“I’ve asked Linda to take Sarah on a tour of Kilmarin,” he said. “I’ll have Robert do the same for you.”
“It’s not necessary,” Douglas said. “I doubt I’ll be this way again.”
“Do you know your Gaelic, Douglas, or have you forgotten it like the fact you’re a Scot?”
“I’ve never forgotten I’m a Scot, Donald,” he said, calm in the face of the older man’s gibe. “It’s in my blood. As to my Gaelic, I’ve probably forgotten most of what I knew.”
“Then here’s a Gaelic word you should know,” he said. “Sealbh.It means fortune or luck. Providence. Some things are meant to be. Some are not.”
Douglas couldn’t help but wonder why the old man’s words sounded like a warning.
Sarah would have liked to spend some time thinking about her grandfather’s revelation, or at least his supposition as to why Morna had never returned to Scotland. Unfortunately, her cousin was intractable, insisting upon showing her Kilmarin, because, of course, Donald Tulloch requested it.
After only a few minutes, however, she found herself enthralled by the tour of her mother’s family home.
Kilmarin was easily four times the size of Chavensworth, a complex of ten buildings all linked by porticos. The first castle had been built atop a circular mound, but now fingers of buildings stretched outward over the hills and toward the River Tay. In the last hundred years, the walls of the oldest courtyard had been rebuilt, emplacements for ten guns had been added, and a new courtyard added to the area north of the towers.
Linda led her to one of the ancient towers ofKilmarin. The circular space was saved from total darkness by the narrow arrow slits high in the six-foot-thick walls. Sloping, treacherous looking steps, their centers worn down by generations of Tullochs, led to the top of the tower.
“Shall we?” Linda asked, moving to the base of the steps.
“I would rather not,” Sarah said. “It’s not important that I explore everything, is it?” She waved her hand in the air when Linda would have spoken. “Grandfather will just have to be satisfied with what I’ve seen.”
Linda’s face froze into lines of distress, but she didn’t comment.
The Tullochs made their own cloth, weaving wool from the sheep that grazed on the sides of the hills adjacent to Kilmarin, and milled their own flour from the power of the River Tay. Kilmarin even had a dungeon, although she’d chosen not to explore it, either.
At the beginning of their tour, Sarah had managed to restrain her reaction to all the wonders of her mother’s ancestral home, but at their noon meal, taken on a small terrace overlooking the River Tay, Sarah finally asked, “How on earth do you manage it all?”
For the first time, Linda seemed a little less confident than she’d acted all morning. “I don’t,” she said. “I’ve nothing to do with Kilmarin. Iwantnothing to do with Kilmarin.”
Perhaps that was why, when Sarah had begun to contribute what she’d done at Chavensworth to control mice, Linda had cut her off with the comment, “You need to tell Grandfather.” When she’d dared to tell her cousin how she’d rid the rooms of a wet smell after a storm, Linda had said the same thing. By the time Linda complained about the shortages in the larderor the problem of the warped floors in the east wing, Sarah had learned her lesson and remained silent.
Their meal had been pleasant enough, consisting of a hearty lamb stew. The terrace on which they sat was adjacent to the dining hall and built to give a visitor a view of the River Tay through the balustrade.
The small square table where they’d taken their meal was as rough-hewn as the dining table, but its surface was not as dark, and the pine scent it gave off was an indication that it had been recently constructed.
At the conclusion of their meal, Linda remained silent, staring at the river for so many minutes that Sarah was left without knowing what to say or do.
Her cousin turned finally and, with an apologetic smile, addressed her. “All your suggestions were good ones, cousin. But Grandfather is the one who dictates what happens at Kilmarin,” she said. “The rest of us simply obey.”
Sarah raised her hand, as if to push the words away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cause any discord by coming here.”
Linda smiled. “You haven’t. We’ve been at odds for months, he and I. Your presence has given me a respite, if you must know. I’ve been excused from lectures for two days.”
They sat in silence for a moment before Linda spoke again. “Do you like being married?”
Sarah looked at her cousin. It was such a strange question that she wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I should think,” Linda said, before Sarah could formulate a response, “that being married to the man you love is the most wonderful feeling in the world.”
Sarah didn’t quite know how to respond to that remark, either, especially after last night.
“Perhaps some people are simply luckier than others.” Linda drew herself up and smiled at Sarah.
The expression didn’t look the least bit sincere.
She didn’t know her cousin well enough, wasn’t certain if she would be rebuffed, but Sarah asked the question anyway. “Whom would you marry, Linda?”
