Of Lands High and Low, page 24
Chapter Thirty-Two
Uncle John was not sitting up when Isla entered this time. She could barely see him in his bed—a small mound beneath a sheet. There was a servant in the room with him, but upon Isla’s entrance, he rose from his chair and came over to her.
“How is he?” Isla kept her eyes trained on her uncle, who moved not at all.
The servant shook his head. “No’ well. Mr. Westland was here this morning, but he could only stay for half an hour. The master is no’ the most urgent of his cases. He has only seen him three times since the fever set in.” His lips drew into a thin line to show what he seemed to think of this.
Isla nodded. Why, oh why had her uncle not let Graeme attend to him? “Is he awake?”
The servant grimaced. “He is and he isn’t. He drifts in and out, but perhaps a visit from ye will rouse him.”
Isla feared just that.
“He was verra insistent upon it. I’ll leave ye,” said the servant. “Ring if ye require anything.”
She thanked him and waited until he had left before approaching the bed. She stepped as quietly as the rug would allow, but the floor creaked under her feet. Uncle John didn’t stir.
She came up beside the bed, and the light of a candle illuminated his face with oddly angled shadows, accentuating how thin and gaunt he had become and the uneven surface of a face covered in fluid-filled pustules.
Her heart ached at the sight. There had been times over the years when she had wondered whether Uncle John would have rethought his refusal to allow her to be variolated if he could have experienced first-hand what she had suffered. She regretted those thoughts now.
His hand, spotted and wrinkled, hung over the side of the bed, and she reached for it, holding it gently between her own.
He stirred, eyes gradually opening and searching dazedly for whoever had woken him. They landed upon her, taking a moment to focus. “Isla.” His voice was weak and gravelly, but he made no attempt to clear his throat.
“I am here, Uncle.” She wondered if he would take his hand away as he had last time, but whether from frailty or something else, he did not. He lay in silence, eyes opening and closing slowly, trained on her face.
She said nothing, allowing the silence to continue. She had no idea what his reason was for summoning her, but if all he wanted was her company, she would give it to him. It was the least she could do after all he had done for her.
It was an age before he spoke again. “Have you changed your mind?”
Her heart pattered within her, and she hesitated. She wanted so badly to tell him what he wanted to hear. He was hanging on to life by a fraying thread, and she didn’t wish to disappoint him yet again—or fray the thread further.
But she was tired of lying, tired of deception. She didn’t wish to live with the knowledge that in her last interactions with her uncle, she had deceived him.
“No,” she said softly. “I have not.”
He said nothing, his blank expression unchanging.
“Uncle,” she said, “I—”
“I am dying,” he said, and his labored breath was a testament to his words.
She swallowed.
“Everything I have done for you”—he took in a rattling breath—“I have done out of care and love—out of a regard for you and a desire for your good.”
“Shh,” she said, stroking the palm of his hand to avoid the sores that covered the back of it. “I know, Uncle. I know. You mustn’t worry yourself. Know that I am very grateful for all that you have done for me. And I am terribly sorry to have disappointed you.” Her voice trembled, and she forced a deep breath.
“You have not disappointed me.” His eyes closed, and his forehead knit. She wished she could take his pain away, but his words were so needed. So very needed, and they brought her to tears.
“I thought what I did was right.” He coughed weakly.
“Shh,” she said again.
“He should never have left her. It is my fault.”
Isla sighed. Uncle John seemed to be drifting away to the past. “It was wrong of him, Uncle. And I do not blame you for your feelings toward him. I have struggled against the same thing myself. I still struggle to forgive him for abandoning us.”
His head shook ever so slightly. “He did not abandon you.”
She frowned. She had always wondered what it would be like to know one’s life was drawing to a close—what emotions such a situation would bring to the surface. Her uncle’s primary one seemed to be guilt, and it hurt her that he had been laboring under such a thing, even if beneath the surface, for her entire life. She had felt her own guilt scraping away at her for two weeks, and it was wearing her down. How would it be after twenty years?
“It is not your fault that he left, Uncle.”
“Not the first time, no,” he said. “But the second time. The second time, yes.”
She stared at him. He must be confused, surely. “What second time?”
He reached out a hand for the glass of water beside his bed, and Isla hurried to help him find it, as his eyes were still closed. She assisted him in putting the glass to his lips and tipping it so that it didn’t slop over his face and neck.
“Your father does not know about you, Isla,” he said. And the water seemed to have refreshed him a bit. He spoke with more strength. “He left before your mother knew she was with child. He promised to return for her. To marry her.” His words came slowly, between drawn-out, shuddering breaths—so slowly that it agonized Isla. What was he saying?
“What? No,” she said. “He knew of me. You told me he knew. He knew, and he left. Without a word.”
“I know what I told you.” His voice carried the first hint of frustration. But it left as soon as it had come. “I lied.”
There was nothing but silence.
“I wanted you to hate him as I did. I wanted your mother to hate him as I did.”
Her thoughts whirled, her stomach churned. Her father didn’t know she existed? She had spent a lifetime thinking he had never cared enough to return—to know the child he had created or to care for the woman he had professed to love. “But he still left.”
He gave the hint of a nod. “He left. And he returned. Just before you were born. And he wrote.”
“What?”
“I intercepted the letters to your mother. And I sent him away when he came,” he said. “Before he could see Elizabeth. I told him she didn’t want to see him and to never contact her again.” His brow knit even further, and Isla could only imagine the pain it caused him with the wounds there. “He never should have left. His priority should have been her.”
Isla breathed as evenly as she could manage, pulling her hands away and dashing the tears from her cheeks. Anger bubbled inside her. Fury at the frail man beside her, calm for once in his life as he admitted to breaking his own sister’s heart and depriving his niece of her father. “How could you?”
His jaw hardened, and his eyes opened, and he seemed to regain some energy. “You were better off without him. Was I to send away my sister and niece to live amongst barbarians? To inhabit a world Elizabeth didn’t understand? To entrust her happiness to the man who had debauched her and then left her? She fell ill just before he left—couldn’t make the journey with him to transport everything back home. So he left her.”
“And you turned him away when he returned?”
“He returned a month after he had promised,” Uncle John said with disgust. “He didn’t deserve to see Elizabeth.”
“That was not your choice to make.” Isla’s face trembled as she tried to keep her voice level.
“It was!” he said. “I was her guardian, and she was naïve—too naïve to know what sort of life she was agreeing to by following that man. A man who wouldn’t even marry her properly! He wished for an irregular marriage.” He spat the words. “At least here I could take care of her. And you. Which I have done.” He lay his head back against his pillows, as if he took comfort in the thought.
Isla let out a disbelieving laugh. He had deprived her of her own father and now congratulated himself on stepping into the lack he himself had created?
“Perhaps I was wrong,” he said. “Perhaps.” He clasped his hands atop the sheet, his chest rising only slightly with every strained breath. His burst of energy was flagging. “The letters are in the bottom of the chest.”
Isla stared at him for moment then let out a disbelieving breath through her nose as she rose and walked to the chest. All these years, she had thought the plaid the only remnant of her father in the house, when she could have seen his handwriting, read his own words, known his feelings through the letters he had sent.
She raised the lid and pushed aside the lighter coats and other clothing items that lay within until her hands scraped the bottom. It was too dark to see, but she felt around with her fingers until they found purchase—crinkling paper. Her anger quelled as her heart quickened, and she pulled the small stack of letters out into the candlelit room. Without taking her eyes from them, she shut the chest and sat upon it.
There were four letters, each one with the seal unbroken. Uncle John had not even bothered to see what her father had to say to her mother. She didn’t know whether to be disgusted by his obstinate antagonism or grateful that the words meant for her mother hadn’t been read by someone as unworthy of them as Uncle John.
She slipped her finger under the seal of one letter, careful not to tear the paper or crack the wax. She wanted to preserve everything she could. With gentle hands, she unfolded the paper, letting her eyes travel over the neat script of her father’s handwriting. She put a hand to her mouth to stop the choking sound that tried to escape her.
Mo ghraidh. Those words began the letter—the words her mother had called her. My love.
She held the letter out from her body to prevent her tears from dropping upon it as she read its words. They were as tender as the endearment that began it. Not the words of a barbarian. Not the words of a man who had abandoned Isla and her mother with no warning.
I miss ye fiercely, Ealasaid. If only ye could be here with me now. I didna think to stay so long, but I canna leave until my mother is laid to rest. But dinna doubt. I will come to ye and make ye mine in the eyes of the law. And then I will bring ye here where we can raise wee bairns of our own. To our home. It disna feel like home without ye here.
It was signed Morgan MacKinnon. “Morgan MacKinnon,” she whispered. She had never known his surname—the name she would have had.
Isla read through each letter, transported to two decades ago, imagining what might be different if her mother had read these words—the pain she might have been saved to know that the man she had entrusted with her heart and body had not betrayed her.
A great, labored breath sounded from the bed, and Isla hurried to her feet, setting the last letter atop the others and moving to her uncle’s side. He had worsened in the half hour she had been neglecting him.
“I am going to call for Mr. MacNeill,” she said. “Do not argue with me, Uncle.”
She rang the bell, and as she waited, she watched for any sign that her uncle meant to oppose her. But he did not. She instructed the servant who came—disheveled from sleep and hair askew—to send to Pitcairlie for Mr. MacNeill without delay and then to send up a sponge and cool water.
She sat by her uncle, staring at his barely-conscious form as she waited for her instructions to be followed, and when the water was brought, she bathed her uncle’s forehead with the sponge.
Her heart fluctuated between anger, pity, and sadness as she cared for him in silence. She could never get back what he had taken from her. She didn’t even know if her father was still alive. But, enraged and devastated as she was, she couldn’t find it in herself to leave her uncle to suffer alone. If there was anything that could be done for him, she would do it. She would try to alleviate the pain in the person who had caused her so much, even if he had done it for what he thought to be her good.
His breathing seemed to calm as she bathed his head and cheeks.
“You will despise me,” he rasped, “for the rest of your life now.”
She said nothing. She knew she wouldn’t despise him forever, but she was too full of the memories and the life he had deprived her of to counter his words just yet. She was still angry.
His mouth turned down, as if hurt at her silence. “Isla.”
“Yes?”
“Tell Margaret to be variolated. And the children too.”
“They already have been.” She knew a degree of satisfaction in telling him so. He was not the only one who had kept secrets. But she knew the feeling for what it was: base and vengeful. And she didn’t wish to be vengeful.
He didn’t seem perturbed by her words, though. He showed relief, rather, in the way his body relaxed.
The door opened, and Graeme appeared there, eyes alert, leather satchel slung over his arm. Isla rose and hurried over to him.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, and she took his hands. What if she had let her uncle’s words guide her? If she had given up Graeme because of the lie she had been led to believe her whole life?
Graeme’s eyes flitted nervously to the bed at her display of affection, but Isla shook her head. “I want him to know.” She had so much to tell Graeme. But the most important thing now was her uncle’s health. “He is terribly unwell. I do not think he…” She felt emotion rise in her throat in spite of all the things she was feeling toward Uncle John. “Can you help him? Can you save him?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Graeme hadn’t slept at all. Pitcairlie felt full of death, and it had been pressing down on him with more weight than he felt capable of bearing. To be at Braemore was a respite in many ways, despite the animosity he knew Mr. Findlay held toward him. Light had just begun to spread on the horizon as Graeme had arrived, but there was no sign of that in Mr. Findlay’s room, with the curtains drawn tight.
Isla’s plea to save her uncle wrenched his heart. He hadn’t been able to save anyone from the brink of death. He had rather ushered them over it and stood as they disappeared. His father. Martin Douglas. Mr. Smith’s son.
As he looked down upon Mr. Findlay—upon the only father Isla had ever known—he knew one thing: he had to save him. He could not watch a third person breathe their last breath under his care in the space of twenty-four hours.
Mr. Findlay was still breathing. Graeme didn’t need the rise and fall of the man’s chest to tell him that. The sound of it was loud enough to carry throughout the entire room. But his pulse was irregular—weak and slow then suddenly quick and pounding.
Mr. Findlay caught Graeme’s hand as he let go of the man’s wrist, and his eyes flew open, trained upon Graeme. “You mean to have my Isla, don’t you?”
Graeme glanced at Isla, but she gave him a nod.
“I do, if she’ll have me.”
Mr. Findlay stared at Graeme with eyes that could barely maintain their focus. His nostrils flared, and his nails dug into Graeme’s hand. “Swear you will marry her!”
Graeme blinked.
“Swear it! Swear you will take care of her.”
Graeme set his free hand over Mr. Findlay’s. “I will, sir. I swear it.”
Mr. Findlay relaxed, but he kept Graeme’s hand in his and his eyes on him. “She has no one else.” He let out a quivering sigh and shut his eyes with a frown. “I made certain of that.”
Graeme glanced at Isla, whose cheeks and eyes glistened, then looked back to Mr. Findlay. “I love her, sir, and I willna let her come to harm.”
His eyes locked briefly on Graeme again, the urgency in them at odds with the weak grip on Graeme’s hand. “Then marry her.”
Graeme nodded, and Mr. Findlay shut his eyes again, seeming more at peace.
“Is there anything to be done?” Isla asked, her hand clasping Graeme’s arm.
He looked at her, at the exigency and dread in her eyes. She was relying upon him. He had to do something. He had to save Mr. Findlay.
He shut his eyes, and suddenly he was at Lochmara again, looking into his father’s drooping, gray eyes. They blinked once, twice, then never again.
Then he was at Pitcairlie, standing before Mr. Smith, the sagging body of the man’s child drooping over his arms.
Ye killed him! Murderer!
The words rang in Graeme’s head, louder than anything he had heard in his life, until he shoved his palms over his ears to stop them. They were the words no one had said to him at home. But they hadn’t needed to be said. Graeme knew the truth of them in his heart. And he knew everyone else knew it. He was a murderer. The furthest thing possible from the physician he had trained to become, from the healer his family had expected him to be.
Mr. Smith tugged on one of Graeme’s arms, pulling it away from his ears. But it wasn’t Mr. Smith. It was Isla, looking at him in alarm. “Graeme. Graeme.” She put her hands on his face, forcing him to look at her.
“I can save him.” Graeme blinked quickly, looking back toward the bed. “I can. I can save him.”
“Graeme,” she said louder, pulling his face back to look at her. He could see himself reflected in her tearful eyes. “He is gone.”
He stumbled backwards, and she caught his arm with her hand, steadying him. His eyes went to Mr. Findlay, whose chest was still, and the room oddly quiet without the sound of his labored breathing.
She was right. He was gone.
Graeme had only fuzzy memories of the next two hours. He had come to his senses enough to hold Isla as she cried and to stand beside her while she held her uncle’s limp hand.
“Old fool,” she had said at one point amidst sniffs and quiet sobs.
And, even as his heart weighed him down with all the pain he thought he had managed to overcome from his father’s death and all the sympathetic grief of watching Isla mourn her uncle—he knew that there was still a blow to be dealt to her. An insult to add to the injury.
