Chapter 24 #2
“Och, now there’s the crux of the tale. Gregor fell for Janet, sure enough. That’s why Donag hates your name so much.”
“Yeah, why is that?”
“Think on it. Your mother was mistress of Dunrose Castle. Come spring, roses grow thick along the bailey’s outer walls. And Janet was never without some. Gregor would sneak off to meet her, and he’d always be carrying a rose upon his return.”
“I bet Donag loved that.”
“She had her own concerns, truth be told. Turned a blind eye until Janet rubbed it in her face. She’s a proud one, Donag is.”
“What did she do to rub it in her face?”
“Janet came for help in slipping Gregor’s child.”
“I’m not following. What do you mean, slipping?”
“To slip a bairn? It means to rid a babe from the belly.” He holds my gaze, then realizes he has to spell it out for me. “Gregor’s seed soon quickened inside Janet. And though your mother was fond of the man, she wasnae so fond she’d give up her life in the castle to bear his child.”
I process the fact that my mother was pregnant with another baby before she had me. Knowing her, I’m sure she didn’t blink at the thought of getting rid of a child she viewed as inconvenient.
“Are you telling me, my mother was stupid enough to ask Donag for help with that?”
“No. Your mother was stupid enough to ask Donag for soapwort. The only thing that’s used for is in the slipping of a bairn. But she wouldn’t have been able to get it from one of her own attendants—it might’ve raised questions. And Janet was not without enemies.”
“I’ll bet.” I consider his words. “But trust me, my mom’s not stupid. I’m sure she enjoyed rubbing it in Donag’s face.”
“Verra possible.”
“So? What happened next?”
He pauses, like he’s making his way to an ending I might not like. “Well,” he says finally, “Donag isnae the only one who found out. When Campbell got wind that his bride had a MacGregor babe in her belly, he had Gregor killed.”
“Holy crap,” I exclaim. “Donag’s husband is dead because of Janet?”
Everything about this revelation chills me. This place, this time, it’s so violent. My married mother dallied with another woman’s husband, with no thought as to whether it might get him killed. It’s all so lawless and brutal.
“Poor Donag.” I shake my head, sickened. “No wonder she hates me. I’d hate me, too.”
“Donag doesnae hate you.” He pauses, and with a sad smile, adds, “Not overmuch, anyway.”
“How did Janet react? When they killed Gregor?”
I want Callum to say she railed against the injustice, cried for her dead lover. But I can guess the real answer, and it turns my stomach. I can certainly picture my mother crying and railing, but mostly because she’d have hated being denied a favorite plaything.
“She didnae know. By the time Gregor swung from the hanging tree, she was already gone.”
“Whoa. Stop.”
I sit up so fast my vision swims, heather stalks crackling beneath my palms. “My mother doesn’t know Gregor is dead?”
Callum doesn’t answer, but his silence speaks volumes. The wind whips strands of hair across my face, and I brush them away with trembling fingers as nineteen years of memories suddenly shift and realign. Every time my mother stared out our living room window on stormy nights, lost in thought.
How she kept a rose pressed between the pages of a book, its petals long since faded. I always thought it was just another one of her affectations, another pretty thing she collected and forgot.
But what if she never forgot?
I sink back down onto the heather, my movements slow and careful, like I’m carrying something fragile inside me. Understanding, maybe. Or forgiveness.
“If Janet thought her lover was still alive, her desire to return to Scotland makes sense.” The thought lands differently now, less bitter.
My chest aches with an emotion I can’t quite name. It’s like discovering a door in a house you’ve lived in all your life. A door you never noticed before, leading to rooms you never knew existed. Only these rooms are where my mother might’ve kept her grief, her love, her longing.
I lie back down, trying to process, but my body feels too light, almost untethered. The Highland sky wheels above me, vast and blue as endless possibility. “Was her plan always to find a way to travel back in time? She might’ve aged nineteen years, but she still wouldn’t be too old for Gregor.”
My mother. Pregnant. With another man’s child. I can’t make it make sense. “Are you sure it was Gregor’s? Couldn’t Campbell have—”
“Not possible. The old man can no longer…you know…run his flag at full mast.” Crimson washes over Callum’s cheeks as he quickly adds, “Aoife will tell you. All those herbs you grow in the garden? They’re all so the laird might once again, uhh, set his pike. That is to say—”
I put up a hand. “I get it. And no, I will not ask Aoife for details, thanks.”
He gives me a sly smile. “Can’t blame a lad for trying to avoid the thing, can you?”
“Oh, can’t I?” I don’t even know what I mean by that, and now my cheeks are turning hot. “So how does this story end?”
“Can you not guess? In her rage and jealousy, Donag sent Janet as far away as she could. To a time when the Craignish Campbells are no more.”
“To the future.”
“Aye, just so.”
“But one thing doesn’t make sense.”
“Just the one?”
I give his shoulder a playful shove. But not because he’s bothering me. Mostly I want to touch him again. “What I don’t get is, after all that, why did Donag try to call my mother back?”
“Campbell wanted Gregor dead. But don’t be mistaken. The laird loves your mother. When she disappeared, he lost his mind with grief. He’s convinced she was kidnapped by the MacGregors. But the custom with kidnap is for a body to appear.”
“Nice custom.”
He smirks. “Aye, and he’s not seen Janet’s body.
The man is haunted by the notion that she’s alive, held prisoner this past month, suffering at their hand.
And so Campbell torments his tenants, hoping bloodshed will terrorize the truth from them.
Until then, he bides his time hunting and killing MacGregors.
Donag fears that soon he’ll run out, and it will be our turn. ”
“So she tried to call Janet back.”
“And you came instead.” Callum’s voice changes, taking on a rhythmic quality that makes the hair on my arms stand up. I recognize what’s coming—the words that pulled me from my world into his. He closes his eyes, as if reading the spell from memory:
“We summon a lass, hair red as kite’s wing,
Nae young nor old, in her nineteenth spring.”
The words seem to hang in the air between us, carried on the breeze. My fingers find their way to my hair, unconsciously touching the copper strands that marked me as the spell’s target.
“Fair as the dawn, with roses on her cheek,
Yet fierce as the sun, her spirit not meek.”
Callum’s voice grows stronger. The cadence reminds me of church hymns, of ancient things passed down through generations. Each line feels like it’s being carved into the air, into memory.
“Her heart’s true longing lies on Scottish land.
Come to us now, beside kin take thy stand.”
My chest tightens. Even now, hearing these words again, I can feel their pull. Like hooks in my soul, drawing me across time itself.
“Come thee, bold lass, whose soul burns steadfast.
Come she, whose beauty time cannot outlast.”
The last words fade into silence, but their echo vibrates in my bones. Callum opens his eyes, and there’s something different in the way he looks at me now. Like he’s seeing both who I am and who the spell was summoning, and finding them to be one and the same.
The corners of his mouth lift in a gentle smile, so different from the solemn way he’d recited the incantation the first time. Back then, it had been an explanation. Now it feels more like…appreciation.
I try to lighten the moment, though my voice comes out shakier than I’d like. “Good thing you didn’t get any other red-headed nineteen-year olds.”
“Do you wish we had?” The words are light, but there’s worry in his eyes. “Tell me truly. Are you terribly devastated to be here?”
“Devastated?” I hold Callum’s gaze as I consider my reply. Devastated, yes. But there’s another feeling too. I’m discovering something, which is like the opposite of devastation.
“I miss Poppa,” I say, and while it evades his exact question, it is the truth. “But otherwise, my life in the future wasn’t so very magical.”
It gets me thinking. Does my mother have power in her blood? “How did my mother know to ask for soapwort? Is she a witch?”
He hesitates, like he’s not done with the devastated thing yet, but then he answers, “Donag would have you believe it. She says Janet bewitches all she sees.” He shrugs, and I’m momentarily thrown by how modern the gesture is.
“Though, as I understand it, ’tis only the MacGregors who’ve magic in their blood. But,” he adds with a wink, “witch or no, if I were to tell it plain, I confess, I always found your Janet a wee bit frightening.”
I chuckle. “You’re not the only one.” My smile fades. “There’s so much I don’t know about her. It’s kind of upsetting to think she was pregnant before me. That she had someone else first.”
Someone else she didn’t keep.
The warmth drains from Callum’s face. His mouth opens, then closes, as if the words have dried up in his throat. He pushes himself up on one elbow, and something in the way he looks at me—like he’s seeing a wound he hadn’t noticed before—hollows me inside.
“Oh, Rosie-love. No.” His voice comes out hoarse, barely above a whisper.
The silence stretches between us, heavy as stone. A gust of wind sweeps across the heather, and I shiver, though I’m not cold.
Callum’s jaw tightens, his eyes locked on some distant, unknowable point.
Like he’s watching something awful play out on the horizon.
“Janet never got her soapwort.” He swallows hard, like each word cost him something.
His gaze drops back to mine, and I see the pain there—for me, for what he’s about to say.
“You were the bairn she wanted to slip.”
The world tilts. I dig my fingernails deep into the dirt trying to ground myself, but my body feels far away, like I’m watching from somewhere outside it.
“She never got the chance,” Callum continues, his voice gentle as a prayer. “Donag sent her away that night.”
The sky above us suddenly seems too vast, too empty. I press my palms flat against the ground, trying to anchor myself as the truth sinks in. The heather beneath me no longer feels soft. It might as well be thorns.
I wasn’t just an inconvenience to my mother—I was the inconvenience. The mistake she tried to erase before I even existed.
Callum’s hand hovers near mine, not quite touching, as if he’s afraid I might shatter.
Maybe I will.