Chapter Fourteen
“I apologize for the late hour,” Dougal said.
Meg, holding the door of Norrie’s house open, smiled faintly, heart pounding. A fine rain sparkled on his bowler hat and broad shoulders as he stood in the doorway. He was so handsome, so strong and earnest and dear to her, she only blinked.
“I came for my mail, just briefly. I heard Norrie brought it in from Tobermory today.”
“He did,” she said. A strong gust of wind blew past, nearly tearing the door from her hold. The sky was blustery, with great gray clouds hovering over the sea. “Come in.”
“Dougal Stewart!” Norrie came toward the door. “I would have brought the letters to you. Come out of the rain. We will have a gale before long, with the look of that dark sky!”
Removing his hat, Dougal stepped past Meg without glancing at her. She stepped back.
“Sit you down, Mr. Stooar.” Thora indicated a bench by the table. “It is a dirty night.”
“It is indeed,” Dougal agreed, still standing. “Thank you, but I do not want to disturb your evening. I was out walking and thought to save Mr. MacNeill the trouble of bringing the mail.”
“Sit you down,” Mother Elga repeated, gesturing.
“I should be on my way,” he answered. Meg, silent, felt he avoided looking her way. Sensing his cool, shuttered mood, she wondered if he kept his distance from her just as she had done after the night of the ceilidh that had led to deep kisses, love, a marriage offer—and yet she had fled.
Now, standing close beside him, she felt the pull of him like a lodestone. The regret she felt at turning him down still twisted in her like a knife.
“Ach, Mr. Stooar, it is not good for a body to work all the time,” Thora said. “We see you out there on the great rock day and night it seems.”
“Day and night,” Elga echoed, nodding.
“Sit you down and have a dram. The children are to bed, and we are just sitting here in the nice quiet, the four of us. And you make five,” Thora said.
Dougal acquiesced with a polite murmur and sat on the bench. He thanked Thora for the cup of whisky she handed him. He cleared his throat, looking awkward enough that Meg wanted to reach out to him.
Elga, seated in a wooden chair by the warm hearth, smiled at him. “Mr. Stooar! Do you love the rain?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “A soft rain like this can be peaceful.”
“Ah,” Elga said. “Peaceful like your home in the sea?”
He glanced at Meg then, and she knew he remembered the old woman’s conviction that he was a kelpie come to shore. “Mother Elga, please,” she said.
“A soft rain and a peaceful sea are lovely indeed, Mother Elga,” he said. “Thank you,” he said then, as Meg handed him the bundle of letters that Norrie set on the table. Dougal’s fingers brushed hers as he took the envelopes. Startled, feeling a tug of the heart, she stepped back.
“Sit you down, Margaret,” Elga said. “Ach, not here. Over there, next to Mr. Stooar!”
“Just here,” Thora insisted patting the bench beside Dougal.
Reluctantly, Meg sat. Since the bench barely held two, her skirts fell over Dougal’s long, muscular thigh, and her arm brushed his.
The mingled scents of rain, wind, and a hint of the flowery machair clung to him.
He radiated strength, warmth, security, intimacy too; he hardly looked at her, yet she felt keenly aware of him, body and soul.
Her breath came faster, though she sat still and silent beside him.
While he chatted with her grandparents, she glanced at the letters under his hand.
The topmost envelope, she saw, was from her solicitors, Dundas and Grant.
Dread plunged through her. The lawyers intended to find a way to stall the work on the lighthouse, just as she had requested.
She had not received a new report yet, for Norrie had no mail for her on this run, but she assumed that Dundas and Grant wrote to notify Dougal of a new threat to his work.
“I am thinking we do need a lighthouse out there,” Norrie was saying. “I am glad you are doing the work.”
Meg roused at that. “But, Seanair, you have always been against the lighthouse.”
“For a while, I agreed with Lady Strathlin, who wants the isle kept private and the rock kept sacred.” Norrie pulled on his pipe and gave Meg a meaningful look.
He pointed toward the window and the bay beyond.
“Now I am thinking the lighthouse will help out there and be not much bother to us after all once it is up. That wicked reef needs a light, and no question.”
“The lighthouse could be placed anywhere on that reef,” Meg said.
“The light on Sgeir Caran would illuminate the whole of the reef, Miss MacNeill,” Dougal said quietly. “Other locations here are partially submerged in high tides. Lighthouses can withstand such conditions, but it is not my preference to risk it.”
“It is not his preference,” Elga repeated precisely. “He likes Sgeir Caran.”
“It is the best location,” Dougal agreed.
“Besides, it is an honor to have the resident engineer staying on Caransay,” Norrie said. “The one who saved our wee lad.” Meg scowled at him.
“Mr. Stooar is always welcome here,” Elga said. “And so we like his lighthouse.”
“Many ships have gone down on that reef,” Norrie said. “The tidal flow between those rocks can spin a ship around and suck it down quickly. I have seen too many wrecks there.”
“We never want to see another wreck,” Thora agreed.
“You have witnessed some?” Dougal asked.
“Aye, we have,” Norrie said. “God save us, it is an awful thing to see. We tried to help the poor souls, but there is little that men can do against a powerful storm. We saved too few souls over the years. It breaks the heart.”
“You have rescued people from shipwrecks?” Dougal sat forward.
“Ach, aye, me and my kinsmen, and our fathers before us. We did what we could if we saw a ship foundering out there. My grandfather and great-grandfather and some before them were wreckers, I am ashamed to say. Some of them wanted ships to break apart on the rocks.”
“Wreckers still do their work in the Isles,” Dougal said.
“It is not done on Caransay any longer,” Meg said.
“But it was done here long ago,” Norrie said.
“Many relied on wreckage to bring goods into their homes and money into their pockets. Some even lured ships this way with lamps and fire signals. The wood that made this table and that cupboard came from ship timbers salvaged in my great-grandfather’s time,” he said.
“But my father never wrecked, nor did we. The screams, the groans of the ship, the prayers shouted to God. It is an awful thing, so we must help.”
“I am sure you did your best,” Dougal said.
“The times it has happened, we have rowed out as far as we dare, and throw out ropes to survivors in the water, though the waves tried to take us as well. Too many ships go down there, I tell you.”
“Do you recall,” Dougal said slowly, “a wreck about eighteen years ago? A ship called the Primrose went down there.”
“Primrose.” Norrie sent a small puff of smoke out of his pipe. “I recall that name. Many were lost that night, though we rowed out. The inspectors came to the island afterwards and said the ship was the Primrose out of Glasgow, sailing up to Skye with people on holiday.” He sighed.
“That’s the one,” Dougal murmured.
Meg felt a surge of compassion, of love, and nearly reached out to touch his hand, resting on the table.
“It was a sad thing. A black storm blew out of the west suddenly and took the ship down within minutes.” Norrie shook his head. “We did our best.”
“Thank you, Mr. MacNeill,” Dougal said.
“Have you a particular interest in that one, then?” Norrie asked.
“My parents were on that ship. I was home with my siblings. I was thirteen.”
Meg saw a muscle bounce subtly in his cheek. Breaching the gap without thinking, she touched his forearm, caring only about the hurt he carried in him. He let her hand linger.
“Mr. Stooar,” Thora said, “I am sorry. We did not know.”
“Of course not. But thank you.”
“A hard thing,” Norrie said. “We all know that, here in this room. Our son, our Margaret’s father, was taken on the reef too.”
Though he did not look at Meg, Dougal turned his arm so that her hand fell into his, and he folded his fingers over hers for a moment. That quick gesture gave her bright hope. She desperately needed to know he cared for her.
But as Norrie had just said, it broke the heart; she could not act on the love she had begun to feel deeply, keenly, certainly.
“So that is why you are determined to build a lighthouse out there,” Norrie said.
“Aye, sir. The Caran light is important to me, and to your family too.”
So many revelations lately, Meg thought. Listening, she realized again how wrong she had been about him over the years. The man had true integrity and compassion, some of it simply born to him, some stemming from private suffering. Tragedy had fueled his work and his persistence.
And she had acted selfishly, making assumptions, allowing solicitors to speak for her as the baroness. From the start, she should have taken the time to learn why Dougal Stewart was so adamant about the lighthouse on Sgeir Caran.
The contents of the letter under his hand might destroy what he had dedicated himself to create. Frowning, head lowered, she felt a heavy remorse and knew she must stop her solicitors from progressing.
“Though a lighthouse would not have saved our son,” Norrie was saying.
“He knew that reef well. It was the strength of the storm that he could not fight. Margaret,” he said, looking hard at Meg, “we will tell Lady Strathlin of the noble reasons for putting a light there and urge her to give Dougal Stewart her help and support. Urge her, do you hear?”
“I hear, Seanair,” she whispered.
“I doubt the lady would care, from what I have seen,” Dougal said.
Tears stung her eyes. Resolve washed through her—finally she must be done with holding back, done with the hurt and the ruse. Hiding the truth had not protected her or her family, but had only caused more difficulties.