Epilogue
13 May 1931
Rose Cottage, Dumfries House
‘May we come in?’
Jayne peered around the door of the cottage bedroom. It had been crowded with bodies all morning, the women fussing excitedly – none more than Mad Annie, who loved a wedding – as the men waited downstairs with Robert, admiring his vegetable garden and the views back towards the Big House. But now the guests had gone ahead and Effie was standing alone, staring at her reflection in the mirror, just as Jayne had done five years before.
It had taken them all a while to get used to the sight of their ‘strip of wind’ in white chiffon and ribbons, satin slippers on her feet. For someone who had got through the first eighteen years of her life trying to ignore that she was a girl, it was bewildering enough to see herself as a bride – but to wear a crown...Fanny had called it a ‘tiara’ as she had come up from the Big House to do Effie’s hair, carefully pinning it in place, shooing everyone out so she could ‘work in peace’.
‘Oh!’ Jayne gasped in admiration as Effie turned towards her with a nervous look.
‘Does it look all right?’
‘All right?’ Jayne beamed, her hands fluttering to her heart. ‘Effie, you’re a vision!’
‘Let me see!’ Flora cried impatiently behind her, pushing the door wider so she could get through. ‘Oh! You’re like a princess!’ she gasped, her hands rushing to her mouth.
‘Well, she is marrying a future earl,’ Jayne laughed as Flora and Mhairi came further into the room.
‘You’re like a fairy!’ Mhairi exclaimed, lifting the gossamer veil and letting it billow and flutter back down.
Effie blinked back at them, her eyes wide. ‘Am I dreaming? I feel as if I’m in a dream.’
‘It’s better than that, Eff,’ Mhairi said, taking her hand and clasping it tightly. ‘It’s the life you were always supposed to have.’
The four of them stood for a moment, the bridesmaids matching in peach silk and carrying posies of miniature cream roses.
‘...How did we end up here?’ Effie asked, the question coming out as a half laugh, half sob. But her tears were happy ones.
Ever since the earl had invited her to sail back on his yacht ‘as his honoured guest’, Sholto hadn’t left her side. He had put duty before self when the hour of need had come, but his mother, caught for a time in what she called ‘a living death’, didn’t want the same for her son – and she had finally urged him to win Effie back. She had seen Sholto become a shell of himself in those few months after the split, robbed of all joy or interest, and when he had escaped to Edinburgh rather than stay while Lady Sibyl had ‘been passing’ – refusing to return until she had left again – the countess had known a society match could not be forced. For the earl’s part, he had been impressed by Effie’s willingness to help their dear friends, the MacLeods, even after she had been shunned, and he had seen that ‘a rich heart lay beneath her poor coat’. And, after all, he had always had a soft spot for her ‘spiritedness’; her growing legend at Loch Dunvegan had delighted him.
‘It’s at the year’s end that the fisher can tell his luck,’ Jayne shrugged.
‘You’re saying we’ve had a good year?’ Effie laughed, the others too. Had they ever suffered so much? And yet it was a year to the day that she had first met Sholto, catching that glimpse of him strolling down the street – before, an hour later, she was leaping into his boat on account of a wager, and it had all begun.
‘I’d say it was worth it in the end,’ Flora smiled, reaching for Jayne’s hand and drawing her over to stand with them. ‘You know, Jayne, when we were plucking the birds last summer, I said to Eff and Mhairi that we would always be St Kilda girls, no matter where we ended up: Dumfries House, Lochaline, Glasgow or Paris or Quebec...it doesn’t matter. We’re sisters, all of us.’
Jayne felt the warmth in her words. Soon Flora would be her sister in deed as well as spirit, and Jayne couldn’t help but think of the girl she had first loved as her own. Losing Molly had been a desperate blow for the village, a tragedy for Norman and David, and a personal catastrophe for her. All their worlds had unspooled in the aftermath: Lorna might never have found support for the evacuation had Molly survived; David would have become her fiancé, not Jayne’s...Sometimes the guilt caught up with her that she was living the future Molly had been denied. But David argued the opposite: that their love held Molly within it, keeping her memory close.
‘I also said that what we three did, only we three would ever know...But it’s what we four did that only we four will ever know.’
‘Aye,’ Mhairi nodded, reaching for Jayne’s hand too. ‘What you did for us...’
‘It was the only possible happiness that could come from so much wickedness,’ Jayne replied.
Mary had disappeared, as agreed, as soon as the paperwork for the divorce and the adoption had been finalized. No one knew where she had gone and no one cared. She was exiled.
Jayne’s world, by contrast, had opened up like a flower. It contained colours and textures now; it brimmed with life. David loved her, she had friends – true friends – and she felt safe for the first time in many years.
She saw Mhairi’s hand settle on her rounded belly. She and Donald were to be married quietly within weeks, and would be relocating here to settle down in full respectability. Donald had accepted Sholto’s offer of a position as gamekeeper of the estate when Huw Felton took employment with the Duke of Argyll. Effie fretted that she was responsible for driving him away, but Sholto said it was for the best if he really couldn’t let her go. Archie Baird-Hamilton had conceded defeat with good grace, at least, sending them a wedding present before slipping away to the wilds of Kenya.
They heard the sound of hooves on the ground outside and Flora ran to the window. ‘It’s here,’ she said excitedly.
Effie gathered her long skirts and walked carefully out of the bedroom and down the narrow cottage stairs. Her father was waiting alone in the front room for her. He was wearing his Sunday suit, and someone had put a rose from the garden in his buttonhole.
He caught his breath as Effie stepped into the room, ethereal in white, the diamond tiara glittering in her hair. It was another few moments before he spoke.
‘Y’r mother would be proud, lass,’ he said finally. ‘As I am.’
He gave her his arm, and together father and daughter walked out of the small cottage into the spring sunshine where the horse and trap was waiting. The earl had offered his Bentley to bring them down the short drive to the Big House, but Effie preferred to feel the wind on her face in her last moments as a single girl. She would have walked if she could. Only Flora’s horrified interjections that she would ruin the dress had persuaded her that a pony trap was a suitable compromise.
Jayne, Mhairi and Flora helped Effie negotiate her long, delicate gown around the steps before they climbed into the back and sat on the low wooden bench seats.
‘Not forgetting these rascals,’ Robert said, clicking his fingers – and Slipper and Socks, with peach satin bows around their necks, jumped in beside them. ‘Stay there,’ he commanded in his gruff voice, ruffling behind their ears before closing up the back and taking his place beside his daughter.
The driver shook the reins gently, and the horses began their slow walk along the track towards the chapel. No one spoke as they took in the glorious sight of Dumfries House basking in the sunlight; the gardens were in full bloom, the water spouting from the fountain refracting the light so that diamonds seemed to twinkle in the air.
It felt like an ending, even though they knew it was the first of many beginnings. Flora and Mhairi’s aside, Jayne herself was going to walk down the aisle for a second time after David had proposed in her kitchen.
Too soon, they were passing through the old stone wall of the chapel grounds where ancient yew trees stood fatly like Mrs McLennan’s steamed puddings. The young flower girls and page boys were clustered around the chapel door, waiting restlessly with the mothers, Rachel, Christina and Big Mary, though they all fell still as they caught sight of Effie as a bride.
‘Oh!’ the women exclaimed as one, exactly as the bridesmaids had done, as the trap rolled to a stop and the passengers disembarked, dogs first.
‘What a vision y’ are,’ Christina smiled, stroking Effie’s cheek tenderly.
‘The most beautiful bride,’ Rachel chimed too.
‘Is he here?’ Effie asked nervously as Mhairi and Flora arranged her veil.
‘Is he here?’ Rachel laughed. ‘The poor man’s been pacing the floor for nigh on twenty minutes now! He got here early!’
Jayne came around and put the floral posy in Effie’s trembling hands as Flora and Mhairi carefully pulled the veil forward. ‘There,’ she said with satisfaction, covering the bride’s hands with her own for a moment to calm her. ‘...Are you all right?’
Effie nodded, although she looked terrified. ‘I just...don’t feel quite myself,’ she mumbled.
‘Wearing the veil down can be disorienting at first,’ Jayne said calmly. ‘But it’s not for long. Only while you walk down the aisle – then it’s pulled back again.’
Effie nodded, but Jayne knew her friend would far rather be in breeks and holding a rope than all this. She supposed the tiara might feel alien too.
‘Hurry now,’ Big Mary said, shuffling the children into position behind Effie. ‘The minister’s waiting.’
‘We’ll sit at the back in case they misbehave,’ Rachel said hastily as the organ started up inside the chapel and the doors were opened.
Jayne, Mhairi and Flora positioned themselves behind Effie as heads turned, everyone smiling, particularly as they caught sight of the dogs standing at Robert’s heel. All the St Kildans were seated on the left, Sholto’s family and friends on the right, the estate staff lining the walls.
Robert offered his daughter his arm and they walked forward a few steps into the small porch. Jayne could already see Sholto standing at the end of the aisle, tall, golden and utterly in love. The relief on his face as he saw his bride was palpable. His pride too.
‘Ready?’ Effie’s father said nervously under his breath, as the introductory music ended and the first few bars of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major sounded. He began to move...
‘No!’ Effie said suddenly.
Jayne felt her stomach lurch. What?
Some of the guests heard it too. A look of horror dawned on their faces and concern rippled through the pews. Sholto startled.
‘Effie!’ Jayne whispered desperately, as there was a pause – and then Effie grew smaller as she slipped off her satin shoes, her bare feet pressing to the cold stone floor and connecting her to the moment. The place.
Her new home.
Sholto – watching her, understanding her – beamed.
And the bride beamed back. ‘ Now I’m ready.’