Uneasily I cleared the table and piled the dishes in the sink. Caitlin played for a while with the andirons, and then I gave her a wooden bowl and spoon from the kitchen, which occupied her while I washed the dishes. She seemed a placid and contented child, though her lack of concern about her mother’s absence was almost disturbing.
I heard voices at the door and hoped it was Dominic, but as I came from the kitchen wiping my hands on a dish towel, I saw Grisel MacLeod pass by the window, followed by her husband. There was a light rap on the open door and Grisel called in softly, ‘Are you there now, Mrs. Reilly?’
I went to the door to meet them. I knew at once that they had heard about Shona Anderson. Grisel had been crying and Angus stood respectfully back, his black cap held in both hands before him.
‘Oh, Mrs. Reilly, isn’t it a terrible thing?’ Grisel said as she came through the door. Angus waited to be introduced to me, and then he, too, shook his head solemnly and said, ‘Aye, a terrible thing, a terrible thing.’
‘Mrs. Innes was down with the news this morning,’ she said. ‘And we felt just awful, such a young girl and the wee one now all alone. Angus was just after seeing to the cows and he met Mr. McGuire on the road then, and he was saying how the wee one was here with you.’
Caitlin looked up from her playing as we entered the room and she scrambled onto her feet with a glad little smile.
‘Gizzel,’ she said delightedly and ran to be picked up. Grisel sat with her in the rocking chair by the fire, rocking and murmuring and holding her very close.
Angus lowered his voice and asked, ‘And is Mr. O’Brady about?’
I shook my head, pushing my hair back nervously. ‘No,’ I answered. ‘He went out a little while ago. I don’t know where he was going.’
‘Was that him, then, flying past in the van?’ Grisel asked.
I nodded.
‘Och, the poor man,’ she muttered and returned her attention to the child. ‘It will be very hard for him.’
I asked, ‘What about Caitlin’s father?’
Grisel shook her head slowly. ‘We are not knowing that Shona wasn’t married. It was just herself and the little one. We never knew about the father, you see. Shona went away from Achbuie for more than a year. And when she came back, she had the baby with her. She never said about the father, and of course, we would not think of asking.’ She spoke softly without any trace of disapproval. I was surprised for I had always thought of Scotland as Calvinist and narrow-minded. Perhaps I was wrong. Or perhaps Grisel’s respect for the dead would allow no harsh judgment of the unfortunate girl.
‘Is Achbuie her home?’ I asked.
‘No, no dear. She belongs to Inverness. But she has been staying at Achbuie for years. Before she went away, too. They have all been there for some time now.’
‘All?’ I asked.
‘The young people, you know. Shona and Mary, and there’s Stephen’ ‒ she was ticking them off on her calloused fingers ‒ ‘and Diana, and Daniel is back now, and’ ‒ she paused just slightly with a change in her voice ‒ ‘yes, and Mr. McGuire, he stays at Achbuie, too.’
‘That is, Lower Achbuie,’ Angus put in softly.
‘Yes, Lower Achbuie,’ Grisel repeated. ‘Achbuie is the Inneses, Rebecca and Andrew. They are very nice, Mrs. Reilly, you will be liking them.’ She smiled. ‘I have told them all about you and they say you must come up and see them.’
‘That’s kind of them,’ I said. I was still thinking about the other Achbuie, Lower Achbuie. It sounded like a commune, and I was again surprised to find no disapproval of such a thing in Grisel MacLeod.
‘Are they, you know, hippies?’ I asked tentatively, not too sure Mrs. MacLeod would know the word.
She giggled loudly, ‘Och away, that is what they are calling them in Braemore now. But they have always been kind to Angus and me.’
Angus nodded seriously. ‘Aye, they have been that.’
I asked if Shona had any family at all, anyone to look after the little girl. Grisel shook her head, explaining that Shona Anderson had lived alone in Inverness, working. Apparently she had no close relatives. Caitlin would probably go into a children’s home. Grisel grabbed the child up again and hugged her close as she said so.
‘I’ve had her to look after when Shona’s been away, ever since she was a baby,’ she added, stroking the wriggling little back. Caitlin giggled and pulled loose and went to sit beside Angus and played with the leather laces of his boots.
Outside I heard a car pull up, crunching on the gravel in front of the house. I ran to the window and saw with real relief that the minivan was back and Dominic was walking up the path, slowly, his head bowed. But when he came in and saw the MacLeods, he greeted them warmly and there was a soft murmured exchange of sympathies about Shona Anderson.
Dominic went silently to the carved wooden sideboard and took out four glasses and a bottle of whisky. He filled the glasses, and still without speaking, handed one to each of us.
‘Slaìnte mhath,’ he said then.
‘Slaìnte,’ Angus replied, and then Grisel after him. We stood in a small formal circle, solemnly drinking. It was a ceremony of friendship and sorrow. Around our feet Caitlin toddled, alone and contented.
The police arrived shortly after the MacLeods left, two tall pleasant-looking young men in dark-blue uniforms and peaked hats with a strip of blue-and-white checks around the crown. I found their soft-spoken manner and the fact that they wore no guns very refreshing.
They first retreated with Dominic to the office and then came for me. I left Caitlin playing with Dominic on the rug and went with them to give my story. We were sitting now in the office with the door shut.
‘Now, if you could just tell us precisely what you saw last night, in your own words, Mrs. Reilly,’ one officer asked gently.
I told them what I knew, which was little: my brief conversation with Shona Anderson, my belief that she was running away from something, her obvious desperation. I was glad I was so sure of the time of the event, and gave them that, too.
They listened and the first officer wrote my words down on a note pad. Then the second officer, who had been standing looking out the window, said without turning, ‘We have reason to believe the girl was high on drugs at the time. Have you anything to say about this?’
I was stunned. I saw the first officer studying me, trying to judge if I would have any understanding of such matters. Living in New York, I was no stranger to drugs. I had known people who used them. But I found it hard to imagine that that force of destruction had reached even here, this wild clean place.
Was that, then, what she ran from, the dark imaginings of a bad drug trip? I envisioned the thin panicked face, eyes full of fear … it could have been. But still, in her panic she could think clearly enough to find me, and see in me a refuge for her child. Her few words were rational.
‘No,’ I said firmly to the officer, ‘I don’t think she was.’ He looked hard at me, but did not question my statement.
When we returned to the front room, Dominic was sitting talking to a middle-aged woman in a blue nurse’s uniform who sat by the table with Caitlin on her knee. She turned to us as the door opened and the police officers nodded to her as they went out; they apparently knew each other.
Dominic said, ‘Nurse, this is my secretary, Mrs. Reilly. Caroline, this is Mrs. MacPherson, the district nurse.’
We shook hands and Caitlin turned on her lap, and put her arms up to me. Pleased, I lifted her and held her on my hip while we talked.
‘Mrs. MacPherson has come to talk about Caitlin’s future,’ Dominic said quietly.
I had a little sick feeling inside. Already? I somehow felt it would be a few days before anything need be done. But I nodded and asked calmly as I could what was to become of her.
The nurse talked about a children’s home in Inverness in which Caitlin could wait for a foster home to be arranged, or perhaps an adoption. She mentioned that adoption was only a possibility. Afte
r all, Caitlin was no longer a baby. Babies were generally preferred.
The conversation was really between the nurse and Dominic. After all, I had very little to do with the child leaning comfortably against my shoulder. For that matter, neither had Dominic, but he was obviously a person of responsibility, and the child was in his house. I imagined the nurse turned to him quite automatically. He listened, saying nothing. The nurse began to discuss arrangements for Caitlin’s delivery to the home.
Suddenly I couldn’t stand it and I turned and walked with the child toward the kitchen. Dominic got up, surprised, and followed me a few steps. The nurse opened her mouth to speak and then I was blurting out, ‘Couldn’t she stay here, just a little while. I could look after her. I mean, maybe you’d find a foster family and she wouldn’t have to go all alone to that home.’ I was crying, my face buried in the shiny hair at the nape of her neck.
Dominic said, ‘Caroline …’ amazed, and hesitant. The nurse stared. I ran to the dark kitchen and stood sobbing by the sink.
I heard Dominic and the nurse going out the front room door.
After a while I wiped my face on the dish towel, found Caitlin a cookie, and went back with her to the empty front room. I didn’t care that I had made a fool of myself. I didn’t really care about anything just then.
The brass doorknob rattled and I looked up. Dominic came back in. The nurse was still with him.
‘Mr. O’Brady and I have agreed,’ she said. ‘The child may stay.’
For a moment something caught at me about the way she said it; as if it were simply up to the two of them to decide. But this was another country; perhaps such things were handled less officially here. I dismissed it all in the wave of happy relief that flooded me.
‘I’m so glad,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad.’
The nurse nodded, glanced from me to Caitlin to Dominic. She said goodbye briskly, satisfied, I imagined, with the easy completion of her business here, and went out, taking with her my belated telegram message for my parents, which she promised to send for me.
Dominic turned to me with a look almost like love. ‘This is so good of you, Caroline,’ he said.
‘But I want to do it,’ I said, knowing I was acting as much for myself as for Caitlin. ‘I want her.’ He still looked at me like that, and suddenly embarrassed, I rushed past him into the kitchen, calling over my shoulder, ‘I’ll make some lunch, you must be hungry.’
I made sandwiches and heated up a can of soup I found in the cupboard. We sat around the little table, with the sunlight pouring in. Caitlin unpeeled the sandwiches, eating the inside. She splashed soup at Dominic and he laughed at her, wiping her face and setting her down from the table. I could see he was enjoying her very much.
‘Do you want coffee, Mr. O’Brady?’ I called from the kitchen.
‘Dominic,’ he called back.
‘Dominic, then,’ I said.
‘Yes, I want coffee.’
He was smiling when I returned, and for the first time since I had come to Sron Ban, he looked again like the man who had teased me in the doorway of his office in New York.
We drank our coffee together, and then Caitlin came and leaned against my leg, whining. I picked her up and offered her some of her milk, but she pushed it away, fussing, trying to get comfortable.
‘She’s tired,’ I explained to Dominic, who looked questioningly at me. ‘She didn’t have enough sleep last night I’ll put her down on the bed upstairs,’ I said, rising.
He shook his head and took her from me, draping her over his shoulder. Then he sat with her in the rocking chair by the hearth, rocking and singing an Irish folk lullaby. He had a low throaty voice and I listened with pleasure as I worked in the kitchen.
Eventually the singing stopped. When I came out of the kitchen, they were both asleep in the rocking chair, Caitlin’s blond head on his shoulder, her little hands spread out against the thick white wool sweater.
I left them there and tiptoed around the sunlit room, tidying and dusting. For a moment I allowed myself the dangerous fantasy that this snug house on the grassy windy hillside was mine, and the child was my own.
But what, then, of the man in whose arms she slept? What was he to me? I shook my head sharply and left the room. In the doorway of the croft I stood and let the wind-song sweep Dominic’s lullaby from my mind.
Chapter Five
It was a long walk to Achbuie, on the stony road across the hillside. Just as well, too. It had taken me most of that distance to rid myself of the anger in which I had left Sron Ban.
Dominic had awakened suddenly, startling the child. He glanced quickly at the clock on the mantel and jumped up, handing Caitlin, still sleepy and rubbing her eyes, to me.
‘I’ve got to go down to the distillery,’ he announced, surprising me.
I hadn’t expected any work to be done today, after everything that had happened. I said, ‘Is there any work for me?’
He looked blank and then said, ‘No, no. We’ll talk tomorrow about that.’ I nodded and asked when he’d be in for dinner. His response was a preoccupied shrug and a vague look of annoyance as he rushed passed me and into the hall.
I should have taken my cue from that and let him be. That question had been sensible enough ‒ I was the cook after all ‒ and if he didn’t want to answer that, he obviously wasn’t in a mood for talk.
But the subject had been bothering me ever since the police officers had left. I leaned in the doorway of the office, Caitlin on my hip, as he shuffled papers on the desk.
‘Dominic,’ I said. He didn’t look up.
‘The police thought Shona Anderson was on drugs.’ He still didn’t look up, but his hands stopped searching the papers.
Looking down at them, he said, after a long silence, ‘They’ll have got that from McGuire.’ He wasn’t talking to me. I persisted though.
‘Is it possible?’
‘It’s possible,’ he said softly and carefully.
‘Do you think she was?’ I asked.
He looked up then, annoyance turning suddenly and sharply to anger. ‘How the hell should I know?’ he demanded. Then he brushed roughly past me and out the door. Caitlin, frightened, began to cry, and as I comforted her, I heard the van start up and pull away, scattering the gravel in the road.
His anger upset me, more than it should have. I was hurt by it, and because I was offended, I got angry at him. Though when I reminded myself of the day, and night, he had had, I felt guilty. I shrugged, annoyed with myself and him, and went to put my boots on.
Before she left, I had asked Grisel MacLeod about clothes for Caitlin. I hadn’t known then how long the child would be staying with me, but even for the day or two I had expected, she would need more than the one playsuit she was wearing. Grisel had suggested that I visit the commune at Lower Achbuie and collect what things the child had there. She had offered, kindly, to look after Caitlin while I walked the considerable distance to the commune.
I closed the front door behind me, still not free of my anger. Caitlin ran stumbling and happy down the rough road toward Grisel’s chimney. Grisel’s house was like Sron Ban, only smaller and somehow rougher, more obviously devoted to the simple purpose of shelter. No one had bothered to carve a gingerbread of wood to trim these eaves. Getting the heavy slate roof up had been work enough. Any decoration would have to be left to the slow-growing velvet green moss.
Grisel did have a porch, though, which Sron Ban lacked. It was small and narrow, a peaked shelter enclosing just the front door. In the windows Grisel had placed lines of potted plants, all thriving in the sheltered sun. She was at the doorway, reaching her arms out to Caitlin.
Telling Grisel MacLeod that she would not be losing the baby just yet was one of the few pleasures of that odd uneasy day. I left them, Grisel holding the child and showing her how to wave her fat little arm to me as I walked on down the road, westward, toward Achbuie.
From the distance of the road, Achbuie Farm, the Inneses’ home, lo
oked like a painting out of the past. The house sat low in the shadow of the hill, slanting sun just touching its slate roof. Around it the gorse bushes grew dark green, thick and protective. A slim rowan tree stood at the door, traditional guardian against evil spirits. Below the crofthouse, sheep grazed, clustered in cotton clumps in the early summer pasture. A broad-horned and brown-furred Highland cow watched me from a gate in the stone pasture wall.
I saw a bearded man working with a hoe in the fresh earth of the vegetable garden beside the house. Around him two small blond children played with two grey-white baby goats. Both children and goat kids looked shaggy and wild.
By the door of the house, which stood wide open, a woman sat in the thin shadow of the rowan tree. She wore a brown sweater and a long brown skirt and with one bare foot she worked the treadle of the old wooden spinning wheel before her. There was a wicker basket filled with cream-coloured fleece on the ground beside her. Her dark head was bent over her work, and as I came nearer, I could hear her singing softly with the ancient rhythm of the wheel.
Grisel had told me that. I must stop and say hello to Rebecca Innes and her family; it would not be proper to pass their door without an exchange of greetings. Seeing them now in their idyllic, gentle setting, I realized that curiosity would oblige me to stop, if nothing else.
The children saw me and ran to their mother, shouting and pointing as if I were a rare stranger on a frontier homestead. I supposed in some ways it was a fair comparison.
‘Hello,’ shouted Rebecca Innes, beckoning me toward the house. I followed the path up from the road. The bearded man, having seen me, came down from the garden. They were standing together with the children when I reached them. Rebecca had guessed who I was, having had Grisel’s description, and she introduced herself and then the bearded man as her husband, Andrew. The children were brought into a wiggling shy line and introduced as Tambrey, who was four, brown-eyed and tawny-haired, and her brother Tobias, who was just Caitlin’s age.
Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists Page 5