It was that impenetrable wall of fog that engulfed the islands every September. Eachann had claimed the fog would come early this year. And it had.
Calum turned away, thinking that his brother must have decided to stay ashore. He crossed the room and relit the logs in the rock fireplace, then swept up a few of the ashes that had drifted on the hearth.
He started to straighten, then stopped for a moment and polished the brass andirons, moved on to polish a candle branch, and some heavy bookends cast in the shape of lion heads. He set the bookends back and ran the cloth over the leather book bindings, then made certain that each gold-embossed spine was aligned with the next. He turned around and glanced out the window again, thoughtful and feeling edgy.
Eachann had known the weather was about to change. He had even passed up on those blueberry pies so he could get Fergus’s women safely back to shore, go to his children’s school, and return to the island before the fog rolled in. He’d said as much before he left.
His brother had an uncanny ability to read the weather, something few of those who lived on the islands could do. Most of them, Calum included, lived with the weather in the same way as someone lived with a wild animal made into a pet. They lived with constant unpredictability.
The weather here was an elusive thing. Hell, the fishermen who earned their living from the sea spoke of the moods of the weather, and every islander knew that when you lived on an island, the weather ruled what you could and could not do.
Calum supposed there was some innate thing his brother was born with, an instinct, a special gift that made him see and know what others couldn’t. Eachann had a fey touch with animals as well. It served Eachann well with his horses. Calum had seen his brother look into the rolling wild eyes of a frightened horse and calm the rearing beast when nothing or no one else could.
But Eachann’s gift wasn’t limited to horses. Calum had seen an eagle land on his brother’s huge outstretched arm as if the proud elusive bird were an ordinary sparrow lighting on a tree branch. He had seen him look a timber wolf in the eye and send it running away, and he could walk right up to a deer and in no time flat have the animal eating wildflowers from the palm of his huge hand.
A loud crash suddenly rang through the house, followed by the sound of footsteps up the stone stairs. Calum turned just as the door flew open.
Eachann stood there, his sleeping children in his strong arms. A curly blond head, Kirsty’s, rested against one shoulder and Graham’s spiky red head was on the other.
“I need your help,” Eachann said.
Calum tried to take Kirsty, but her arms were wrapped so tightly around her father’s neck that he had to pull them away first, then he took her, frowning at Eachann.
“I’ll explain later. Help me get them in a bed.”
“In your section of the house?”
“Hell no.” Eachann walked out the door and headed down the west hallway toward the stairs that led to Calum’s section of the house.
Their habits and the way the two of them lived were about as alike as the Scottish Highlands and the Sahara Desert. So to keep brotherly peace, they had long ago used the wisdom of Solomon and divided the home into two equal parts.
Right down the middle. Half for Calum, who lived with tidiness, order, and discipline. Half for Eachann, who shoveled out his rooms less often than he mucked out his stable.
“We’ll have to put them in one of your rooms.”
They went into a small neat room off the hall in the west wing, where they each placed a child in a clean bed. Calum smoothed the covers over little Kirsty, who seemed to have grown a half a foot since he’d last seen her. He folded the sheet with a precise corner and tucked it under the mattress.
She opened her sleepy eyes for a minute and looked at him. “Uncle Calum.” Then her drooping lids slipped shut and a small smile curled the corners of her mouth. “We’re home,” she whispered, and a second later she was fast asleep.
He wondered how his brother would handle the children this time. Eachann had been unable to deal with them after the death of their mother, and even though both Fergus and Calum had tried to help, Eachann took the children to the mainland. When he returned, he said little to Calum, except that they needed to be in school, not running loose on the island.
Before Calum could have another thought, Eachann was out the door and down the stairs two at a time.
At the landing, he stopped and said, “Follow me.”
“Why?” Calum called out, but his brother was already down the halls and going out the front doors.
Calum followed him out into the fog, which was so thick he had to stop at the base of the front steps until Eachann’s voice drew him toward the road. “Where the hell are we going?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” came a call through the mist.
Calum followed the sound of Eachann’s voice, thinking as he walked almost blindly down the path that his brother’s children, especially Kirsty, were very much like their father. Eachann had always been restless and a little wild.
While Calum played by the rules and did things in a safe and logical way, Eachann made his own rules. The brothers seldom agreed on how things should be done. Age, time, and respect had taught them to stand aside and let each other act in his own unique way. Although there were times over the years, if for nothing more than Calum’s sanity, when he couldn’t help but wish he and Eachann were more alike.
A few moments later their boots made a hollow sound on the planked dock. In a thin wavering spot of mist he caught the looming shadow of Eachann as he hopped on the boat deck before the thick fog closed in again and his shape disappeared. “Come aboard, Calum. I need your help.”
“Where the hell are you? I can’t see a bloody thing.”
