Storm Over Rhanna Read online

  ‘Stop off at Slochmhor and phone from there,’ suggested Phebie, ‘it will save you a hike and Lachy will be glad to hear what’s going on. Don’t let him come back here though, he’s had his day o’ trudging treacherous roads.’

  ‘The snow’s stopped for a minute,’ Fergus reported as he got out of the car. ‘It will give us a chance to get home reasonably dry.’

  Everyone struggled out, complaining of pins and needles, uttering exclamations of amazement at the amount of snow lying in the glen. The white world stretched, sparkling in the light of a half moon rising up over the sea. A movement near the house caught Shona’s eye. The deer had come down from the hills and were helping themselves to the remainder of the hay Donald had scattered for the sheep. High in the heavens, directly above Laigmhor’s chimneys, a great star glittered; light splashed from the house to lie in orange pools under the windows. Ellie Dawn was entranced by the snow and reached down chubby fingers to pluck handfuls and throw them high in the air.

  Despite her pain, Shona experienced a euphoria such as she had not known since childhood. ‘Oh, Father, it’s so bonny,’ she cried, ‘and that star, surely it’s a good omen. Everything is going to be fine. Come morning a new life will be born into this beautiful world.’

  ‘Ay,’ he agreed gruffly, putting his arm round her, ‘you were aye a one for this sort o’ weather but I canny thole it and neither can the sheep. I just hope we got them all safely down from the hill earlier.’

  ‘Ach, you’re a fake,’ she giggled, ‘I’ve seen you wi’ my very own eyes romping like a bairn in the snow, and the sheep are fine or you would have had plenty to say about it before now.’

  The dogs went bounding ahead, delighting in the freedom, silent and purposeful in their sniffings and leg-liftings. Phebie and Elspeth were hurrying as best they could along the snow-bound track, holding each other up as the way got rougher and the slope more slippery, keeping their vision trained on Fergus who was leading the way with the storm lantern held aloft.

  The minister was making sure Thunder’s doors were shut when Megan came struggling awkwardly back to retrieve her bag from the rear seat, the high heels of her shoes no use at all on the treacherous ground.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ he put out his hand as she came back with her bag, ‘you’ll get nowhere fast in those shoes.’

  Without a word she bent to remove her footwear and, clutching both them and her bag to her breast, began to scrunch along in her stocking soles.

  A muscle tautened in his face. He fell into step beside her. ‘Quite the stubborn little madam, aren’t you? And bad-tempered into the bargain. Poor Tina didn’t know what hit her back there. She thinks the world of you too – always ready to champion you if need be.’

  Once again crimson flooded Megan’s cheeks and she hated herself for being so out of control of her emotions. He always did this to her, made her feel like a silly, awkward schoolgirl without any sophistication whatsoever. ‘I don’t need anyone to champion me as you put it,’ she spoke coolly to hide her feelings, ‘but I’m sorry about Tina. I like her and will most certainly apologize next time I see her.’

  She started to hurry away from him, her foot slipped and down she went. Instantly he was beside her, scooping her up as if she was weightless, his teeth flashing at her look of complete outrage. Her angry face was very close to his, the silken wash of her glossy brown hair cascaded over his hands. Just for a moment she stayed perfectly still, gazing into his eyes, noting the firmness of his well-shaped mouth. Her heart began to beat too fast, an unbidden longing consumed her reason. His arms were warm and so very safe around her body and she recognized for the umpteenth time how powerfully attractive he was – attractive and dangerously persuasive. She cursed him, she cursed his magnetism, she cursed all men possessed with that fatally charismatic charm.

  ‘Let go of me this minute!’ she gritted, her fists coming up to beat uselessly against the hard wall of his chest. ‘If you don’t put me down I’ll scream and scream till the whole of Rhanna comes running.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they would find that a cakewalk in this weather.’ His voice was perfectly calm and conversational, both facts inciting such anger in her that she began to writhe in his arms, to pull his hair, to dig her nails into his face till she felt skin breaking.

  He was maddeningly cool. ‘Stop behaving like a snarling little she-cat and for goodness’ sake stay still or I’ll drop you. It’s Shona who’s having the baby – remember. Only she has the excuse for tossing her body about in torment and it’s high time you were up there seeing to her.’

  With that he ran with her to the house, his long legs carrying him effortlessly through the snow. Megan glimpsed Elspeth’s shocked countenance as they flashed past, and if she hadn’t felt like crying she would have laughed her head off.

  It was quite a party which staggered into Laigmhor’s kitchen out of the bitter night.

  Prior to the intrusion, Bob the Shepherd had been gazing restlessly up the lum, furiously puffing his pipe, Gaffer’s head heavy on his knee, the dog’s eyes peacefully closed though every so often, in common with his master, his attention had strayed to windows and doors as he listened for some sound to come out of the blizzard.

  Kirsteen had been sitting on the seat opposite Bob, darning a pair of Fergus’s socks, Tuffer’s purrs reverberating on her knee. Every so often she had got up to open the door and look outside, straining her eyes for a sign of life in the white, empty wastes outwith the farmhouse.

  Both she and Bob had been on edge ever since the latter had come limping in with a twisted ankle to say that Fergus and Davie had gone off in pursuit of Croynachan’s bull and that he, Bob, had tried to follow them only to fall down heavily in the snow. ‘I had a fancy I saw Shona and some other womenfolk on the road,’ he reported gloomily, ‘wi’ that bugger Venus hot on their heels but the snow was getting heavier and I couldny right make head nor tail o’ anything much.’

  After that he had remained in the kitchen to await his tea while Kirsteen administered to his ankle. The table was set ready for the evening meal, the clocks ticked, peat sparks exploded in the lum. All was drowsing and peaceful in the interlude of waiting for the master of the house to come home. At the sound of voices Kirsteen jumped up, tense, waiting, and then the door burst open, shattering the peace of the slumbering room.

  Mutt preceded everyone, his big, ungainly sodden feet skiting him indoors faster than he had intended. Behind him came Sporran, eager for the welcome that always awaited him at the friendly old house. It was too much for Gaffer. He was up, growling deep in his throat, not in the least swayed by the friendly lop-sided grin splitting Mutt’s hairy, happy face. The sheepdog crouched, ready to spring, deaf to his master’s commands to ‘come away and be still’.

  Bob forgot all about his ankle and made a lunge at the dog. Down he went, in amongst a pile of dogs, cats, and trampling feet as the humans came through the door in ones and twos, brought up by Mark James with Megan in his arms. No one had time to look askance at that last amazing sight, not even Elspeth who was too taken up with her own discomforts to bother with those of anyone else.

  For a few minutes there was complete pandemonium. The dogs barked, the cats hissed, Ellie screamed with glee at the entire novelty of the evening, Bob cursed, everyone else was speaking at once.

  Dazedly Kirsteen pushed her hair back from her eyes and wondered if she could possibly escape to have a nervous breakdown somewhere private. But order quickly emerged. Mutt and Sporran were shoved unceremoniously into the parlour while Gaffer was relegated to the lesser comforts of the barn. There he was quickly bullied into a cold corner by Sheil who wasn’t in the least swayed by the fact that the pups she had been nursing peacefully before the intrusion were the boisterous offspring of the big bossy Gaffer. With the departure of the animals the kitchen became quieter and facts big and small weren’t slow to emerge. All the womenfolk noticed Megan’s hectic colour, the overbright eyes, the ragged marks of her fingern
ails on the minister’s temples and upper cheeks, but only Elspeth stared openly enough to make an issue of it and only she shook her head in a rank disapproval that said more plainly than words, ‘Fancy our very own minister bearing the ravages o’ passion for all the world to see and at the hands o’ the doctor too. Heathens, the pair o’ them! No’ fit to tend animals never mind human beings.’

  She muttered her way over to the fire to stare at it as if she was glimpsing hell fire, while everyone congregated round Shona as Fergus helped her off with her coat.

  ‘Set her down here,’ directed Kirsteen, indicating her own recently vacated chair.

  ‘I’m not a sack o’ tatties, you know.’ Shona attempted jollity though she was very glad to sink into the cosy chair. ‘Mark,’ she took and held his hand. ‘You’ve already been a Godsend but Niall will be wondering what’s happened, Babbie too.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’ The minister lifted the lantern from the windowledge and turned to the door, whispering to Megan in passing, ‘Just tell them it was a wildcat we met on the way up or Elspeth will never let you live it down – me either for that.’

  ‘You deserve all the gossip that’s coming,’ she hissed back furiously. ‘Don’t expect me to lie for you – after all, aren’t you the very one who preaches honesty from a raised dais every Sunday of your life?’

  He brushed past her quickly, but not before she saw in his eyes an anger that very nearly matched her own for intensity.

  Kirsteen handed round tea which was gratefully received by everyone with the exception of Fergus who went bounding away upstairs to light fires in those rooms he thought might be needed. Kirsteen and Phebie followed close on his heels and so too did Megan, after she had checked to make certain that her patient wouldn’t need her for a while.

  ‘Mercy on us all,’ Elspeth sipped her tea and stretched her booted feet to the fire’s blaze, ‘I needed that cuppy more than anything else. This is one experience I’ll no’ forget in a hurry. At my age I’m no’ able to take the excitement o’ a motor car journey over these treacherous roads.’

  ‘Ach, you could hae stayed in your own house in Portcull and left the space in the motor for folk who needed it,’ growled Bob, adding sarcastically, ‘I am sure Phebie and Lachlan dinna need you to hold their hand every minute o’ the day and night.’

  ‘I prefer to bide at Slochmhor,’ Elspeth imparted haughtily. ‘Doctor and Mrs McLachlan are used to me doing for them and I am sure I don’t mind the sacrifice if it means making certain they get all the attention they have become used to all these years.’

  ‘Sacrifice!’ snorted Bob. ‘Looking to Lachlan and Phebie is no sacrifice to you and fine you know it. You make money out o’ your house lettin’ it out to visitors and are only too happy to bide at Slochmhor for your own convenience.’

  He winced as Elspeth’s stout footwear came in contact with his tender ankle. He and the old woman had been at loggerheads ever since he had won a small fortune on the football pools, an event which had made him suddenly popular with the spinsters and widows of the island. Elspeth had been one of those who had tried to ingratiate herself into his affections with offerings of home baking and cooking and she had been among the first to be decanted from his doorstep in no uncertain manner. Since then, her attitude towards him had been distinctly offtaking which had made him avoid her at every turn. Now here she was, stuck beside him, her frost-purpled nose rapidly thawing to a bright red, the stiff little hairs on her upper lip positively bristling with self-pity, her thick tweed skirt visibly steaming as the fire’s heat dried the damp out of it.

  Shat coloured, that skirt, Bob decided to himself, shat coloured and shat smelling, like a yowe’s fleece after a good soaking. ‘Take your big feet off the hearth, woman,’ he ordered sharply. ‘Can you no’ see my ankle’s gone soft on me and needin’ all the space it can get?’

  Elspeth’s lips folded, ‘’Tis more than your ankle’s gone soft, ’tis your head forbye. A fine time to be mumpin’ and moanin’ about your own self when other folk have more than their own troubles to contend with. Where am I to sleep the night, I’d like to know? All I want is my own bed at Slochmhor and instead I’m stuck here wi’ a bodach as selfish as Satan himself.’

  Bob groaned. He was in for a night of it. He would never make it up to his biggin in this weather with this ankle – and his tea would be late in coming too, if ever. He glanced at Shona stretched out on her chair, little Ellie cooried sleepily beside her, and his heart melted.

  ‘Och, Shona, my lassie,’ he soothed in his lilting voice, ‘wheesht now, you’ll be fine in no time at all—’ he paused, the full import of the situation coming home to him. A baby would be born at Laigmhor that night and through the mists of memory he saw Mirabelle heating water on the range, billows of steam rising, Mirabelle plodding upstairs to take ‘Bakin’ sody’ to Biddy who had had heartburn from too much rushing. And then the baby – this young woman with the bonny red hair falling over her face and her blue eyes brilliant with pain.

  Struggling up, he went over to place an awkward arm round her shoulders. ‘That bull o’ Croynachan’s brought this on, eh? I dinna ken much about women and bairns but I knew you wereny due for a whilie yet.’

  ‘Ay, Venus is enough to make anyone have a bairn.’ Shona gripped the edge of the seat and shut her eyes. All she wanted was a cool bed and respite from prying eyes – Elspeth’s eyes were always prying – and more than anything else just then she wanted Niall to come through the door.

  ‘That buggering crazed brute,’ Bob spat his anger into the fire, a sly grin touching his mouth as Elspeth scuttled hastily out of the way. ‘Croynachan will need to give it back to the Department o’ Agriculture. It’s a fine beast, but just a bittie too frisky to be biding among civilized cratur’s like ourselves.’

  ‘Is that what you call yourself?’ Elspeth turned a sarcastic face. ‘The Vikings themselves had more common decency than some I could name hereabouts.’

  Bob’s faded blue eyes could still blaze fire when he was severely riled. They blazed now, so effectively Elspeth noticeably wilted under their glare. ‘Ay,’ he hurled, ‘and they maybe just conveniently forgot it when they were plundering other folk’s lands and ravishing the women – no’ that you would have been in any danger o’ that if you had been alive then, though mind –’ thoughtfully, he eyed Elspeth’s wizened countenance – ‘it wouldny surprise me if maybe you did go as far back as that. Wi’ a face like that on you, you look as though you might have lived forever.’

  ‘Will you two stop bickering like a couple o’ bairns and do something useful wi’ your time?’ Fergus blazed as he came back to help Shona upstairs. ‘We’re putting you in your old room,’ he told her as they ascended slowly upwards. ‘I thought you would feel at home there. The bed has been moved out of the alcove to give more space all round.’

  Shona sighed. Here was the little haven where she had spent her childhood, so full of happy memories the very walls seemed to have absorbed the laughter. For a moment she stood on the threshold, gazing round her with affection. Her room, the sunshine room, with its soft yellow curtains and gold-coloured carpet and its sense of happiness pervading every corner.

  Without a murmur she allowed Kirsteen and Megan to undress her and help her into bed. Gratefully she slid between the cool sheets and closed her eyes. ‘Oh, Kirsteen, this is bliss,’ she murmured, ‘I never thought I was going to make it, especially downstairs just now with Bob and Elspeth snarling at one another. How on earth are you going to manage having us all here?’

  ‘Och, I’m used to folk arriving at the most unexpected times.’ Kirsteen tried to sound lighthearted even while she tried to guide her seething mind into some semblance of order. Mentally she was working out how she was going to feed everyone, but Phebie soon solved that problem by appearing upstairs to announce she had made enough sandwiches to feed an army.

  ‘I just grabbed cold mutton and eggs from the pantry and dolloped them in between layers of bread,’
she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll bide wi’ Shona for a while – you had better go down and see to your guests,’ she added with a wicked twinkle.

  Doors banged from the nether regions of the house, accompanied by deep male voices. ‘It sounds as if more have arrived,’ Kirsteen said with a groan, stepping back quickly as Niall came bounding in, bringing with him the cold sharp scent of frost. Going straight to the bed he took his wife in his arms and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Mo cridhe,’ he said into her hair. ‘It looks as though we’ll have our baby on Rhanna after all – thanks to that damned bull o’ Croynachan’s.’

  ‘Och, Niall, it was meant to happen this way. I’m no’ mad – I’m glad.’

  Slower footsteps sounded on the stairs and Lachlan came into the room, his brown eyes smiling at sight of Shona. ‘Just like old times, eh, mo ghaoil? I think you must have planned this. I wouldny be surprised if you told me there was some sort o’ conspiracy between you and Croynachan.’

  ‘Lachy McLachlan!’ Phebie tried to sound severe. ‘I told the minister no’ to let you come here the night. Look at you, frozen to the bone and too much o’ a bodach to go tramping snowbound roads at the dead o’ night.’

  ‘I’ll bodach you!’ he protested indignantly. ‘And you must be a cailleach if you thought I was going to sit alone at home contemplating my old age with all this excitement going on here.’

  Babbie arrived, hat slightly squint on her thatch of red hair, green eyes sparkling with mischief as she threw herself down on a chair to fan herself with her hat. Oh, oft times had auld Biddy done the self-same thing and everyone in the room looked at the young nurse with affection, thinking to themselves how easily she had slipped into Biddy’s place, both in manner and dedication.

  ‘Stop gawping the lot of you,’ she laughed. ‘I know fine you’re thinking that Biddy did this, that, the other, and I’m following in her footsteps. Well, I tell you now, I’ll never work till I’m a cailleach ready to drop into my grave with my fingers raw to the bone. I’m far too fond o’ my comforts for that so you get out that bed this minute, Shona McLachlan, and administer to me for a change. I’ve tramped for miles in hostile country thinking betimes –’ Biddy again, she laughed – ‘I would never see Anton again, and after all that I had to tramp all the way back again with one distraught husband and one excited grandfather hauling me along in their hurry to get here – no’ to mention a minister with legs on him made for stepping over hills in one giant stride.’