“Then Iain’s back?”
“So they say.” Billie tried to ignore the stab of disappointment that accompanied her words. There was no reason to think that Iain Ross should have searched her out now that he was back in Druidheachd. He had made it clear by his month-long absence that she had no hold over him.
“So, he’s been back a while, has he?”
Billie shrugged. She told herself it didn’t matter. Her days had been full since Iain had left, and she was making headway on her research. “I don’t know when he came back. I haven’t seen him.”
“And ye wish he’d called or come to see ye?”
She gave up the pretense. “Well, we almost drowned together. That’s a tie of sorts.”
“Our Iain has no ties. Och, Duncan and Andrew are his friends, that’s true, but I’d guess that even with them, he keeps a muckle part of himself in rein.”
“Why?”
Flora had always avoided Billie’s questions about Iain. Now she stirred her tea, gazing at her china cup as if it had answers to give. “Iain’s parents died when he was still a bairn. His da first, then his mum. He was sent to England to school, only coming back to Fearnshader for the occasional holiday, when he was tended by servants and an auld uncle of his father’s.” She stirred harder. “Some in the village said that the uncle was insane. Whether he was or no’, it was a terrible way for a lad to grow to maturity.”
Billie made a low sound of sympathy, but she was afraid to say a word. She hoped if she remained quiet, Flora would continue. She wasn’t disappointed.
“The Rosses’ lot is to be unhappy.”
This time Flora was silent so long Billie was afraid she had finished. “That seems like a huge waste of cosmic energy, wouldn’t you say?” Billie mimicked a deep bass voice. “Let’s see, prepare half a million babies for launching today, James, and Peter, get your halo shined up, because there’s going to be a rush at the golden gate this afternoon. Oh, and Paul, you see about the Rosses of Druidheachd. Make sure nothing good happens to them, or I’ll set you back down on that road to Damascus, and that’s not such a great place to be these days.”
Flora’s eyes sparkled. “Laugh if you will.”
“I’m not laughing. Not exactly, anyway. I’m trying to understand.”
“There was a curse.”
“So I’ve been told. And that’s all I’ve been told, I might add. Don’t you think it’s time to enlighten me a little more?”
“It came about because of Ruaridh and Christina.”
“Christina.” Suddenly Billie’s ancestor had a name. “You’ve known her name all along?”
“Aye. It’s a very old story, and I’m a very old woman.”
“A very long story, I’d guess,” Billie said carefully.
“Aye, that it would be.”
“One you’d love to share with me.”
“Had I only the time.” Flora finished her tea and the last crumbs of her scone. “But Steuart’s wife is coming back to take me to visit a friend in hospital.”
To Billie’s knowledge, none of the wives of Flora’s sons had first names, though Flora seemed to love them all dearly. “Have you time for any of it?”
“A bit. Yer Christina and Iain’s Ruaridh fell in love that day beside the loch, just as Mara MacTavish told you. Separately each vowed they would no’ try to see the other again because only tragedy could come from it. But even as they made their vows, in their deepest hearts they were searching for ways to break them.” She stood and smoothed her tweed skirt. “And now I must be off. Steuart’s wife does no’ like to be kept waiting.”
Billie made a face. “Hey, I can understand her feelings completely.”
“You must learn patience, lass.”
“Life’s so darned short, Flora. Why do I have to waste a single second of it being patient?”
“Ye’ve much to learn, Billie. Spend yer time listening to the things that people dinna say.”
“Well, that gives me a lot of material.”
“Our Iain, for instance.”
“An awful lot of material.”
“Would he avoid ye so hard if he had no feelings for ye?”
“I’m afraid so.” Billie stood, too. “Look, I hardly know Iain, and I’m not even sure I want to. I’m not a good judge of character, Flora. I’ve never learned to see the bad in anybody. Somebody could steal my wallet and I’d be thinking what clever hands they had or what terrific coordination. People take advantage of me all the time. I don’t trust myself.”
“Ye knew ye did no’ like Jeremy Fletcher.”
Billie took their dishes to the sink. Jeremy Fletcher was now the absent Jeremy Fletcher. He had left town the same day as Iain, not to return. In the end Billie had reported their encounter to the bobby, but Jeremy had been gone by then, and no charges had been pressed. “I only took a real disliking to him after he got nasty. Anyone else would have spotted him for what he was a mile away.”
“The MacFarlane women have always known their destiny. Tell me yer mum did no’ know yer da was to be her intended the first day they met.”
Billie couldn’t deny it. Her mother and father had married less than six weeks after their first meeting, and to Billie’s knowledge there had never been a single regret. The same had been true for her grandmother. “You seem to know a lot about the MacFarlane women.”
“Christina knew her destiny, though she fought it.”
“Well, from what little I’ve been allowed to piece together, Christina would have been better off following somebody else’s destiny. I don’t think there’s a happy ending to that story.”
“Sometimes, lass, a happy ending takes a century or twa to come to pass. Sometimes even longer.”
Billie was still formulating a response when she realized that she was alone in the kitchen. Flora had slipped away.
* * *
Billie had fallen in love with Mara’s cottage at first sight. Her own ancestors must once have lived in a home just like it. Built of stone and thatched with rushes, it was as picturesque as its mountain setting.
Billie had learned that Mara had constructed most of it alone. Mara had explained that at the time she’d had her own demons to work off, and she’d chosen hard physical labor and primitive living conditions as her therapy. From nothing she had carved a home and gardens, pastures and a shelter large enough for the small flock of sheep she kept. She was a spinner and a weaver, and she sold her yarn—hand dyed from herbs and flowers she grew and collected—in shops throughout the Highlands.
Until she and Duncan built their dream house farther up the hill above the cottage, Mara intended to live at the hotel with her new husband. In the meantime, she had found a local boy to stay in the cottage during the week and care for the sheep. On weekends she and Duncan and April would use it as their retreat.
On the morning of the wedding Billie warmed her hands in front of Mara’s peat fire. The cottage was snug, but central heating was a luxury no one in Scotland seemed to have heard of. After a raucous party at the hotel, attended by nearly every female in Druidheachd, she had spent the night in the cottage with Mara, a last symbolic salute to the single life.
“You must see the cottage in spring,” Mara told her as she dressed to go outside and check on her sheep one last time before they left for Fearnshader. She fastened her dark green cloak and pulled on gloves. “I’ve flowers planted all around the cottage, and the hillside blooms with daffodils.”
“I think I’ll still be here in the spring. Flora’s introduced me to wonderful people with wonderful stories. I’m gathering quite a collection.”
“I’m glad it’s going well.”
“As well as it could, considering that the idea wasn’t well thought out before I came. I’d planned to do something else. This was…my second choice.”
“Was your other idea turned down, then?”
“No.” Billie looked up and smiled ruefully. “But the other idea was one I could have researched closer to home.
The advantage of this one was that it was thousands of miles away.”
Mara wrapped a scarf around her neck. “We have something more in common, then. I came here to escape a man, too.”
Billie had never really discussed her past or her personal life with Mara. There had always been other, happier things to discuss, but somehow, Mara knew about her past anyway. “Talking to you can be very disconcerting.”
“I dinna see why. Why else does a woman flee across an ocean to a village so remote it’s less than a dot on the map?”
“Who was the man you escaped? Your former husband?”
“Aye. His mission in life was to make me doubt myself.”
“And you came here and built this cottage, stone by stone, to prove that there was nothing to doubt?”
“Aye. That I did. And then I met Duncan.”
“And now you’re about to be married.”
“But I made very certain, Billie, that Duncan would no’ make me doubt myself, too.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever trust myself in exactly the same way.”
“Give yourself time.”
Billie considered that as she stared at the blue smoke curling up from the hearth. Mara whistled for Guiser, her border collie, who was lying near Billie’s feet. She heard Mara leave, but she didn’t turn as the door closed. When she finally turned to toast a different part of her anatomy, she discovered that she wasn’t alone after all. Iain stood beside the door, and he was watching her.
“Well, hi there,” she said. “You could have announced yourself.”
“Hello, Billie.”
She really didn’t know what else to say. When she didn’t speak, he did. “I came to take you and Mara home with me.”
“I thought Andrew was going to be our transportation.”
“There were some last minute details to oversee. He asked me to take his place.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t too busy yourself. Who’s checking to be sure all Fearnshader’s gargoyles are washed and polished?”
He smiled. “So you’re to be Mara’s attendant at the wedding.”
“That’s right.”
He crossed the room and joined her at the fireplace. “I half expected to find you back in the States for the holidays.”
She really didn’t know how to respond. Had he hoped she would be gone? Or was she just imagining that his long stay out of town had involved her in some way? “I half expected you to stay away for them. But I’m glad you’re back. Fearnshader will be a lovely place for the wedding.”
“And that’s the only reason why you’re glad I’ve returned? Because I can open my home?”
“I’m not sure why else I should be. You’ve been back in town three or four times in the past month, but this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of your company.”
“I’ve been very busy with business. I apologize.”
“Don’t. You don’t owe me anything, Iain, certainly not your presence. I’m just glad to see you again.”
“Are you?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Just because on the one memorable day we spent together I was drowned, stripped, attacked, regaled with tragic visions of my ancestors and soundly kissed? That’s no reason to worry about what’s coming next.”
He didn’t smile. “It would be a hard day to top.”
She made a wry face, although it felt forced. “So, let’s not try. Okay?”
Iain looked as if he wanted to say more, but she suspected he wouldn’t. He confirmed it when he turned away. “As soon as Mara comes back, I’ll drive you to Fearnshader. I’ve had a room readied for you, in case the festivities go late into the night. That will be easier than finding a sober driver to take you back to Flora’s.”
Billie wasn’t going to argue, but she had absolutely no intention of staying overnight at Fearnshader. She wasn’t sure she could explain why, not even to her own satisfaction.
The door slammed, and Billie looked up to see Mara covered with snowflakes. “I shall stop fussing over the sheep now, I promise. Guiser will watch over them until Danny comes. I’ll just get my bag, and we can be off.”
“I’m ready, too,” Billie said. She reached for the coat she’d thrown over a chair and slipped it on.
Iain watched; then, with a shake of his head, he stepped forward and took the front flaps in his hands. He stood so close that she could smell the subtle, musky scent of his aftershave. His gaze connected to hers. She couldn’t have looked away, not even for all the answers to all her questions. His hand brushed her breast as he fastened the top button, then followed the row to the bottom, fastening the buttons one by one.
“I’m a big girl,” she said when he’d finished. Her voice emerged low and sultry. “Didn’t you know?”
“Aye. There’s very little about you I haven’t noticed. Including the fact that you don’t look after your own welfare.”
Billie was afraid he was right. If she really looked after herself, she would make a point of avoiding Iain as stringently as he had avoided her. Sadly, she realized that wasn’t going to happen. In the month since she had last seen him, she had nearly convinced herself that the attraction between them was all in her overheated imagination. Now Iain was back in her life, even if only temporarily, and she felt as if someone had hot-wired her nervous system and jump-started her heart.
And judging from the flicker in his eyes, Iain was tuned for takeoff, too.
CHAPTER 7
Billie wore jeans and sweaters as if they were part of her, so much a part that Iain hadn’t been able to imagine her wearing anything else. But when she emerged from the bedroom he’d set aside for her, dressed in wine-colored silk and amethysts, he questioned the scope of his own imagination.
Silk emphasized everything that denim and wool had hidden. She had small, perfect breasts, a tiny waist and narrow hips. He had already noticed that her legs were as long as a dancer’s, and just as elegantly shaped. Now they were covered in shimmering stockings designed to make it impossible for a man to look away. As Iain admired her, he had a vision of the day he had held her naked in his arms. He realized just how badly he wanted to do it again, but this time in his bed, with Billie’s legs twined around him.
“I gather I pass?” She was staring at him, too. Her voice was husky. “God, you certainly do. Great legs, Iain.”
“Do you think so?”
“I think you were born to wear a kilt.”
“You look particularly bonny.”
For a moment she almost seemed embarrassed, a charming and unexpectedly feminine response to his compliment. She looked away. “I feel like I’m in a fairy tale. I’m sure that in the Middle Ages Ruaridh and Christina didn’t live this well, but I’ll bet they’d have felt at home here.”
He wasn’t surprised she had learned her ancestor’s name. “Ruaridh was born at Ceo Castle.”
“And Christina?”
“There’s nothing left of the place where she was born.”
She didn’t ask more, which surprised him. As she studied the staircase that swept down to the hall below them, he tried to see his ancestral home through her eyes. From the outside Fearnshader was a Gothic monstrosity, with castellated towers, soaring parapets and pointed-arch windows. The stone walls were smothered by ivy, which did nothing to soften the harsh angles but somehow added to the air of decaying grandeur.
Inside was little better. The halls were so cavernous that as a small boy he had often passed his parents walking through them and remained hidden. Too many of the fifty rooms were dark and cheerless, in need of a keen eye, a loving touch and the strength to turn over a portion of the relics of past centuries to willing museums. He didn’t seem to possess any of the qualities needed to make Fearnshader a home.
“Mara says there’s been much unhappiness here,” Billie said. “But there’s been laughter, too, and that moderates it. Was it good to grow up here, Iain? I mean, when your parents were still alive?”
Unaccountably he thought of evening
s in front of the sitting room fire, held tightly against his mother as she read story after story and his father smiled fondly from a nearby armchair. There had been Sunday walks along the loch and into the hills, trailed by his father’s hounds and his mother’s terriers, afternoons at play with Duncan and Andrew as his mother pruned her rose garden and laughed at their antics.
And then there had been the nights, so many of them just before his father’s death, when he had heard sobbing, and voices raised in argument. Sometimes he could still hear his mother crying, even though he knew it was only the wind.
“It was like anyone’s childhood,” he said. “There were happy times. But no one is supposed to be happy for long, are they?”
“Where on earth did you learn to think like that? I’d swear the damp climate’s made a pessimist out of you. Maybe I’m lucky the MacFarlanes were driven out of town.”
He saw questions in her eyes, and concern. He could allow neither. “The music will be starting soon. The guests are arriving. Is there anything I can get for you before the chaos really begins?”
Her forehead wrinkled in speculation. He doubted she was capable of having a thought that wasn’t visible on her face, and he found that facet of her personality, like so many others, to be completely captivating.
She moved toward him, a rustle of silk, the flash-fire of amethysts and, surprisingly, the fragrance of violets. She touched his cheek, and her fingers were soft against his skin. “I want you to be happy,” she said softly. “I want whatever haunts you to go away.”
“I think you’ve read too many fairy tales.”
Her voice was light, but her eyes were troubled. “Fairy tales are my business, remember?”
He removed her hand, but he couldn’t seem to let it go. He brought her palm to his lips and kissed it before he left her at the top of the stairs.
* * *
“Duncan Sinclair, you may kiss your bride.” The minister of the village kirk beamed at Duncan and Mara as Duncan took him at his word and swept Mara into his arms.
Billie tamped down the urge to whistle and settled for a sentimental tear instead. Duncan and Mara’s wedding was the most beautiful she had ever seen. The ancient stone chapel on Fearnshader’s grounds was lit entirely by candles and adorned with cascading swags of evergreens, holly and ivy. A light snow had fallen as the vows were exchanged, and now the world outside the high, narrow windows was a winter wonderland.
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