Soon Meg joined them at the top, the faint flush in her cheeks brightening her pretty aqua eyes, shining like the sea in sunlight. “It’s not so high,” she said. “The exercise is good for me.”
“Here we are. After you, my dear,” Dougal said, as she preceded him into the lantern house.
The walls of the compact, circular room were glassed all around above the wainscoting, giving an expansive view of sea and sky. The room was dominated by a huge, complex arrangement of glittering prismatic lenses in amber and clear glass.
Meg gasped. “What a beautiful lantern! I have not seen it this close yet.”
Taking Sean’s hand, she walked with him around the perimeter of the huge light. It gleamed like a diamond: hundreds of polished-glass surfaces cut like prisms, arranged in slightly angled rows to provide a powerful illumination. The brass fittings added more brightness and beauty.
Sean stood on his toes to see, and Dougal picked him up to hold him high.
“Go ahead, touch it,” he told Sean, who reached out. “The lamps are not burning yet. Oil lamps will be used to light the lens,” he explained. “They will be lit at dusk to burn until dawn.”
“So this is what they call a Fresnel lens?” Meg asked.
“Aye, a Fresnel of the first order—there are seven levels of size and power. It was rather expensive to acquire a lantern as powerful as this one, but well worth it. Our investors will be pleased, I think. This lighthouse will endure, and protect this part of the coast for hundreds of years, with luck.” Dougal smoothed his hand over one of the glazed surfaces.
Meg went to the window to gaze out over the sea and sky. “How far can the light be seen?”
“About eighteen miles on a clear night. In deep fog, the light may not cast as far, but there are bells in the roof cupola above. One of the lighthouse keepers will ring out patterns to warn passing ships that there is a reef and a lighthouse nearby.”
Meg nodded. “Fergus and Norrie will be quite busy.”
“Aye, our first lighthouse keepers! They are suited perfectly to keep the Caran Light. The Lighthouse Commission prefers local men as the lightkeepers, particularly seafarers, since they know the sea and the changing weather best in their own region.”
“Grandmother Thora is pleased, too—she worried about Norrie going out each day for the fishing, now that he’s older.And with two men tending the light, Norrie still has time to fetch the mail, which he insists on doing. He will not give that up.”
Dougal set Sean down, and they joined Meg at the window. In the pale, vast sky, gray clouds moved fast over the horizon. Far below the high tower, down at the base of the immense dark rock, the sea was choppy and greenish in the rising wind.
“There! I see a boat!” Sean cried, pointing.
“Very observant, lad,” Dougal said, peering toward the south. “You’ll be a help to your grandfather and your Cousin Fergus when we come to Caransay.” He ruffled the boy’s golden curls. He knew that Sean enjoyed the weeks and months they spent on the mainland, but loved the island best. Caransay would always be his true home.
Before the wedding, he and Meg had gently explained to Sean the truth about his parentage, as much as a child of six and some could understand. Sean had readily accepted the news, delighted to have a father, especially one he already loved and admired. Deeply grateful, Dougal realized that Sean’s happy, trusting heart had been shaped by the generous love he had learned within Meg’s islander family. He, too, had learned that from them.
Life had eased tremendously in the past year—and the roots of the change had begun in a great storm on this very rock.
“Norrie is bringing several guests over the water,” Meg said, looking out the great windows at the boat crossing from the island to the rock.
“Aye. My dear, I should tell you that Sir Roderick is among them. One of the commissioners said he might join them.”
“I see him. He is welcome.” She touched Sean’s head as she spoke. “We will always be in his debt for grabbing Sean from the edge that day.”
“I still have the rocks I got that day!” Sean said, listening.
“You might be a geologist someday, you and your rocks,” Meg said, laughing. “Dougal—I meant to tell you that I asked my solicitors to inform Roderick that his monetary debt to the Strathlin estate is forgiven. It seemed best, once I learned of his arrangement with the bank.”
“Your generous and forgiving nature,” he murmured, “is just part of what I love about you.”
“Oh, I learned something about generosity and forgiveness from a certain engineer,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Even though I thought he was odious at first.”
He chuckled, setting his arm around her, watching the boat sail closer. “One of the men coming in today is an experienced lightkeeper.”
“Aye, the Commission sent him over to train Norrie and Fergus,” she agreed.
“Three keepers are best for a light such as this. Two can be on duty while the third rests. Perhaps he will like it here and stay.”
“Who would not like it here?” Meg smiled. “I am thinking,” she said, her speech falling easily into the pattern of the islanders, “that I was wrong, and that the odious engineer was right.”
