Waterfall Glen (2 page)

“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me again. Crofters?”

“Aye, crofters. They’re tenant farmers. But you can’t afford to let them influence your decision about whether or not to sell the estate. Please bear that in mind if you do decide to pay a visit.”

“Are these people depending on me in some way?”

“Well, let’s just say that Finlay and Miss Weir are your employees; and as for the crofters, they hold their tenancies at your pleasure.

“Anyway, I can fax over the balance sheets and books if you’d like, and you can go over them with your accountant. Or, if you decide to come over here in person, I’d be happy to go through the accounts line by line with you myself. I’m afraid that whoever it is that explains them to you, though, they’ll say the same thing.”

“My head’s spinning,” Kate told him. “I don’t know quite what to think about any of this, let alone what to say.”

“Then don’t say any more until you’ve had a chance for a wee think to yourself, Lady Kate. Meantime, if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to call.”

After thanking the lawyer Kate dialled her father’s number, desperate for an answer. She was disappointed rather than surprised when she didn’t get one. It was a nice morning and the chances were he’d be out sailing on
Lawman,
the small yacht that had been his second home since retiring from the Marin County Police Department. Unable to keep the excitement from her voice, she left a
message on his answering machine: “Dad, something very strange has happened—please look into the shop as soon as you can.”

Keith Brodie walked into the shop just after lunchtime, bringing some coffee, a couple of blueberry muffins, and a puzzled expression with him.

Kate did her best to explain the morning’s events, but the words came out in a jumble because she was so excited.

Her father had to say, “Slow down, darling, and start from the beginning.”

So she did.

When she reached the end, her father—who had talked his way out of confrontations with men carrying knives and guns and broken bottles in his time—was lost for words.

“Here’s the cable,” Kate said, handing him the flimsy piece of paper. It was dog-eared and almost torn in two because she’d spent most of the morning staring at it in a not entirely successful attempt to convince herself she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

Keith used his free hand to take a pair of half-moon reading glasses from the inside pocket of his vest. A bemused look crossed his face, and he shook his head as if barely able to believe what he was reading. “I knew that your mom’s mother came from over there, but she never talked about the family she left behind. I got the idea there
had been a bitter falling out over something because she never heard from her folks after she came to the States. Your mother and I never expected to hear from them, either. We certainly never expected anything like this.”

“It’s like some sort of fairytale, isn’t it?” Kate said. “I keep expecting to wake up any moment and find out that it’s all been just a dream.”

“Well, if it is just a dream, I must be having the same one,” Keith told her. Handing the cable back to his daughter, he said, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do, Kate?”

“According to this Mr. Cunningham I don’t really have much choice—I’ll have to sell the place.”

“How come?”

“I just gave you the good news. The bad news is that the house is very neglected, and the estate has running costs I wouldn’t be able to meet.” She hesitated, then added, “Besides, I have to think about what I’d be leaving behind here.”

“If you’re talking about me, don’t make that a factor.”

“You’re the most important factor of all to me, Dad.”

Keith moved closer to the high stool, so that he could put his arms around Kate and draw her head into his chest. “You’re not trying to tell me you think your dad’s so old and crumbly he needs looking after, are you?”

Kate drew back to look up at him, saying, “Of course not, Dad. I just like to think we’re there for each other.”

“However far apart, we’ll always be there for each
other, Kate,” he told her. “The important distance between two people isn’t the one that’s measured in miles.”

“Dad, that’s so sweet.”

“It’s just my way of saying I’d like a vacation in the Scottish Highlands every now and then. Just think, you could take me salmon fishing and deer hunting.”

“What about this place?” Kate said, looking around the shop: at the hanging wall plates depicting Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf and Cathedral Grove; at the shelves stacked with hand-painted mugs and ashtrays; the trays of souvenir keyrings, and racks of tie-dyed T-shirts.

Watching her, Keith said, “Are you happy here, Kate?”

“I’m comfortable.”

“Yes, I know, but that’s not what I asked. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re truly content?”

Kate sighed and looked around the shop again. Her gaze fell on a display cabinet of romantic sculptures—expressions of her unfulfilled desires and nameless longings. She’d once shaped such figures effortlessly with her long-fingered hands, but for some time now had struggled to visualize new poses or even recreate old ones. Her figures had gradually been taking on a cold, lifeless look, as if incapable of feeling love.

“I do feel stuck in a rut,” she said finally. “Well, maybe ‘rut’ isn’t the right word. It’s more a daily routine that’s not unpleasant, but doesn’t really challenge me or let me grow. Like I said, my life is comfortable, Dad, but I sometimes feel as though there has to be a bit more to life than just
being comfortable—and lately I’ve been wondering if I’m ever going to find it here.”

“Then it sounds as if you have to at least go and see this place, Glen—”

“Cranoch—or, as Mr. Cunningham called it, ‘Glen Crrranochh’,” Kate said, putting on a comedy Scottish accent.

Her father laughed. “Anyway, the only way to find out if it’s something you could make a fist of is by going there.”

“What about the shop?”

“I’ll look after it while you’re away. I’ve been a bit thoughtless, Kate. You’re long overdue a break.”

“What if my stay turns into something more than a break? Would you be happy to turn Kate’s Crafts into Keith’s Crafts?”

“Somehow I can’t really see it, can you?”

Kate shook her head.

“What I can see, however, is
Keith’s Cabin:
a nautical supplies store, with me at the helm—and, if it did well enough, somebody else at the till so that I could still go out on
Lawman.
How does
that
sound?”

Kate smiled. “It sounds much more you than Keith’s Crafts.”

“I could buy you out or keep you as a silent partner,” Keith told her. “Either way, the money would help you get on your feet.”

“Thanks, Dad. From the sound of it, this Cranoch estate would be a bit of a money pit, though.”

“I just want you to know that you have options. I’d
hate you to be held back in any way because of me; and your mother would have hated you to be tied up because of the shop.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m unhappy here, Dad. It’s just that sometimes I feel the walls closing in.”

“You should be feeling the wind in your hair, Kate, not the walls closing in. I have no idea what you’ll find in this Glen Cranoch, but it sounds like a place where you’ll at least feel the wind in your hair.”

A
WEEK LATER KATE WAS ON A
J
UMBO
J
ET BOUND FOR
London, with an Inverness flight to follow. Butterflies fluttered crazily in her stomach as she thought about what awaited her in Glen Cranoch, and just how different the next few weeks were likely to be from any of the years that had gone before. All she knew for sure was that nothing she’d experienced was likely to have prepared her for what lay ahead.

She didn’t know whether Greystane was little more than a barely habitable ruin, or somewhere she could turn into a home; whether the glen would be bleak and desolate moorland or wildly beautiful. She tried picturing the place in her mind, but didn’t have nearly enough to go on; so instead she turned her thoughts to the people who lived there—Finlay, Miss Weir and the crofters. Would they be friendly and welcoming or regard her with suspicion, resentment and barely veiled hostility? Would the glen have the kind of isolation that drew people together and fostered a far greater sense of community than you got in a city, or
would its people just feel plain isolated? She wondered if they wore tweed and tartan, ate porridge and drank whisky; or if those would turn out to be ridiculous stereotypes she’d look sheepishly back on after seeing them dressed in denims, Nike T shirts and baseball caps, drinking cans of Coke and eating slices of pizza.

Kate was still thinking about that when she fell asleep not long after the remnants of the in-flight meal had been cleared away.

The excitement of the previous few days had exhausted her, and when she woke up it was to the captain’s cheery voice saying, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The cabin crew are about to start serving a light breakfast, and shortly after that we’ll be commencing our descent to Heathrow Airport in London.”

They touched down ten minutes ahead of schedule and, with a couple of hours to kill before her connecting flight, Kate had a shower in the airport. She changed from jeans and black halter top into fawn slacks, a low-cut cream cashmere sweater, and a long Burberry coat and matching scarf she’d bought the day before because she thought they were what a Highland lady might wear. Finlay was meeting her at Inverness, and she wanted to make a good impression.

She spent the first part of the flight north trying to imagine what Finlay would look like, and the rest of it in a dreamy doze during which her imagination conjured up a convincingly detailed picture of a kilted Tom Hanks. He
was tall, dark, and ruggedly handsome, reassuringly strong but comfortingly gentle. His voice was deep yet quiet, and his smile would make her heart skip a beat. So complete was the picture that, when the plane began its descent, Kate felt as if she was going to meet someone she already knew and loved rather than a complete stranger she’d never even seen before.

The butterflies Kate had felt on the other side of the Atlantic returned in force as she pushed her luggage-laden trolley towards the sign that said MEETING AREA. Pausing just before she turned the corner from partitioned corridor to rendezvous point, she took a compact from her handbag, finger-combed her hair, and gave herself a reassuring smile.

Maybe he’ll be younger than Tom Hanks, with a roguish Ewan McGregor grin and unruly hair a sun-kissed shade between gold and ginger, she thought. Or perhaps he’ll be older, more like Sean Connery, with irresistible charm and a voice you could listen to all day without hearing the words because you were so caught up in the accent.

But when she reached the rendezvous area there wasn’t anyone remotely resembling Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor or Sean Connery; just a slight old man in grey slacks, absently picking at a piece of fluff beside the regimental badge on his dark blazer. He looked at least 70, but his posture was ramrod straight. When he became aware of passengers filing into the meeting area he held up a piece of cardboard with
LADY KATE BRODIE
crayoned on it.

Kate tried to hide her disappointment. She could see he’d made every effort to look his best, from his Brylcreemed silver-grey hair and neatly trimmed David Niven moustache to the carefully folded white handkerchief peeping from the pocket of his blazer, the razor crease in his slacks, and the parade-ground polish of his shoes.

Their eyes met and Kate smiled. At first she thought his eyes were steely and cold, but she quickly changed her mind because they had more than a hint of mischief in them when he smiled back. He had an interesting face, Kate thought as she pushed her trolley towards him. His grooming meant he was too refined to be completely rugged, yet at the same time his weather-beaten complexion and the way the middle section of his nose was knocked slightly to one side made him too rugged to look refined.

“Are you Finlay McRae?” Kate asked, bringing her trolley to a halt in front of him.