He took her arm and steered her across the dark stableyard to the oak doors leading into the Castle.
Neither one spoke as they ascended the stone steps to the upper levels of the building and entered a reception room of huge dimensions that served as dining hall, living room and display area in which the family coat of arms of the Campbells was proudly displayed above an imposing fireplace, and ancient weapons were arranged around the walls between the noble racks of deer antlers.
The baronial hall was a history lesson at a glance.
Fiona was intrigued rather than afraid at this turn of events. She gazed around at tartan fabric on the high-backed chairs and saw stuffed animals in glass domes and wondered why Gordon Campbell had brought her here.
Her unspoken question was soon answered.
He indicated that she should sit near the fireplace and as soon as he had set light to the wood and coal inside the grate, he stood in front of the fire with his head barely reaching the mantel and looked up toward the barrel ceiling as if challenged to be as honest as Fiona had been, but afraid he might not be able to continue if he watched her face.
He began slowly then gained speed as he warmed to his subject and realized he would not be interrupted by his listener.
“I am the only son of a large family in which there have been girls for generations. My birth was welcomed with jubilation and my future set before I could talk. I don’t recall any choices being offered.
My task in life was to be the long-awaited son and heir, inheritor of the proud name of Campbell, protected and cherished by a horde of sisters and female relatives and expected to do my duty in all respects.
My father was a clan chief on the Borders of Scotland. He ran a tight ship, as it were, and employed a large staff of experienced men and women whose families had served Campbells faithfully for close to a hundred years. He was an ex-naval officer with high standards and expected to be obeyed without question.
I did as I was told.
Like many Scots of a certain standing in life, I was sent to England to be educated among the upper classes; those who would soon form the ranks of policy makers and financial wizards of Britain. It was a liberation of sorts for me. I met young men whose wealthy, tolerant upbringings were very different from my own and whose main ambitions in life were to escape the shackles of adult supervision and break free to indulge themselves while they could. Within the university student population there was a palpable sense of a looming deadline. Beyond the end of formal schooling, nothing existed for them other than the twin pillars of duty and death.
I truly tried to disentangle myself from my early conditioning. I went to bars and nightclubs. I accepted invitations to country houses far more elaborate and impressive than my own. I was presented with a series of eligible sisters and fashionable women who attempted to initiate me into their society.
Perhaps it was memories of my own sisters that got in the way. I was patently unable to treat women as casually as seemed to be required of me.
For a while I drank and danced with abandon until the night I found myself alone on a terrace gazing at the moon sailing above me. I was waiting for an amorous young lady to join me with more drinks; drinks I did not need. I suddenly had a moment of clarity. I was once more falling into an old trap. I was doing exactly what was expected of me with no thought for what I really wanted to do.
I left the garden and the lady behind me and drove all night to Scotland. I needed time to sort out who and what I truly was. I calculated I had a day or two before all hell broke loose behind me. For that brief period I slept in my car and drove wherever the road led me.
Eventually, a calm descended on me as the vast empty spaces of Scottish moor, loch and seascape began to teach me what in life is important. I had to be the one in charge of my fate. I had to choose for myself.
I remembered a Campbell Castle where a cousin lived and turned the car in that direction. My cousin had gone but the position of estate manager was vacant. I had no official training for the post but I had watched my father manage his properties for years and I had walked the Borders’ hills, dales and forests with dogs, hunters and fishermen since I was a boy.
The name helped of course. I took the job and began to learn what it is like to work every hour of the day trying to establish a new persona. It was damnable hard work, Fiona, and it still is. I have little or no time to relax but I love every minute of it and at last I know where I was meant to be.
I am my own man now.”
Fiona had not dared to move a muscle while the fascinating story unfolded before her. She had a dozen questions to ask but kept quiet as Gordon appeared to be steeling himself for yet another confession.
“There was only one thing lacking in my new existence, Fiona. I think, I hope, I found it in you the first moment I set eyes on you.”
Fiona gasped as his words electrified her. Gordon Campbell immediately turned those solemn grey eyes on her and reached for her hands.
“Not what you expected to hear, I am sure, and quite possibly far too much information, but I had to make you understand why I reacted the way I did. I need a serious lot of coaching to be the romantic highlander you deserve and I want you, Fiona, to be my coach.”
No man had ever bared his soul to her as this man had dared to do. His very vulnerability shattered her defenses. There was only one true response.
She rose to meet him and for a few moments, as their lips merged, no words were necessary.
When they moved far enough apart to study each other’s face, they saw amazement and acceptance mirrored there, and also the beginning of the inevitable questions.
“Can two independent individuals from entirely different backgrounds come together like this, so quickly?” she asked.
“I can’t wait to find out!” he answered. “But there are two important tests you must pass before we can be sure.”
Fiona would have been worried by this demand had not his eyes glittered with amusement.
“Bring them on!” she challenged.
What on earth could he ask her to do?
“First, you must let down your hair for me.”
“Simple enough,” she said, as she pulled the hairband out and let her straight brown hair swing forward around her face.
He did not ask, just ran his fingers through her hair with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“I have been aching to do that, Fiona Jameson.
Second, and much more difficult, you must declare whether or not you love dogs.”
She couldn’t resist laughing at this strange request. “I may not have found a man I loved before now, Gordon Campbell, but I can assure you that cats and dogs love me without reservation and the feeling is mutual.”
She thought about Sylvester and Morag, the animals at Callum Moir’s vet surgery, and Alan Matthews’ two Border collies and smiled confidently.
“Good! My own dog, Hector, is on the floor above. He stands guard for me each night outside the bedroom door.”
“Excuse me! Are you inviting me to inspect your sleeping quarters?”
She produced a show of mock horror despite her secret delight that this brand-new relationship was moving forward at warp speed. She had a lot of catching-up to do in this area.
He did not deny the invitation so Fiona pushed the agenda even further.
“Is it possible you are asking me to spend the night with you, sir?”
“Well, only if Hector approves of you of course!”
Fiona briefly considered displaying more maidenly shock and horror but she was overcome with the sheer, bold assurance of his statement and contented herself with a fist attack, parried at once by his superior boxing skills.
She eventually retrieved her hands from his grasp and removed her uniform jacket, laying it carefully across a chair back. No official business would be conducted here this night.
A small portion of her brain issued an alarm that she was allowing the situation to move so quickly to a serious stage of commitment, but she shushed it into oblivion. Her Granny always said, ‘When your heart speaks, lassie, aye follow where it leads.’
After all, how many young women had the chance to see what a grand Scottish towerhouse bedroom was like? More importantly, how many young women had heard a moving and personal life story that rivalled anything a groom might declare to his bride on his wedding day?
She decided to let whatever was to be, be determined by fate. No one else was involved in their situation. No one else could be hurt by their decisions. They were alone together in an age-old castle with stout defenses. These thick, stone walls were accustomed to keeping secrets and sheltering the inhabitants from harm.
She would trust herself to this castle and this man.
Anna Mason was alone in the farmhouse cedar closet upstairs when she heard the faint sound of a telephone. Lawren was out at the barn retrieving his easel and brushes from storage so that he could continue work on the McLennan family portrait. She dropped the clothes she was unpacking and hurried through the access door into the bedroom, looking frantically to find where she had placed her cell phone when she had come upstairs. The ringing persisted and seemed to grow more urgent as the seconds ticked by.
Another woman might let it go and check the message later but I can’t seem to learn that skill at this advanced age.
At last she tracked down the vibrating phone under the pillows, on the bed she had made only a few minutes before, and quickly pressed ‘talk’.
“Anna! Thank heaven you’re there!”
“Fiona! I’m so glad to hear from you. What’s up?”
The young woman laughed with such abandon that Anna began to worry, briefly, about her sanity.
“Whoa there, girl! That doesn’t sound like the serious Fiona I know, and it’s too early in the day for you to be drunk, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, Anna! The truth is I am kind of drunk today but it’s happiness rather than alcohol to blame.”
Anna was immediately intrigued by this comment and asked where Fiona was calling from.
“I’m at work in Glencoe at the Visitors’ Centre giving a talk, but it’s my lunch break and I
just could not wait to tell you.”
The giggling started again and Anna realized whatever she was about to hear was something totally unusual in her experience of Fiona Jameson.
“Well then, what are you telling me? I’m sitting down so don’t fear I’ll fall over with shock.”
“Oh, you do know me well, Anna, and that is why I am taking you, and you alone, into my confidence.”
There was a pause while Fiona calmed her giggles and became more sensible. Anna could hardly stand the suspense but when Fiona began to talk in a quiet, sober tone, she knew she was hearing a new and important truth.
“I just spent the night in a castle with a Campbell heir who I hardly know. It’s completely out of character for me to behave like this but I took a risk and grabbed a chance at happiness and I am so glad I did. So, so glad!”
A host of questions hovered on the end of Anna’s tongue but she wisely held most of them back. Fiona had chosen to confide in her and that confidence must be respected. She had felt, before now, that this young woman was like a daughter to her and that feeling must be confirmed in the most subtle and supportive way.
“That’s amazing news, Fiona! How did it all happen?”
Fortunately, Fiona did not catch a hint of the inner turmoil leading to Anna’s innocuous question. She was too anxious to go on with her story.
“It’s incredible, Anna! I had no idea how deeply he felt about me until he took charge and told me his life story. Strangely enough, our lives are a wee bit similar in some ways but, wow, are they different in other ways! You won’t believe it! I had to pass a test before he would let me into his bedroom. You should see the size of his dog, Hector! He’s part jet-black Labrador and part
Great Dane. He sniffed me once or twice then padded off to guard the door and left us alone there all night. I can’t explain what it was like for me, Anna! To fall in love so fast and find
a man so right for me; it’s a miracle, I tell you!”
Anna was still trying to digest the suspect information about the dog test. Her one quick comment was all she could summon at this point. “Wonderful, my dear!” It almost strangled her to eke that out but, again, Fiona did not seem to notice.
“Oh, what am I thinking? My brain’s scrambled this morning. I haven’t even told you his name!
It’s Gordon Campbell I’m talking about. He’s the new estate manager at Glenmorie and I know you will say I haven’t known him long enough to be jumping into bed with him and, normally, I would have to agree with you, Anna, yet that’s the thing here. None of this is normal at all.
It’s all totally magical and it feels so right.”
As Fiona drew breath, she noticed a silence on the other end of the line.
“Anna? Are you still there?”
Anna was there and about to have a heart attack as she put together the implications of all that Fiona had revealed. This young woman, starting out on a career she had always yearned for, was risking everything on the basis of a very brief acquaintance followed by a night of passion.
What had happened to change her from an eminently practical, level-headed, independent person in charge of all aspects of her life, into this besotted teenager at a rock concert?
None of these questions could be spoken aloud, of course. She would have to tread carefully to keep her contact with Fiona and be there to advise and comfort her if, and when, things went badly wrong.
“I am right here, Fiona. Just wondering where you go from this?”
“Honestly, I can’t think beyond today, my head’s in such a swirl. I am longing to go back to the castle tonight and see if I have imagined it all but I know he will be there waiting to hold me in his arms and ask me about my day and I’ll ask about his day and……….Oh! That sounds like one of those stupid soap operas on the telly but Anna, you suddenly found a true love in Lawren and I knew you, of all people, would know what it feels like.”
Anna would not dream of comparing her feelings about Lawren to the crazy stuff she had been listening to on the phone, and yet, there was a kernel of truth in what Fiona had said. Love, whenever it arrives, is a miracle and one not to be questioned too closely. Time would tell whether or not Fiona and her Gordon had found true love. Anna was certain there was not only one path to happiness in love and she was no expert. Each of her romantic relationships had been different and Fiona was living in a more relaxed era than Anna’s. So what if Fiona had skipped over months of slow progress in getting to know this Gordon? Anna would not attempt to be the arbiter of appropriate behaviours. After all, some might consider her own romance with Lawren to be far from the standard variety.
She would keep her own counsel about this for now and hope that Fiona would continue to confide in her.
All this passed through Anna’s mind in a flash. She composed a suitable response to keep the channels of communication open.
“I am very happy for you, Fiona. He must be a special young man and I hope, in time, to meet him. For now this will remain our secret. Please keep me posted and let’s meet soon,”
“Of course, Anna! Thank you for being my listening post. I always value your opinions.”
Farewells were made quickly. Anna could hear a voice in the distance calling Fiona’s name. The workday beckoned for her.
Anna plopped back onto the pillows and closed her eyes. This business of being a surrogate parent could be exhausting. Hopefully, it would be many years before little Annette might come to her godmother for help and understanding. Anna did a quick calculation and surmised that her goddaughter would be seeking other sources by then, as Anna would be an old, old woman.
There’s quite enough to deal with right now without worrying about the distant future. One thing at a time.