Their looks, their faces were indescribable. The sorrow and grief were there, but there too was a look and sense of an inevitably hopeless future that creased their faces like wrinkles of age. Their faces could break the heart of a grindstone.
Their mourning weeds were little more than rags that had once been clothes. The child’s mother walked along behind the small coffin, her clothing torn and her eyes empty and vacant as the promises made to these poor people by their lairds and benefactors—those desperate men whose grandfathers had protected them. Now the grandsons threw the crofters off the land they had farmed for centuries so they could graze sheep.
The procession walked on toward the grave site, where their hopes and the promises for a future would be buried in that shallow grave along with the coffin.
I am a clan laird, by birth chieftain, by title the MacLachlan of MacLachlan. I have no Highland lands, for they were taken from my great-grandfather many years before. I have no clansmen like my grandfathers did. Just my small family. But I have Scots blood and I can’t help but feel a strong sense of anger at what I am seeing here. I cried as I watched that funeral. I cried for that mother, for that child. It could, but for the grace of God, have been me or my brother or even Kirsty or Graham.
I vow, today, with everything I have and everything I am, that this will be no more. That no more Highlanders will starve and die and freeze in the streets. I will not let it happen. If I do nothing else in my short lifetime, this will be enough.
When Amy finished reading she was crying. The tears were pouring down her cheeks the way they must have poured down Calum’s. She read on, every newspaper article and Calum’s entries. She could see what he did, how he provided these people with more than just food and clothing and a place to live. Calum gave them back their pride.
She closed the book and sat there, staring up at the wood on the ceiling. Then she closed her eyes against all the images she saw, vivid painful images from Calum’s journal. They haunted her, those images, until Amy finally fell asleep with tears still streaming from the corners of her eyes.
Chapter Forty-One
When the bold kindred in the time long vanished,
Conquered the soil and fortified the keep,
No seer foretold the children would be banished,
That a degenerate lord might boast his sheep.
Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand,
But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.
—Canadian boat song
When she awoke it was to the sight of Calum leaning against the wall, his black hair ruffled by the wind and probably from his habit of driving his hand through it when he was frustrated. He wore no coat, only a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up and a leather vest.
His breeches were tucked into tall leather boots and he rested one foot on the steps of the companionway. He was absently rubbing his chin with a tanned hand and staring at her like a missionary who’d been stuck with the job of converting all the tribes of Africa.
“You’re awake.” He straightened and his hand fell away from his chin.
She sat up, still drowsy, until she realized the boat was not moving. “We’re in Bath.”
“Aye.”
She swung her legs over the side of the narrow bunk and spent a moment or two straightening her twisted skirt. She glanced up at him. “You’re being very quiet.”
“I’m trying to decide what to do with you.”
“You could let me help.”
“I could send you back to Portland in a wagon.”
“What would you do with me when I came back? Besides, you cannot make me go if I don’t want to. You have no right to tell me what to do. You are not my father or my husband.”
She stood and raised her chin the way she had seen Georgina do when Eachann was trying to tell her what to do.
He just watched her for the longest time, not saying anything, but he was thinking. She could see it in those dark blue eyes of his.
“I never thought you to be such a stubborn lass.”
“I never thought you to be autocratic and unfair.”
“Autocratic? Me?”
