M argo was up bright and early, charmed from sleep by some unknown bird’s song. Dressing hastily she opened her door to a quiet house. But there was a fire in the kitchen range, and what looked like a pot of porridge simmered on the back lids.

Having watched Cameron, the previous night, dip water from the stove’s reservoir, Margo took the enamel basin from its stand at the side of the door, dipped water, which was comfortably warm, and returned to her room for a sketchy wash. Briefly she thought of Cameron’s reference to a “zinc tub” and decided she’d settle for that before another day went by.

Struggling with her mostly unmanageable hair in front of the small mirror, Margo remembered yesterday and her first, startling glimpse of Molly Morrison; she frowned. How strange! Common sense told her that the heritage of each of them could easily be traced back to . . . well, perhaps to the Romans and the invasion of England and Scotland by Hadrian, centuries ago. His soldiers could not have built and maintained the stone wall and the many stationary camps, mile-castles, and turrets without great numbers of them. And, being human and far from home, it was not unlikely that, from alliances with the women of the area, dark-haired and dark-browed offspring were born, the coloring to emerge from time to time across the years since. Yes, that was the explanation, that accounted for the color. But the curl! Who was responsible for the curl!

“Oh, bother!” Margo muttered with vexation; she tied her own “mop” back severely with a ribbon and wished Molly Morrison good luck with her so-similar problem.

Making her way again across the silent house, Margo dumped her bathwater in the slop pail beside the washstand, set the basin in its proper place, opened the door, and stepped out.

It was the parkland at its best. Birds flashed around with burst of color and song; the grass was springy underfoot; the bush was sparkling with dew. It would not be hard to fall in love with the bush country! Margo felt its magic and did not resist. Knowing her future was sealed in this place, she did not resist the impulse to happiness and satisfaction. Would they—happiness and satisfaction, peace and comfort—be found here?

Considering, Margo’s gaze went automatically toward the barn and the faint sounds emanating from it. Soundlessly she crossed the wet grass, entered the open door, studying the dark interior. It was the sight of three cats ranged behind the swishing tail of a cow that gave her a clue to Cameron’s whereabouts. Even as she watched, a stream of milk spurted, straight and true, toward the cats. Never moving except to open their mouths, they received the foamy offering placidly. Margo’s laugh, as happy in its way as the birds’ songs, caused the flow to cease abruptly and the cats to turn their slanted eyes toward her, stand, tails erect, and rub their heads against her hand as she bent to fondle them.

“Good morning, Princess,” came the muffled voice from the side of the cow.

So that was how it was to be, she thought, with a sigh. Stepping around gingerly, Margo watched as Cameron stood, lifting a brimming pail, and turned toward her.

“Good morning,” she responded and, knowing there was nothing to be gained by waiting, added, “We need to talk.”

“Of course. At your service.”

“Well—not here.” Margo felt disadvantaged on such strange turf. “Could you step outside?”

Walking beside her, his old hat on the back of his head, his blue eyes squinting into the morning sun, Cameron was the picture of health and masculinity. Stiffening her resolve, Margo looked around for a likely place of business.

“Sit here,” Cameron said, gesturing toward the woodpile, and Margo seated herself on the chopping block, Cameron nearby on an upturned chunk of poplar.

“I love the smell,” Margo said simply, and Cameron’s eyes softened, in spite of himself.

“You mean the wood,” he said smiling, “not the barn.”

“The wood, of course. The wood, and the woods, and . . . everything has a fragrance all its own. One could grow accustomed to it, I suppose. Does it lose its charm?”

“No.”

“Cameron,” she began, “for your sake, as well as mine, I need to discuss the . . . the . . .”

“The Bliss place?”

“This place of bliss.”

Cameron’s eyebrows lifted. “You make hasty decisions,” he said.

“I guess I do,” she said, surprising herself as she recalled her vacillations in regard to marriage to Winfield. “Anyway, at present, Bliss seems a refuge for me—”

“The intended marriage,” Cameron asked casually, “it didn’t come off?”

“It’s off; no doubt about that. Off, and over.”

“Is that why Bliss is a refuge for you?”

“Partly. It seems like a new beginning.”

“For you. What about the place, Margo? What about the future? I’m sure that’s what you want to talk about. And it’s what I need to hear.”

Margo took a deep breath and started in. The Bliss place, she told him, was indeed hers, the only thing that was hers. What’s more, she had limited funds with which to run it. She would have to make it pay, to survive. Without money to pay wages, was there some arrangement—half and half, perhaps, on whatever the farm brought in? And would he, Cameron, be willing to stay on with such an arrangement?

Having finished, Margo waited tensely for Cameron’s answer.

Cameron was slow in responding. A calf, somewhere, bawled; a cat rubbed itself against Margo’s ankle, and a late-rising rooster crowed.

“You’ve taken me by surprise,” Cameron said, finally. “But I have a solution for you. I’m ready to get my own place—can’t work forever for someone else. Let me buy you out, Margo. I can put down a fair amount . . . enough to get you home again and keep you until you get settled; something will open for you among your father’s business partners. Life can go on for you much the same as always, I’ll be bound.”

“I haven’t made myself clear, Cameron. I’m not going back. Not ever. I’m here to stay. Sink or swim, survive or perish,” she said firmly, “it will be in Bliss.”

Looking into those dark eyes, now fiercely determined, Cameron had no choice but to take a deep breath, rise, brush himself off, and say, “Then I’ll need to make my own decision. And that will take some praying. If this is what the Lord wants for you, he’ll be faithful to show me what he has for me.”

Before he picked up the milk pail and walked away, he asked, “You’ve prayed about your decision, I suppose?”

“I’m not in the habit—” Margo began stiffly.

“Perhaps you should be,” Cameron said mildly, but seriously. A faint smile lit his face. “Oftentimes the Lord is leading when we don’t know it. I have a feeling that’s so in your case, ‘wee’ Margo. I’m certain it will all turn out for the best, for all of us. And if you’re looking for a refuge, consider wings.”

“Wings?” Margo asked uncertainly.

“God’s wings. ‘In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge,’” the stalwart man quoted and seemed none the weaker for it in his listener’s eyes.

Wings, Margo thought as Cameron swung off with his pail of milk, the cats following, tails aloft. What a comforting place to be, hidden away under wings. The only things comparable that she had known were Kezzie’s arms.

And these, she realized with a pang when she went into the house, were hers only for a time . . . a brief time. For Kezzie, in a wrapper, sitting in her rocking chair with a cup of tea in her hand, seemed frighteningly frail. The morning sun through the window was merciless, etching lines not revealed before and emphasizing the poor color of the sagging face.

But Kezzie smiled her fond smile, and Margo stooped to place a kiss on the withered cheek. Who could blame them if each found the moment another time for tears? Margo laid her cheek on the white, frizzy hair for a moment and knew the trip was worth it for this alone.

Kezzie had set the table, and bread was toasting on the range top. A coffeepot bubbled, and the porridge, when the lid was removed, steamed invitingly.

“Cameron will get milk from the icehouse,” Kezzie explained to an exploring Margo. “And butter and cream. You’ll want to get acquainted with your icehouse, Margo. What a blessing that’s been. I don’t know what homesteaders do in places where there’s no winter and no ice.”

Margo discussed her need to learn the farm’s workings at the breakfast table.

“It will be a good time for us to get our own chickens,” Kezzie suggested. “You can care for them . . . gather eggs. . . .”

“The garden,” Cameron said. “You might begin to think about berry picking. It’s early, but strawberries are coming on.”

“The cows . . . the team of horses . . . the plowing,” Margo said, impatient with egg gathering and berry picking. “Hitching up—”

“Whoa!” Cameron responded, laughing. “It will all come, in time. I have decided one thing—I’ll stay on through harvest. I couldn’t, with a good conscience, leave with the summer and fall work ahead. When the harvest is in, that will be the time for me to turn it over to someone else and leave.”

“If you leave,” Margo said, her breath catching.

“If I leave. But I think I may want to, Margo. I can’t be a hired man all my life.” Unspoken, as he watched the vivid face, was the urgent goad to remove himself from this girl’s presence for her own good. Vulnerable, she was, and well he knew it. Vulnerable and wounded in love and open, he felt sure, to being taken advantage of. All the more reason to remove himself. Cameron Morrison and the poor little rich girl? A most unlikely alliance, for sure and certain. No, no. The moment the thought had presented itself, he had soundly rejected it. And too bad . . . too bad. What a choice person she was.

The rest of the week flew by. Unaccustomed as she was to kitchen duties and the never-ending preparation of food, it seemed to Margo that dishes were barely done from breakfast before it was time to pare potatoes or some such thing for the noon meal. The longer afternoon, which might have allowed a breathing space as far as meals were concerned, was crowded with a dozen other tasks pressing for attention. There was so much more than swishing through the house with a dust rag, dressed in a frilly apron, or serving tea to one’s company. Company, when it came, had business in mind. Molly dropped in once to deliver mail but also to fill a can with cream from the icehouse. “We have been making the cheese and butter for both households,” she explained. “Now,” and she eyed Margo speculatively, “you may want to handle it here.”

“In time, lassie,” Kezzie responded for the hesitant Margo. “Just now it’s biscuit-learning time . . . sock darning . . . setting hens to nest. . . .”

“I get the picture.” Molly smiled and turned to take her departure. There hadn’t even been time for a cup of tea together. “We’ll visit Sunday,” she said. “Bliss people, for the most part, recognize it as a day of rest, and thank God for it. Will you go to church with Cameron, Margo?”

Margo fumbled for an answer. “Ah . . . do you go, Kezzie?”

“Nae, lass.”

“Then I’ll stay with you.”

“Well, then, at the dinner table—at our house, you remember—we’ll just have to go over the sermon for you. We preach to Mam regularly, don’t we, Mam?” Molly’s words were crisp, but her eyes were loving as they rested on the old face so marked by the cares of this world and the old eyes, so soon to look on the next world, and Margo felt there was serious thought behind the half-teasing words.

Molly kissed her grandmother tenderly and whirled away, a blur of vitality and purpose.

“That’s our Molly,” Kezzie said proudly.

“You know, Mam—” Margo found it easy to adopt the title the rest of the family used for Kezzie, and reserved the Granny/Nanny words for their close and personal times, “I had the strangest sensation when I met Molly for the first time—”

Kezzie looked at her sharply.

“She seemed . . . familiar, somehow.” Weak words, to express the blindingly bright recognition of herself, for one brief fraction of time.

“You’re both young . . . pretty . . . full of life. . . .”

“It was more than that, Mam,” Margo pursued stubbornly.

“The dark Scots . . . what else could it be? Your eyes are brown, lassie; hers are blue.”

“I know,” Margo said, somehow unsatisfied and wondering why.

If Sunday was a day of rest, as Molly had reported, it certainly didn’t start off that way. Breakfast routine was the same; Cameron went off to chores the same as always. Margo fed the ducks and geese; Cameron “slopped” the pigs. But there the routine changed. Rather than proceed with farm tasks, Cameron brought the team and wagon to the door, slipped into his room, and emerged a transformed man. Gone the blue denims (thankfully, Margo thought, never the “bib” or “apron” variety); gone the cotton cassimere overshirt (as opposed to undershirt, Kezzie had explained at mending time); gone the worn Wellingtons or rubber boots that Cameron wore almost exclusively outside, changing at the door for felt pacs, or padding around in sock feet.

If she had thought him handsome before, Margo’s breath was as good as taken away by her first glimpse of Cameron in his “Sunday-go-to-meetin’” clothes. Unless she was sadly mistaken, the well-fitting navy blue suit was made of German Vicuna cheviot cloth, very closely woven, very smooth, soft surfaced. The coat was undoubtedly satin piped throughout, with every pocket stayed and with arm shields of velvet. And all sewn, of course, with silk and linen. His shoes were of satin calf and featured the dongola top and the new coin toe with tip and had never seen the inside of a barn.

Straightening his neatly dotted pongee silk Windsor tie before the washstand mirror, Cameron turned to catch what Margo supposed was a foolishly approving look on her face, and she blushed.

“Clothes don’t make the man,” he said with a grin and clapped the latest style derby on his head.

“Mam knows just about when I’ll be back,” he said. “We’ll load her up—that’s why I have the wagon. I’ll just pick her up, chair and all, and we’ll go have dinner with the folks.”

More bemused by him than ever, Margo watched the wagon trundle away. “Your Prince Albert stores,” was her single comment, “seem to be better supplied than I realized.”

“The catalog, lassie. Much more convenient than P. A. I guess the ‘wish book’ carries everything one would want. Some people call it the prairie Bible and study it more than they do the ‘good book’ itself.”

Settling herself at Kezzie’s knee, as of old, Margo asked for the stories of “olden days.”

Kezzie’s mind, still sharp, had not only retained the facts of her early days in Scotland with the Galloway family but had absorbed the very savor . . . the essence of those days. Margo interrupted from time to time. As an adult, hearing it all again, she asked questions that were important now—about her ancestors, her parents’ marriage, about Heatherstone, Scotland. . . .

When it came to the sea voyage, Kezzie’s tale faltered.

“Oh, go on, Granny Kezzie . . . do go on. I’ve wanted to hear it all again for so many years. No one else can give me all the details, and I need to be refreshed about it. Tell me again about when I was born . . . about that miserable doctor . . . about that sad, sad day when you and Papa stood with Angus and Molly and Cameron, and baby ‘Angel’ was buried at sea.”

But Kezzie’s head was back against her chair, and her face was white again, and she barely managed, “Not today, lassie,” before struggling to her feet and turning to her room.

Margo was chastened. She had asked too much. It must be Mam’s age; never before had she hesitated over the touching account of birth and death.

I need to make allowances for the changes time has made , she realized.

Margo hadn’t heard the old stories since Kezzie had left Heatherstone almost eight years before, and many of the details had faded. Sophia’s accounts had been from an entirely different viewpoint, and anyhow, as Margo grew older, they had ceased altogether. If Kezzie couldn’t, or wouldn’t, recount those times for her, her slim hope of making some sense of her father’s bequest looked bleaker than ever. What had he meant? If Kezzie, her father’s faithful friend and servant for many years, couldn’t shed any light on the cryptic words, then who could?

It was a happy, even joyous, group that gathered at the Morrisons’ oak table, the added leaves extending across one end of the comfortable room that was living/sitting/drawing room, parlor and kitchen, all in one. Mary had left a large roasting pan in the oven when they went off to church, and the roast and fresh garden vegetables—baby carrots, onions, tiny potatoes dug carefully from the hill—topped with rich, brown gravy, couldn’t be surpassed.

After the blessing was said by Angus, and the bowls and platters were being passed around to hearty chatter and much good humor, Margo grew silent . . . watching, listening. Here was a family circle the likes of which she had never experienced but often dreamed of. Always eating alone, in the nursery, during childhood, occasionally dressed to come down for a few special moments to meet guests; joining, finally, not long before her mother’s death, her parents for a quiet, elegant dinner; enduring the meals alone with her father after her mother’s death, with little to say and no laughter at all—it all seemed so bleak now, so empty. Sitting now, an outsider, at what seemed a charmed circle, Margo warmed her lonely heart at the Morrison fires and wished they were her own.

Sensing her mood, perhaps, Angus turned to her, at his side. A man in his early fifties, large, like his son, though a little stooped, with a smattering of gray in his ink-black hair and a fine network of wrinkles around the dark eyes, he was, obviously, a man of great physical attraction—like his son. And obviously a gentleman, due, Margo had heard, to her grandfather’s recognition of the boy Angus’s abilities and possibilities and the Galloway investment in his education. Margo’s father had had a high regard for the absent Angus, always spoke highly of him and kept in touch across the years. Sophia’s opinion of Angus had been . . . Margo tried now to puzzle out her mother’s opinion of Angus. There had been a dreamy quality to Sophia’s recollection of Angus; her brief comments concerning him had always ended with a sigh. Now Margo wondered. . . .

“Am I like my father?” Margo asked abruptly, “or my mother?”

With conversation swelling around them, Angus studied the face before him, smiled, and said, “Neither one, lass. You’re yourself, and a lovely self it is at that. Your father must have been proud of you.”

At that moment, Margo tensed, her face going still. Startlingly still. So still that Angus set down the tumbler from which he had been about to drink and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Your finger,” Margo said. “The little one. It’s—” her voice was strange—“it’s bent . . . curved.”

“And so it is.” Angus seemed relieved that there was, after all, no problem. “Both of them,” he added, and held up his two hands, open, with fingers splayed. The two little fingers were indeed unusually bowed.

“Born with them,” Angus explained. “So was my father; so was Molly. It’s a trait that seems to run in the family.”

A great roaring filled Margo’s ears. Angus’s startled face dimmed away momentarily; the happy dinner sounds faded to an indistinguishable murmur.

So this is why he sent me here . Molly clenched her curved little fingers with the others into fists in her lap. So this is why Papa sent me here .

No, not Papa. Never again Papa. Hugh Cavalier Galloway—cruel, vindictive, venomous Hugh Galloway—had deliberately sent her here, and for this malicious purpose.