At the Water's Edge (26 page)

I
f Willie the Postie was surprised by my disheveled state when I entered his post office and asked about the possibility of making a transatlantic phone call, he didn't betray it. It was, after all, mere hours since he'd delivered the news of my father's death.

He explained that overseas calls were by radio only, and that the equipment was at the Big House.

“Thank you,” I said, putting my gloves back on.

“And where do you think you're going?” he demanded, angling his eyebrows fiercely.

“To the Big House,” I said.

He raised a hand. “I'm afraid that's absolutely out of the question. The equipment is strictly for military use, no exceptions. It's not like a telephone box, you know. And anyway, you can't just go mucking about on the grounds of a battle school.”

“No. Of course not. I wasn't thinking.”

“You'll be sending a telegram then?”

I cast him an embarrassed look. “I would, but I'm afraid my situation hasn't changed.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Under the circumstances, I think I can overlook the fee.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That's very kind. I'll do my best to keep it short, but I'm afraid it might end up being rather long anyway.”

“I quite understand,” he said, preparing to take my dictation.

And I think he did understand, right up to the part where I asked the lawyer to please let me know what was involved in getting a divorce and whether I could do so from Scotland, and to please respond by either telegram or airmail, since I wished to settle both matters as quickly as possible.

Willie understood that part too, but it was a different type of understanding, one not tempered by empathy. His entire bearing hardened.

Despite the warnings, I couldn't help myself. I had to see Craig Gairbh.

I had no illusions about getting inside the Big House. I just wanted to lay eyes on the place. It was where Angus had lived before the war, and still spent his days. It was where he “took” the game and fish so many villagers depended on to supplement their rations. It was where the Colonel had made such a nuisance of himself, all those years ago, causing the international scandal that eventually led to Ellis and Hank deciding we had no choice but to find the monster ourselves. It was the nucleus of everything.

There were no signs to direct me, although there were posts with holes in them where signs used to be, so I walked the periphery of the village until I found a dirt road that led into the forest. Because of my experience at the Cover, I took a moment to note where the sun was, as well as the relative positions of the hills, before winding my way in.

Ancient rhododendrons began dotting the side of the road, the tips of their droopy leaves pulled toward the earth by the weight of snow, but already bearing buds for the coming spring. In one clearing, a constellation of purple crocuses poked defiantly through the crusted ice.

About three quarters of a mile in, I caught my first glimpse of the house. I could see it only in bits and pieces, because the road was still twisting its way around, and many of the trees between the house and me were coniferous. Still, I got an immediate sense of its scope.

I hurried around the bend to see more. The road grew wider and the thicket beside it disappeared, turning quite suddenly into a formal approach lined by hundred-year oaks. I stayed back, in the shadow of the woods.

I was no stranger to large houses, but this was enormous. From counting windows, I could see that the center of the house had at least four main stories, and the end towers even more. I could not begin to count the chimneys—I started at one end and lost track at sixteen, before I even reached the center. Semicircular staircases with stone balustrades approached the main door from both sides, and another row of balustrades graced the roof's parapet.

This was no house. This was a castle.

The entire front garden—or what had been the front garden—was enclosed in barbed-wire fencing and crammed with row upon row of corrugated metal shacks. They looked like Anderson shelters, only much larger. An enormous stone fountain, dry of course, rose from the center.

The fountain looked to be from the Baroque period, with three or four human forms kneeling under an enormous vessel. I crept up behind a large yew to get a better look, and tripped on an exposed root. I fell forward, catching myself on the tree's rough trunk. Only then did I see the sign nailed to it, directly above my hand. It was bright red and triangular, with a white skull and crossbones on top, and a single word across the bottom:

MINEFIELD

I froze. My right foot was still partially on the root, leaving me precariously balanced. With my hand still firmly planted on the trunk, I looked down, studying my feet and the ground around me,
wondering if there was any way at all of knowing where a mine might be buried.

A spurt of gunfire crackled in the distance, underscored by male voices: bellowing, primitive, and fierce.

I hadn't moved—was still standing with one foot teetering on the root and my hand braced against the trunk—when another round of gunfire went off, answered by a volley from a different, much closer location.

I think I screamed. I'm not sure. But certainly my careless attitude toward live ammunition had been replaced by sheer terror. Tracer bullets at night were one thing. Minefields and machine guns were quite another.

I was carrying my red gas mask case and wearing my red gloves, which would either make me visible enough that no one would shoot me accidentally, or else would make me an easy target.

Guided by sheer instinct, I twisted away from the tree and leapt toward the road in long strides. My feet landed in a thick carpet of leaves three times before I reached it, and each time I was sure I was going to be blown to smithereens.

When I found myself safely back on the road, I went completely still. I wondered if I'd been walking in a minefield the entire time, and how the hell I was going to escape.

As shots continued to ring out in the forest around me, my eyes lit on tire tracks. I hopped into a rut and stayed carefully within it, placing each foot directly in front of the other. By the time I passed the last of the ancient rhododendrons, I was running flat out. My gas mask bounced behind me, hitting me in the back with every stride.

I stumbled out of the woods and onto the street, my legs pinwheeling as though someone had shoved me from behind. I went straight over the white painted curb and crashed into the low stone wall beyond it.

I leaned against it, doubled over and wheezing, as a red cow with very long hair and even longer horns gazed placidly at me, chewing its cud.

Meg was standing by the end of the bar when I burst through the door and slammed it behind me.

“Maddie! Whatever's the matter?”

I peeled off my gloves, but my hands were shaking so hard I dropped them. When I leaned over to pick them up, my gas mask slipped off my shoulder and landed on the floor with a
thunk
.

“Leave them,” Meg said. “Come sit.”

I left everything and wobbled over to the couch. I sat on the very edge and reached up to feel my hair, which was plastered to my forehead and neck.

Meg looked anxiously at the door. “Why were you running? Is someone chasing you?”

I waved vigorously, still out of breath. “No, no—it's nothing like that. Don't worry.”

She looked at the door one more time, then sat gingerly beside me.

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“It's clearly
something
. You're all worked up. Wait here—I'll get a glass of water.”

“Please don't get up,” I said. “What are you doing down here, anyway? You're not supposed to exert yourself.”

“I'm hardly exerting myself. I needed a change of scenery, so I brought down the crossword puzzles you gave me. Stay where you are. I'm fetching some water, and I'll have no arguments about it, either.”

I gulped it down noisily as soon as she handed it to me, not even lowering the glass when I had to pause for breath. When it was empty, I set it down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing over in embarrassment. I found Meg gazing at me with a combination of sympathy and sadness.

“Anna told me about your father,” she said quietly. “I'm very sorry for your loss. It's perfectly natural to be rattled. You never know how you're going to react to news like that.”

“It's not my father,” I said. “I don't care about my father.”

Meg watched me for almost a full minute. I realized how awful what I'd just said sounded, and wondered if she thought me heartless.

“Then what is it?” she inquired carefully.

I let out a desperate, nervous laugh. “I'm not sure I should tell you.”

“Rest assured, I'll not be judging,” she said. “I'm hardly in a position to cast stones.”

“You're going to think I'm crazy.”

“Well, I won't know until you tell me.”

I leaned in closer. “I was attacked by the monster today.”

Meg's eyes widened. After a brief pause, she said, “You were
what
?”

I threw myself against the back of the couch. “I knew you'd think I was crazy! I didn't believe in any of this supernatural stuff before I came here. Then the Caonaig came for Anna's brother—there was never any doubt in Anna's mind that she'd come for Hugh, and she was right. And that damnable crow, signaling sorrow and chasing me into the Cover. And today, the monster—it rose straight out of the water and attacked me!”

Meg stared at me for several seconds, then got to her feet. “I think we could both use something a wee bit stronger.”

She poured two small whiskeys and brought them over.

“Slàinte,”
she said.

“Slàinte,”
I said, clinking my glass against hers.

“All right, then,” she said. “How about you go back to the beginning?”

I didn't know how far back she wanted me to go, so I started at the actual beginning, blurting out everything and barely pausing for breath. Everything, from how I felt nothing about my father's death because he had been completely indifferent to my existence, to my mother starving me for years, to her plans for fixing my nose and scrambling my frontal lobe, to the suicide attempt that I was supposed to foil, to discovering that Hank and Ellis had tossed a coin to
see who had to marry me and now had abandoned me completely, to my belief that Ellis wasn't color-blind after all, to realizing I was crushingly in love with Angus, to my alarming experience at the bottom of the Water Gate, to sending a telegram to the lawyer asking how to go about getting a divorce, and, finally, to wandering into a minefield because, for whatever reason, the Big House held some kind of gravitational pull I couldn't resist.

In the dead silence that followed, I realized what I'd done.

“Oh God,” I said, clapping my hands to my face.

“If you're talking about Angus, it's hardly a surprise,” Meg said. “I've seen how you look at him.”

I turned away, panting through steepled fingers.

“And I've seen how he looks at you, too,” she added quietly.

My heart either skipped a beat or took an extra one.

I lowered my hands and turned back around. She was staring straight into my eyes.

“Go back a wee bit. Tell me exactly what happened at the water's edge.”

I told her again. “And then, just as I was about to hit the water, it was like a boulder of air exploded from the surface, knocking me backward. I know how crazy it sounds, but it's the God's honest truth, even though I can't explain any of it.”

Meg nodded knowingly, solemnly. “Aye. But I can. It wasn't the monster, Maddie. If it had been, it wouldn't have pushed you away. It would have dragged you in.”

I shook my head. “But then what—”

“It was Màiri,” Meg said. “She died three years ago today, at that very place. She entered your head and your heart to see if you'd be true to Angus, and when she saw that you would be, she pushed you to safety. Maddie, she gave you her blessing.”

I
n the space of one day, I'd gone from thinking that no one in the world had ever loved me to thinking that the man I was hopelessly in love with might feel the same way about me. It was more than just that, though—the ghostly intervention gave me hope that we were meant to be together. After the Caonaig, I was no longer inclined to ignore such a message.

Meg wanted to return to work that night, just to lend a hand, but Angus was having none of it. I had to agree—she'd only just had her stitches out, and I still caught her wincing when she thought no one was looking. Still, I was sorry she wasn't going to be there, because I felt in need of moral support.

A few minutes before six, when I took my place behind the bar, Angus came up beside me and laid a hand on mine. “I heard about your father. I'm very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking up at him. “And I, for yours.”

He nodded slowly, and that was it. He knew I knew everything.

As the evening wore on, I watched Angus's face, hoping for a sign that Meg's words were true. But he was understandably preoccupied, his expression unreadable.

It was clear that the local men also remembered the anniversary, for they placed their orders solemnly and with diffidence. The only chatter was at the tables of lumberjacks, some of whom had brought their fiancées.

At one point, when I was sprinting into the kitchen with a stack of empty plates, I ran straight into Angus. He caught my elbows to steady me.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, in a pathetic attempt to sound casual. “Not sure about the front of my dress though.”

He stared down at me, his eyes intense and unblinking. For the longest time, neither one of us moved.

When he finally stepped around me and returned to the front room, I dropped the stack of plates onto the table and leaned against it.

When the front door opened and closed for the last time, and Meg had gone to bed, I crept down the stairs as quietly as a cat.

I had prepared myself like a bride, brushing my hair until it was soft, rubbing scented lotion into my hands and elbows, and donning a long white nightgown—modest, but with lace at the neck and on the ends of the sleeves.

The fire had been smoored, and cast but the faintest glow. The flagstone floor was cold beneath my feet, and I almost lost my nerve. I stood with both hands on the bar, gathering courage.

If I turned back, it would be like nothing had ever happened. If I kept going, I would be stepping into the great unknown.

Maddie, she gave you her blessing
.

I slipped into the kitchen, and felt my way along the wall until I found one of the carved wooden doors that slid shut in front of his bed. In the darkness, I couldn't tell if they were open or closed. I let my fingers crawl along the wood until I reached the far edge.

The doors were open. I was standing right in front of him.

I found myself in a beam of blinding light, and jumped backward. When Angus saw it was me, he leaned the flashlight against the wall
so it was aimed at the ceiling instead, then swung his legs around. He was wearing blue striped pajama bottoms and an undershirt, just as he had on the night of our arrival.

“What's going on? Is everything all right?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“Everything's fine,” I said, blinking quickly. The flashlight's glare had left two white spots in the center of my vision.

“Then what is it?”

I dropped my gaze and bit my lip. After the better part of a minute, when the blind spots had mostly gone away, I forced myself to look up again. He was watching me with obvious concern.

“What is it,
m'eudail
?” he asked gently.

I steeled myself. “Angus, there's something I want to…no, something I
need
to tell you. Something important.” I swallowed loudly and looked directly into his eyes. “I know the situation is unusual and that under any other circumstances none of this would make sense, but nothing about our circumstances is normal, and I've come to realize that…that there are…that I have…” I clapped my hands over my mouth to stifle a cry. “Oh God! I'm so sorry! I've never felt so stupid in all my life!”

In a flash, he was up and I was in his arms. “Hush,
m'eudail
, you don't have to say a thing. I already know.”

“But how can you know if I can't even manage to tell you?” I sobbed.

“Because I just do,” he said. His heart went
thumpity-thumpity-thump
, inches from my ear.

Eventually he pulled back, keeping his hands on my shoulders. He stared into my eyes, and held my gaze until there was nothing on earth but his face. When he put his hands on my cheeks and leaned toward me, my legs almost abandoned me. I closed my eyes and let my lips part.

He kissed my forehead.

“
M'eudail
, you're grieving,” he said quietly. “You're vulnerable. This is not the time for such things.”

I don't know how I made it upstairs. Certainly quickly, and certainly not gracefully, and when I finally reached my bed, I blubbered shamelessly, burying my face in the pillow.

There was a quiet knock on the door. Even though my sobs had subsided into quiet weeping, my ignominious retreat had certainly been loud enough to wake Meg.

“It's not locked,” I said.

The door opened, and the light of a candle cast long shadows at the far end of the room. Judging by its silhouette, the chair was almost as tall as the ceiling. I lay facing it, my knees folded nearly to my chest, my face and pillow wet with tears.

“Sorry I woke you up,” I mumbled.

“I'm not,” said Angus.

I jerked my head off the pillow and looked behind me. He was standing in the doorway, holding the candle.

“May I come in?”

I pulled myself upright, sliding backward until I was against the headboard. I sniffed and wiped my face with shaking hands.

He set the candle on the dresser and crossed the floor to the bed.

“Forgive me,” he said.

I stared at him, trembling. Fresh tears rolled down my face.

He sat on the bed and ran a thumb across my cheek. I held my breath and closed my eyes.

“Forgive me,” he said again.

When I opened my eyes, I was looking directly into his.

“I was wrong,
mo run
—this is exactly the right time.”

He shifted closer and began kissing the tears from my cheeks in a slow, tender dance that moved from one side of my face to the other. Finally, when I thought I couldn't stand it any longer, he put his lips on mine.

They were warm and full and slightly parted, and I felt the quickness of his breath behind them. He kissed me over and over, with increasing
urgency, his beard brushing against my skin. His hand slid down my neck and into my nightgown.

I gasped, and he stopped.

With his hand cupping my breast, he searched my face for a signal. It was a moment of excruciating sweetness, of torturous rapture, of exquisite need. It was unbearable.

I leaned forward, tugging at his shirt. He stood and pulled it over his head. I knelt on the bed, yanking at my nightgown.

“Wait,” he said, and this time I was the one who stopped.

He removed my nightgown, slowly, reverently.

I had never felt so exposed, yet I didn't want to cover myself. The candlelight flickered behind him, and his breathing grew even heavier as his eyes traveled my body, resting without shame on my breasts and hips.

“Mo run geal og,”
he said. “So beautiful.”

He untied his pajamas and let them drop to the floor. I caught my breath. I obviously knew the anatomy, but other than statues, I'd never seen a naked man, never mind an aroused one. Angus seemed to sense that and paused, giving me a chance to look.

Finally, he knelt on the bed and put a hand behind my neck, supporting my head as he guided me backward.

Moments later, when he was poised above me, he looked deep into my eyes and said, “You're sure,
mo chridhe
? For this cannot be undone.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I am completely and absolutely sure.”

When he sank into me, I was so lost my body began to quake. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, holding on for dear life.

The next morning, it took me a moment to realize I wasn't dreaming. The candle had long since burned out, so we were in cave-like darkness, side by side, our naked bodies pressed together. He had one arm under my pillow and the other across me, his hand resting between my breasts. I lay very still, with my hands on his forearm. When he
stirred, I clasped his hand to my heart and ran my fingers up his arm, marveling at our different textures. Although he was still asleep, a pulsing nudge intensified until the length of him was pressed against my back.

I rolled over and pulled the sheets down, kissing his chest and tracing his scars with my lips and fingers. When I finally worked my way up to his mouth, he took my face in his hands and pressed his lips against mine, parting them so we shared the same breath. A moment later, he lifted me across him like I weighed nothing, setting me down so my knees were on either side of him. I put both hands on his abdomen to brace myself, more than a little shocked to find myself straddling him.

He reached up and ran his thumbs over my nipples. I sucked in my breath and almost didn't let it out again.

“Maddie,
mo chridhe
,” he said.

“Angus—oh my God,” I said in a broken voice. “I don't know what to do.”

“You do, though. Let yourself come to me.”

I lowered my hips slowly, and stopped breathing altogether when I felt the tip of him pressing against me.

“Angus—”

“It's all right,” he said, stroking my face. “
Na stad
. I'm right here with you.”

He held himself steady while I took him into me, slowly, slowly, sliding down until he was buried so deep our hips met, then lifting myself up until I was afraid I might lose him, then sinking back down until we were joined again. I leaned forward and put my hands on either side of his head, breathing hard into the pillow beside his face.

He had his hands on my waist, and his hips rose a little higher each time I sank down, pushing himself deeper and staying there longer. I felt his blood pounding, as if our nerve endings had merged.

My legs were shaking violently, and just when I thought I was going to lose control entirely, he reached up and clasped my hands, intertwining our fingers, and guaranteed it.

The contractions overwhelmed me, so unexpected and intense I cried out, and he held my face, covering my mouth with his, pressing into me, faster, more urgently. When I felt his own surrender, I was shot through with an ecstasy so intense I thought my heart might actually stop.

After, as we lay in each other's arms, he stroked my hair and back. My face was buried in his neck, and every breath I took was suffused with his scent.

“Well,” he said, kissing me. “I'm afraid that while I'd love to stay here forever, duty calls.”

I caught his wrist. “I love you, Angus Grant. With all my heart, I love you.”

He leaned over and gave me a long, lingering kiss.

“And I, you,
mo chridhe
.”