Читать книгу Highland Hearts - Eva Hamilton Maria - Страница 8

Callander, Scotland 1748

Sheena Montgomery stood completely still at the top of Bracklinn Falls. The sound of rushing water filled the gorge. The rock underfoot felt hard and cold, a mirror image of her heart.

Alone, she looked past the tip of her toes dangling dangerously over the edge of the steep cliff. Several yards down the water crashed against the soft pudding stone, wearing it away. With all its fury, the water fought, eking out a way through the world. Pushing forward, not caring what it hurt in its path.

“Sheena?” a man’s voice leapt out of the silence behind her, making Sheena whirl around so fast she lost her footing. In shock, she waved her arms frantically trying to regain her balance.

The man raced forward. His strong arms pulled her away from a certain death. “There now, I’ve got you. You’re all right.”

Sheena stood staring at the man’s face, his raggedly long brown hair and beard unfamiliar to her. But his eyes, those deep brown, soul-piercing eyes. Unforgettable.

Sheena’s voice caught in her throat for a fleeting moment. “Logan?” Her eyes surely fooled her. She envisioned herself succumbing to her father’s mental illness. Because Logan McAllister had left Scotland five years ago. He couldn’t be here. She never thought she would see him again.

“I hoped to find you here, lassie.” Sheena just looked at Logan. In all the years he’d lived in the Americas, he’d never sent word. Not one letter saying he was still alive.

But she wasn’t losing her mind and wouldn’t die the same way her father had this past autumn. Logan’s arms cradled her against his warm chest. Her senses heightened. His smell, his touch, his very being, raced through her with dizzying speed. She stared at his lips, remembering their warmth.

“In our special place,” he told her, and Sheena couldn’t deny the meaning this place held for them. She remembered only too well all the times they had come here hand in hand, talking about the day they would wed.

Since the day he’d left, she’d hiked miles up this crag. Like a pilgrimage site, it became a shrine to their relationship. A place where she felt close to him again, like being in his presence, even though he was in another country.

But weeks stretched into months and then years and Sheena gave up on her silly girlhood dream, forced to acknowledge that Logan never meant to ever come back to Scotland. And yet, he stood in front of her now, grinning as if no time had passed and nothing had changed. Anger welled up in Sheena.

“Mr. McAllister.” She pulled away from him. She couldn’t say his given name as she always had before—he stood before her now almost as a stranger. Calling him Logan would show closeness, something she could no longer attest to. Besides, she would never give him the satisfaction of knowing how much she had pined for him during his absence or how much he had hurt her when he chose to leave.

He apparently didn’t agree with her logic. “We’re a little past formalities, aren’t we, lassie?” Logan’s lips formed a wry smile under his thick beard. A spark lit up the light golden flecks in the brown eyes Sheena had once adored.

“Nay, Mr. McAllister. I don’t think so.” A gust of wind sent Sheena’s auburn hair into an annoying flurry that blocked her vision. She raised her hands quickly to get control of it.

“You are a sight for sore eyes.” Logan’s wry smile turned into a full grin. “Five years left you even more beautiful.”

“Five years,” Sheena repeated, her irritation erupting, as she pulled roughly on her unruly locks to keep them in place.

“I still remembered how to get up to our waterfall.” Sheena furrowed her brow at Logan’s words, but Logan didn’t seem to acknowledge her anger. “It’s just as I remember.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t move, hardly dared to breathe as she watched him to see if he did indeed look just as she remembered him.

He still wore the same socks that didn’t slouch an inch lower than his knees where green ribbons held them up, but instead of his kilt he now wore brown breeches. The color had faded somewhat, and they looked as well-worn as his brown shoes.

His buttoned-up brown vest could do with some mending, not to mention how much scrubbing the collar of his white shirt needed.

Maybe in another time and place she would have offered to do such work. But not now. Not as she watched him draw in another seemingly peaceful breath. The pleasure he derived from his surroundings radiated from him and it infuriated Sheena all the more. Especially his apparent oblivion to her feelings.

“That’s wonderful that your memory didn’t fail you,” Sheena said in an uncharacteristically sarcastic tone. “But this waterfall is one of the only things left that didn’t change in your absence.”

Logan’s eyes opened and she looked directly into them only to hear, “God has the ability to change everything, lassie, and yet keep it the same.”

“Maybe in your world, but surely not in mine.” Since Logan left, not one single thing in Sheena’s life had remained the same. “Let’s start with the year you left Scotland, Logan. In 1743 the military built a road right through Callander, just in case they needed to use it to pacify any Highlanders who sought to rebel.” And in 1746 when the Jacobites did rebel, a bloodbath ensued.

This example stood as only one of many things that had changed in Sheena’s life over the past five years.

But surely Logan knew about this. It was only Sheena he didn’t know anything about anymore. He had made it very clear by his absence that he could live without her.

“Besides all this political nonsense, what else has changed in your life? From where I stand, everything looks the same to me as it did in the past.”

“Logan, you don’t understand. Everything has changed. The past is just that and I live in the present.” She bent down and snatched up her black shoes.

“And what of that?” Logan stepped closer, giving Sheena no recourse. She couldn’t back away from him, unless she wanted to meet her Maker. And as tough as life got, she would never succumb to that.

Sheena pushed her way around Logan. “I am sure the details of my life are of no interest to you.”

“Let me be the judge of that, lassie.” Logan followed her away from the edge of the waterfall to a rock she leaned against for support to put on her shoes.

She scowled at him as she walked away, jutting her chin high into the air. “Do as you wish, Logan. You always do anyway.” Her underlying contempt for him and his actions snapped through the chilly air. She never wanted him to leave Scotland, but he had done so anyway.

“And you don’t?” Logan kept up, even with her brisk pace.

“We both know that a man is given that privilege, while a woman is not.”

“Since when have you not lived and breathed for yourself?”

“Since you left.” Sheena stopped dead and faced him.

“Then you must tell me what happened to you in the past five years, lassie, so we can reverse it.”

“I already told you, it no longer matters. Events are set in motion. Forces beyond my control and even yours, propel me toward a future that no longer resembles the past.” Sheena held fast to her skirts and walked on.

“Sheena.” Her even stride faltered at the sound of her name coming from his lips. “Whatever has happened can be undone. Nothing is ever final, not even death.” He came up beside her again. “I am here now. We can fix this.”

But Sheena couldn’t argue any longer. Being livid, she didn’t trust what would come out of her mouth. She knew cementing her new path in life after he left meant she couldn’t turn back time now. If she felt gracious, she could thank God he lived to tell of his journey, but she wouldn’t listen to his tales.

It hurt too much seeing him.

“My life is no longer any concern of yours.” Tears welled in Sheena’s eyes. If only he’d loved her enough to remain in Scotland. But he ignored all her pleading. Did what he wanted. Left. And now that he had returned, nothing remained the same.

“You are wrong. It is. It always has been and it always will be.” Logan reached out for her hand, but she pulled away.

“Nay.” Sheena turned swiftly. “Nay, it isn’t.” She ran from him.

Logan could see over the whole village of Callander with his feet planted on the crag. He knew exactly which path Sheena was taking to her house, but he couldn’t follow her.

He sighed. He wanted the separation from Sheena to end. Already spending five years away tortured him enough. But evidently, she needed time to get used to the idea that he had returned. That took him completely by surprise.

He’d dreamed about his homecoming every day since the day he left the Highlands. He’d amassed so many versions of their reunion and yet none of them played out like this. In his dreams, Sheena ran to him, wrapped her arms around him and professed her undying love. Somehow, he needed to figure out a way to make her react like that.

If only he could tell her why he’d left Scotland five years ago. But he couldn’t. To do so would go against her father and the secrecy he’d sworn Logan to uphold.

And Logan knew, if he breathed a word to Sheena about what had transpired five years ago before his departure, her father would never allow Logan to marry her. Not then. And not now. Not ever. And Logan couldn’t let that happen.

So he never told Sheena he’d met with her father to ask his permission to marry her. And he never told Sheena that her father had demanded that Logan prove his worthiness to marry her by risking his life to accept an indenturement in the Americas. Nor did she know that as a measure of good faith, her father had given Logan a Montgomery family heirloom. It was a wooden box with leaves carved all over it that housed a letter her father had written, telling Logan he could marry Sheena after he made the treacherous voyage back to Scotland.

But tearing himself away from Sheena to accept his indenturement in the Americas had ripped Logan apart. The shock and betrayal in her darkened amber eyes had agonized him. Hearing her plead with him to stay, seeing her tears, watching her anger develop had pained him. But he couldn’t see another option. Not when he had been dirt-poor and had nothing to offer her besides his love.

He had hoped they would wed. And yet there he had stood at the top of their waterfall, their most special place, telling her he would leave Scotland for an indenturement in the Americas.

He knew it didn’t make any sense to her. He knew he’d hurt her. He only prayed the situation didn’t turn into something irreparable. He would go and talk to her father right after he made amends with Sheena and, of course, after he dug up that wooden box containing the hidden letter he kept to remind her father of the promise he’d made.

However upset Sheena was now, after his explanation she would know he’d never meant to hurt her. She would understand that everything he’d done he’d done to secure their future together. She would forgive him. At least he prayed it would be so.

Turning his attention toward the countryside where he grew up, he walked down the treeless crag, to the barren land beneath, with his life’s meager belongings hardly filling the slim bag he flung over his shoulder.

Logan’s shoes sank into the damp earth as he walked home, their wet sound his only accompaniment. Not even a bird greeted him. If only his reunion with Sheena had turned out differently, with her love the same as it had been their whole lives. Maybe then the five years he’d spent away would seem like nothing more than a bad dream. But he couldn’t ignore or wish away the reality of the situation. She despised him for leaving. And his return marked the beginning of atonement, rather than triumph.

Sheena came down the crag like a woman running from an attacking poisonous adder snake. Gasping for breath, she leaned against a rock at the edge of the village to steady herself. Glancing back up the crag, she saw nothing but the steep cliff. Logan hadn’t followed her.

The tears she ran from stormed out. She fell to her knees in the soggy moss, not caring when the cold wetness soaked through her skirts. Logan’s unexpected homecoming caused too much pain. He thought they could just pick up from where they’d left off five years ago. Not possible.

Reliving all the hurt he’d caused her, she cried until she completely exhausted herself and couldn’t shed another tear. Taking a long, deep breath, she turned her face up toward heaven and wiped her tear-streaked cheeks with her hands. Standing slowly, she forced her mind to focus on the here and now. The supper hour loomed, and her attendance would be mandatory. Duty and obligations beckoned her. As they always seemed to do.

After shaking her green, sodden outer skirt several times, she gave up. The chances of her drying those skirts before reaching home stood as high as the skirts themselves coming to life and saving her from her impending engagement. An impossibility.

Walking as if an executioner awaited her arrival, she spied her white two-story house far too soon. Smoke wafted up from the chimneys on opposite ends of the house, signaling the use of all the fireplaces therein. The numerous windows on each floor winked at her in the sunlight, mocking her foul mood.

Sheena stopped outside the main entrance and took another deep breath. The walk home had returned her breathing to normal, but her mind remained in turmoil with every thought of Logan. She needed to stop thinking about him. To compose herself.

She hesitated longer, not wanting to go in. She didn’t know if she could maintain her composure. Although, she reasoned, no one would see the inner workings of her mind if she just kept her expression calm. Not that she would get any sympathy anyway. That, she knew only too well.

Moving forward, she shoved Logan out of her mind. And not just for supper. She needed to push him out of her life for good. Her future didn’t include him.

She thrust the door open. “Well, it’s about time,” her aunt Jean shouted, even before Sheena closed the rest of the world out.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Jean,” Sheena called automatically as she quickly took off her dark blue woolen shawl. She forced one foot in front of the other, propelling herself to the drawing room.

“Where have you been for this long?” Jean continued.

“No doubt out roaming the countryside,” Sheena’s mother piped up in her usual tone of resentment, not even bothering to look up from her embroidery.

Sheena hastened over to her mother’s chair. “I’m sorry, Mother.” She kissed Tavia on the cheek.

“And what about your aunt? Do I not deserve the same respect as …”

“Aye,” Sheena interrupted Jean’s tirade, kissing the woman’s cheek as well, then crossing the room to sit close to the fire, hoping her skirts would dry before anyone noticed.

The chair’s hearth location served an extra purpose in keeping her at a more guarded distance from them. Dealing pleasantly with the pair of sisters on a good day took every ounce of concentration. After seeing Logan mere moments before, Sheena highly doubted she was up to the task today.

If only she could run straight upstairs to her bedroom, but what a verbal lashing she would receive for behaving in such a way. Best to try and sit quietly until supper got served momentarily, and then she could spend the evening alone, as she did every night.

“Why do you persist in going out in the countryside, child? What a filthy place,” Jean said, scrunching her face as she took in Sheena’s green skirt. “Just look at yourself.” Sheena tried laying her hands over her knees, but she couldn’t cover the stains taking hold of the woolen fibers. Just as she couldn’t hide from herself the scar Logan had stained onto her heart.

And to her annoyance, Tavia picked that moment to feign interest and look up from her needlework. “Sheena, do you know how long it’s going to take the maid to scrub that out of your skirt?”

“I can do it myself, Mother.”

“I know that,” her mother clucked her tongue. “But you will not. You cannot behave like a servant. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Tavia wagged the needle at her. “And now the maid must waste unnecessary time on your clothes, when she could be doing other, more important chores.”

Her mother always insisted on Sheena acting like a lady and keeping company with her own wealthier landowning class, even though no one else in the region did and Sheena didn’t even hold the title of Lady. Nevertheless, Tavia had always hated Sheena’s friendships with Logan and his brother’s sister-in-law, Cait. Even when they played as mere children. And it all came down to money. Logan and Cait lived a poor life in the countryside, farming the land. Thus, Tavia considered them useless, due to their inability to help raise Sheena in society. A goal Tavia now neared fulfilling.

And Sheena remembered well enough her mother harboring ill thoughts toward Logan for constantly “being about” as she put it. But Sheena and Logan always remained careful never to let her mother, or anyone else for that matter, know how much more than just friends they had become. Her mother would never stand for such a match and Logan and Sheena agreed to wait for the perfect time to break the news that they loved each other. Although Sheena knew only too well now that the time had never come. And never would.

Logan had wanted to do everything properly back then. He never asked Sheena to marry him, because he said he must ask her father first. But instead of following their plan and meeting with her father, Logan had met with Sheena and told her he’d accepted an indenturement in the Americas and would come home in three years, so instead of a wedding band, Sheena received a green moss agate stone to remember Logan by before he boarded a ship and sailed away.

Sheena’s head had spun for days trying to understand why Logan hadn’t followed their plan to ask her father for her hand. If Logan had, they would already live as husband and wife now. But it didn’t matter. Not now that she had turned twenty-three and Logan twenty-four. It was all so very long ago. When she still believed in fairy tales and love and Logan with all his promises.

Now, however, she knew better. She wore the scar Logan etched onto her heart. But try as she might to throw away that green moss agate stone, she never could. She’d convinced herself she didn’t hold on to it as a reminder of him, rather for the protection people believed the stone brought to the carrier.

Sheena looked to Jean, knowing she needed to clear her thoughts, and she couldn’t endure another lecture from her mother right now. The shock of seeing Logan had exhausted her.

She couldn’t love Logan now. And not just because she didn’t trust him anymore. Her future didn’t include him. He’d left and hadn’t even returned as he promised after three years. For all she knew he’d married another woman during his time away. He’d forfeited all rights to be included in her future plans and that is exactly what happened.

“Aunt Jean.” Sheena got her attention. “Walking in the countryside is very good exercise. You should try it, at least once.” Jean’s facial expression gave every indication Sheena wouldn’t persuade her.

“Nothing good ever comes from the countryside, child. Oh, just thinking about some of the people who live out there makes me want to call for my smelling salts.” Tavia laughed at her sister’s theatrics before turning her eyes back down to admire her handiwork. But Sheena only half listened. She succeeded in getting Jean on another tangent, but the fight within her own mind raged.

“Just take that terrible MacDonald boy who is always spitting. Why didn’t his parents teach him any manners? And just yesterday, I ventured as far as the village and had the misfortune of running into that Murray woman and she just about talked my ear off. Don’t people know when they’ve said enough?” Jean looked to her sister for confirmation, and began again when she met with her sister’s acceptance. “Then there was that McAllister fellow. Remember him? Terrible lad. Good for nothing.” Sheena flinched, her insides tense. Why did her aunt have to bring up his name? All she wanted to do right now was forget about him.

“Now, Jean.” Tavia laughed. “Even I would say that’s not very charitable.”

“Maybe not, but true nonetheless.” She held her embroidery tight in her hands, but from what Sheena could see, her work didn’t possess many new stitches since this morning. “I said good riddance to him and I will say the same to all the rest of the poor Highlanders who get cleared out of Scotland.”

“Then, Aunt Jean, you may have to add a welcome home when they return, as well.” Sheena couldn’t bring herself to say Logan’s name, but she would defend her fellow clansmen. Poor or not, they were her brethren.

“Really? That lad made it home?” Jean scoffed, raising her eyebrows.

“He is well past the age of being referred to as a lad. But aye, he returned.”

Sheena held her temper in check as her aunt spewed forth her distaste of Highlanders. “Why on earth would he come back? There is nothing for his kind here. Just goes to prove my point about those people. No sense. Do you know how much it costs to travel by sea? No wonder his people are so poor. They have no idea how to make or save money. Dreadful waste. It is like a different world up here in the Highlands. I so miss Glasgow. And civilization.”

The sound of a servant entering the room diverted their attention. “Supper will be served now,” the parlor maid said as she curtsied awkwardly, fleeing the room the second her words escaped her lips. Sheena didn’t blame Cait for rushing away—she only wished she could, as well.

“See what I mean.” Jean pinned her needle into the cloth. “You must be thankful your fate is tied to a notable house Sheena. You will only have to suffer these people as your servants. You shall be forever grateful to me for that, child.” Jean laid her embroidery aside and rose with an air of dignity to lead the way to supper. Sheena didn’t argue. Her aunt wouldn’t understand why Sheena considered Cait her best friend.

“Aye, Jean, we are very thankful to you and Kyle for finding such a suitable match for Sheena.” Tavia took her sister’s arm, creating a wall in front of Sheena that made her unable to sidestep them. “Arranging your betrothal to Ian Mackenzie was the best thing your uncle and aunt could have done for you Sheena. Ian is the son of one of the richest tobacco lords in Glasgow—you will be set up in the nicest house …”

“Estate,” Jean corrected her.

“Aye, estate.” Tavia grinned. “And Sheena, you will have all the finest things. You will want for nothing.”

Maybe one day Sheena would feel gratitude for Jean and Tavia’s interference into her life, but not today. Not after seeing Logan at their waterfall. And surely not after he stirred all those old emotions she’d painstakingly buried inside the locked chambers of her heart.

Yet with her dowry bestowed upon Ian, to whom did that heart belong?