God's Highlander (24 page)

‘I'm staying in the village, with a married friend. Why do you ask?'

‘I didn't like to think of you walking across the mountains in the darkness. It's dangerous. I also wondered whether you would come with me to visit the Munro family in the morning. Lachlan's ill again. Annie Hamilton's promised as much food for them as can be carried.'

‘Poor Elsa. Her family are a constant worry to her. Yes, I'll come, if that's what you would like.'

‘I would.'

Mairi stopped walking, and Wyatt stopped, too. They stood in silence, no more than a foot apart, each aware of the other's closeness.

‘I'd better get back to the village…. Not that I'll be missed with all that's going on….'

Mairi waited for a reply. When none came, she said: ‘I'll see you in the morning.'

‘Yes.'

‘Goodnight, Wyatt.'

‘Mairi…?'

‘Yes?'

‘Don't go…. Not yet.'

Then he was holding her and kissing her as he had kissed her once before in the darkness, at the shielings. They kissed for long minutes, and when he held her close she clung to him. They were both aware of the hunger of their bodies. For Mairi it was a new and wonderful, yet frightening, experience. Suddenly she wanted Wyatt with a ferocity
that allowed no restraint. She forced herself against him and gasped as she felt him respond. There were moments of near-ecstasy as body explored clothed body – and then they both heard the sound of someone approaching along the road.

They stood self-consciously apart as the ‘clump and drag' of the approaching steps identified the unseen man as Alasdair Burns.

The schoolteacher sensed rather than saw them in the darkness and he stopped when still a few paces away.

‘Who's there?'

‘It's me, Alasdair.'

‘Wyatt! What are you doing standing here in the darkness? I would have thought you'd have been in Eskaig, bible in hand, warning your flock against at least three of the deadly sins. Neglect your duty tonight and you'll end up with a whole crop of brides, all carrying their past before them….'

There was a slight sound from the darkness, but it was missed by the chuckling schoolteacher. When Wyatt reached out he discovered Mairi had gone.

When Alasdair Burns, still laughing, had gone on his way to the schoolhouse, Wyatt retraced his steps to the village, but there was no sign of Mairi. Wyatt made his way home to the manse, deeply troubled.

W
YATT THOUGHT IT probable Mairi would find an excuse for not coming with him to the Munro croft in the morning. Not until he came face to face with her at the Eskaig inn did he realise just how much he had wanted her to be there. He needed to talk to her. He, better than she, knew how close they had been to committing the sin he had warned others against on so many occasions from the pulpit of his kirk.

Each carrying a heavy sack of food, they said very little to each other until the village was well behind them and they stopped for a brief rest.

‘I'm ashamed of myself for what happened last night.' Wyatt knew he had not found the right words, even before Mairi replied.

‘
Nothing
happened last night – at least, nothing to make either of us ashamed.'

‘It was no thanks to me, Mairi. If Alasdair hadn't come along when he did…. And after all I've had to say to others about resisting “the lust of the flesh”.' Wyatt's face contorted in self-recriminatory anguish.

Mairi turned to face Wyatt. ‘Since arriving in Eskaig you've endeared yourself to many people – especially those from the mountains – because you've come among us as someone who's as human as anyone else. All the other preachers we've seen – and there haven't been many – have set themselves up as the closest thing to God that Highland folk are ever likely to see. Minister Gunn was one. You're different. You've never tried to impress us with being
better
than any of us. You've simply pointed out what's right and what's wrong. Telling us what God would
want
us to do. That's why you're well liked. That's why
I've
grown so fond of you. There's nothing to be ashamed of in being mortal, surely?'

Mairi struggled to lift the heavy sack to her shoulder. She did not succeed until Wyatt came to her aid. Shrugging the burden to a more comfortable position, Mairi added scathingly: If it was only
lust
you were feeling, then perhaps it is a good thing Alasdair Burns came along when he did.'

With this observation, Mairi made off along the edge of the loch, setting such a pace that by the time Wyatt shouldered his own sack and caught up with her he was puffing and panting like Donald McKay's steam-launch. When he tried to correct the erroneous impression he had given to Mairi, she told him curtly: ‘Save your breath for walking,
Minister Jamieson
; you sound as though you haven't too much to spare.'

Wyatt planned to make his peace with Mairi when they next rested, but fate in the form of Ewan and Elsa Munro and the youngest Munro girl interceded.

They were gathering wood close to the loch. When they recognised Wyatt and Mairi they waved cheerfully and hurried to meet them.

Elsa Munro took possession of all the wood that had been collected, and Ewan relieved Mairi of her load.

The boy had sprung up during the summer months and he looked far healthier than when Wyatt had first met with him.

When Wyatt commented upon this, Elsa Munro smiled. ‘Ewan's a different boy, Minister, thanks to you. He's doing a man's work on our land and enjoying every minute. He's felt especially good since that doctor from Edinburgh put his leg to rights. Not that you didn't do a good job in removing the rest of the lead shot,' Elsa Munro added hurriedly. ‘The doctor said if it hadn't been for you Ewan would probably have lost his whole leg….' Elsa Munro shuddered. ‘I dread to think what would have become of us if that had happened. Ewan's the man about our house, and no mistake.'

‘Lachlan's no better, then?'

Ewan Munro had dropped behind to readjust the position of the heavy sack on his bony young shoulder. With a quick glance in his direction, Elsa dropped her voice. ‘Lachlan will never be any better. The Edinburgh doctor said we could expect bad days and
very
bad days. All the good ones are behind us.'

Mairi was carrying the young Munro girl, but she put an arm about her friend's shoulders and gave her a sympathetic hug. ‘Lachlan's a good man, Elsa. He deserves better fortune.'

‘So does Ewan. He's enjoyed the school, Minister, but we need him to work the land now.'

Wyatt nodded. It was a problem that educationalists were having to face throughout the land. By the time a boy or girl reached an age where they could benefit most from schooling they were needed to contribute to the support of the family. ‘I'll bring some books along for him to read in the evenings. It would be a pity if he wasted all he's learned. He's a bright boy.'

Lachlan Munro was in the garden of the croft, directing his daughters in a hunt for caterpillars among an impressively sprouting crop of late greens. Leaning on a stick, the ex-soldier looked frail, emaciated and much older than his years.

He was genuinely pleased to see the Eskaig minister. When food and whisky were produced from the sacks the sick man's gratitude was overwhelming. Although it was not yet mid-morning, Lachlan made his wife set out the food on the only table in the house. When it was ready the young family sat down on home-made benches and ate. With a pewter mug of warming whisky in his hands, Lachlan Munro watched happily as his family tucked in to the best meal they had ever eaten. He declared Donnie and Seonaid must have had a fine marriage feast indeed in Eskaig.

Later Wyatt sat with Lachlan on the low freestone wall that encircled the garden, enjoying the winter sunshine. Each man held a pot of whisky in one hand, and blue smoke from two clay pipes drifted lazily upwards from where they sat.

Looking about him, Wyatt said: ‘You've put in a lot of work here, Lachlan. It's a different croft from the one you took over.'

‘Ewan and Elsa have done most of the work. Ewan's a good boy. He's a hard worker and he loves the land.' Lachlan Munro knocked out his pipe against the wall beside him. ‘My biggest worry is what's going to happen to them all when I'm gone.'

Wyatt began to protest that Lachlan Munro would outlive them all but, shaking his head, the ex-soldier waved him to silence.

‘I knew the truth better than anyone, Captain – and I include your Edinburgh doctor. I'll be lucky if I see another planting-time. I don't mind so much for myself; I've had a good life. Seen places that most Highlanders have never heard about. Besides, I've outlived this body of mine. It's not comfortable to live in any longer. You know all about
it, Captain. You've gone through it yourself. Can you imagine what it's like living with such pain day and night, week after week, month after month? It will be a relief for me when the time comes. It's Elsa and the children I'm worried about. Do you think you can help them?'

‘How? Do you have something particular in mind?'

‘Speak to Garrett. See if he'll let Elsa take this place on when I'm gone. She and Ewan can make a go of it, helped by the girls. They're doing it now in all but name.'

Wyatt doubted whether the factor would be willing to grant
him
any favours, especially after the humiliation Wyatt had caused him in Edinburgh. Wyatt doubted, too, whether he would be able to call on support from Lord Kilmalie again. Then he looked at Lachlan Munro's face. There was an expression of fevered pleading there. ‘I'll try, but I can't promise anything.'

‘Thank you, Captain. If anyone can help them, it's you. It's likely every crofter and cottar will need all the help he can get before long. A flock of sheep came through near here last week, driven alongside Loch Shiel so as to avoid any trouble around Corpach and Eskaig, I reckon. Ewan watched them crossing the shallows. He said they were ten and twelve deep and it took most of the daylight hours to drive them over.'

‘Where were they heading?' Wyatt asked the question sharply. Sheep in such numbers spelled trouble for someone.

‘They were on their way to the slopes beyond the Fraser cot. It's Kilmalie land that was cleared a few years ago, but some of the animals are bound to spill over on to worked land. It's my opinion that Garrett's looking to create trouble.'

‘You could well be right. I'll have a word with him when I speak about Elsa taking over the rent here. I'll be back to let you know how I fare, Lachlan. Right now there's someone else I must talk to.'

As Wyatt stood up to leave, Lachlan Munro followed the minister's glance. Mairi was in the doorway of the cot, surrounded by the children. She was saying her farewells.

Lachlan Munro gave Wyatt a tired smile. ‘Mairi's a fine girl, Captain. A good, strong, loyal girl who takes after her mother. You remember the women who'd follow their men into battle, Captain? Right up to the enemy lines? No, of course you don't. You were too young to have been some of the places I've been to. A good one would
go into hell to bring her man back – and Mairi's a good one. She'd make a fine wife for a soldier – or for a minister who's fighting his people's battles.'

‘I believe you.' Wyatt never took his eyes from Mairi. He thought she might try to slip away without bidding him a proper farewell. He was right. A wave of the hand and Mairi was out of the garden, swinging barefoot and long-legged across the turf, not heading towards Eskaig, but making for a stream-fed glen that curved deep into the mountains in the direction of the Ross croft.

By the time Wyatt had said goodbye to the entire Munro family and caught up with Mairi she was half a mile from the croft and well into the wooded glen.

‘Have you lost your way? Eskaig is in that direction.' Mairi waved an arm to where the high shoulder of a mountain ridge stood between the glen and the road to Eskaig.

‘Why did you run off as you did? With no more than a wave?'

‘I thought you'd prefer it. There's little temptation in the wave of a hand.'

Wyatt realised that Mairi was mocking him. He probably deserved it, but there were things that had to be said.

‘I want to talk to you before you return home.'

‘Oh? Are you going to warn me against leading any other poor man into temptation? Just in case he doesn't have your own God-given, strength of mind?'

‘That's enough, Mairi.'

‘No, it isn't,
Minister
. You won't ever need to feel ashamed again because of me, I promise you.'

Mairi had taken at least ten paces before he caught up with her again and took her arm. She tried to shake his hand away, but he held her fast. When she turned to remonstrate with him she found herself pulled into his arms – and he was kissing her once again. She continued to struggle for only a few moments before responding as she had twelve hours before.

When Wyatt stopped kissing her Mairi's whole body was trembling. His hand came up to touch her hair, but suddenly she shook herself free.

‘Why, Wyatt? Why do you do it when you know you're going to regret it afterwards?'

‘I regretted what I did because I believed I had no right. Because I felt I wasn't certain enough. Now I
am
. In fact, when I think clearly about it, I've known since I first stepped ashore at the Eskaig jetty and saw you.'

‘Known what?' Main hadn't intended the words to come out as a whisper.

‘I love you, Mairi. I want you to marry me.'

Mairi tried hard to hold her own emotions in check. Only she knew the true extent of her feelings for Wyatt. For this very reason she wanted to be certain he meant what he was saying.

‘You're being foolish, Wyatt Jamieson. Marriage is out of the question for us.'

‘Why?'

Her reply was not at all what Wyatt had been expecting. Her reaction to his kisses had led him to expect a very different answer.

‘Why? It should be perfectly obvious to you. I'm a simple Highland girl who owns little more than I'm wearing right now. I've never had shoes on my feet, can only just read and barely write. Sums are beyond me. You're a
minister
. The most important man in the whole area after the landowner – and many would say more important than him. You've served as an officer in the Army and been to a university…. Do I need to go on?'

Wyatt looked at her in genuine surprise. ‘What's any of that got to do with us getting married? My mother was a cottar's daughter. She died before I was old enough to know her well, but my father swore she was the best wife any man ever had – even though
she
never learned to read or write.'

Wyatt looked so hurt and bewildered that Mairi wanted to hug him. Instead she said: ‘It would be foolish, Wyatt. If you weren't a minister with such high principles, we could do the same as Donnie and Seonaid did at the shielings. The same thing other young courting couples do when they want each other badly enough.'

‘You know I can't do that, Mairi. The
soldier
in me is sorely tempted, but I'm a minister now. Although I find it hard at times, it's what I want to be. Besides, that would be no answer at all, for either of us. I want to
marry
you. To have you for my wife. Nothing less will ever be enough.'

‘Marrying our Donnie to Seonaid has addled your brain, Wyatt
Jamieson. If I said Yes, you'd wake up in the night in a cold sweat, wondering whatever made you do anything so stupid.'

‘That isn't true, Mairi. I want to marry you. I thought…. I
hoped
you felt the same way,' Wyatt was pulling his thoughts together now.

He was hurt because Mairi seemed not to be taking his offer of marriage seriously. For the first time he wondered whether there was anyone else in Mairi's life. After all, Wyatt had not been the minister in Eskaig long enough to know all that had gone on before his arrival. There could be a strong contender for the hand of the Highland girl. Someone he knew nothing about. The thought dismayed him far more than the possibility he might have made a fool of himself.

‘I've told you what I think, Wyatt. I'm far too fond of you to let you do something you might regret later.'