years ago he had left and not a word since. It could not be him, it made no sense. Why would he come back after all this time? And though he looked like him, this stranger was far too self-assured and far too sophisticated to be Alasdhair. If it was him, he had not just changed, he had been transformed.
It could not be him, Ailsa told herself. It couldn’t be.
She had just about persuaded herself when he moved, turning fractionally to the side so that she could see his profile. Her heart, encased in ice since the day he left, gave a sickening lurch, like an animal woken too soon from hibernation, and in that instant she knew.
Just a fleeting glance she caught before he turned away again, but it was enough. He was clean shaven. A strong jaw, with a mouth held in an austere line, but it was the same mouth that always used to quirk up in a half-smile. Fine lines around his eyes, grooves running from mouth to nose, his face deeply tanned. But they were the same eyes, dark brown, peat-smoked, under brows heavy and black, almost meeting in the middle. A forbiddingly handsome face, harder and more defined than the good-looking young man she remembered, who had not had this mature man’s air of authority. But it was still the same face.
Though she had never in her life fainted, Ailsa thought she was about to do just that. Her vision swam. Her head pounded. Her mouth was dry. She clutched at the mossy top of the cemetery wall, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
‘Tell me my old eyes are deceiving me.’
Ailsa looked up, startled.
‘It is him, isn’t it?’ Shona said, nodding at the man in black. ‘Alasdhair Ross, a ghost from the past, come to join all the others in the graveyard.’ She chuckled. ‘He was banished for challenging the laird’s authority, but your father never did say why.’
‘No,’ Ailsa replied shortly. ‘The laird was never one to explain himself.’
‘You had aye time for him, did you not?’ Shona probed. ‘I mind now, you used to follow Ross about like a wee puppy.’
‘It was a long time ago. I was very young.’ Ailsa tried desperately to hold back a tear she could feel welling up. ‘But, yes, I was …’ She paused. ‘I was very fond of him.’
‘I can’t blame you,’ Shona said. ‘He was always good looking in his own wild way, but he’s turned into a right handsome devil. Made something of himself, too, judging by those clothes. Who’d have thought that Factor Ross’s son would do so well? Do you think he’s come back to rub our noses in it?’
‘How would I know? What has it to do with me?’ Ailsa said tersely. What was he doing here?
‘Whatever he’s doing, it’s stirring up a few ashes.’ The fey wife’s low laugh was more like the cackle worthy of the witch she was sometimes called by the village bairns. ‘Would you look at him, all in black, hovering over your father’s corpse like Auld Clootie himself. I’m surprised we canna hear the laird spinning in his coffin.’
‘Shush, Shona,’ Ailsa whispered urgently, ‘they’ll hear us.’
Sure enough, some of the men had turned towards the disturbance, and in turning they began to take notice of the stranger. Ailsa watched as they shuffled away from Alasdhair, as if his very presence would contaminate them. She saw some of the shock she herself was feeling reflected in Calumn’s face when he recognised his friend. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed through a wringer. Her emotions were a maelstrom of anger and hurt and regret and bitterness, so that she could only clutch the stone dyke for support and watch as the man whom she had so foolishly thought the love of her life stood impassively over her father’s grave.
When Alasdhair Ross left Errin Mhor six years ago, he swore never to return to the Highlands. He had dreamed of leaving since he was a wee boy, almost from that first time he’d seen the globe Lord Munro kept in his library. He couldn’t get over how tiny Scotland looked, or how big the New World was in comparison. His ambition to travel to the other side of the world and make his fortune grew stronger with every passing year, weaving itself into a warm blanket that protected him through the long cold nights after his mother abandoned him and his father departed this mortal coil very shortly afterwards. It protected him, too, from the scorn and derision that his aspirations elicited from the laird, who had taken him in and become his guardian.
‘Dinnae be so soft, you and your fanciful notions,’ Lord Munro told him contemptuously. ‘Your place is here, lad, your bounden duty to serve me. If ye’re lucky and you behave yourself, I might just make you factor one day. That should be the height of ambition for the likes of you.’
But as Alasdhair grew older, his ambition to forge a new life in America became the only light at the end of the dark tunnel of subservience that was his lot as the laird’s ward. The laird’s property. The laird’s serf.
America had been everything Alasdhair had ever dreamed of. Hard work, sound judgement and a bit of luck had paid off in spectacular fashion. Having eventually found employment in the Virginian plantation of a fellow Scot, he had, through diligence and determination, worked himself into the position of manager and trusted right-hand man before setting up his own business. It had been a tough life, but it had been worth it. Alasdhair was a very rich man, a respected plantation owner and merchant, known to be fair and honest, two qualities sometimes in shorter supply than they should be in the tobacco business. But Alasdhair’s integrity meant more to him even than his wealth. He answered to no one but his own conscience. He relied on no one but himself. His life had turned out just as he’d always dreamed it would. He had proved them wrong, all of them, succeeding on his own terms, without having to pay dues to his laird. He was his own man, in his own place, and no one cared who his kin were or even where he’d come from.
Except, lately, Alasdhair had found that he cared, and cared deeply. Now that he had what he had always wanted, he found it was not enough. The past, which he had been too busy and too tired to even think about, was beginning to haunt him. The story of his mother’s absconding with another man made less sense, the more he thought about it. Why had she left no word, nor ever tried to contact him? And his father’s death. Alasdhair refused to believe that it had been anything but an accident, but he did wonder if Alec Ross had had cause to encourage the tragic fate that left Alasdhair orphaned and uprooted from his family home to become the object of Lady Munro’s unrelenting hostility. Despite this, and his guardian’s determination to bend his ward to his will, Alasdhair regretted the terms on which they had parted. Though his life was in Virginia now, he wanted the right to return to the home of his heart, even if he did not intend to exercise that right often, or ever.
And then there was Ailsa.
Why? The question buzzed around his head like an angry hornet. And like a hornet, the more he swatted at it, the more persistent it got.
Why? Eventually, he realised he’d have no peace until he found out, and to do that, he must return to Scotland. A clean sheet. A blank page. That is what he wanted to return to Virginia with. Then he could write whatever future he willed on to it.
Circumstances colluded with him. An opportunity to form a new partnership with a merchant in Glasgow arose, and at the same time, one of Alasdhair’s own ships was about to depart for that very port.
He had arrived in Glasgow two weeks ago. Travelling north, he had reached Argyll when the tolling of the bells had alerted him to a death. Hearing it was Lord Munro, a long-awaited event after a protracted illness, he had been taken aback by the strength of the feelings that shook him. Regret that he was too late, and sorrow, of course. But anger, too, for the old man must have known his end
