The Secret Gift (17 page)

She shrugged. “I’m not quite sure. I’ll probably spend a little more time in the village, finish up my research on my family, and then return to the States, I guess.”

“Or ...”

She looked at him. “Or what?”

“Or, you can file paperwork claiming your rightful inheritance.”

“Why would I want to do that? I have no interest in revenge against Lady Venetia. I don’t even know her.”

“Perhaps not revenge, but what about preservation?”

“Preservation? What do you mean?”

“Libby, when I was doing this research, I came across some rather disturbing information.” He took a quick shuffle through his sheaf of papers. “Apparently Lady Venetia intends on selling the entirety of the estate to a Dutch mineral drilling company—everything, that is, with the exception of the castle, which, as you know, she has already sold. She did that because she apparently promised her husband, your grandfather, the old laird, that she would never sell the castle his ancestors had worked so hard to preserve to anyone who might seek to tear it down. The land, however, is another issue, and if she does sell the land, it will include the whole of the village.”

Libby already didn’t like the direction the conversation was heading. “And if she does that, then what will become of the villagers?”

“Well, you’ve been to the village. You can see that a good deal of their livelihood comes from tourism, particularly in the summer months. People flee to the remote points of the Highlands to escape the things that blemish the landscape in the south, like factories and”—he looked at her closely—
“mineral drilling plants.
If Lady Venetia succeeds in making the sale, it will have a definite and adverse effect on the tourism industry in the village of Wrath. Vacationers and hillwalkers don’t want to come all that way just to see an eyesore of a drilling plant. They come for the unspoilt landscape, the wildlife, the peace and quiet.”

And the charm of living, just for a little while, in a place where people greet you on the street as if you were an old friend.

Libby thought of the sisters, Aggie and Maggie, and their beloved B and B. She thought of the picture postcards in Ellie Mackay’s store, the fishing rods and the walking sticks stacked in the corner, waiting for the next influx of tourists. She thought of the craft center and the nimble fingers that spent the winter weaving and knitting the local wool into sweaters, wraps, caps, and blankets to sell. She thought of the boaters who she’d learned spent much of the summer months ferrying passengers back and forth from the mainland to the many islands off the mainland. She thought of the perfectly unblemished landscape she had just enjoyed that very morning, the ancient ruins, the place that her ancestor and namesake, Lady Isabella, had created, where her great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren still lived and flourished.

“But how? How could I possibly stop her?”

Hamish got an eager light in his eye. “First, we would file an injunction to block the sale, challenging Lady Venetia’s right to sell any part of the Mackay estate. As I see it, what it’s going to come down to is your ability to prove your parents’ marriage. With verifiable proof of your legitimacy, Lady Venetia will be unable to do a thing to the estate, and she will be forced to acknowledge you as the Mackay heir, as we both know you rightfully are.”

“And in the process, I’ll be picking a rather big fight with one very angry and, if the stories are to be believed, formidable, grandmother. I really don’t have any wish to
own
an entire village, Hamish. I have a life in America, a job to return to ...”

And nothing else.

Libby shook the thought off.

“But this is where you can really make a difference, Libby. Land ownership in Scotland is currently under radical reform. You see, up until now Scotland has been the last civilized country in the world that still adheres to feudal law.”

“Please tell me you’re going to explain what that means,” she said. “Right now I have visions of ermine-robed kings and jousting tournaments.”

He grinned. “Basically it gives the landlord supreme rights over the people who live on the land. For instance, if the villagers decided they wanted to, oh, I don’t know, build a swimming pool for the community, where they could teach their children how to swim properly, dramatically reducing the number of drownings that are an unfortunate circumstance of living so close to the sea, they would have to apply to Lady Venetia for the permission to do so. And Lady Venetia could deny them this right. She, after all, owns the land.”

Libby was stunned. “But that’s terrible.”

“True, but it is happening all across the Highlands. The large estate owners of today—well, a good many of them, unfortunately—don’t take much of an interest in the lives of the people who actually have to live on their land. They come once, maybe twice a year, usually to collect the rents and do a bit of stag hunting, to
feel
what it’s like to be a Highland laird, but they want to keep their estates as their own private playgrounds, available for their own benefit. They don’t want to see growth and improvements in the villages that pepper their land, because it will mean more issues they will have to deal with, which will mean less leisure time for themselves.”

“Is there nothing we can do?”

Hamish nodded. “Some communities have successfully managed to buy out their landlords in lieu of other absentee landlords and have taken the control of the land into their own hands. It is a rare thing. As you can imagine, very few landlords are willing to sell their land at an affordable price to the community when they can ask millions more from American movie stars—or Dutch mineral drilling companies. But through mortgages and grants, you could turn the bulk of the land back to the people who have lived there all their lives and who have the biggest stake in its preservation and protection.”

Libby remembered then the fear she had seen in the eyes of every one of the villagers when she had made inquiries about her mother. It was terrible enough that they should have to live with such fear, fear that their very homes would be taken away from them. But now this? How long would it be before this mineral drilling company decided it wanted to vacate the village for its own use?

She thought of the garden that sat in the village square, the handprints of the schoolchildren that had been pressed in the new concrete walkway the day it had been poured. She thought of the churchyard filled with the generations who had lived in the village, people who had worked, raised their children, passing on a way of life that in other parts of the world had simply ceased to exist. In the short time she’d been there, the village and its people had wound their way deep into her heart.

“File whatever paperwork is necessary to stop this proposed sale, Hamish. I will do what I can to find the proof of my parents’ marriage.”

“Brilliant!” His eyes were positively alight with the challenge. “Now, before you go, just a few preliminary questions for the paperwork. Your age? Oh, wait, I’ve got your birth certificate here somewhere ...”

“My birth certificate? How did you get that?”

“Oh, just a simple call to the Scottish Registry Office. They have the records for all Scottish births and—”

“But I’m American, Hamish.”

“Your
citizenship
is American, my dear. But I can assure you that you were indeed born on Scottish soil. I have with me a faxed copy of your original Certificate of Birth. Here. Have a look. A certified copy is on its way to me by post.”

Libby took the document and read each detail.

She’d been born in the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital at 7:24 p.m. on March 23, 1972. She’d weighed seven pounds, two ounces, and had been eighteen inches long. Her mother, Matilde Mackay, was age thirty-three; her father, Fraser Mackay, was listed as deceased.

As Libby stared at the document, Hamish went on with his questions. “So, then, are you married?”

Libby blinked, felt a familiar sting at the question.

Would “almost” qualify as an answer?

“No. I’m not married.”

“All right, so then I assume no children of your own?”

“No.”

“Well, that will keep things neat and simple.”

Libby, however, didn’t quite see it that way.

“Hamish, how long do you think all this will take? As I said, I have a job back in New York, which isn’t that much of an issue. I think I can convince my employer to grant me field work here, but my passport only allows me to stay for up to three months.”

“Right. But you are, by birth, a Scottish citizen. I don’t expect any trouble, though it will require the filing of some paperwork to extend your visiting privileges. I’ll get in contact with the Home Office to see what we need to do. Then I’ll give you a ring once I have the court date scheduled. I’ll do my best to hurry things along.”

Graeme balanced the point of his walking stick on the toe of his left Wellington as he stood atop the cliff, at the very edge where the land gave over onto unrelenting sea. Two hundred and fifty feet below him, waves pummeled the rocky coastline, the sound of them roaring up to meet him like a storm even on this calm autumn day. Seabirds cried, soaring on the tumbling current of the crosswind, and the air was spiced with a mixture of salt, the sea, and the fading heather that blanketed the landscape around him.

It was a view that would offer unending inspiration for poet, artist, and author alike. It was timeless. It was overwhelming, and it was the perfect place to be alone.

He’d come to Castle Wrath for its solitude, for its remoteness and its effectiveness for hiding out. He had intended to remain only long enough for the press furor to die down and to finish the project he was currently at work on. It was an agreement he’d made with both his mother and his uncle. He’d been hounded for weeks straight, had found a photographer hiding in his garbage Dumpster one morning, and a leggy blonde waiting in the men’s washroom at his firm the same afternoon. He’d informed his mother and his uncle that night that he was changing his name and moving to Siberia.

“Graeme, dear,” the countess had said, “you don’t mean that.”

But he did. And he told her so.

“I am working on the most important project of my career.” He looked at the duke, already anticipating what he would say. “Yes, I know. A career as an architect would be too much of a demand on the time I need to devote to my place in the nobility. And I have agreed to give up my career, even before I assume the titles. But you agreed I would finish this project, and now this, this
life
is preventing me from doing that.”

It wasn’t only the press Graeme had been running from when he’d come to Castle Wrath. He’d been running from his life.

Something in his voice must have given his mother pause, because the countess had looked at the duke and had merely said, “We must do something.”

The duke had thought about it.

“Find a place. Not Siberia—someplace preferably on the U.K. mainland where you can continue your work and finish up this project.”

And so he had found Castle Wrath.

Graeme had always known the day would come when he would have to leave the castle. The very nature of his agreement with the duke had guaranteed that, but in the weeks he’d been there, something had happened. Something completely unexpected.

This place—not just the castle but the whole of this part of the country—had come to mean something to Graeme. When he was here, he could choose to
not be
that heir,
not be
that title. He could be something as simple as a castle caretaker. He could allow himself to enjoy the company of a woman.

When he was here, at this place, he felt he could finally
breathe.

Graeme knew he would never find another place like it.

And the truth was, he didn’t want to.

Now all he had to do was figure out a way to break the news to his uncle, the duke.

All along the drive back from Inverness, Libby went over the details of her conversation with Hamish.

She was having no second thoughts about her decision to pursue her inheritance. In fact, just the opposite. The more she thought about the lives that would be forever altered by Lady Venetia’s plans for selling the estate, the more determined she was to do whatever she could to stop it. She would spend every free moment poring through the church records. But even if she was unable to prove that her parents’ marriage had ever taken place, Hamish had suggested that at the very least, the litigation of it could delay the sale of the estate long enough for certain land reform provisions to allow the villagers more of a fighting chance on their own.

Hamish had advised her that she could tell no one of what she was doing. If one of the villagers, spurred by his own fear, happened to forewarn Lady Venetia, she could very easily set her own legal representatives to the task of trying to prevent their efforts. And that would spell disaster for the villagers.

“An unanticipated offensive is always the best strategy,” Hamish had said, sounding quite like a military general, when she’d bid him farewell outside the restaurant.

He would be in touch with her by phone, he’d promised, until he could arrange to have the initial court session scheduled.

It was late afternoon the following day when Libby decided to stop in at the village’s only café, a charming place called the White Heather. The weather was odd, overcast and still, as if even Mother Nature were waiting for something to happen.

Libby had been at the church all that day, searching the records, but to no avail. She refused to feel the disappointment, just as she refused to believe there might not have been any marriage at all. There had to have been. She just had to keep on looking.

The café was housed in a pretty bright blue cottage that stood at one end of the village high street. Flower boxes hung below the windows, and the chimney smoked with a welcoming fire. Inside, small tables covered in red checkered linen were scattered beneath the exposed beams of the low-ceilinged dining room. A tabletop stereo played faint Celtic dancing music.