by Karen Ranney
She knocked on Riona’s door, and when her daughter answered, entered.
Riona turned at Susanna’s entrance and sighed inwardly. It would do no good to ask for a reprieve. Her mother had a look on her face that brooked no opposition. If she had inherited her stubbornness, it came from the maternal side of the family. She couldn’t remember if her father had an obstinate character. All her memories of him were of an easygoing sailor, filled with tales of his travels and gusty laughter. But then, she supposed, he must’ve been stubborn, to continue following his dream to the detriment of those he loved.
“Would it help if I told you I know what you’re about to say?” Riona asked.
“What am I about to say?”
“That my behavior is deplorable, that I have shamed the family, and that I have forgotten I am to be married shortly.”
“You have, indeed, saved me a lecture,” Susanna responded, smiling.
“Then that is one thing I have done tonight that is to my credit,” Riona said softly.
She stood, pushing back the bench in front of her vanity and walking to one of the two windows in the chamber. She pushed aside the curtains and stared out at the view.
“There isn’t any hope for it, Riona. Harold McDougal is going to be your husband, and wishes and wants will not change it.”
“Do you think I don’t know that, Mother?” Riona asked softly. “I have become resigned to it.”
“Was the kiss I witnessed a form of your acceptance?”
“I could tell you, Mother, that it was an act of gratitude. After all, James saved my life. Or perhaps I simply forgot myself.”
“Is that the truth?”
No, she’d kissed him deliberately and would again, but there were some thoughts that were not meant to be shared.
“Should I be satisfied with your explanation, Riona?”
“You might pretend to be,” Riona said, smiling wryly. “Just as I am engaging in pretense about my wedding.”
For a long moment, Susanna looked at her. Did her mother see all the reluctance in her mind? She didn’t want to try to explain what she felt for James. In the end, it didn’t matter. However much she might be fascinated with him, might crave his touch or think forbidden thoughts, he was not for her. Not permanently.
“I have never wanted anything but your happiness, Riona.”
“I know that, Mother.”
“But I do not see how anyone can conjure up happiness out of this situation. Whatever you do, it can only end in heartache.”
If she were a woman given to tears, Riona thought she might cry at this moment. But her tears were better saved for another time.
On the day she married Harold.
“Shall I ask him to leave?”
Whether James was here or gone, the result was the same. She would long for him regardless of where he was.
“No,” Riona said. “Nothing will come of this, Mother. I am going to marry Harold. Nothing must disturb Maureen’s happiness, after all.” There, a little bitterness showing.
“Do you hold your sister responsible?” Susanna asked, frowning.
“No, I don’t,” she said, her sense of fairness coming to the surface. But it seemed that the past several months had been given up to everyone else’s wishes. Mrs. Parker’s dictates must always be obeyed, Maureen’s happiness must be preserved, even Harold’s needs must be considered.
She wanted a few days of hedonism, of sheer enjoyment for the sake of it, with no recriminations. An escape from the reality of her future. A release from being responsible for everyone’s happiness.
“No,” she repeated. “Do not ask him to leave. My behavior will be above reproach.”
How strange to make a promise at the same time she ached to break it.
He was standing in the shadows when Susanna left the room. Moving cautiously so as not to startle her, James came forward.
“The fault is mine,” he said.
She turned and looked at him. “Is it?”
“Only mine. Riona is not to blame for what happened.”
“Is it honor that makes you say that, James, or guilt?”
“Perhaps a measure of both,” he said honestly.
“I know my daughter, James MacRae. No one could have coerced her to such affection. What she did was willingly done.”
“I still hold myself responsible.”
She regarded him levelly. “This is an untenable situation, James. I am sorry for it. I was wrong to ask you to stay. Forgive me.”
“The fault is not yours.”
She stared at the far wall and sighed deeply. “At least we’ve rid ourselves of Mrs. Parker.” She studied him once more, smiling this time. “It’s already been pointed out to me that I’m lacking wisdom where you’re concerned.” A surprising comment, but she didn’t elaborate.
“I wish Riona had never seen Edinburgh,” she said fiercely, and left him, leaving him staring after her.
At first Rory thought he’d died, but the pain was so great that he was certain he hadn’t. There was something on his chest, and something else was pressing against his ear and his neck. He brushed at it or tried to. His arm wouldn’t work, and a streak of pain traveled from his wrist to his shoulder, answering that question for once and all.
He wouldn’t be hurting so badly if he were dead.
He moved his other hand from half beneath him. He was buried alive. A surge of panic made him want to scream, but there was dirt in his mouth. He tried to call out, the sound emerging as a garbled cry. One by one, he picked the bricks off his chest, until he could breathe easier. His arms were next. When he felt upward he finally encountered no obstruction.
It took him nearly an hour, or what he thought was an hour, to emerge from beneath the bricks and crawl a short distance away. He began to shout then, as loud as he was able.
“James!”
He half turned, holding up his hand so that the other men would halt for a moment. The sound of the saws and axes nearly drowned out her voice.
Abigail was running toward him, her skirts held at one side, her hair askew and her cap missing.
“It’s Rory!” she shouted. “He’s been hurt.”
“Where?”
“The barn.”
He’d thought Rory was working with one of the teams of men throughout Tyemorn last night. They’d first set up a brigade to extinguish the fire, and then to surround the farm with lookouts. Twice he’d asked about Rory, and twice someone had said that he’d been spotted patrolling one of the pastures.
James should have sought the boy out himself.
He began to run, reaching the site of the burned-out building. He hadn’t missed Rory, but he should have. He and the other men had worked through the night, ensuring that the fire was out.
At dawn, he and Ned had set up gangs of men to begin the work necessary to rebuild the structure. The barn was too valuable to do without for more than a few days.
The sagging west wall had collapsed, now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Rory lay atop it, his young body looking broken and burned. Abigail stood near him, crying softly into the hem of her apron.
James felt a surge of guilt as he knelt at his side. He should have noticed Rory’s absence.
Rory turned his head weakly. “Drummond’s still out there, sir.”
“Did he do this to you?”
Rory nodded. “The lantern exploded. I didn’t expect that. Am I burned all over?”
James did a quick appraisal. “One leg, Rory, but it doesn’t look that bad.”
The young man sighed in relief, looking beyond to where Abigail now stood. “I hurt all over, James.” He looked scared and too young. James hastened to reassure him.
“You were buried by the wall,” James said, “you’re full of bruises. But the bricks probably kept you safe from the rest of the fire.”
Susanna moved into James’s sight. “We’ll take care of him,” she said, Riona at her side. Behind her stood Maureen. All three women wore
looks of worry overlaid with calm resolve. James realized how much they had come to care for Rory, just as he cared for all of them.
A landlocked home was a strange place for a former cabin boy.
They devised a litter for Rory, carrying him back to the house. Several times during the journey he lost consciousness. Yet every time he opened his eyes, Abigail was at his side, brushing her fingers over his hand.
Without knowing it, the young maid had made a friend. James smiled at her as she hesitated at the door.
“I think he’d like you with him,” he said when she glanced back at him. Abigail nodded and followed the stretcher inside.
“I’ll go in search of Drummond, then,” he said.
Riona remained between her sister and mother, but the look of concern on her face was reserved for him.
“I’ll be careful,” he said, in response to her unspoken words.
Ned and a few other men accompanied him on his search for Drummond, a task that James expected to take all day. This time, he vowed to go from door to door in Ayleshire to find the man, if need be. But they discovered him before an hour had passed.
Drummond lay on the path near a copse of trees, not far from where a pack horse stood, its reins tied to a sapling. He was beyond any mortal justice.
James knelt at his side, turning the body over slowly. The dead man’s face was long and thin, his ears too large for his head. His mouth hung open, revealing sharpened brown teeth.
“Do you recognize him?” Ned asked.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Thomas Drummond.” He told Ned the story of the last battle fought between the two clans at Gilmuir. “We turned the prisoners over to the captain of an English merchant ship. He was one of them.”
“Reason enough to hate you,” Ned said, flinging back the man’s leather jerkin. “Pity he didn’t care for that cut of his.”
A large yellowish stain marred the front of Drummond’s shirt, and the stench of a suppurating wound tinged the air.
“A terrible way to die,” Ned said. “And a foolish one.”
“Hatred killed him as much as his wound,” James said.
Ned only nodded.
Chapter 21
T he dawn breeze fluttered her skirt around Riona’s ankles, brushed against her calves as if demanding attention. She wrapped her arms around her waist, tilted her head up to see the branches of the pine tree towering above her. The day was perfect, with not a hint of clouds in the sky.
Closing her eyes, she tried to identify each separate scent. Earth, still damp from the spring rains. Mushrooms, plentiful now that the ground was wet again. Flowers, the wins and harebells and heather that marked the season so well.
Life was precious at this moment, special and unique. Especially after they’d nearly been killed in the fire. The calls of the birds were so much more vocal on this morning, as if they had something of import to share with one another. Or did they tally up their numbers to ensure that all of them were present?
She smiled at her own whimsy, closed her eyes, and stretched out her arms. In this bright moment she felt a penitent before an all-imposing God, a worshipper at His altar of nature.
Holding her arms out, she began to twirl, a silly movement for a woman of propriety. Her skirts belled up, and she grinned, feeling foolish and too young to be herself. Dizziness prompted her return to decorum, but she was not yet done with dancing.
Here there was no measure to count, no movements to memorize, no constant stream of conversation half understood. No one saw or discussed or judged her as she gripped her skirts with her hands and curtsied to a pine tree.
A most proper companion, Mr. Pine.
Riona grabbed the tip of a low, supple branch, and followed a movement, silent and happy. Not once did Mr. Pine inquire as to how she was enjoying Edinburgh, or if she was discommoded by all the construction in the city. No, the tree was content simply to be itself.
As was she.
She wanted to appreciate each separate moment. To take an hour and savor it. To prize an afternoon or feel joy in a dawn. She experienced every second of her freedom and cherished it, tucking it, used and spent, into a place in her heart.
One day, far into the future, she would pull these hours from her memory and view them again, remembering these days as halcyon and rare, beautiful and splendid.
She attempted to allow nothing into her mind that might tarnish the silver of these days. No thoughts of Harold.
Thoughts of James, however, were harder to expunge.
At times, she’d turn and he would be staring at her, his eyes hooded, as if to hold back any emotion that might have been revealed in them. Occasionally, he’d make a remark and she’d realize it was a goad, a temptation to speech, a comment deliberately made to incite her interest or her answer. But she’d keep silent, concentrating on her plate. Attempting to be decorous. Praying to the dishes.
She turned toward the manor house, wondering what plans he had for today. As she did often, she thought of that moment outside the barn when she’d kissed him. And earlier, when he’d shown her how it was done.
Had he known that she wanted more? Or that her ruin was halted not by temperance or conscience, but by discovery?
She pressed her fingers against her lips. How often in the past year had she attempted to please others by being someone she was not, by holding her own true nature so tightly compressed that not even a shadow of the real Riona was visible? Yet that effort had not proven good enough, had it?
She’d seeped out around the edges, her true nature made visible by comments she couldn’t restrain, exuberance she couldn’t quite conceal, laughter that sounded too loud, and now wishes that were so far from being proper that they almost shocked her.
Did James know that whenever she was around him she felt more herself than at any time in her life? Or that she was carried away by feelings too strong to be labeled by simple speech?
Even now her cheeks warmed at the memory of those moments in the barn. Turning away, she tried to banish him from her thoughts, but the deed was not so easily accomplished.
Gripping the end of a branch, she pulled it sideways, let it spring back into place with a faint whipping sound. Then, holding it once more, she smiled at herself as she again curtsied to her companion.
Mr. Pine became James MacRae in her mind, and her cheeks warmed even further. When she danced with him, her feet suddenly knew their place, her heart heard the beat of the music clearly and without distortion, and she became witty and charming and urbane.
If she were to engage in foolishness, then she would have all her dreams come true. Not simply a country dance executed in perfect decorum.
She would be beloved and cherished, a woman desired. Her life would be ordained not by rules and regulations, but by the seasons and a celestial clock pushing day into night.
Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and let the wind kiss her cheeks, pretending that it was James.
James scaled the ladder to the roof of the new barn, intent upon finishing the structure in the next two days. He glanced to his left, then came to a halt, his arms crossed over his chest in a position he often adopted at sea. Those who knew him well said that it was his thinking pose. At the moment he was not conscious of having any thought at all, however, being entranced by the sight of Riona, dancing.
The dawn light captured her hair as it fell from its careful coronet of braids to the middle of her back. With two fingers she held on to the end of a branch, and from time to time addressed it as if it were a partner.
There was something youthful and innocent in her delight. He was content to be an observer for the moment, captivated by the sight of Riona as he knew her to be and not as society and Mrs. Parker would have her appear.
He wanted to seduce her with his mouth, taking his time about it until she directed him with her moans and soft, helpless gasps.
Becoming besotted with a woman soon to marry was foolishness and he’d never been considered la
cking in wits.
Turning away, he set about his duties.
“Be careful where you walk,” he cautioned Ned as he topped the ladder.
“Do I look the fool, then?” Ned squinted at him. A frown, James thought, or maybe not. With Ned, it was difficult to discern his exact expression through that full beard.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked, glancing at the other man’s arm.
“I am,” Ned said, his look daring James to argue.
He stifled his smile, and walked to the outermost part of the frame.
The barn was the single most important building at Tyemorn Manor and any number of people could, and had, been recruited to rebuild the structure. Not only were the more valuable animals, such as the horses, sheltered here, but those too young or too old to survive out of doors.
Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, James knelt and began hammering in the trusses. The framework wasn’t much different from that of a ship’s hull, only inverted.
There were a great many similarities between his shipboard life and farming, he’d discovered since arriving at Tyemorn Manor. Both occupations required attention to the implements of the trade. Aboard ship, sails had to be mended, decks kept free of salt spray. Here, harnesses had to be repaired, plows sharpened.
A day at sea was regulated by bells; Tyemorn’s routine was dictated by the passing of the sun across the sky. The fields must be tended, the animals fed, the cows milked, the slaughtering done. Each day brought its own schedule, as fixed and marked as life aboard ship. But then, life itself was like his grandmother’s rosary, each event a tiny gleaming jewel. Spring came and lambs were born. Summer arrived and the crops matured. Autumn brought the harvest, and the winter a dormancy to rest the earth.
Yet there was a curious contrast between the two ways of life. The farms of Tyemorn rewarded hard work with flourishing fields and thriving animals, whereas the sea grudgingly repaid a sailor’s efforts by allowing him to survive from voyage to voyage.