Taming the Heiress (41 page)

"Let me open the door," Iain said, and Dougal set him down so that he could turn the gleaming brass knob in the oak door at the top of the stairs. While climbing, the boy had stopped a few times to open doors on the two levels below, peeking at bunks, kitchen, sitting room, and storage rooms.

Soon Meg joined them at the top, smiling, the faint flush in her cheeks brightening her beautiful aqua eyes, shining like the sea in sunlight. "It's not so very high," she said. "And I think the exercise is very good for me."

"Madam, you did well," he murmured, bowing while he waited for her to preceed him into the lantern house.

The walls of the compact, circular room were glassed all around above the wainscoting, giving an expansive view of sea and sky. The room was dominated by a huge, complex arrangement of glittering prismatic lenses in amber and clear glass.

"Oh!" Meg gasped. "What a beautiful lantern! I've never seen one of these so close." She took Iain's hand and walked with him around the perimeter of the huge light, which gleamed like a diamond, its hundreds of polished-glass surfaces cut like prisms, arranged in slightly angled rows to provide the most powerful illumination. The brass framework and fittings added even more brightness and beauty to the lens.

Pointing upward, Iain stood on his toes, trying to get a closer look. Dougal picked him up and held him high.

"Go ahead. You may touch it," he told Iain when the boy reached out. "The lamps are not burning yet. Oil lamps are used to light the lens," he explained, glancing at Meg. "They are lit at dusk and kept burning until dawn."

"This is what is called a Fresnel lens?" Meg asked.

"Aye, a Fresnel of the first order—there are seven levels of size and power. It was rather expensive to acquire a lantern as powerful as this one, but well worth it. Our investors will be pleased, I think. This lighthouse will be both enduring and functional, and it will protect this part of the coast for centuries." Dougal reached up to smooth his hand over one of the glazed, brilliant surfaces.

Meg went to the window and gazed out over the sea and sky. "How far can the light be seen?" she asked.

"We estimate eighteen miles on a clear night," Dougal said. "In deep fog, when the light may not cast far, there are bells set in a cupola in the roof. One of the keepers will ring out patterns to warn passing ships that there is a reef and a lighthouse nearby."

Meg nodded. "Fergus and Norrie will be quite busy."

"Aye. And I'm glad they were given this assignment. Those two are the perfect choice to be the keepers of the Caran Light. Of course, the Lighthouse Commission considered the excellent recommendations of the resident engineer and Lady Strathlin," Dougal added with a grin. "And The Commission prefers local men as lightkeepers, particularly seafarers, since they understand the moods of the sea and the changing weather peculiar to their own region."

"Grandmother Thora is pleased, too—I know she worried about Norrie going out each day for the fishing, now that he's getting older. And with three men tending the light, Norrie will still have time to fetch the mail, which he insists on doing."

Dougal set Iain down, and they joined Meg at the window. In the pale, vast sky, gray clouds moved fast over the horizon. Far below the high tower, down at the base of the immense dark rock, the sea was choppy and greenish in the rising wind.

"There! A boat, I see it!" Iain cried, pointing.

"Very observant, lad," Dougal said, peering toward the south. "You'll be a help to your grandfather and to Fergus MacNeill whenever you come to Caransay with us." He ruffled the boy's golden curls. Before their marriage, he and Meg had gently explained to Iain the truth about his parentage—as much as the child could understand at barely six and a half years old.

Iain had accepted the news easily, something Meg had attributed to his young age. Deeply grateful to have gained Iain's affection so readily, Dougal was sure that the boy's trusting heart had been shaped by the generous lessons of love and acceptance taught within the MacNeill family. He knew that he, himself, had learned from them as well.

"That must be Grandfather Norrie with our guests," Meg said, looking down at the boat coming over the water.

"Aye. My dear, I hope you do not object, but I believe Sir Frederick is among them. One of the commissioners mentioned the invitation in his last letter."

"If so, then he is welcome." She touched Iain's shoulder as she spoke. "We will always be in his debt. I sent word through my solicitors that his selfless deed more than paid the monetary debt that he owed... the baroness, and that she would not accept repayment of the funds."

"That quality of generosity," he said softly, "is one of the virtues I love best about the baroness."

"She learned the importance of generosity and forgiveness, too, in her struggles with that odious resident engineer," she said, wrinkling her nose.

He chuckled. "There are several men in the boat," he said, watching as the little craft approached the rock. "One of them will be the experienced lightkeeper assigned by the commissioners to train Norrie and Fergus. We prefer three keepers for each light, so that two may stay on duty while the third rests."

Meg nodded and stood silently for a few moments, flattening one gloved hand against the pristine glass. She did not watch her grandfather's boat, but gazed out to sea. Dougal touched her slim shoulder.

"Your thoughts, my love?" he asked quietly.

"I am thinking," she said, "that I was wrong, and that the resident engineer was right."

He looked down at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

"I am thinking," she went on, "that this light is a beautiful monument indeed, a lantern upon a finer future. It stands here in honor of all the lives lost in those waters—my father and your parents among them. With luck, no more lives will be lost because of this great, dark reef, and the future will indeed be brighter for all of us."

Dougal slipped his arm around his wife's shoulders and pulled her close. He dipped his head to kiss her temple softly beneath the tilted brim of her hat. For a moment he could not speak, for his throat tightened.

"I wish," he whispered, "that my parents could have known you. They would surely love you as much as I do."

She smiled silently, and he saw tears glaze her eyes.

"Look!" Iain said, pointing out to sea.

"Aye, the boat," Dougal said. "Thank the Lord they're so close to the quay at the base of the rock. The winds are picking up. We'll have a storm before long."

"I hope we can finish the ceremony before it sweeps in," Meg said. "Although I would not mind being stranded with you again on this rock, Mr. Stewart"—she smiled up at him so fetchingly that he felt desire spin inside of him—"I do not relish the thought of spending the day in the sitting room of the lighthouse entertaining a group of lighthouse commissioners." She slipped her arm around his waist.

"They would enjoy it, though, for it would give them time to solicit even more funds from Lady Strathlin." He grinned. "Don't fret. The ceremony will not take long—simply the cutting of a ribbon and the sharing of some whisky. No whisky for you two," he added. "Mrs. Berry sent a fruit brose for you both to drink."

"Look there!" Iain said again. "Do you see them?"

"See who, dear?" Meg asked.

"The water horses! Far out on the water. The
eichuisge,
all of them, are coming this way."

"What?" Meg gazed in the direction that her son pointed.

"What are you seeing?" Dougal asked.

"The white horses, there, in the foam," Iain said excitedly.

Dougal narrowed his eyes. Suddenly he saw, as he had seen once before, the beautiful, prancing shapes of a legion of horses, their hooves pounding forward, their manes spilling down, then rising again as their proud heads and chests were lifted. He watched, entranced.

"Oh!" Meg said. "Those are wave curls. The white foam on the highest waves sometimes looks like—"

"He's right, my love," Dougal said. "I see them, too—just where the light pours through the waves as they crest."

"Ah, I do see them," she murmured, smiling.

"Must be a hundred of them, all racing for the rock!" Iain laughed with delight. Dougal scooped him up to give the child a higher vantage point.

"They've come to give their blessing to the lighthouse today," Dougal said. "And you saw them first, my lad."

"He's got the magic of seeing the water horses. And why shouldn't he?" Meg asked with a smile. "He's the son of the most wonderful
each-uisge
of them all."

Dougal chuckled softly and drew them close, his son and his wife and the small one she carried, tucked them in his arms and closed his eyes in silent gratitude. A wave of love poured through him, magical, powerful, so real. Meg tilted her head toward him and he kissed her mouth tenderly.

"We'd better go downstairs now, my dear baroness," he murmured. "We've guests to welcome to the Caran Light."

The End

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followed by an excerpt from

WAKING THE PRINCESS

The Scottish Lairds Series

Book Two

Author's Note