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“Yes, you do.”
Anger bubbled up, sudden and bright, and he’d jerked his arm away from her grasp.
“Where in hell do you get off telling me what I know?”
She widened her stare. “I’m married to you.”
“You think that entitles you to try to read my mind?”
“I think that entitles me to worry about you!”
“Well, don’t!”
They’d made it up, of course. Kissed—well, a bit more than that—and forgiven each other. Forgiving, of course, didn’t mean forgetting.
“Yes, you do.”
Did he know?
“Yes,” he said defiantly to the broch, visible from his window. “Yes, I damned well do!” What to do about it: that was the difficulty.
Was he perhaps meant to be a minister but not a Presbyterian? Become a nondenominational, an evangelical … a Catholic? The thought was so disturbing, he was obliged to get up and walk to and fro for a bit. It wasn’t that he had anything against Catholics—well, bar the reflexes inbred by a life spent as a Protestant in the Highlands—but he just couldn’t see it. “Going over to Rome” was how Mrs. Ogilvy and Mrs. MacNeil and all the rest of them would see it (“Going straight to the Bad Place” being the unspoken implication); his defection would be discussed in tones of low horror for … well, for years. He gri
Well, and besides, he couldn’t be a Catholic priest, now, could he? Not with Bree and the kids. That made him feel a little calmer, and he sat down again. No. He’d have to trust that God—through the agency of Dr. Weatherspoon—proposed to show him the way through this particular thorny passage of his life. And if He did … well, was that not evidence of predestination in itself?
Roger groaned, thrust the whole thing out of his head, and immersed himself doggedly in his notebook.
Some of the songs and poems he’d written down were well-known: selections from his previous life, traditional songs he’d sung as a performer. Many of the rare ones, he’d acquired during the eighteenth century, from Scottish immigrants, travelers, peddlers, and seamen. And some he’d unearthed from the trove of boxes the Reverend had left behind. The garage of the old manse had been filled with them, and he and Bree had made no more than a dent in it. Pure luck that he’d run across the wooden box of letters so soon after their return.
He glanced up at it, tempted. He couldn’t read the letters without Bree; that wouldn’t be right. But the two books—they’d looked briefly at the books when they found the box, but had been concerned mostly with the letters and with finding out what had happened to Claire and Jamie. Feeling like Jem absconding with a packet of chocolate biscuits, he brought the box down carefully—it was very heavy—and set it on the desk, rummaging carefully down under the letters.
The books were small, the largest what was called a crown octavo volume, about five by seven inches. It was a common size, from a time when paper was expensive and difficult to get. The smaller was likely a crown sixteenmo, only about four by five inches. He smiled briefly, thinking of Ian Murray; Bria
The small one was carefully bound in blue-dyed calfskin, with gilt-edged pages; an expensive, beautiful book. Pocket Principles of Health, it was entitled, by C. E. B. F. Fraser, M.D. A limited edition, produced by A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh.
That gave him a small thrill. So they’d made it to Scotland, under the care of Captain Trustworthy Roberts. Or at least he supposed they must—though the scholar in him cautioned that this wasn’t proof; it was always possible that the manuscript had somehow made it to Scotland, without necessarily being carried in person by the author.
Had they come here? he wondered. He looked around the worn, comfortable room, easily envisioning Jamie at the big old desk by the window, going through the farm ledgers with his brother-in-law. If the kitchen was the heart of the house—and it was—this room had likely always been its brain.
Moved by impulse, he opened the book and nearly choked. The frontispiece, in customary eighteenth-century style, showed an engraving of the author. A medical man, in a neat tiewig and black coat, with a high black stock. From above which his motherin-law’s face looked serenely out at him.
He laughed out loud, causing A
It was her, all right. The wide-spaced eyes under dark brows, the graceful firm bones of cheek, temple, and jaw. Whoever had done the engraving had not got her mouth quite right; it had a sterner shape here, and a good thing, too—no man had lips like hers.
How old… ? He checked the date of printing: MDCCLXXVIII. 1778. Not much older than when he’d last seen her, then—and looking still a good deal younger than he knew her to be.
Was there a picture of Jamie in the other … ? He seized it and flipped it open. Sure enough, another steel-point engraving, though this was a more homely drawing. His father-in-law sat in a wing chair, his hair tied simply back, a plaid draped over the chair behind him, and a book open upon his knee. He was reading to a small child sitting upon his other knee—a little girl with dark curly hair. She was turned away, absorbed in the story. Of course—the engraver couldn’t have known what Mandy’s face would look like.
Grandfather Tales, the book was titled, with the subtitle, “Stories from the Highlands of Scotland and the Backcountry of the Carolinas,” by James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Again, printed by A. Bell, Edinburgh, in the same year. The dedication said simply, For my grandchildren.
Claire’s portrait had made him laugh; this one moved him almost to tears, and he closed the book gently.
Such faith they had had. To create, to hoard, to send these things, these fragile documents, down through the years, with only the hope that they would survive and reach those for whom they were intended. Faith that Mandy would be here to read them one day. He swallowed, the lump in his throat painful.
How had they managed it? Well, they did say faith moved mountains, even if his own seemed presently not adequate to flatten a molehill.
“Jesus,” he muttered, not sure if this was simple frustration or a prayer for assistance.
A flicker of motion through the window distracted him from the paper, and he glanced up to see Jem coming out of the kitchen door at the far end of the house. He was red in the face, small shoulders hunched, and had a large string bag in one hand, through which Roger could see a bottle of lemon squash, a loaf of bread, and a few other foodlike bulges. Startled, Roger looked at the clock on the mantel, thinking he had lost complete track of time—but he hadn’t. It was just on one o’clock.
“What the—” Shoving the paper aside, he got up and made for the back of the house, emerging just in time to see Jem’s small figure, clad in windcheater and jeans—he wasn’t allowed to wear jeans to school—making its way across the hayfield.
Roger could have caught him up easily, but instead slowed his pace, following at a distance.
Plainly Jem wasn’t ill—so likely something drastic had happened at school. Had the school sent him home, or had he simply left on his own? No one had called, but it was just past the school’s di
Jem had got to the stile in the drystone dyke that walled the field, hopped over, and was making determinedly across a pasture full of sheep. Where was he heading?