Red Skye at Night (24 page)

“Of course. Your call. I’m just the driver.”

Harry shoves the last of his toast and marmalade into his mouth before reaching across the table for my hand. He takes it, turns it palm up and plants a soft kiss in the center. He curls my fingers inwards to make a fist around the kiss.

“Not just a driver, honey. You’ve made this trip truly wonderful. I’ve enjoyed every moment. Thank you for agreeing to come.”

“Thank you for asking me.” I hesitate—there’s something that’s been bothering me for at least the last couple of days. I need to get this sorted. “Harry, I should never have accepted your money. Please, let me give it back.”

“No way.” His tone is emphatic, his Dom voice that brooks no argument. Nevertheless, I persevere.

“Yes. This is no business deal. It never really was. Was it?”

His head tilts to one side as he considers me, his expression softening. “It was to you.”

I shake my head as I study my hands, clasping and unclasping in my lap. “No, not really. I was attracted to you, right from the beginning. It was only ever a matter of time.”

“Now she tells me.”

“So, I got you to pay me all that money under false pretenses. I want you to have it back.”

Harry chuckles, the sound bringing Daisy to her feet. Harry tickles her ears as he smiles across the table at me. “What I meant was, if I’d known in Leeds what a gloriously submissive little slut I was hooking up with, I’d have been far better prepared. We
would
have made that trip to Ann Summers.”

I try to ignore the distinctly lascivious tilt of his gorgeous lips. “But the money. I should return it.”

“No, honey. It’s yours. We struck a deal, even if neither one of us was totally honest with the other about what our true agenda was. I’m not unhappy with my bargain. Are you?”

“No, but…”

“But nothing. The cash is yours. Give it to a cats’ home if you want—if that makes you feel better—but it’s yours.”

* * * *

The ferry port is every bit as unlovely as these places usually are, despite the stunning backdrop of the Caithness coastline. We book ourselves onto an afternoon sailing before enjoying a stroll with Daisy along the cliff path. Harry takes my hand. It feels natural. I’m content and I refuse to think of the future.

Orkney is just visible, a smudgy line on the horizon. I still have my reservations about being thrust among Clan Harrison, but I’m beginning to think it’ll be fine. Anything is fine as long as I’m with Harry.

Daisy dances along beside us, loving the walk but careful never to be out of sight. It seems as though her recent adventures have wrecked her confidence, shredded her security, and who could blame her for being cautious now? She’ll be a while learning to trust, I expect. Not that she need worry—Harry has already emailed Jill to get her to find out what the regulations are for flying a dog from the UK to Canada. If his loyal secretary thinks there’s anything at all odd about Harry’s requests, I get no wind of it.

At last it’s time to make our way back to the car and join the queue of vehicles rolling toward the ferry doors. I’m sad—it seems to me we are moving into a new phase now, a phase involving others. Our ‘just us’ time is over.

* * * *

Janet is lovely. Bubbly, feisty, noisy, exuberant, she hugged Harry like a long-lost son the moment she threw open her front door to us. She then turned her attention to me, announced that I looked fit to drop, and hauled the pair of us inside her cottage. We opted to leave Daisy in the car just while the introductions were out of the way.

I wasn’t aware that I looked that bad. I glance in Harry’s direction seeking confirmation but he has problems of his own as Janet dumps him in a chair and proceeds to peer at him through her bifocals. She examines him carefully, first one profile, then the other. Then she peruses his face from the front, screwing her eyes tight to better to inspect him. At last, seemingly satisfied, she declares him “the spit o’ his da’”, and bustles off into the kitchen.

He grins at me as soon as she’s out of earshot. “I’ve never seen my da’, so I doubt she has. She must mean my granddad.”

“What do you mean you’ve never seen your da’. Dad. You mean dad, right?”

“Aye, lass.” Harry’s mock Scottish accent is actually not bad.

I can’t help grinning, but I’m not to be put off. “What do you mean? About your dad?”

“I was born when my mum was only eighteen. My dad was some jock from the football team at her high school, I guess. Anyway he never figured in my life. I grew up with my uncles, my mum’s younger brothers.” Janet is returning with a tray of tea so he winks at me. “I’ll tell you later.” He stands to tackle the tray. “Here, let me. It’s very kind of you to have us here.”

“Och, not at all. Not at all, lad. Ye’re family, ye and yer wee lassie here.”

I feel a need to explain, to somehow account for my presence here in this tiny front parlor in a farmworker’s cottage on Orkney. “Oh, no, I’m just…”

“Hope’s my girlfriend. She kindly agreed to drive me up here.” Harry cuts across my tentative attempt to introduce myself. I have to agree that his explanation of my presence is preferable to anything I might have concocted.
Girlfriend indeed.

“Have ye known each other long then?” Janet pours tea, looking from Harry to me then back again.

“No, not long.” Harry takes my hand, kisses it. “It was love at first sight. Wasn’t it, honey?”

“Er, yes.
Honey
.” I frown at him, but make no attempt to repossess my hand.

“We have a little dog with us too.” Ah, Harry seems to have moved on to a safer topic. No less pressing, though. “We found her, somewhere in the Cairngorms I think it was. Anyway, she’s in the car…”

Janet throws up her hands, apparently horrified at this news. “Oh, the poor wee mite. Ye canna leave her there. She’ll fret.”

Harry nods, clearly on the same wavelength. “Yes, so I was wondering…”

“Go fetch her. Bring her indoors. She can have a drink, maybe a bite tae eat…”

I feel a sudden need for fresh air, to regroup. The ‘girlfriend’ remark was welcome, but it still rattled me. I know an opportunity when I see one, so I spring to my feet. “I’ll go. You two must have a lot to catch up on.” Before Harry can stop me, I’m out of the door and scurrying back along the narrow road on the outskirts of Kirkwall toward my car. I can see Daisy watching from the rear window, forlorn at being left on her own. I let her out, slip her lead on, and start marching her back in the direction of Auntie Janet’s interrogation chamber. Daisy will make a useful diversion. It’s time she earned her keep—now’s her chance.

By the time Daisy and I are safely ensconced back in Auntie Janet’s front room, we are onto the second, or possibly third, cup of tea. I feel for Harry—to the best of my knowledge he’s a coffee addict, but he accepts politely each time Janet waggles the teapot in his direction.

“So, how is our Sarah? She’ll be retired by now, aye? Like me.”

Harry nods as he sips his tea. “Yes. She and Granddad both retired about five years ago. He spends most of his time on the golf course, and she paints.”

“Our Sarah’s a painter? What, pictures?” Janet looks stunned. I can only assume her cousin Sarah exhibited no artistic flair in the past.

“Yes. Landscapes mostly. She does watercolors, and still teaches occasional sessions at the local college.”

“Oh, yes, she was always a fine teacher. Had a real calling for it.”

“She did.” Harry agrees. “By the time she retired, she was principal of a high school with over two thousand students.”

“Aye, I always knew she’d be a success. She loved teaching, and never wanted to do anything else all the time we were growing up. She went off to Aberdeen to train when we left school. I always assumed she’d stay on the mainland, but next I heard she’d gone to Skye and was working in a village school there. Always an island lass, ye ken.”

Harry helps himself to what looks to be a home-made ginger biscuit. “Yes, I’ve heard that part of the story. She met my granddad on Skye and married him, then they came back here. Is that right?”

“Aye, it is. They arrived here as newlyweds, must be fifty years ago. Sarah was expecting already…”

“That would have been my mum. She was the eldest. They had three more children after her, all boys.”

“Aye. There was Ann-Marie, yer mam. Such a sweet little bairn she was, a lovely wee thing. Then Duncan, Iain and, and… Let me think.”

Harry opens his mouth to supply the remaining name, but she forestalls him, “No, it’s on the tip o’ me tongue, now what was it? Och, it were James. Wee Jamie as yer da’ always called him.”

“My granddad,” Harry corrects her, though I’m not sure she’s taking the multi-generational details on board. He continues, “But yes, wee Jamie. He’s only three years older than me.”

“Och, a fine family. Sarah was very lucky. She chose herself a good man.”

“Yes, I suppose they were both lucky.”

“I gather Ritchie did well fer himself. An electrician, was he? I recall he was interested in that.”

“Electronics. In the early days that meant television and radio. He started a shop, originally in Vancouver, then added a couple more. When hi-fi systems became popular, he moved into that field, and later into home computing. By then his sons were growing up and joined him in the business. The home entertainment stuff was still the mainstay but that developed into hardware and then the software we specialize in now.”

He pauses as Janet’s expression becomes ever more puzzled. She’d followed him as far as the hi-fi, I suspect, but he might as well have told her the rest in Swahili for all the sense it was making. Harry grins at her. “McLeods is now just called Clouds, and we develop computer programs. It’s quite a big company—we employ maybe fifty people or so.” He leaves it there.

Janet regards him steadily. “I’m glad he did well. And Sarah. Mind, we were surprised when they turned up out o’ the blue like that. Our Mary, Sarah’s mam, expected them to settle on Skye. Yer granddad’s family were crofters, had been fer generations, I gather. He should have inherited the place. There was some sort of falling out, though, and they left. Came back here to live wi’ Mary fer a while.”

“What did they fall out over?” This question comes from me. I’ve been listening quietly, but I’m fascinated. I can’t imagine what sort of rift would drive such a wedge between close relatives, especially if a family business depended on them working together. “Did they make it up eventually?” I know by now that Ritchie and Sarah never returned to Skye—they forged a life for themselves in Canada—but they might have been in touch.

“No, they hadna time. Yer grandda’s mam and da’ died, not five years later, I gather. I met him, yer great-grandda’.”

“You? You met him? How?”

“He came here lookin’ fer Ritchie and Sarah. It wer maybe two years after they showed up. They weren’t here, though, no’ anymore. They lived wi’ Mary for about a year, then she died, sudden like. Women’s problems.” Janet pauses to look at me, nodding wisely as though she and I share a unique insight into these matters.

I nod back, keen to get her to continue her tale.

“Right, so Angus—yer great-grandda’—just turned up one day, at Mary’s old cottage. It had been sold when she died, after Sarah and Ritchie emigrated, but the new owners sent Angus round tae me. I put him up for a night. Nice man.”

“Nice! Granddad never described him as nice. A bloody auld tyrant is closer to the mark.”

“Nay, lad, he wer polite, verra pleasant company. He had a, a presence about him. Hard tae describe but I’ll wager he ne’er lacked for female company. He was a loyal man, though, as far as I could tell, and a true one. He came after Ritchie and Sarah because his wife was pining. She couldn’t settle after their lad left and kept on at Angus tae make matters right. He tried. He came all the way here seeking them, but I had to tell him that Sarah and Ritchie decided to go to Canada when her mam passed away, because she had brothers already out there.” She pauses to pass the biscuits around again.

We each take one.

“At one time a lot o’ Orkney folk moved to Canada, wi’ the Hudson Bay Company. I think Sarah might ha’ stayed here if Mary had been alive, but when she died… Anyway, I had nae forwarding address fer a while. It was maybe another five years before I started to get letters from Sarah. I promised Angus I’d let him know if I did get news of them, but by that time, both he and his wife had died.”

“How did you know that?” Harry is leaning forward, his attention rapt by the tale unfolding.

“Ritchie wrote to them. He relented—perhaps it was when his own lads were born. Anyway, he wrote to his kin, but the letter came back from the post office in Skye, wi’ ‘deceased’ stamped on it. No more details, but they were both gone. It’s a tragedy really.”

I nod, feeling indescribably sad for a family torn apart, leaving it too late to say sorry. I’m assuming that is what Angus and Ritchie each had in mind when they started trying to make contact again. Things might have been so different.

“Sarah tells me that ye’re headed to Skye when you leave here. Maybe you can find out what became o’ them.” Janet stands, perhaps intending to refill the teapot. I doubt either one of us could manage another drop.

“We’re all right for tea, thanks. And yes, we might go. Hope? What do you think?”

“I’d like to. It’s a sad story but we might be able to find where Angus and his wife were buried. Maybe even meet someone who knew them, remembers them. Perhaps we could find out what the row was about.”

“Oh, I can tell ye that.” Janet is in full flow again. “Angus was dead set against Ritchie marrying Sarah. He thought she’d never make a crofter’s wife. Ritchie had to choose between the croft and Sarah, an’ he chose Sarah. There might have been more to it, but I gather some harsh words were exchanged, things said that couldn’t be unsaid. It came to blows.”

Harry and I exchange a glance. It really does sound as though whatever happened back then was pretty terminal. And yes, Janet’s right. It was a tragedy.

* * * *