Whence Came a Prince (67 page)

Nae, he dared not think of embracing Leana.

Together, mother and father watched their son. The child’s eyelids
fluttered, his mouth drooped open, and finally he sank into the mattress with a noisy sigh. Jamie wondered aloud, “Is that what I look like when I fall asleep?”

“Aye,” Leana said lightly, turning toward the stair. “You do.”

Embarrassed, Jamie quickly followed her into the upper hall. “I beg your pardon …”

“Jamie, you worry too much.” Leana paused at the top of the stair, her smile genuine. “ ’Twas an innocent question.”

Unintentional, perhaps, but not entirely innocent. He felt so comfortable with Leana he sometimes forgot they were no longer husband and wife. Even now, walking down the stair with her on his arm felt natural, felt
right.
But she was not his wife; she was his cousin. He would do well to remember that, lest he risk offense. Or was it his heart that he risked each hour, each day that Leana McBride lived beneath his roof?

That he loved her still, had always loved Leana in some way, was not the question. Could she love
him
again after he’d so thoroughly put her aside for her sister? It was a great deal to ask, even of a woman as generous as Leana.

I
have a gift for you.”

Leana looked up from her reading as Jamie handed her a rough square of paper, crudely folded, covered with a fine gray dust. “A gift?” She took it with some hesitancy. “For Lukemas Day?” Other than in Rutherglen, where the old holiday was duly observed, the eighteenth of October usually came and went without ceremony.

“I was not thinking of St. Luke,” he confessed. “And perhaps
gift
is not the right word.”

She’d pulled her chair near the hearth. Jamie did the same, sitting rather closer than usual. Two’ hours before supper the gloaming had already settled across the glen. The drawing rooms three long windows no longer ushered in enough natural light to read by, so the maidservants were going through the house lighting more candles. Lovely, tall beeswax tapers, bright and fragrant. Lachlan McBride’s miserly nature was nowhere to be found at Glentrool.

Leana began to unfold the stiff paper, scattering the pale dust across her black gown, until Jamie stilled her hands. She glanced up, surprised to find him looking quite serious.

“Before you open this, Leana, let me say again how sorry I am that you cannot join us at kirk each Sabbath.”

Though she’d protested at first, Jamie had been adamant: No trips south to the village for her this autumn. “The risk to our child and to you is too great,” he’d insisted. Even on the Sabbath last when her sister’s headstone was finally set in place, Jamie would not allow Leana to travel. After a lifetime of Sunday services in Newabbey, she missed the
time of worship each week and—though she would never confess it aloud—the chance to sit with Jamie by her side.

Leana nodded at the paper. “This has something to do with the kirk?”

“Not really. It has more to do with Rose.” He helped her unfold it, brushing away the dust. Granite dust, she realized. “It’s the stonemasons drawing,” he explained, spreading it across both their laps. “When I told him how you longed to see your sister’s headstone, he presented me with this. He confessed that had he known a lady would be studying it, he’d have rendered it more carefully. But it
is
a good likeness, Leana. I hope you are pleased.”

She touched the paper, following the mason’s lines with her fingertips. The design was graceful. And familiar. A wreath of roses, delicately carved in stone, just like the one that adorned their mothers gravestone in Newabbey. “How did you remember?”

Jamie’s voice was softer still. “How could I forget?”

Leana gripped the sketch, struggling to maintain her composure. Her sister’s name was etched below the wreath.
Rose McBride McKie.
Then the dates that fell much too close together.
Born 1 August 1773. Died 8 August 1790.
Finally the tragic facts.
Beloved wife of James Lachlan McKie. Mother of William and Alexander.

“Oh, Jamie. ’Tis good that … you …”

“Aye.” He brushed away the dust that obscured the epitaph at the bottom. “I chose some lines of poetry by Isaac Watts. See what you think of them.”

Leana read the epitaph aloud, imagining Jamie on the worst day of his life having to think of such things.

“ ’Tis perfect,” she told him. And it was.
Our beautiful Rose.

“Leana.” He slowly refolded the sketch, his eyes the color of moss and mist. “I am glad … so very glad to have you here at Glentrool. With Ian. And with me.”

A single knock sounded on the drawing room door. Ivy Findlay’s voice slid through the cracks like emery paper. “Supper is ready whan ye are, Mr. McKie.”

They both looked up with a guilty start. Jamie caught her elbow and helped her stand. “As I was saying, I am glad you are here.”

Leana remembered what else he’d said a moment earlier.
With me.
Dared she ask him what he meant?
What’s to become of us, Jamie?
’That was the question on her heart. Could she speak it aloud? Nae, it was still too soon. Their grief was too fresh.

She would wait.
Let patience have her perfect work.

Leana slipped out the front door at half past six to watch the day begin. Once Davina or David arrived—she had to keep an open mind in case her instincts were wrong—such early morning forays would be out of the question. But this morning, all things were possible. She followed the front path to the stone pier, neatly built with roomy seats. A small boat was lodged beneath it. Perhaps in the spring, when Jamie’s days of mourning ended and her babe was safely delivered, he would take her rowing on the loch. How still the surface was this morning. Without the sun, it had no color at all.

She dared not stray far from home, for today was the start of stag season, and the hunters would soon be on the hills, bows drawn, eyes alert for red deer. The sky was a luminous dark blue with a faint pattern of clouds. As she watched, the color changed to turquoise so gradually she could not discern how or when it happened. Yet when she looked down for a moment to brush a leaf from her lap, then looked up again, the sky was lighter. And fading to gray.

Now she could see the ground, covered in dew. Or was it frost? The glistening foliage on the nearby birch and rowan trees, as well as her shivering arms, confirmed that it must be frost. Icy particles blanketed the mountains across the loch, outlining the deep ruts carved by winter torrents. She pulled her plaid tighter and moved her feet up and down to warm them.

The air was blessedly calm. Usually the winds sighed through the
pines, moaning across the glen, the saddest of sounds. But not today. Instead, she was rewarded with the most stirring of sights: an eagle soaring high above the loch, headed for its cliff-side aerie near Glenhead.

Leana heard footsteps. Then Jamie’s voice. “ ’Tis a beautiful sight first thing in the morning.”

She stood and turned to greet him. “Oh, did you see it?”

Jamie closed the distance between them, taking off his greatcoat to slip it round her shoulders. The wool hem touched the ground. “See what, lass?”

“The golden eagle.” She peered at him. “What were you looking at that was so beautiful?”

He smiled, and then she knew. Frosty morning or not, heat rose to her cheeks. She turned to face the loch and felt his hands rest lightly on her arms.

“Do not stay long, Leana. The hunters will be out soon.”

Jamie left her to enjoy the solitude. Moments earlier she would not have welcomed someone’s company. Now she missed his voice, his touch. Even wearing his coat, warmed by his body, she was chilly. And lonely, standing by herself on the pier. The loch was gray, like the sky. Like the hills, like the house. Yet with Jamie there, Glentrool was warm, full of color, brimming with life.

My Jamie.

He was the husband of her heart if not her hand. He was the father of her children and their hope for the future. She would never deny her love for him. Not even if he asked her.
Please, Jamie. Ask.

A
s the days of autumn grew shorter, the work hours grew longer. While Leana spent more time resting for her bairn’s sake—a practice Jamie heartily approved of—he poured his energies into the land that was now his responsibility. Glentrool’s flocks were more than ten times the size of Auchengray’s, and the terrain they covered more rugged. Henry Stewart and the shepherds who labored for him remained on the braes past the gloaming, preparing the ewes for breeding.

Jamie joined Stew when he could. The man was more taciturn than Duncan and not as likely to dispense advice, but Stew had the same even temperament, the same shepherd’s wisdom honed from time alone on the hills.

“How is yer faither?” Stew asked early one evening as they worked side by side with the dogs, herding the ewes into the sheepfold. It was the last Friday in October, yet there were still many sheep to be bred. “Way-to-me!” Stew called, and the collies headed round the flock
widdershins
, like a clock turning backward. Though Stew had seen fifty years come and go, his weathered face appeared older, and his agile body, younger. He was the color and texture of a walnut shell—wiry hair, rough skin, close-set eyes, wrinkled clothes—all stained a nondescript light brown, blending in with the faded heather.

“For a gentleman his age,” Jamie answered, “my father is doing remarkably well.”

Stew took his time before saying, “ ’Tis hard on a man whan he loses his wife.”

“Aye, it is.” Harder than Jamie had imagined.

He could still see Rose when he closed his eyes. But he could no longer hear her voice. However much he tried to recapture the timbre, the inflection, the pitch, Rose’s voice was simply
gone.
He remembered many things she’d said, but he could not hear her saying them.

When he heard a woman’s voice, it was Leana’s. Singing to Ian. Laughing with his father. Praising the servants. Even in the midst of their mourning, Glentrool was a place of quiet joy. Sometimes he wondered if Leana
willed
it so. His mother had exerted her influence over the household, yet it produced envy and discord. Leana’s methods were entirely the opposite, and so were the results. Not a soul at Glentrool would dispute the positive difference Leana had made in three months’ time.

Stew lifted his head, scanning the darkening horizon. “We’re losin’ our licht, Mr. McKie, and yer family will be wantin’ their supper. Best be headin’ hame, aye?”

Bidding Stew good night, Jamie strode down the hill, still wincing when his right leg twisted a certain way. He had but half a mile to walk. As the sunlight faded, so did the warmth in the air and the colors of the earth. The trees round Glentrool turned to black, outlined against the sunset. Orange at the treetops gave way to pinkish clouds, then a pale blue gray, growing darker as the eye moved upward.

His many thoughts of Leana made him long to get home to her.
Aye.
To her, not just to the house. Leana was the very heart of Glentrool, even if she was not his wife.

Can you not change that?

He slowed his steps, gazing at the loch below, glistening in the sunset.

They had spoken their wedding vows once before. Then lived as husband and wife, not knowing the days of their marriage were numbered.

Is there any impediment to this marriage?

There were so many impediments Jamie did not have fingers enough to tally them all. Except when he started to count them, none of them mattered. Only one thing counted. Nae, two: Leana was the mother of his children, and he loved her completely.

“Then she will be my wife.” He said it aloud to the hills and the
braes, to the pines and the winds. If she was reticent, he would woo her again. If her heart needed mending, he would heal it with his love. If the kirk did not allow it, he would convince them. If the parish did not approve, he would remind them he was the laird of Glentrool, whose only desire was to honor the Laird of all.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Jamie lengthened his stride, his eye on the stone manor house that sheltered his future bride. If there was any pain in his leg, he no longer noticed it.

Marry me, Leana.
The words were as sweet as an autumn apple in his mouth.

As he drew closer, he realized Leana was standing at the front door. As if she knew. Watching for him, waiting for him. He shouted her name, raising his hand to her, quickening his pace, not caring if he looked eager. Wanting her to see the truth on his face before she heard it from his lips.

She opened the door behind her, smiling as he approached. “I feared we’d lost you among the ewes.”

“Nae, lass. I am not lost but found.” Jamie held the door as she turned and walked back in. Moving with care, he noticed, looking sturdy and fragile at the same time. Five weeks at most, she’d said that morning. Arrangements had been made with Jeanie Wilson, the howdie of the glen.

Now he had some arrangements of his own to make.

He caught up with her and drew her hand into his as he stopped outside the library door, too impatient to find somewhere else to meet. He was laird of this house and would speak where he chose and with whom.

“Jamie, what is it?”

Where to start? At the beginning.

“Leana, there was a time … when you …”
When you loved me.
That was true, but that was not what needed to be said.

He started again. “There was a time when we loved each other. As a man loves a woman. As a husband cherishes his wife. I cannot … I dare not …”