Chapter Forty-six
A few weeks after our wedding, I noticed that Angus had quietly had the gravestone with his name on it replaced with one that didn’t. This time, it was I who knelt and traced the names of Màiri and her baby, leaving behind the handful of bluebells I’d just gathered from the Cover.
Knowing I’d paid homage to just one grave, I continued on to the Water Gate, picking more flowers on the way. After placing them at the water’s edge, I stared across the loch’s shiny black surface, and wondered what, exactly, had happened to us out there. Was it Màiri? Was it the monster? Or was it something else entirely?
The monster—if there was one—never revealed itself to me again. But what I had learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually in plain sight.
—
When Angus asked if I was ready to see my new home, I said that yes, of course I was, as long as he was entirely sure the army had removed all the land mines. He roared with laughter when I told him about my escapade, and told me that there weren’t any mines in the first place—the signs were there to keep civilians out, as well as to keep the commandos in. The live ammunition, however, was real.
“What do you think?” he asked, when we rounded the bend and reached the oak-lined drive. The Nissen huts and barbed wire were gone, so it was the first time I’d seen the Big House in its entirety.
Angus’s arm was around my shoulder, and he watched my face expectantly.
“Oh, Angus!” I said, skipping ahead of him. “It’s magnificent! Is it locked?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, and then laughed as I ran ahead.
—
The double doors were huge and studded with brass. The entranceway was draped with carved boughs and vines, starting above the pediment and reaching almost to the ground. Just above that was an enormous coat of arms, and way up at the top, over a frieze of rearing horses flanking a shield, was a clock tower in a cupola that Angus told me was added in 1642. Each window was graced with a carving, and forty-foot Corinthian pillars ran up the wall between them.
When I walked through the front doors and found myself looking up at a vast, multistory gallery, I caught my breath. Generations of larger-than-life Grants glowered down at me from the oak-paneled walls, the frames that contained them separated by gilt curlicues. Most of them had ginger hair; all of them had Angus’s striking blue eyes.
There was not one room on the main level that didn’t have intricate plasterwork on its ceiling, and most were either painted or trimmed with gilt. Every detail was exquisite—from the ornate chandeliers to the medieval tapestries to the “cabinet of curiosities” that once belonged to Louis XIV. The upholstered furniture seemed oddly shabby until Angus told me that it dated from the early 1700s, and that all the velvet was original.
I tried to imagine the Colonel’s reaction when he first stepped inside all those years ago. When he looked up at the portraits of his relatives, did his fantasies of finding the monster grow to encompass fantasies of becoming the laird? During his stay, as he harassed servant girls and adopted his upper-crust accent and commissioned estate tweeds, did he secretly ascertain how many male Grants stood between him and the title?
There was no doubt in my mind. Ellis probably had too.
—
Although the war was over, Europe remained in chaos: there were food shortages and transportation crises, a staggering number of refugees streaming from city to city, mass surrenders of German troops, hundreds of thousands of freed prisoners, as well as innumerable wounded soldiers who now faced the prospect of trying to rebuild their lives.
I’d never forgotten the wounded men on the SS Mallory, particularly the soldier who had caught my gaze and held it. He opened my eyes, awakening me to a reality I had somehow managed to avoid until that point. While Hank and Ellis carried on without a care in the world, it was men like the burned soldier, Angus, and Anna’s brothers who sacrificed everything to save the rest of us. I wanted to give something back.
When I told Angus what I had in mind, he folded me wordlessly into his arms.
And so the plans were laid. For the next few years, the Big House at Craig Gairbh would be a convalescent hospital for injured soldiers.