Beloved Secrets, Book 3

by Marti Talbott

  “Hendry has been banished.” Lucus enjoyed their cheers and happy smiles.

  “Are you stayin’? Where are the others?” Evander asked.

  “We have found good land and I shall return to them shortly. Skye told me of your troubles, and I could do naught but come back and banish Hendry.”

  “What? I cannae hear him,” a woman shouted.

  Lucus climbed the castle steps, turned around to face them, and paused until they all came closer. “We found good land,” he repeated, “and there we shall stay.”

  “But who shall lead us?” Lorna wanted to know.

  Lucus started at the beginning and spoke slowly so they could comprehend what he was saying. “Hear this and remember it. Laird Dronstan MacGreagor had two sons. The eldest was Donnan and the youngest was Cullen. Laird Donnan MacGreagor had two sons also, Jamie, and me. With Jamie and his son passed and me gone away, the next to become laird would be the sons of Donnan’s brother, Cullen.”

  “Aye, that be right,” said Elder Aulay, although he was not quite certain, wrinkled his brow and scratch his head.

  Lucus ginned and continued, “Cullen had two sons...”

  “Ludovic and Nachton, with Ludovic being the oldest,” Elder Aulay muttered, “or am I mistaken? My memory dinna serve me well lately.”

  “Aye,” said Lucus. “Ludovic died of the cough and Nachton died in battle. Natchton was Hendry’s father but Natchton was not the rightful heir.”

  “He was not?” Dan asked.

  “Nay, he was not, nor could Hendry lay claim to inherit and he knew it very well, for I had explained it to him.”

  Glenna muttered, “’Tis why he lied about Jamie namin’ him.”

  “Indeed.” Lucus nodded and then went on, “The rightful heir was Ludovic, who was Cullen’s eldest son. Ludovic had two sons and they are Bruce and...”

  Nearly everyone turned to see the dumbfounded look on Shaw’s face. “Me?” he asked, pointing his thumb at his chest.

  “Aye,” said Lucus. “The title is handed down from eldest son to eldest son, but when the eldest has passed, the youngest son is next in line.”

  “Shaw is our laird?” Evander asked.

  “Thank Heaven,” said Glenna. “We are to have reason amongst us again.”

  When Lucus looked, he chuckled at the lack of color in Shaw’s face. “You shall do fine. You know what must be done and how to do it.” It seemed to take quite a while for the fourteen-year-old Shaw to slightly nod.

  “Do all of you agree to give your pledge to Shaw?” Lucus was not surprised when each of them joyfully agreed. “Good. Now that all is settled, I must leave.” He whistled for his horse and then walked among the MacGreagors for a last time.

  “MUST YOU GO SO SOON?” Shaw asked.

  “Aye, there is much to do.” Lucus gathered the reins to his horse and then turned to the newest MacGreagor laird. “Skye waits for you.”

  Shaw smiled and waited until Lucus mounted his horse. “Tell her I have not forgotten. How am I to find you?”

  “I shall send a lad back, perhaps as you requested, more than one shall come to show you the way. I miss the glen, but I tell you true, I believe we shall be happy in the north.”

  Shaw nodded, moved away from the horse, and watched as Laird Lucus MacGreagor rode past the graveyard, past the ancient MacGreagor cannon and out of the glen.

  At last, there was a reason to celebrate in the MacGreagor glen and on a warm and sunny Saturday, they held their annual harvest feast. Shaw moved into the castle, although he was far from comfortable there. More than one unmarried lass was happy to see to his meals and to the cleaning, but the castle made more noise at night than his cottage. More often than not, he took his blankets and went back to the cottage to get a good night’s sleep.

  I, DUNCAN MACGREAGOR, was about to finish my writing when I felt the ground beneath the glen suddenly jerk. I scrambled out of my cottage to see what was amiss and as I watched, the earth in the outer courtyard began to roll hither and yon. ‘Twas then the stones started to fall out of the towers. In the blink of an eye, both towers collapsed as did the wall around the inner courtyard. I yelled for Shaw, and was rewarded by an answer as he struggled to walk on the moving earth. I was much relieved. After that, the castle was not fit to live in. There is talk of building another, but ‘tis not likely to happen in my lifetime.

  Six unmarried MacGreagor men did come back, the winter was not as harsh as they feared and never did they discover what became of Lexine.

  Laird Shaw MacGreagor, when he thought himself old enough, sought to find Skye and bring her home. Her freckles were gone and she had become quite handsome. Her manner was just as busy and jovial, and after they were married, she gave him six strong sons.

  I pray we shall never again see a battle the likes of which Shaw suffered at Branxton Moor. Perhaps the day has come when we shall see war no more. Yet a new kind of war now threatens to tear the clans apart – the battle between Catholics and Protestants.

  More and more, the lads long to sail the oceans and some have already set out to join Scotland’s Royal Navy. Otherwise, all remains the same. We work the land, sell the wool, milk the cows, welcome the next generation and most of all – we love and are loved.

  Squire, Duncan MacGreagor

  10 August, 1534

  CHAPTER 8

  GLENARTAIR VILLAGE, 1912

  Charles MacGreagor was never out of work for very long. His wife ran Glenartair’s one and only hat shop, while he did what he loved best – construction. Building a manor for him and his wife gave him almost as much pleasure as rebuilding Glenartair Castle. That was only because there was nothing as grand as the castle he had known and loved since he was a child. There were definite advantages to being related to the duke, even a few times removed from the direct line. One of them was being often invited to the castle. Although the castle was to have the best of everything, it was also to look as old and as distinguished as the original. That was just the kind of challenge Charles loved most.

  As soon as he got home and entered the foyer, he slipped the copy of the Shaw MacGreagor story on top of a high shelf, and then joined his wife for dinner. Obediently, he never said a word and even waited until she was fast asleep before he went back to the foyer and retrieved it.

  That night, he stayed up half the night reading the secret story and when he was finished, he put the pages back on top of the shelf in the foyer. He was troubled by what he read, but soon after he climbed into bed, sleep wiped the story out of his mind.

  Monday morning, a ringing telephone woke him. He got up, answered it, and said little more than, “Aye,” and, “Thank you.” When he looked at the clock, he discovered it was later than he thought, completely forgot about burning the story, and went to work.

  GLENARTAIR CASTLE, 1912

  The men were waiting to lay the rest of the hardwood floor when Charles arrived and let the dogs leap out of his Benz. However, instead of giving them the go-ahead, he grabbed a shovel, motioned for them to wait there, and went to the place where the bones had been discovered. He knelt down and in a pattern, began to gently turn the top layer of dirt over with the tip of his shovel. He worked the dirt, row after row, turned the soil over and then gently spreading it to be certain there was nothing there – until at last he found it.

  Charles set his shovel aside, leaned down, and carefully picked it up. He slipped the item in his pocket, stood up, stepped up on the flooring, and finally nodded for the men to begin working.

  Next, he walked down the grassy glen until he reached the graveyard. Somewhere the bodies of the men lost in the battle of Branxton Moor were buried, but where? He slowly walked on until he found what he thought might be the place. A hundred times he had been to the graveyard, twice in fact to bury his parents, but this was the first time he truly paid attention to graves that were marked with a cross instead of a proper stone. In the back row, there was a gap wide enough for three graves, and still there was no stone �
� only a tall wooden cross in the middle.

  “’Tis a shame not to honor them,” he muttered. Charles considered commissioning some sort of memorial stone. But then, he would have to explain how he knew who was buried there, and he promised McKenna he would not let anyone else read the story.

  From the graveyard, he walked across the wide glen and stopped. Somehow Shaw’s story made him see the land in a different light as he went past the thicker row of trees and gazed at the loch and the hillsides beyond. So many trees had been cut down over the years, there was no longer anything but untrimmed bushes and a few scattered Scotch pines on the hillsides. He tried to imagine the flocks that once grazed the land and the milkmaids going off each morning and evening to tend their chores. Now, little remained to mark the days when wool was the clan’s main source of income, and even the gardens that fed them in winter were long gone. The fruit trees, those that still remained, were so old the fruit was inedible and if there had once been a golf course, there was no evidence of it.

  Even so, this was the home of all the generations that had gone before him and the home Shaw MacGreagor and so many others fought to save from the English. Finally, Charles shook the memory of the story out of his mind and went back to work. Even so, when he approached the castle he paused to imagine the towers falling in an earthquake. The story did not say and he always heard the first castle burned, but maybe it fell in or became so dangerous they tore it down instead. Scotland suffered few earthquakes that he knew of, but it did happen. Just now, he wondered if the new castle could withstand an earthquake. He shrugged and went inside to help the workers.

  SERENA MACGREAGOR WAS as much English as she was Scottish, but she was born in Scotland and felt more loyalty to that side of her family. By 1912 the two kingdoms shared the same royalty and were governed as one anyway. Her husband, Charles, always got up early and left the house before she did. After all, there was no point in opening the hat shop before nine in the morning and even then it was not until afternoon that business usually picked up.

  Finished with her breakfast, she went to the full-length mirror in the foyer, smoothed the skirt of her pink, ankle-length, empire waisted frock, and checked to make sure her hat was properly situated on her up-swept, dark brown hair. It was then she spotted something on the shelf above her head.

  She was not quite tall enough to reach it, even with two inch heels on her high-top shoes, but on tiptoe, she managed to pinch the corner of the paper between her thumb and forefinger. It was not just one page, but several and abruptly, the whole story fell to the floor.

  Serena knelt down, picked up it up, turned to the first page, and began to read.

  “5 March, 1534, MacGreagor Glen, I, Dugan MacGreagor, shall tell you...” She wrinkled her brow. “What? 1534? Why have I not read this story before?” She shrugged, added the papers to the bag she carried her lunch in and headed off to work.

  When she arrived, Serena went about her daily routine of straightening the hats on the shelves, making certain she had the latest fashion in her show window, unlocking the door, and changing the closed sign to open. Then she took her seat behind the cash register, pulled the story out of her bag, and began to read.

  It was not long until she too gasped. She looked up as if someone might have heard her, remembered she was all alone and continued reading. From time to time, she sighed. Occasionally, she tore herself away from the story long to help a customer and then rushed back. Once, she even got tears in her eyes and had to dab at them repeatedly. At last, she finished reading the final page, set the story on her counter and then just stared at the paper. “We never knew,” she muttered.

  “Never knew what?” her best friend asked.

  Before she could stop her, Gloria snatched up the papers and began to read the first page. “Where did you get this?”

  “Twas atop the shelf at home. I suspect Charles meant to give it to me and forgot.”

  “Well, I have certainly never seen it and I have all the MacGreagor stories.” Gloria turned to look when another of their friends entered the hat shop. “Mable, have you ever seen a MacGreagor story written in 1534?”

  Mable thought about it for a moment. “I have not, and I have read the stories so many times I practically have them memorized.”

  Gloria held up the papers and narrowed her eyes. “McKenna has been holdin’ out on us. Did she not say she had given us all the stories?”

  “I thought so. Aye, she did say that.” Mable wrinkled her brow. “Surely she did not give it to some and not to others.”

  “Ladies,” Serena started, “I am not so certain others should read it. There is, shall we say, some unpleasantness in it, and...”

  “What stories dinna have unpleasantness?” Gloria asked.

  “Not like these,” said Serena.

  Her words made both Gloria and Mable pause. At length, Gloria said, “Now I am even more curious. Might I borrow your copy?”

  “And then loan it to me?” Mable asked.

  Serena hesitated. “I fear I was not meant to see it either. What will Charles say if I loan it without his permission?”

  “You never needed his permission before,” Mable argued.

  “Aye, but I honor him enough to ask. Allow me to talk to him this evenin’ and if he agrees, I shall...”

  “Never mind that,” said Mable. “It is apparent there are copies and I shall just ask McKenna for one of my own.”

  “So shall I,” said Gloria. She brushed a speck of lint off her sleeve and then followed Mable out of the shop. Just as they started to climb into Mable’s carriage, Susan walked by. It was important news, so Gloria told Susan, who told her brother, who just happened to be headed into the crowded barber shop.

  KENTIGERN MANOR

  That same morning, Nicholas went to town to buy a new garden shovel. When he got home, he brought the shovel inside, leaned it against the wall in the foyer, and went to check on McKenna. “Now?” he asked, just as he had for the last month when he returned.

  “Not now,” she giggled.

  “Well, as short as your labor was last time, I fear I shall leave for an hour and miss the entire event.”

  “Fear not, the midwife lives nearby and there is nothin’ you can do anyway.”

  Nicholas chuckled. “True.” He chose one of the chairs opposite her and then opened the daily newspaper.

  “Charlotte called.”

  “Did she? What did she have to say?”

  “The undertaker has the bones on display.”

  Nicholas slowly lowered his newspaper. “On display?”

  “The bones are drawin’ quite the crowd. Our dear undertaker has them arranged in the casket just as they were found, except now there is a dagger stuck between two of the ribs.”

  “He has the dagger?”

  “Apparently so. He probably paid a fortune for it, and shall include the price when he bills me for the casket.” McKenna sighed. “I can think of no other way to stop this insanity except to have a proper funeral and be done with it.”

  “No matter whose bones they are?” asked Nicholas.

  She stared at her husband for a long moment and then looked away. “I hate the very thought of it being Hendry, but what else are we to do?”

  Nicholas did not answer. Unless they could tell for sure whose bones they were, he had no idea either.

  FROM THE HAT SHOP, word that there was another story – one McKenna had not bothered to share – spread through the clan faster than an eagle flies from one tree to another. Half of the people were suspicious, half were confused, and all of them were starting to get angry. Therefore, when Ann MacGreagor suggested they go ask McKenna about it, people hopped in their automobiles and buggies, mounted their horses and began to converge on Kentigern Manor.

  They were hardly quiet about it too, for the first automobile that arrived backfired. That caused several of the women to cry out which rattled Cook Jessie’s nerves and caused Butler Alistair to rush to open the front door. To hi
s astonishment, the number of people arriving appeared to be endless. Soon, Sarah came to see, and then Jessie and finally Nicholas and McKenna.

  People then leapt out of automobiles while others dismounted or climbed out of horse drawn buggies and began to congregate in front of the manor. None of them looked too happy.

  “What is it?” Alistair asked. “What has happened?”

  “We come to get our copy of the story,” said a woman with an unmistakable scowl on her face.

  Alistair guessed which story they were talking about and knew not what to say. He immediately turned to look at McKenna.

  “’Tis our history too,” a man shouted. “What right have you to keep it from us?”

  McKenna hung her head. “We thought to protect you, not to harm you.”

  “What did she say?” someone in the back yelled.

  “She said she dinna want us to read it.”

  “Why not?” the same man yelled.

  McKenna raised her voice. “Because ‘tis unpleasant and I fear it shall be printed in a newspaper if word gets out.”

  “They printed none of the other stories in the paper. Why would they print this one?” a woman asked.

  “Because of the bones,” McKenna answered. “People are already speculatin’ as to whether it was a murder or not, and when the body was buried.”

  “So then, the story shall tell us whose bones they are?” Mable asked.

  “Not precisely.” McKenna was getting frustrated and so was the crowd.

  “We’ve a right to read this story the same as the others.”

  She felt Nicholas put his arm around her. Suddenly annoyed, McKenna shot back, “Do you? Have you forgotten who paid the printer so each of you could have a copy to read and to hand down to your children?”

  “I suppose you want us to pay for this one,” someone else shouted.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and collected her thoughts. “’Tis not what I want. What I want is for the castle to be finished and the glen to be as peaceful as it once was. I fear if this story is printed in the newspapers, we shall see thousands of curious in the glen. They shall get in the way and the castle shall never be finished?”