To Scotland With Love (7 page)

He wouldn't let himself go there. He didn't need a relationship. His chest hurt just considering it.
Besides, Duncan needs someone more than I do.
But something niggled at him just the same.

Ah, hell.
He just might want to keep Caitie Macleod for himself.

C
ait adjusted the large box holding all of the cookie exchange containers and tromped behind Deydie in the snow. “You really should hold on to my arm for support,” she hollered.

Deydie kept right on walking. “Mind yere own business,
city girl
. I'm doing just fine up here.”

As if her gran had willed it, Cait slipped and shuffled. Deydie harrumphed, and for a second Cait wondered if her gran wouldn't stand there and watch as she dropped everything. But then Deydie helped her get the big box settled.

Cait glanced over at her as they continued on. “I don't know what I'm going to do with eight dozen cookies.”

“You have friends, don't ye? Send them back to the States.”

Cait wouldn't tell her the truth. She had nobody. Under the weight of Tom's demands, she had let her friendships slide away into nothingness. How stupid that had been. What the hell had she been thinking?

They stopped in front of a two-story stone house, one of the larger ones in town.

Deydie held up a gnarly hand. “A word of warning
about the twins. They're a mite strange, but good quilters.”

They didn't have to knock. The door flew open, and Christmas music floated into the air.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
.

“Glory be, the newcomer is here,” said one of the two women at the door. She was wearing a goofy smile, a green plaid wool dress, and an elf hat on top of her 1960s bouffant. “Come in.”

“Come in,” the other one parroted, looking identical in features and wearing a matching red plaid dress and a red elf hat.

They ushered Cait in, one taking the big box, the other peeling off her coat. The twins were a bit overwhelming for Cait. She looked to Deydie for buoyancy, but her gran just ignored her.

“I'm Ailsa and this is my sister, Aileen.” The first twin extended her hand to Cait. “We're Harry Elliot's nieces. He left us the—”

“House, when he passed ten years ago,” Aileen finished.

Cait imprinted their names and their dress color to memory.
Ailsa green
.
Aileen red
.

The two matronly twins pressed close to Cait while a third woman hung back in the hallway.

Ailsa
green
grabbed Cait's arm and pulled her forward, more toward the heart of the house. “This is Moira. She said you might remember her.” Ailsa
green
turned back to the shy, mousy woman. “You said you were, what, two years younger than Caitie Macleod?”

“Aye.” Moira looked down at her boots.

Cait recalled her from school—a tall, plain girl who
was so shy she would never meet anyone's gaze. Cait didn't know if small talk would make Moira more comfortable or if ignoring her altogether would be better. “It's good to see you,” she tried.

No response, as if her shyness had powers of its own, weighing her eyes down, keeping them glued to the floor.

Cait tried again. “It's been a long time. What have you been up to?”

“Up to?” Deydie snarled as she took off her coat, her pitch rising with each word. “She's been a dutiful daughter, taking care of her sick da. That's what she's been up to.”

Moira's cheeks turned a deep red, darker than the Turkey Red quilt on the wall.

Cait's gut took the punch of Deydie's message.
Cait—not devoted like Moira. Cait—neglectful of her family, just like her da.

Bethia made her way into the hallway and took Deydie's coat. Her kind eyes met Cait's. “Moira's mama had an accident and left us three years ago. Last May, Moira's da got his leg caught in the fishing lines. They had to take it off. He fights infection to this day.”

The Christmas music was now playing in the background. “Silent Night” might have been soothing, but to Cait it felt like she'd climbed into a fricking nightmare. Gandiegowans led a hard life of death, illness, and obligation.

“Da is better today,” Moira offered, fumbling with a length of garland.

“You're a good girl, Moira.” Deydie patted her. “God be with ye and yeres.” She gave her a wink. “Now, help me find the whiskey.” She toddled off with Moira leading the way.

Bethia took Cait's arm. “Don't let it worry you. Yere gran can be testy at times. Sometimes, ye just have to love her regardless.”

“Yeah, like loving a surly pit bull.”

Bethia laughed. “Now ye have the right end of the needle.”

Before Cait made it down the hallway where the festivities seemed to be, Aileen
red
had come back with a glass of punch for her.

“Just a warning. It's a wee bit strong,” Aileen
red
said, her eyes noticeably glassy.

Cait downed the glass. It burned like a son of a bitch, but she welcomed it. Just what the doctor ordered for dulling Deydie's accusations. “I need another.”

She followed the noise into the parlor, where a roomful of familiar faces milled about—Rhona, Amy, and Bethia, all the quilting ladies from before, and now Ailsa, Aileen, and Moira. Deydie seemed in her element as the queen bee, with all the ladies surrounding her.

Chestnuts roasted in the inglenook fireplace, and the mantle was decorated with real pine boughs and holly. Instead of twinkling lights, there were beeswax candles. A big Christmas tree sat in one corner, decorated with paper chains and tartan bows. Under the tree lay a quilted tree skirt with the nativity scene in appliqué.

Ailsa
green
tottered over to Cait, apparently a little tipsy, like her sister. “I see you noticing our handiwork.”

Cait bent to examine the fine workmanship. “It's beautiful. The stitching's unique—little pine cones. I've never seen anything like it.”

“Our signature stitch. Aileen and I invented it when we were teenagers. It goes into all our quilts.”

Aileen
red
called out from the cookie table. “Ailsa, come here. You have to see this.”

Cait walked with her. The dining room table was stacked with boxes of cookies, each person's grouped together—fancy red ones, plain green ones, blue snowmen, gold plastic containers, all sorts. Aileen
red
stood over one of Deydie's boxes.

Cait looked inside and gasped. “They're exquisite.” Deydie had made heart-shaped shortbreads, the top half of each heart decorated with what looked like a delicate string of Christmas lights. Cait gaped at her grandmother.

“'Tweren't nothing,” Deydie grumbled.

“It's art,” argued Cait.

“What else did you bring?” Aileen
red
opened another box from the pile.

Inside were little individual cheesecakes with a cherry on the top. Cait's mouth watered just looking at them. She'd grab those for herself.

“I knew you could bake, but I sure don't remember these,” Cait said.

“There's a lot of things you don't know about me, Caitie Macleod.” Deydie huffed away to the side bar, where the finger foods sat.

Using her eyes as laser beams, Cait glared at Deydie's back, hoping to scorch a little niceness into her crotchety old head.
Fat chance.
Ebenezer wanted to completely humiliate Cait in front of her friends. Why? Because Cait refused to stay at her cottage? Deydie should just get over it. It was Christmas, for chrissakes. A holiday truce wasn't asking too much. Couldn't her gran be pleasant for one evening?

Soon Deydie had more than sipped a bit of the juice.
She'd tied one on. She wrangled poor Moira into dancing a jig to “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.” Deydie had a drink in one hand and a little sandwich in the other, her dress bobbing up and down like a plunger in time with the music. Amy joined in by singing along, a little off-key.

Bethia took a seat in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

Cait joined her. “Deydie seems to be enjoying herself.” She said it with more attitude than she'd intended. But dang it, Deydie had bruised her feelings twice since they'd gotten there, and now the old grump was jigging it up like a longshoreman on payday.

“Aye. But would you have your gran moping in the corner instead?” Bethia scolded. “Your gran has had a hard life. At fifteen her parents died, leaving her all alone in that cottage. When Hamish McCracken came along, thinking Deydie hung the stars and moon, I thought her luck had changed. What a hard thing it was when Hamish was swallowed up by the sea, and Nora only three at the time.”

“I didn't . . . I mean . . . I never knew.” Cait felt the heat rise into her face. She knew Mama had grown up without a da, but no one had ever talked about it. The pain must've been too much. And to think Deydie had been waylaid by Death, too. All alone just like Cait. She hadn't realized the two of them had so much in common. “I'll try harder not to take her jabs so personally.”

Bethia patted her hand. “That's a good lass.”

Cait spent the next couple of hours working at
enjoying
herself. She let Amy pull her into a long conversation about the comings and goings at the store, which wasn't too bad. Amy's constant chatter was starting to grow on Cait; plus she learned more about the people of the
town. Then Ailsa and Aileen took all the ladies on a tour around the house, pointing out their handiwork, most of them appliqué quilts, all of them works of art. Later, she sat with Rhona and Bethia, talking about quilting.

“Freda Douglas asked again if we'd let her join our quilt group,” Rhona said.

“'Tis a shame.” Bethia shook her head, her old brown eyes sad. “I always say there's room for one more and there isn't really.”

“Why?” Cait asked.

Bethia answered. “We don't have the space at Deydie's. We sometimes quilt in Graham's dining room, but it's not the same. And even then, not everyone can join us who wants to. We just don't all fit. Besides Graham's house, Deydie has the only updated electric.”

“Aye, Graham saw to that,” Rhona added.

“Graham?” Cait questioned.

“He made sure Deydie could have friends over to sew. He worries about her being lonely.” Rhona answered matter-of-factly, without a finger of accusation.

Just the same, shame poked at Cait. Hard. What did it say about her if a neighbor cared more about her grandmother's loneliness than Cait had? She mentally kicked herself in the butt for being the all-time loser of granddaughters.

And Graham
. Cait didn't know if she liked him
more
because of his thoughtfulness or hated him because he'd done something she should've known to do.

Cait resolved right then and there that Deydie, despite her lean toward unpleasantness, would come first. Cait would spend so much time at the cottage that her gran would be sick to death of kin. Cait would just have to grow a thicker skin to deal with Granny Vinegar.

“Bethia, we should get Caitie involved in the round-robin quilt,” Rhona said.

Amy joined them. “What a good idea. The theme is Our Town Gandiegow. You know how a round robin works, don't you? Each one of us sews one row for the quilt. I'm doing a line of paving stone blocks that will be between Deydie's house blocks and Bethia's ocean.”

Bethia patted Cait's hand. “We do a quilt every year and auction it off at the Valentine's Day Céilidh, party and dance. Usually draws a hundred pounds. We give the money to the Lost Fishermen's Families Fund.”

“Only a hundred pounds? That's highway robbery,” Cait said, flabbergasted. “A handmade quilt for that?”

“We're a small village with small means. A hundred pounds is a lot of money to us.”

If they'd been back in the States and had the right press, they could get ten times that.

“Will you help, then?” Amy asked.

“Sure. What's left to do?” Cait said.

“The bluffs,” Bethia replied.

Rhona gave her a conspiratorial grin. “Aye, the bluffs. You'll have to piece something together for Graham's house, now, won't you, wee Caitie?”

At the sound of a commotion and a shriek, Cait looked up in time to see Deydie grab Ailsa's green elf hat, shove it on top of her own white-haired head, and hustle away.

“Give that back,” Ailsa cried. “I'm going to wear it Christmas Eve, when the Urquhart twins come over from Fairge to have dinner.”

Bethia sighed. “I think it's time you took your gran home.”

Cait followed Bethia to where Deydie played keep-away.

“It's getting late,” Bethia coaxed. “Cait will walk you home. I'll pack up your cookies so you can get going.”

“Party pooper,” Deydie cackled, making everyone laugh.

Cait had never seen her gran like this—carefree and having fun.

Her gran made one more attempt to dodge Ailsa, then finally gave up, shoving the green hat back on its owner's head with a loud “Ha.”

As Cait and Deydie went out the door, the quilt ladies serenaded them with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Cait couldn't help but smile as they slipped along the boardwalk. It'd been a nice Christmas party. And in the last couple of hours, no one had died within Cait's immediate vicinity. Old Man Death must be taking a snooze.

When they got to Deydie's house, Cait planned to drop her grandmother off, then go up to Graham's place and start snooping.

But Deydie had different plans. “I expect ye'll be staying.” She flipped up the quilts on her bed and pulled out a full-sized trundle. “But first we'll be having ourselves a wee bit of a nightcap.”

Cait felt completely confused. Earlier this evening, Deydie had been as disagreeable as a rabid dog, and now she was as playful as a puppy, whistling and clogging to her own tunes. And what about the story Cait was working on? What about combing Graham's house for tidbits and essentials?

The promise Cait had made to herself earlier, the one where she'd vowed to spend every spare moment with
Deydie, felt pretty damn burdensome right now. But it did have her answering her gran. “Of course I'll be staying.”