“Many times,” I replied. “I can’t imagine how I could have missed Traquair House.”
“Perhaps it was meant to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“We Scots believe in the sight. Some things are best left to the hand of fate.”
I almost smiled, then thought better of it. “If I meet anyone, who shall I say sent me?” I asked instead.
“Kate, miss.”
“I’d be grateful if you would point me in the direction of the Bear Gates, Kate.”
“Just walk the path, and you’ll find them. Enjoy your day, Miss Murray.”
I stared at her back as she walked away. For an instant, she’d reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t recall who it was.
The late afternoon sun warmed my head and calmed my frayed nerves. Drawing a deep, cleansing breath, I walked up the hill to the end of the gravel path. From there I turned back to look at the house. Never, in all my travels through Scotland, had I seen anything quite like Traquair House. It was as if time had rolled back, and I, Christina Murray, an unwelcome stranger, had intruded on the ancient fief of Maxwell.
The grounds were steeped in a halo of welcoming light. Four stories high with a gabled roof and rounded towers, Traquair looked more like a large manor house than a fortress. I knew from reading the brochures Ellen had sent that the original structure dated back over eight hundred years when Alexander the First signed a charter in the common room and that the modern wings weren’t completed until 1680.
In times of peace, Traquair had been a pleasure ground for royalty, in war, a place of refuge for Catholic priests. The lairds of Traquair had remained loyal to Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Jacobite cause without counting their personal cost. Imprisoned, fined, and banished for their beliefs, their home still stood, a sentinel to a nobler, more gallant age.
Something moved on one side of the far tower. A workman climbed down the scaffolding and disappeared behind the house. So much for romanticizing. In spite of all my efforts to the contrary, practicality had its own insidious way of invading my fantasies. Living in a home over eight hundred years old had some disadvantages after all. Traquair’s repair bills were probably stupendous.
It was obvious that the house had been well maintained. Stucco covered the original stone and mortar, but the dozens of rectangular, small-paned windows looked like the real thing. The grounds were exquisite with acres of manicured green lawns reaching past the gates to a forest of pine and black oak. A maze with shrubbery over twelve feet high grew in the back garden, and everywhere I looked squirrels and cotton-tailed rabbits stared at me from a healthy margin of safety.
Traquair House had been home to the Maxwells since the beginning of Scottish history. Once again I marveled at how I could have bypassed such a wonderful relic from the past. A simple diversion of ten miles on the way to Edinburgh would have brought me directly to the front gates.
My nose felt numb. Grateful for my wool pants and lined jacket, I slipped my hands into my pockets and increased my pace. Scotland was always cold. While the rest of the world celebrated the advent of summer, the first green shoots of spring were barely visible in glens north of the Firth of Forth. Even here in the borders where the temperature was ten degrees warmer, winds blew with the promise of snow and ice-covered lochs showed no inclination to thaw.
With my shoulders hunched and my head buried in the collar of my jacket, I would have walked right past the gates if Ian Douglas’s voice hadn’t stopped me.
Years later, I would recall the timing of that moment with pristine clarity. I would remember the crisp air and the leaden late-afternoon sky. I would smell the clean scent of pine, taste snow on the wind, and see stalks of gorse, golden and russet, growing wild beyond the tilled fields of Traquair. I would speculate on the odds of our meeting at all. What would have happened to the two of us if I’d explored the garden maze or the brewhouse instead of the gates? What if I’d taken a wrong turn or walked in the opposite direction?
I always shudder with grateful relief that none of those things happened. One small moment in time had determined my destiny. Or had it? Was it really such a coincidence or had fate woven its