Chapter 40 #2
Sunny scowled at her. “Not funny. This is important to me.” She looked at Patrick. “Are you giving up that body-guarding business? That’s not the kind of work a man with a family takes lightly.”
“I’m not going back,” Patrick said.
“Are you sure?” Madelyn asked.
He nodded. “Conal knows I’ve grown weary of it. I’ll find something else to do.”
“Your brother will be happy,” Madelyn said with a smile.
“He’ll be overjoyed,” Patrick said dryly. “It will give me ample time to restore that wreck of ours.”
“Hmmm,” Sunny said, studying him. “And when that’s done, what are you going to do?”
Madelyn sighed and reached for more pictures. “I really hope you guys work this out soon. I don’t think I can handle a lifetime with you not getting along.”
“It isn’t that we don’t get along,” Sunny said. “We’re just getting the rules of the game straight.”
“Your sister is right to see what I’m made of,” Patrick agreed. “I’ve no quarrel with her over that.”
Madelyn looked at the two of them, then shook her head. “You are two peas in a pod. Maybe that’s it.”
Sunny nodded thoughtfully. “We are irritated the most by flaws of our own we see in others.”
“Not another waterskiing analogy,” Madelyn pleaded. She looked at Patrick. “Agree with her quickly so we don’t have to listen to it—”
Sunny threw a pillow at her sister. Madelyn only laughed and looked at Patrick. “I think she sees a lot of herself in you and it drives her nuts.”
He smiled. “Aye, I understood that—”
Then he stopped smiling. It was as if his entire existence had ground to a painful, full stop. He closed his eyes at the sense of déjà vu that washed over him in a wave so fierce, he could scarce catch his breath.
A memory of Lisa’s mother saying the same to him came to him, saying it during a conversation in which he’d wondered aloud what he could do to please her husband.
“He dislikes you because you are too much like him,”
she had said. “He refuses to speak of his youth or of life in the Highlands. You, Patrick my lad, are very much like Gilbert when I first met him. Full of that Highland fierceness.”
He sat there and stared at nothing. Highland fierceness? What had she meant by that? He’d been three weeks in the present when he’d left Moraig’s and walked to Inverness. He’d had a job tending Helen McGhee’s garden a week after that.
Highland fierceness.
Was it possible Gilbert was more than he seemed?
“Patrick?”
He blinked, looked at Madelyn, and smiled faintly. “Aye, love?”
“You were very far away.”
He shook his head. “Foolish thoughts.” He paused, then shook his head again.
“Nay, quite foolish.” He looked at Sunny.
“Do you have more questions for me? Ask me whatever you like, sister, and I’ll answer as I can.
And I hope my answers will satisfy you in regards to my intentions to care for Madelyn.
I do not fear work, so she will never lack for food on her table.
I am not afraid to fight, so she will never have to live in fear for her life.
And I am not too proud to admit when I am wrong. ”
“You’ve apologized enough,” Madelyn said firmly. “Sunny, let it go.”
Sunny pursed her lips. “All right. I’m not thrilled about your occupation—since you don’t seem to have one at the moment—but I’ll get over that.”
“Why don’t you start a business together?” Madelyn asked. “You know, herbs and things.”
Patrick felt a small chill go down his spine. “Herbs?”
Sunny also looked a little unsettled. “A business? Together?”
“You should,” Madelyn said, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents.
“Patrick, as you might imagine, is really good at all that survival stuff. Finding herbs in the wilderness.” She smiled up at them.
“Books. Classes. Wilderness training.” She looked at Sunny.
“You’d have to come to Scotland. A lot. Maybe move there. ”
“Scotland,” Sunny said, sounding bemused. “I’ve never been to Scotland.”
Patrick looked at Madelyn with a smile. “And so it begins.”
“We’ll tattoo a map on the back of her hand.”
“That might be wise.” He smiled at Sunny. “’Tis an interesting idea.”
“I’ve always wanted to write a book,” she admitted. “Pass on some of the things I’ve learned.”
“Begin your treatise with an entry extolling the virtues of lobelia,” he advised.
Sunny actually smiled at him then, and he felt as if he’d passed some kind of test. It was important to him. Madelyn loved her. If Sunny didn’t care for him, things would no doubt go quite ill for him at family gatherings.
And the thought of a business was intriguing.
His cousins had put their knowledge of various things to good use.
Perhaps he could start up some kind of school with Ian and teach not just swordplay, but survival.
Who was to say that in difficult times, a knowledge of how to heal the body with herbs from the field wouldn’t be useful?
He put the thought aside for examination later, when he had the leisure for it, and turned his attentions back to the conversation at hand which was, fortunately, in a language he could understand.
The future would take care of itself, as it generally did.
When Madelyn had her great-gran’s house sorted out properly, they would go back to Scotland.
“More dessert, Patrick?” Sunny asked pleasantly.
He looked at her assessingly. “Aye, if you taste my portion first.”
She was an herbalist after all, and he’d tasted her wares before.
“Maybe Madelyn would play her violin for us while we eat,” Sunny offered.
“As long as I’m not listening to it from the loo, I’ll be delighted,” he said.
So he sat quite happily with dessert that hadn’t been tampered with, and listened to his lady wife play her violin for them for a goodly part of the evening. He closed his eyes at one point, simply because if he’d left them open, the tears would have been running down his cheeks.
By the saints, there was something about her music that stirred his soul.
It gave him hope.
And it made him very glad he had the remainder of his life to listen to it.
Thoughts of Gilbert teased at the back of his mind, but he pushed them aside. There would be time enough to think about them later. For now, he would listen to Madelyn’s music and let it soothe him.
A fortnight later he couldn’t bear his gnawing thoughts anymore. He left Madelyn happily sitting before the fire reading and walked down the block to the local library. He sat down at the computer and started looking.
Fortunately, genealogy sites were numerous.
Clan sites had become so as well. It took him no time at all to find himself standing boldly in the Fergussons’ great hall, as it were, and looking up their family tree.
It gave him the chills, somehow, just looking back over the generations of lairds.
That, at least, was complete. The other names he supposed they would find in time, if at all.
But the laird and his immediate family? Aye, those names were there for anyone to read.
The Fergussons’ genealogists had been thorough and apparently quite determined.
Patrick felt another chill creep down his spine.
He went straight to the place where he thought he might find what he sought. 1362. A son, William, was born. That son grew up to become the laird. He had sons as well. They were listed, apparently, from youngest to eldest.
1348, a son was born and named Neil.
1344, a son had been born and named Simon.
And a third entry. An entry he hadn’t anticipated, but honestly wasn’t surprised when he saw.
1342. A son had been born to William Fergusson and Mary McGhee.
A son named Gilbert.
Patrick closed his eyes and took many deep breaths. Indeed, he took so many, he thought he might begin to hyperventilate soon. He put his face in his hands and shook.
“Sir? Sir, are you unwell?”
He looked up at the librarian, who was watching him with concern tinged with suspicion. He smiled weakly. “Genealogy.”
She nodded knowingly. “We call it the ‘royalty or rustler’ syndrome. I had a lady faint last week because of it.”
“Was she related to a king?”
“The other kind,” the woman said in hushed tones. “It happens all the time. I’ll get you water if you need it.”
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to look fine. “Am I allowed to print this?”
“Certainly.”
Ten minutes later he was stumbling from the building clutching something that might or might not change the course of his life.
Gilbert McGhee?
Son of William Fergusson and Mary McGhee?
It could happen, he supposed. Indeed, he was living proof that it could.
He walked up the street to Dewey’s house, stepped inside the gate, and stood for a moment in the garden. It was raining, but that didn’t trouble him. The garden was a haven, a place of complicated beauty, something that had been created with loving care over the course of decades.
He wondered if his children might come to look at his garden the same way.
Well, they wouldn’t if he didn’t do something about weeding out the weed that would continually crop up until it was eradicated once and for all.
The back door opened. Madelyn stood there, smiling.
“Hey,” she said, “you weren’t gone long.”
“I missed you,” he said simply.
Her smile deepened and she stepped backward. “Then come in, my lord, and tell me all about it.”
He would, but later.
For now, there were other things on his mind.