A sandpapery tongue scraped across Elias’s chin, just as his thoughts drifted to the castle as it would look when restored. Glamis was a larger edifice, but Brodie Castle was older. Blair Castle had larger grounds, but Brodie Castle stood in prettier surrounds.
The tongue scraped across his cheek this time.
“Stop that.”
Elias had considered opening the castle and lodge to his charities for board meetings, but that would have meant hiring a caterer, finding help in the village to change the linens and clean. Jeannie, who managed a lovely little holiday cottage, had discouraged him.
A soft paw batted at Elias’s lips.
Elias opened his eyes and found himself nose to nose with Wallace. “I’m occupying your throne, I take it. Enjoy your tyranny while you may, cat. By this time next year you’ll be deposed by a wee prince or princess, and this will no longer be your castle.”
The cat squinted, as if to say, he’d known a baby was on the way long before Elias had, and was in fact, responsible for wooing Jane into joining the household.
“I’m off to check on the chickens,” Elias said. “And I’ll try to un-bungle what I bungled yesterday. Guard the castle, cat, while it’s still yours to guard.”
He left Wallace curled in the recliner, and drove out to Violet’s, stopping to pick up a six pack of heather ale from the bottle shop that ordered it for Dunstan at a scandalous price.
Violet was in her garden, Brunhilda scratching at the dirt beside her.
“Weeding again,” Elias said, taking a cross-legged seat in the grass at the edge of the garden. “I see you have help today.”
“I have company,” Violet said, “which is almost the same thing.” She used a tool with three curved prongs to hack at the soil, pitching weeds into her basket as she went. “I overslept, got a late start. We’ll probably get rain this afternoon, and the weeds do love a good shower. What’s in the bag?”
She sat back on her heels, wiping her brow with a forearm. The line of her throat was lovely, and the way her old T-shirt strained across her breasts riveting.
“Where is your hat, Violet Hughes?” Elias asked, extracting an ale from the brown paper bag at his side. “You will get a sunburn, and I can tell you from experience, sunburn is unpleasant. Try this.” He twisted off the cap and passed her the bottle.
She took a sniff, then a cautious sip. “That’s lovely,” she said, examining the label. “If I drink one of those in this heat, I will soon be flat out in the glide-a-rocker. What brings you here, Elias?”
The question confirmed Elias’s sense that on his last visit, he’d made a wrong turn.
“You do. You bring me out here. Give me one of those digging implements and I’ll at least get as much done as Brunhilda.”
“You eat bugs?” Violet asked, taking another sip of ale, then passing Elias the bottle.
“I eat crow, as you Americans would say. Will you marry me, Violet?”
She paused, the tool in her hand poised to strike at the earth. “Have you been drinking, Elias?”
“That is not among the usual replies to a marriage proposal,” Elias said. “And no, I have not been drinking, though a wee dram or three never hurt a man’s outlook. Yesterday, I invited you to come to Scotland, but I failed to make clear, that is, I neglected to….”
This was not going well. Elias carried the ale and his rucksack to the porch, returned to take the tool from Violet’s hand, and scooped her up against his chest.
“Is this a Highlander thing, Elias? This hauling women around for no apparent reason? I’m capable of walking, and the beer will get hot if you leave it out for more than ten minutes.”
“If I gave you two minutes, you’d hop on a tractor, or move sheep fences, or can dingleberries, or run off to whatever thousand other things you’re intent on doing before I finish making a fool of myself. Besides, I’ll take any excuse to hold you.”
“Elias we need to talk.”
No, they did not. Talk would be a somber undertaking, of which Elias had had a bellyful.
“We need to get married.” Elias carried Violet up the porch steps, but she refused to open the door when he obligingly dipped at the knees. He compromised by settling with her on the glide-a-rocker, keeping her in his lap. “That came out wrong. Violet, will you please marry me? We’ll get the conservation easement, hire managers, split our time between the crops and the castle. The renovations should only take a few years, and by then—”
She kissed him, though Elias didn’t mistake the gesture for affection. He was babbling, and kissing him was a merciful gesture to shut him up. Bungling apparently grew easier with practice.
“I called the land preservation office,” Violet said. “They know me there, because I’m such an advocate for the program.”
Her tone was level, her gaze was sad. The orphan in Elias began to silently howl.
“Tell me,” Elias said. “Whatever the news, just tell me.”
“Maryland’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30.”
Many business organizations used a date other than January 1 to start their accounting cycle.
“Why is that significant?”
“Because,” Violet said, “the land preservation program has used up its purchasing funds for this fiscal year. They will accept new applications starting in September, and probably begin making awards around January. I knew how the program operated in theory, I’d just never acquainted myself with the actual schedule. Elias, I’m sorry.”
She squirmed off his lap, and he let her go.
No mortgage, no easement, no hope, and Violet was sorry.
Elias rose and crossed the porch to where the ale and his rucksack sat at the top of the steps. He kicked the rucksack so hard it soared across the yard and landed immediately outside the sheep pen. The ewes startled, the chickens flapped, and Elias felt the smallest increment better.
“Does this mean,” he said returning to Violet’s side, “you’re not interested in marrying me? You’d be a countess, for which I do apologize, but it can’t be helped. Our daughters would carry the title lady, our oldest son would be a baron. There’s nothing I can do about that, either.”
Violet retrieved the open beer and resumed her place in his lap. “This is what it’s like to be a farmer, Elias. You risk everything on a new hybrid strain of wheat, and a hailstorm knocks a bumper crop flat in thirty minutes. The most beautiful hay God ever grew springs up in your fields, but if the ground is too wet, you won’t be able to cut it, much less bale it, until it’s far past prime. Without farmers who can plow on through all those vicissitudes, nobody has anything to eat. You would have made a fine farmer.”
She took a sip of the beer, and passed him the bottle.
“You are telling me, you can’t abandon your post. This farm is a vocation, such that you can’t sell it to one of your neighbors and take up the land preservation cause from another pulpit.”
Elias was still searching for a solution, which suggested Dunstan’s accusation of pigheadedness was spot on.
“Your castle is a vocation,” Violet said, snuggling closer. “I know this farm, Elias. I know which fields dry out too fast, which stay boggy. I know which hollows will be nipped by an early frost, and where my dad buried my first dog. I could sell this property eventually, but because it’s not in the preservation program, how do I know the buyer won’t just flip it into Maitland’s lap, and laugh all the way to the bank? People have to eat—they also have to learn to value our farmland—and I know how to grow crops on this patch of ground.”
“So put your farm into the goddamned preservation program,” Elias said. “You believe in the program, and even if you don’t sell this land, someday, you will no longer be able to farm it.”
Someday, she’d die, though hopefully not in a farming accident. Sitting on the porch, a part of Elias was dying, the part capable of enduring heartache on the strength of hope and sheer stubbornness.
“My mother would not agree to put
her farm into the program,” Violet said. “That leaves a very small acreage, Elias, and I’m not likely to be approved the first few times I apply.”
Elias took another sip of cool, fragrant ale, though it did nothing to ease the ache in his throat. This must have been how his ancestors had felt, when their lands had been pried away by legal machinations, their cottages burned, their cows driven off so the landlords could raise the more profitable sheep. The only option for the tenants had been to accept defeat, and hope for the best in an unknown land.
“If there were no castle,” Elias said, “I’d relocate here without a backward glance, Violet.” Cousins, clients, aged single malts, a lifetime of memories—Elias would part from them, happily, and that realization brought a drop of comfort in a barrel of heartache.
Many of those memories were sad, and it was past time he let them rest in peace.
“If there were no farm, Elias, I’d be on the next plane to Scotland with you, but especially if you have to sell to Maitland, I can’t turn my back on my property or my valley.”
Elias loved this woman, for her integrity, for the ferocity of her passions, and for her honesty. He spared her a recitation of his sentiments, because like every Scotsman ever to pen a memorable ballad, he would apparently soon have to leave behind that which he treasured most.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Violet’s guilty secret was a capacity for tears. She cried when the new lambs first went pronking across the barnyard on a sunny winter morning, she cried when the autumn light sharpened in anticipation of winter. She cried at falling leaves, and when she banged her thumb with a hammer. She cried at sappy movies, and sometimes, she cried after meeting with her accountant.
Cuddled in Elias’s arms, she understood what it meant when a sorrow was too deep for tears.
If she left the valley, Max Maitland would snatch up every spare acre, and the families who’d been hanging on for the last ten years would take his coin with sigh of guilt and relief.
Once development began, it never stopped. It slowed, it even paused, but once it started, a region’s quality of life was forever altered. Land ceased producing, and fell under the control of inane homeowner’s policies intended to create homogeneity where life-sustaining purpose and diversity had been.
“Right now,” Violet said, gazing out across the valley, “I hate Scotland. I hate your castle. I might even hate my life, and I surely do loathe Maxwell Moneybags Maitland, but I love you.”
Violet felt the surprise of her words go through Elias. She’d surprised herself too, but what was the point of keeping silent about love?
“Thank you, but you’re not… that doesn’t….” Elias heaved a sigh, such that Violet’s cheek rode the rise and fall of his chest. “I love you, too.”
Never had a man sounded less happy to surrender such a declaration.
“Love is good, Elias. I love my farm, you love your castle. We make sacrifices for who and what we love.”
They shared another sip of his flowery Scottish ale. A hawk took off from a leafy maple and soared over Elias’s fields on a lazy thermal.
“The properties we love are on separate continents,” he said. “Another item on the list of immutables that apparently cannot be helped. Will you at least visit me?”
He was so stubborn. “I’ll want to.” Every night for rest of her life, Violet would wish she was climbing into bed beside him.
“You’ll want to, but a woman who can barely find three days to visit her own mother can’t be nipping across the Atlantic to admire a castle that’s only fit for weddings and ceilidhs. I’m good at missing people, Violet, and I will miss you terribly.”
Violet did not invite him to visit her—what would be the point, when the Atlantic Ocean remained between them? She took the ale from him, finished it, and set the bottle aside. She’d keep it for a bud vase, and when the cat accidentally knocked it over, she’d glue the pieces back together.
Elias held her in an embrace at once secure and gentle, his gaze on the property across the road. Did he see houses there? Streets? A community center where his barn stood?
Violet would miss the quiet and the rural beauty of the property when his farm had been chopped into cul-de-sacs and jogging trails, but she’d miss Elias more. She’d miss his arms around her, his Scottish diction, the scent of him….
“Did you pitch the last condoms in captivity across the yard?” Violet asked.
“No,” Elias said, lips against Violet’s temple. “My wallet is in my pocket.”
“So what do you keep in that knapsack?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I keep things in there—a clean shirt, toiletries, sometimes a book. Conveniences and comforts, not necessities. Anything irreplaceable, I carry on my person.”
“You are irreplaceable. Let’s go upstairs.”
Making love with Elias would hurt like hell. Ignoring the opportunity to be close to him one last time would hurt worse even than that—and apparently, on this point only, he wasn’t prepared to argue with her.
* * *
Elias wanted to carry Violet over the threshold of her home, but she denied him that pleasure by wandering across the yard to retrieve his backpack. He stole a photo of her, the sheep in the background and the mountains framing the barn and fields.
He had pictures of his parents, dear, somewhat artificial images of people trying to look happy. Violet looked strong, lovely, and absolutely, utterly, undeniably at home. She shouldered Elias’s pack with lithe grace and rejoined him on the porch.
“Upstairs, you say?” Elias asked.
“Now would be good. If we’re running out condoms, I will expect you to make our supply count.”
“We will make it count,” Elias retorted as she passed him the backpack. “You’ll want to put the ale in the fridge.”
“You’ll want to stop giving me orders,” Violet said, snagging the remaining ale, and preceding him into the house. “At least until I have my clothes off. Then I might be more open to your suggestions.”
Then Elias’s wits would be too scrambled for coherent speech. Violet stashed the ale in the fridge, then led him up the steps. When Elias had stretched out on her bed between cool white sheets, Violet pulled her T-shirt over her head, stepped out of her sensible footwear, and shucked out of yoga capris that bore garden dirt on both knees.
She was naked, her braid trailing over her shoulder in an auburn rope, and she hesitated by the bed, her courage seeming to desert her. This intimacy had been her idea, but in her eyes, Elias saw the reality of what lay ahead.
This was not good-bye sex, of which they’d both probably had their share. This was not part romp, part relief, part friendly disengagement, a fond memory intended to spare both parties futile acrimony.
This was farewell forever sex.
The pain in Elias’s heart as he watched Violet silently wrestle with their fate, was exquisite, different even from the resonating grief of losing both parents. Elias had been a mostly happy lad of eleven years one day, and a bewildered orphan the next. The lack of warning had been a mercy, for what boy could have borne the anticipation of such a loss? Now, Elias knew that in a few days, he’d leave behind hopes, dreams, most of his heart, and a woman worth treasuring.
“You come here to me, Violet Hughes,” he said, holding out his arms. Not a suggestion or an order, but a plea.
In the next instant, she was bundled against him, bringing with her the scents of cut grass and lemons, sunshine and summer, and the taste of unshed tears in her every kiss.
If the pain of parting was exquisite, Elias was determined to make the loving exquisite too. He linked fingers with Violet as he slowly, slowly joined their bodies, holding her gaze as he brought more and more pleasure to her. Violet retaliated with kisses and sighs, with an embrace more intimate than ivy twining among ancient stones.
So much Elias wanted to give to her, so much he wanted to show her, but all he had was the next hour. He teased and t
asted, dabbled and delighted, until Violet was a boneless heap of aroused female beneath him.
“Now, Elias,” Violet said, stroking his chest. “Love me now.”
“I will always love you.”
He held back. He held back as if he could stop time, hold the sun to its position in the sky, and keep the moon from rising, but in the end, Violet’s determination overcame his self-restraint. He followed her into exquisite pleasure, and then held her while her tears came at last.
* * *
“Have you a proper kilt?” Elias asked, tapping away at the computer keyboard.
Dunstan picked up Wallace and deposed him from the recliner. “I do. I was married in my kilt. Jane fancies me in it, and I’ve worn it to the occasional investiture of a judge or to a retirement dinner. I get a lot of looks and the usual questions.”
“I am cursed,” Elias said, staring at the computer screen.
Elias had been acting odd since he’d walked in the door shortly before dinner, but then, Elias was odd.
“You’ve an ancient title, good health, relatives who put up with you, an embarrassment of assets, a single-malt collection that’s the envy of—Elias what the hell is wrong?”
Dunstan ceased lecturing because Elias’s expression was stunned, disbelieving.
“Nick Aiken is my head mason, one of the best. Knows castles inside out, loves them the way Angus loves his pipe music, or wee Henry loves his mother. Nick claims the roof over the long hall isn’t sound.”
The roof over the castle’s long hall was an enormous expanse of vaulted stonework, worthy of a cathedral, and probably centuries older than any cathedral in Scotland.
“Age takes a toll on us all, Elias.”
Wallace hopped back up into the recliner.
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