Men of Midnight Complete Collection

by Emilie Richards

  To make matters worse, Iain had disappeared from her life again. She didn’t know where he had gone, since he had neglected to say goodbye. She had phoned him several days after Christmas, only to find out from Gertie Beggs that “Lord Ross was gone, had no’ left any messages for her and would no’ be back for some time.” Iain’s message was clear anyway. The intimacy of Christmas day had sent him running again. He had told her in no uncertain terms that he had to live his life alone.

  He had just neglected to explain why.

  “Lassie, ye come from sturdy Highland stock. Ye’ve no cause to let a wee turn of bad weather get ye down.” Flora thumped her china cup on the table and narrowed her eyes. She had lectured Billie throughout their traditional morning tea, and Billie had ceased trying to defend herself.

  “What shall I do, then?” Billie asked.

  “Ye need to get out. Ye need to go visiting.”

  Billie had already considered that. There were several friends of Flora’s who had proved to be fountains of folklore, all of which they doled out a drop at a time to make sure that Billie would continue her visits. Mara had left her car at Billie’s disposal, but it was old and unreliable in cold weather, and not one of the women lived within easy walking distance.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Billie said. “I’ve been cooped up with my notes and my computer for too long.”

  “Ye’ve been cooped up with yer thoughts. And gloomy ones they be.”

  Billie ignored that. “Maybe I’ll see if Mrs. Fairmow would like some company. If Mara’s car won’t start, I suppose I can get there on foot.”

  “T’would be better to accept young Dr. Melville’s offer of a ride into the country.”

  Billie set her cup down. “What offer is that?”

  “He rang early, while ye were at Cameron’s. I told him ye’d be ready at half past eleven. Which gives ye only a wee spot of time.”

  “For Pete’s sake, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I thought ye might say no.”

  “Why? It sounds like a great idea. Where’s he going, and why?”

  “He has a patient or two out beyond Bein Domhain. He travels there weekly to check on them. He thought ye might like a change, that ye might like to have a look.”

  Billie got to her feet. “Well, I’d better get ready. And next time, you don’t have to walk on tiptoe. I’d have said yes without all this plotting and maneuvering, Flora.”

  “He seems a fine lad.”

  He was a fine lad, and although Alasdair was a year or two older than she was, that was the way Billie thought of him, too. Since their first meeting they had become friends. He was intelligent, enthusiastic about his work and easy to talk to. Several times they had eaten together at the hotel, and once they had driven to Inverness to take in a movie. He regaled her with stories of his patients, and she told him about the material she was collecting for her dissertation. But there was nothing romantic in their friendship. He was a mellow and congenial man who couldn’t begin to fill the gap that Iain’s disappearance had left in her life.

  And that was too bad.

  By the time Alasdair arrived she had changed into a presentable black sweater and tan wool pants. He greeted her with a casual kiss on the cheek. “Does this mean you’re coming?”

  She stepped back to examine him. He was the quintessential Scottish country doctor making rounds in a tweed coat, deerstalker hat and a bright tie that was slightly askew. “Of course. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “The weather’s no’ so good,” he warned.

  “I know. I walked down to Cameron’s for the mail. Do you have a rash of suicides this time of year?”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Nope. You know, there’s that thing about light deprivation and depression. I find myself not wanting to get out of bed in the mornings.”

  “And is it just for the lack of sunlight, Billie?”

  She grimaced. “Who knows? Anyway, I’m ready to go soak up what light there is.” She called a last goodbye to Flora and closed the door behind her.

  “Have you been out this way before?” he asked on the way to his car.

  “Not as far as we’re going.”

  “Then you’ll particularly enjoy the ride.”

  She did enjoy it. The sun didn’t peek out from behind the thick cloud cover, but the heater in Alasdair’s car worked perfectly and kept her toasty warm. He told her funny stories about his days as a houseman at an Edinburgh hospital, and she found the malaise that had settled over her lifting.

  “I’m surprised you’ve no’ been out this way,” he said, when they had driven for half an hour or more.

  Once over the hump of Bein Domhain, they had passed nothing but rocky farmland and clumps of grazing sheep. There was an austere beauty to the land, even under the thick cloud cover of winter, but she hadn’t been possessed by any desire to stop the car and explore. “Why? Is there something out here that I should see?”

  “If I’m no’ mistaken, this is the homeplace of your ancestors.”

  She sat very still. “My ancestors?”

  “You’re a MacFarlane, are you no’? Did you no’ say once that’s what brought you here?”

  “Are you saying that this is where my family lived?”

  “Oh, it’s no’ quite so straightforward, as you must know by now. There were no surnames in Scotland for centuries. But later, when kinsmen and their supporters began to group themselves that way, this is said to be where the MacFarlanes of Bein Domhain had their lands.”

  “I wonder why no one’s mentioned that before.”

  “I’m surprised no one has. I only mentioned it in passing.”

  Iain had told Billie that the place where Christina had been born no longer existed, but now she wondered. “How do you happen to know so much, Alasdair?”

  “Well, I grew up here, remember? As did my father and his father before him.” He shook his head. “My father may have been a simple gamekeeper, but he was a man who remembered everything he’d ever heard about Druidheachd and the lands around the loch and Bein Domhain.”

  She wondered how many other people knew that these had once been MacFarlane lands. She had a gut feeling that Iain knew and had just decided not to mention it. “Is anything left of the MacFarlanes? Any structures? Ruins?” She watched him shake his head each time. She slapped her knees in frustration. “Circles of standing stones where they sacrificed whatever Rosses they could get hold of?”

  “If it’s Stonehenge you want, Billie, it’s a bit to the south.”

  “So, there’s nothing? Iain Ross has a castle, a mansion and a sizable chunk of Scotland, and the poor old MacFarlanes have some tortured trees and a few pitiful sheep to remember them by?”

  “How about this? My first patient is Annie MacBean, an old woman who’s lived here since the dawn of time. Why do you no’ ask her if there’s any bit of a memorial to your family here? If there is, Annie will know.”

  Twenty minutes later, Billie knelt in front of Annie and let the old woman’s hands play over her face. She was a hundred years old, and her eyes were nearly opaque from cataracts. She lived alone except for a well-fattened cat, although there was a granddaughter up the road who looked in on her twice a day.

  Annie was ancient, but there was nothing wrong with her long-term memory. “Aye, ye have the strong bones of the North. Yer a Scot, through and through, lass, no matter where ye were born.”

  “Well, I’ve been told I look like my mother, and she’s been told she’s MacFarlane through and through.”

  “Yer people are here no more.”

  “I know. But is there anything of them? Any structure? Church? House? Ruin? Cemetery? I’d love to see something that was part of them, Annie.”

  Annie nodded. She was silent, as if she were thinking. “Have ye seen the stone?” she asked at last.

  “This is the first time I’ve been this far west, so I haven’t seen anything.”

  “It’s no’ far.
Ye could walk there.”

  “Great.” Billie stood. “I’ll take a walk while Dr. Melville examines you. Where should I go? And what should I look for?”

  Annie gave directions that seemed easy enough to follow. The walk sounded pleasant and shorter than half a mile if she took the required shortcuts. “Ye’ll come upon a stone fence with a stile crossing it. Just over the stile will be a large stone, no’ well shaped or extraordinary. T’was carved by an ancestor of yers.”

  “Carved?”

  “Go and find it,” Annie said. “And see for yerself.”

  “Go ahead, if you’d like,” Alasdair said. “If I’ve finished by then, I’ll bring the car and meet you there.”

  Billie bundled up against the cold and the cruel wind sweeping across the treeless moor that bordered Annie’s cottage. Annie’s directions had been explicit, and Billie looked for landmarks as she hiked down the road in the opposite direction from the way she and Alasdair had come. She walked along a hedgerow, and at a wide division, she ventured into a field. Ignoring the black-faced sheep and one ram who watched her intently, she headed for a clump of trees at the border.

  The walk reminded her of childhood games when she and her brothers had made treasure maps. She followed Annie’s directions and hoped that what waited for her at the end was more worthwhile than the Monopoly money and dime store jewelry she’d dug up as a child.

  About twenty minutes later she came to the stone fence and the stile, which was nothing more than rickety wooden steps that crossed it. At first she didn’t see the stone. She had expected something at least the size of Plymouth Rock. The stone in question sat at the base of a cluster of stunted hazel trees, and a strong man who’d wanted it badly enough could have found a way to haul it home.

  Lichen crusted the surface, and a thicket of brambles, dried broom and gorse surrounded it. Billie stooped and cleared a place to kneel. At first she thought she had found the wrong stone after all. There was nothing of interest here. But as she rubbed her fingers across it, indentations became evident. Words had been carved into the surface. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. A statue, perhaps, or at least a monument of sorts. This was a simple fieldstone, a broken one at that, with something inscribed in its surface. A suspicion began to form.

  “So, you found it.”

  She turned and discovered Alasdair behind her. “You made good time.”

  “It’s far simpler by car. Annie was as fit as a fiddle and no’ in need of my services today.”

  “If this is all that’s left of the MacFarlanes, I’d say we’re in pretty bad shape.”

  Alasdair squatted beside her. “You’re certain this is what she meant?”

  She didn’t share her suspicions with him. “I don’t know what else she could have. And there is writing on it, though I can’t tell what it says.”

  He stood. “Let’s clean it up and see.”

  A few minutes of careful scrubbing with alcohol and gauze pads from Alasdair’s well-equipped bag revealed deeply chiseled letters. Billie stared at half a Gaelic inscription as Alasdair read what words there were with a properly guttural accent. “Too bad it’s no’ all there,” he said. “It’s missing too much to make any sense.”

  “Then you can translate?”

  “Aye, I speak Gaelic so I might be able to, if the text was complete.”

  She contemplated the stone. “Do you have paper with you? I think I have a pencil in my purse.”

  “You want to make a rubbing?”

  “Why not? It’s something, anyway.” She didn’t add that she would be making another rubbing of the matching half, which was firmly embedded in a battlement of Ceo Castle. Until she translated and understood the whole text, she didn’t intend to share it with anyone. She smiled up at him. “Half a family memento is better than none.”

  “Let’s see what we can do.”

  As he went back to the car for paper, she traced the letters with her fingertips. The wind whistled across the field and rattled the hazel branches. She was cold down to her wool-shrouded toes, but the stone felt almost warm.

  * * *

  The tower steps seemed more forbidding than Billie re-membered them. Despite a burning desire to make a rubbing of the tower stone, she had not driven to Ceo Castle yesterday after Alasdair had dropped her back at Flora’s cottage. What passed for sunlight had already disappeared, and she had resigned herself to waiting until the morning. But the morning had arrived with so little sun that now, at ten o’clock, it seemed like dusk.

  The tower had been intimidating on a sunny day with Iain climbing right behind her. Now she stood at the bottom and gave herself a pep talk, but her feet weren’t listening.

  She had parked Mara’s car at the edge of Cumhann Moor some distance away and hiked to the castle. Iain had made it clear that the ruins weren’t open to the public, and signs on the grounds emphasized it. If she was going to trespass—and she certainly was—she hadn’t wanted to advertise the fact. Now she wondered whether anyone would find her before spring if she made it to the top and lacked the courage to climb back down.

  All the way up she imagined that spectacle, visualizing ridiculous pictures of herself as a short-haired Rapunzel waiting for rescue from the tower. Only this particular princess would demand a helicopter before she gave her heart to any prince.

  Despite sweating hands and shaking legs she reached the top without mishap and emerged into a friendlier gloom. She was less interested in the view than she’d been on her first visit, but she spared a glance for Loch Ceo, the moor and the mountains in the distance. Wind whipped across the walkway and whistled through the arrow slits in an unfriendly, atonal symphony. She unfolded one of the large sheets of paper she’d carried in her pocket, took out a charcoal stick and settled in front of the inscription.

  There was no doubt in her mind that this was the other half of the “MacFarlane stone.” How it had gotten here was the real mystery, along with why no one had ever brought the other half to the castle. If Annie MacBean had known the stone’s whereabouts, surely dozens of other people knew it, too.

  Perhaps even Iain.

  She traced the letters with her fingers. Had one of her own ancestors chiseled this inscription? Had he sent a message into the future for his kinsman to find? It was a fanciful thought, not a scholar’s thought at all, but it appealed to her on a hundred different levels. And if it was true, it excused her trespassing as a necessary evil.

  The stone seemed strangely alive to her, as if it vibrated with a special power. That wasn’t a scholar’s thought, either, and she knew that the source of power wasn’t the stone but her own imagination. Still, she felt a definite pull from it, and her hand wasn’t quite steady as she placed the paper over the stone and began to rub the charcoal across it.

  “Do you need someone to hold the paper for you?”

  Billie dropped the charcoal, and the paper fluttered to the stone floor. She turned and found Jeremy Fletcher leaning against the wall not ten feet away, his arms crossed over his chest. His expensive cashmere coat looked as warm as July sunshine, but his thin-lipped smile was as cold as the ice on Loch Ceo’s shore.

  The wind had blocked the sound of his approach. A dozen curses came to mind as Billie got to her feet. “You’re back.”

  “Don’t let me disturb you, Billie. I’ll just watch for a bit.”

  “Did you follow me here?”

  “What would make you think so?”

  “Look, Jeremy, I don’t want any trouble. Why don’t you just go away and I’ll forget you were trespassing?”

  “And you, of course, are not?”

  “I have permission to be here,” she lied. “We both know you can’t say the same.”

  He pretended to look around. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone about who might care.”

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “Follow you? I’m just here for the view.”

  “Take a good look, then leave, please.”

  He did
n’t move. Billie knew there was no chance she could get past him and down the stairs. Even with a decent head start, given the way her fears slowed her down, he would catch her almost immediately.

  “What’s your interest in that stone?” he asked.

  “Local history.”

  “That’s right. I’d nearly forgotten. And, of course, the history of the Rosses interests you most of all.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Perhaps not, but as I understand it, Iain Ross interests you a great deal. Would you like to be the next Lady Ross, Billie?”

  “I’d like you to leave so I can finish up here.”

  Jeremy stripped off gloves that exactly matched the gray of his coat and examined his nails. “There are better things to aspire to, you know, than marriage to Iain. The last Lady Ross found that marrying into the family was no bargain. They’ve always been cursed. No one who’s living today can remember a time when it was otherwise.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Are you leaving now?”

  “You do know there’s insanity in the family, don’t you?”

  Billie was silent. She didn’t want to betray a single thought, so her eyes didn’t flick from Jeremy’s. But she remembered an early conversation with Flora. Iain had been sent away to school, but on holidays he had returned to Fearnshader and a great-uncle who was said to be mad.

  “Every generation,” Jeremy said.

  “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

  “I would hate to see history repeat itself.” He smiled. “Try to imagine marriage to a lunatic. One can hardly imagine the strain of such a thing, can one? Watching the person one loves most deteriorate day by day until the choices become too horrible to contemplate.”

  “If you don’t go, I will.” Billie stooped and picked up her paper and charcoal, but she didn’t take her eyes off Jeremy. “Please get out of my way.”

  He stepped in front of the stairs. “What would you do, do you suppose, were you in that situation? Can you imagine watching the man you love lose his mind, bit by bit? And it’s not just the mind, you know. There’s much, much more. One day he reaches for something and finds that his hand refuses to do his bidding. It starts simply at first. Headaches. Memory loss. Difficulties with coordination. Then it progresses a bit at a time, but so slowly that there’s always a question that it’s really happening.”