Autumn in Scotland

by Karen Ranney

  “You’re named after Dixon Robert MacKinnon,” she’d told him more than once. “You’ll be a proper namesake, you will.”

  No climbing in the forest for him. No tricks on cook, or his uncle. Nan always insisted upon inspecting him before gatherings or ceremonies, in case his breeches were stained or wrinkled, or his waistcoat was buttoned improperly. George was exempt from such supervision, which Dixon never thought especially fair.

  “Tell her I will,” he said reluctantly now. “Is she still in the tower room?”

  She nodded.

  “Ten minutes, no more.”

  She curtseyed again as he turned and strode up the broad steps of Balfurin, heading for his room. Once inside the Laird’s Chamber, he moved to the dresser. He released his hair from its queue, took his military brushes, one in each hand, and brushed his hair until it shone before retying the queue at the back of his neck. A great many years had passed since he’d been subjected to Nan’s appraisal, but he inspected himself critically with an eye for detail.

  The dark blue of his jacket was immaculate. His waistcoat, embroidered with yellow and green butterflies, was colorful but not gaudy. His trousers were of the same material as his jacket, and thanks to Matthew’s ministrations, perfectly pressed. His boots were highly polished, enough that he could almost see his reflection.

  He looked exactly as he was—a man of some substance, a man of wealth, a man who’d traveled the world. If the expression in his eyes was a little wary, that was easily explained. He’d learned to trust himself more than any other person. If there was something missing from his life, no one could discern it from his appearance.

  He turned to the window. Charlotte’s carriage was almost out of sight.

  Where was she going in such a hurry? Did she have a destination in mind, or was she simply escaping Balfurin? Because of him? Questions he couldn’t answer.

  Nor could he answer a more important question. Why didn’t he simply go to Charlotte and tell her that he wasn’t George? The elderly servant’s error could easily be explained away—in the dim light, Jeffrey had simply been mistaken. Only a day had passed since he’d been announced as her husband. He could simply go to her and say: I’m not George. I’m Dixon, his cousin. Then all would be well. He could assist her in looking for George and do so without hiding his identity.

  Then why didn’t he? Why continue with the ruse?

  When Balfurin was empty of its students and the school had disbanded for the term, he and Charlotte would be alone except for the servants. Balfurin was a large castle, but not large enough to silence the gossips.

  He left the Laird’s Chamber, heading for the tower room. In all these years, he’d not forgotten the way. At the moment he felt like he was twelve again and summoned to Nan’s presence for another misdeed.

  Nan had been a scullery maid, advancing over the years to a position of housekeeper at Balfurin. She was revered for what she knew about Balfurin, and the history of the MacKinnons, and possibly because she had been his grandfather’s leman.

  Her punishments were generally upheld by his uncle. Once, Dixon had to sweep the stables for a week because he’d ordered one of the stableboys to exercise his horse and Nan had heard of it.

  “You’ll learn to give orders once you’ve learned how to take them,” Nan had told him. “And don’t you go looking at another man as being less than you.”

  He passed through the corridor leading to the tower room. This was the oldest part of the castle, where the walls were four feet thick. Over the years the arrow slits in the outer walls had been filled with stained glass, and now a pattern of multicolored light followed his passage.

  At the end of the corridor, he turned right to a small door. He opened it, remembering a time when he didn’t have to stoop beneath the lintel. The stairs, cut into the masonry, had a depression in the middle worn by countless pairs of feet over the generations. At the top of the stairs was another door, and again he had to stoop to enter the tower. When he straightened, he glanced to his left, to the lone window. From here the vista of Balfurin was magnificent. In the distance, he could see Charlotte’s carriage. On the horizon, another storm was coming, the dark clouds warning of high winds and lightning.

  He knocked on the small door, and when a faint voice answered, took a deep breath and entered.

  Old Nan sat in a chair beside the window, her hands resting on her lap. Time had wizened her, as if she were shriveling with each advancing year. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, giving her skin the appearance of the softest leather. Her eyes were sunken, lids almost disappearing in the sockets. Her hair, once thick and pure white, was now wispy and sparse, arranged in a coronet that barely covered her scalp. Blue tinged veins, like engorged worms, skittered over the skin of her hands, seeming to knit the joints together.

  Her smile, however, was oddly lovely, as if age could not quite destroy the last remainder of her beauty.

  “It’s been more than ten minutes,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. She studied him, her soft green eyes still capable of pinning him in place.

  He felt strangely as if he should bow to her, if nothing more in honor of her age. She was a survivor, and the expression in her eyes seemed to indicate that she knew it only too well.

  “Nan,” he said, coming to stand in front of her. She leaned back in the chair, making a slow and leisurely inspection of him from the tip of his shiny boots to the top of his black hair.

  “The girl tells me that George has come home. Finally.”

  “Is that what she said?” He wasn’t foolish enough to lie to her.

  “There was no celebration for your homecoming. No fatted calf.”

  “No,” he said.

  “There should have been,” she said, looking out at the horizon. “You’ve been gone a very long time, Dixon Robert MacKinnon.”

  He pulled up a chair from the table and sat in front of her. “Yes, I have,” he said, grateful that someone at Balfurin had finally recognized him. That it was Nan could be a complication, however. She had a very stringent sense of honor, for all that she’d been his grandfather’s mistress. He should admit his identity to Charlotte before Nan told her.

  They eyed each other for a moment.

  “Why would you tell them you’re George? You’re more handsome than him.”

  “I didn’t tell them,” he said. “Jeffrey announced me as the earl. I merely allowed them to continue to think what they would.”

  Her face changed, became harder. Now she would lecture him on his behavior, he was certain. Instead, she clenched her hands together and leaned back in the chair.

  “Are you unwell?” Asking that question of a woman of her years struck him as idiotic, but she fixed her gaze on him and gave him a little smile.

  “I am healthier than most people here, and destined to outlive most of them, especially the English.”

  “My grandfather wouldn’t be pleased at the English,” he said with a smile.

  “Do not say his name,” she said sternly. “You’ve lost the right. Gone for ten years, Dixon Robert MacKinnon. Gone for ten years. Did you think to turn your back on Balfurin?”

  “I thought to create my own life,” he said. “There was nothing here for me, after all. Balfurin belongs to George, not me. What would you have me do, Nan, be his whipping boy? Remain here grateful for the crumbs from his table?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why are you here?” she finally asked. “Why have you come home?”

  He stood, too uncomfortable to remain seated. The lone window offered little respite, since the view was of Balfurin and its hills and glen. What he needed, perhaps, was the oblivion offered by sleep or spirits. Unfortunately, all he had was Nan’s uncompromising stare.

  “I needed to feel anchored,” he said, offering a confession to her. Would she absolve him? Or would she simply delve further, seeking more of an explanation.

  “Has the world been too cruel to you, Dixon?”

&nbs
p; “The world has been exceedingly kind,” he said, turning and facing her. “By anyone’s standards, I’m a wealthy man.”

  “Yet you’re poor in your spirit. Why?”

  “Greed,” he said, giving her more of a truth than she’d recognize.

  She nodded, as if she somehow understood. The gesture made him uncomfortable. Venerable and stern, she managed to get beneath his skin.

  “Where’s George?” he asked, certain that she’d know.

  “Why do you care? Leave him where he is. He’s probably gambling and whoring, and shaming the name of MacKinnon. He’s not welcome here at Balfurin. He would’ve torn apart the place brick by brick and sold it if he could. Besides, he brought an English woman here.”

  Her expression left no doubt that she was angrier about the last statement than the first.

  “Who kept Balfurin alive. Or are you angry because of the school?”

  “It’s a fair enough destiny. An honorable one, better than allowing the place to fall into rack and ruin. Robbie would’ve been sad to see it the way it was before the woman came.”

  “But you can’t quite forget she’s English. It’s been a long time, Nan. Things change, including hatreds.”

  She nodded. A sign of her age, that she allowed him to contest her comment.

  “He didn’t want to marry, you know. George. He once told me that he didn’t want to be chained to a rich wife because of a building. I told him that Balfurin was more than a building. It was his heritage, his honor, his responsibility. He only laughed.”

  He sat in the chair again, leaning forward to take one of her hands in his. Her skin was papery thin and cold. Retrieving her shawl from the back of the chair, he wrapped it around her shoulders, draping the ends over her arms.

  Her lips curved into the faintest of smiles. “You remind me so of Robbie,” she said. “You both had the same temperament. Stubborn as goats, the two of you.”

  This, too, was new. She’d never before mentioned his grandfather in less than glowing terms, and always with a sense of formality. As if Dixon didn’t know that his grandfather’s will had stipulated she was to live in the tower room until she died.

  When he was a small boy, still grief stricken by the loss of his parents, he watched her make a daily pilgrimage to the chapel. She placed flowers on his grandfather’s plaque, and then sat on the pew in front of the altar. Sometimes, she’d talk to the man he’d only known as old, as if sharing her day with him.

  She’d found him there once, crying over his parents. Instead of scolding him, she’d simply hugged him close. Ever since that day, his life had been molded by two adults who’d given him both instruction and a grudging affection: his uncle and Old Nan.

  “George didn’t understand that he had to choose duty first, because he was earl. But he never remembered that. He always thought it was more important simply being George.”

  “Why do you talk about him as if he’s dead?” Dixon asked.

  She turned her head and regarded him. “He is, to Balfurin. He’s gone away, and I doubt he’ll ever be back.”

  “Why did he come here?” Dixon asked.

  “To ask me about the treasure, of course.”

  “He hasn’t given that up?”

  “Perhaps he found it,” she said, pulling her hand away and wrapping the end of the shawl around her fingers. “Perhaps that’s why he’s not here. He found the treasure and he went away. We’ll not find him again until he’s spent all the money.”

  “There isn’t a treasure,” he said. All his life Dixon had heard the tale of the missing MacKinnon treasure. Pots of gold hoarded for generations, insurance for the heirs of Balfurin when they needed it. As a boy, he’d been fascinated with the tale, but that’s all it had been, just a story handed down from father to son to excite the imagination, and then to be put away as a child’s fable.

  He and George had badgered every single adult at Balfurin about the treasure. He’d even sought information from his aunt before she died, but she’d just shaken her head, smiling at him fondly.

  “There’s supposed to be a treasure map somewhere. Your uncle and your mother tore through the library when they were children, trying to find it. I think it’s a nursery rhyme, something to keep the children of Balfurin occupied for years. There’s nothing more to it, I’m afraid, my dear.”

  He and George had explored the caves along the bank of the river, finding assorted items that they excitedly carried back to Balfurin: a scrap of tartan, an old pipe, a rusted knife blade, and a long thin reed that looked as if it might have once belonged to a set of bagpipes. But they’d never found the Balfurin treasure.

  “The treasure is real,” Nan said, focusing her attention on his face once again. For a moment he forgot what she said, concerned as he was with the tears that pooled in her eyes. “You are so like your grandfather. How could anyone mistake you for George?”

  He brushed aside her question for one of his own. “What do you mean, the treasure’s real?”

  “I only know the poem. Your grandfather made me memorize it. Some days I think I’ve remembered it all. On others, I’m certain I’ve forgotten something.”

  She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.

  “When changes come

  And the wind blows cold

  Ancestors will speak

  Of things foretold.”

  She opened her eyes, fixed her gaze on the ceiling. “That’s the first part of it. Anyone who asks is to receive the first part.”

  He sat back and studied her. “Did you tell George?”

  “Weren’t you listening? I had to. I was to tell anyone who asked me. Even George.”

  “But there’s more?”

  “I can’t tell you that. You must follow the riddle.”

  She was old and frail, but she was still stubborn.

  They sat in silence for a moment as she stared out the window.

  “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been able to leave the tower,” she finally said. “But I don’t mind that my world is only this little room. He used to visit me here.” She sighed and closed her eyes.

  “You didn’t mind that it was wrong?”

  She didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did, her voice was laced with such sadness that he regretted the bluntness of his question.

  “Adultery? Of course I minded. I hated him every time he came. And yet I couldn’t wait for him to come to me. I’d vowed that I would never ask about his wife, and I never did. I told myself that my sin was less because I didn’t know what excuse he gave for leaving her bed and coming to mine.

  “The MacKinnons do not have happy marriages,” she said, opening her eyes and glancing at him. “But they always have love.”

  “What else did you tell George?” he asked gently, turning her back to the subject.

  “You want the whole of what I told him? Are you seeking the treasure as well, Dixon?”

  “I have enough money. I am seeking my cousin.”

  “Should you not let him be, wherever he is? He’d do the same for you, less out of caring, I think, than because it’s too much of a bother.”

  “I’m not George.”

  “Why do you feel such responsibility for your cousin?”

  Because he’d not felt enough responsibility for someone else in his care. Perhaps looking for George would help to expiate his guilt, make amends for the fact that his greed and ambition had caused the death of another human being.

  Instead of telling her the full truth, he gave her a partial answer. “Perhaps because I once envied everything he had. Perhaps to show him I’m the better man.”

  “You’ve become an honest man, Dixon, but one, I think, who’s too hard on himself.”

  “Or not hard enough.”

  “Life will do to you what your own nature does not, have no fear of that. We do not know, any of us, how long we will have. Some of us will outlive our usefulness, and some of us will outlive our loves.”

  She leaned
her head back and began to speak. For a moment he didn’t understand, but then he realized she was reciting the poem again. This time, however, there was an additional stanza.

  “Where once we came, so where we’ll go.

  The fates have said what no mortal will know.

  Swords and shield and treasure foretold,

  A fortune for those brave and bold.”

  When she finished, she looked at him. “Is that any clearer, Dixon?”

  He shook his head. She laughed in response, a gentle tinkling laughter that sounded almost young.

  “Did you think I gave you more, simply because you look like your grandfather sitting there? Do not be so foolish.” She closed her eyes again and lifted her right hand, flicking her fingers at him in a dismissive gesture as regal as a queen.

  Chapter 9

  H ad she been too rash?

  Normally, it took a little more than an hour to reach Spencer’s home, a pleasant manor house on the outskirts of Inverness. But this morning it seemed to be taking much longer, perhaps because Charlotte was so conscious of the passing of the moments.

  There was a storm coming; the clouds were black on the horizon and the wind already rising, whipping the last of the leaves from the trees lining the road. The air was chilled, and she held her cloak tight around her neck, feeling a shiver travel the length of her body.

  Autumn was evidently impatient for its death.

  She ended the term in mid-October because of the weather. By spring, Balfurin would be hospitable again. For the first time, however, she dreaded the coming of winter, wishing there were hundreds of people left in the castle. There were days when even Spencer could not make it through, and she and the staff were cut off from the rest of the world by the snow and ice.

  And now there was George.

  She couldn’t even think of him without feeling her temper rise. Perhaps she should do what Lady Eleanor suggested and give her errant husband a reason to think she wished him in her bed. Then, at exactly that moment when he expected her to welcome him, she’d draw back and smile at him in a very cool, calculated manner and banish him from her room.