Forgive me.
He sent the entreaty to those he’d loved and, for the first time, he felt as if they did forgive him, that they always had. Perhaps only his guilt had fleshed in his ghosts.
What if Veronica were right?
He’d always thought he should have returned to Gleneagle when Caroline had first corresponded with him. He could have read between the lines, understood the dire circumstances, and known they were down to their last resources. He could have left Washington, taken food and supplies. Perhaps his presence would have altered Gleneagle’s fate.
As he stood there, looking at Scotland, Montgomery realized he’d believed in his own omnipotence for years. He could have been captured on the way home. Or killed on the journey. Perhaps he couldn’t have saved Caroline or Gleneagle. Instead, he might have simply been the last Fairfax brother to die.
As it was, he was the only survivor of Gleneagle, the only one of his grandfather’s grandsons, the lone Fairfax brother. He, and he alone, carried the hope of his family.
What had he done with it?
He’d not moved forward, that was certain. He’d played with his navigation system but nothing more. The innovations he’d made could revolutionize the use of airships. He’d not taken responsibility for the Fairfax fortune. He’d not been a good husband. Lust had sent him to his wife, but he’d been tooinvolved in his own misery to discover as much about her as he should have from the beginning.
He’d been a fool. A selfish fool more intent on looking backward than in living his life.
This was an old land. For thousands of years, people had warred over it. Generations had laughed and cried here. Men had gone off to war, and women had stayed behind.
Women like Veronica, with her stubbornness and resilience, with her courage. Veronica, with her impulsive nature, her trust, and her wholehearted passion. Who believed in her Gift regardless of how many time she’d been ridiculed.
What had she said? People mock what they do not know.
How many times had she been mocked? How many people—besides himself—had underestimated her? He’d originally seen her as a foolish girl. The passing days had revealed how wrong he’d been.
He had the most curious thought. Veronica Moira MacLeod Fairfax would never stop being exactly who she was. Another thought, one that startled him in its certainty. Veronica would never abdicate the responsibility for her welfare or that of people who depended on her. She would not give that responsibility to anyone else but would assume it herself.
She would not wait to be rescued.
Two things struck him, then. Somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with his wife.
The second thought was he was damned if Edmund Kerr was going to take his future from him.
Old Mary lowered herself to a chair with a series of gasps. “I’m old, child,” she said, when Elspeth hovered at her side. “Not crippled.”
Elspeth exchanged an amused look with Veronica.
“I’ve waited all this time,” Mary said, turning her head toward Veronica. Her pale blue eyes, so light it seemed as if they had no color at all, speared through her. “Wondering if the mirror would come back to me. It’s time for it to return,” she said. “I’m nearly done.”
“Oh, Granny,” Elspeth said, falling to her knees beside the chair. Tears sparkled in her eyes, earning her a caress as the old woman smoothed her withered hand over Elspeth’s hair.
A moment later, Mary reached for the drawstring bag, withdrew the mirror, tracing the line of diamonds with a withered finger.
“It’s an ugly thing,” she said, “but someone tried to give it beauty.” She smiled, the expression deepening the furrows on her face. Her hair, thick and black, belied her age, revealing not one touch of gray.
“It’s come full circle. I gave it to a woman who’d lost a love, and a woman who’s found a love brought it back to me.”
“Have I?” Veronica asked, startled.
Old Mary smiled. “Have you not looked in the mirror?”
“I have,” she said.
“Is it that you didn’t like what you saw? Or you didn’t believe it?”
She leaned forward, placed her hand on top of Old Mary’s. The elderly woman’s skin was soft, the veins on the back of her hand engorged and blue. The hand she clasped was cold, however, as if Mary’s body had already begun to prepare for the grave.
“Does it tell the future? Or does it just reveal something you want to see?”
