Strong arms came around her. She let him pull her against his chest. She could no more have resisted than run away. She wanted his arms around her. The soft cotton of his shirt brushed her cheek, but it was the only thing soft about Andrew. His chest was stone, as secure and solid as the hotel walls.
His hand stroked her hair. His fingers were trapped by a curl, then released. “You remember more?”
“I remember it all.”
“Do you want to…tell me?”
She shook her head. She had no desire to share these memories out loud. She had learned long ago that no one could bear to listen.
“Then I’ll tell you what I remember.”
She lifted her head. The light was dim. Only a distant street lamp shadowed his face. “But you weren’t here.”
“No’ that night. I came the next day, after I’d been told what had happened. You were in Glasgow, by then, of course. Your whole family was there with you. I’d been told no’ to come to the hotel. Ordered, really. But as soon as my da’s head was turned, I came anyway. It was a dark day, as if the sun had no interest in shining after what had occurred the night before. I walked the distance, because I was afraid my bicycle would make a fair bit of noise, and I did no’ want to be caught. When I first glimpsed the hotel, I thought that I’d been lied to. Nowt seemed different. I expected to see you come bobbing through the front door.”
Her face was so close to his that she could almost see his memories in his eyes. “I’m sorry you weren’t right.”
“Once I was inside, I knew it had no’ been a lie at all. There were crews of men carrying out charred wood and water-soaked furniture. They passed close to me, carrying something long and narrow that still appeared to be smoking. I could no’ tell what it was at first. Then I realized that it was your bed.”
They were both silent for a moment. Fiona shuddered. Andrew drew his arms tighter around her. “And so I know,” he said, “at least a bit. I know what you suffered that night, and I know how much of a miracle it was that you survived to come back here this night.”
“There were times when I wished I hadn’t survived. I was too young to think of it that way, of course. I just knew that I wished it would all disappear, the pain, the skin grafts and surgeries. I would think of the pictures I’d seen of heaven, pictures in storybooks, and I’d wish I was there.”
“But it’s different now?”
She thought of the little girl he had rescued and the conversation they’d had about it. “Yes, it’s different.” She turned, and he dropped his arms as she faced the room before her. It was a room, and there were no sinister presences here. It was simply a room.
She told him something she’d never told anyone. “The fire was caused by a space heater. When I began to think I’d need a passport, I went looking through some old papers to find my birth certificate. I came across the insurance report. I’ll never know why my mother kept it. Maybe she thought that destroying it would compound her guilt somehow. But the report said that the heater was defective and it overheated. The cord shorted out and set fire to the rug beside my bed. Neither Duncan nor I was ever told that. The cause of the fire was supposed to be a mystery.”
“Her guilt, Fiona?”
“My mother believes she’s responsible for…everything that happened.”
“I’ve never heard Duncan say so.”
“Duncan doesn’t know, and I don’t plan to tell him. Mother’s kept it a secret all these years because she couldn’t bear for us to know the truth. She was the one who pulled the heater from the closet and turned it on. She was the one who left it on that night.”
“Fiona, how can you know that?”
“I remember.” She waited for him to dispute it. It seemed impossible that a child of three would know or that a woman of twenty-five would still remember. But he didn’t dispute it.
“Do you blame her?”
“For that? No, of course not. She despised Scotland’s climate. To her the hotel was always damp and cold, and she didn’t want me to be uncomfortable. I can only guess, but I think she probably intended to come in a little later and turn off the heater. Instead she probably fell asleep or just forgot.”
She turned again to face him. “But her guilt, Andrew, her guilt was more dangerous than any fire. Her guilt almost destroyed me.”
He didn’t ask how. He seemed to sense it, as if he could envision all the years since the fire when Melissa Sinclair had struggled to make life perfect—and out of reach—for her daughter. From guilt as much as from love.
Fiona didn’t know why she had told Andrew all this. She had learned long ago to keep her thoughts and feelings silent inside her. She offered him a tremulous smile in apology. “It’s the same room, but I’m not the same, am I? I had to come in here and walk out again on my own two legs. Time stopped for me after my father kissed me and put me to bed that night. And now I have to start it ticking again.”
He rested his hands on her shoulders, bandaged hands that throbbed from another child’s tragedy. He leaned toward her, and her eyelids drifted closed. He had kissed her cheek this morning. She expected, yearned, for the same, for the warmth of his lips, the cherished safety of his affection.
But his lips brushing hers were a surprise. They were warm and moist, and pleasure spiraled through her, entwined with surprise. He lingered, deepening the pressure until there was no mistaking the kiss for comfort. Her breath caught; her lips parted. A world of enchanted sensuality and black velvet nights seemed to hover within her reach.
She opened her eyes, and he lifted his head. “Time did no’ quite stop, Fiona. You were a child then. Now you’re a woman. And you have the rest of your life before you.”
He touched her cheek with his fingertips, but he didn’t smile. He left without another word, left her there to walk out of the room on her own.
He had been gone for a long time when she walked out into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind her.
CHAPTER 4
“It’s enchanted.” Fiona stepped over the ridge leading down to Mara’s croft and stood staring at the view before her. “I can’t believe you could bear to leave all this to live at the hotel.”
“Your brother was an enticement,” Mara said.
“Duncan?” Fiona raised a brow. “The same Duncan who plays rock music at top volume and never refolds a newspaper in the right direction?”
“I’d be the first to admit he’s no’ perfect. But he has a way about him you might no’ ken, being his sister.”
Billie crossed over the ridge to join them and the conversation. “I’m afraid she’s right, Fiona. Every one of the men of midnight is irresistible.”
It was a conversation Fiona might have enjoyed pursuing, except that she didn’t know how to, exactly. The only man of midnight who had so far resisted his own irresistibility had been on an oil rig in the North Sea for the past two weeks as she slowly adjusted to living in Druidheachd. Andrew had dropped completely out of her life, and she missed him.
Mara put her arm around Fiona’s shoulders. “Shall we explore?”
“I can’t wait.”
“You’re certain you feel up to it?”
“I could walk a hundred miles.” Fiona smiled. “Over the next year or so.”
They took the gentle slope slowly, stopping to admire the thatched stone cottage that Mara had built with her own hands. Surrounded by the last stands of fading daffodils, sheep grazed behind a fence, several with lambs frolicking at their sides. “Once I bred all my ewes,” Mara said, “but now I breed only as many as I’ll need for my own spinning. I could no’ bear to sell the young ones off each summer. Their mothers mourn them so.”
Fiona had already seen the gorgeous yarn that Mara spun and dyed from the wool of her sheep. Mara had woven her a shawl for Christmas that was one of her most prized possessions. Now Mara had become the owner of a small shop in the village where she displayed her crafts and those of the other local artisans who staffed it. Mara was a
woman of many talents. “Will you teach me to spin?” Fiona asked.
“Aye, and you’ll be wonderful at it. Your fingers are nimble and your patience unending.”
“Oh, it ends more often and a lot more abruptly than you might think.”
“Billie, now…” Mara shook her head sadly, but her eyes danced. “Billie will never be a spinner. But I can see our Billie tramping the countryside, searching for plants to help me make my dyes.”
“That’s me, all right,” Billie agreed. “Explorer and threat to all she surveys.”
They petted and played with Guiser, Mara’s border collie, as well as one of the sturdiest of the lambs. Fiona held the soft wiggling body against her own and was loath to give it up when it was time to put it back with its mother.
“We’ll go have some tea now, if you’re ready,” Mara said. “I’m anxious to show you the cottage.”
The cottage was charming from the outside, a fairy-tale residence. Fiona was awed as Mara explained how she had carried the stones for the cottage herself and set them in place in two parallel rows. The space between was packed with dirt for insulation. The roof was thatched with dried sedge in picturesque rippling whorls and webbed with wire mesh.
“In the old days,” Mara said, “we would have held the thatch in place with hand-tied ropes made from straw or heath and weighted with stones. But I deviated a bit, like the lazy city dweller I am.”
“The whole project definitely reeks of laziness,” Billie said. “If you had even an ounce of ambition, you’d have built a whole settlement here.”
“Ah, that comes next, and soon, I hope.”
“What are you planning?” Fiona asked as she followed Mara and Billie inside.
The interior of the cottage was every bit as quaint and intriguing as the exterior. The rectangular space was divided by a bed raised off the stone floor on a platform. Fireplaces adorned each end of the room, one with iron kettles hanging from sturdy hooks and chains inside it. Rafters as thick as a ship’s mast supported the roof above, as well as the dried flowers and herbs hung in colorful clusters below.
Mara gestured Fiona to a chair beside a gleaming walnut table. “I’ve no’ told you my plans for the croft?”
“I don’t think so.” Fiona settled herself. The view out the small window just in front of her was more glorious than any artist’s landscape.
Mara removed a kettle from the hearth and held it out to Billie. “Will you do the honors?”
Billie tucked the kettle under her arm and started for the door. “I think I’ve got the hang of your pump by now. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Mara struck matches to light a neatly laid pile of kindling. When it was blazing, she carefully introduced several small blocks of peat. By then Billie had returned, and Mara lowered a chain to set the kettle over the fire to heat. All three of the women wore sweaters and jeans, but Fiona was glad when the fire began to slowly warm the room.
Mara set out a teapot with delicate china cups. A tin of shortbread was next, followed by bannock and blackberry jam. “Well, I’ve plans to turn the croft into a school,” she said, when she had completed preparations and joined them at the table. “It’s been my dream for a time now. It will be a place for children to come and learn the skills of their ancestors. We’ll construct more cottages like this one, raise animals and a garden together. I’ll teach them to spin and dye and weave on hand looms.” She tilted her head, as if she could see the entire picture. “For a week or two at a time, of course. I’ve no plans for it to be large or important. Just a place to pass on the traditions and history of our Highlands.”
“It’s a wonderful idea. When do you plan to start?”
“After Duncan and I have built our house.”
This, too, was a surprise. “A house? Here?”
“I’ll show you the site after tea. We’ve designed it already. And if it’s done on time, then we can begin the school with a few children next summer.”
“You’ll live here and not at the hotel?”
“I think we’ll live in both places, most likely. Here in the summer and the village in the winter. But we can be flexible. As much as I like the hotel, I savor the privacy we have here, and I’m inclined to want to hole up in the country from time to time, even after winter’s come.”
Fiona had already noticed that Mara retreated frequently to her apartment, particularly when the hotel was most crowded. “You like the quiet, don’t you?”
Mara didn’t say anything for a moment, and Billie toyed with her cup. Finally Mara spoke. “Fiona, there’s something you ought to know about me. I’ve no’ told you before this because it seems so…unlikely.”
“Unlikely?”
“I sometimes see the future.”
Fiona frowned, unsure what Mara meant.
“Sometimes?” Billie said. “Sometimes?”
“All right, then. Often.” Mara smiled as Billie shook her head. “Very well, Billie. Fair often. Is that better?”
“She sees the future as often as the rest of us remember yesterday,” Billie said.
“And have you no’ had your own brushes with things the rest of us can no’ see?” Mara chided Billie. “Am I the only one whose sight has been extended?”
“I’ve never seen the future. Just…other things.”
“Other things from eight hundred years ago, to be exact. Other lives.”
“Wait a minute.” Fiona leaned forward. Her head was whirling. “Are you telling me that both of you have had, umm… psychic experiences?” She couldn’t think of a better term, although that one seemed inordinately clinical.
“Put bluntly? Aye,” Mara said. “And I know you must think we’re both a wee bit gyte, at best.”
“It does sound a bit…gyte, whatever that is.”
“Daft…crazy. I’ve always seen bits of the future. I can no’ explain it, nor do I want to particularly. But all too often I can sense what’s going to happen to someone I meet. It’s a fact of my life that I’ve learned to live with. And when it gets to be too daunting, I come here. I’ve never yet seen the fate of a sheep or songbird. I can rest here.”
“And you, Billie?” Fiona said.
“Oh, nothing so exotic,” Billie said. “Just a little brush with an ancestral curse. But it’s all over now.”
Fiona sat back and stared at them both. “Well.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“I felt I had to warn you,” Mara said. “It seemed only right.”
“Does this mean that when you look at me…?”
“No. It’s rare that I can see the future of those I love.”
Fiona felt warmth radiate through her. “Thank you.”
Mara got up to pour the water into the teapot, and Billie began to butter the bannock. “But I do have feelings about your future,” Mara said. “No’ predictions, mind you. But feelings.”
“And?” Fiona asked.
“Billie and I have both put our pasts to rest since coming here. I think you will, too.”
Fiona considered that. She had so often thought of herself as someone apart. Now, and as naturally as if it had always been so, she had been embraced and included in the friendship of two women she already admired immensely. Two strong women, secure in themselves, despite the trials they’d endured. “Well, that’s why I came,” she said at last.
“Then you came to the right place,” Billie said, covering her hand. “And we’re glad you’re here.”
* * *
Andrew stepped through the doorway of the hotel pub and paused to let his eyes adjust. He needed a wee taste and a bit of company before going home to sleep for a day and a night.
Andrew worked a fortnight at a time, and the work was constant and draining. He would work two more shifts before summer’s onset; then he would be off until autumn. He had stipulated the odd schedule at the beginning of his employment, and although there were still grumbles from management when summer approached, there was never a threat of losing his job. He was talente
d at what he did and a hard worker with years of valuable experience. If his employers privately thought he was daft for trading his generous salary for the headaches of a tour boat, they kept their opinions to themselves.
The night was still early, and the pub was half-empty. As he stepped over the dog stretched across the threshold—a dog remarkably similar to the one waiting at a neighbor’s house for him—he greeted men he had known all his life. Safely across he squatted and scratched Primrose behind his bedraggled ears until the dog rolled to his back, tongue lolling in total ecstasy. Primrose was April’s dog, the brother of Andrew’s, but at night, when April was in bed, Primrose appointed himself guardian of the pub doorway.
Andrew turned away and stood to find a hand stretched toward him, offering whisky. “Could you use this?”
“That I could.” Andrew took the drink from Duncan’s hand and held it out in the traditional Gaelic toast. “Slainte mhah.” Then he downed it in a single swallow.
“A bit dry, are we?”
“I dinna drink when I’m at work.”
“Come over to the bar and I’ll have Brian pour you another.”
“And to what do we owe your generosity? Have you gone and sold Scotland to France while I was at work, Dunc?”
“Nothing quite so lucrative. I just want to talk to you.”
Andrew had come for a few slaps on the back and the latest village gossip, not for anything serious. He thought longingly of his bed and the peace of the cottage where he had lived all his life. He lived there alone now. His father had been dead for more than a decade, and his mother had moved to Fife soon after, to rid herself of memories.
“Can we keep the conversation short, I hope? I’ve had just the barest wink of sleep in the past forty-eight hours.”
“It won’t take long, then you can go home and sleep straight through until your next shift if you want.”
“I might well.”
At the bar they both waited for a dram of the pub’s finest, then took it to a table in the corner. Andrew leaned his chair back on two legs and watched his friend. Duncan seemed to be mentally sifting through openings, which was unusual. He had always been a blunt man who said exactly what he was thinking without preamble.
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