Dearest Millie (The Pennington Family) Read online

  “They call this forest the Auld Grove. In a glen not far from here, there’s a group of deserted stone buildings where Ian rescued my sister after she was pushed into a well.” She pulled off her bonnet and waved it in that direction.

  “So, this is the place.” Dermot looked around him. “I heard some of the story from Dr. Thornton and his wife yesterday. Terrifying for all of you.”

  “I’m sorry I abandoned you for so long.”

  He smiled. “I know my limits. I can never compete with that bonnie bairn for your attention.” He took her hand. “On a more serious matter, you’re not taking me out here to push me into that well, are you?”

  “I might be.”

  Not far ahead, they came to the waterfall in the glen. Then, beyond a short, steep rise, they reached an open meadow bordered by thick forest. In the center stood an ancient stone circle.

  “I love this place,” she whispered.

  They stood together in the summer sunshine, surrounded by patches of bluebells bobbing their tiny heads. She let go of his hand, and he moved inside the perimeter of the standing stones.

  “Sarah used to say that people come from all over Scotland to make pilgrimages here.” The stones were weathered, and some had fallen, but the circle was largely intact.

  “I’ve seen others like this. In Orkney and Shetland. On the Isle of Lewis.” He touched each stone in turn, moving slowly from one to the next, running his fingers over grooves carved by the passage of years. “I can imagine witches and sorcerers performing rituals of the auld religion here on moonlit nights.”

  As he spoke, she was reminded that he was a Highlander. The history and culture of this land was part of him.

  “So I was correct.” He stood by a rude stone table at the center. “You plan to sacrifice me on this altar for the gifts I sent you in Edinburgh.”

  “I have other plans for you.” She motioned him to come toward the ravine. Below them, the waterfall tumbled over moss-covered rocks, and a cool mist hung in the air. She walked along the edge until they reached the particular shrub she was looking for.

  “White heather!” he exclaimed.

  She bent down and touched the tender blooms. “You know the legend?”

  “What Highlander didn’t hear it at his grandmother’s knee?”

  “I only know the story from books.”

  He crouched beside her, and Millie admired the play of the wind in his hair. She stared at his lips, and in her mind she was back in the carriage, kissing him. Then, she was in the library when she burst into tears and he held her, the infant nestled safe and snug between them.

  His fingers brushed against Millie’s as he swept it across the white flowers. “Tell me what you know.”

  “I read the tale in James Macpherson’s book of Ossian.”

  He sat beside the heather and pulled her down next to him.

  “Ossian had a beautiful daughter, Malvina,” she began, “and she was pure of heart and very beautiful.”

  “She was betrothed to Oscar, the strongest and most courageous of warriors,” he finished for her. “But before you continue, I warn you not to think of the two of them having anything in common with us. The tale is too sad.”

  She agreed. She wouldn’t. “One day, when summer was drifting into autumn, Oscar was away at war but due to return. In the distance, she saw a figure limping toward her through the heather.”

  “Oscar’s faithful messenger, wounded in battle,” Dermot added.

  “The man knelt before Malvina and gave her a sprig of heather that Oscar had plucked as he lay mortally wounded, waiting for death. He sent it as a token of his undying love.”

  Millie’s gaze lifted and met Dermot’s.

  “As she listened, tears fell from Malvina’s eyes, and the purple heather turned white,” he continued for her. “Afterwards, as Malvina walked over the moors, her tears turned the blossoms white wherever they fell.”

  Millie didn’t know she was crying until Dermot reached up and tenderly brushed her tears away.

  “Even in her sadness, she wished for the happiness of others.” Millie paused and could not continue. A knot the size of a fist had risen into her chest, and she couldn’t get the words out.

  Dermot finished it for her, but his voice, too, was thick with emotion. “She prayed that the white heather, a symbol of her sorrow, would bring good fortune to all who find it.”

  He leaned toward her, kissing the wetness from one cheek, then the other.

  “Here is the white heather, Millie. Make your wishes. Believe in the magic.”

  She cried and smiled at the same time, and then plucked off a bloom. “That Phoebe and her daughter should continue to thrive.”

  Dermot broke off a sprig of white flowers. “That the union of the Pennington and Bell families strengthen them both.”

  “That joy dwell in the halls of Bellhorne Castle, now and forever.”

  He traced the path of tears on one cheek and touched her lips. “That . . . that Lady Millie be healed, and her illness never return.”

  She accepted the bloom from Dermot, adding it to hers. She chose another sprig. “That Dr. McKendry know he has been a true friend to me during the most difficult time of my life.”

  He held up another. “That Lady Millie know how much I love her, that what I do and what I say comes from my heart.”

  The snow-colored flowers he handed to her danced in her vision. She couldn’t look into Dermot’s eyes. She feared the words she was about to say would never leave her lips if she were to admit how much she loved him, too.

  “That when I am . . . ” She took a deep breath, her face lifted to the sky. “That when I am gone, my dearest Dermot not suffer as he did before . . . when he lost the first love of his life.”

  DERMOT HAD A LARGELY unspoken rule that he lived by. Regardless of how close the acquaintance, one did not inquire into their past. Even with his partner, Wynne Melfort, whatever each man knew about the other’s history, that knowledge had been offered, never solicited.

  Millie knew about Susan, and she told him right away that she’d learned about his heartbreak the day they visited the museum. She assumed he’d be upset with Turner, but he wasn’t. His old friend’s concern was heartfelt; he’d stood by Dermot when he couldn’t help himself. If ever he felt the need to explain his past to anyone, the time was now.

  She clutched the bouquet of white heather as he helped her rise and asked her to walk with him.

  “Susan and I were young,” he began. “Our attraction was immediate and mutual. Both her parents were dead, but she came from an old landed family. She was the ward of her oldest brother, and he had no objection to our proposed engagement. When I think back on it now, it all happened so quickly.”

  Dermot knew so little about the workings of the human mind then, or about the diseases that afflicted people who pretended to be happy.

  “She was beautiful, loving, kind. But at the same time, she was troubled. With each passing month of our engagement, I grew more worried about her. She would say or do things that would confuse me. Moments of anguish that she would deny having. Comments about the hopelessness of life. I found out there were times when she’d not leave her room for days. Even now, I don’t know what was the cause of her melancholy.”

  “One day, I happened to see her in an apothecary’s shop near the Surgeons’ Hall. She was buying arsenic.”

  Dermot never forgot the incidents with Susan prior to that day. Wanting to jump off North Bridge. Stepping in front of the mail coach. There were many. He took a deep breath. It was so hard to talk about it.

  “I was worried. And then I made the mistake of speaking to her brother about it.”

  Millie linked her arm in his and brushed her cheek against his shoulder.

  “I don’t know what he said to her. But that same afternoon, she climbed to the top of Nelson’s Monument on Calton Hill and stepped off.”

  They came to a stop by the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The tr
ees and the cliffs of the ravine blocked the sunlight, and the air was cold, but Dermot barely noticed it. News of Susan’s death reached him the same evening.

  “At first, I felt anger. I blamed her brother. Then, in the days that followed, a numbness set in. I wasn’t even aware of it. A dark abyss opened, and I unknowingly descended into it. I was overwhelmed with grief; I know that now. I blamed myself. Melancholy incapacitated me, shut down my mind to the point that I couldn’t even care for myself. Those who knew me feared I might do the same thing that Susan had done, so they committed me to an asylum in the shadows of Edinburgh Castle.”

  Ever since then, he’d allowed people to think he worked in an asylum after completing his medical education.

  “How long were you there?”

  “Three months. The time I spent there in Livingston Yards was a horror.” The methods were barbaric. The abuse was rampant. As his mind began to heal itself, he became more and more aware of how inhumane the conditions were.

  “But you survived. And then you became a ship’s surgeon.”

  “I needed to get away from Edinburgh, away from Susan’s memory. I needed to forget what I’d been through.”

  “And the navy needed surgeons,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “I was fortunate. I secured a place on the ship commanded by Wynne Melfort. I found in him a friend for life. And when the wars against the French and the Americans were over, I knew I had to come back and start an asylum where patients were treated with compassion and a sense of decency.”

  He looked down at Millie’s hand. She was still clutching the white heather. He recalled her last wish.

  “My reaction to her death was because of guilt. I had betrayed her trust. Rather than helping her myself, I reached out to someone who was less than capable. In my own mind, my actions were responsible for pushing her off that tower.”

  “But you weren’t responsible. He was her brother.”

  “I know that now. But her brother wasn’t really responsible, either. He may have handled things badly with her, but in the end, her illness was her own.” Dermot turned Millie in his arms until she was facing him. “Today, I recognize my mistakes. I’ve learned from them. I’d like to think I’m a better man because of them. But what matters to me at this moment is what you think of me, now that you know all of it.”

  She flattened one hand against his chest. In her other, she held the heather. It sat like a white cloud beneath their chins.

  Her eyes were clear and untroubled, and her face shone. “You’re my dear friend. You entertain me and buoy my spirits. You have medical expertise that I’ll need and rely on during the trials ahead of me. I still have worry and fear in me, but because of you, I also have hope. You are the extraordinary man I’ve come to love.”

  “Millie.” The flowers pressed between them as he gathered her tightly. “I love you.”

  “And if you are truly to take this uncertain journey with me, I hope you’ll consider becoming my husband and my lover for—”

  “Forever. For eternity,” he finished, kissing her lips.

  Chapter 11

  THE PENNINGTON FAMILY arrived at Bellhorne in a caravan of carriages. However sedate the old castle had been in recent days, it was now alive with children and smiling faces.

  Millie waited two days, since that was how long it took for her siblings and their spouses to meet the new addition and for the initial chaos and excitement to settle a little. Also, it was enough time for Dermot to be introduced and become comfortable with family members he hadn’t met before. As Millie expected, her mother fell in love with him right away, and her father was keen to exchange stories with the man he’d already heard so much about from Jo.

  People can cope with difficulties they know about. They can’t cope with what they don’t know. Feeling lied to is often more painful than hearing a difficult truth.

  Dermot’s words stayed with her during the days as she looked for an opportunity to talk to them.

  At night, she’d go to his room. She was the seducer. She wanted to feel this side of love. She’d wanted to experience their first moments of intimacy together before she bore the scars of surgery.

  Fervent. Magnificent. Loving. Whatever Millie’s expectations had been, they didn’t compare to the radiant glow she felt by the end of that first night. The second night had been even better as the desire he aroused in her took them both to thrilling and unknown heights of passion. And before she left his room before dawn this morning, he reminded her again that she was not alone and never would be.

  This weight you carry...your parents have already sensed it.

  Speak to them. They should know what you’re struggling with.

  The morning room in Bellhorne was the brightest and most cheerful in the castle at this time of day. Tall windows opened out into the rose gardens, and the very air in the room carried a feeling of hope. Millie met with her parents there on Saturday morning.

  “He’s the one, isn’t he?” the earl asked in his usual brusque tone as soon as the doors were closed. “Dr. McKendry.”

  “We approve of him.” The countess put a hand on her husband’s arm, encouraging patience as he started to say more.

  Millie wasn’t surprised they knew. It had to be obvious. And thanks to Phoebe’s whispering, she guessed everyone knew. She stepped away from the windows and faced her parents. Her father’s age was becoming more marked every year, with his snow-white hair and his pronounced limp. But he was still tall and commanding, and his mind was sharper than ever. Her mother was a vision of strength. Whatever ailments might trouble a woman of her advancing years, Millie had never heard her complain of any. She was a lioness who, with courage and vigor, looked after her husband and her family.

  They could deal with the news of her illness, Millie told herself.

  “He’s the one. He’ll ask your permission sometime today.”

  “Of course,” Lord Aytoun growled. “He’s a fine man. No question. And if he’s the one you want, then we stand with you. As always.”

  “But you didn’t ask us here to discuss an engagement, did you?” Her mother’s voice was soft. “I picked up something to read when we stopped overnight in Edinburgh. It had this handbill inside. Is it yours?”

  In her hand she held the advertisement for the ship sailing to America. Millie had left it in the pages of the Byron book.

  “I thought I might go away, but no longer.”

  Her mother started to stand, but her husband kept her seated beside him.

  “Tell us what’s wrong, Millie,” he prompted.

  She started to speak but stopped, biting hard on her lip. It hurt her to cause them even a moment’s worry. She wished Dermot were here with her now.

  Be honest with them. Tell them exactly what you need from them.

  “Look at me. I’m fine. I feel no pain. I have no outward symptoms of anything. I appear to be standing here in perfect health.”

  The words spilled from her lips, but she realized the longer she waited, the more concerned they were getting. It showed in her mother’s eyes and in the clenched jaws of her father.

  “But I need an operation to remove a tumor in my breast tissue. I saw a physician in Edinburgh on my own, but Dermot knows there are others more capable of helping me. Experts right in the city. The best anywhere. And I plan to see them.”

  Millie didn’t want to take a breath. She stared at the portrait of Sarah on the wall, for she couldn’t bring herself to look into their faces.

  “I’m going to fight this. I need to fix what’s wrong. There are dangers, of course, but I’ll be strong and brave. And I’ll survive.” She pushed herself to continue. “Dermot will stay with me through it all. But I need you two to be strong, as well. To be there for me. To support me with your confidence and to guide me if I happen to miss a step. If I forget to keep looking forward.”

  Strong arms slipped around her. Her father’s arms, followed by another pair. Warm whispers of love and encouragement b
reathed against her ear. Her mother’s voice.

  “We love you, Millie. We’ll always be there for you.”

  Chapter 12

  The Abbey

  Western Aberdeen

  The Scottish Highlands

  DEAREST DERMOT,

  A chair is a piece of furniture—designed long before the time of the pharaohs—for sitting. Kindly make a note of this information, since it is particularly relevant when the aforenamed furniture is located in my work room.

  You may retrieve the pile of books, journals, paper and (apparently) associated miscellaneous paraphernalia at your leisure. The items are currently located in the pig sty where Little Dermot (who, as you know, is hardly little any longer) is no doubt perusing the material with great interest.

  DEAREST MILLIE,

  Vile slander! I must proclaim my blamelessness in the strongest terms! One must recall that I was shockingly distracted. Allow me to clarify. After wandering unknowingly into a lovely young woman’s office this morning, I was seduced! You read that correctly, m’lady . . . seduced! She was not to be either rebuffed or denied.

  What else was a man to do with the armful of work materials he was carrying but to put them down on the nearest chair?

  P.S. Is it possible the aforementioned young lady retained a pocket watch that may have dropped from my coat as it was being stripped from the body?

  P.P.S. For all his qualities, I don’t believe Little Dermot has ever learned to tell time.

  P.P.P.S. Never mind, I just found the timepiece in my waistcoat pocket.

  DEAREST DERMOT,

  Since we are proclaiming innocence, I must declare that seduction was hardly my intention. Not at first. The elderberry stain on your shirt from breakfast was too much for my nature—which, as you know—is inclined to correct disorder and chaos wherever I find it.

  P.S. I’m overjoyed that you have found your watch. That was an anniversary gift and needs to be treasured.