there’s a shadow on the door
of a cottage on the shore
of a dark Scottish lake.
Sir Walter Scott
Despite the exhaustion that claimed her in waves, Anna put on a brave face while Brando towed her filthy green Chevy rental into the driveway at Breagh House. A sign at the edge of the road pointed visitors for the BREAGH HOUSE HIGHLANDS MUSEUM around to the side of the rambling Gothic-style construction that, sometime in the nineteenth century, had replaced the Murrays’ earlier home.
The museum was another overly-hopeful title. As Elspeth described it, the former ballroom of Breagh House now held an ever-rotating collection of Highland history and memorabilia, most of it acquired at bargain prices from local estate sales, or on eBay and various online sites, before receiving fanciful backstories that Elspeth changed whenever she got bored. Elspeth had no shame about that at all.
“It’s the stories people enjoy, not the rusting junk. Who cares about a sword? Tell them who owned it and whom he stabbed with it. A flask? Describe the man who sipped from it as he lay dying on the battlefield. Who drank from it before he bedded the lass who would become his wife? That’s what people want to know.”
Anna and her sisters, Margaret and Katharine, had always loved the museum stories whenever Elspeth came to visit. For the length of Elspeth’s stays, the whole family gravitated to the kitchen, and for once in the hectic and perpetually-dieting Cameron household, the smell of baking wafted from the oven. Everyone sat and laughed together. Even Anna’s mother would allow herself a sliver of Ecclefechan butter tart or Montrose cake along with a “wee dram” of the whiskey Elspeth had brought for Anna’s father. But inevitably Ailsa would remember herself again. Her face would stiffen and her voice go shrill while she lectured Elspeth on the evils of taking in unsuspecting tourists with her Highland flimflam.
Anna had never thought there was much harm in Elspeth’s stories. If the tourists came and had a good time, they’d gotten their money’s worth and helped Elspeth keep a roof on the family home.
That roof was more sizable than it had appeared in photos, Anna realized once Brando had stopped the Land Rover. Still, despite the almost ostentatious structure, the front floodlights provided a cheerful glow to the weathered gray stone, and the smell of woodsmoke curling out of the chimney promised a warming fire.
Brando flicked off the ignition. The front door of the house flew open and, backlit by the chandelier hanging from the foyer ceiling, Elspeth emerged onto the stoop. Leaning heavily on a walker, she waited in the doorway instead of coming to greet Anna with her usual energy and enthusiasm. The sight of her conjured up the best memories of Anna’s life.
Anna raced up the steps. Elspeth released one arm from the walker to tuck her into just the kind of hard, unconditional embrace Anna needed. The kind that didn’t care whether she was more or less pretty or dutiful than her sisters, whether she had a stain on her blouse, whether she didn’t smile on cue at beauty pageant judges as her mother instructed, no matter what they said or did to her, or whether she had a man or a job or a future.
“Aren’t you a sight, now?” Elspeth stood back and looked Anna over. “You have had a tough time of it, haven’t you? Poor love, but no matter. We’ll soon get you sorted. Are you hungry? You must be famished.”
“I stopped for a meat pasty in Callander. Mostly, I’m half-asleep.”
“Well, and no wonder. You’ll get a hot bath, a nice cuppa, and some scones to nibble on while you soak, then it’s straight off to bed with you. And no arguing. We can catch up in the morning. Plenty of time for all of that.”
Anna couldn’t help smiling. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, remember?”
“The day Elspeth lets anyone take care of her, that’s a day I’d love to see.” His tread light and graceful for such a large man, Brando came up the stairs behind them, carrying Anna’s suitcase in one arm and her Keepall in the other. Pausing beside Elspeth, he shook his head at her and bent to kiss her cheek. “You’re not fooling anyone, old woman, you know that? You’d better hurry up and tell her before she susses it out herself.”
“Mmmh. Watch that ‘old’ business, Brando MacLaren. You’re not getting younger yourself.”
“Aye, and the rate I’m going, I’ll catch up with you before too long.”
Elspeth raised both eyebrows at him. It was a look Anna had seen her mother direct at people a million times, but Elspeth’s eyes sparkled with humor and gave the expression a different meaning. Intrigued, Anna studied her aunt’s face, which was so similar to her own mother’s countenance, but at the same time so very different. Where a facelift and years of expensive skincare had left Ailsa’s skin unlined beneath black hair she touched up twice a month like clockwork at the most expensive salon in town, Elspeth appeared a decade older, her chin-length curls left to gray attractively, and her complexion weathered by laughter and sun and wind. Even now, deep lines scored the corners of her eyes as she let Brando pass into the foyer.
“Thanks for bringing our girl home in one piece,” she said.
“What do you want me to do with the car?” Brando set Anna’s baggage down at the bottom of the wide, carpeted steps and glanced from Elspeth to Anna and back again. “No point unhooking if you’d like me to take it back for you. I’m heading to Edinburgh in the morning, so it’d be no trouble, and she’ll have your Volvo to use in the meantime.”
A bit of strain lifted off Anna’s wallet, and she gave him a grateful nod. “If you really wouldn’t mind . . .”
“Brando’s always the first person to be there when you need anything. Before you know you need it, half the time,” Elspeth said, directing a fond smile at him and patting his arm as he slipped out past her. “Not half-bad to look at either, is he?”
“Enough flattery now, you.” Kilt fanning out around his knees, Brando turned to wave good-bye then waded down the front steps without seeing Anna’s reddened face. “I’ll try to come back by tomorrow afternoon,” he called over his shoulder. “That light on the far side of the house has gone out again, and you’ll want to start thinking ’bout security if we’re going to get more visitors.” He strode down and jumped into the Land Rover to drive away down the circular drive with Anna’s rental car still chained up behind him.
“Lovely man.” Elspeth cleared her throat and turned to go back into the house. “You could do worse, you know. Although at this rate, I’m afraid we’ll never manage to get him married off. Even Duncan at the inn has given up trying to find a woman for him. There was a time when Davy the postman had the whole glen laying bets on a different girl each week, but we’ve all gotten tired of losing money.”
“Sorry. Not interested,” Anna said firmly, trailing Elspeth inside. “I’m leaving in a month, and he doesn’t seem like he’d transplant very well. Everything except his name seems very Scottish.”
“Aye, isn’t that the truth? His mother watched On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire a dozen times too many, and now he’s stuck with it. Don’t let the kilt fool you, though. Brando’s only been wearing it since he moved back from London. Swears it’s more comfortable, a lot of men do, but I suspect it started off for the tourists as much as for any other reason. Now you take your bags up to the bedroom—third door on the left—and then come down to get your tea. The kitchen’ll be that direction.” Elspeth gestured toward the right.
Anna looked around. The whole house gave the impression of belonging in a different time, and she had the odd sense that it was reaching out to welcome her, folding her inside itself. The intricate wood of the hardwood parquet gleamed beneath the chandelier that spilled cascades of color across a Victorian stained glass window on the landing, and the carved staircase with thick, square newel posts spoke of solidness and security. Warm yellow light shone down the corridor from the kitchen.
Anna couldn’t help thinking her mother must have loved John Cameron very much, at least at first, to give up all this for a modern faux-chateau in Indian Hill on the outskirts of Cincinnati. But she’d long ago given up despairing about her parents. If they wanted to spend their time arguing with each other, that was their business.
The thought of their polite fights led her back to the rude man with the Audi, and partway up the staircase she paused and turned. “Who was the man who called you to say I’d run off the road, Aunt Elspeth? The one who looks like Gregor Mark. Brando said he was rude because I was coming to help with the festival.”
“Did he now?” Elspeth looked away. “Brando ought to keep his tongue in his head.”
“But who is he? And why does he object to the festival?”
Elspeth pursed her lips. “Connal MacGregor. He lives down at Inverlochlarig, the big house at the end of the loch there, though he owns half the glen. The Sighting and the bonfire are both on his property, and he’s none too happy about us making the festival bigger.”
“Can he stop it?”
“He could—but listen, all this is a longer conversation than we’ve time for tonight. Connal’s bringing his daughter ’round for dinner tomorrow night, and we’ll settle everything then.”
Anna’s heart gave an unexpected thump. “Settle what?”
“Well, not so much settle as negotiate. That’s where your lawyer skills come in—and now that’s more than enough for tonight. Away upstairs with you. You’re so tired you’ll fall asleep in your bath if you’re not careful.”
Warning bells pealed loud and long in Anna’s head as she studied Elspeth. Even so, just hearing the word bath brought up a yawn that rippled up from the bottom of her exhausted body.
Whatever fresh disaster was heading in her direction, she was going to have to wait and face it in the morning. After a good night’s sleep.