Storm Of Love

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Book excerpt

Prelude

DUNDEE, SCOTLAND, MAY 1827

Scudding clouds slid over a half-moon, sending shifting shadows across the serried gravestones, while a slight breeze whispered through the near-naked branches of the trees above us.

“This way.” Barbara crouched in the shelter of a marble angel, gripping her canvas bag to prevent the contents from rattling. “Keep your head down.”

She did not need to warn me. We moved from gravestone to gravestone, keeping in the shadows and cursing the fitful moon. I had hoped for full dark, or at least a cloudy night, but here, nature had not proved our ally as it sent God’s lantern to betray our mission.

“This one.” Barbara stopped beside a weathered yew. Somewhere in the dark, an owl called, the sound echoing. I pushed away the sinister images that filled my mind.

“Are you certain?” I looked around; it was only a few hours since we had watched the funeral but, in the dark, nothing looked familiar.

“I’m quite certain, Catriona.” Crouching at the side of the grave, Barbara opened her bag and handed me a short-handled spade. “Come on, before the grave watchers see us.”

Hitching up my skirt, I knelt at the side of the grave and plunged the spade into the earth. “Sorry,” I apologised to the man who lay beneath. “I’m dreadfully sorry.” The first few spadefuls were easy, and I shovelled the earth to the side, making progress with little effort. At my side, Barbara did likewise, gasping as she delved into the dirt.

I started as the owl called again, the sound eerie in these surroundings.

“Don’t stop,” Barbara urged. “The watchers could be on patrol at any time.”

I glanced up at the squat stone watchhouse, where the flicker of a candle was visible through the small window. Somebody laughed. “I think they’re having a celebration in there,” I said.

“They bring in whisky against the cold.” Barbara shovelled as she spoke. “Now be quiet.”

We made rapid progress, creating a hole so deep that soon we had to slide inside. The walls of the grave seemed to close in on me, crumbling slightly, so I shivered at the thought of my own mortality. “We’re lucky there’s no mortsafe,” I said. I had dreaded finding a mortsafe, a heavy cage that relatives placed over the grave to deter such activities as that in which we were engaged.

“Keep quiet! Here.” Barbara tapped her spade on something wooden. “We’ve reached the top of the coffin.”

I stopped for a moment as a renewed burst of laughter and snatches of a bacchanalian song came from the watchhouse. Somebody left the building, swinging a lantern. The light bounced from the gravestones, heading in our direction. Peering across the top of the grave, I saw the figure of a tall man in a high hat, striding purposefully with a shotgun in his hand.

“I see you!” He roared. “Get out of that grave!”

“Keep still,” Barbara hissed. “For God’s own sake, keep still!”

What am I doing here? I asked myself as I crouched on top of the coffin lid with small pieces of earth from the grave crumbling around me. Why am I digging up a grave with a woman I do not like, in the middle of the night? I sighed, and thought back to the beginning of this whole sorry episode and the men who seemed set on ruining my life.

Chapter One

GLACK OF NEWTYLE, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1827

It was raining that morning as I walked southwards towards the Glack of Newtyle, a narrow pass through the Sidlaw Hills in eastern Scotland. I hunched my shoulders, slithered on the muddy track and wished for better weather. As well wish for the moon, of course, in a Scottish spring, but I was so concerned with passing the road and the miles to Dundee that I nearly failed to notice the old man who was walking in front, gathering sticks and adding them to the bundle on his back.

“Halloa,” I called to him. “What’s to do?”

The poor old fellow nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of my voice. After he recovered his composure, he turned to face me. “Hello, young lady.” His voice was as cracked and ancient as his face, while he peered at me through narrow eyes.

“That’s a heavy load you have,” I said, thankful for the company, for the Glack can be a lonely place. “Are you going far?”

“As far as I have to,” the man answered cryptically. “You’re welcome to share my load, young lady.”

I balanced half the man’s bundle on my shoulder, and we walked side by side for the next mile, with him panting and peching with the weight and me trying to sweeten the journey with a conversation.

“It’s a coarse day,” I said at last as the old man responded to my sallies with nothing but grunts.

“It’s worse than it might be and better than you know,” he said at last. “I’ll take my sticks now.”

I looked around. We had walked perhaps a mile on the deserted road. “Are you sure, Grandfather? There’s no house here unless it’s in that copse of trees up on the hillside there.”

“I said, I’ll take my sticks now,” the grumpy old fellow repeated and, not wishing to offend him, I obligingly handed them over. He took them with neither a smile nor a thank you, although some trick of the light caught a surprisingly ornate ring on his little finger. “It’s a long road behind you.”

“It is,” I said, looking back instinctively. When I faced forward again, the old man had vanished, presumably into the copse. “Silly old rogue,” I said to myself. “Why is he collecting firewood elsewhere when there are scores of trees around him?”

Sighing, I walked on, with the rain now harder than before and the wind buffeting me forward toward distant Dundee.

I stepped aside when I heard the drumbeat of hooves and the grinding of wheels on the road behind me. Fortunately, a nearby tree provided welcome shelter from the rain as I watched the coach whirr past. One can tell the quality of a coach by the noise it makes, from the groaning and creaking of a farmer’s cart to the rattle of a decent dog-cart and the whirr of a stagecoach. This coach was different; it purred, even on the rutted road over which it passed. Skilled hands had created that masterpiece of travel, and wealthy people had paid for its construction.

I watched in admiration and not a little envy as this chariot passed me. Drawn by four matching black horses, the coach had two sedate servants sitting in full livery at the back and a tall driver who politely saluted me with a sweeping gesture of his whip. It was a poem on four wheels. I tried to recognise the coat-of-arms, but I was foiled by the spatters of mud that concealed most of the device. I could see only the unusual depiction of an elephant standing on its hind legs. And then I saw the face at the window. He was undoubtedly the most beautiful man I had ever seen, a face that would gracefully adorn any statue of David or even a classical god, an Apollo of the road. I could not help but stare as he looked curiously at me as I stood at the side of the track. Even in that short time, I noticed his bright smile. He raised a slender hand in acknowledgement and then the coach was gone. I watched as it splashed around a bend in the road and vanished beyond a copse of trees.

Sighing, I walked on, wishing that I had been born into a household that could afford such a luxury as a coach. I shook my head, thinking: Don’t be silly, Catriona. Hardly anybody can afford a coach, and you have a good life. All the same, the image of that splendid carriage with its godlike passenger kept me company for the next mile of the muddy road. The two farm-carts that passed were dull in comparison, even when the collie dog yapped at my heels and looked for attention.

I did not see the woman until I turned a sharp bend. She sat outside her tent, smoking a long-stemmed pipe and looking directly at me.

“Aye, grand weather,” she said, lifting the stem of her pipe in acknowledgement.

“It’s fine soft rain,” I said, wriggling as a drop slithered down my spine to rest uncomfortably at my waist.

“God bless the journey.” The woman looked about a hundred, with her wrinkled, weather-battered face and the rags she wore, yet her eyes were as bright as a kitten’s as she surveyed me. She replaced her pipe and puffed happily.

“Thank you.” I sought an appropriate reply. “God bless the pipe,” I said, knowing that it was a feeble response.

The old woman cackled and exhaled blue smoke. “You’ll be Catriona Easson, then?”

I started at that. “How do you know my name?”

The woman chuckled again. “I know.”

I looked around, where the grey-green slopes of the Sidlaw Hills slid into the rain to my right, and to my left, the ground dipped into a mist-shrouded hollow before climbing toward Kinpurnie Hill. Everything was wet and dismal under the relentless rain.

“Sit beside me, Catriona.” The woman tapped the damp ground at her side. “It’s all right; I don’t bite.” Her eyes were intense as she examined me.

Although I wished myself elsewhere, I sat at the woman’s side, pulling my legs under me and laying my basket nearby.

“You’re going home to Dundee.” The woman spoke around the stem of her pipe so that a spurt of smoke accompanied each word.

“Yes,” I said. “How do you know that? Who are you?”

“They call me Mother Faa,” the woman said. “You’ve come from Meigle, where you took your mother’s baking to your grandmother.”

“Yes,” I said again. “But how do you know that?”

“I am Mother Faa. How much money do you have with you?”

“A little,” I replied cautiously, wondering if half a dozen sorners were hiding in the tent, just waiting to leap out and rob me of all I had. Well, they would be vastly disappointed for I had hardly a penny to scratch myself with, as the saying goes.

“Do you have any silver?”

“I may have.” Turning my back so that Mother Faa could not see what I was doing, I opened my pocket-book and scrabbled inside, where a single threepence gleamed silver among the copper pennies and halfpennies.

“Give it here, and I’ll tell your fortune,” Mother Faa commanded, spreading a hand like a claw. She bit into the threepenny bit and secreted it away somewhere inside her rags. Strangely for one so old and so shabbily dressed, she was clean of person and her clothes had been recently washed.

“I’ve never had my fortune told before,” I wondered what Mr Grieve, the church minister, would think of such a superstitious practice.

“Give me your hand.” Mother Faa’s claws gripped my wrist and held it tight as she pored over my palm. She turned it this way and that, while a long, if clean, nail traced the various lines.

“What can you see?” Interested despite myself, I found myself relaxing in Mother Faa’s company. I could not sense any danger from this woman.

“Everything,” Mother Faa said. “I see your past, your present and your future.”

“My past is not much to shout about,” I said, “my present is wet, and my future is a walk to Dundee.”

Mother Faa did not smile at my attempt at humour. “Your past is no secret, Catriona Easson. There is a tragedy there.”

“Aye,” I said. “My father’s ship went down about a year ago. The sea claimed him.”

“The sea has a habit of that,” Mother Faa said. “The loss of your father affected your mother.”

“Yes.” I did not say more. My mother’s present fragile state of mind was not this woman’s business.

“Don’t you worry, Catriona. Better times are coming for her and faster than you think.”

Mother Faa’s words did not convince me. She continued to study my palm. “Your present includes somebody with the letter K.” She looked up, her eyes soft. “K?”

“Kenny.” I could not hide my smile. “My intended.”

“Kenny is your intended.” Mother Faa looked into my face. “Yet you are not entirely happy with him.”

“I am so,” I denied hotly, too hotly.

“You think that he lacks something.” Mother Faa ignored my outburst as she pushed my hand away. “You may be right, Catriona. Perhaps he does, but there is another man in your future, and nearly in your present.”

“I don’t want another man,” I said.

“You will,” Mother Faa told me with perhaps the hint of a smile. “This man will help you see your Kenny as he truly is.”

I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable in the presence of this woman. “I’d better be on my way,” I said.

“Wait.” Mother Faa seized hold of my sleeve. “You have a lot of good in you, Catriona Easson, and a lot of uncertainty. Be careful in the days ahead for there is a storm coming.”

“I’ll be careful.” I was suddenly desperate to escape from Mother Faa with her gimlet-sharp eyes that saw right through me to find out truths that I hid even from myself. I had no notion what she meant about Kenny. True, he had his faults, but I loved him, didn’t I? And was love not blind?

“Choose carefully, Catriona Easson.” Mother Faa gave her final unsettling advice. Not until I walked away did I realise that Mother Faa had been wearing the same style of ring on her finger as the old man carrying the sticks. That was curious, if hardly important.

I was not happy as I hurried towards Dundee. Mother Faa’s words had disturbed me, so I was less careful where I placed my feet and splashed into more than one of the deep puddles on the road. Sighing, I contemplated the mud that now caked my boots, the bottom of my cape and my skirt. That would take some cleaning when I got home. I was still thinking about the mud on my skirt when I came across the coach for the second time on that eventful journey.