she was ready to die.
Anne was glad she and Aidan had been in Town to keep watch by his sister’s bedside. Alpina had silently suffered so much pain, death came as a blessing. She left her estate to Anne, who used a portion of it to purchase rugs for the floors and hangings for the walls at Kelwin and the rest to start a school in Caithness. She named the school after Alpina, Lady Waldo.
Deacon accepted Aidan’s offer to emigrate to British Canada. Two months after the gunpowder explosion, when he could walk on his own, albeit limping, he and Cora married. Aidan and Anne returned to Kelwin for the ceremony, and a great celebration it was, too. A week later, the couple left with Marie and many members of the clan Gunn to begin a new life.
Unfortunately, once he’d sided with Aidan, Deacon never heard from his brother again. Robbie Gunn refused to have anything to do with his younger brother, whom he considered a traitor. Robbie turned to highway robbery as a means to raise money for his rebellion. He was captured outside Glasgow in the fall of 1815 by English troops and hanged. It was Aidan’s duty to write Deacon and inform him he was now laird of clan Gunn.
Deacon’s response took several months to arrive. He thanked Aidan for performing such a “grim service.” He finished by hoping Aidan was successful with his quest to fight for Scottish rights. “You are closer and dearer to me than my own brother,” Deacon wrote, “but I tell you this, I and my children and my children’s children will not set foot on Scottish soil until the English give back what was ours from the beginning: our right to self-government.”
Hugh managed Kelwin in Aidan’s absence. He turned out to be a good steward and the estate prospered.
Whenever they returned to the Highlands, Aidan and Hugh always took off hunting. They’d paint their faces blue, drink a toast to Deacon, and charge off on the trail after deer. Often, Fang’s sons joined them. And once, Fang himself.
Anne, Fenella, and the other women shook their heads at such boyish nonsense, but what could they say? All men were really children at heart when it came to sport. If Aidan was happy tramping the hills dressed as an ancient Celt from time to time, well, Anne loved him enough to let him do it.
Several months after Donner was born, Hugh added a postscript to his letter reporting lamb counts that Fenella was expecting their first and Thomas Mowat had begun courting Fenella’s cousin.
Sitting in his study, a book-lined room paneled in walnut, Aidan passed Hugh’s letter to Anne. She nursed the baby in a chair beside his. Holding the letter in one hand, she read the postscript with delight.
“I can’t wait to return to Kelwin,” she said, shifting the baby to a more comfortable position. She could have hired a wet nurse, but had decided against the practice. Her father had once said it was natural and right for a mother to nurse her child and she had chosen to follow his advice. Aidan teased that she was being very “Republican.”
If the truth be known, sometimes, when all was quiet and she was alone with Donner like this in the nursery, she could sense her parents’ presence. She realized now they always hovered close because now she understood a parent’s love.
“I can’t believe you invited your Aunt Maeve and Uncle Robert up for a visit,” Aidan said with a mock shiver. He was not impressed with her tight-fisted relatives. On the other hand, they adored him…or, at least, adored bragging about their connection to him.
Anne laughed. “You don’t need to worry. I can invite them all I wish but they’ll never make the trip. It’s all form.”
“Good.”
Someone knocked on the study door. “My lord, Lady Tiebauld, your guests have arrived,” the very correct butler said.
“They are here!” Anne said happily. They’d been waiting for the arrival of her old friends Tess and Leah and their husbands.
While she quickly made herself presentable, Aidan said through the closed door, “We’ll be there in a moment, Baxter. Please make them comfortable in the blue salon.”
“Yes, my lord,” came the droning reply.
“I miss Norval,” Anne said.
“I thought you wanted to pension him off.” Aidan held out his hands to take Donner from her.
“I do. He’s old and deserves to enjoy his remaining years in comfort. But he is one of the family. Baxter is so butlerish.”