The Highlander's Yuletide Love (23 page)

Sophy entered
the breakfast room at Glencairn, and looked with disfavor on the customary wide
assortment of fruits, breads, cured meats, fish, and condiments available. Glancing
towards the table and seeing her father and stepmother absorbed in the mail and
the newspaper, she dithered as she filled her plate, finally settling for
kippers in cream and a slice of sweet brown bread, slathered in butter and the
heather honey harvested from the estate beehives.

“Good morning
dear,” Harriet said absently as Sophy sat down, but didn’t lift her head from
the letter she was perusing. After a moment she looked up. “Only fancy,
Glencairn, Phillippa tells me that she is considering bringing out Elizabeth a
year early. It seems some of the young gentlemen in their neighborhood are
taking an interest in her, and she fears that one of them may fix her interest
before she has a chance to meet a larger and more select group of young men.”

“Hmmmph,”
Glencairn replied inarticulately.

“It’s all very
well for you to grunt like that my dear, but if that’s the case we will need to
expect them for the Season next year. It will mean any number of changes in our
plans,” Harriet persisted. “At least now we need to worry less about escorting
Sophy about.”

“As they have
yet to decide, and we have months to make plans, I don’t wish to spend time on
it now,” Glencairn answered. “Did you see that Sir Walter Scott’s new novel
Kenilworth
has been published to great acclaim?”

This gambit
successfully distracted Harriet. “We must write for a copy to be sent
immediately!” She looked over at Sophy. “Will it not be delightful to have a
new work by Scott? It makes me think of how beautiful the Trossachs are. How
happy I am I was able to visit there.”

Sophy nodded her
head and continued to push her breakfast around her plate, barely picking at
it. She fidgeted until Harriet finally looked up. “Whatever ails you, Sophy? You
have barely spoken a word and are fussing about like a cat with a dog in the
room."

“The everlasting
rain is oppressive,” she muttered. “I feel so dull. “

“‘Twas you who
said you wished to stay here at Glencairn and go to Town no more,” Harriet
pointed out.

Sophy looked
down, but didn’t speak.

“Would you like
to go to Edinburgh for a week?” her stepmother continued in a softer tone. “We
could visit friends and attend some assemblies.”

“Oh, I don’t
know!” Sophy exclaimed, and tossing her napkin on the table, stood and stalked
out of the room.

“Goodness!”
Harriet said. “Perhaps it is the weather. It has been gloomy the last few days,
and little Euan’s fever has been exhausting for all of us.”

“Or perhaps it
is something else,” Glencairn answered. “She’s not been herself since we
returned from Spaethness, and there is nothing like loneliness and ill weather
to make you miss someone.”

“It sounds as
though you speak from experience,” Harriet answered teasingly.

“Well, I own
it’s true that it was gray days like this that made me realize how much I
missed your company and conversation and loved you, rather than merely seeking
a helpmate and a mother for my children,” her husband replied.

Harriet laughed
a little. “We shall have to keep an eye on her. If it’s Ranulf she is pining
for, she likely will not wish to admit it to herself. Opening her eyes to it
may take some managing, and even if she could be brought to acknowledge it, we
have no idea if he still has an interest in her. After all, she did turn down
his offer of marriage, which is not something likely to endear her to him.”

After Sophy
stormed out of the breakfast room she stood dithering in the passage, trying to
decide what she wanted to do. She thought of visiting the gallery, but instead
walked to the back of the castle, to the studio that her parents had created
for her in an unused storage room that had been built onto the main building. It
had a flagged stone floor, worn smooth with years of use, and a high shed
ceiling that was ten feet high at the short side and easily twice that at the
other. Windows had been installed along all three exposed walls, and light
poured in from the north, east and west sides.

She went to the workbench
where her paints, brushes, charcoals and colors were stored, and opened one of
a number of portfolios stacked towards the end. As she did so, pages of pencil
and pen and ink sketches of Spaethness and the surrounding countryside slid out
of it and across the wooden surface. Sophy spread them out, gazing at them
intently, pushing them around before her, and studying first one then another,
putting some aside, and leaving others in her field of view.

Eventually she
reached for a rack of prepared canvases, and withdrew one, placing it on her
easel, before pulling on an apron and beginning to mix paints. Hours later,
when the light was beginning to fail, she stood back from the canvas, and
looked at it, a dissatisfied expression on her face. The painting, of a torrent
of water rushing through a highland burn as the sun broke through heavy clouds,
clearly depicted high water after a driving rainstorm.

Sophy stood
tapping a toe, arms akimbo as she looked at her work, and finally walked to the
bell pull and yanked on it violently. A footman appeared shortly.

“Send one of the
estate carpenters to me, Ian,” ordered Sophy.

“Aye, Lady
Sophia,” the footman replied, but she had already turned back to the
contemplation of her canvas.

It took some
time for a carpenter to arrive from the workshops, but when he did, Sophy was no
longer looking at her canvas, but had cleared an area in front of the tall back
wall of her studio.

“Hello,
MacIntosh,” she said when a grizzled workman opened the door. “Come this way,
if you please,” she continued, as she walked to the area she had cleared. She
indicated marks she had made in charcoal on the wall that were six feet apart. “I
want a frame for a canvas that is as wide as this and half again as high.”

The carpenter
looked stunned. “You want me to make you a frame that is six feet wide and 3
yards tall, Lady Sophia?” he asked.

“Quite so,” she
agreed.

“How will you
reach up to paint it?” he asked as though she had lost her senses.

“Oh, you will
build me some scaffolding as well,” she replied airily. “I have seen them used
in artists’ studios in London. It’s nothing out of the common way.”

“It is at
Glencairn, my lady,” he answered.

“First make the
frame,” she said. “I will need some help stretching the canvas over it too, and
you had better reinforce it with some cross members.”

“Aye, my lady,
that I will.”

“While you are
making the frame, think about how to build the scaffolding, and then come talk
to me, if you please,” Sophy said.

MacIntosh
thought that he’d be talking to the earl’s steward first, but said nothing,
only nodding his head and saying that it would be some time before the frame
and scaffolding could possibly be ready.

“Oh, that is
perfectly fine,” Sophy replied. “I will do several studies for the larger
painting before I start, while I prepare the canvas and you build the scaffolding
I require.”

MacIntosh left,
wondering if Lady Sophia had taken leave of her senses, and she returned to the
contemplation of her sketches.

Sophy spent all
of the following day in her studio, missing breakfast, and ringing for bread
and cheese to be brought to her for lunch. When at length she appeared in the
drawing room before dinner, Harriet exclaimed, “My dear, I have barely seen you
these two days. I--” She broke off, and touched one of the curls that fell from
Sophy’s top knot to frame her face. “Whatever is that blue spot in your hair?”
she asked.

Sophy grimaced.
“Oh dear, I must have gotten some paint in it. Poor Wallis will be so
mortified! I will have to have her brush or snip it out before I go to bed
tonight.”

“Paint in your
hair!” Harriet exclaimed, scandalized. “Really Sophy, it is perfectly fine to
pursue your art, but surely you can do it without getting it in your hair?”

“Calm yourself,
Mama. I will wear a kerchief over my hair in the future.”

“A kerchief? As
though you were a dairymaid?”

Sophy laughed. “Well,
what would you have me wear? A lace cap? A little turban? A poke bonnet? Surely
it is not a matter of concern how I cover my hair in the studio, as long as I
do not come to dinner with paint in it.”

Harriet was
clearly dissatisfied with this response, but knew when to stop, and said no
more.

A few days
later, Sophy’s enormous picture frame had been assembled and, with some effort,
a large canvas delivered from Edinburgh had been stretched across it. She had
covered it with gesso and allowed it to dry, and now it stood on a scaffold,
leaning against the back wall of her studio in all its unformed potential. She
stared at it, realizing she was terrified

“Hallo, sister,
I came to see this enormous painting you are doing,” Douglas called out from
the door of the studio.

“What do you
know of it?” she snapped, spinning around in surprise.

Douglas
sauntered over to her. “All the talk in the stables has been of the immense
frame and complicated scaffolding that the carpenters have been making for you.
The stablemaster was annoyed when he had to wait a day to get some boards
replaced after the stallion kicked out and broke them.”

“Well, there is
nothing to see yet, Paul Pry,” she retorted.

“Why are you
biting my head off for asking about your painting? I’d think you’d be glad for
a bit of company.”

“I’m not sure,”
Sophy admitted ruefully. “I suppose it has to do with this rain, and being
cooped up in the house for weeks on end.”

Douglas
continued to stroll around the studio, glancing at the paintings and sketches. Sophy
bit her lip and fidgeted, but made no attempt to stop him. When he halted
before a study depicting a stream in full spate, threatening a woman in a
carriage being driven over a bridge, she set her jaw firmly, and turned away.

“You’ve
certainly changed your tune, going from watercolors of flowers on the banks of
the Dargenwater to this,” he observed.

“What of it? If
I wish to be a great painter, I must do something besides charming
watercolors,” she said.

“You are cross
as crabs today. Can’t I take an interest in what you are doing?”

“When have you
ever been anything but rude and tiresome about my painting?” Sophy responded. “Oh,
do go away Douglas, I can’t think with you wandering about poking at my
things!”

Her brother
looked as though he wanted to say more, but seeing the irritation etched in her
face, and her tense stance, he left in silence.

Sophy heaved a
sigh of relief, before turning to her colors and dabbling about with various
shades. Some minutes later, she stepped up to the intimidating canvas and laid
the first brushstrokes on it.

Sophy gazed out
the sitting room window discontentedly. The view before her was lovely; the
storm that had passed through the day before had left everything newly
blanketed with snow. It glistened on the trees and covered the gray stones of
the building with layers of white frosting. Even now, flakes glittered in the
frigid air, reflecting back the few rays of sunshine that penetrated the clouds,
which gathered again overhead, threatening another bout of snow. She sighed.

The door opened
and Harriet bustled in, shaking her head when she saw Sophy staring at the
clouds, her chin in her hand.

“My goodness,
are you moping again? I never thought I’d wish you to be back in your studio
all day, but you’ve done nothing but languish about the house for the past
fortnight, ever since you finished that enormous painting. Oh, I do wish you
could find it in yourself to be a bit merrier. It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

“I’m sorry,
Mama,” said Sophy. “I hoped to be able to go out today, but the snow is so
deep, and it’s so cold, that I think it must be yet another day spent indoors.”

Harriet nodded
sympathetically. “I know, dear. Perhaps I can wheedle Glencairn into having the
sleigh brought out, and we could go for a ride. We will need it tomorrow if we
are to go to church, so it should not be too much of a bother. Would that make
you happier?”

Sophy bit her
tongue, reflecting that she really could not tell her stepmother that she had
been thinking of Ranulf Stirling. How many times had she told her parents that
he was unacceptable to her, and that she meant never to marry? “It would be
lovely, Mama,” she said quietly.

“You don’t look
overjoyed,” observed Harriet. “What has come over you? You’ve always loved
Christmas. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my marriage to your father, you
know.”

Sophy summoned
up a smile, knowing how precious that memory was to Harriet. “What a beautiful
day that was. I remember the candles in the church, and the white vestments of
the priest, and how very, very surprised you were when Papa asked him to marry
the two of you right then.”

Harriet sighed
ecstatically. “How happy I was. Indeed, how happy I am now. I was very lucky to
meet your father.”

“Douglas and I
were so pleased he fell in love with you,” said Sophy. “I think the two of us
fell in love with you first, for your kindness and caring. It took Papa a bit
longer to understand his heart.”

“I was lucky
indeed. Though you say you do not wish for such things, I hope someday you may
have the same happiness, Sophy dear.”

Sophy gazed out
the window once more, her expression blank. “I know you do, Mama. Maybe
someday.”

Harriet watched
her for a moment, perplexed, and then headed for the door. “I must speak to
Cook about dinner. Do try to cheer up. The villagers will come caroling after
dinner, if they get through the mountains of snow, and we will have wassails
and refreshments. People will expect you to be enjoying yourself, not moping about.”

“Yes, Mama.” Sophy
heard the door close behind Harriet, and she sank back into her chair. She
could remember her father’s Christmas wedding to Harriet as though it were
yesterday. The weather had been cold and crisp, with sunlight bouncing off the snow,
and the parish church had been full, with gentry and farmers side by side,
celebrating the season. When Glencairn had stepped forward and spoken a few
words to the priest, before leading Harriet to the altar, her delight had known
no bounds. She had missed having a mother, and Harriet had almost filled that
empty place in her heart. She realized now that, while Harriet had been content
enough unwed, her marriage had made her life more complete, not less. She had
found a good man, who understood the value of love and commitment. Sophy
wondered again if Ranulf could be such a man.

She sat for a
few more minutes, pondering the riddle, before rising to her feet. It was a
good two hours until she needed to dress for dinner, so she made her way to her
studio, thinking she might bring her canvases into some semblance of order. But
when she got there she felt listless, and stood for a few minutes, gazing up at
the big windows and watching the snowflakes fall, one by one, adding to the
mounds of snow outside. She wondered if it was snowing at Spaethness, and if
Ranulf ever thought of her. Perhaps he did, from time to time, and felt a sense
of relief that he no longer was entangled with someone so volatile and
unforgiving. Maybe he was with the Lady of Ardfern now, and had forgotten all
about her.

Trying to banish
her morose thoughts, she wandered over to the painting she had so recently
completed. It dwarfed anything else she had ever done, and she wondered how she
had found the temerity to produce it. A river in full spate dominated it,
clearly flooded by a violent storm, for on one side of the huge canvas
threatening clouds were breaking to allow the sun to shine on the roaring
river, its golden rays forming little flashes as they were reflected by the
rushing water. Over the torrent a bridge was tipping perilously, a trestle
holding up one span buckling as the floodwaters beat against it. A carriage was
trapped on its surface, the horses panicking in their harness, while the
coachman ran for safety, leaving a lady struggling to get out of the coach. At
the other end of the bridge a tall, dark gentleman was hastening towards the
carriage, clearly planning a rescue despite the danger. As Sophy looked at it,
she found herself unable to fathom whence the idea for it had come.

The door to her
studio opened and Douglas appeared. She turned her head to look at him, but
said nothing, presuming he had only come to tease her about something. He
walked over to her, and viewed her handiwork. He whistled.

“So that’s what
you’ve been up to these past weeks,” he said.

“Yes,” she
replied simply.

Douglas stepped
back a few paces and Sophy steeled herself for his cutting remarks. “I quite
like it,” he said.

Sophy’s mouth
dropped open. “You what?”

Douglas laughed.
“Do you think I only come here to insult you?”

“Given the past,
yes, I do,” said Sophy, a touch of acid in her voice.

Douglas looked a
bit shamefaced. “It is not that I don’t like your paintings, you know,” he
confided. “It is just that I—well, perhaps I am a bit envious. You seem to know
so exactly what it is you want, while I—I seem to be the sort of man you
despise, interested only in horses, angling, and how many capes are on his
greatcoat.”

Sophy turned to
him in surprise. “I never meant you when I said those things,” she protested.

Douglas
shrugged. “Did you not? It seemed that way.”

“But—but you are
not like those other men,” said Sophy. “You are—well, you are extremely
annoying at times, but you have a great many interests. Did I not find you
reading Cato in the library the other day?”

“You mustn’t
tell any of my friends that!” said Douglas hastily.

Sophy grinned. “You
see? You are not like them. You are a kind, sweet, boy—I mean man,” she said
hastily, seeing Douglas start to frown. “You will grow into someone like Francis,
or father—someone who people love, and cherish, and take their troubles to,
because they know you will listen.”

Douglas tugged
at his ear, embarrassed. “I can aspire to nothing more than to be like Papa, or
Francis, or Ranulf.”

Sophy colored. “Yes,
or Ranulf,” she said shortly.

Douglas stepped
closer to the painting, seemingly unaware of her discomfort. “It’s jolly good,”
he said. “I don’t think you’ve ever done anything quite like it before.”

“Thank you.” Sophy
tried to see it through her brother’s eyes. For some reason, despite it being
such a large canvas, she felt that it was surprisingly intimate.

“I just wonder
why you put yourself and Ranulf in it,” continued Douglas, his voice puzzled.

“What?”

Douglas jumped
at her forbidding tone. “Don’t yell at me. I just said I was curious as to why
you and Ranulf are in it.”

“We aren’t!” Sophy
glared at him.

“You aren’t?’” Douglas’
brow furrowed. He raised a hand and pointed at the man. “I realize they are far
away, but he looks a great a deal like Ranulf—tall, lean and very dark—while
she—his hand moved to indicate the woman, “seems to look like you—short, with
brown ringlets.”

“I—I didn’t mean
any such thing,” protested Sophy. “They are—just people, they aren’t meant to
signify anybody.”

“Oh, I see,”
Douglas didn’t sound convinced, and Sophy realized he was humoring her. “No
doubt I’m wrong. After all, I am not a painter.”

“You certainly
aren’t!”

Douglas
shrugged. “As you say, sister dear. Well, I’ll be off. Mind you don’t hang
about here too long. Mama will want you to be ready when the villagers arrive. I
know there’s a lot of snow out there, but I don’t think any of them will wish
to miss the wassail.”

Sophy nodded,
staring at the painting. “I’ll be there,” she said.

Douglas cast her
a dubious look and then put a brotherly arm around her, kissing her on the
cheek. “Happy Christmas, Sophy,” he said.

“What?” Sophy
turned to him, surprised. “Thank you, Douglas. You too.”

Douglas left the
room, leaving Sophy to stare at her painting. She realized with a start that
what Douglas had seen was true. The man, desperately reaching out to rescue the
woman in peril from the rushing water, looked very much like Ranulf. His hair
was dark, his figure elegant and strong, and, though it too far away to be
seen, she knew in her heart that his eyes were a deep golden brown. The woman,
reaching out to him, looked very much like her, petite, with a trim but rounded
figure and a head of glossy brown hair. She sat down abruptly on a stool,
gaping up at the canvas.