The Inheritance (17 page)

July 2010

I lay my head down on my folded arms and sighed in defeat.  We’d been going through dusty old books all morning and found absolutely nothing.  There had been references to McBrides, and specifically to John Donald McBride, chieftain of Clan McBride, but nothing about anyone with initials R.A.M.  John had been beheaded in London, so he was mentioned in several historical sources. 

I was hungry, tired, and bored.  Danny had a few more books in front of him, but looked like he was ready to call it a day and go get some lunch
, so I took a stack of books and went to return them to the reference desk.  When I came back to our table, Danny looked ecstatic. 

“Look at this.  I got him.”  I looked at the book.  It was about the tales of Culloden and there was a small
blurb that Danny was pointing to.  It read:

“Despite the fact that the British kept copious records of the dead and imprisoned, there were several well-known Jacobites who were never accounted for.  One such person was Rory Alexander McBride, War
Chieftain of the McBride clan.  He was well-known among the rebels and was often seen in the company of the king.  He disappeared after the fateful battle of Culloden never to be heard from again.”

I put down the book.  So, we had our man and we knew that he
’d also gone missing.  I was still pondering this information as we sat down in the pub across the street. I took a sip of my iced tea and looked across at Danny.

“They both vanished.  What does that tell you?” I felt like a detective who just had a
breakthrough in the case.  Danny took a long pull of his beer and gave me a thoughtful glance.

“You
’re jumping to conclusions.  We assume that he is the right person and if he is, we know they were lovers.  They both disappeared some time after Culloden.  However, there could be many other explanations.”

“Like what?”  I asked stubbornly, wanting a happy ending for the lovers.

“He might have been killed and wrongly identified, or taken prisoner and given a different name to the British.  There was a price on his head and he would have been executed right along with John.  Giving a false name might have saved his life.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that they ran away together.  She might have jumped off the tower, as legend suggests, whether mourning her husband or her lover, or both.  Her body could have smashed on the rocks and been washed away before anyone found it.  That would explain her disappearance.”

“Is there not a romantic bone in your body?” I demanded.  I was upset by his theories
, and wanted them to have lived happily ever after.

“I take great offense at that,” Danny said in mock hurt.  “I have a very romantic soul, but I
’m a lawyer.  I need evidence and proof.  You’re making assumptions based on an old story and a few sentences in an ancient book.  There’s no proof.  And anyway, why are you so eager to know that they ended up together?  She was an adulteress, and he was cuckolding his cousin.  Not exactly sweet and innocent, were they?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it was like that.  Her marriage was probably arranged by her father and maybe her husband was a brute.  They just remind me of Romeo and
Juliet,” I replied, realizing how lame that sounded.

“We still have a few letters
; maybe we’ll find proof.  Maybe he says something about running away together,” I insisted.

“O
kay, we’ll read the rest of them tonight and see what we can find out.  I’m kind of curious myself.”  With that Danny tucked into his burger and I was left with my theories.

After lunch we decided to take a walking tour of Edinburgh.  Danny suggested that we walk down the Royal Mile toward Holyrood Palace where we could take a tour. The Royal Mile was crowded with tourists, and the shop owners were doing a brisk trade in kilts, dirk letter openers and mugs bearing the likeness of the prince.  Despite the shops and cafes, I could imagine what the street had been like a few hundred years ago.  The cobblestone street led us down the hill toward the palace.  Many narrow streets branched out from the main road, and we wandered into some of them just to get a feel for the place.  The houses were old with low ceilings and small windows, and the alleyways were almost completely dark despite the brightness of the day. 

We
continued to walk toward Holyrood, catching sight of it as we finally descended the hill.  I was impressed by the grandeur of the place, and tried to imagine Prince Charles holding court in the elegantly appointed rooms of the palace during his brief reign.  Had Isobel’s lover really walked these halls and dined with the king?  I wondered if he had been handsome, and if her husband knew of the affair.

After completing our tour
of Holyrood, we walked toward Edinburgh Cathedral, where I spent a long time looking up at the magnificent stained glass windows and trying to decipher the biblical stories they told. Danny finally had to pull me outside of the dim interior into the late afternoon sunshine.  We made our way to the statue of Sir Walter Scott.  “Ivanhoe” had been one of my favorite books when I was a teenager and I wanted to see the man who had written it.  The statue was in a lovely park, and we strolled among the flower beds enjoying the gorgeous day and each other’s company.

“I am surprised there is no statue of J.K. Rowling.  At this point she is much more famous tha
n Sir Walter Scott,” I joked. 

“Are you a Harry Potter fan?” Danny was clearly surprised. 

“Guilty as charged.  I like fairy tales.”

“I noticed,” he said with a
smile.

When we got back to Inverness, Danny went to take a shower and I headed straight for the phone.  I wanted to call Sophia and tell her about our discovery at the archives.  She’d been incredulous when I told her about my dream and the stack of letters we found, and was waiting for information with great anticipation.  I dialed her number and listened to it ring, wondering if she were at home.  It would be lunchtime in New York and it being Saturday, she might be out.  Sophia picked up on the eighth ring sounding very weepy.

“Katie, I
’m so glad it’s you.  I called you at the inn, but they told me that you left.”  It was completely out of character for her not to ask where I’d gone, so I became instantly concerned.

“What
’s happened, Soph?”

“My life is a Greek tragedy!”  I was glad to see she hadn’t lost her sense of humor.  Obviously this had something to do with her family.

“Tell me what happened.  From the beginning!” 

Sophia had a habit of just going to the gist of the problem
, and I needed to hear the whole story before commenting on the situation.  She took a deep breath and began.

“Last night Jesse was waiting for me
after work.  He was supposed to work late, but his meeting got canceled and he came to surprise me.  It was a gorgeous evening, and we went to that little place in Little Italy that I love.  I could sense that he was nervous and suddenly I felt sick to my stomach.  I just knew that my life was about to change in some significant way.  I almost wanted to make an excuse and run away.”  She sounded so miserable that I was beginning to wonder if Jesse had broken up with her.

“Go on,” I prompted while she blew her nose
noisily into the phone.

“Dinner was really nice, despite my stomach doing somersaults
, and just when I thought I’d imagined the whole thing — there it was.  The waiter brought out a whole cheesecake with “Sophia will you marry me?” written across the top, and a diamond ring in place of the dot over the “i” in my name.  It should have been the happiest night of my life, but I just wanted to cry.” 

She was certainly crying now
, and I wished I could have been there to give her a hug and talk this out.  Not that there was really anything to discuss.  I knew exactly what this meant.  Sophia had come to a crossroads, and either way she went, she would be making a sacrifice.  Her parents had come to the States when they were in their early thirties, and despite their youth, remained firmly set in the old ways.  Most of their lives took place within the Greek community, so the idea of marrying someone who wasn’t one of them was unacceptable.

Sophia had always fought for what she wanted
, and they eventually accepted her going away to college and even living by herself, although that took some doing, but this wasn’t something that they would come around to. 

“Have you told them?  What are you going to do?  Did you give Jesse an answer?”

“Jesse knows what this means and he didn’t press me to give him an answer right away.  He knows that I would say “yes” in a heartbeat if my parents weren’t so against our union.  How do I choose between the people who’ve raised me and loved me all my life, and the one guy whom I feel I can’t live without?”

“Would Jesse ever convert do you think?”  I didn’t think he would, but I had to ask.

“I would never ask that of him.  He’s not a very religious person, and only goes to Temple on Yom Kippur, but it’s a part of who he is.  I wouldn’t want him to give that up; he would eventually come to resent me if he did. I wouldn’t want to convert either.” 

“I agree with you.  I wouldn’t want that either.  What about children?  How would you raise them?”  I knew this probably wasn
’t the right time to ask this, but she had to consider all the angles before making her decision.

“We talked about that.  I wouldn
’t want to raise my kids in the Orthodox Church, so we’d just celebrate both holidays and they would get double the presents.”

“
It seems that you’ve made up your mind,” I knew her well enough to know which way she was leaning.  Sophia loved her family, but she’d always felt stifled by the rules imposed on her by the community and the Church. She was a free spirit, and wanted to live her life with someone who cherished that rather than tried to suppress it.  Marrying a man from the Greek community would mean accepting a certain type of lifestyle for herself and her future children, and I couldn’t see her consenting to that, even for her parents. 

“Maybe they’ll come around eventually,” I tried to comfort her despite my doubts. 

“I don’t think so.  If it was just them, maybe they would in time, but there’ll be too many other people adding fuel to the fire and egging them on to do the right thing.  They’ll cut me off for good and I will have to live with that.” 

She sounded resigned
and it broke my heart.  Why did it have to be so difficult?  Sophia had plenty of boyfriends in the past, but not one of them made her as happy as Jesse.  It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that they genuinely loved each other and brought out each other’s best qualities.  No relationship can be perfect.  This was their one impediment, but it was a huge one.  I was sure that Jesse’s parents weren’t thrilled either, but they welcomed Sophia for their son’s sake, and would do their best to deal with the situation despite their own reservations.  They weren’t about to lose their only son and future grandchildren. 

“Will you be my maid of honor?” Sophia sounded a little more cheerful
, and I was glad to have been able to help her make up her mind.

“I would be honored, and if you have any desire to marry at a
dilapidated castle in Scotland, just say the word; I know the owner.” 

“Thank you.  We
’ll definitely think about it, but I haven’t even given him an answer yet, much less considered having a wedding.  I’ll keep you posted.  Now tell me about you.  Why have you left the inn?  Could a sexy Highlander be involved?”

I told her about the developments with Danny
, and she was her bubbly self by the time I finished my story. 

“You deserve it, Katie.  Enjoy it.  Don’t think about the future or what it might lead to.   Just allow yourself to be happy.  So, how was your day in Edinburgh?  Did you find anything at the archives?”

“Actually, we did.  We found a mention of the McBride War Chieftain named Rory Alexander McBride, who was among the missing after the battle of Culloden.  He didn’t turn up among the dead, and he wasn’t taken prisoner, although of course, he might not have been identified properly.  All we know is that the initials fit, and he was probably the author of the letters to Isobel.”  I knew how flimsy my evidence was, but I wanted it to be him.

“Sounds about right.  As the
War Chieftain, he was probably close to the Laird and frequently around his wife.  It sounds like she didn’t marry for love, so it’s entirely possible that she fell in love with the handsome Commando.  Sounds very romantic.  I wonder what happened to them.”

“I don’t know, but I
’ll do my best to find out.”  With that we said goodbye and Sophia promised to call me after she spoke to her parents.

By the time I finished my conversation with Sophia, Danny had come out of the shower and was waiting for me on the patio.  He’d opened up a bottle of wine and had the next letter out for us to read.  We got comfortable on the wicker couch and I carefully unfolded the yellowed square.  The date was smudged, but it had to have been after Rory and Isobel saw each other in December.

Dearest Isobel,

Seeing y
e was the greatest gift I could have asked for, and I carry ye with me in my heart every day.  Dougal’s spirits are low, and he keeps moaning about missing his wife.  I know how he feels.

We rejoined the army at Edinburgh where they
’d retreated after being defeated in England.  No British or Lowland Jacobites joined the rebellion, and some of the Lowlanders actually support government troops.  The men are tired, disillusioned and frequently hungry, as there aren’t enough funds to supply the army. 

His Majest
y is awaiting help from the French afore attempting to march on England again. 

Our
Laird is close to the king and bids us follow him to England.  I am duty bound to follow, but my heart is with ye at Kilmaron.

All my love,

R.A.M.

I put
the letter aside.  I could sense some of Rory’s discontent and doubts, but there was nothing about him deserting or making plans to run away with Isobel.  The book had said that he disappeared after the battle of Culloden, so maybe we’d still find something.  There was only one more letter left in the stack, and I hoped it would provide some clues.  I would have liked to read it immediately, but Danny was pulling the paper out of my hand and unbuttoning my blouse.  It would have to wait — I had more important things to do.