Chapter Twenty-Nine
The hills were beautiful in the rain, Caroline thought, walking through the glen, skirting the loch, climbing the path until she stood overlooking the whole valley, which spread out before her, half shrouded in the mist, mysterious and soft.
The chimneys in the village smoked, and the tower’s yellow stone glowed against a pewter sky.
The loch was moody and gray, the same color as Alec’s eyes.
She turned away and kept walking. It was threatening to rain any minute, which was probably why she hadn’t met anyone else on the path.
The girls were looking over pattern books with Sophie, and Caroline had excused herself as Sophie offered a lesson on the subtle differences between Belgian lace and French lace, stunned the girls didn’t know already.
Mostly, Caroline left because she knew they needed time to get to know their new sister-in-law.
After the ceilidh, she had decided it would be for the best if she left Glenlorne before the wedding. She would go to Edinburgh and look for employment with another family that wished their children to learn English. She had come out today to say farewell to Glenlorne.
She stopped at the top of the craggy hill on the opposite side of the loch from the castle, and stared at the gray stone, memorizing every detail.
The castle had come to feel like home in the short months she’d been here, though she knew it was not.
It was Sophie’s home, or it would be in a week, when the wedding took place in the old chapel.
She avoiding looking at the chapel, and turned away to take the path over the hill and down through the woods.
She came upon a house in a clearing. The old place hunched among the trees, a dowager with good bones fallen on hard times, drawing a ragged shawl of ivy around her.
The driveway was badly overgrown, the roof sagged, and the shutters were crumbling for want of paint.
It must have been beautiful once, here among the pines.
Caroline drew closer, leaned on the stone wall that surrounded the garden, and peered at the front door, which was barred firmly against intruders.
She felt a moment’s sadness that the old place had been abandoned and forgotten.
A flagstone path led the way into a tangled garden.
There were roses struggling through the wildflowers—English roses.
Caroline smiled at the heavy pink heads, gaudy among the white and yellow weeds.
They were like the ones in her mother’s garden, and she’d often gone out to cut them to bring the heady scent indoors on a summer afternoon.
Caroline slipped past the broken gate, and bent to sniff one of the roses.
She shut her eyes at the familiar fragrance.
“Ye can’t mean to leave, lass,” a voice said, and she jumped. A thorn bit through her glove and into her finger. She pulled her hand away. The old gentleman from the ceilidh stood watching her.
“You startled me,” she said, and tried to move past him toward the gate. “Forgive me. I fear I’m trespassing.”
“No ye’re not. If anyone has a right to be here, you do. D’you know what this place is?” he asked. She turned to look at him. “It’s Lullach Grange, lass. Your grandmother lived here once, long ago.”
“It seems so sad,” Caroline said.
“Aye. No one has lived here for a very long time. I thought she belonged here, in Scotland, at Glenlorne, but others didn’t agree.
” His thick white brows drew together. “And now you mean to leave as well.” He looked as sad as the house, and she felt the sting of the thorn, and looked down at the spot of blood on her glove.
“I thought maybe you were meant to make your home here, to stay for good.”
Caroline felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes, as sharp as the thorn. “Will you excuse me? I must get back to the castle,” she murmured.
“Do you love him?” he demanded as she reached the gate.
“Who?” Her voice shook as his face filled her mind’s eye.
“Och, ye know who I mean. Alec, of course.”
Her response hovered on the tip of her tongue.
Of course not. But she did. She found she could not speak the lie without crying.
Instead she shook her head, and watched his face crumple into sorrow.
The breeze shook the petals from the rose, and they fell at his feet, pink and white against the black stone, and it began to rain.
Caroline pulled her hood close and hurried up the path between the trees. When she turned to look back, the garden was empty.