Epilogue
A few years later
It was the day of the annual CaerLaven Fly-Fishing Contest, attended by the village and crofters, as well as passionate fishermen who began turning up after Caelan’s book went into its third printing, begging to be taught how to create a “sinking fly,”
the kind that brown trout devoured.
If—and only if—they contributed to the local school fund, Clara would sit down and show them how to make one of her signature flies that gleamed under the surface, luring trout into recklessly biting. If they were particularly generous in their donation, she might gift them with one of her reticules, which were proudly carried by every woman in the vicinity of CaerLaven.
This year, as had become custom, Cobbledick had taken Clara’s newest fly into the stream while Caelan and Rory wielded their own creations. For the first time, Alfie had been judged strong enough to brave the current without his father or uncle at arm’s length. He was still slender, but thanks to his passion for fly-fishing, his legs had far more strength than those of other boys his age.
Fishermen were standing up and down the whole loch, but only MacCraes and McIntyres were allowed to fish the patch closest to the castle path.
Family members who weren’t in the water watched from chairs set on the shore, except for Clara, who sat on a flat stone to make sure that her son, Angus, wasn’t swallowing river rocks; he put everything in his mouth these days. Thankfully, he was preoccupied with Thursday, the blue-and-green-eyed puppy who was as beloved as Wilhelmina. Belying Alfie’s fears that his rabbity chicken would be teased by the other hens, she had readily established herself as the queen of the coop.
Mrs. Gillan was rocking a baby and crooning a lullaby in one chair, while Fiona sat in another, a child at her breast.
“Such a greedy little pig,”
Fiona said happily, propping her son against her shoulder so she could burp him.
At the sound of her voice, small hands burst from the bundle Mrs. Gillan held, a wail emerging shortly thereafter.
Clara laughed. “Maggie is just as greedy.”
Fiona rolled her eyes and traded bundles with Mrs. Gillan. “How’s yours doing?”
Clara eased back the blanket covering the baby she held. “Catherine is sleeping, like the sweet honeybee she is.”
“I don’t know how I’d survive without both of you,”
Fiona said. “I’m so grateful.” Her eyes welled up. “No one thought they would live, not all three of them.”
Clara grinned at her. In the last four months, Fiona, Clara, and Mrs. Gillan had lived together, rotating the triplets on and off their mother’s breasts. Luckily, Clara and Caelan had been blessed with a sweet-natured, placid child. As long as Thursday was allowed inside the house, Angus was as happy to play in the McIntyre kitchen as his own.
When she glanced down at him again, he’d toppled over and fallen peacefully asleep, his head on Thursday’s stomach. The dog looked up at her, his blue-and-green eyes seeming to twinkle.
Out in the loch, a sudden roar echoed over the water. “Is that Caelan?”
Clara asked.
“Rory?”
Fiona was wiping up some spilt milk.
“No, it’s Alfie—and it’s a big one,”
Mrs. Gillan exclaimed.
Clara jumped to her feet. Out in the stream, Rory had splashed over to help his son land a huge brown trout. “Bravo!”
she shouted.
Catherine stretched a tiny fist and blinked open her eyes. Her hair stood out around her head in red corkscrew curls. “Hello, beautiful girl,”
Clara said.
The baby blinked and then smiled, a wide, gummy smile.
“Guess what? Your older brother won the annual fishing contest! Your uncle will be very, very cross.”
“No, I will not,”
said a deep voice in her ear. “Alfie won with one of my floating flies, after all.” Since it was a public occasion, Caelan was dressed, though his breeches and white shirt clung to his body. “I’m all wet,” he said unnecessarily.
“I see that.”
His eyes were ravenous—not surprising, considering that Cobbledick had routed the household out of bed at dawn to set up the fishing contest. “Perhaps you could escort me back home to change my clothing.”
Mrs. Gillan smiled. “I’ll take Catherine and keep an eye on Angus.”
“You’ll find rusks and milk in the basket,”
Clara said. “If you need more help, Elsbeth is down the stream to the right, cheering on James.”
“My best footman,”
Fiona said mournfully. “I suspect he’ll be leaving and coming over to live with you soon.”
“He’ll never talk Elsbeth into leaving the castle,”
Caelan said, taking Catherine in his arms and kissing her forehead before he settled the baby into Mrs. Gillan’s free elbow. Then he picked up his wife and carried her off down the path, ignoring the excitement behind him as Alfie waded to shore, his huge catch held high.
Clara was entirely unsurprised when Caelan only waited until they were around the bend, hidden by the trees, before he put her down and kissed her so fiercely that she found herself backed against a trunk.
“Really?”
she murmured, her heart thudding.
“I love you,”
he groaned, yanking up her skirts. “I know I’m a beast, Clara. I can’t help it. I see you all round and rosy with one child at your feet and another in your womb, and I feel like stripping myself naked and painting myself blue and laying siege to your castle.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,”
Clara said, giggling, and then gasping, as he pinned her to the tree.
“You’re hardly a gentleman,”
she whispered, cupping his face in her hands and kissing him, “but I’m hardly a lady, either.”
A Note about Heroes, Heroines, and Sexual Mores
Lately I’ve taken a deep dive into eighteenth-century novels featuring heroes with “manly curling locks like jet” and beautiful, beleaguered heroines.
I found myself particularly curious about the effect reading these novels may have had on young women at the time: on one side, fictional ladies were rigidly chaste and prudish (à la Isla); on the other, they readily climbed into breeches and set out on adventures (à la Clara).
These heroines were always in danger of being accosted and were not infrequently raped; yet the novels did nothing to teach young women about sex, beyond commands to avoid “allurements” and to never indulge a man’s passion.
When I dreamed up the plot of this novel, I had two characters in mind: a young woman who throws herself into a carriage bound for Scotland, and a laird who doesn’t want the pleats on his kilt getting wet while fly-fishing.
Caelan and Clara are antiheroes, compared to the novels of their time.
They embrace the messiness of life, the impulsive, improper delight that people in love can take in each other.
They also, crucially, learn to talk to each other about sex.
On a historical note, Prince George was an oaf and a sexual harasser, who occasionally found himself at an event with both his longtime mistress, Lady Jersey, and his unfortunate wife, Princess Caroline.
Some of the novels and poems mentioned here were published a year or two after 1803, but within the decade.
Scottish whisky was indeed brewed in secondhand madeira casks, assisting the country’s dominance in whisky production to this day.
Caelan’s crofters would have survived the potato famine looming in 1846 thanks to their laird’s fascination with the brew and his support of their experimentation, not to mention his lady’s adroit use of poetry to describe their creations.