“Where did that box come from?” she interrupted herself to ask her father. “Roger found it in his adopted father’s garage—that’s a place where you park a car, I mean—” she added when she saw a look of confusion touch Jamie’s face. “Never mind, it was a sort of storage shed. But we always wondered where you’d put it at this end?”
“Och, that?” Jamie’s face relaxed a bit. “Roger Mac had told me how his father was a priest and lived for a great many years at his manse in Inverness. We made three boxes—it was a good bit of work to copy out all the letters, mind—and I had them sealed and sent to three different banks in Edinburgh, with instructions that in such and such a year, each box was to be sent on to the Reverend Wakefield at the manse in Inverness. We hoped at least one would turn up; I put Jemmy’s whole name on each one, thinkin’ that would mean something to you, but no one else. Go on, though—ye smashed yon Cameron wi’ the box and then …?”
“It didn’t knock him out all the way, but I got past him and into the hall. So I ran down to the hall tree—it’s not the same as the one your parents have,” she said to Ian, and then remembered what one of the last letters had said. “Oh, God! Your father, Ian … I’m so sorry!”
“Oh. Aye,” he said, looking down. She’d grasped his forearm, and he put his own big hand over hers and squeezed it lightly. “Dinna fash, a nighean. I feel him wi’ me, now and then. And Uncle Jamie brought my mam back from Scotland—oh, Jesus.” He stopped, looking at her round-eyed. “She doesna ken ye’re here!”
“She’ll find out soon enough,” Jamie said testily. “Will ye tell me what the devil happened to this gobshite Cameron?”
“Not enough,” she said grimly, and finished the story, including Cameron’s conspirators and the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.
“So I took Jem and Mandy and went to California—it’s on the other side of America—to think what to do, and finally I decided that there wasn’t any choice; we had to try to find Roger—he’d left a letter that told me he was in Scotland, and when. And so we did, and …” She gestured widely to the wilderness around them. “Here we are.”
Jamie drew in air through his nose but said nothing. Nor did Ian, though he nodded briefly, as though to himself. Brianna felt strangely comforted by the proximity of her kin, eased by having told them the story, confided her fears. She felt protected in a way she hadn’t for a good long time.
“There it goes,” Ian said suddenly, and she followed the direction of his gaze, seeing the sudden wild swaying as the rose briers gave way to the bear’s bulk, waddling slowly away. Ian stood up and offered Brianna a hand.
She stretched to her full height and swayed, easing her limbs. She felt so easy in mind that she barely heard what her father said, rising behind her.
“What’s that?” she said, turning to him.
“I said, there’s the one thing more, isn’t there?”
“More?” she said, with a half smile. “Isn’t this enough to be going on with?”
Jamie made a Scottish noise in his throat, half apology, half warning.
“Yon Robert Cameron,” he said. “He likely read our letters, ye said.”
A trickle of ice water began a slow crawl down the groove of Brianna’s spine.
“Yes.” The sense of peaceful security had suddenly vanished.
“Then he kens about the Jacobite gold we keep hidden wi’ the whisky, and he also kens where we are. If he knows, so do his friends. And he maybe canna travel through the stones, but there are maybe those who can.” Jamie gave her a very direct blue look. “Sooner or later, someone will come looking.”
3
Rustic, Rural, and Very Romantic
THE SUN WAS BARELY up, but Jamie was long gone. I’d awakened briefly when he kissed my forehead, whispered that he was going hunting with Brianna, then kissed my lips and vanished into the chilly dark. I woke again two hours later in the warm nest of old quilts—these donated by the Crombies and the Lindsays—that served us for a bed and sat up, cross-legged in my shift, combing leaves and grass heads out of my hair with my fingers and enjoying the rare feeling of waking slowly, rather than with the oft-experienced sensation of having been shot from a cannon.
I supposed, with a pleasant little thrill, that once the house was habitable and the MacKenzies, along with Fergus and Marsali’s son Germain, and Fanny, an orphan left with us after the horrible death of her sister, were all ensconced within, mornings would once more resemble the exodus of bats from Carlsbad Cavern that I’d seen once in a Disney nature special. For now, though, the world was bright and filled with peace.
A vividly red ladybug dropped out of my hair and down the front of my shift, which put an abrupt end to my ruminations. I leapt up and shook the beetle out into the long grass by the Big Log, went into the bushes for a private moment, and came out with a bunch of fresh mountain mint. There was just enough water left in the bucket for me to have a cup of tea, so I left the mint on the flat surface Jamie had adzed at one end of a huge fallen poplar log to serve as worktable and food preparation space, and went to build up the fire and set the kettle inside the ring of blackened stones.
At the far edge of the clearing below, a thin spiral of smoke rose from the Higginses’ chimney like a snake out of a charmer’s basket; someone had poked up their smoored fire as well.
Who would be my first visitor this morning? Germain, perhaps; he’d slept at the Higgins cabin last night with Jemmy—but he wasn’t an early riser by temperament any more than I was. Fanny was a good distance away, with the Widow Donaldson and her enormous brood; she’d be along later.
It would be Roger, I thought, and felt a lifting of my heart. Roger and the children.
The fire was licking at the tin kettle; I lifted the lid and shredded a good handful of mint leaves into the water—first shaking the stems to dislodge any hitchhikers. The rest I bound with a twist of thread and hung among the other herbs suspended from the rafters of my makeshift surgery—this consisting of four poles with a lattice laid across the top, covered with hemlock branches for shade and shelter. I had two stools—one for me and one for the patient of the moment—and a small, crudely built table to hold whatever implements I needed to have easily to hand.
Jamie had put up a canvas lean-to beside the shelter, to provide privacy for such cases as required it, and also as storage for food or medicines kept in raccoon-proof casks, jars, or boxes.
It was rural, rustic, and very romantic. In a bug-ridden, grimy-ankled, exposed-to-the-elements, occasional-creeping-sensation-on-the-back-of-the-neck-indicating-that-you-were-being-eyed-up-by-something-considering-eating-you sort of way, but still.
I cast a longing look at the new foundation.
The house would have two handsome fieldstone chimneys; one had been halfway built and stood sturdy as a monolith amid the framing timbers of what would shortly—I hoped—be our kitchen and eating space. Jamie had assured me that he would frame the large room and tack on a temporary canvas roof within the next few weeks, so we could resume sleeping and cooking indoors. The rest of the house …