Grace in Thine Eyes (4 page)

This was one fence he intended to repair immediately. Jamie waited as his wife descended the stair, his uplifted gaze searching hers.

“Where are the twins?” she asked softly.

He inclined his head toward the front door. “Off on their morning ride, I imagine. Pounding their anger into the bridle path round the loch.” When she reached the last step, Jamie pulled her aside. “And what of your mood, Mrs. McKie?” He glowered at her in jest. “Are ye
fash wi’
me for sendin’ yer
green
sons off tae Embrough?” His quaint use of Scots was meant to appease her. Few among the gentry still spoke the language, so thoroughly had King George’s English plowed its way north.

“I am not unhappy with you, Jamie,” she confessed, “though you might have been more genial toward the twins.”

“Forgive me, my love.” Jamie lightly kissed her cheek. “However poorly executed, my intentions were sound. I grew up as a second son in this house. I’ll not see Will and Sandy coddled—”

“As your mother coddled you?” Leana did not say it unkindly.

“Just so,” he agreed. “Her indulgence earned me a blessing from my father but a curse from my brother, and well deserved. ’Tis only by God’s grace that Evan does not hate me still.” Jamie sighed heavily. “I’ll not send my sons into the world as I was sent: a
heidie
young man, ill prepared and irresponsible.”

Leana laced her fingers through his. “As it happens, I fell in love with that young man and gladly gave him three sons and a fine daughter.”

“They’re fortunate indeed to have you for their mother.” Jamie
lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, her skin soft against his mouth and fragrant with soap. “I know this is distressing for you, Leana. How could it not be?” He glanced toward the second floor. “And hard for Davina as well. Is she prepared to live without the twins’ company? For they’ll not return soon.”

“Will they not come home at Lammas?” A faint tightness crept into her voice.

“For a fortnight in early August, but no longer. Once they’re settled in Edinburgh, visits to Glentrool will be rare. And when Ian marries—”

“Marries?” She did not hide her surprise. “Have you some lass in mind?”

“Nae, but Ian might.” Jamie glanced toward the closed library door, ten steps away. “The last few Sabbaths he’s tarried in the kirkyard with Margaret McMillan.”

He’d noticed the two quietly conversing between services, Ian’s dark head bent over Margaret’s fair one. The McMillans of Glenhead were the McKies’ nearest neighbors, and John McMillan one of his oldest friends. Though not people of great fortune, the family had earned the respect of the parish for their honest speech and good hearts. “A man’s greatest wealth is contentment with little,” Jamie often said of his friend.

“Will you approve the match?” Leana asked.

Jamie studied the library door, thinking of the young man within. “Our households share the same history, the same faith. And Margaret has a lively manner.”

Leana smiled a little. “I remember her splashing in Buchan Burn last summer, her skirts kilted well above her ankles. Miss McMillan might be a good foil for your serious-minded heir.”

He nodded, convincing himself. “Margaret has a keen mind, which bodes well for their future together. However comely a woman, ’tis her intellect that pleases a husband most.”

“Truly?” Leana smoothed a loose strand of his hair into place, trailing her fingers across his brow. “My mind gives you pleasure, then?”

Jamie turned and drew her closer. “Aye, it does, dear wife.”

Four

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain.
J
OHN
A
RMSTRONG

D
avina rested her cheek on the library door, listening for some movement within. Most of the household had already convened out of doors to welcome their guests. Her father and Ian were among them, it seemed; not a sound came from the library.

She pushed open the door and hastened across the spacious room, the sound of her footsteps lost in the thick carpet. Grandfather Alec had spent his last years in this room, sleeping in the ornate half-tester bed, bathing at the mahogany washstand, warming his fragile limbs at the hearth, listening as his grandson Ian read to him. Awash with tender memories, Davina stood before the bookshelves, her gaze trained on her grandfather’s fiddle.

Might the familiar scent of the wood ease her distress or the taut strings hold her broken heart together? She’d assumed—naively, perhaps—that Will and Sandy would remain at Glentrool until they married many years hence. Instead they were departing for Edinburgh on Thursday, leaving her to fill the ensuing silence with her one true friend.

Davina carefully removed the worn fiddle from its hallowed perch between two bookcases, remembering the first time she’d held it. How enormous the instrument had seemed to her then. Now the curved wooden body fit snugly beneath her chin, and her left hand circled the ebony fingerboard with ease. She plucked each string, wincing until she’d adjusted the tuning pegs just so.

Alec McKie had bestowed the prized instrument on her, his only granddaughter, when she was seven—not long after her accident, not long before his death. “Take it, my wee
posy
,” he’d said, clutching the fiddle with gnarled hands as he’d held it out to her. “ ’Twill be your voice.”

He’d spent his last days teaching her all he knew of gapped scales and bowing techniques, playing every fiddle tune in his repertoire—airs and pastorals, reels and
rants
, jigs and hornpipes, and his cherished strathspeys—until his willing young pupil had committed the many tunes to memory.

No one had mourned the death of Alec McKie more than Davina.

Determined to honor his memory, she quit the room, headed for the garden.
Heartsome
voices beckoned from out of doors, lifting her spirits. She could neither speak nor sing, but she could make music. Aye, she could. And bless the One who gave her the gift: not her grandfather but her heavenly Father.

I love the
L
ORD
, because he hath heard my voice
.

Familiar faces awaited her as Davina sallied forth, her fiddle held high like a standard. Hannah McCandlish, the weaver’s daughter from Blackcraig, was the first to greet her, waving a branch covered with snow-white petals. “God
bliss
ye, Miss McKie!
Firsten
the
flooers
, then yer fine fiddle.”

Davina dipped a curtsy, then stepped aside to watch their neighbors bring in the May. Young mothers with wriggling bairns, older children dressed in their Sabbath clothes, and lads and lasses of courting age—all came bearing fresh hawthorn. Robert Muir, gardener to the estate for many a season, grinned broadly as he collected their offerings, winking at each unmarried girl as if he were a lad of twenty. With her mother’s guidance, Robert fastened the branches round the doorposts, assuring good fortune to the household. Though the petals would flutter to the ground long before the dancing ended, at the moment the massed tiny white flowers were newly blossomed, still wet with dew.

Waiting her turn, Davina breathed in the heady fragrance: strong, evocative, unmistakable. Some folk compared blooming hawthorn to the scent of a woman; others insisted the flowers smelled like death. “Decaying meat,” Will once said, wrinkling his nose. “May’s perfume,” their mother had countered, and Davina agreed.

A sharp yank on her braid brought her whirling round.

“Beggin’ yer pardon.” Johnnie McWhae fell back a step and hung his copper-colored head. “I … I
howped
ye might … cry
oot.
” The shoemaker’s
apprentice from Drannandow could not hide his embarrassment any better than he could hide the leather dye etching the creases of his hands. “I meant nae harm, Miss McKie.”

Davina brushed her fiddle bow through the air, waving away his harmless trick. Johnnie was not the first lad in Galloway to attempt some canny ruse to make her speak. ’Twas fortunate that none of her brothers had seen Johnnie’s foolish prank, or the lad might never have cobbled another shoe. Ian was merciful, but Will and Sandy preferred judgment, swift and terrible.

When a weaver’s son from Creebridge had bedeviled her at market one Saturday morning, making choking noises and pointing at his throat, the twins had tied him up with his own yarn and left him badly bruised and shaking. They were no kinder to the blacksmith’s son, who’d called Davina names—
stupit
and
dummie
—and so was treated to a severe beating with heated tongs from his own forge. Davina understood her brothers’ need to protect her, to defend her, but she did not care for their methods. Most in the parish knew the twins’
wranglesome
reputation and therefore did nothing to merit the attention of their fists.

“Music! Music!” the crowd began to chant, clapping their hands as they ambled along the flagstone path toward the center of Glentrool’s garden. A rowan tree covered with vivid green leaflets would serve as their Maypole—one not carved by man but grown by the Almighty. Planted years ago, the tree for which Grandmother Rowena was named had withstood many a wintry blast to bloom again each spring.

With Robert’s assistance, Davina mounted a broad stone bench that served as her stage. She tested the fiddle with a light touch to the strings, then struck a more confident note, choosing a spirited reel meant to amuse Will and Sandy: “The Fairy Dance.”

From her vantage point, she quickly picked out her three brothers, each with a
sonsie
lass in tow. However trying their breakfast hour, the twins appeared to have rallied. Agnes Paterson, with her softly curved figure, well suited Will, while raven-haired Bell Thomson stood eye to eye with Sandy. Ian, taller than his brothers by a handbreadth, had claimed Margaret McMillan, whose small face turned toward his like a daisy seeking the sun.

Davina blinked away tears. What a strange brew of emotions stirred inside her, seeing her brothers so paired. Was it simply because they each had a partner for the day and she did not? Or was it the sad realization that she would lose her place in their hearts whenever they married?

Och!
Unhappy with herself, Davina repeated the opening measures of the reel with more fervor. She seldom gave in to self-pity and would not do so now. Let the lads choose whomever they pleased. With fiddle in hand and flowers in her hair, she alone was the May Queen. All would dance to her tune this day.

Hands clasped, folk circled the rowan three times
deasil
, or clockwise, rather than
widdershins
, the direction favored by witches. Dappled sunlight decorated their smiling faces as the sprightly tune carried them along. Callused, bare feet dinted the grass beside well-heeled leather boots. Woodcutter and landowner, dairymaid and gentlewoman—all moved as one, led by the laird of Glentrool and his fair-haired Leana.

Without missing a note, Davina launched into a second reel, livelier than the last, then a third, amazed at how easily the music poured forth. Was it the freshness of the air? the joyful occasion? seeing the twins in a better humor? Whatever the reason, her fingers were more nimble than usual. If only someone in the glen played the violoncello. She imagined hearing the accompanying bass notes of the larger instrument and tapped her foot to the duet that sang inside her, reel after whirling reel.

When the breathless revelers begged for mercy, she eased into “Miss Wharton Duff,” a marching air with a pleasing lilt. She noticed her parents bowing out of the dance, bound in opposite directions—the hostess toward her kitchen, the laird toward his stables—both attending to the needs of their guests, who’d not depart for their homes until the four hours, when tea was served.

Taking advantage of the slower rhythm, the dancers formed two circles, one inside the other, and began weaving in and out, moving in opposite directions. Davina pretended not to see the couples who exchanged fleeting kisses whenever they met in passing. Tradition, to be sure, but had her father been present, he would not have approved—not for his unmarried sons and especially not for his only daughter, who had yet to be kissed.

The thought warmed her face. To have lived seventeen years and not felt the touch of a young man’s lips on hers! She turned aside, concealing her pink cheeks behind her fiddle lest anyone spy her discomfort and question its source. While the gentlemen of the parish always treated her with the utmost kindness and respect, no one had sought her father’s permission to court her, and for that, Davina felt nothing but relief. She’d been introduced to many a lad at kirk, yet none had made her breath catch or her heart dance. Not Andrew Galbraith, with his sandy hair and sizable inheritance, nor the handsome widower, Graham Webster, nor dark-eyed Peter Carmont in his lieutenant’s uniform, nor any other gentleman of her acquaintance. Though perhaps tonight …

“
Hoot
, lass!”

Startled, she looked down to find young Jock Robertson, a laborer from Brigton farm, lurching toward her. She smelled the whisky on his breath and heard it in the slur of his words. The flask bulging from his pocket explained his condition; Mother seldom served anything stronger than ale. Pointing her gaze elsewhere, Davina started another tune.

But Jock would not be ignored. “Will ye nae speak tae me?” He planted one foot on her bench, listing to the side as he did. “
Losh
, but ye’re a bonny wee thing!”

Flustered, she took a small step backward and nearly tumbled into her mother’s rosebushes. Her music came to an abrupt halt, attracting the attention of the dancers, who craned their necks to see whatever was the matter.

She heard Will and Sandy before she saw them.

“Davina!”

The twins parted the crowd like a sharpened dirk separating bone from flesh. When the bleary-eyed lad at her feet tried to right himself by grabbing a fistful of her gown, her brothers came at him running.