The Adventurer (21 page)

As she sat back, wrapping her arms around herself, Isabella stared at the stone, this stark monument to a life cut tragically too short. She realized she had been so very blessed. She had had parents all her life who loved her and had raised her in a blithe and secure environment. War, rebellion, human loss, those things had never really touched her. She had read about them, heard them discussed, but they had never threatened the safety of her most cherished circle.

Her family.

Yet Calum had lived with those things almost from the very moment of his birth. He had never known the comforting touch of a mother’s loving hand smoothing against his brow. He’d never had a father to turn to for guidance and strength. He had been orphaned twice over, left alone in the world. ’Twas no wonder he had turned to rebellion. It was all he’d ever known.

Yet, somehow, despite the misery, it hadn’t tarnished him completely. He still brought a flower to his mother’s grave site. And he still said a prayer for her soul.

Isabella spent the next quarter hour pulling away the tall grasses from the stone, cleaning the slate. She didn’t know why; she had never known the woman, but she had somehow inexplicably been touched by this memorial to her. She tried to envision what Moira Mackay must have looked like, what her life must have been. She wondered if Calum’s dark hair and warm eyes had been a feature he’d inherited from her. She wondered how she must have felt, carrying her dead husband’s child, only to be herself taken from her son at the very moment of his birth.

Calum had told her he had been given in fosterage to Fergus’s father shortly after he’d been born. Had he been loved? And even if he had, had he always been plagued by a sense of displacement, of not truly belonging?

It was a thing Isabella had never had to experience. She had always known her place in the order of things at Drayton Hall, had always been comforted by it, yet somehow she sensed how he must have felt.

At sea, without a port to call home.

When she finished with the weeds, Isabella stood, wiping her fingers on the cloth she used while she was drawing. She looked out onto the sea. The day had moved on. The sun had come out and was struggling to shine its light down through the clouds. A single heavenly beam of light reached out to the little bay and its ancient church like the hand of an angel. It was a most blessed place, and Isabella couldn’t understand how it had been left to ruin.

With a last glance to the headstone, Isabella gathered her pencils and chalks and wrapped them carefully in the folds of the cloth. She tucked them into her basket and headed over the hill to where she’d left the pony to graze.

She was so lost in her thoughts, she never realized that someone stood watching her departure from afar, watching and waiting till she’d gone. That same someone went to that same graveyard, and stood before that same headstone. Another hand set a second pale wild rose beside the first one.

Another prayer for the soul of the departed was offered.

Isabella was perched upon a boulder, her sketching hand scribbling at a furious pace as she sped to capture the odd-looking bird pecking at the pebbles along the burn’s edge.

It was a large bird, and all black except for a brownishness to its wings and the brilliant red that surrounded its eyes. Its tail feathers were glossy and sleek, and they stood in a wide fan like that of a peacock while it strutted around, emitting odd little
click-clock
noises from its hooked beak.

Isabella had never seen such a bird, so she was racing to sketch it so that she could ask M’Cuick what it had been. But when it suddenly squawked and took flight, its wings beating it a hasty retreat over the grassy stretch of moor, she couldn’t help but groan aloud.

“No!”

She tried to quickly finish the sketch while the bird’s features were fresh in her mind, until a movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She turned just as a small boy was snatching her picnic basket.

Their eyes met.

And the boy ran.

“Wait!”

Isabella was a good runner. She always had been, had always beaten her sisters in the foot races they would have along the ancient bowling green at Drayton Hall. She took hold of her skirts and sprinted after him, calling out for him to stop, that she wasn’t going to hurt him, that she just wanted to speak with him.

But he just ran on.

He fell once, sprawling headfirst into the heather, and the contents of the basket went tumbling down the braeside. He looked at her in terror as she ran to meet him, his eyes white on a dirty face. He grabbed up whatever he could of the food, the apples, oatcakes, and a round of cheese, and started running again.

Isabella charged after him, trying to ignore the stitch in her side.

He headed for a rocky outcropping that jutted above the burn, slowing when he had to pick his way over the boulders and brush.

Isabella called after him. “Please, stop! I won’t hurt you! I just want to talk to you!”

But he didn’t listen. He just babbled something at her in Gaelic, and she realized he couldn’t understand that she meant him no harm.

He must have been terrified.

When he ducked into the low opening of a cave, Isabella thought she finally had him. She heard him call out something in Gaelic, and lowered her head to follow. But it was black as night inside the cave and she stopped a short distance inside, fearing she might not find her way out without a light. She could hear him hurrying deeper into the cave, and then very soon there was no sound at all.

She had lost him.

Isabella returned to the castle late that afternoon, her basket filled with the purslane and primrose she had promised M’Cuick, along with fragrant rosemary, heather, broom, and gorse that she’d clipped to freshen the castle. After the incident with the boy, she had waited outside the cave for a while to see if he’d emerge. She’d wanted to see if she might somehow communicate with him, deduce where he was living and how. He was obviously hungry, and the way his tattered clothes had hung on his bony frame, she could tell his meals were few and far between. What if he was alone, surviving only on the benevolence of nature? What would he do for shelter and warmth once the winter months approached?

But he hadn’t come out and with the sun beginning to wane in the sky, Isabella had had little choice but to go back, collect her sketching tools where she’d left them, and head for the castle.

When she arrived, Calum was waiting at the stable. His arms were crossed and his expression was quite fierce.

His words, when they came, were equally as fierce.

“Where the devil have you been?”

He practically growled at her.

“Good day to you, too, Calum,” she said lightly, handing Hamish the reins and patting the mare on her nose. “She was lovely, Hamish. A perfect mount. Thank you for choosing her for me. I’ll ask M’Cuick for an apple treat for her after supper.”

Hamish tugged on his hair for want of a cap to tip. “She’s a sweet lass, she is, Miss Maris.” He called when she started away. “Miss Maris, can I carry your basket for you?”

“I’ll get the basket,” Calum glowered. “You see to the pony.”

Hamish nodded and turned, reluctant to goad his laird, even for Isabella.

“You needn’t have been so harsh with him,” Isabella said when he’d gone. “He was only trying to be helpful.”

“I’ll ask you again, lass. Where have you been?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Mackay, but I seem to remember you telling me I was free to wander about at will.”

“Aye. But you were gone all the day, lass.” He frowned. “We cudna find you anywhere. You took a mount and I knew you were—” He stopped himself. “You only just rode with me yesterday ...”

“You were worried,” she said.

“I simply thought—I mean to say, you’ve the stone and—”

“You were worried,” she repeated, and he looked at her, reluctant to reveal any emotion.

So he said nothing.

Isabella decided not to tell Calum of the boy’s thievery. He might forbid her to go out again, might send out Fergus’s dog after the lad, and she wanted to return to the cave again to bring more food.

“Thank you,” she said and smiled. “I am sorry to have caused you any alarm. I was simply enjoying myself so much I forgot the time. In fact, I forgot even to eat. I’m starved and I’m sure Malcolm is anxious for his purslane. Care to join me for some tea?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. She shoved her basket into his arms, sending stalks of broom and heather smacking into his nose. Then she turned and headed for the kitchen.

Calum did the only thing he could.

He followed her inside.

Supper was late that evening, and the men’s mouths were grumbling nearly as loudly as their stomachs. By the time M’Cuick brought out his roast of beef and mutton collops, they had been on the very verge of civil unrest.

The tastiness of the food, however, soothed their hungry palates and soon they were so busy shoveling forkfuls of rosemary potatoes and tender roast into their mouths, they never even noticed that the chair at the end of the table reserved for the lass stayed empty.

But Calum did.

He was sitting there frowning at that empty chair, ignoring his supper plate as he wondered if she’d been slighted by his harsh words earlier and had stayed away because of it. He hadn’t intended to sound like such a tyrant. It was just that he’d been waiting for her, for hours it had seemed, and when he’d seen her riding into the courtyard on that pony, her face pinked from the wind and her hair windblown about her shoulders, he’d forgotten himself, forgotten himself completely.

She’d been right. He had been worried. And it was a thing he’d not been prepared to feel.

It had been foolish of him to tell her she could wander at will. While he liked to think of this part of the Highlands as his own private island, in truth it was not. What if she’d been set upon by some renegade rebel soldier? Or by a wolf? Or even worse, a Hanoverian detachment of soldiers who would rescue her and take her away?

What if she just hadn’t come back?

It would be better if he had someone accompany her in the future. Hamish perhaps. Yes, she liked Hamish and if he made it seem as if Hamish was only accompanying her to be useful, to carry things or show her about, then perhaps she wouldn’t be made to feel as if she were being watched over.

“Oy, Calum.” The voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Have you made any sense of Belcourt’s books yet?”

Calum glanced at Mungo, who sat down the length of the table. “Nae, not as yet. ’Twill take some time to get through, I’m thinkin’.”

Mungo nodded, took a swig of ale.

“Why d’you no’ ask Calum if he’s e’en taken a look at the books as yet, Mungo?”

It was Fergus who had spoken. Calum looked at him.

He didn’t say a word, but his expression offered a warning.

Fergus, however, wasn’t daunted.

“And while you’re about it, Mungo, why d’you no’ ask Calum why he’s frolicking his time away with his wee merlass whilst my da rots away in a Sassenach prison, eh?”

The room silenced. A tension descended, thick and sudden as a hot summer thunderstorm. Calum took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He set down his fork and knife and was about to respond, when the door across the room pushed open, and the very object of their conversation stood framed within its opening.

She walked into the room, oblivious to the scene she had just come upon, carrying what appeared to be a covered dish. She had changed from her riding clothes into a gown that was a dark wine color, silk and fitted low over her breasts. She looked especially lovely in the candlelight, and her full skirts brushed the chairs of the men as she walked the length of the table to Calum’s chair. The rustle of her petticoats was the only sound in the room.

She set the platter before him.

“What’s this, lass?”

She grinned, cocked her head softly to the side. “Remove the cover and you’ll see.”

Calum looked down the length of the table, catching the eyes turned his way. Everyone else seemed as ignorant of what she was about as he. Everyone, that is, except M’Cuick, who was grinning as if he’d just paid a visit to Jenny Sinclair in Durness.

Calum lifted the cover to reveal a cake, garnished with wild berries—brambleberry, strawberry, and cloudberry—and topped with a custardy cream. In the center of the cake stood a single small candle.

He looked at her, bewildered beyond belief.

“Happy Birthday, Calum.”

Calum blinked. “What did you say?”

“It is your birthday, isn’t it?”

In that moment, he might very well have been knocked to the floor by just the flutter of a feather. How? How could she have possibly known? Nobody, not even Fergus, knew the significance of the day.

If he didn’t know better, from having read that journal, she might just have convinced him to her mermaid story right then.

“Thank you,” was all he managed, and even that was an effort. He was staring at the cake, as if he’d conjured it up in a dream.

“Did you know,” she said, breaking the awkward silence that had descended, “that in ancient times it was feared evil spirits searched out people on their birthdays? To protect the birthday person from harm, friends and family would gather around them and bring good thoughts and wishes. And giving gifts brought even more good cheer to ward off the evil spirits.”

Calum looked at her.

“I regret I have no gift to offer you, other than this.” She took the blossom of a rose that she had tucked in her hair. “ ’Tis significant. The rose is the good luck flower for your birth month of June.”

Calum took the rose. He didn’t know what to do with it. He felt rather stupid just staring at it, so he set it on the table beside his claret glass.

“You made this cake?” he asked, anything to break the silence.

“I wish I could say that I had, but that was Malcolm’s doing.”

The big Scotsman sat at the opposite end of the table, grinning ear-to-ear.

“Why is there a candle?”

“Have you never had a birthday cake before, Calum?”