Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] (8 page)

The deathly silence brought the burn of tears to her eyes.
She felt Eli’s eyes upon her and she knew without even looking at him that he
felt just as helpless as she did.

Never in her life had she gone down in a boggy mire on all
fours, up to her chin in mud. But one missed a great many of life’s experiences
by never doing these things, she reasoned. Besides, mud wasn’t anything that
couldn’t be washed off, and the person who always did the circumspect thing had
a very dull time of it.

“You dinna tell me the mud here was so strong,” she said in
a breathless way, then laughed and took Eli’s hand as he pulled her to her
feet. “I can see my first purchase will be a sturdy pair of boots.”

Holding Eli’s arm, she took three more steps, and the other
slipper came off. She paused for a moment, then continued on, deciding to leave
it where it lay. What good was one slipper, anyway? “When I was a child,” she
said, “I envied horses for having four legs and being able to run as swift as
the wind. Until this moment, I was never so thankful that God in His infinite
wisdom saw fit to give us only two.”

Eli laughed. “Miz Mackinnon, if you were a man, I’d slap you
on the back.”

Maggie laughed and released her hold on his arm.”Thank you,
Mr. Carr. I ken I’ve got the way of it now.”

She squared her shoulders and smiled, then stepped forth to
conquer the hearts of every man in camp, as they watched Adrian Mackinnon’s new
wife walk toward them, barefoot and covered with mud.

The promontory rose up out of the ground like an angry fist
thrust into heaven. Below, the great, swelling waves crashed against the rocks
with all the fury of a battering ram besieged by an angry sea—then abating. Its
rage diminished, the sea was reduced to nothing more than churning green water
and white, frothy foam.

There was a savage wildness here that reminded Maggie of
home, for, like Scotland, this was a place born of the violence of the earth.
She had not expected it, and the kinship she felt with this wild and beautiful
land was both welcome and maudlin, a bittersweetness that left her reflective.
She clasped her hands over her knees and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply the
smell of the sea, and thought of Scotland; then, opening her eyes, she felt a
wave of homesickness she had not felt since leaving her mist-shrouded shores.

Yes
, she thought,
this is Scotland. Before the
sadness.
For there were no haunting echoes of the Gaelic tongue here, no
dim visions of a brave piper, the kilt-clad warrior, the tragic saga of kings
and queens. Sadness had not yet laid her hand upon this place. Feeling the pull
of her homeland, the burn of tears behind her eyes, she looked quickly away.
Sadness, it seemed, was Scotland’s twin at birth. Was sorrow her sister as
well?

Sensing her feelings, Eli pulled back on the reins, halting
the team, his foot on the wagon brake. He stared out across the last stand of
land buffeted by an unforgiving sea. “Sorta makes you feel like you’re the only
person left on the face of the earth, don’t it?”

Maggie’s throat was dry. She did not look at him. She didn’t
have to look at him in order to let him know that was exactly how she felt.
Alone. Abandoned. Desolate. How could she speak of it? How could she put into
simple words her feelings of this place, the mingling of far older illusions it
evoked? How could she explain how it spoke to her of a place of remembered
dreams, of visions sprinkled with bits of truth, chips of falsehood, fragmented
strips of remembrance, and long, sad laments of what might have been?

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

She climbed out of the wagon and stood, wind-whipped and
chilled, halfway up a long, winding, narrow road, looking at the towering house
she would soon call home. But would it ever truly be her home? A shudder passed
over her, like a draft of frigid air. She sensed a presence here, a sadness.

The house on the point began to shimmer, and fade, and for
the briefest twinkling she thought she saw the blurred countenance of a woman.
Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. Was she going crazy then? Had her
sorrow, the lengthy journey here, been too much? Perhaps she was simply
manifesting her woman’s intuitive side. Or was it the Sight? She blinked to
clear the dazed sense of possession that seemed to have gripped her, and looked
at Eli, but even then, she felt its pull. Something about the house spoke to
her. Turning back, she stared again at the house and saw it for what it was—a
memorial Adrian Mackinnon had erected to the memory of his long-lost love, a
woman she knew only as Katherine Simon Mackinnon. The tribute of a lonely,
bitter man to his brother’s wife.

The sight of the great house withstanding the anger of the
sea was both awesome and frightening. There it stood, a reminder of a turbulent
drama and grand romance of the past. She should hate it for what it stood for,
for what it might come to mean, but she found she couldn’t. It was both sad and
maudlin, bittersweet and pitifully tragic, the last hapless stand of denial
against pain. It was the Battle of Culloden Moor, the passing of the Gaelic
tongue, the fading echo of the pipes. It beckoned to her with a flame of pageantry
and the pride of the Black Douglas. It called out to her to close her eyes and
feel defiance and pain, to picture a desolate, treeless heath. It spoke to her
in ways she could not express with words. Dear God, dear God, how it reminded
her of home. Of Scotland.

“Are you all right, Miz Mackinnon?” Eli’s voice cut through
the silence.

“Aye,” she said. “I’ll only be a moment longer.”

“Take all the time you need,” Eli said as Maggie looked at
him. She nodded and turned away.

Upon this jutting point, Adrian Mackinnon had built the
crown of his empire, a house too magnificent to be called anything but a
mansion. Huge and sprawling, it looked more like a hotel than a house. Homes of
this size and magnitude were commonplace in Scotland and England, but out here,
with nothing but ocean and trees and mountains for as far as the eye could see,
it seemed odd and strangely out of place, as if she had stumbled upon the
carcass of a giant whale bleaching in the middle of a desert with no
explanation of how it came to be there.

She felt haunted by it. Her first instinct was to turn away
and run, to leave this place, for she knew now, knew down to the very marrow of
her bones, that always and everywhere there would be an eternal presence here,
the shadowy memory of another woman.

What kind of man would build a house like this for himself
in the middle of such a vast wilderness?

A man who had loved, and loved deeply. A man who could not
forget. A man who built a monument to the past so he would remember. She
shivered, and drew her cape more closely about her, but it did not help. The
chill wasn’t from the cold. It came from a premonition, a feeling that she was
being inescapably drawn into the brooding passions of a romance long dead but
not forgotten.

Maggie turned, and made her way back to the wagon. “I’m
ready now,” she said, and Eli helped her climb up.

The drive from camp had been a tedious one, and exhausting,
most of her energy spent in keeping herself warm. Her feet, long ago too numb
to feel much of anything, were tucked snugly beneath her skirts in an effort to
warm them. When, at last, the wagon topped the point and drew up in front of
the door, she stood unsteadily, and clutched the back of the wagon seat for
support.

Eli was already coming around the wagon toward her. “Excuse
me, Miz Mackinnon,” he said, and swept her into his arms before she could step
down. Then, as if he wanted to explain away his bold actions, he said, “I
should’ve done this back at camp and kept you from falling in the mud.”

“You’ll get your clothes dirty, Mr. Carr,” she said.

“Don’t mind that none, ma’am. Besides, you did a pretty fair
job of cleaning the worst of it off yourself, and what’s left is pert near
dried.”

He deposited her in front of the dark mahogany door. “I know
you must be plumb wore-out…tired as a dog with eight feet,” he said with a
cheerful tone. “As soon as we’re inside, I’ll see what I can do to rustle you
up some hot coffee.” Coffee. Maggie forced herself to smile. She liked tea. She
looked at the door, an inhospitable-looking barrier that stood between her and
this house, and fought the urge to turn away, to run, before the doors opened
and she was swallowed up in the shadow of another woman. She could not speak
for the swelling tightness that came with the panic that clawed at her throat.
Eli had mistaken her silence, her staid acceptance, as fatigue, or perhaps he
knew, more than she, the ghost that awaited to greet her.

He opened the front door, drawing her inside with him.
“Well, here you are,” he said, looking around. “All brand-spanking-new and just
itching for a woman’s touch.”

Maggie felt the dull throb of her own nails digging into the
palms of her hands, and looking down, saw her knuckles were white and stiff
from the tight grip she had upon the handle of her wicker basket. Nothing but
silence greeted her; silence and long, eerie shadows that streaked across the
glossy, unmarred floor. How different from the stone hallways of Glengarry
Castle, worn smooth and dipped in the center from centuries of use.

“It’s a bit much at first,” he was saying, “catches you off
guard, it does. It’ll begin to feel like home in no time at all.”

Home?

Maggie had never doubted anything more in her entire life.
You
will like it here. You will. You will.
“Is there no one here?” she asked,
finding her voice at last. “No one at home?”

“Only Wong, I suspect, but don’t you go worrying none. He
used to be the camp cook, but he’s been taking care of the house good and
proper since your husband hired a new cook. You won’t have to fret about a
thing. Wong does the cleaning, and Molly Polly helps out. Mostly she does the
cooking.”

Eli had moved out of the enormous foyer and into another
room now, returning to the doorway and giving her a speculative look. As he
watched her stand just inside the doorway, he saw a small, willowy figure in
her mud-caked blue serge dress, clutching in her parchment-white hands a worn
wicker basket, her face pale and smeared with mud.

Somewhere inside the house, a door closed. Footsteps
approached. The light coming through the doorway was suddenly blocked, and
Maggie looked up to see a woman of warriorlike proportions coming toward them.
Her hair was thin and gray, twisted into such a small knot, it hardly seemed
worth the effort. Her eyes were hazel, now looking almost yellow-green, and
while not unkind, they were piercing and steady.

“This is Molly Polly,” Eli said. “Her husband, Big John
Polly, is the number two man here. She’s the one I told you about, the one who
does the cooking. Used to be the camp cook, along with Wong, but Adrian decided
to keep her cooking for no one but himself.”

“Only because I’m getting too old and too mean to get along
with any of the kitchen help,” she said. “Now, don’t you go believing any of
that whitewashing Eli’s giving me. If I listened to him, I might start
believing all that hoopla myself, and Big John says I’m hard enough to live
with as it is.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Polly,” Maggie said.

“Saints above, I ain’t been called Mrs. Polly since the day
I was married. You can call me Molly, or Molly P., or even M.P., if you like.”

Maggie noticed the way Molly was looking at her, not
critical or unfriendly, but more like she was making a comparison. There was
little doubt in Maggie’s mind as to whom she was being compared with, and how
she was quickly found to be lacking.

She looked around the room, seeing everything on the inside
was as perfect and new as the stone and redwood exterior. “It’s a lovely house.
It seems quite new.”

“It’s not quite three years old. It took four years to
build.”

“Were you here then? When it was being built?”

“I’ve been here since Adrian and his brother Alex started
their first camp.”

A large yellow dog of dubious lineage came into the room,
his nails clicking against the hardwood floor. He came up to Maggie and thrust
his cold, wet nose against her hand, sniffing and inspecting until, apparently
satisfied, he gave it a lick.

“That’s Israel,” Eli said. “He doesn’t belong to anyone in
particular, but he’s sort of taken up with Adrian.” He reached out and scratched
Israel on the head. “We call him Israel because he’s always wandering.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to keep you standing here in the middle
of the floor like this,” Molly said. “I can see you’re pert near tuckered out.
I imagine you’d like to rest.” She looked at Maggie’s muddy dress. “And maybe
change for dinner.”

“Aye, I wouldna like to come to dinner like this. It’s been
a long while since I’ve had a real bath,” Maggie said.

“I’ll put Israel out and see to dinner,” Molly said.

“Oh, Israel is no bother,” Maggie said. “I ken I’ll find him
to be good company.”

Molly glanced at Israel. “He’s company, all right, but I
can’t go vouching for how good he is.” Looking back at Maggie, she said, “If he
gets to be a bother, you can call me and I’ll turn him out.” She turned away,
then paused. “I’ll put some water on to heat for your bath, then I’ll show you
up to your room.”

Molly left as abruptly as she had come.

Soon after Molly’s departure, Eli exited, leaving Maggie
standing in the hall. A moment later, Molly returned, showing Maggie to a
bedroom upstairs.

Maggie bathed, changing into her dressing gown. The rest of
the afternoon she spent unpacking. At half past eight she was summoned to
dinner, and dined alone in the great dining room, where a table twenty feet long
reflected the light of three massive chandeliers overhead.

After the dishes were cleared away, Molly came in. She stood
silently for a moment, looking Maggie up and down. “I’ll be heading on home
now. Is there anything you need before I go?”

“No,” Maggie said. “I think I can manage. Thank you.”

“Well, Wong is about—if you should have need of him.
‘Course, you’ll have to go looking for him. Never in all my born days saw a
body that could disappear like he does. Never know he’s on the place. Moves
through this house like a ghost, he does. Must be those little black shoes.
They never make a sound. Nothing like these old clodhoppers of mine. You can
hear me coming from a mile off.” Molly paused, her eyes twinkling. “Well, here
I go again, talking your leg off, and you so tired, you can’t stand up
straight. I’ll be going on now.”

She was left alone once again, in the great dining room,
knowing that she and the Oriental man called Wong were the only two humans who
remained in a twenty-room house.

Maggie sat at the table until the candles in the candelabra
began to burn away, great masses of melted wax dripping down the base,
hardening into strange shapes. She went to the sideboard and picked up a gold,
two-branched candlestick. It was small and very heavy, but she could manage.
She lit its two candles with one from the candelabra. After blowing out the
candles on the table, she left the room.

Just before she reached the base of the enormous curving
marble staircase, she decided to take a quick tour of the downstairs, finding
the library and a room she could only think of as Adrian’s study. Although each
room was different, they all featured a great deal of what Eli had identified
as
primavera
, the prized, honey-colored South American hardwood.