Chapter 11 #2
"Oh, now," Dougal said, teasing a little, bouncing the boy on his shoulders, "that would break the lad's heart. He's like me, I think. He's drawn to the sea. It's in his blood."
"Aye, in my blood!" Iain said giddily from his perch. He stretched his arms high and laughed as Dougal spun around once.
Meg stared up at them, still serious, and Dougal wondered again at her thoughts. "Well, his family tree is full of fishermen and seafarers," he said, feeling an urge to explain.
Instead of answering, she whirled and shouldered into the crowd.
Hands resting on Iain's knees, Dougal watched her go.
As Norrie started a slow, poignant fiddle tune, Dougal slid the boy to the ground and fetched him a cup of the fruit brose that Thora had prepared with cream, oats, and wild strawberries.
Watching Meg from across the room, Dougal wondered what the devil he had said or done to upset her.
* * *
"Miss MacNeill," Alan Clarke said later, turning to Meg, who stood nearby.
The most recent song had just ended, and Norrie bent to adjust an off-tune string, which gave a narrow whine.
"I admit to being curious about something.
Is that Lady Strathlin over there?" Alan indicated two women who chatted with Thora and some fishermen's wives while they served food and drinks.
Seeing Mrs. Berry and the housekeeper from Clachan Mor, Meg hesitated.
She had dreaded a question like this ever since her grandmothers had told Dougal that Mrs. Berry was Lady Strathlin.
Now Dougal Stewart also waited for her answer.
The resident engineer turned with interest, hearing his foreman's question.
"Oh," she finally said. "The tall lady is the housekeeper, Mrs. Hendry, and the other is Mrs.... ah, Berry, who is Lady Strathlin's... former governess and is now her companion."
"Mrs. Hendry and I have met," Dougal said.
"But I have not met Mrs.... Berry?" His tone sharpened.
Meg did not answer, looking carefully away from him.
Though she had tried to stir up a better sense of joy for tonight's celebration, she harbored fear and guilt after her encounter with Sir Frederick a few days earlier.
"Everyone is here tonight but Lady Strathlin. Seems odd," Alan muttered. "Even such a high-and-mighty shrew as that one couldna fail to be moved by Iain's rescue."
"I assure you she was quite moved," Meg snapped.
"I'm sure she at least sent her respects to the family," Dougal suggested, as he stared thoughtfully at Mrs. Berry.
"I believe she did." Meg wanted to sink into the floor.
"I could swear," he said softly, "that Mrs. Berry was the lady who was pointed out to me on the beach as Lady Strathlin."
"Some women look alike," Meg said, "and some do not."
"Ah, true. So it seems that once more I have missed meeting the lady." Dougal looked at her over Alan's shoulder.
"It would seem so, Mr. Stewart," she replied. She dared to look at him. I am your shrewish baroness, Mr. Stewart, she thought boldly, watching him. And I need you very much just now.
He narrowed his eyes suddenly, as if he had understood her thoughts, and she flickered her eyes away, the risk too great.
"Och, she's probably here, guised as a fishwife while she observes the local peasantry in their habitat," Alan said. "The real Mother Elga is asleep in her bed, y'see, and that wee one there is Lady Strathlin, wearing auld Elga's plaidie." He grinned, and Dougal chuckled softly.
Scowling at both of them, Meg turned away, but Dougal leaned toward her. "Alan's joking. He means no harm," he murmured. The dark velvet of his voice shivered through her. "I'm almost certain the woman over there is your great-grandmother."
She pursed her mouth sourly at his jest and did not answer, while he gave her the subtle smile that he shared only with her—an impish curve to his lips, a green dazzle in his eyes that lingered after the smile vanished.
He seemed more beautiful to her in that moment, more appealing, than she dared admit.
And Sir Frederick Matheson seemed even more dastardly for ruining her chances of true happiness.
She turned away to watch Iain dance between Peigi and Fergus, jumping and laughing. She remembered Dougal's sweet playfulness with Iain and his tender strength in rescuing a boy whom he did not even realize was his own son.
Sighing again, she touched her fingers to her mouth and realized that she was shaking slightly.
She had hardly slept, had hardly spoken to anyone, pacing out long, solitary walks while she thought about Frederick's threats.
His smooth, cruel words kept repeating in her mind.
She would soon owe him an answer, and she faced an inevitable surrender.
Desperate, even hopeless, she felt as if her spirit beat its wings on cage bars.
He had trapped her so smoothly, without lifting a hand.
Somehow she had to resist the forced marriage and stop him from using his knowledge against her.
She could not bear to live the rest of her life as Frederick's wife, living in fear that he would expose her youthful mistake and harm her son.
Nor could she bear the thought of living the rest of her life without Dougal.
The other day, after mad kisses and breathless apologies, she had felt joyful just knowing that he had not played her falsely that night and that he cared for her.
She had begun to hope that he could care for her as much as she did for him.
For years, she had both hated and loved him, seeing his face in her son's, holding on to the dream of him while nursing the hurt.
As yet, she did not know his full explanation of that night; they had found no time for it. But the reasons did not matter as much as knowing and believing in his sincerity. Finally she could let that old hurt go, release it like water poured back into the sea. She was free of anguish at last.
Or so she had thought—until Sir Frederick had arrived.
Watching the dancers, listening to the music, she saw Fergus spin around with Peigi, both laughing brightly, without cares.
Meg folded her arms tightly, feeling a piercing loneliness.
She wanted to be in Dougal's arms again, felt the craving and the need like a weight in her soul.
Tears pricked her eyes. She yearned to be alone with him, to tell him that she had forgiven him, that she loved him.
She wanted to seek the wildness of her soul in his arms.
Would it be so wrong, she wondered, just once, to go to him and give of herself? Soon she would return to the mainland, to the other world, to Sir Frederick and a life of lies and fear. She would have to leave Dougal and Iain and all her newest hopes and dreams behind forever.
The dance ended, and she turned to see Dougal, his brow puckered thoughtfully, his eyes dark with concern. Tipping his head, he seemed to ask silently if all was well. She looked away. Despite her longing, she could not explain her heart to him.
The music began again, and several people separated into two lines to perform the Seann Triubhas, or Chantreuse, as she knew Lowlanders called the old dance still popular in the Isles.
Dougal moved toward her. "Miss MacNeill?"
"I... I would be delighted, Mr. Stewart," she said softly, glad for this chance to forget what troubled her for a little while, a chance to simply be near him and feel his touch.
They moved toward the dancers, some of whom shifted to offer them the lead positions.
Facing Dougal, Meg curtsied as he bowed, and they stepped in natural harmony, folding into the center, gliding in unison on the rhythms of the music.
With her hand on his lifted forearm, they reached the end of the line and separated again.
Happiness bubbled briefly through her, rippling again as she faced him across the gap.
He smiled in the way that she had grown to adore, private and quick with twinkling eyes, as if his heart were hers alone.
Beyond this dance floor and this celebration, it could never be so. Here she was simply Meg, dancing carefree with handsome Dougal, and dreams were still possible. Out there, she was Lady Strathlin, with a desperate secret and a vile enemy—and Dougal, the man she loved, despised that lady.
* * *
"Ach, I should have sent the child to his bed," Fergus told Meg.
"Look at him now. He cannot keep his eyes open, though he begged me to let him stay up the night.
" Tilting his head, he indicated Iain, half asleep on a bench, chin and arms leaned on the scrubbed pine surface of Thora's table.
His eyelids drooped, flew open, then sagged again. "I'll take him to bed now."
"Fergus, I'll take him," Meg said, smiling as she looked at Iain.
He had stubbornly lasted until this late hour, when guests were leaving, the lively music had ended, and the storytelling had begun with a smaller gathering.
"They're waiting for you to join them with the stories and such.
And... I'd like to tuck Iain into bed myself. "
Time with Iain was precious to her, for she saw her son only a few weeks out of every year. Days ago, he had come close to death, and now another threat loomed, one only she knew about.
Fergus touched her arm. "A moment, Cousin. I want to ask you something." His golden-brown eyes seemed troubled.
Meg nodded. Her cousin had a good-hearted, earnest nature, and she had never regretted her decision to entrust her son to his care, even after Anna had died.
"I hear the lad is doing well with his schooling," he said.
"He's a bright lad, and Mrs. Berry is a fine tutor."
"I am thinking he will need much more learning, unless he becomes a fisherman, like me and so many of his kinsmen."
"He would do well to follow in the footsteps of you and Grandfather Norrie."
Fergus removed his cap and rubbed his head. "I am thinking he might do well in a mainland school."
She blinked, surprised by that. "Is that what you want for him, Fergus?"
"Well, I am thinking it is what you want for him." He kneaded his cap in his hands. "If you take him back to Edinburgh to live in your castle and your other fine houses, he can go to a real school. He can grow up to have all that a man dreams of."
If she took Iain back to Edinburgh, she ran a great risk of losing him entirely, now that Sir Frederick knew about him. Soon enough Dougal might learn the truth and take his son.
"I can think of no better place than Caransay for a boy to grow up," she said.
He smiled in shy agreement. "Margaret, I have not forgotten who gave birth to the lad.
And though I love him with all my heart, he has no mother in my house now," he said sadly, glancing around to be sure they would not be heard.
Most of the others sat by the fireside, creating a private corner for Meg and Fergus.
Meg leaned close, her hand on his arm. "On the day Iain was born, I trusted you and Anna with him. And though she is gone, I would trust you with him always. He loves you and small Anna. He would be heartbroken to leave you." Tears stung her eyes.
He nodded, looking down. "We nearly lost him the other day. So I am thinking you will want him to live with you now, in your great castle, where you can see him each day."
Her heart surged. "Is that what you want, Fergus?"
"I want him to be happy—and you to be happy, too."
"And for yourself?"
"I would miss him like my life," he said.
"But it is good for a man to have an education.
And the lad is smart. He read a story to me.
Read it!" He smiled proudly. "I can sign my name and speak some English.
But he can learn far more than I can ever teach him.
What can I give him, but what I know about lobster fishing or the ways of the sea and the signs of the weather? "
"All that is just as important as a university education—even more so," she said fervently.
"If, when he is older, he wants to go to school or to university, I will make it possible for him.
For now, he is too young for anything but a tutor.
He can learn from Mrs. Berry when we are on holiday here, and next year he can go to the village school.
He should stay with you and the rest of his kin. Iain needs a family."
"But you are his—" He stopped, glanced around.
"He cannot learn the value of family by living with me in my cold and lonely castle, with only my servants and my advisers. And some of them are not very fond of children. Besides," she added, "where I live, he could not see the water each day."
Fergus nodded, still twisting his cap. "Now that is a sad thing. And yourself?" He looked at her. "Do you miss the sea?"
"Every day."
"And you miss Iain whenever you go back."
She gazed at Iain's golden head. "I miss him like my life," she whispered. "But he needs to be here." He is safe here.
"Someday there will come a time for you to take him. I have always known that," Fergus said.
"Someday," she agreed. "Not now."
Not for a very long time, she thought. In the outside world, Lady Strathlin would soon be forced to marry a banker and a minor baronet, a heartless man. In that household, she knew, her beloved little son would not be welcome.