“Of course.”
“In one of those rooms are some portraits of my family.”
“Indeed, laird?”
Alasdair smiled a little. “Haven’t you been wondering, all these years, where they were?”
“It’s not my business to wonder, laird,” replied Lister piously.
“I’d like you to have the portraits put back in their place, in the gallery.”
“To be sure, laird, I’ll see to it.”
“Good. Have you been able to pay those old invoices of my mother’s?”
“Oh yes, it’s all been taken care of.”
“I’m glad. Thank you, Lister,” said Alasdair, and went on to the breakfast-room. If Cuilean had been able to form the words, he doubtless would have said, in a joyful voice, At last.
Late at night, wide awake, in her bedchamber Fiona took out paper, ink, and a quill. She sat at her old escritoire, wearing not only her thick flannel nightgown but also two of her heaviest wool cloaks and four pairs of stockings. Logan Munro was right: the keep was atrociously cold.
Not that it was news to her.
Was she going to marry Logan?
She dipped her quill in the inkpot and slowly wrote:
Pros
Start a new life
Babies (hopefully)
Logan is very good-looking
His house is probably warmer
Cons
No real sense of humor; fond of puns (ugh)
Has a weak chin
She paused.
So what if Logan’s chin was less than ideal? She herself, after all, was far from perfect. For example, she’d become so thin that the last time she’d gotten onto Gealag’s back, he’d inquiringly turned his head around to see if it really was her, or perhaps a scarecrow from the field which someone had set on top of him.
Fiona looked down at the sheet of paper on which she’d begun her list.
Stared at it for a long time.
She thought again about the things Logan had said to her in the stillroom. Then she pushed aside her list, and began writing them down on a new sheet of paper.
The past is gone.
Start over again.
Second chances.
The future.
At this she also stared for a long time. Logan had said all the right things. He really had. Her mind moved and leaped, reversed itself and jumped ahead, looping over and over as she studied these eleven simple words.
Finally she slid aside the paper, revealing another blank sheet.
Slowly she began to write again.
He was dreaming that he’d been very far down in the water, where all was icy blackness.
He dreamed that he had at last figured out which way was up. Where the surface was. With powerful strokes of his arms, powerful kicks of his legs, he swam up, the water around him gradually brightening, until, his lungs seeming about to burst, he broke through and out into the air and light of the world. He breathed. A few gentle strokes of his arms kept him buoyant. Not for him another descent into the watery soundless gloom below. Radiance everywhere.
And then Alasdair woke up.
It was morning.
He turned from his side and lay on his back, looking around his bedchamber.
Another morning.
Hours ahead of him, to fill as best he could.
What next?
He remembered, suddenly, the time he, and Gavin, and a group of schoolfellows had been taken to a zoo in Glasgow, one of the very first built upon modern scientific principles. He remembered standing in front of an enclosure, inside which a bear had been confined. It was a very large enclosure. It had obviously been carefully designed so as to provide a comfortable setting for the bear; there were trees, shrubs, a spacious pool of water. Still, the bear wasn’t free, and Alasdair had been almost unendurably sad to see it. Nonsense, said one of the masters, the bear is safe, it’s got no predators or hunters, it’s fed every day, what’s there to be melancholy about?
But still he remembered wondering, at the age of ten, is it better to be safe or to be free?
It occurred to him now that safety was, perhaps, overrated. And in the wake of that thought, his being was flooded again with the essence of his dream.
Radiance everywhere.
It came to him, all at once, with the ease of an obvious idea, what he needed to do today.
It really was time to move forward.
Yes.
How simple it all was.
Simple, and yet risky.
The outcome was uncertain.
But he was going to try.
That’s all he could do.
Alasdair got out of bed, pulled aside one of the heavy drapes, looked at the sky. There was snow in those low gray clouds. Well, it couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t about to let a little snow get in his way.
It had been a tedious morning. After nearly a week of mild sunshine, the weather had turned nasty. The oatmeal served at breakfast had been burnt, the tea tasted worse than usual, and Father had been grumpy. Mother was nursing a cold; Isobel had been solicitous until Father had snapped at her, reducing her to tremulous silence. Only Logan had been cheerful, relating amusing anecdotes about his tailor back home and regaling them with a few choice puns. Fiona had finally stopped listening to him, given up on the execrable oatmeal, and simply looked at how beautifully put together Logan’s features were (aside from his chin). She had never before noticed that his eyelashes were so long and lush that they actually curled. A woman might envy them.