Page 71 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

Stewart Mackinnon rode his horse hard down the dry Texas road, stirring up a cloud of dust that seemed in no hurry to settle behind him. A minute later he pulled to a stop in front of his uncle Alexander Mackinnon’s house.

He found his mother sitting on the back porch with a fan in her hand, her eyes drifting closed.

Breathing hard, he sat down on the top step. “I really do like Tess Delaney,” he said.

“I’m glad. I think she’s a lovely girl,” Annabella said.

“We’ve gotten to be friends…good friends, while we’ve been here.”

“I thought so. You spend a great deal of time together.”

“I told her we’d be going back to Scotland in less than a month.”

“It will be three weeks tomorrow,” Annabella said. “Our six months have passed awfully fast this time.”

“I surely do hate to leave here.”

“I know you do,” Annabella said. “Of all my children, you seem to enjoy Texas the most. You’re a lot like your father in that respect. It’s always hard for him to leave when it’s time to go back.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking. It’s awfully hard for me to leave.”

Annabella opened one eye. “It will pass and you’ll be glad to get home, just as your father is, once we’re on our way.”

Stewart rose to his feet. “I’m not going back, Mother.”

She opened the other eye. “When did you make that decision, Stewart?”

“Last night. Mother, I asked Tess to marry me.”

“I see. Has she given you her answer?”

“Yes. Just now. I’ve just come from her place.”

Annabella swatted at him with her fan. “Well? Don’t leave me in the dark, Gavin Stewart Mackinnon. You’re a fine-looking lad. I’m sure she said yes.”

Stewart grinned. “In a roundabout way.”

“You either agree to marry someone or you don’t, Stewart. What exactly did Tess say?”

“That it would make her as happy as a pig with its head in a slop bucket.”

Before his mother could respond, Stewart kissed her on the cheek and leaped over the railing of the porch. “Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To find my father.”

Annabella smiled and started fanning herself again.

The sun was on the horizon now, its golden-red glow touching the world and setting it afire.

In the cottonwood tree beside the back gate, a mockingbird found something happy to sing about, and Annabella thought about Stewart, her baby, the youngest of her seven children.

She was thinking that years from now, when she was an old woman, she would probably remember this gentle, gold-washed evening when she lost the youngest of her brood to the land of his father’s birth.

She closed her eyes, thinking of her loss.

Out of three girls and four boys, it isn’t so bad to lose one to Texas.

Faith! In the beginning, she had expected to lose more.

She heard someone come up the steps and opened her eyes to see Ross standing there, looking as splendid as he had that day so long ago when she had hit him in the head with a croquet ball.

She smiled in remembrance of how handsome he had looked in his kilt on the day of their wedding, and how proud the old duke had been.

Ross was standing before her, wearing the clothes he had always preferred; a blue cambric shirt, buckskin pants, a sweat-stained hat, and a pair of run-down boots.

There was nothing of the Scottish duke in the way he looked now—but inside, in his heart, she knew he was every inch the laird of Clan Mackinnon.

He dropped down into the rocking chair next to hers and removed his hat, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his arm. “Stewart said he spoke with you.”

“Yes, he did.”

Ross stretched his legs out in front of him and gave the rocker a push. “Did he tell you what Tess said?”

Annabella smiled. “He said something about her being as happy as a pig with its head in slops.”

“That’s a mighty strange way to respond to a proposal.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I seem to remember something similar that you said to me when I accepted your offer.”

“What was that?”

“You said, My love, I wouldn’t trade you for an acre of pregnant red hogs. ”

At the astonished look on her husband’s face, she began to laugh.

The sound of Annabella Mackinnon’s laughter drifted over the yard and across the white picket fence.

It whispered through the green glossy leaves of the orchard and over the rusting remains of an old moldboard plow.

It was caught up in a little whirlwind that came out of nowhere, and riding on the current, was dropped in the barn yard, where a contented old sow lay with her head resting blissfully in a bucket of fragrant, cool slops.