Page 32 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

The duke was spared having to say anything else, for as she drew even with him, she dropped down beside him and said, “I’m ever so glad I found you, Your Grace.

Oh—I’ve said that already, haven’t I?” She clasped her hands over her knees and looked longingly over desolate mountain passes before turning back to look at him.

“You see, I’ve been walking for quite some time, and had almost given up finding you.

I had all sorts of visions of having to walk all that way back all alone and without having found you.

Of course, if I hadn’t found you, I would have just turned around and walked right back the way I came.

” She stopped talking, partly because she had finished what she had to say and partly because she had used the last bit of breath in her small body.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk to you, you see. I’ve had the strangest dream and I don’t know to whom I can talk about it, besides you, of course.”

He looked surprised. “I dinna ken why you want to ask me. Why not your mother or your father?”

“Well, it may not seem obvious to you,” she said, “but I cannot speak of things of this nature to either of my parents.”

The Mackinnon looked at her. “So, you had a dream,” he said. “Do you have the Sight?”

She thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said, remembering her mother telling her once that her grandmother had had the Sight.

“This has never happened to me before.” She went on to tell him about the dream, about the three horsemen and the lone, pale horse that stalked the other three like Death.

“Aye, I ken it to be Death the same as you.”

“What should I do?”

“There is naught you can do, lass, except let it go. Nothing will be served if you hold on to it and make yourself sick. The death belongs to another. You canna change that.”

“But…”

“Ease up, child. You’ve been given the gift of seeing something that will happen, not the ability to change it.” The Mackinnon looked about him. “It’s getting cold and the mist is closing in. We’d best be going back down.”

Annabella wasn’t the only one who had dreamed the night before. Not long after the duke and Annabella returned, Ross found his grandfather in his study. “ Audentes fortuna juvat, ” he said to the Mackinnon. “What does it mean?”

“ Audentes fortuna juvat, ” the Mackinnon slowly repeated, taken unawares by Ross’ question. “Who told you about that?”

“No one told me. I heard it.”

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. What does it mean?”

“It’s the Mackinnon motto. Fortune assists the daring. ”

Ross watched his grandfather go to a huge oak cabinet and open the heavy carved doors.

The duke removed a small box inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, which he opened with a key he kept in his desk.

He took something out and crossed the thick Persian carpet, handing a small box to Ross.

“I had planned on giving this to you later, but since what I was saving it for willna happen, I might as well give it to you now,” he said.

Then, seeing Ross’ puzzled expression, he added, “Go on, open it.”

Ross removed the lid and saw a silver clan badge that displayed a boar’s head crest. Encircling the boar’s head was a belt-and-buckle surround where the words Audentes Fortuna Juvat were engraved. “It’s a bonnet badge common to the Mackinnon clan,” the Mackinnon said.

“What occasion were you saving it for—the one that willna happen! ” Ross asked, his affection for the old man evident in his voice.

“The occasion of your wearing a kilt for the first time.”

“You’re right,” Ross said with a scowl. “It willna happen.”

It was a surprise to Ross that his grandfather didn’t start an argument, as he usually did whenever Ross’ wearing a kilt was mentioned, but this morning the Mackinnon was more interested in something else.

“I told Percy to tell you nothing about the Mackinnon clan badge or crest until I gave this to you,” he said. “I ken he didna listen too keenly.”

“Perhaps he did,” Ross replied. “Percy didn’t tell me.”

“Who did?”

“I wish the hell I knew,” said Ross. “I told you, no one told me. I heard it.”

“Where?”

“I heard it last night, in a dream.” Ross watched his grandfather’s face turn pale and noticed how his hands trembled as he placed the inlaid box upon his desk.

Ross paused, running his hand through his hair and looking at the wall over his grandfather’s shoulder as if he expected some sort of help to materialize there.

“I know this sounds like I’ve been dipping into the Mackinnon reserves of Drambuie, but I swear to heaven I was as sober as a stone when this voice seemed to come right out of a cloud-colored light.

” He paused and looked in a puzzled way at his grandfather.

“You think I’m a blithering idiot, don’t you?

That I’m a few pickles shy of a full barrel? ”

The duke leveled his penetrating blue eyes at him, and Ross wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what his grandfather was about to say.

“No, I dinna think that, lad. But I do think you’re the first Mackinnon to hear those words—in that particular manner—in over a hundred years. It’s happened before in the Mackinnon clan—three or four times. I didna ken it would happen again, at least not in my lifetime.”

Ross was thinking, Just what I need—nighttime visitors appearing like magic from the past. Visitors who have my life all mapped out for me.

“Is it a good omen?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t been set aside for affliction and torture so the Mackinnons could have another martyr.

A great sufferer he wasn’t, and sacrificing his life for some high-minded principle or being tortured to death to achieve martyrdom was definitely not his brand of whisky.

He liked living, and he intended to live just as long as he possibly could.

If he were to pick a motto, it would be, Better to be a live coward than a dead hero.

Any fool knew a live coward would live to fight another day, but a dead hero?

All he would get was a marble slab. Ross wasn’t too fond of marble, anyway.

“Perhaps it isn’t a good omen now, but eventually…” The Mackinnon’s voice trailed off in a foreboding way.

“What do you mean, eventually?” Ross asked, his voice high-pitched arid cracking.

“You willna have an easy time of it, lad.”

“Listen, God may have written out a plan for my future, but He didn’t sign it.”

His grandfather didn’t look too convinced, and that made Ross sigh wearily. “Whatever it is,” he said, “I won’t do it.”

“It willna do any good to resist. Those who hear the voice must go through a severe trial before achieving their end.”

“Will you please not refer to it as an end?” Ross said.

“All right. You will swim some rough waters before you reach the far shore.”

“More wonderful news. Tell me, has anyone not reached that far shore? Alive?”

“I dinna ken that anyone has died from the swim, if that’s what you mean.”

“I suppose I should be thankful for that.”

“Aye, you should.”

“When was the last time a Mackinnon heard those words?”

“Before the battle of Culloden.”

“Well, that’s wonderful. This conversation is getting more and more cheerful by the minute,” Ross said, giving his grandfather the eye. Seeing the far-off look on his face, he wondered if the old duke was listening.

The Mackinnon was listening, but he was seventy-two years old, and his mind didn’t always follow the lines of convention.

Take right now, for instance. While he was finding more pleasure in this grandson of his by the minute, he couldn’t help thinking about how close he had come to never seeing the lad.

He had spent every night for the past ten years on his bony knees, praying in earnest that he would live long enough to see the whelp of his son John.

And now that prayer had been answered. It was enough to make an old man cry.

Ross was still eyeing the old man and thinking how like an eagle he looked, with his white hair down past his shoulders, his sharp blue eyes, his overall gamecock appearance.

“I don’t suppose it’s possible to undo what’s been done…

you know, sort of reverse things…maybe tell them to go try the voice on someone else? ”

The Mackinnon looked for a moment as if he was on the verge of laughing, but he gave his attention to the way Ross was pacing the floor with an overabundance of nervous energy.

“I dinna ken that is possible now, lad. You dinna have a choice. You were chosen and the fat is in the fire. The matter is out of your hands now.”

“I just wish I knew whose hands things were in.” Without saying another word, Ross turned and strode briskly out of the room.

The Mackinnon watched him go, feeling his mind slip a little.

It was like that sometimes. One minute he felt sharp as a tack, the next minute his mind was as dull as a crofter’s hoe.

At this moment Ross reminded him of someone, and lost somewhere in that maze of his mind was the name he couldn’t quite grasp.

It might have been one of his brothers; but just now he couldn’t remember his brothers—in fact, he didn’t even remember how many brothers he had.

His mind was a lot like his old legs—they felt as spry as a lad’s one minute, then grew cold and numb the next.

Only this morning he had watched the parlormaid shine the huge silver tray that sat on the sideboard, and he remembered how he used to take that tray and slide down the stairs, sitting on it, racing one of his brothers—who preferred to slide down the banister—to the bottom of the staircase.

It had been great fun then, and this morning he had been tempted to give it another try.

How sad it was to know that in a day or two, he would look at that tray like he had never seen it before, and ask the maid if it was new.

“I dinna mind growing old,” the Mackinnon mumbled to himself, “but I canna bear to watch everything slowly wear out.”