Chapter 23
Clementine
Three Sheep and the Smell of Peat Work Too
The idea comes from Cameron.
“Today, no plans,” he says over the phone. “No old documents to hunt down, no inventories. I’m proposing we spend a day together. Just the two of us.”
I hold the phone against my ear while staring at the three planning boards pinned to my living room wall.
The board on the left is for the manor restoration.
The one in the middle is for my current professional projects.
And the one on the right is titled Glenfield Decision and contains exactly two sticky notes.
One says Stay.
The other says Think About It.
Which doesn’t really qualify as a plan, but it gives me the illusion of having one.
“What do you have in mind?” I ask.
“I think it’s time I made you fall in love…”
My heart misses a beat before immediately launching into a triple gallop.
“…with the Highlands,” he adds.
I exhale.
“I want to show you the beauty of my corner of the world. We could start with the loch. Bring a picnic. Go for a walk. Stop whenever we feel like it.”
I look at the board on the right.
Stay.
“Okay.”
A pause.
“For real?” Cameron says. “No! Don’t answer that! You already said yes. A deal’s a deal. Now you’re stuck with me for the entire day.”
“I can hear you smiling through the phone, McGregor.”
“Absolutely not. I’m being very serious.”
“If you say so. I’ll handle the food.”
“And here I was thinking my day couldn’t possibly get any better.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m in the kitchen putting together a picnic.
Something I haven’t done since I was eighteen, and back then it happened in my parents’ garden with nothing more exciting on the horizon than the privet hedge separating us from the neighbors.
I open the refrigerator and survey the contents.
Cheese.
Bread from yesterday that’s still hanging in there.
Apples.
Leftover quiche Lorraine that I made yesterday during what I had called a moment of strategic inventory management and what I’m now calling preventative nostalgia.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Hamish come in through the back door I left slightly open.
Officially, for ventilation.
Unofficially, so he could come visit if he felt like it.
I turn to face him.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
“Behave yourself,” I tell him.
He ignores that entirely and walks over to the table, sniffing the space between the quiche and the apples with the concentration of an exceptionally meticulous customs inspector.
“Hamish. This picnic is not for you.”
He lifts his eyes toward me with an expression I can only describe as politely disapproving.
Then he lowers his nose toward the insulated cooler bag I’m filling.
“No.”
I zip the bag shut and pick it up.
I head for the door.
Hamish follows directly behind me.
Cameron arrives wearing a waterproof jacket, carrying a thermos of coffee and an expression that says he’s extremely pleased with himself.
He stops when he sees me standing in the garden with Hamish at my side.
His gaze finds mine.
And everything else disappears.
No invasive sheep.
No distractions.
Just Cameron.
“Is he coming with us?” he asks.
It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about the sheep.
I shake my head.
“Who knows what he’s going to do?”
Cameron looks at Hamish.
Hamish looks at Cameron.
Between them exists the sort of silent understanding that develops between two beings who have learned to coexist despite profound differences.
“It’s fine,” Cameron finally says. “He knows the trail better than I do anyway.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“It’s supposed to be funny.”
We set off.
Without asking for my opinion, Cameron takes the cooler bag from my hands.
The path winds away from the manor through a gently sloping meadow before disappearing into the moorland.
The grass changes beneath our feet.
Thicker.
Denser.
It gives slightly with every step, as though the ground pauses to consider whether it wants to support you.
Scotland has a unique talent for making silence comfortable.
In Paris, silence feels like an absence.
Here, it feels full.
Complete.
Hamish walks on our left with the calm confidence of a sheepdog who took early retirement.
He never strays.
Never stops to graze.
He follows the trail exactly as we do.
Which is mildly unsettling.
“Does he always do this?” I ask Cameron.
“Do what?”
“Act like a human.”
Cameron considers the question with more seriousness than it probably deserves.
“Yes. We think he’s believed he was human since 2012. Ever since the castle dining room incident. I’ll tell you about it someday.”
“I can’t wait to hear that story.”
We continue walking.
The wind carries the scent of wet grass and something more diffuse.
Peat, maybe.
Something old and mineral-rich that seems to exist nowhere except the Highlands.
I noticed it the moment I arrived, and I still haven’t decided whether I like it.
Cameron slows slightly and turns toward me.
“What are you thinking about?”
“The smell of peat.”
“That’s poetic.”
“Yeah. That’s me. A regular poet.”
His smile takes its time.
Starting at one corner of his mouth before reaching his eyes.
I stopped pretending not to notice it because it required too much effort.
The loch appears between two ridges after forty minutes of walking.
I stop.
Partly because I’m out of breath.
Mostly because I’m stunned.
This isn’t the loch featured in tourist brochures.
Not the one with the parking lot and bilingual informational signs.
This one is smaller.
Darker.
Framed by gray stone and a narrow strip of grass descending straight into the water.
The wind wrinkles the surface.
Thistles sway gently.
And most importantly, there’s nobody here.
“It’s…”
I turn toward Cameron and catch him watching me.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.
Cameron smiles and takes my hand, guiding me toward a flat rock overlooking the shoreline.
He pulls a blanket from his backpack, spreads it across the stone, and gestures for me to sit beside him.
I do.
He opens the thermos, pulls out two cups, and pours coffee.
Hamish wanders down to the water’s edge, sniffs the surface, takes one cautious step backward, then settles into the grass looking completely content.
“Do you come here often?” I ask.
“Whenever I need to be alone and have a little peace and quiet.”
“I understand. I’d do the same thing if I had a loch this beautiful near home.”
“You could,” Cameron says.
I look at him for a moment before turning back toward the view.
I could belong here.
I could live in the Highlands.
For real.
The thought makes my heart beat faster.
I can’t remember the last time I felt this excited about a future possibility.
Cameron hands me a cup.
The coffee is hot.
Slightly too strong.
We sit and look out over the loch.
Hamish remains quietly below us.
It’s pleasant.
In a way I hadn’t scheduled into my mental agenda for the day.
“I don’t come here as often as I’d like anymore,” Cameron says after a while. “I think I let work consume me.”
“Storytelling never sleeps.”
He laughs softly.
“That’s pretty much it. What about you? What do you do on weekends in Paris?”
“I work. Run errands. Cook on Sundays for my mother and grandmother.”
“And that’s it?”
I shrug.
“I’ll admit I’m the living embodiment of work-sleep-repeat.”
Cameron looks at me with an expression I’m starting to recognize.
The one that comes right before a comment he ultimately decides not to make.
Instead, he pulls the quiche from the bag.
“You made this?”
I nod.
“Yesterday.”
“It keeps for two days?”
“Mine keeps for three.”
“That’s impressive,” he teases.
He cuts two slices with the knife I packed.
He waits for me to take a bite before trying his own.
His expression cycles through several emotions in the space of two seconds.
Surprise.
Conviction.
Something suspiciously close to surrender.
“Clementine.”
“Yes?”
“This is a disaster.”
“The quiche?”
“No. The fact that you cook like this and still considered selling the manor and going back to Paris to make spreadsheets instead of opening a restaurant in the Highlands.”
You are blushing, Clementine.
Hamish lifts his head from the grass and glances in our direction as though assessing the situation.
Then he lowers it again with the serene wisdom of an animal who believes human affairs are proceeding naturally and do not currently require his intervention.
That is the exact moment Rosita appears.
She emerges from the dip between the ridges we descended earlier without the slightest hurry, as though she always intended to come here and we were merely incidental details in her itinerary.
Cameron notices her at the same time I do.
He freezes with a bite of quiche halfway between his hand and his mouth.
“She followed us,” he says.
“From the manor?”
“Apparently.”
Rosita heads toward the loch with the confidence of a regular visitor.
Hamish turns his head.
The moment he sees her, his posture changes.
He rises to greet her.
Rosita settles into the grass beside him.
“Ailsa was right,” I remark.
“About what?”
“Even the sheep around here get beautiful love stories.”
Cameron looks at the two animals.
Then at me.
There’s something in his expression I don’t quite know how to name yet.
But I’m beginning to recognize it.
“Yeah,” he says.
Just that.
Yeah.
I turn my attention back to the loch so I can pretend to be composed.
We finish the picnic in silence.
A silence I don’t feel compelled to fill.
Which, in itself, is remarkable.
Usually silence makes me want to create lists.
This one simply makes me want to stay.
The problem with Ragnar is that he never gives any warning.
He appears from the left, emerging from a fold in the landscape I hadn’t even noticed.
He reaches the loch carrying the restrained energy of someone who has been running and is trying not to show it.
Cameron immediately shakes his head.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“Ragnar’s here. Which means trouble is about to start.”
The black sheep stands about twenty yards away, perfectly still now, staring at Hamish with an intensity I would describe as deliberate if I were the sort of person who assigned motives to animals.
Hamish sees Ragnar and rises to his feet.
“Cameron.”
“I see it.”
“They’re not going to…”
“Fight? I don’t know. With those two, anything’s possible.”
Ragnar strides toward Hamish with what I can only describe as pure swagger.
Hamish doesn’t back down.
Rosita, positioned between them, lifts her head and looks from one to the other with an expression I interpret as exhaustion, though that’s probably me projecting.
“Should we intervene?” I ask.
“The last time I tried getting between Hamish and Ragnar, I spent ten minutes running around the castle meadow while Keira filmed the whole thing.”
“She kept the video? Asking for a friend…”
I bite my lip to keep from laughing at the image of Cameron chasing sheep.
“She saved it and sent it to the entire family!”
Down by the water, Ragnar and Hamish now stand two yards apart.
They stare at each other.
Nothing happens.
Then Ragnar looks at Rosita.
At Hamish.
Back to Rosita.
With the patient expression of someone waiting for an explanation.
Hamish sits down.
Ragnar remains standing for a few more seconds, apparently trying to preserve his dignity.
Then he settles on Rosita’s other side.
The three sheep are now lined up along the shore facing the loch.
“I’m not entirely sure I understood what just happened,” I say.
“Ragnar thought there was a situation requiring intervention. He arrived. Assessed it. Determined no action was necessary.”
“And then stayed.”
“It is a very pleasant loch.”
The problem with Ragnar reveals itself twenty minutes later.
Cameron decides he wants a better view and starts down toward the shoreline.
I follow.
The sheep, in their collective wisdom, decide to follow us as well.
What could have remained a peaceful stroll immediately turns into a traffic negotiation involving three animals, each with a different opinion regarding the correct direction of travel.
Hamish heads left along the shore.
Rosita follows Hamish.
Ragnar, for reasons known only to himself, decides the correct route is to the right.
Without warning, he pivots and walks directly into my legs.
I don’t fall.
I do something much harder to describe.
I attempt to maintain my balance on a slightly sloped bank while a large black sheep crosses through my personal space at moderate speed.
I succeed in not falling.
But I perform what could generously be called an involuntary half-turn and end up facing Cameron, who witnessed the entire thing and is very clearly trying not to laugh.
“You okay?” he asks, catching me.
“Perfectly. That was completely intentional.”
“I’m sure it was.”
Even so, he doesn’t let go of my hand.
And I keep holding his because the ground is slightly slippery in places, making this a purely practical decision.
We continue along the edge of the loch without letting go.
Ragnar resumes his place in front.
Hamish settles to our left.
Rosita brings up the rear.
“Do you regret not having a plan?” Cameron asks.
I think about it.
“No.”
And I realize that for the first time, it doesn’t stress me out.
He squeezes my hand lightly.
I stare at the loch ahead of us and think that this is exactly the sort of moment you can’t schedule and can’t recreate later, so I take it as it is without trying to fit it into a column on a planning board.
Ragnar stops abruptly.
Cameron and I stop too.
The sheep is staring at something in the reeds near the water.
I squint.
“What is it?”
“A frog, probably. Or his reflection. Ragnar has a complicated relationship with mirrors and reflective surfaces.”
Apparently deciding the water no longer deserves his attention, Ragnar resumes walking.
We follow.
Hamish uses the interruption to conduct a thorough investigation of my jacket.
“Brodie and Mairenn spent their whole lives here. And they seemed happy,” I say.
Cameron doesn’t answer immediately.
“They chose this life,” he finally says. “That’s different from being stuck with it.”
“Probably.”
“And you? Are you choosing? Or are you enduring?”
I look out over the loch.
The water is dark and perfectly still now that the wind has died.
There’s something soothing about that stillness.
“I think I’m making my choice,” I say.
“We could build something together.”
Cameron stops walking.
So do I.
We look at each other there beside the loch, with Ragnar waiting ahead and Hamish and Rosita behind us.
And it occurs to me that romance novels are completely wrong about romantic settings.
Because apparently three sheep and the smell of peat work just fine too.
Cameron lifts his free hand and cups my cheek.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “We could.”
At that exact moment, Ragnar turns around, assesses the situation, and lets out a short, decisive bleat that sounds remarkably like impatience.
“I think he wants us to keep moving,” Cameron translates without removing his hand.
“I think you’re right.”
We start walking again.
Hand in hand.
With our three sheep.
Around a breathtaking loch.