CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE LIVINGSTONES REACHED Lismore Island at dusk the next day and were greeted by a dozen rabbits hopping around on the little strip of sand as they made their way up from the beach. When they’d crested the dune, Old Donnie sounded the horn, startling Drustan and causing him to wail.
Very soon, Livingstones were coming down the path to greet them. People were laughing, throwing their arms around them, kissing their cheeks. The commotion unsettled Drustan even more. “I want to go home, Lottie. I want to go home,” he said, flapping his hands uncontrollably.
“Aye, we’re almost there,” she assured him.
“Where’s Bernt, then?” called out a woman. She was one of three widows in their clan. All three had been frequent visitors to Bernt’s salon, coming round with a pie, or to mend shirts that did not need mending. Lottie had hoped she’d not have to address her father’s absence so soon. She needed to think. She needed to plan. But she knew these people—they would not rest until they knew what had become of their chief. So she slowed her step and reluctantly turned around to look at the crowd behind her. Her heart crawled to her throat. For all his faults, her father was a beloved man. “Have you no’ heard from Norval and Mark, then?” she asked.
Everyone looked around them. “Norval and Mark were with you,” someone said.
“They’re probably hiding,” Mr. MacLean muttered.
“Where is Bernt?” someone called.
“My father...” Her throat tightened, and she cleared it. How did one announce that their chief had passed on? “He’s... Well, he’s dead.” Her inelegant announcement was met with gasps and soft cries of distress.
“Dead! But how?”
Lottie’s eyes began to burn with tears. “We met with a wee bit of trouble, we did. And we...we—”
“I’ll tell them,” Duff said firmly, and removed himself from the embrace of his wife and children and stepped before Lottie. “Allow me, Lottie.” He turned to the group. “It’s a tale as old as time.”
There were several stifled groans, but Lottie was grateful to Duff for sparing her the necessity of telling the story about their demise. Duff told it all right, on that grassy hill, with rabbits all around them. And when he was done, some were quietly weeping. Others were visibly angry. “’Tis no’ right,” said Gavin Livingstone. “’Tis no’ right at all.”
“What are we to do without a chief?” someone near the back shouted. “We must have a chief, aye? We’ve taken the stills as he asked, but he said we’d all be rich.”
“What?” Lottie asked, lifting her head. “My father asked you to take down the stills?”
“Aye,” said another. “The morning you left, he bid us take down the stills, and remove any trace so that no one could ever know. We didna need them any more, Lottie, for we’d all be rich.”
“We’re no’ rich,” MacLean said bitterly.
“The laird is to come Monday!” said a woman. “Who will answer for the rents?”
“We must have a chief,” said another. “It must be Lottie.”
“What? No!” Lottie exclaimed, and held up her hands. “No, I canna be your chief. Duff will take charge for now, aye?”
“For God’s sake, no’ Duff,” Mr. MacLean said. “He’d turn us into a theatrical troupe, he would. It must be you, Lottie. I daresay it is you. We all know you’ve been chief for a verra long time, aye?”
A chorus of ayes rose up to agree.
Panic rose so quickly that Lottie thought she might choke. “No!” she said again, and took several steps toward the small crowd, imploring them. “Do you no’ see that I’m the last person who should be chief? I am the reason we sailed. I am the reason we took the Mackenzie ship! It is because of me that we’ve come to this terrible place, with no money, and no occupation, and no way to pay our rents.”
“Aye, but you’ll think of a way, Lottie,” said Mrs. Livingstone Blue. Several heads around her nodded in agreement. “You always do. I’ve always said you’re right clever, you are.”
Lottie looked around at their hopeful faces. What was the matter with them? “Och,” she said, flicking her wrist as her father used to do at the lot of them, and whirled about and continued the march to the house, rabbits and people following behind her.
At the manor house, Lottie said, “We’ll think on this again on the morrow, aye? But now, some rest.”
There was some rumbling, but the crowd began to thin, gathering their sailors and taking them home. Lottie and her brothers went inside and she shut the door behind them.
They stood in the foyer, looking around them. “I never thought I’d see it again, in truth,” Mathais said.
“Neither did I,” Lottie breathed.
“I’m hungry,” Drustan said.
“Aye, me too,” Mathais agreed.
Lottie had no appetite. The last twenty-four hours had been an eddy of conflicting emotions, of despair and hope, of fear and utter relief. She was grateful for her freedom, afraid of being discovered. She’d found love with Aulay, and they’d parted so suddenly. He’d disappeared from her life almost as irrevocably as her father had.
Lottie went to her father’s bedroom and opened the door, hesitating a moment before stepping over the threshold. Just inside, she found the stub of a candle and lit it. She held it up—his room was comfortingly familiar, essentially unchanged since her mother had died. And yet it felt strangely distant from the person she was now. That voyage had changed her in ways she didn’t fully understand.
The spirit of her father was still very much alive in these walls, as was her mother’s spirit, and Drustan and Mathais and Lottie’s, as well. But she felt herself miles and miles from here. She didn’t know how she could return to being the woman who had left this island three weeks ago.
She picked up a wooden box and opened it, inhaling the scent of the cheroots her father had kept there. It was his scent, and the familiarity of it felt almost as if he’d wrapped his arms around her. She sank down onto his bed and curled onto her side and allowed her tears of exhaustion and loss and heartache to fall.
She awoke the next morning to the sound of birds chirping. Sleep and tears had made her groggy, and she slowly sat up, uncertain at first where she was...until she saw the rabbits through the window, come to devour what was left of the grass.
Lottie swung her legs off the side of the bed and rubbed her eyes.
She knew what she had to do. She’d known all along, but hadn’t come to fully accept it until she’d found herself at Balhaire. It had taken her a grand adventure and deep loss to come to terms with it. “I’ve no’ forgotten what I want, Mor,” she said to her mother’s departed spirit. “But I’m no’ clever enough to achieve it.”
She stood up and went to her room. She opened her wardrobe and examined the gowns there. She owned precious few, but the yellow one with tiny rosebuds and green leaves would do.
By midmorning, while her brothers still slept, Lottie had bathed and dressed, and had made the eggs she’d found in the hen house. She donned her sturdy walking boots, picked some flowers from the garden that the rabbits had not yet feasted on, and set out for the south end of the island.
An hour or so later, the MacColl house came into view. Her father was right—it was larger than theirs. It had six chimneys across the top, four of them with smoke curling out of them. The lawn was better tended than the Livingstone house. Well, in fairness, they’d never been particularly orderly on the north end of the island, but really, how did the MacColls keep the rabbits from destroying every green thing?
Lottie walked down the hill and went through the little picket fence, and up to the door. She drew a breath for courage and knocked. Before long, an elderly woman in a plain cap stood in the open door. “Madainn mhath,” Lottie said. “Might Mr. MacColl be at home this morning?”
“Lottie? Is that you?” Mr. MacColl suddenly appeared behind the woman and stepped around her. “Aye, thank you, Miriam, you may go.” He turned a beaming smile to Lottie and ran a hand nervously over the silver hair on his head. “You’ve come back! I had some question of it, that I did, but here you are! Come in, come in, aye?” he said, gesturing for her to enter. “Miriam! Have we any tea? Bring some tea for the lady! And...and some biscuits!”
“We donna have biscuits, you know it well!” the woman shouted from the back.
“It’s all right,” Lottie said quickly. “Please, Mr. MacColl, donna go to any trouble.”
“’Tis no trouble for you, lass. I’m so...pleased, that I am, that you’re quite all right. I had feared the worst.”
“The worst?” she asked curiously. “Oh. I brought these for you.” She held out the flowers to him.
Mr. MacColl looked at the flowers and his face lit with delight. He beamed. “Miriam!”
He took the flowers and ushered her into a room. “Please,” he said, gesturing to a seat.
Lottie sat gingerly as Mr. MacColl bustled about, looking for something in which to put the flowers. She noted some touches of his life before his wife had died. A bit of china. Some bonny paintings on the wall. But it was rather stark, really, and obvious that a man lived here without benefit of a female companion. Or children, his all grown and married now, with families of their own. Her heart ached a little for him.
Mr. MacColl returned to her side and sat on a chair across from her.
“You said you expected the worst?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, aye,” he said, blushing. “I thought... I suspected, well...” He paused. He swallowed. He studied his hands, clearly searching for words.
“The stills are gone, Mr. MacColl,” she said, taking advantage of his fluster. “My father, he ordered them taken down when we left. I’m glad they’re gone.”
He sighed with relief. “I am happy to hear that from your lips, Lottie, that I am. Naugh’ but trouble, that. Gilroy’s ship didna look seaworthy, and there was rumor of a wee bit of trouble on the North Sea. A ship that sounded quite like Gilroy’s had fired on a naval ship and set it afire, which, again, sounded a wee bit like Gilroy, aye?” he said with a slight roll of his eyes. “And that wee ship has no’ been seen since.”
“So, you knew that we...”
“Oh, aye,” he said, nodding. “I saw you go out, I did. Sailed right past us here on the south end.”
There was no other way to the sea. They’d been such fools, the lot of them. “We thought no one had seen us.”
“Oh, but we all did,” Mr. MacColl said cheerfully. “Was your, ah...voyage successful, then?”
Lottie shook her head. “Quite the contrary. There was indeed trouble on the North Sea and Gilroy’s ship sank.”
Mr. MacColl’s eyes rounded.
“We couldna find a buyer and lost our cargo...and we lost my father.”
Mr. MacColl’s eyes widened. “Bernt? The devil you say,” he added softly, and moved to sit next to Lottie on the settee. He took her hand in his. “Lass, my deepest condolences. What happened, then?”
Lottie told him everything. Everything. She left nothing out—from the fight with the naval ship, to stealing the Mackenzie ship, to Aalborg and the awful voyage home. She told him about the fortnight spent at Balhaire, and their escape. She told him about the Livingstone predicament, and the Mackenzie loss, and what she hoped to do to repay their loss, and what had brought her here. She talked so much that her head began to throb with all the talking.
When she had finished, Mr. MacColl smiled affectionately. “Your father has long boasted that you were the brightest star on our little island, aye? He was right about that, he was. Of course I’ll do as you ask, Lottie...but are you certain this is what you want, then?”
She laughed ruefully. “No’ at all.” She colored slightly and said, “I donna mean to offend.”
“I’m no’ offended, lass. I’m a wise old man. I understand you completely, aye?” He stood up. “Shall I come with you now?”
“No’ now, if you please,” she said. “I need a wee bit of time—I’ve no’ told anyone. Will you come for supper?”
“I will.”
She stood up and smiled at him. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, then smiled at her again. “You’re a brave lass, no one can ever say you’re no’.”
Lottie wasn’t brave at all. She’d just run out of options.