Burtie stepped aside and straightened her coat, her face gone ruddy and her eyes full.
Malcolm extended his hand. “Sir Harald,” he said. “I’ve only popped in to wish Mum a Happy Christmas.” Their handshake was perfunctory.
After glancing at Burtie, Harald said, “You’ll come in for a drink, then.”
Burtie’s smile was fleeting, grateful.
Harald and Burtie joined the priest on the steps to bestow both the Lord’s and the Laird’s Christmas blessings upon the departing congregation, leaving Els and Malcolm alone in the aisle. Malcolm’s cheeks had the rosy spots that always bloomed when he exerted himself or was excited. The chapel was ablaze with candles, and in their gentle light, his eyes were their autumn sky blue and full of the amused curiosity that had been his habitual expression as a boy.
“Fàilte,” he said.
“’Tis I should be welcoming you,” Els said. “Where’ve you been hiding all these years, Mallo?”
“I could just as well ask you the same,” he said, and pulled his watch cap over curls the color of rusted iron. “Since the Laird himself suggested it, let’s have that wee dram together and share our tales.” He offered his arm, and when she took it she caught a whiff of wood smoke, wool, and dogs mingling with the chapel’s scent of pine boughs and melting wax.
As they strolled toward the house, he told her that his agricultural degree, courtesy of Harald, had landed him a position managing an estate to the north after Harald kicked him out. He visited Burtie at Cairnoch rarely, and usually when Harald was away.
“So you’re still into the politics,” she said.
“Deeper than ever. I’ve become quite the rabble-rouser,” he said, grinning. “I believe Mum’s tickled to think I might stand for office, but she’d never confess that to the Laird.” He pulled her arm more tightly under his own. “When I come here, it still breaks me heart not to be runnin’ yer lands as we’d always planned.”
“Perhaps he’ll relent.”
“Not once he’s declared his position publicly.”
Up ahead, Harald was guiding Burtie through the front door, and for a moment they were caught in the portico light, a fond and aging couple, upright and proper. Though they’d been living in sin for years and fooling no one—Burtie a widow but Harald still technically married to Els’s mother—they’d just taken communion.
“He makes his own rules, your father,” Mallo said, and his undertone of bitterness sliced through her delight at seeing him again. Harald had shattered their childhood bond by sending Els to a convent school at eleven, where the girls had made fun of her boyish ways. Mallo had found companionship among the village lads and, at the holidays, was shy in her company. She believed she’d lost her only friend.
“How long have you known about them?” Els asked.
“I saw them in the bothy,” he said. “I was about six.” They veered from the chapel walkway onto the drive. “I was terrified he was killing her and that I’d be left an orphan. Then she commenced to giggling, which I’d never heard her do.”
“And you never told me?”
“Never breathed a word of it to anyone. But some o’ the laddies began cracking jokes behind my back, and I knew the whole village was in on it.”
Els mulled over the news that her father and the young widow Burton, given shelter and work as her nanny, had become lovers when she was barely five. To the children and staff, she was Burtie, but Harald had always called her Mrs. Burton, or occasionally by her given name, Hannah.
“Who was the instigator, Burtie or Father?” She’d always imagined his mother the schemer who’d seen her chance at security, preying on disconsolate Harald after her mother’s departure.
“He was,” he said. “And got the better of the bargain.”
“Did you also happen to know why Mum abandoned me?” she asked.
He shifted his grip on her arm. “Ye’d best ask Sir Harald about that.”
“He made a point I was never to bring it up.”
Instead, she’d plagued Burtie with questions, which had brought mumbled responses: “She is nae fit to be around children,” or, “Let her stay with the Napoleons, where she belongs.”
“Ma tells me ye’ve got a blazing career in New York,” Mallo said. “Following in Sir Harald’s footsteps, are ye?”
“He was probably a bit miffed when I chose investment banking instead,” she said. “It was the hot thing when I finished business school. I had other offers, but Standard Heb was just starting its New York mergers