Page 60 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

Chapter Eighteen

Annabella didn’t get much sleep that night.

Thoughts of Ross kept her awake long after the household had settled down for the night.

The pinkish-gray light of early morning was already streaking the sky when she dozed off at last. She slept for what seemed only minutes before she was rudely awakened by someone shaking her with near violence. “Bella? Och! You sleep like the dead.”

“I am as good as dead,” Annabella said, pulling the covers over her head. “Go away and let me sleep.”

“Sleep? It’s half-past ten and we’ve an important job to do.”

Bella opened one eye. “What kind of job? If it’s cleaning the pig swill or scrubbing the kitchen floor, I want no part of it.”

“Pedair MacBrieve sent word half an hour ago. He needs our help straightaway.”

Bella opened the other eye. “I never heard of anyone by that name.”

“Of course you have. I just told you.”

Bella was about to tell her she meant she had never heard of Pedair MacBrieve before this minute, but Ailie looked primed enough to take on Queen Victoria and the Royal Navy, so she thought better of it. “Who is Pedair MacBrieve?” she said finally.

“A crofter who lives nearby. He sent word that his back door is swarming with bees.”

“And he sent for us ?”

“Of course. You know Mama and I keep bees. We often get sent for like this, whenever someone finds a swarm.”

“Oh, how lovely. We’ve been called out of bed to tackle a raging swarm of bees.

I can’t tell you what a relief that is. I was beginning to fear we’d been called to gather prawns’ eyelashes at high tide.

” Sitting up in bed, Annabella asked, “What can you do with a swarm of bees? Besides being stung to death. Kill them?”

“A whole swarm? Of course not. They’re much too valuable for that. Now, up with you.” Dragging Bella from the bed by one arm, Ailie began pulling clothes out of the wardrobe. “We’re going to bring them home with us.”

Bella dived into the bed and pulled the covers over her head. “You go on,” she said through muffled layers. “I’m not feeling well.”

Ailie laughed. “I dinna ken I had a coward for a cousin, but that’s to be expected of the English.”

Up popped Bella’s head. “We English aren’t cowards. We’re sensible. There is a difference, you know.”

“All right,” Ailie said. “Be sensible, then. Get up. We need to hurry.”

An hour later the two girls, wearing long coats, gloves, hats, and veils, arrived at Pedair MacBrieve’s hut, and just as he had said, a seething bunch of bees as big as a cheese wheel swarmed over his door.

Annabella was terrified of them.

Ailie was not. “Here,” Ailie said, picking up the wooden box she had carried from home. “We’ll put them in here.”

That looked easier said than done. “What are you going to do, tell the bees to jump into the box and clap on the lid?”

“ Oye of little faith. You hold the lid,” Ailie said, handing it to Bella. “I’ll get the bees.”

That was the most sensible thing she had heard all day. Bella held the lid as Ailie picked up a dead branch and carried it with the box to the swarm. “Come stand beside me and be ready to hand me the lid when I tell you.”

Annabella crept slowly forward. “If I get bitten…just one tiny bite…”

“You won’t.” Holding the box beneath the swarm, Ailie took the branch and knocked the swarm loose.

The bees fell into the box. She threw away the branch.

“Hand me the lid.” Bella did, happily, and backed away.

Ailie clapped the lid down and said, “There. What a nice swarm. Thank you, Mr. MacBrieve.”

Turning to Annabella, she said, “Well? What do you have to say for yourself now?”

“ Ancora imparo ,” Annabella replied with a shrug. “I learn,” she added, seeing it didn’t seem to be in Ailie’s repertoire of foreign sayings. “Michelangelo said it.”

On the way home Bella asked, “How did you do that without being bitten?”

“Swarming bees are almost always completely harmless,” Ailie said. “Most of the time they’re so full of honey that they can’t do much more than swarm.”

When they arrived back at Seaforth, they went straight to the beehives.

Annabella, who was getting braver by the minute, even volunteered to place the swarm in the straw skep.

She did, without one bite, and felt inordinately satisfied with herself once they had covered the skep with canvas before placing an earthenware pot over the whole thing.

One of the swarming bees must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, for when Annabella began removing her gloves, she felt a stinging bite on her wrist. With a yelp, she jerked off her glove and slapped the bee away.

“That won’t do any good now,” Allan said, swinging over the fence and coming to join them. “The stinger is already imbedded in your skin. Here,” he took Annabella’s hand, “let me see if I can get it out.”

By the time he pulled it out, Annabella had a red welt that burned like fire. “Go on up to the kitchen and tell Cook to put something on it,” he said.

The girls started off as Allan grabbed Ailie by the collar. “ You ,” he said, “are coming with me.”

“What for?” asked Ailie. “What did I do?”

“Mrs. McGinnis has three sick children and her husband is down with an injured back. Mama is sending food and milk. She wants you to come with me, to see if we need to send for the doctor.”

“But Annabella…”

“Won’t die from a bee sting,” he finished. “Come on, Miss Busybody. I left the cart in the road, just over the fence.”

They started away, then Allan stopped. “Go on to the cart, Ailie. I have to ask Bella something.” When Ailie started to speak, he said, “Go on. You can ask me about it later.”

As soon as she turned away, Allan came to stand beside Annabella. “Do you know a man named Fionn Alpin?” he asked.

Annabella considered the name. “No, I don’t.”

“Do you remember ever hearing that name?”

“It isn’t familiar, and it isn’t a usual name, at least not to me. I’m certain I would remember hearing it if I had.”

Allan nodded and started to turn away.

“Why do you ask? Who is Fionn Alpin?”

“I’m not sure. He stopped me on the road today, when I was exercising the gray. He wanted to know if I was from Seaforth. For some reason I told him no . He began asking a lot of questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“About you and Mackinnon, mostly.”

“Have you told Uncle?”

“No, but I intend to.”

She shrugged. “It’s probably someone my father hired to keep an eye on me,” she said. “He wants to make certain I don’t fly away.”

Annabella watched him go and saw that Ailie hadn’t gone to the cart, but was waiting for him down the way.

Allan caught up with her, then the two of them raced to the fence.

Ailie was laughing when she got there first. In her haste to climb over it, Ailie snagged her skirts, then dropped on the other side, apparently unharmed.

The pony nickered and the cart started off.

The creaking of the huge wooden wheels was strangely in harmony with the sounds of Allan and Ailie’s chatter.

Annabella turned away and started toward Seaforth.

She went a few feet and stopped, then turned back toward the fence.

She had never climbed a fence before, but Ailie made it look so easy—and daring.

Bella soon discovered that fences weren’t as easy to climb as she had assumed.

Hitching up her skirts as she had seen Ailie do, Bella eyed the stone wall that was almost as tall as she.

The stones were blackish gray and rough, covered with lichen, and had bracken growing in the crevices.

Dried leaves crunched beneath her booted feet as she approached the fence.

Once there, she braced her foot on one stone, grabbed the top of the fence, and heaved herself up.

It took some doing, but she located a resting place for her other foot and pulled herself slowly to the top, scraping her elbow as she did.

Sitting on top of a fence, she learned, gave one the advantage of a rather lofty perch from which to survey the world.

The meandering stone fence seemed to follow no distinct plan, but it did appear to mark the boundary between the rolling, heather-splashed heath and the clefts and shelters of the rugged fells beyond, where outcrops of brooding gray rock looked harsh and cold—and so wildly beautiful it excited her heart with wanderlust. From this lofty perch she could see the reedy little loch, the melancholy moor with its almost savage monotony, and in its center the single track of a narrow, winding path, where Ailie and Allan’s cart was now no more than an insignificant dot upon the face of history.

A brown hare glared at her from the heather; overhead a lone eagle circled the icy-blue backdrop of Highland sky. She looked at the harsh reality of the world around her, aware now of its demanding environment and understanding the reason for the Scots’ legendary resilience.

Theirs was a fragile presence in a land filled with crumbling ruins and a faded past filled with glory.

Scotland with its thin soil and inhospitable mountains was a place of rich glens and tea-colored rivers; it was a land with a timeless spirit, full of mischief and grit, impervious to the passage of time.

She knew the springy feel of its peaty heath beneath her feet, the leaden color of its thrashing sea.

It was reality. It was fantasy. It was the place where the footprints of history reached the end of their journey.