When he stopped, she whispered the question that had consumed her. “When you learned where I was, why didn’t you come to me then?”
“And you newly wed? I thought you’d made your choice.”
“Then why did you change your mind, these last few months?”
He looked away, his profile clear in the faint light that filtered through the trees. “Did you dream about me, Hazel?” he said softly. “Over and over again? Did you have to stop yourself calling out my name when you were in your husband’s arms?” When she nodded, reluctantly, he went on. “It was that way with me. And I began to see it wasna going to change, no matter how hard I tried—
and I did try. We were meant to be together, whether we like it or no.”
“It was no accident, that day in London, was it?”
“Well, I couldna verra well ring your doorbell, could I?” He took her hand in both of his, raised her palm to his lips. “You canna deny this, Hazel. And it’s more than the flesh, whatever this is that draws us together.”
She made a last desperate stand. “But my daughter—I can’t do this to her—”
“What kind of life are you giving your daughter, lying to your husband and yourself? What kind of wife will you be, knowing what you felt when I kissed you this morning? And do you think I wouldna love your daughter as my own?”
She was lost. She knew it before he pulled her to him, knew it before her body responded of its own will. She knew it as they slid to the ground, the smell of crushed ferns rising around them in the darkness.
Carnmore, November
It was well past midnight when Will’s mother sent him for the priest. He’d seen the look that passed between his mother and the nurse, seen his mother nod and turn her face away.
In spite of Nurse Baird’s care, his father’s condition had gradually worsened. Charles labored for every breath, and it seemed to Will that in the last few hours the flesh had sunk away from his bones.
It had not snowed since the storm two nights earlier, and the night was still and clear. The diamond-hard air seared his lungs as he slipped and slid his way down the track towards the village. In the sky above, the stars blazed, looking near enough to touch. God’s eyes, his mother had told him when he was small, watching over them all. The idea had frightened him, and on nights when the starlight fell upon his bed he’d hidden his head beneath his blankets.
Now he tried to find some comfort in the idea of God looking down on his father, but it only made him wonder if God knew his father had not been a very good Catholic.
Oh, he’d gone to Sunday mass, had even donated towards the building of the new chapel, but that was an expected part of life in the Braes. Had it ever been more than a social duty on his father’s part?
Will thought of his dad as he had seen him most often, in his office at the brewery, spectacles sliding down his nose, reading the books he brought back from Edinburgh.
These had not been books of which the church would approve, Will suspected—Darwin, Huxley, Robert Owen, Haeckel. And once, when Will had questioned him about the Jacobites, his father had said that Catholicism was responsible for a good part of Scotland’s grief. That was the sort of opinion one kept to oneself in this part of the Highlands, when one’s family’s loyalty in the ’ was a matter of honor, and Will had never repeated it. But God, now, what if there were no keeping secrets from God?
The track leveled out and Will quickened his pace, more surefooted now. Would it matter if he prayed?
Could he intercede for his father? And what if Father Mackenzie prayed as well?
He ran now, into the village, down the path to the chapel house, snow flying under his boots, and slid into the door with a thump. Panting, he banged hard with his fist, the words in his mind forming a silent chant. Please don’t let him die, please don’t let my father die.
He waited until Louise’s breathing steadied and slipped into what it would infuriate her to call a snore, then he eased out of bed. Pullover and trousers he’d left within easy reach on a chair, but he’d been careful to remove his belt and empty his pockets as a preventive against telltale jingling.
Once dressed, John crossed to the window, taking care to step over the creaking floorboard. He cranked open the
casement and perched on the sill, leaning out to light his cigarette. It was a vice he seldom allowed himself, but considering the evening, he felt he deserved some small compensation.
A bloody disaster, the whole thing, and just when he needed Donald’s good will more than ever. Damn Callum! It must have been Callum who had told the woman where to find Donald, but why would he have done such a stupid thing?
Not that John had ever fathomed what made Callum MacGillivray tick. He gazed down at the moonlit garden.
All was still and quiet. The lights were out in the barn and the other bedrooms in the house, although he hadn’t heard Donald come in.
Well, he’d have to chance it. He flicked his fag end into the flower bed below and drew back into the room, listening. Louise slept on, making tiny whuffling noises in her dreams. John stopped once, holding his breath as the house made an infinitesimal shift, then he slipped out the door. It was getting late, and he had an appointment to keep.
Carnmore, November
Will was too late. He knew, the instant he saw his mother’s bowed head and the nurse’s comforting embrace, but he refused to believe it. Dropping to his knees beside his father’s couch, he shook the unresisting body, shouting, “No! Wake up!” But his father’s face, blue-white as the marble Madonna in the church, remained still.
It was the priest who disengaged his hands and led him to a seat by the fire. “It’s all right, son,” Father Mackenzie said gently. “This is what God intended for your father. You’ll learn to accept it, in time.”
Watching as Father Mackenzie took the unguent from his case and knelt beside his dad, making the sign of the cross, Will felt his anger sink deep inside him, hardening into a fiery core.
What use had he for a god who would take his father from him? There was no justice in it, and no pity. His father had been a good man, a kind man, who had lived by his principles and bettered the lives of those around him.
If that had counted for nothing, if God had chosen to punish him for his beliefs, then Will was finished with him.
He would have no part of such a god.
Gemma drifted in and out of troubled dreams in which a phone rang endlessly as she searched for Duncan and the children. She had tried ringing home again before she went to bed, but the line had once more been engaged.
Nor had her wait for Hazel’s return proved any more fruitful, although she had outlasted all the other guests in the lounge before finally giving up and making her way back to the barn alone.
Now she rose towards the surface of awareness, sensing Hazel’s presence in the room, but she could not quite rouse herself to full wakefulness. Sleep claimed her again.
Some time later, she heard a door close—or had that been part of the dream as well?
The early dawn had come when the sound of a gunshot echoed in the fringes of her consciousness. Just someone potting rabbits, a dream voice reminded her, and reassured, she sank deeper into the clinging fog. Then, a few minutes later, she came fully awake with a gasp.
