Waterfall Glen (30 page)

He smiled with quiet pride, and said, “They’re okay.”

“They’re a whole lot better than okay. This’ll cheer the Alexanders up.” She kissed him and whispered in his ear, “You’re hired!”

When they got back to the glen they stopped off at the cottage Sandy was staying in, and handed in his set of photos. He looked through the first half-dozen pictures, then, without saying a word, shook Cameron’s hand.

“How are Pamela and Ross?” Kate asked.

“Still sleeping.”

“Sandy, I’m so sorry about what happened.”

“Lady Kate, you’ve nothing to apologize for.”

“The paper’s are talking about the cur—”

“I’ll make sure Ross and Pamela don’t see them.”

Kate was about to leave but, before she did, she couldn’t help asking, “Sandy, do you think there really is a curse on my family?”

The little crofter couldn’t meet her eye. Instead he looked down the length of the glen, at the deserted townships around the lochan and the abandoned church in the distance.

Kate put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have put you in an awkward position like that.”

Still not able to meet her gaze, he reached up and clasped her hand in his own.

When he finally looked at her, it was to say, “Does this mean you’re going to sell up and go back to the States?”

Kate shook her head. “It means I’ll have to work even harder to save the glen, though. Mr. Fraser and I are about to make up an advertisement to put in magazines around the world. Do you think Pamela and Ross would mind if we used one of their photos in it?”

Sandy Alexander’s face brightened, and he said, “They’d be thrilled if you did.”

“Meantime, is there anything we can do to help them or you?” Kate asked.

“It’s okay, Lady Kate. Everybody’s been so kind. They haven’t let us want for anything. I don’t think I could ever
repay them.”

“If the business works out like I’m hoping it will, you’ll have repaid them a dozen times over,” she told him.

When they got to Greystane, Finlay greeted them with an anxious look and a question: “You didn’t see Hamish when you were coming up the crag, did you?”

Kate shook her head.

“The rascal’s disappeared. He sometimes wanders off through a hole in the wall and scrambles down the crag, but it’s not like him to miss his lunch.”

“Want us to have a look for him?” Kate asked.

“It’s okay. I’ll give him a wee while yet.”

“Let us know if he doesn’t turn up, and we’ll mount a little search party.”

Finlay nodded.

Kate and Cameron carried on up to the sitting room. Kate settled on the chaise longue with a pad and paper to note down ideas for an advert. Similarly equipped, Cameron sank into what had become “his” armchair.

“Okay, where do we start?” Kate asked.

“How about with a name for the firm.”

She nodded. “Any suggestions?”

“I’m trying to come up with something inspiring involving the names Greystane or Glen Cranoch, but nothing’s springing to mind.”

Kate thought for a few moments, then said, “What about The Highland Fling Wedding Company?”

“I like it,” Cameron said. “How about some sort of
slogan to go with it—you know, the way Pepsi has
The Real Thing.”

Kate thought about that, then said, “Finlay told me a Highland Fling is a dance people do until the music stops or until they drop, not caring where the steps take them or whether all that it makes them is tired in the end. He told me it was a dance people did to the beat of their heart. How would that sound:
The Highland Fling Wedding Company—Dance to the Beat of Your Heart.”

Cameron nodded, and said, “Works for me.”

Kate wrote the name and slogan at the top of the page, then said, “Okay, how do we go about describing everything that Greystane and Glen Cranoch can offer a couple who want to get married?”

Cameron thought about that. “Difficult knowing where to begin, isn’t it?” he said.

Kate nodded.

“It might help if we break it down into the different parts that make up a wedding, then try to come up with some evocative words for each one,” Cameron suggested.

“Okay,” Kate said. “There’s the ceremony itself, of course, and the meal …” she wrote the words down and underlined them as she spoke.

“And the photos,” Cameron added.

Kate looked up from her pad and smiled, loving the way he was getting as caught up in the idea as she was.

“And the dancing,” he added.

But by now Kate wasn’t listening to him any more, or
writing anything down. She’d turned over a new page and was sketching Cameron as he noted ideas under each of the little headings, so caught up in what he was doing that he didn’t realize he was the subject of her attention.

She finished before he did, and by the time he said, “Kate, I think I’ve got it,” and looked up from his page, Kate was holding up a sheet of paper with an almost perfect likeness of him drawn on it.

“Kate!” he said, taken aback by what he saw.

She just smiled.

Cameron took the paper from her and studied the drawing, then looked at Kate, seeing her in a new light. “I knew you could draw, but I didn’t realize you could do anything like this,” he said.

“Neither did I,” she told him. The portrait was as lifelike as a photo, but her pencil had also recorded things no camera lens could capture; a hint of hidden depths, a suggestion of what made the man.

Modestly changing the subject, she said, “I hope at least one of us was doing what we were supposed to be doing: what did you manage to come up with?”

Cameron tore his gaze away from the portrait, looked at his own sheet of paper, and read out what he’d written: “
For vows exchanged in a hilltop castle, and photos taken beside a cascading waterfall; for a feast in a banquet hall, and all the enchantment of a Highland ball; for the history, mystery, and romance of Scotland’s most beautiful glen; for the love of your life, and for memories that will last a lifetime: Highland Fling
Weddings—dance to the beat of your heart.”

Kate clapped her hands with delight, and said, “This calls for a drink.”

“Want me to go downstairs for a couple of cold ones?” Cameron asked.

Kate nodded.

Cameron opened the sitting room door just as Finlay was about to knock on it. There was a worried look on his face, and Cameron guessed what had put it there. “Still no sign of Hamish?” he asked.

Finlay shook his head.

“Want a hand to look for him?” Kate said.

“I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t want you and Mr. Fraser having to change any plans because of Hamish and me.”

“I wanted to get some more pictures of the glen to go with the adverts, anyway,” Cameron said to make Finlay feel better.

“Hamish has never been gone this long before,” Finlay said. “I hate to think he’s got himself lost or cragfast somewhere.”

“Crag what?” Kate asked.

“Cragfast—you know, climbed up somewhere he couldn’t get back down from.”

The thought of the lovable little dog whimpering away on a cliff ledge made Kate drop everything.

Five minutes later they were heading through the door in the outer wall and down the summit steps. When they got to the path at the bottom, where the Land Rover was
parked, Kate said, “Should we split up?”

“It might be best, if you don’t mind,” Finlay told her. “How about if you look down by the lochan and Mr. Fraser and I go this way,” he said, pointing down the path that led to Waterfall Bridge.

Kate nodded.

“Do you want to take the Land Rover?” Finlay asked, reaching in his pocket for the keys.

Kate shook her head. “It’s too nice a day. I’d rather walk.” She kissed Cameron, waved to Finlay and headed down the track that wound around Castle Crag and led to the lochan below.

Cameron and Finlay started along the path to the right, towards the hanging valley between the two crags. At the end of it Finlay said, “If I take this bank, could you take the opposite one, Mr. Fraser?”

Cameron nodded. He hurried down the steps, looking at the wooden sleepers below his feet rather than the wooded slope on either side, and crossed the bridge.

Jamie’s Crag was too steep for Hamish to climb, and so was the staircase cut into it, so if the little Westie had crossed the bridge the only way he could have gone was to the left, along the forested lower slope of the hanging valley. Cameron hesitated on the edge of the woods, trying not to think about the last time he’d searched in a forest, then took a deep breath and headed into the trees.

He was startled by every twig that snapped underfoot, unsettled by the movement of each branch in the breeze.
He didn’t notice that the trees weren’t bare-branched but had leaves that were a dozen beautiful shades of green …

He didn’t notice the little specks suspended in slanting shafts of late afternoon sunlight…

The resilient give of the forest floor beneath his feet…

Or the sweetness of singing birds from high above.

All he noticed was the silence between the birdsongs, the menace in the shadows between the shafts of sunlight, the tree roots like half-buried bones, the dryness in his throat and the moisture on his brow.

After he’d been walking for about ten minutes he noticed something else, too, something so un-nerving that it stopped him in his tracks. The feeling that he was being watched: not from the left, where the embankment sloped down to the river a dozen yards below; but from the right, where the rising slope steepened and forest gave way to crag and heather.

The first time he looked he saw nothing. Telling himself his mind was playing tricks, he started walking again.

However the sensation of being watched was so strong that he stopped a few yards further on and looked up to his right again. This time he noticed a black slash in a rocky outcrop about thirty yards up the slope. It was like a large, irregular letterbox, and he guessed it was the mouth of a cave that had been almost covered with boulders, either by hand in an attempt at concealment, or by chance in a rockfall. The opening was just big enough for a small dog like Hamish to climb into.

Glad of the excuse to get out of the forest, Cameron scrambled up the slope. Once, as he looked up at the black slash in the rocks above, he thought he saw the flash of a pair of eyes staring at him out of the darkness. “Hamish?” he called out. But there was no answering bark, and the small eyes disappeared before he could even be sure he’d seen them.

The shadows cast by the setting sun advanced rapidly up the rocky slope, drawing closer to the small opening. Cameron quickened his pace, racing to get to the cleft before it was swallowed in blackness because he didn’t have a torch with him.

He reached the small opening just before the sunset shadows merged with the blackness of the cave. For the first few seconds his eyes weren’t sufficiently dark-adapted to see anything other than a thin band of warm orange sunlight slanting across the rock floor.

However, as his eyes adjusted and he was able to distinguish shape and shade, he saw what looked like a rusty strip of metal lying at an angle across the band of light. It was like part of a sword, he thought, but the band of sunlight narrowed even as he watched. Before he could get a closer look, the inside of the cave was swallowed up by the darkness that marks the end of the day.

“My kingdom for a torch,” Cameron said. He’d heard that the surviving Jacobite clansmen hid their weapons after Culloden, and guessed he’d stumbled across a little horde of them now. Peering into the depths of the cave, he
wondered what else might lie hidden in the darkness. An old flintlock musket, maybe, some rusty dirks and a pistol or two—

And then from the blackness in front of Cameron came a sighing that would have frightened the life out of him if he hadn’t heard it once before and known what to expect next. He moved his head out of the way and, sure enough, an owl flew out of the opening, passing so close that his face was caressed by the draught from its soft-feathered, slowly beating wings.

Cameron turned to follow the bird’s flight. As he did, he noticed a movement from the corner of his eye: a small white dog trotting along the edge of the treeline, about to head into the forest below. “Hamish!” he called out.

The terrier stopped and looked around, as if not sure where the voice had come from.

“Hamish, over here!” Cameron called out, scrambling down the scree towards the terrier. Cameron got the feeling Hamish was relieved to see him: the little dog barked a couple of times and started hurrying up the slope.

When Cameron got to the Westie he lifted him up in his arms, gave him a comforting little hug and got a lick on the cheek in return. Cameron was more of a cat person than a dog-lover, and normally wouldn’t have taken too kindly to a canine lick on the cheek. But now he just smiled, won over by the display of affection and delighted to have found the little pal who meant so much to Finlay and Kate.

And besides, he was glad to have a little buddy himself for the twilight walk back through the woods.

Cameron and Hamish arrived back at Castle Crag just as Finlay was about to get into the Land Rover. After a joyous reunion with his beloved little terrier, Finlay said to Cameron, “Kate’s not back yet—I was just about to see if I could give her a lift up from the glen. Want to come along?”