Waterfall Glen (7 page)

Kate woke up just before 5 p.m. after something longer than a nap but shorter than a slumber. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the frilly fringe around the top of the four-poster, and for a moment she felt like she was in a doll’s house. She blinked and looked around. The unfamiliar surroundings added to the notion that she must be dreaming. Even after she remembered about the transatlantic flight and Finlay McRae, the climb up the staircase cut into the crag, and her first sight of the tower house that topped it, she still had to get up and look out of the window to convince herself it was all real.

The sun was setting beyond the hills at the far end of the glen, and Kate bathed in the light and gloried in the view. Before her eyes the craggy summits changed color and seemed to soften, as if granite was being transformed to amber. Bewitched, she watched as the green of hillside forest was swallowed up by shadow, and the lochan turned
from a shimmering pool of liquid gold to a bottomless well that plumbed the depths of night. It was all so enchanting that at one point she actually pinched her arm in a bid to convince herself it wasn’t just a dream.

After a soak in the old enamel en-suite bath she put on jeans and a white cotton sweater—happy to dress casually now that she’d met Finlay and Miss Weir and knew they had no airs or graces—before going downstairs for something to eat.

Kate wanted to take her evening meal in the kitchen but Finlay led her to the banquet hall instead, where a place was set for her.

Sitting alone at the head of a table that would have seated thirty—and faced by a mountainous helping of stew and dumplings that would have fed half a dozen of them—Kate got the feeling that, while she’d been sleeping, Finlay and Miss Weir had formed a little conspiracy with the intention of doing all they could to impress her with Greystane’s grandeur.

She smiled at the idea. The smile didn’t last long, however, for as she unfolded her napkin and looked around the empty hall her gaze was drawn instinctively to the picture of Lady Carolyn, and again she was unsettled by that strange, unaccountable sense of recognition. For a moment she actually considered turning the painting around to face the wall, like Jamie’s picture. All that stopped her was the knowledge that she couldn’t comfortably explain away such an action to Finlay and Miss Weir.

She tried shifting herself rather than the painting so that the wall of portraits was at her back. However that only made things worse because it wasn’t a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” but rather “IT’S BEHIND YOU!”

Moving back to the head of the table, Kate did her best to concentrate on her food and forget about the painting. It took all her willpower but, with the help of a healthy appetite and the perfectly cooked meal, she managed.

She was more unsettled than she’d realized, however, because when the polished brass handle of the door that led to the lean-to began to turn fifteen minutes later, it gave her such a fright that the fork fell out of her fingers and clattered on the plate. Powerless to move, Kate made no attempt to pick it up. She just sat there as the door swung open and the clash of silver on china echoed from the old walls.

Finlay appeared and said, “Sorry, Lady Kate, did I give you a fleg?”

Kate was able to muster a smile at the funny word. “A what?” she asked.

“A fleg—a fright.”

Her smile turned to a laugh. “Yes, Finlay,” she told him, “you gave me a wee fleg.”

Finlay chuckled at hearing the Scottish words spoken in an American accent. “Do you want a little longer to finish your meal?” he asked when he saw how much food was left on her plate.

“No,” Kate said, a little too quickly, not wanting to be left alone again with the portrait of Lady Carolyn. “No,”
she repeated again more calmly. “I’m full, thanks.”

Finlay grimaced. “Miss Weir likes to see an empty plate, Lady Kate. It’s not quite ‘finish your greens or you won’t get any desert’, but not far off it.”

“You’ll have to help me out, then,” Kate said, sliding the plate across to him and handing over her knife and fork.

Finlay took a seat, gave Kate a conspiratorial grin, and set to work.

“I better leave something or the auld boot’ll get suspicious,” he said several minutes later, reluctantly sparing a morsel of dumpling and a few token chunks of beef.

Kate laughed, then accompanied him through to the kitchen to thank Miss Weir for the meal.

The “auld boot” inspected the remains of the meal, smiled at Kate and said, “You’ve done better than I expected, lass.”

Kate smiled back, but lies and deceit didn’t come easily to her and there was enough guilt in her expression to arouse Miss Weir’s suspicions. Looking from Kate to Finlay, the housekeeper said, “That wouldn’t be gravy on your moustache, now, would it, Finlay McRae?”

Finlay’s hand quickly shot up to his neatly trimmed moustache, the panic in his gesture and the alarm on his face an eloquent admission of guilt.

Kate did her best to come to Finlay’s rescue, saying, “It’s just that there was enough for two, Miss Weir, and it seemed much too good to waste. Besides, I felt silly sitting there all alone. How about if we eat in the kitchen from
now on, or you two join me in the banquet hall for meals?”

“That’s very kind, but it just wouldn’t seem right,” Miss Weir said.

“It can’t be more wrong than one person eating alone at a table that seats thirty,” Kate said, made uncharacteristically assertive by the fresh memory of eating dinner alone with the portrait of Lady Carolyn.

Miss Weir still looked unconvinced.

“I’ll tell you what—how about if we eat breakfast and lunch here in the kitchen, and dinner together in the hall—how does that sound?”

“Aye, well—”

“Good.” Kate smiled. Turning to Finlay, she said, “There’s a lot of ground to cover tomorrow morning, so I imagine you’ll want an early start. How does eight o’clock sound?”

“It sounds just fine,” Finlay told her.

“Eight o’clock it is, then—I’ll set my alarm.” She was about to leave, but stopped and said, “Finlay, Miss Weir, thanks for making me so welcome. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

With that she walked through the door that led back to the banquet hall, smiling when she heard Finlay say to Miss Weir, “And to think you were worried she was going to be some stuck-up besom who’d be looking down her nose at us.”

Kate was still smiling a few minutes later when she curled up under the covers and drifted off to sleep to the sound of the waterfall far below.

“D
O YOU
M
IND IF HAMISH JOINS US ON OUR WEE JAUNT
around the glen?” Finlay asked after breakfast the next morning.

Kate had no idea who Hamish was, but again her mind conjured up images of a kilted Tom Hanks.

They were quickly dispelled when Miss Weir explained: “That’s his wee West Highland Terrier.”

Kate smiled at how wrong she’d been once more, and said, “No, of course not.”

“Good,” Finlay said. “If you’ll excuse me, then, I’ll just nip upstairs and see if he’s awake yet.”

“He spoils that dog something terrible,” Miss Weir said after Finlay left. “He even made a little bed for him out of the bottom drawer of his chest, and lined it with a blanket.”

“That’s so sweet.”

“Aye, he’s a loveable wee beast, right enough.”

“Hamish or Finlay?”

Miss Weir laughed.

A few minutes later Kate heard yelping from the other
side of the serving door that separated lean-to from banquet hall.

“Don’t you dare bring that dog in the kitchen!” Miss Weir shouted.

The door opened and Finlay stood there, meticulously careful not to set foot over the threshold. He was cradling a little white terrier with black button eyes and a red tartan collar.

“Oh, Finlay, he’s such a little cutie!” Kate said, getting off her stool to pat the dog.

“Aye, he’s a bonnie wee thing, right enough,” Finlay agreed. “We’re ready when you are, Lady Kate.”

Hamish led the way, scrambling down the crag at the side of the staircase ahead of Kate and Finlay. When they reached the Land Rover, Finlay said, “It’s such a nice day you’d maybe rather take a walk than a drive.”

Kate nodded. “Much rather.”

“Good. I’ll be able to show you some places not even a Land Rover can go. Like this one,” he said, turning not left down the track they’d driven up the day before but instead right, along what was little more than a dirt path that led towards the hanging valley and the opposite crag. As they made their way along the trail, with Hamish bounding happily in front of them, the thunder of the falls grew louder with every step.

“I love that sound,” Kate said. “I left my window open last night and drifted off to sleep with it, and it was the first thing I heard when I woke up this morning—well,
once I’d switched off my alarm clock. It’s a beautiful sound to start and end the day with, isn’t it?”

“Aye. You might not think quite the same when there’s been a storm, though, because there’s so much water going over that it can be deafening even with your window closed.”

Kate tried picturing Greystane in a storm. She couldn’t imagine a place she’d rather be curled up in on a night of howling gales and flashing lightning—or a place she’d rather walk around than Glen Cranoch on a sunny summer morning such as this.

As they drew nearer the falls and lost height, so the crag opposite loomed ever higher. Kate paused while they could still see the derelict cottage on top of it.

“It’s supposed to be haunted,” Finlay told her. There was nothing mocking or derisory about they way he said the words.

“That’s all the glen was missing—a haunted house,” Kate said.

“Oh, it’s got far more than its share of them,” the old Highlander told her. “I’ll show you some of them later.”

“Is this to do with the ‘curse’ and the ruins down by the lochan?”

“It is indeed. But the ghost in the cottage up there has nothing to do with the curse,” he said, pointing to the crag. “That was Jamie’s Cottage, and no one’s lived in it since. A few have tried, but even the least superstitious haven’t stayed.”

“Have you ever seen anything spooky up there?”

“No, but that’s probably just because I’ve never got
close enough.”

“I can’t believe you’ve lived here all your life and haven’t at least had a peek.”

“Aye, well, if you’d been with me and Mr. Chisholm when we were just boys and he was just plain Colin and you’d heard what we heard, then you’d find it easier to believe.”

Intrigued, Kate said, “What did you hear?”

Finlay didn’t answer. Studying him as he gazed up at the ruined cottage, Kate guessed that he hadn’t heard her question. Instead, he was hearing whatever it was that had frightened him all those years ago. “Finlay?” she prompted.

He was startled by her voice, as if he’d forgotten she was even there.

“What did you hear?” she repeated.

“I think we heard the ghost of Jamie Chisholm,” he told her.

Kate was about to laugh, but the old man’s expression stopped her. Even sixty or seventy years later, he was obviously still deeply disconcerted by the incident. “What happened?” she asked.

“Mr. Colin and I were climbing up Jamie’s Crag…” he nodded to the rocky outcrop on the other side of the tiny hanging valley. “We got almost to the top, and that’s when we heard it.”

Again the memory seemed to have overtaken him, and Kate had to prompt him with, “Heard what?”

“It sounded like a pibroch—a bagpipe lament—coming from Jamie’s Cottage.”

“Couldn’t it just have been the wind whistling through the ruins—I’m sure that can make an eerie sound.”

“It can indeed. But the thing is that there was barely enough breeze to ruffle our hair that day, let alone enough wind to make music. I thought I might have been imagining things, but then I looked at Colin and he was looking back at me from a face that was white as a sheet. We scrambled back down the crag like a couple of startled rabbits and never climbed it again, or even talked about it.”

“Now I’ve got to go up there,” Kate said.

“Unfortunately we don’t have time today,” Finlay told her, not sounding in the slightest sorry.

“Maybe we can go there another day,” Kate said, looking up at the ruin.

“Aye, maybe,” Finlay said without conviction.

“You said something yesterday about the cottage not belonging to me—who does it belong to?” Kate asked.

“A man by the name of Cameron Fraser, apparently. I got the impression that Archie Cunningham had found out more about this Mr. Fraser than just his name, but for some reason he wouldn’t let on what it was. He just said: ‘I’d rather have you make your own mind up about the gentleman, and not be influenced by anything I say,’ whatever that might mean.”

“I can’t begin to imagine what it means,” Kate said thoughtfully, looking up at the cottage.

“You should have a word with Miss Weir, then—she’s been doing enough imagining about it for two people.”

Kate smiled.

“Anyway, never mind about Jamie’s Cottage and Cameron Fraser, whoever he might be; I want to show you my favourite place in the world.” He led Kate to the end of the path, where they were level with the tops of the trees lining the banks of the hanging valley. She followed him down a wooden-sleepered staircase that wound through the trees and led to an old stone bridge spanning the river just before it plunged into the glen below. An enormous rock sat in the middle of the fast-flowing water, dividing it into two forks and forming the foundation for the central pillar of the small, twin-arched bridge.