Jamie MacLeod

by Michael Phillips

  “Yes.”

  “The night he died, he gave me a gift. I thought it strange, but always assumed it was a gift from him to me. But I was a mere child and didn’t even know what it was. He had been holding it so tightly that its sharp edges made his hand bleed. He tried to tell me something about it but couldn’t. I guess with death reaching out to take him, it did not seem important at that moment. But I carried it with me, treasured it all my life, as a parting remembrance of my father. But then after I met the Lundie woman, I began to wonder where he had gotten the thing, whether he had torn it . . . it seemed there had to be more to the thing . . . was it a clue—was it his way of telling me—”

  She stopped short and swallowed. She could not bring herself to say the words.

  At length she held out her hand to him and said, “Do you know these?”

  “Why, yes! Those are my old cufflinks. Where did you find the other one, Jamie? It’s been lost for years. I only just today gave Miss Campbell—”

  But the look of agonized horror on Jamie’s face stopped him short. Her face had turned ghastly white.

  With terror in her eyes she slowly withdrew her hand, backed up a step or two before stumbling over a chair, never taking her eyes from his.

  “Jamie—dear Jamie!” said Edward, the truth of the missing cufflink slowly dawning on him. He held out his hand and walked toward her.

  “No!” she shrieked. “Stay away!”

  “Jamie, it’s not what you think,” he said with forced calm, still approaching her with outstretched hand.

  “No!” she screamed again, running past him and out of the library, out of the house.

  Jamie ran and ran, hardly heeding where she went. She only knew she had to get higher, she had to have air, room—room to see, to breathe, to think. She ran up . . . up . . . always higher, until she dropped with fatigue; then she pulled herself up to run again. Now she was running along the side of the burn in the meadow, following its course up the mountain. Almost before she realized her destination, hardly thinking that her steps had continually been pointed in this direction, she looked up. And there, as it had been all her life, was the place of her own beginnings, the place where her dreams had begun, the place from which she had viewed distant horizons—

  Donachie!

  She had lived at Aviemere for a year, always thinking of the mountain, always seeing it in the distance. She had continually put off the trek she knew she must one day make. But today she ran as if getting there were more urgent than life itself. As everything she had thought she could hold onto crumbled around her, suddenly the mountain raced back out of the subconscious of her distant past and loomed as a mighty sentinel of hope, solid and unchanging—the one, the only unchanging entity she could grasp. In the chaos of her overturned emotions, she had even forgotten the God who had made both her and Donachie.

  The sun had begun its descent in the west and it was well into the gloamin’ when she reached the rocky foot of the mountain itself. Here she kicked off her shoes, for it was summer, and she had never worn shoes in summer on Donachie. Suddenly she was fifteen again and she ran with unencumbered delight, forcing the pain which lay in the valley to stay behind in the low country. This was no place for sorrow, for distress, for the questions which had plagued and driven her upward toward her home.

  Now the climbing had begun in earnest but the twilight served her well, and as she penetrated deeper and deeper into the still and awesome regions of the silent mountain, gradually she began to pass the old landmarks, each of which brought a cry of joy to her lips, even as it shot a stab of bittersweet longing to her throbbing heart. All the pleasant memories of her girlhood flooded upon her as she followed the course now of this path, now of that burn, past the grassy glen where they had so often grazed the sheep, by the foot of the tall tree where one day old Finlay had shown her the falcon’s nest, ever higher, ever deeper into the mystique which had always been Donachie.

  How simple her life had been there, and how pleasant! Why had she wanted to leave? What had she ever hoped to find as she gazed upon the distant horizons from the summit that day of the storm? All her dreams to find something more had, in the end, led her back to the land of her roots. There had been nothing out there, in the distant world, which had not been right here all the time. Even being a lady, as Edward had said, was not something to be sought in the distant cities of society of the world, but in the quiet of one’s own heart.

  Everything had been here all the time!

  But only old Finlay had seen it. He could not tell his son. And in the end, Gilbert had lost his life in the pursuit of the hollow dream. Everything he had so yearned for could have been his had he only heeded the wisdom of his time-wise father. But he had not been able to hear. So he had gone, never to return.

  She had not seen it, either. She had been too caught up in the dream her father had implanted in her to fully grasp the truths her grandfather had so desperately desired to reveal to her. She, too, had peered longingly into the distance—not merely toward Aberdeen, but toward the horizon of what she was not, hoping to become something she never could be.

  But now she had returned. At last she knew there were no reachable horizons beyond what Finlay had always told her. It had been here all along—everything she had wanted. The life she was searching for was within her own heart, a life with the God Finlay had taught her to believe in. It was not to be found in some distant city. She needed only to look within. Even love, if indeed she had found it, she had discovered at the very foot of Finlay’s mountain. The horizon-seeker and adventurer Robbie Taggart had not brought her love, though he had tried. No, love, now about to be wrenched away, had come to Jamie through a man very much like the mountain his family owned, the mountain she had loved.

  But those thoughts brought such acute panic to Jamie’s heart that she began to run once again, trying to forget.

  It was very late when she finally reached the clearing where the old stone cottage stood. She shivered with the chill of the night, for she had no coat. She walked slowly to the door and reached for the latch. How many hundreds of times had she come up to this door, stepping in to find the warm loving presence of her granddaddy? She prepared her heart as she pulled the latch this time, for she knew it would be cold and lifeless inside. The door swung open, and there everything stood, just as she had left it three years earlier.

  She went first to her old bed, where she found a blanket waiting for her return. She took up the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, grateful for its warmth. Then she wandered back outside and down the path that led to Finlay’s grave. The elder, so gray and barren when she had laid her grandfather beneath it, still stood protectively over the mound, its branches covered with new green foliage.

  She stood there for some time thinking only of the old man. Then suddenly she wondered what he would think of Edward Graystone. In many ways they were alike: proud and stoic, holding within themselves their pain and sorrow—even their joy sometimes. Perhaps Finlay had helped Jamie to understand Edward and to love him.

  At last a thought surfaced that she had never asked herself, perhaps because she had avoided facing it. What would her father think of his daughter loving a Graystone? And what if—?

  There was that awful thought again! Mackenzie Graystone, Edward’s father, had cheated her own father out of his land. Had Gilbert hated the Graystones? Was the Lundie woman right? Had her father been involved in some plot against them? The possibility was too horrifying.

  What if all the things that woman said were true! What if—?

  No—no! she screamed, clasping her hands to her ears and breaking out in loud sobs. It could not be!

  As the sobs subsided and her emotions quieted, Jamie wondered at her own rash behavior. Why hadn’t she given Edward a chance to explain the cufflinks? What a fool she had been! She was no lady! She was still a little girl—still a waif who deserved nothing better than a cottage on a mountain! Wouldn’t he have explained what had happe
ned thirteen years ago? No, he would probably have wanted her to believe in him, to trust him, without proof or denials. That was the kind of man he was!

  But she had failed him! When the first opportunity had arisen to demonstrate trust in the man she said she loved, she had doubted him completely, giving him no opportunity to explain.

  Yes, she had to admit, she did love him! But was that not a betrayal of her father? Could she have a relationship with any Graystone? How could she fulfill his dreams for her by becoming a lady of the Graystone name? Would he not scoff at the very idea?

  Yet, the Lord had led her to Aviemere. Yes, she had forgotten the Lord’s hand in all this! Now her mind was growing clear. It was God who had instilled in her heart her love for Edward. She could trust in God. She could also trust Edward. How could she have doubted?

  “Thank you, Lord,” she breathed. “Forgive me for forgetting you, for doubting. Help me to believe in you, Lord. And help me to believe in Edward, and he in me.”

  The day had been the fullest of her life, ending with a strenuous five-or-six-mile climb up a steep mountain. She rose from under the elder where she had been sitting, the dew already beginning to gather upon the blanket, and walked back to the cottage. A renewed courage had come to her weary body. No longer were there any doubts about Edward, nor of disloyalty toward her father. If they could meet, she thought, all would be understood. God was still leading her, even when she forgot Him, and whatever the future held would be of His design.

  She was stiff with the chill of the night and the thought of a crackling fire was inviting, indeed.

  Inside the cottage she gathered some dried grass and several peats which still stood beside the hearth—peats she herself had no doubt cut several summers ago—and before long had a tolerable fire blazing away. It was a bit smoky but she soon re-accustomed herself to the homey smell and lay down on her old bed where she soon fell asleep.

  She did not stir until the light of morning awakened her almost nine hours later.

  46

  The Laird of the Mountain

  Jamie awoke at peace.

  Sunlight streamed through the small windows of the cottage, but the fire had burned itself out. After the briefest of moments to reorient herself to her surroundings, she rose from the bed alert and set about lighting a new fire.

  The confusion of the night before was gone. She loved God, she loved her father, she loved old Finlay, and she loved Edward, and there could be no disharmony in any of her loves.

  But perhaps most importantly, she was content with herself. The questions and turmoil of the night before had been the birthplace of a tranquility greater than she had ever known. God had used the cries of her heart as an opportunity to fill her with His love. And when she awoke, she felt utterly at peace with who she was, perhaps for the first time in her life. She was not the shepherd girl trying to be a lady, nor the daughter trying to give meaning to her father’s life.

  She was simply Jamie MacLeod, needing only to be what God wanted her to be—shepherdess, lady, duchess, governess, or nurse. It did not matter. Her contentment lay not in such externals, not in things or positions, but only in her personhood as a child of the God who made her, and had never failed her.

  Two hours later, after she had returned from a walk to the summit of the mountain, the cottage door creaked open. She was not surprised when she turned and saw Edward’s large frame filling the doorway. Her heart surged with joy and she jumped forward and ran to meet him.

  “Oh, Edward!” she cried, “Will you forgive me? I know you had nothing to do with my father’s death. I know! I was foolish to doubt you, even if for a moment!”

  He smiled, in a simple offering of his understanding, then came fully into the cottage and embraced her.

  “I do, my dear,” he answered. “But it does matter. This is no trifling misunderstanding—this is murder, and you were right to care so deeply.”

  “But I had no cause to doubt you, Edward.”

  “But you did, Jamie. Of course you did. The cufflinks are mine, and your father more than likely tore the one from the person of his attacker. You only thought what anyone would think—that the man you love killed your father.”

  “Don’t even say the words, Edward. Please!”

  “You have a right to know.”

  “But I don’t need to.”

  “Oh, Jamie, what a gift you are to me!” he said, then sighed. “But even if that’s true, I’m afraid I would still need to know. I’ve asked myself a hundred times since yesterday—could someone in my family have been responsible, or was the cufflink stolen and the whole thing merely coincidental?”

  He took her hand and led her closer to the hearth where he spread out the blanket and motioned for her to sit. He sat down beside her and stared into the orange flames for a time.

  “We must talk,” he said at length.

  “Oh, Edward, how I wish we could just forget.”

  “But neither of us could. That’s why I had to know. When you ran off yesterday, I looked everywhere for you. At last I guessed you might have come here. I was worried, but something assured me you would be all right and that you needed to be alone. So I left off my search for you and set about trying to answer the question that had battered my brain since you reached out your hand and showed me those cufflinks.

  “I went first to Iona Lundie. She was none too hospitable, and welcomed me with a cold, evil stare. But who could blame her? I was away at Cambridge when all these things transpired. Perhaps if I had been here—well, I don’t know what might have happened.”

  He shook his head dismally and covered his face with his hands for a moment.

  “We Graystones,” he sighed, “have never brought much honor to our station. I know what kind of man my father was, and I know something of what my brother is capable—and, God forgive me, I’ve seen those same things at work within myself, struggling to turn me into a replica of my father. For the past year I’ve been torn with guilt many times over a little incident with one of my tenants, a family by the name of MacRae—one of my brother’s tenants, I should say.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Oh, nothing to go into now. I threatened to evict them, spoke harshly to them—nothing that the Graystones haven’t been doing for years. But how the memory of that day grieves me as I remember that poor, wretched man—with a sick wife—standing helplessly before me while I, sitting proud and mighty and well fed on my sleek stallion, told him to pay his paltry rent or get out. Oh, God, how could I be so blind to that man’s needs—”

  He stopped and hid his face in his hands.

  Jamie placed a loving arm around his shoulder and laid her head against him.

  When the storm of his emotion had passed, he drew a deep breath, and continued.

  “Anyway, Mrs. Lundie told me that my father dismissed her husband over a prized thoroughbred that was injured under his supposed care. He denied fault, and I tend to believe what she said he said—he had been a faithful servant for years—more honest than many. I worked closely with him when I was a teenager and knew him well. But more than that, I had seen my brother ride that very horse upon the moor against my father’s instructions. I, myself, foolishly did it on one occasion too—perhaps the only thing we ever had in common. But Derek didn’t know the moor and I warned him that he was just courting trouble. Well, trouble is not a large enough word to describe what came of it in the end. Whatever actually happened to the horse, Lundie was dismissed, extremely bitter. It was then he hatched his scheme to blackmail my family. I don’t know what secret he knew, but having worked here as factor for years, and knowing what kind of men the Graystones were, I imagine he didn’t have to look far for something to hang over their heads. He tried to interest your father in the deal.

  “Your father had just sold his land to my father at a pitifully low price—I also spoke to George Ellice yesterday and was able to obtain some of the particulars. In fact, Mrs. Lundie is probably right when she says my
father stole the land from your father and was the principal cause of his bankruptcy. I haven’t been able to trace the whole series of transactions back through the ledgers as yet, but I plan to. In any case, Mrs. Lundie said that your father would have nothing to do with her husband’s scheme, but I think Lundie still planned to use him for protection against any possible reprisal by my family. Then suddenly, they both were dead.”

  “Mrs. Lundie said everyone thought they killed each other in a violent argument,” said Jamie.

  “Yes, she told me that too, which I had heard before. I was not altogether idle during your year’s absence, you know. I had set a few inquiries afoot about your father, but little had come of it yet.”

  “Thank you,” said Jamie. “But do you think it could be true?”

  “What?”

  “That Lundie and my father killed one another?”

  “It would make this whole mystery simpler. But that doesn’t answer the question of the cufflink. And it’s just too convenient, too simple an explanation—exactly the sort of rumor someone in power would concoct to divert suspicion from himself. And if your father tore the cufflink from his assailant, what would Lundie have been doing with it? He was hardly the type. And only one cufflink! It makes little sense!”

  “But you said it was yours?”

  “My father gave them to me for my eighteenth birthday. I remember because his gifts to me were so few. When I went to pack them to take them with me to Cambridge, they were missing. Later the one turned up, but I gave it little thought. It kicked around all these years until Dora was gathering her collection of cast-offs. One cufflink does little good, but the gems were of some value and could be sold to use in other settings. But I had no idea why they turned up missing or why only one found its way back—well, I do know that now! Your father wound up with the other. I suppose a dozen things could have happened to them while they were missing. But if they were stolen, why would a thief return one cufflink?”

  “Edward,” said Jamie, “don’t you think I’ve had similar questions? We may never know the answers. Perhaps we will just have to live with the uncertainty. Perhaps it is God’s way of strengthening the bonds between us.”