He had a sudden startling vision of Claire Randall’s fine white limbs, locked in wild abandon with the naked, straining body of a red-haired man, the two bodies slick with rain and stained with crushed grass, twisting in ecstasy among the standing stones. The vision was so shocking in its specificity that it left him trembling, sweat running down his chest to vanish into the steaming water of the bath.
Christ! How was he going to meet Claire Randall’s eyes, next time they met? What was he going to say to Brianna, for that matter? “Read any good books lately?” “Seen any good flicks?” “D’you know you’re illegitimate?”
He shook his head, trying to clear it. The truth was that he didn’t know what to do next. It was a messy situation. He wanted no part in it, and yet he did. He liked Claire Randall; he liked Brianna Randall, too – much more than liked her, truth be told. He wanted to protect her, and save her whatever pain he could. And yet there seemed no way to do that. All he could do was keep his mouth shut until Claire Randall did whatever it was she planned to do. And then be there to pick up the pieces.
3 MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
I wondered just how many tiny tea shops there were in Inverness. The High Street is lined on both sides with small cafes and tourist shops, as far as the eye can see. Once Queen Victoria had made the Highlands safe for travelers by giving her Royal approval of the place, tourists had flocked north in ever-increasing numbers. The Scots, unaccustomed to receiving anything from the South but armed invasions and political interference, had risen to the challenge magnificently.
You couldn’t walk more than a few feet on the main street of any Highland town without encountering a shop selling shortbread, Edinburgh rock, handkerchiefs embroidered with thistles, toy bagpipes, clan badges of cast aluminum, letter-openers shaped like claymores, coin purses shaped like sporrans (some with an anatomically correct “Scotchman” attached underneath), and an eye-jangling assortment of spurious clan tartans, adorning every conceivable object made of fabric, from caps, neckties, and serviettes down to a particularly horrid yellow “Buchanan” sett used to make men’s nylon Y-front underpants.
Looking over an assortment of tea towels stenciled with a wildly inaccurate depiction of the Loch Ness monster singing “Auld Lang Syne,” I thought Victoria had a lot to answer for.
Brianna was wandering slowly down the narrow aisle of the shop, head tilted back as she stared in amazement at the assortment of merchandise hanging from the rafters.
“Do you think those are real?” she said, pointing upward at a set of mounted stag’s antlers, poking their tines inquisitively through an absolute forest of bagpipe drones.
“The antlers? Oh, yes. I don’t imagine plastics technology’s got quite that good, yet,” I replied. “Besides, look at the price. Anything over one hundred pounds is very likely real.”
Brianna’s eyes widened, and she lowered her head.
“Jeez. I think I’ll get Jane a skirt-length of tartan instead.”
“Good-quality wool tartan won’t cost a lot less,” I said dryly, “but it will be a lot easier to get home on the plane. Let’s go across to the Kiltmaker store, then; they’ll have the best quality.”
It had begun to rain – of course – and we tucked our paper-wrapped parcels underneath the raincoats I had prudently insisted we wear. Brianna snorted with sudden amusement.
“You get so used to calling these things ‘macs,’ you forget what they’re really called. I’m not surprised it was a Scot that invented them,” she added, looking up at the water sheeting down from the edge of the canopy overhead. “Does it rain all the time here?”
“Pretty much,” I said, peering up and down through the downpour for oncoming traffic. “Though I’ve always supposed Mr. Macintosh was rather a lily-livered sort; most Scots I’ve known were relatively impervious to rain.” I bit my lip suddenly, but Brianna hadn’t noticed the slip, minor as it was; she was eyeing the ankle-deep freshet running down the gutter.
“Tell you what, Mama, maybe we’d better go up to the crossing. We aren’t going to make it jaywalking here.”
Nodding assent, I followed her up the street, heart pounding with adrenaline under the clammy cover of my mac. When are you going to get it over with? my mind demanded. You can’t keep watching your words and swallowing half the things you start to say. Why not just tell her?
Not yet, I thought to myself. I’m not a coward – or if I am, it doesn’t matter. But it isn’t quite time yet. I wanted her to see Scotland first. Not this lot – as we passed a shop offering a display of tartan baby booties – but the countryside. And Culloden. Most of all, I want to be able to tell her the end of the story. And for that, I need Roger Wakefield.
As though my thought had summoned it into being, the bright orange top of a battered Morris caught my eye in the parking lot to the left, glowing like a traffic beacon in the foggy wet.
Brianna had seen it too – there couldn’t be many cars in Inverness of that specific color and disreputability – and pointed at it, saying, “Look, Mama, isn’t that Roger Wakefield’s car?”
“Yes, I think so,” I said. There was a cafe on the right, from which the scent of fresh scones, stale toast, and coffee drifted to mingle with the fresh, rainy air. I grabbed Brianna’s arm and pulled her into the cafe.
“I think I’m hungry after all,” I explained. “Let’s have some cocoa and biscuits.”
Still child enough to be tempted by chocolate, and young enough to be willing to eat at any time, Bree offered no argument, but sat down at once and picked up the tea-stained sheet of green paper that served as the daily menu.
I didn’t particularly want cocoa, but I did want a moment or two to think. There was a large sign on the concrete wall of the parking lot across the street, reading PARKING FOR SCOTRAIL ONLY, followed by various lowercase threats as to what would happen to the vehicles of people who parked there without being train riders. Unless Roger knew something about the forces of law and order in Inverness that I didn’t know, chances were that he had taken a train. Granted that he could have gone anywhere, either Edinburgh or London seemed most likely. He was taking this research project seriously, dear lad.
We had come up on the train from Edinburgh ourselves. I tried to remember what the schedule was like, with no particular success.
“I wonder if Roger will be back on the evening train?” Bree said, echoing my thoughts with an uncanniness that made me choke on my cocoa. The fact that she wondered about Roger’s reappearance made me wonder just how much notice she had taken of young Mr. Wakefield.
A fair amount, apparently.
“I was thinking,” she said casually, “maybe we should get something for Roger Wakefield while we’re out – like a thank-you for that project he’s doing for you?”
“Good idea,” I said, amused. “What do you think he’d like?”
She frowned into her cocoa as though looking for inspiration. “I don’t know. Something nice; it looks like that project could be a lot of work.” She glanced up at me suddenly, brows raised.
“Why did you ask him?” she said. “If you wanted to trace people from the eighteenth century, there’re companies that do that. Genealogies and like that, I mean. Daddy always used Scot-Search, if he had to figure out a genealogy and didn’t have time to do it himself.”
“Yes, I know,” I said, and took a deep breath. We were on shaky ground here. “This project – it was something special to… to your father. He would have wanted Roger Wakefield to do it.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a while, watching the rain spatter and pearl on the cafe window.
“Do you miss Daddy?” she asked suddenly, nose buried in her cup, lashes lowered to avoid looking at me.