Page 52 of Highlanders for the Holidays
Hugh spun about to watch them race away, toward an old stone keep at the top of the hill—the ancient seat of the MacKinnon lairds.
Soaring high upon a gently sloping hill,Chreagach Mhorwas a rugged fortress seated upon a violet mantle. The heather bloomed a brilliant violet against a vivid carpet of green and scattered across the lush landscape, rugged stones stood like proud sentries to guard the mammoth tower. Small thatch-roofed buildings spattered the hillside.
Another boy came racing past, perhaps this one no more than twelve. “Mother says to come along,” he shouted at the escaping girls. “Tis time to sup.”
The girls all squealed as the boy reached the hindmost runner, trying in vain to grasp the little girl’s golden hair.
“Constance!” the boy screamed, when the child managed to escape, and then all the girls laughed and scurried away.
Was this some form of hell, to glimpse a life he was never privy to?
Once again, Hugh FitzSimon slapped his burdened chest. “Dear Lord, Eleanore! Am I already dead?”
In truth, he did not feel so well this eve.
Eleanore smiled yet again, not quite warm, not quite cold. Hugh could barely look at her for the brightness of her eyes. “Not yet, Hugh. Not yet.”
And then they were no longer standing upon the hillside. They were in a barren field. It was sunny still, but now it seemed they’d somehow happened into the middle of a celebration, surrounded by happy folk the likes of which Hugh had never beheld.
His wife reappeared by his side, not alive, not quite dead. “Is this for real?” he asked. “What of ye? What do ye be?”
The blue glow in Eleanore’s eyes dimmed—just enough so that he could spy the true color of her eyes: hazel green. “For love of ye, I come bearing gifts.”
Hugh screwed his face. “From beyond the grave?”
Eleanore nodded wistfully, looking more like herself than the specter she had been. “Love, you see, is quite the hopeful thing.”
Hugh remained confused. “B-But I did not love ye well enough!” he said.
“This I know.”
“And yet ye loved me still?”
She nodded again and bade him to look about once more, so he could see what she had brought him there to see.
And there she was—his daughter, Page. Older now, with soft tendrils of sun-kissed hair framing a lovely grown-up face. After all these many years, she’d kept her beauty—just like her lady mother. But Hugh peered from mother to daughter, and realized with a start that Page had more of him than she had of Eleanore.
She had his face, not her lady mother’s.
Amazed by the sight of his daughter, he watched her hug a little girl—his granddaughter, Hugh supposed. And then another child came to tug her skirts. With a smile, Page bent to meet the little girl’s gaze. The two spoke at length, after which the child hugged her neck and went racing away, laughing with unrepressed joy. By now, Hugh’s heart pained him immensely. He could watch no more.
Dear God, he could watch no more!
Cruelly, Eleanore pushed him closer. He glided uphill, all the easier to eavesdrop on his daughter’s conversation with her laird husband. At first, Hugh was afeared they might spy him.
“You spoil them overmuch,” Iain complained.
Hugh waved a hand before their faces. It swished through the air nebulously, passing through the MacKinnon’s short gray beard.
They could not see him.
“And why not?” Page asked her laird husband, who by the way, had kept a hand about her waist, as though he could not quite bear the thought of losing touch. “I will not treat my children the way my father treated me.”
Page’s words were like daggers cast unerringly at Hugh’s heart. He writhed a bit in pain.
The MacKinnon drew his wife close. “There is very little danger in that, my love.”
“A single tart for each will surely not break us,” Page maintained, and then she cast her husband a worried glance. “Do you think there’ll be enough to last the winter long?”
