6

In his company, I am grieved to the soul by a thousand tender recollections.

Jane Austen

By dusk the next day tongues were worn out wagging. Even as the castle decorations were taken down, those too ill and infirm to weather the tenants’ ball were stuffed full of morsels they’d missed. Who danced with whom. Who drained the punch bowl. The number of delicacies to be had. The quality of the musicians. The lateness of the hour. Who the laird had chosen for the first reel. Why the mistress of Kerrera Castle was missing. Even the Thistle was abuzz. Jillian had told Lark so.

Never mind that Magnus had danced with every willing woman present as he did every tenants’ ball. That he’d led out with Lark was tantalizing enough.

“Where no wood is, the fire goeth out,” Granny muttered as she hung the kettle over the hearth’s flame.

Lark mulled this to solace herself all the long afternoon as she savored the Sabbath after kirk, staying near the warm hearth and drinking several cups of fragrant tea as rain slashed sideways in the rising wind, clouds marring her magnificent view.

In the adjoining bedchamber Granny snored softly. Lark’s only company besides Tibby the cat was the book the captain had lent her, the title onerous. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships.

Gotten from Ireland? Rory had the wanderlust, no doubt, like Mr. Gulliver. She purposed to read one chapter, the cat warming her lap. But the book did not hold her, and her thoughts ran back and forth between the Thistle where the captain lodged and the castle.

What did Magnus do on a day with the mistress away?

Granny snorted, stirring awake. Her cobwebbed mind seemed on the verge of some remedy for Isla. But what? Lark had thought of everything, had even raided the castle library for apothecary books. She’d best have some answer when Isla returned, especially if the Edinburgh physics did not help her.

From where she sat in the rocking chair by the hearth, she had no view of the castle, but its shadow seemed to fall over her. It now seemed to blanket Magnus, who’d once been unlined and carefree. Since his father’s death—and then his mother’s and sister’s—his joie de vivre had leached out of him by degrees. They’d all hoped his marriage would spell new life. Lark was not the only islander who longed to see Kerrera Castle restored, a true family seat again.

Truly, any gossip about her and the laird was laughable and would soon fizzle. Magnus was the brother she did not have, their shared history and love of the island’s tumultuous beauty lashing them together. His leaving on the verge of manhood seemed a little death, snatched from her life as he’d been. She stroked Tibby’s fur, traveling backwards through long corridors of dusty memories. Away a year or better in a succession of longer and longer absences, he’d left a boy but somehow returned a man with little warning, the wall between them ever widening. She felt it but was powerless to stop it or cross it, though it rent her heart.

Once he’d written her a letter. But she’d had no ink to pen a reply nor coin to post it, and so it lay unanswered. Later, she’d cobbled together enough coin to pen more. But he’d never written another. She’d saved it, the ink faded from the passage of lonesome years though the fine flourish of his script remained. Now she reached for the Bible and opened it to Ecclesiastes, where the letter lay pressed between the pages. Her eyes focused on the blurred words, but truly there was no call to read it, for she knew it by heart.

Dear Lark,

Because the time seems very long since I first left Kerrera, I finally write. With you continually in mind, I remain half there, in the salt spray and wind, not the smoke and soot of the city with its myriad wynds and closes.

Before I sleep and when I wake, I set you on Kerrera’s cliff edge in my mind’s eye, the sea at your back, waiting for me as you used to. Then and only then can I shut out the strange smells and sounds of Edinburgh and close the onerous distance.

You once said you would never leave the isle. Would that I had not left it too. I long to be free as you, with no title or ties to weight me. If so, I would return and find you waiting, and together we would make a different sort of life.

Yours entire,
Magnus

The letter lay open in her lap. Still a thorn. Still capable of piercing her heart. Folding it up, she allowed herself a final remembrance, mulling the day Magnus had told her he was to take a bride. ’Twas April of her nineteenth year, the hard, hungry winter giving way to a fragile spring. Had fate arranged for him to find her on that very cliff’s edge he wrote about, the sea at her back? Recovering from a fever, she’d paused as she crested the cliff’s top, still weak and a bit winded from her climb. ’Twas all she could do to stay standing in the face of the wind. And then his shattering words.

Above the kestrels and crashing waves he’d called to her. “Lark.”

She turned, disbelief and delight turning her girlish again. So long he’d been away this last time, months crowded with two wakes, three births, and a good many missed holidays. A whole year lay between them, full of the unspoken and unshared.

He stood apart, arms crossed, Nonesuch by his side, the cape he wore furling and unfurling like an indigo flag. Edinburgh had turned him a stranger. In that instant she felt a wild, everlasting hatred for the city.

“Magnus?” The question held heartache. Could it be him? Aye, but not the Magnus she knew and loved—the young laird, the lad he’d been.

“I’ve come home to announce my impending nuptials.” A sudden gust nearly flung his unwelcome words away.

She took a step closer. “Yer to wed?”

“Aye. An Edinburgh lass.” He did not smile. Why, when even the basest fisherfolk announced such news with joy?

She looked to her battered shoes, trying to take it in. Why was she fashed? Truly, no one on the island was his equal. No woman worthy.

Yet a town-bred lass?

“The daughter of an auld friend of my father who is Lord Ordinary of the Court of Session. Isla Erskine-Shand.”

The proud name seemed a comeuppance to the simple Lark. At once she knew all his schooling in law had come to this. He was a rising advocate—a barrister—not only laird of Kerrera Island. ’Twas said that when in court or chambers he wore fine robes and a powdered wig. She’d never seen such, but it sounded high and mighty. But ’twas more than this, truly. Such a father-in-law would protect him, protect Kerrera from English revenge over the Jacobite cause. When lairds and clansmen were being imprisoned and tried for their Scottish loyalties, such a marriage might give him immunity. Was that why he was to marry, now that he’d just come out of mourning?

She looked up then, half afraid of what she’d find if she met his gaze. But he was staring past her to the sea, the jut of his jaw signaling determination. Or resignation.

She swallowed hard and dredged up polite words she had no wish to say. “I’m pleased for ye both.” And then, weak-kneed and half-fevered still, she set her own jaw, dangerously close to tears. She’d always tried never to tell a lie, but she just had.

“I wanted ye to be the first to ken.”

First? Was it an honor? Still he did not look at her. Her own gaze strayed to the basket on her arm, brimming with bannocks.

“Feel free to speak of it,” he finished, knowing that if she told but one person it would be all over the island by sunset.

She gave a nod, wanting a swift end to this excruciating reunion. Though she’d widened her stance to fight off light-headedness, she swayed. His hands shot out to steady her. She’d not realized he was standing so close.

The warmth of his touch seemed to burn her. “What ails ye, Lark?”

“The tail end of a fever.” Before he could respond in sympathy or otherwise, she changed course. “Will ye and yer bride live at the castle?”

“Aye.” His hands fell away. “We wed the first of June in Edinburgh. After our honeymoon we’ll come here.”

Honeymoon. How lovely the sound. All the emotion behind it. If she was a bride she’d want to spend it on Kerrera, tucked away in some sunny cove, just she and her groom . . .

Her skin grew hotter. “My work awaits.” She sidestepped him, gaze on the rocky ground.

“Lark . . .”

Unwillingly, she turned around, but not before dashing a tear away. Seeing her so, he seemed to think better of saying anything at all, and so he turned away a second before she did. ’Twas the last time she spoke to him untethered.