“Tackling onerous tasks is the final step that takes a lad into manhood. . .” he repeated. “I quite like that. May I use the idea in a poem?”
This had been Ethan’s way since returning home—extracting snippets of their conversations to use as ballast for his writing. Malcolm had no idea if it was helping or not, but he would always do what he could to assist his brother.
“Of course.” Malcolm stared down at the stone. “I’m right tired of throwing this blasted rock. Let’s go cut down a tree and make a caber. I’m hardly soft yet. And maybe tossing something more properly Scottish will give ye poetic inspiration.”
3
Viola stood in the middle of the road, staring at the rutted tracks disappearing into the roiling fog of the Scottish countryside.
She had been stranded for nearly two hours now, pacing up and down the narrow, tree-lined lane. Their gig rested behind her, its single axle listing at an unnatural angle. Her maid, Mary, was curled up sound asleep on the carriage seat, having grown weary of waiting.
The series of events that had landed them here, waiting on a foggy lane, was a scene from one of Viola’s own novels.
As promised, the Duke of Kendall and her father had contrived an invitation for Dr. Brodure to preach in the parish of Fettermill. Her father would spend the summer discussing arcane doctrinal points with the local vicar, his old acquaintance Dr. Ruxton, leaving Viola free to write and, ‘make friends with the local population.’
And bylocal population, Dr. Brodure meant Ethan Penn-Leith.
Viola blushed whenever she pondered her father and Kendall’s scheming—machinations, she acknowledged, that she had readily accepted eight weeks ago.
But since that time, Mr. Penn-Leith had made only two replies to Viola’s overtures of friendship. And now . . . she worried.
Did his silence indicate indifference? Worse, had she placed the man in a difficult position—not desiring a deeper correspondence but also not wishing to offend her?
Or was it as Lady Whipple had said: men were simply lazy correspondents?
Regardless, due to his lack of reply, Viola had not informed Mr. Penn-Leith of her impending arrival in Fettermill. She feared the words would echo and clang if dropped into the well of his silence.
The journey north had been typical of any long journey: tedious, jolting, and muddy, if generally uneventful. That was, until the last few hours.
After the stagecoach deposited them in Brechin, her father had hired a horse and gig to take them into Fettermill to the west. However, the older carriage had been unequal to the badly rutted road, its axle cracking before their little party reached the country cottage Dr. Brodure had let.
Consequently, he had unhitched the horse and pulled himself onto its back, riding to fetch help.
And now, Viola stood in the middle of a rural lane awaiting her father’s return, the silent mist swirling about her.
No sound reached her ears at the moment. Perhaps the mist had silenced the birds?
And yet, the countryside burst with life, glimpses of vitality shifting in and out of the fog—the vivid yellow flowers of prickly gorse, new lambs clambering in the field. Branches arched over the lane, their leaves just beginning to sprout despite it already being May.
Spring came late this far north, Viola supposed.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, she sucked in a deep lungful of air and released it slowly.
She had worried that the endless greenery and animal dander of Scotland would act as irritants to her lungs, exacerbating her asthma.
But instead, Viola found the air and fecundity oddly soothing. As if the thousand shades of green around her—from the yellow-green of newly-sprouted ferns to the dusky green limbs of Scots pine—hung with breathy anticipation.
Scotland hummed with promise, as if Change itself were hidden in the whisking fog.
This!This was what she had wanted. A sense of transformation. That she could move on from living adjacent, frozen in place, afraid to act.
She would meet Ethan Penn-Leith, open her mouth, and converse with him. They would exchange ideas and critiques. Perhaps he could even advise her on how to proceed with this dreadful short story Kendall demanded she write.
And of course, if Mr. Penn-Leith were to find her just as compelling as she did his poetry and person . . . well, she wouldn’t sayNoto more than mere conversation.
With each breath, a fierce creature stretched inside her, testing the humid Scottish air, reaching for something entirely . . .new.
The fog continued to flow around her, eddying across the road, trees rustling in the wind. Though how wind and fog could coexist remained a puzzle. Why didn’t the wind simply blow the fog away?
