Liam wanted to stuff his head under the pillow, except a small, exhausted, battle-weary part of him refused to hide from Louise’s logic.
We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.
Karen’s not here to defend herself.
I neglected my wife.
I should have tried harder.
The accusations of his conscience, all served up with a dram or three of whisky, which was perhaps the local equivalent of serving pecan pie to a girl struggling with her weight.
Liam wasn’t angry at Karen for dying. He was angry at her for taking a piece of his soul with her—and he had been angry long enough.
“You are so fierce, Louise Cameron,” he said, cradling her jaw between his hands. “Enough talk, enough dwelling on the past. We’re alive, and there’s no place I’d rather be, nobody I’d rather be with, nothing I’d rather be doing. Make love with me.”
The words were a spell, an incantation, that brought a quiet joie de vivre trickling back through him.
And they were the truth. Liam leaned up and kissed Louise, not politely or tenderly, but like a man starved for her ferocity and ready to shower his own upon her.
The cat leaped off the bed, Louise laughed, and then she kissed the hell out of Liam while she fished on the night table for his sporran.
Chapter Five
* * *
Louise saved Culloden Battlefield for a sunny, mild day. The site of a battle that had cost a nation its hopes of holding the British throne, and much, much more, was sobering even in spring sunshine. Liam was quiet as they walked the paths over the moor.
“This place is lovely,” Louise said, “and that feels… both wrong and right.”
“Wrong that they should have died amid such beauty, right that they should rest here,” Liam said. “Shall we sit?”
Any Scot would be sobered by a visit to Culloden, where Scot had fought against Scot by the thousands, and post-battle retaliation by the Crown had been so harsh as to become a foundational component of the national psyche.
“Is there a silver lining?” Louise asked, taking Liam’s hand. “The land is still a boggy moor, but did any good come of this?”
Had the American Civil War produced any silver linings? Did any war?
“The clans haven’t massacred each other since,” Liam said. “But then, after Culloden, the clans were all but obliterated in a political sense. May I change the subject?”
An older couple strolled by, hand in hand, accompanied by a terrier in a Royal Stewart plaid jacket who sniffed the grass beside the path, then trotted ahead.
“Of course you can change the subject,” Louise said, because her time in Scotland had dwindled to days, and they’d yet to talk about what came next.
If anything. Twice Louise had been ready to have that conversation, and twice Liam’s phone had rung at the exact wrong moment. He’d taken the calls, business of some sort, and Louise had wandered off to nibble tablet or admire the infinite shades of green that were Scotland in spring.
Liam kissed her knuckles, one of the countless small gestures of affection with which he was so generous.
“What I’d like to ask you is this: You told me last week that Karen could have fought for me rather than with me,” he said. “Is there somebody who should have fought for you?”
A man who saw aesthetic parallels between stone fertility figures and Georgian portraiture would make that leap, and abruptly, the bleak battlefield was the perfect location for what needed to be said.
“Yes, Liam. Somebody should have fought for me, and instead threw down their weapons without firing a shot. When I was finishing up at art school, the champion who failed to join battle was me. I knuckled under, to Aunt Ev, to pecan pie, to common sense.”
Fighting had never occurred to Louise, not against her family, not against Hellenbore, not against her own broken heart.
“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “When we’re young, we’re reckless about wading into a fight, but often for the wrong causes. Is there a way to make it right?”
Interesting question. The terrier went yapping off into the treacherous, swampy ground that had been the end of so many hopes nearly three hundred years ago. When the old man whistled, the dog came loping back to him.
“How do you make something like that right?” Louise murmured, letting her head rest on Liam’s shoulder. “I was lied to, my work misrepresented, and my future knocked on its ass. I knew I had talent, and yet all I did was go home to my parents, and apply to law school.”
“You’re making it right every time you sit at your wheel,” Liam said. “Atonement can take time.”
He spoke from experience, and his tale wanted telling, so Louise held back the details of her own regrets.
“Before Karen died—I can say those words now, and they only ache, they don’t decimate—before Karen died, when I was racketing about, holding forth on three continents about some damned sculpture or kylix, I was befriended by several of the New York critics.”
That bunch. Most critics lacked the gift of creation, so many of them turned to destruction instead. Boggy ground, indeed.
“This doesn’t end well,” Louise said. If she and Liam had been in bed—Liam slept at the cottage now—she would have climbed on top of him and held on tight.
“It ends,” he said, his arm coming around Louise’s shoulders. “Sometimes, that’s the best we can do. One older fellow chatted me up at every opportunity, always bringing up the latest collections, the latest first shows, the latest articles. I never suspected he was using my half-pickled insights, my off-the-cuff opinions, to recycle into his blog posts. He was clever with words, but his grasp of art sadly wanting, and he was unkind.”
Someone had figuratively stolen Liam’s glazes. Amazing, how angry Louise was on his behalf, while for herself she’d been simply hurt and ashamed.
Amazing too, the comfort she took from Liam’s hand in hers, and his arm around her shoulders.
“You put the bullets into the gun he fired at others’ hopes and creativity, Liam, but he fired the gun, not you.”
“If I’d had any aspirations toward art criticism, that experience put me off them permanently. Some of the damage he did others haunted me for years, though I took what steps I could to make things right. The advantage he took of my carelessness helped me put aside the hard liquor.”
The old couple had walked around nearly the entire battlefield now, their pace measured, though they moved as one unit.
“I want to capture this,” Louise said. “I want that couple, their enduring connection, and the way it blesses even this place. I want a wheel where I can throw the love and the sorrow, both, and finish it with a hundred colors nobody has seen before. I’m not going back into that law office, Liam. I know that now.”
He kissed her cheek, on that bleak, sunny bench, and Liam Cromarty could say volumes with his kisses. I’m proud of you. I’m glad for you. You’ll do it. Your dreams are worthy. You deserve to be happy.
But was he saying I love you?
Louise loved Liam. Loved how with him she could talk about anything or simply be silent with him.
“You never finished your own story, Louise,” he said, tugging her to her feet. “The one about art school, and not standing up for yourself. If you thought law school was a place to lick your wounds, then you were at a sorry pass.”
They wandered along in the same direction as the older couple, who’d apparently made their circuit and gone back into the battlefield museum.
“I didn’t need to feel in law school, Liam. I only needed to think, get enough sleep, and get the assignments done. With my senior art school project, I fell afoul of one or those critics. My adviser claimed any critical notice was good for aspiring artists, so when the great and powerful Stephen Saxe brought his minions on a tour of the campus gallery, the entire senior class was nearly drunk with anxiety.”
In the middle of the battlefield, Liam stopped and put his arms around Louise. He said nothing, so s
he fortified herself with his affection.
“Saxe went after my showing,” she said, “tore it to shreds, said it was well executed but at best a slavish tribute to the new glazing technique my adviser had debuted the previous weekend at his show downtown. If after four years of study at the knee of a master, all I could do was derivative work, then maybe my degree should be in Teacher’s Pet, not art.”
Louise waited for Liam to say something, to console, to philosophize, to heap scorn on the head of the critic who’d be so cruel to a mere student, or the professor who’d steal credit for her creative accomplishment.
“I knew Saxe,” Liam said, eventually. “I learned to avoid him. I’m so very sorry, Louise.” For a progression of moments, bathed in sunshine and spring breezes, he simply held her while she gathered her courage.
“Hellenbore stole my process,” she said, the first time she’d spoken those words out loud to somebody who might grasp their full import. “He set up his own show, and I’m nearly certain he arranged for Saxe to make that royal progress to a mere student exhibition for the express purpose of wrecking my career before I had a career. I never saw it coming, but that experience taught me to anticipate the ambushes even in the courtroom, and never threaten with a figuratively empty gun.”
Liam knew the art world, was part of it, and should have been one person to whom Louise could confide this story and earn some commiseration.
He dropped his arms, took her hand, and resumed walking. “Guns are dangerous to all in their ambit, Louise. I can see why you’d not enjoy the legal profession.”
The comment was… off. Not the Liam she knew and wanted desperately to love. Scotland’s outlook on guns wasn’t the same as what Louise had grown up with, but Liam wasn’t talking about firearms.
“I never figured out how to bring suit against Hellenbore,” Louise said, “or how to get even with Saxe, but I became good at being a lawyer, up to a point. The law is the law and the rules are the rules, but the rules can go only so far toward solving the problems we create with each other. That drove me crazy.”
“Maybe it drove you un-crazy,” Liam said, passing her a piece of tablet. “You’ve found your art again, or you soon will.”
Louise took a bite and gave Liam back the rest. Next would come the shared bottle of water, or perhaps they’d stop in the museum’s snack shop for soup, bread, and butter.
A few days in a borrowed studio wasn’t finding her art again, though those days had been lovely.
“Did you stop eating meat when Karen died?”
“Aye.”
“Because she was a good cook, and the kitchen smells reminded you of her?”
“You’re very astute. I didn’t figure it out so quickly, but by then I was out of the carnivore habit. Shall I take a picture of you?”
This place had put Liam’s mood off. He was present and he was dodging into shadows, much like the man who’d met her at the airport.
“I want a picture of us, Liam.”
“I’m not very photogenic, how about if I—” He got his phone out of his sporran. “I’ll take you and you take me?”
He was the most photogenic man Louise had ever met, and this prevarication wasn’t like him.
“Not good enough, Cromarty. I know Culloden is a sad place, but I’m happy to be here with you.” Louise flagged down a couple chattering in German and gestured and smiled them into taking a photo of her and Liam against the stone cairn at the center of the battle field.
The image was well composed and well exposed, though Liam’s smile was pained, his eyes bleak.
“Shall I send you a copy?” Louise asked.
Liam peered at the screen of her phone, coming close enough to put a hint of woodland and heather on the morning breeze.
“We’ll do better elsewhere, I think. Are you thirsty?”
“Sure.” Louise swilled from the bottle of Highland Spring, then passed it to Liam when she wanted to throw her arms around him.
Even to tell him she loved him, though this sad morning on a battlefield wasn’t the time or place.
“C’mon,” she said, taking his hand. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand and head down to Cairngorms National Park. They have reindeer there, don’t they? We don’t have reindeer in Georgia, and if we did, we’d probably hunt them to extinction.”
Liam had bought a damned ring yesterday, while Louise had been engrossed in her wheel. An emerald stone, more valuable than diamonds and appropriate for Louise’s fire and sense of purpose. The setting was Celtic gold, and the sentiments…
Louise had put the heart back in him, and Liam didn’t want her to leave, ever.
Though now, the sooner he put her on that plane, the better for them both.
As Louise boiled up a batch of gnocchi, Liam opened the wine and prepared to lie his way through the rest of Louise’s visit.
“Will you throw tonight?” he asked. Louise could work at her wheel for hours, and he had the sense she was only warming up. Five years’ penance for another’s crimes rode her hard, and she’d throw her way free of it.
“Nah. No throwing tonight. Tromping around all day wore me out. If you’ll slice the bread, I’ll set the table.”
At every meal Liam ate with his family, every single meal, somebody had to make a joke about his decision to stop eating meat. Louise hadn’t remarked on it once. When they planned meals, her suggestions were meatless, and she was the next thing to a cheese connoisseur.
They’d toured a distillery in Inverness, and she’d made the most awful face at one of the world’s best-loved Highland single malts.
Of course , Liam had bought her a ring, and fool that he was, returning it would about kill him. He’d been about killed before and didn’t care to repeat the experience.
“Shall I dress the salad?” Louise asked.
“Please, and I’ll pour.”
Louise chose the wines, because Louise chose the cheeses. Main dishes were Liam’s province, and salads and dessert were negotiated.
Though what in God’s name would they talk about now?
Say, Louise, did you know that Saxe’s insults to your work weren’t even original? I sneered and snickered my way past all those lovely vases, those intriguing drinking cups, and the teapot that shed rainbows in all directions, though even I admitted a student’s derivative work was superior to what Hellenbore had displayed a week earlier.
Saxe had left that part out, of course. Liam took a sip of wine, but just a sip. He’d earned this misery, and by God, he’d endure it.
Though not alone. Before conversation could turn awkward or intimate, Uncle Donald came clomping onto the porch.
“I smell dinner,” he said, setting his tackle down outside the front door. “Don’t suppose there’s room for a lonely old man at the table?”
“A shameless man in his prime,” Louise said, joining Liam at the door. “The boots can stay out here, though, and you will wash your hands.”
“I like her,” Donald said, toeing off a pair of green Wellies. “Has a confident air and a nice behind.”
“No dessert for you, auld man,” Louise said over her shoulder. “We’re politically correct at Dunroamin Cottage, if we know what’s good for us.”
For once, Liam was affirmatively glad to see his uncle, who could tell story after story, about everything from the Battle of the Shirts to Mary Queen of Scots, to epic rounds of golf at St. Andrews.
When the meal had been consumed, the coffee and tablet had made the rounds, and Donald had told stories on half the Cromarty clan, he kissed Louise’s cheek and rose.
“I’ll be off then. Shall I feed your puppy, Liam?”
“You have a puppy?” Louise asked.
“He has an old blind dog,” Donald said. “Or half-blind. She’s good company fishing, is Helen.”
“Helen’s getting on,” Liam said, taking his dishes to the sink. “She’s not blind in the least, but she is good company if you’re inclined to stay in one spot for hours.”
Louise rose and shoved the mostly empty wine bottle at him. “Time to go, you. Comparing ladies to dogs is no way to win friends and influence women. Don’t forget your fishing pole.”
Liam loved hearing Louise talk. Bits of Georgia crept in—fishin’ pole, instead of fishing rod, or rod and reel—and her tone was always warm.
“I’ll do the dishes if you want to take your shower,” he said when Donald had gone stomping on his way, singing about the rashes-o, and drinking from the bottle.
I don’t want to be like that . Liam didn’t want to be old and alone, smelling of river mud, swilling leftover wine, and deriving a sense of usefulness by feeding a dog who barely woke up between meals anymore.
“I’m dead on my feet,” Louise said, putting plastic wrap over the salad. “If you’re sure you don’t mind cleaning up, I’ll see you upstairs.”
Reprieve. Another forty-five minutes when Liam wouldn’t have to make conversation, wrestle guilt, and count the minutes until Louise’s departure. He kissed her cheek and patted her bottom.
“Away with you, then, madam. Dougie and I will manage. Don’t wait up for us.”
She hugged him—Louise was unstinting with her affection, something Liam would not have guessed about her when he’d fetched her from the airport.
And then she was gone, leaving Liam with a messy kitchen, and more heartache than one tired, lonely Scot should have to bear.
By Louise’s last day at the cottage, an invisible elephant in pink Scottish plaid had joined her vacation entourage. The elephant carried around a load of questions nobody was asking anybody.
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