Chapter 18
MARY
The Garden Massacre
(Or How Three Sheep Destroyed Forty Years of Work in Fifteen Minutes)
Dinner actually starts off pleasantly enough.
I’m seated between Finn and Callum at the massive dining table, surrounded by the entire McGregor family.
Callum and Jane are discussing preparations for the Highland Games.
Keira and Alistair are debating the merits of different whiskies.
Lachlan and Emma are bickering affectionately about some obscure piece of Scottish history.
Nate and Lily are telling a story involving a staircase and Christmas lights.
Finn, seated to my left, is making heroic efforts to participate in the conversation despite his obvious exhaustion.
The twins literally dragged him across the Highlands this morning, and he looks like a man who survived active combat.
His shoulders are tense, his eyes slightly glazed over, and I’ve already caught him suppressing at least three yawns since dinner started.
Maggie, meanwhile, reigns at the head of the table like a queen observing her subjects with the satisfied expression of a woman whose plans are unfolding exactly as intended.
Which, in my experience, is always a terrible sign.
Soup has just been served when Jamison rushes into the dining room.
Jamison never rushes.
Jamison glides silently.
Jamison appears magically.
Jamison materializes with the elegance of a well-mannered ghost.
But right now, he is absolutely rushing.
And his face—normally as expressionless as stone—is pale.
The kind of pale that announces large-scale catastrophe.
“My apologies for the interruption,” he says, his voice trembling slightly. “Madam, there is an urgent problem in the garden.”
Maggie frowns and delicately sets down her spoon.
“What kind of problem, Jamison?”
“The sheep, Madam. Your herb garden... I’m afraid it has been…”
He never finishes the sentence.
An enraged bleat explodes outside so loudly it rattles through the windows.
Then another one.
Even louder.
Even angrier.
The entire table freezes.
“It’s Hamish and Ragnar,” Jamison adds unnecessarily.
“Of course it is,” Finn mutters beside me.
Maggie rises with the dignity of a queen marching into battle.
“Let us go see what is happening.”
The second she moves, the entire family surges toward the windows overlooking the gardens.
Maggie’s herb garden—the one she has lovingly cultivated for forty years, the source of her pride and medicinal teas, the garden she proudly shows every visitor as proof of her patience and expertise—is currently being annihilated before our eyes.
Hamish stands in the middle of what used to be a perfectly organized patch of thyme, rosemary, mint, and sage.
At this exact moment, he is methodically ripping up mint plants with his teeth, chewing them with visible satisfaction before trampling through the thyme like a tiny wool-covered bulldozer.
He’s already created a crater roughly the size of a small car and is now moving onto the rosemary.
Ragnar stands several feet away watching the destruction.
I’ve seen things in my veterinary career.
Cows trapped in ditches.
Cats stuck inside chimneys.
A horse that somehow managed to wedge its head inside a bucket.
But a sheep methodically organizing the destruction of a forty-year-old herb garden?
That’s new.
“My garden,” Maggie whispers faintly.
Beside me, Finn murmurs:
“Why isn’t Ragnar moving?”
“He’s observing,” I whisper back tightly. “Evaluating.”
“Evaluating what?”
“The level of destruction necessary to outperform Hamish.”
As if to confirm my theory, Ragnar suddenly emits a sound somewhere between a wolf growl and a lion’s roar—which should not even be physiologically possible for a sheep.
Then he charges.
Not toward Hamish.
Toward what remains of the herb garden.
And there, before our horrified eyes, he gets to work.
Ragnar doesn’t do moderation.
He doesn’t merely trample things like Hamish.
He uproots entire plants. Roots and all. He digs deeper. Wider. More violently.
Within thirty seconds, his crater is significantly larger than Hamish’s.
Debris flies across such a wide radius we’ll probably find sage leaves in the neighboring county.
Hamish stops in the middle of his own destruction.
Straightens.
Stares at Ragnar with what can only be described as deeply offended disbelief.
Then he lets out a furious bleat that very clearly says:
How dare you do it better than me?
Oh no.
No, no, no.
I recognize that look.
That is the look of a sheep who absolutely refuses to lose a competition he didn’t even realize existed three minutes ago.
Hamish turns toward the ornamental garden.
“They’re going to kill each other,” Cameron comments behind me.
“Or destroy the entire estate,” Connor adds. “Both scenarios seem plausible.”
Maggie slowly turns toward us, her face frozen into an expression of icy control that somehow only amplifies the rage boiling underneath.
“Someone stop those sheep,” she says in a dangerously calm voice.
Callum and Lachlan react first.
Both cousins rush outside with the confidence of men raised in the Highlands—men who grew up competing in the Highland Games and chasing livestock across fields since childhood.
Alistair follows close behind.
Hamish sees them coming.
He’s always had excellent survival instincts, probably developed through years of escaping consequences for his endless crimes.
He bolts toward the neighboring garden.
Since the herb garden is already dead, he’s now targeting Maggie’s ornamental garden—the one filled with roses, peonies, hydrangeas, and all the expensive flowers she spends hours caring for.
And he starts ripping them out.
Every single one.
One by one.
Callum lunges after him.
Immediately slips on a patch of mud left behind by the afternoon rain.
And crashes face-first into the dirt.
I swear I hear Jane choke back laughter, and honestly, despite the disaster unfolding outside, the scene does have a certain comedic quality.
Lachlan attempts a different angle of attack, completely misses Hamish when the sheep dodges at the last second, and ends up headfirst inside a rosebush.
The howl that erupts from the garden sounds like a wounded Highland warrior screaming on a medieval battlefield.
Unfortunately, it’s actually Alistair, who just fell backward over a low stone wall.
“Your cousin got stabbed by a rosebush,” Finn observes beside me in a clinical tone.
“You think?” I reply sarcastically.
Meanwhile, Ragnar hasn’t remained idle.
He notices Hamish invading the ornamental garden and absolutely refuses to allow his nemesis exclusive rights to destruction.
So he charges toward the vegetable garden and begins a systematic massacre.
He tramples everything.
Uproots anything capable of being uprooted.
Knocks over wooden stakes.
Destroys rows of vegetables with terrifying military precision.
Topples the ancient scarecrow my great-grandfather built with his own hands.
Then starts digging holes everywhere like he’s searching for buried treasure.
“Twins! Go stop Ragnar!” Maggie orders in a voice that somehow never trembles.
Cameron and Connor exchange a glance before sprinting outside.
A moment later, they reach the entrance to the vegetable garden and quickly strategize.
Apparently they have a plan.
They try surrounding Ragnar.
It fails spectacularly.
Ragnar sees them coming from miles away, and at the exact moment they close in, he charges directly between them like a professional rugby player dodging a tackle.
The twins trip over each other, tangle their legs together, and collapse into the already-destroyed vegetable beds, crushing the few vegetables that somehow survived Ragnar’s earlier rampage.
Cameron stands and immediately steps on a cabbage.
He tries shaking it off his boot, but the vegetable seems emotionally committed to staying attached.
“You’re a doctor and a veterinarian,” Maggie says, turning toward Finn and me with a look that leaves absolutely no room for negotiation. “Do something.”
“I don’t handle animals,” Finn mutters.
I elbow him sharply in the ribs before he can continue.
We exchange a look, and Finn presses his lips together.
Then he follows me outside.
“I sincerely hope you secretly keep tranquilizer darts hidden under that pretty dress,” he growls quietly, “because there is absolutely no way we’re controlling these insane animals.”
A strange warmth spreads through my chest at the realization that he thinks I look pretty.
No.
Not you.
The dress.
Important distinction.
I force myself to focus on the catastrophe in front of us.
The gardens now resemble a battlefield after a particularly violent war.
Callum is covered head to toe in mud.
Lachlan is inspecting his bleeding hands while swearing under his breath.
Alistair looks spiritually defeated.
The twins have dirt up to their knees.
Hamish is currently in the orchard dragging an uprooted rosebush behind him like a war trophy.
Ragnar stands triumphantly in what remains of the vegetable garden with one hoof planted atop a crushed cabbage like a conqueror posing beside defeated enemies.
I take a deep breath.
“Ragnar,” I say in my calmest veterinary voice. “It’s Mary. You know me. Nobody’s going to hurt you. We just need you to calm down and stop destroying everything.”
Ragnar looks directly at me.
His eyes radiate pure contempt.
Then he growls and resumes destroying the vegetable garden.
Beside me, Finn tries a different approach.
He slowly walks toward Hamish with visible hands and a non-threatening posture.
“Hamish,” he says calmly. “Drop the rosebush.”
Hamish looks at him.
Then bleats happily like he just received the greatest compliment of his life.
And sprints directly toward the orchard.
Of course.
The orchard.
Why stop now when there are still things left to destroy?
We run after him.
Hamish immediately begins violently shaking an apple tree.
The apples aren’t ripe yet, so they rain down everywhere like hard green missiles.
I step on one.
My foot slides forward.
I start falling.
Finn catches my arm at the last second, but the movement throws both of us off balance.
We spin awkwardly trying to recover before collapsing into the grass in a tangled heap of arms and legs.
Hamish races between us carrying the rosebush triumphantly in his mouth.
I lie there with my face pressed into grass that smells like crushed apples, painfully aware that Finn is half sprawled across me.
“I thought animals listened to you,” he grumbles.
“Ragnar has literally never listened to me,” I mutter into the grass.
I roll onto my back.
“And Hamish listens to nobody. Welcome to my daily professional reality.”
We struggle back to our feet.
Our clothes are now covered in mud, grass, leaves, and probably fruit debris.
Hamish has moved on to stripping bark off a young apple tree with his teeth.
Ragnar discovered the irrigation system and is methodically destroying it while water sprays violently in every direction.
The twins have officially given up and are now observing the disaster from a safe distance.
Callum attempts one final intimidation tactic, but Hamish dodges him with the agility of a professional dancer.
That’s when Keira suddenly shouts from the castle window:
“There’s another sheep!”
We all freeze.
Then slowly turn around.
A third sheep stands in the middle of what used to be Maggie’s ornamental garden.
The sheep calmly chews an especially rare peony Maggie had specially imported from a nursery in France.
“That’s Brutus,” I say weakly.
“Brutus?” Finn repeats. “That sheep’s name is Brutus?”
“Yes. He belongs to the neighbors.”
“Brutus,” Connor echoes faintly from the edge of the ruined vegetable garden.
Brutus bleats proudly as if to say:
While you idiots were distracted by those two amateurs, I was actually accomplishing something.
Hamish and Ragnar stop instantly.
They both stare at Brutus.
“Is the tension between these sheep actually real, or am I hallucinating?” I whisper to Finn beside me.
“If you’re hallucinating, then I am too,” he replies.
Then suddenly—as though they silently agreed on a temporary alliance—Ragnar and Hamish charge directly toward Brutus.
Brutus spins around with ballerina-level speed and bolts.
Once it becomes clear all three sheep are gone for good, we finally return to the castle in exhausted silence.
The procession crossing the estate looks like soldiers returning from a lost war.
Callum is coated in mud from head to toe.
Lachlan holds his bleeding hands in front of him like a surgeon waiting for sterile gloves.
Cameron still has dirt in his hair.
Connor limps slightly.
Alistair looks emotionally broken.
Finn and I resemble people who rolled through a ditch together.
We enter the dining room.
The meal that had been warm and inviting twenty minutes ago has gone completely cold.
Maggie slowly lowers herself back into her chair.
Her face is alarmingly pale.
She stares into space for a very long moment.
Jamison quietly enters the room, gliding like a ghost despite the atmosphere of national tragedy.
“Mrs. Finley would like to know if she should reheat dinner.”
Maggie doesn’t answer immediately.
She continues staring at the wall as though trying to understand how her life reached this point.
Finally, she sighs.
“No, Jamison. Dinner is over.”
Callum collapses into his chair with a groan.
“I hate sheep,” he says simply.
“Same,” Lachlan mutters while inspecting his wounded palms.
“Us too,” the twins answer in perfect unison.
Jane places a comforting hand on Callum’s shoulder.
“At least you tried.”
“Trying means nothing when you get humiliated by a sheep named Brutus,” Cameron grumbles.
Keira snorts with laughter.
Emma follows.
Then Lily.
Then Nate.
Within seconds, half the table is laughing despite the murderous glares coming from everyone covered in mud.
Maggie slowly stands and leaves the dining room in complete silence.
The rest of the family gradually disperses to clean themselves up, bandage injuries, or simply try forgetting the disaster they just survived.
Finn and I remain seated there in our muddy clothes surrounded by cold food.
“I think Brutus just became a family legend,” I say quietly.