Authors: Liz Curtis Higgs
“Hoot! You can be sure I heard about it.” Meg released a noisy sigh and resumed her tasks. “Rose posted a very long letter to me while you and Jamie were in Dumfries.”
“She’ll not be writing you now, I wager. Now that she has Jamie to keep her company.”
My Jamie. My love
.
Her aunt asked gently, “Will Jamie be happy as well?”
“I pray he will be.”
Do you, Leana?
She bowed her head, ashamed of the truth. “Perhaps if I am not there to … to interfere. To distract him.”
To tempt him. And be tempted by him
. “With me gone, ’twill be easier for all of them.”
“Perhaps.” Meg leaned over her and cupped her chin. “But not easy for you, Leana. It could ne’er be easy to allow another woman to raise your son.”
Leana fumbled in her sleeve for her handkerchief. “Leaving Ian was the worst of all. The verra worst.”
She’d held him until the last, standing with Neda in the barn while Willie brought round the chaise. Neda’s words, though kind, had brought little comfort. “Ye’re doin’ what must be done, for the puir lad should ne’er have tae pick which mither he luves.”
Leana had buried her sobs in Ian’s blanket, lest someone hear them and put a stop to her departure. “I can’t bear to leave,” she’d said over and over. “But I must, Neda. ’Tis best for all of them if I do.”
“Aye, lass,” Neda had said, embracing her as the chaise drew to a stop at the barn door. “ ’Tis.”
Ashamed of her endless crying, Leana pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. “At the end … in my last minutes with Ian … I could not let go.” A sob came out before she could catch it in her throat. “Had Neda not lifted him from my arms … oh, Aunt Meg, I might be holding him still!” She pressed her forearms hard against her breasts, dismayed at their fullness, even though she’d wrapped them with linen. “But I had to … wean him. I had to … let go. I had to …”
“I’m so sorry.” Meg’s eyes shone with unshed tears.
“I had to …” No other words would come. Grief, heavy as her mother’s gravestone, pressed down on her, bending her over the small dining table until her cheek rested against the wood and baptized it with her tears.
“You’re a good mother, Leana.” Meg comforted her, stroking her hair. “You did what the law and the kirk required you to do. Ian cannot understand what you’ve done for him now, but he will. Someday his father will tell him what a wonderful mother he had.”
Leana shook her head, her voice pinched with pain. “I could have remained at Auchengray, if only for Ian.” Even saying it, she knew it wasn’t true. “When Jamie moves his family to Glentrool in May, Auntie, perhaps then I’ll return home.”
To an empty house. With empty arms
.
“You did what was right, Leana. You’ve no need to doubt it.” With some difficulty her aunt crouched beside her and wrapped her bony arms round her neck. “Now you must wait for the pain to ease. Wait on the Lord, lass. Be of good courage. And he shall strengthen your heart.”
Leana’s head sank back onto her arms. Her body felt like an open wound, leaking tears that would not stop, leaking milk meant for her son.
Ian, my sweet Ian!
Ever so slowly Aunt Meg straightened and kissed the top of Leana’s head. “There, now. Sit for a minute.” The older woman moved quietly round the room, giving Leana time to gather her strength and dry her cheeks. After a bit Aunt Meg reached for a pot swinging o’er the hearth. “Suppose I make some tea to chase away the cold and damp seeping through my thatched roof.” She eyed Leana’s writing desk, still propped on the table. “You’ll need to move that, dearie, or we’ll have no room for our saucers. ’Tis a fine writing desk though. A gift from your father?”
“Nae.” Leana took a deep, shaky breath and ran her fingers across the polished wood. “ ’Tis from Jamie.”
Sixty-Five
Thou bringest … letters unto trembling hands.
A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON
’T
is for ye, Mr. McKie. Miss Leana bid me deliver it tae ye directly.”
Jamie took the sealed letter from the orraman’s weathered hand, relieved that in the fading light of the gloaming the tremor in his own hand did not show. Willie had arrived at the mains an hour ago, throwing the household into a stramash, even as he presented Leana’s letter of explanation to Lachlan. Read aloud by the bonnet laird through clenched teeth, her missive was full of apology and remorse, begging her father and the others not to blame Willie or anyone else. No one but her.
Hearing her written confession only made things worse.
Oh, Leana. ’Tis my fault, not yours. I should ne’er have kissed you. I should ne’er have let you go
. Even now, Twyneholm seemed within reach. He could mount Walloch and arrive before midnight.
And then what?
Run for their lives? Flee from their families, from the kirk, from the law? He’d entertained the notion for the last hour, always coming to the same bitter conclusion:
And then what?
He could not abandon his son or, in fairness, his new wife. Leana knew that.
Is that why you chose another parish, beloved?
He’d come to the stables for a moment’s peace. To think. And to grieve. “Would that you had brought me Miss McBride rather than this,” Jamie told Willie candidly, fingering the letter. “Still, I’m grateful for your discretion.”
Willie could not meet his gaze. “Miss Leana said tae gie it tae ye alone, sir. ‘No one else,’ she said. She’s a fine lady, Mr. McKie. I’m … I’m sorry.”
Jamie nodded, fearing his voice might betray him.
The moment Willie shuffled off, Jamie pulled a lantern close and broke the seal, rubbing his thumb over it first, noticing a faint print trapped in the red wax.
She touched it. Right there
.
He unfolded the stiff paper. The letter was not as long as he’d hoped. He wanted pages upon pages of her words, sentence after sentence of her voice in his head, in his heart. But he was glad for what he held in his hands, knowing it was for his eyes alone.
Sunday, 28 March 1790
My dearest Jamie,
Let me begin by telling you what matters most: I love you with all my heart. And I will never stop loving you.
I did not mean to leave in secret, for I fear I have hurt you greatly in doing so. Please, please forgive me, Jamie. If I had looked into your eyes, I would have stayed forever.
Was it only yestermorn we spoke in the garden? It seems days ago. Weeks. Every hour apart from you is agony.
If I were a stronger woman, I would be content to live quietly in a corner of my father’s house. To watch Ian grow and to watch you fall in love with my bonny sister a second time. But I am not as strong as you may think. I am only a woman who loves you. And who knows that your future is not with me but with Rose.
Oh, my dear Jamie, how hard it is to write that!
You may say that you cannot love Rose again, but with time you will. She is young and has much to learn, but at heart my sister is a dear girl. And she loves you. Never doubt that. She has waited a long time and has risked much to be your wife.
I have come to realize, much as it grieves me, that I cannot be completely yours. Not until I hear you say, “I, James Lachlan McKie, do take this woman, Leana McBride, to be my lawfully wedded wife.” A day I know will never come. For though you have proclaimed those sacred vows twice, you did not speak my name.
Oh, Leana
. Stunned, he fell back against Walloch’s stall.
I would gladly say your name, lass. Every day of my life
.
If I could think of some way to be near you but not touch you. To see you without others seeing me. To love you without needing to be loved in return. Oh, Jamie, if I had a way to do those things, I would.
If I could hold Ian every other minute of the day. If I could share him with Rose with a glad heart and not feel that a part of me had died, I would come running back to Auchengray. But I fear I cannot share Ian any more than I can share you.
Promise me you will be my arms for our son. And my voice. And my heart. Hold Ian close. Say the words I would say. He needs you, Jamie. Even more than I do. And I need you more than I need air to breathe.
I will always love you. And in truth, I will never leave you, for no other man may claim what is already yours. But I do release you, Jamie. To love my sister and to seek your future together in Glentrool.
You will always be in my prayers and ever in my heart. Please forgive me.
Leana
He read it again from the beginning to be sure, to be very sure he understood what she meant yet did not fully say. It was there again, and the third time as well.
Leana was truly gone. She would not come back to him.
Not because she did not love him. But because she did.
My love. My Leana
. Jamie ran his thumb across her name. As if the word had texture, like the sealing wax. As if it held an image of her that he might touch. All at once her inky signature disappeared from the page, smeared by a stray tear on his thumb, now stained in black.
“You have marked me, my love,” he whispered into the darkened stable. “I can never wholly belong to another. But I will love your son and mine. And I will honor my marriage vows because they cost me everything.”
They cost me you
.
Sixty-Six
There is none,
In all this cold and hollow world, no fount
Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within
A mother’s heart.
F
ELICIA
H
EMANS
I
will never be a mother
.
Rose sat in tears at her dressing table, dismayed to find her monthly courses had made an unwelcome appearance. Was it simply her body responding to the pull of the moon, like the Solway tides? Or was it the doctor’s grim prediction coming true before her eyes?
You may be unable to bear children
.
This much was certain: Swallowing tincture of valerian had produced little but a horrid taste in her mouth. No wonder Jamie seemed loath to kiss her.
Jamie, Jamie
. Five days of being his wife. Five days of being Ian’s mother. And neither role felt one bit comfortable yet. She was trying hard to be cheerful and not complain, not make demands. But Leana’s absence left a gaping hole in the household, one Rose feared she might never fill.
Thoughts of hardworking Leana, seldom seen without a needle in her hands, pricked Rose’s conscience. She’d dawdled in her bedroom for most of the morning lest she be given more tasks to do.
Jamie’s sark requires mending, Rose. Might you find his cravat, Rose? Ian needs his porridge, Rose. Have you changed his linens, Rose?
’Twas endless, this business of being a wife and a mother! Leana’s letter to the family had said nothing about how long she planned to stay in Twyneholm. Would her sister return in a fortnight? In a twelvemonth? Never?
Rose glanced at the clothes press, where a second letter from Leana
had mysteriously appeared the day after Willie had come back from Twyneholm. A letter addressed to Jamie. Perhaps Leana had given
him
some clue to her plans. Her sister’s familiar handwriting stared back at her every time she opened the oak door to find a clean shirt or smooth the creases from his coat sleeves. She was certain Leana’s words to Jamie were vastly different than the ones written to the household. Did she dare pluck it out of the clothes press and read it? Jamie was away with her father to Edingham, calling on the Widow Douglas yet again. Since the men weren’t expected home before supper, ’twould be the perfect day. The wax seal was already broken. And she would put it back just as she’d found it.
She eyed the bedroom door to make certain it was closed, then threaded her hand between the sleeves and hems until her fingers touched the cream-colored paper. She gingerly lifted it out, taking careful note of where it was hidden, then stepped toward the window for more light and opened Leana’s letter.
Even before she read the first word, she noticed the signature was reduced to a smear of ink at the bottom of the page. Had Jamie tried to wipe it away, hoping to disguise the writer’s identity? Anyone at Auchengray would recognize the hand that wrote it. Leana’s salutation made it plainer still.
My dearest Jamie …
Rose’s fingers gripped the paper.
Nae, my sister. You may claim him no longer
. She read on, alarmed by Leana’s lingering affection for her husband. And when did the two of them speak in the garden? Then Leana’s comments turned in her direction, and Rose’s feathers fluttered back into place.
Fall in love with my bonny sister …
Rose nodded with relief.
Aye, Jamie. Please do
. He’d warmed to her a little. Yet whenever he gazed at her, Rose felt as though he were looking at her from a distance. Half a dozen parishes west perhaps.
Your future is not with me but with Rose
.
She blinked and read the words again in disbelief. Could her sister mean that, loving Jamie as she did?
My sister is a dear girl …
The compliment heated her cheeks, though more from shame than from pleasure. How could Leana still speak so well of her?
She loves you
…
and has risked much
…
Rose touched her damp brow, staring at the letter. Leana saw too much, understood too well what was going on inside her heart. For ’Twas true: Loving Jamie, insisting that he honor his vows, all the while knowing he loved her sister and not her, was indeed risky. Foolish, most folk would say.
Except Leana would not say that. She had taken the very same risks
.
Rose’s mouth fell open.
Oh, Leana. You do understand
. Why had she not considered that before?
Because you only think of yourself, Rose
. She shuddered, knowing it was true. And hating that truth.