Two
I wrinkled my nose, deliberately sealing off my nasal passages. The church was musty, smelling of damp and mold and the subtle odor of decaying flesh entombed deep within ancient stone walls.
Wiping clammy palms on my skirt, I concentrated on the curved arches and stained glass windows of the Maxwell family chapel. Even after all these years and countless visits in the name of research to mausoleums and family vaults, I could never quite acclimate myself to the stench of death. It seemed to me that I could feel the essence of those who died. They haunted me with their images, touching my skin with bloodless fingers, pulling at my hair and clothing with pale, insistent hands.
Like an old enemy, the panic inside my chest lifted its head. Balling my fists, I focused on the words of the liturgy. It was an Anglican service, enough like those of my childhood to sound familiar. Throughout history, the Maxwells had stubbornly refused to renounce their Catholicism. But Ellen had been a staunch Episcopalian. Since her husband’s death twenty years before, only the rites of the Church of England were practiced in the small Maxwell chapel.
It was jammed to full capacity with mourners lining the walls of the inner sanctuary as well as the stone steps outside. I experienced a flicker of guilt. There were so many without seats. Who was I, a stranger, to take up an entire pew when so many of Ellen’s friends and acquaintances stood outside? I looked around uncertainly. Why had no one entered the pew where I sat? I turned and looked directly behind me, surprising a whispering couple into instant silence. The woman blushed scarlet.
I turned back to face the altar and saw him from the corner of my eye. Ian sat three rows back. I hadn’t seen nor heard from him since Ellen’s death three days before. Attached to his side, her arm through his, sat a woman whose face could be on a magazine cover. Much as I would have liked another look, I didn’t have the nerve to turn around again. Embarrassed, I bent my head and closed my eyes, pretending to pray, thankful that I was in the front and no one could see the flaming color rise in my cheeks. It never occurred to me to ask if he was married. So much for fantasies.
The priest had finished the eulogy. Rows of mourners stood and slowly inched toward the open coffin to pay their last respects to the lady of Traquair. The only exit was through the entrance to the chapel or out the doors on either side of the coffin. My palms were clammy with a cold that had nothing to do with the weather.
Clutching my purse, I slipped out of the pew and stood in the line of mourners, resolving to forego the distasteful and, in my mind, pagan practice of viewing the dead and escape through the door. The woman in front of me wept into her handkerchief, soaking it completely. Fidgeting with the clasp of my purse, I managed to open it. Locating a packet of tissue, I offered it to her. She clutched my arm and thanked me with a watery “Bless you, my dear.” With her arm holding me captive and her solid body wedged between Ellen’s coffin and the first row of seats, I was caught. There was no help for it but to stare down at the woman who had taken one look at my face and died.
I’d expected Ellen Maxwell to look peaceful. But she didn’t. She looked angry. I couldn’t know it at the time, but the mortician had arranged her features as he remembered them from life, haughty and incensed. Looking down at that cold, sour face, I could only believe she wore that expression for me. Lady Maxwell wanted to send the unmistakable message that, despite her husband’s last will and testament, she held me in contempt. An American woman from Boston was no fit heiress for the ancient seat of the Maxwells. Why, then, had she invited me? There was a hint of something else in the frozen mask of her face. Something even the skilled fingers of the mortician couldn’t eliminate. Something dark and terrifying that I wanted no part of.
“Please,” I whispered to the woman on my arm. “Let me by.” She stared blankly. “I’m not feeling well.” By now, I was desperate. “I need air.” Had Ellen’s eyes flickered or was it a trick of the candles? The room swayed. There was a whisper of cloth sliding against polished wood. A hand gripped my shoulder. Then the floor rushed up to meet my head, and everything went black.
***
Cool sheets, smooth from wear and washing, soothed the back of my neck. Strands of hair released from the French twist I had worn to the funeral lay splayed across the pillow under my cheek. Quiet, careful voices whispered just out of hearing. I felt weak. My eyelids were heavy, too heavy to lift.
“Are there any medical problems that you know of?” A stranger’s voice asked the question as firm, competent hands checked my pulse.
“None that Lady Maxwell ever mentioned.” I’d heard that voice somewhere before. “I’ll check the file.” The door opened and closed.
“What about you?” the first voice asked someone else. “Have you any information that might help me?”
“For Christ’s sake, John,” an exasperated voice answered. “I’m not involved in this. Why would I have any knowledge of Christina Murray’s medical history? She fainted in church. That’s all there is to it. Maybe she forgot to eat breakfast. Or maybe she doesn’t like looking at dead people.”
I couldn’t help smiling. There was no doubt as to whom that voice belonged to.
“Take it easy, Ian. I’m only an overworked physician trying to get some answers. If you don’t know the woman, that’s all you need to say. I believe I know what her problem is anyway.”
“I didn’t mean that I don’t know her,” a more subdued Ian corrected him. “We just never got around to discussing whether or not she had a medical condition.”
“I can imagine.” The doctor chuckled.
I decided that this man was worth seeing. With enormous effort I opened my eyes and focused on the scene at the foot of my bed.
“What do you mean by that?” Ian demanded. He was leaning against the mantel, his arms folded forbiddingly against his chest.
A slender man with prematurely gray hair pulled something out of his bag. It was a syringe. “Come now, Ian,” he said. “A woman who looks like that, the right age, with the right background. If it weren’t for the conference in Edinburgh, I would have met her plane myself.”
Ian braced himself on the desktop. “I hadn’t realized you were taking notes, John. Just exactly what is it about her background that appeals to you?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been listening to Ellen for all these years?”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t,” Ian replied. “Other than the fact that Christina is from Boston, university educated, and stands to inherit Traquair, I know next to nothing about her.” He eyed the needle suspiciously. “What is that you’re giving her?”
“Insulin. She’s very pale, and her skin is cold and clammy. The blue around her lips indicates diabetes.”
Thank God he had figured it out, and I didn’t have to say anything. I doubted that I could have anyway. Seconds later I felt the reassuring sting of the needle in my left thigh. Almost immediately I felt my body normalize. When I spoke, my voice was surprisingly strong. “Thank you, Doctor. Your diagnosis was correct. I’m a diabetic.”
Showing remarkable calm at my unexpectedly conscious condition, he asked, “Do you have medication with you, Miss Murray?”
“Yes, it’s in the closet, inside a cooler.”
“You gave us quite a scare, young lady. I presume you have a good explanation for not having anything with you that identifies your condition?”
I rearranged the pillows behind my head and sat up. “I had an insulin injection before breakfast. Something else must have triggered my reaction.” I smiled at him, and the worried look around his eyes eased. He was a good-looking man, about Ian’s age, with spaniel-like brown eyes and a friendly face. I decided to ask the question that had been hovering on my lips ever since I’d regained consciousness. “You never answered Ian’s question, Doctor. What exactly do you know about my background?”
I had no mercy despite the red tide sweeping across his face.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Murray.” The man was truly beside himself. “It was unpardonable of me to exchange idle gossip over a patient this way.”
“Apology accepted.” He really was sweet, but I had to know. “Will you tell me?”
Ian grinned. “You aren’t getting out of here scot-free, my friend. Tell the lady and then leave us alone.”
The doctor cleared his throat and looked down at his feet. “Only that your degree is in Celtic history. You read and write Gaelic as well as a Highlander. Your parents retired and moved to California. You married early and were recently divorced.” He hesitated.
“Anything else?”
“You have no children.”
“Is that all?”
He looked up, startled. “Yes. Of course.”
I couldn’t decide if he was telling the truth. He looked so honest, and yet I knew, through painful personal experience, that the best liars were masters of the art. They had the ability to look a person straight in the eye and protest their innocence with the blood of their victims still warm on their hands.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. Ellen Maxwell had probably told everyone anyway. “I’ll fill you in on the rest, although I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested. I’m an only child, and I can’t have children.” I took a deep breath and bit my lip, bracing myself for the familiar recurring pain. If I hurried through it fast enough, this time I might avoid the embarrassing tears that welled up at the most inappropriate times. “My husband left me for someone younger and more fertile, at which time I took back my maiden name. I’m the last of a long line of Murrays.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Murray,” the doctor mumbled. From the red staining his cheeks, I could tell he hadn’t recovered from his own embarrassment.
“Thank you.” I smiled generously. “I’m over it now. Really I am.”
“Why did you say that?” Ian asked abruptly. There was a strange expression on his face.
“What?”
“That you were the last of the Murrays?”
“Because it’s true. Why do you ask?”
“It’s odd, that’s all. People don’t use that expression any more. You’re the expert in Gaelic history. Do you know anything about the Murrays?”
“Of course.”
“Tell me everything you know.”
“Good God, Ian,” the doctor protested. “The woman just fell to the floor in insulin shock. Is this necessary?”
Ian ran impatient hands through his sun-streaked hair. “Not really. We can discuss this later if you’re tired.”
He was probably the best-looking man I’d ever seen, and I felt like a washed-out disaster. It was suddenly terribly important to find out if he was attached. “I’d be very happy to,” I said. “Can you come back later?”
He smiled, and once again I felt a definite shortness of breath. “Will you have dinner with me this evening?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll come for you at seven. Everything closes up early.”
“I’ll be ready.”
***
The phone jingled in the hallway. I tensed, waiting for the second ring. It didn’t come. There was a knock at the door, and the maid poked her head inside, not at all bothered that I was half dressed. Formality, I found, was not a major concern at Traquair House.
“Phone call from America for you, Miss Murray. It’s your mother, returning your call.”
Knotting my robe around my waist, I walked into the hallway and picked up the phone. “Mom? How are you?”
“Just fine, dear. Is everything all right?” Across ten thousand miles her crisp, no-nonsense voice greeted me over the telephone wire.
“Of course.” I didn’t ordinarily confide in my mother, but something made me tell her. “I’ve only been here two days, and I already have a date.”
There was silence on the line. “Don’t you think you’re rushing it?” she finally said. “It’s awfully soon after the divorce.”
When would that word divorce no longer bring a painful tightness into my throat? I struggled to answer my mother. “Please try and understand, Mom. I know it’s only been legal for three months, but I’ve been separated for over a year. Stephen’s already remarried.”
“Is that what you called about?” Ever-practical Susan Murray didn’t believe in wasting money.
“Actually, I called to speak to Dad.”
She laughed. “Of course you did. I’ll put him on.” It was no secret that I had always preferred my father’s conversation to almost anyone’s, including Mother’s. I was definitely a daddy’s girl. Fortunately, I’d been blessed with a mother secure enough not to resent it.
My childhood had been unique to say the least. Born nine months after my parents’ wedding day, I adjusted quickly to the fact that life with a couple barely out of their teens wasn’t going to parallel the lives of my childhood friends. There were no scheduled bath or bedtimes at the Murray house. My mother’s idea of healthful cuisine was a can of fruit cocktail poured over cottage cheese. Exercise and water cured all illnesses. I was eight years old before I saw the inside of a dentist’s office and that was only because I had fallen on the cement and knocked out a tooth.
It was a delightful childhood, free of all expectations and most restrictions. Nothing was censured. I had grown up on Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence, and William Faulkner. Before the age of twelve I’d read The Virgin and the Gypsy, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and A Streetcar Named Desire with full awareness of their contents. Sometimes I wondered if my unconventional roots and impossible expectations weren’t the cause of major problems in my marriage.
“Hi, hon. How are you?” My father’s familiar voice, soft on r’s, interrupted my thoughts. I loved that voice, and so did everyone who listened to it. Donald Murray was a slightly famous trial lawyer. Or at least he had been before he retired. In his last twenty years of practice, he hadn’t lost a case. I still maintain, as I always have, that his enormous success lay in the exceptional quality of his voice. It was low and clearly pitched, every syllable enunciated, a New Englander’s voice, informal, thick with vowels and bare of consonants. That voice never let me down.
“It appears that I’m due to inherit an eight-hundred-year-old house,” I told him.
He laughed. “Is it still standing?”
“I’m serious. And yes, it is still standing. It’s really more of a mansion than a regular home. Have you ever heard of Traquair House?”
There was silence at the end of the line.
“Dad? Can you hear me?”
“I’m here, Chris. Tell me more about Traquair House.”
“I don’t know anything yet. The lawyers will be here tomorrow. Do me a favor. See if you can locate any information on entailed estates and rights of survivorship. I’d like to know what I’m up against here. And if you can find out anything about our family tree, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll do that. Be careful, Chris.”
It wasn’t until I’d hung up the phone that I realized he hadn’t said that to me in years.
***
The car that Ian parked at the entrance to Traquair that evening was not the small compact that we had ridden in before. It was a lovely old Jaguar sedan of deep forest green with leather seats. The camel sports jacket and wool trousers he wore confirmed what I’d already assumed. Dinner in Scotland, even in the small town of Innerleithen, was a dress-up affair. I was grateful that I’d thought to include in my travel wardrobe a form-fitting dress of fine wool with a v neck. I’d been told the deep cherry color with its white border was flattering to my hair and eyes. The look on Ian Douglas’s face when I came down the stairs was worth every minute of the time I’d spent in preparation.
“You look lovely, Miss Murray.”
His old-world formality was endearing, but I was ready to do away with it. The man had kissed me, for heaven’s sake. “Please call me Christina.”
“All right, Christina. We’ve reservations for seven-thirty.”
We were the only ones patronizing the restaurant that evening. The conversation remained light as the proprietor ushered us into what looked like a formal drawing room where large comfortable chairs were arranged around the fireplace. Ian ordered a drink while I looked over the menu.
“I recommend the salmon,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice. “There is enough of it to satisfy even your appetite.”
“Well then,” I replied, determined to remain as cool as possible, “I’ll take it.”
“Two poached salmon dinners with dill sauce, Angus. Have you any criachan today?” Ian asked the waiter.
“Kirstie was here first thing in the morning making it, sir. It’s the best of the lot, if I do say so myself.”
“We’ll have some of that as well. Miss Murray loves sweets.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Three raspberry scones gave me a small hint.”
Heat rose in my cheeks.
“Surely you know I’m teasing, Christina?” His eyes were clear and contrite. “I admire the fact that you don’t pick at your food. There isn’t anything more aggravating than buying an expensive meal for a woman, only to have her eat two bites and push it away.”
It was obvious that he spoke from experience. “I’ll try not to disappoint you,” I said.
His gaze swept over my figure, lingering on my legs, crossed and visible below the hem of my skirt. “I don’t think that’s possible,” he said dryly, swallowing a healthy portion of his drink.
“Actually I’m not supposed to have sweets,” I reminded him. “I’m a diabetic. The raspberry scones were a rare treat.”
He looked startled. “Good God! I never even connected it. Why on earth did you eat them?”
I laughed. “I’m only human and I love sugar. When I indulge, I pay for it. Fortunately I’m not tempted often or easily.”
I leaned my head back against the chair and closed my eyes. The room was lovely. The warmth of the fire and the intimate flickering lights wove their spell. I felt mellow and slightly drowsy, otherwise I would never have said what I did. “I’d like to think you invited me here tonight because you were bowled over by my charms. But I don’t really believe that.”
He looked at me curiously. “Why not? You’re not exactly the type a man would overlook in a crowd.”
Again, I could feel the color in my cheeks. “Thank you,” I murmured, clearly uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. “I wasn’t begging for compliments.”
“I know. That makes you even more appealing.” He studied me thoughtfully. “What was your husband like?”
“I beg your pardon?” Whatever I had expected of the evening, it certainly wasn’t this.
“He must have been the worst kind of fool to make a woman like you unaware of her appeal.”
My stomach knotted in that twisting, painful way it always did when I thought of Stephen. I couldn’t discuss him. Not yet. “He wasn’t a fool,” I said quickly. “We just wanted different things. What about you?” I remembered the beauty seated beside him in church. “Are you married?”
He grinned, and the pain in my stomach disappeared. “Shame on you, Christina. Would I be here if I were?”
“I hope not,” I answered, “but I don’t really know you.”
“That can be remedied. In answer to your question, no, I’m not married. I came close once, but it didn’t work out.”
“What happened?” The minute I asked the question I wished it back. “I’m sorry. Please don’t feel you have to answer that.”
“I don’t mind at all,” he assured me. “I took her to America with me while I earned my degree at Cornell. She refused to come back.”
“Why didn’t you stay?”
He shrugged, a beautiful fluid lifting of his shoulders. “This is my home. I’ve spent my entire life preparing to take over the land. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
I agreed with him. “Scotland is a wonderful place to raise children. Much better, I think, than America.”
“Thank God children were never an issue.”
“Do you dislike children, Ian?”
“Not at all,” he replied promptly. “But I do believe that every child deserves two devoted parents. I deplore the current trend of selfishness that puts children’s needs last in a relationship.”
He spoke with such feeling. I wondered if it came from personal experience. Curiosity prevailed. “You can’t actually believe that people should endure a miserable existence for the sake of their children?”
“Of course not.” He set his empty glass on the table. “But people’s definitions of miserable are varied. Most of the time, problems can be worked out with a bit of effort. There are few things important enough to break up a marriage.”
What about infertility, I wanted to cry out. What if a man wants children so desperately that nothing else will satisfy him, not even the woman he promised to love, honor, and cherish fifteen years before? Of course I didn’t say it. It was ridiculous to even think it. No one would believe me. This was the twentieth century. A woman’s worth was no longer measured by the number of children she brought into the world. Or was it?
I closed my eyes and remembered the hands. I could still feel those hands, sterile, competent, cold, sure, precise, sliding across my skin, probing, prodding, inspecting every inch of flesh, examining over, under, inside, the tests inconclusive and never ending, until that night when I couldn’t tell my husband’s hands from the hands of the hundred specialists I’d seen, and the very thought of exploring fingers inching their way across my body was like the exploding pain of brilliant light against eyes that had been too long in dark places. I simply couldn’t bear it, and in the end it cost me my life as I’d planned it.
Deliberately, with great effort, I pushed the memories aside and opened my eyes. Ian was staring at me again. Why did I feel as if he knew exactly what I was thinking?
Just then, the proprietor walked through the door to the dining room. “Please follow me,” he said. “Dinner will be served shortly.”
Over a bottle of wine and the best salmon I’d ever tasted, Ian brought up the real subject of our dinner conversation. “What do you know about your family history, Christina?”
“If you mean my personal family line, not much. But I know a great deal about the Murrays.”
“Did you know that the widow of the last Murray of Bothwell married the third earl of Douglas?”
Pausing, with my fork halfway to my mouth, I stared at him. Ian was a Douglas and I, a Murray. “Are you telling me we’re related?”
He laughed. “In a manner of speaking. I don’t believe we’re close enough to worry about genetic defects in our children.”
Even before he saw the stricken expression on my face, he realized what he’d done. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, horror at his faux pas evident on his face.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I assured him and quickly changed the subject. “My family is descended from the Atholl Murrays. George Murray, leader of the Jacobite troops at Culloden, is my direct ancestor.”
“A good man,” Ian acknowledged, cutting off another piece of salmon. “When you made that comment this afternoon, I remembered something.”
Somehow I knew this was it, the reason we were here, eating salmon and drinking wine in this lovely restaurant, cloaking our true intentions in the mantle of polite conversation. “What comment?” I asked, although I knew exactly what he was about to say.
He repeated my words exactly as I had said them. “I’m the last of the Murrays.” He was silent for a moment, allowing me the full impact of the words before he continued. “When I first saw you, I thought you reminded me of someone.” His voice was quiet and reflective with the familiar lilting cadence of a born storyteller. Intrigued, as usual, with any tidbit describing the ancient lore of Scotland, I hung on every word.
“During the 1700s, before Culloden, Janet Douglas married George Murray. For some reason, neither the Douglases nor the Murrays approved of the union. I believe it had to do with an ancient curse. Her diary is in the family archives at Traquair House. Apparently she came back to Traquair after the Battle of Culloden Moor to collect her daughter’s belongings. She must have left it there. It was found, surprisingly intact, in a remote guest room.
When it became obvious that Janet was pregnant, the families put aside their objections and the wedding was hastily arranged. A son was born six months after. Later, they had a daughter named Katrine. According to Janet’s diary, Katrine grew up and fell in love with an Englishman, the infamous Sir Richard Wolfe, on the eve of Culloden. She died tragically, fulfilling the prophecy. Nothing in her mother’s diary explains the nature of the curse, but apparently Katrine’s death didn’t surprise her.”
The flickering candlelight made a circle of golden light in the bottom of my wineglass. Was it a trick of the flame or was Ian looking at me strangely? He had stopped talking long enough to refill his wineglass. “The reason I reacted so strongly to your words this afternoon,” he continued, “is because Janet used almost the same ones in her diary. She wrote that her daughter was cursed because Katrine was the last of the Murrays.”
Reaching across the table, he lifted my chin and thoroughly scrutinized my face. “I have a portrait of Katrine Murray. It’s only an oil painting, nothing like the accuracy of a photograph, of course. She’s younger and her clothing and hair are different, but only a blind man could miss the resemblance. Gathering dust in my attic, Christina, is the picture of a woman who could be you.”