The hills rolled out before them, lush and green in the summer sunlight. The landscape was unbroken by either lane or passerby, and Jessie noticed that the grass was greener than any she had ever seen. It lured her, and she felt the urge to stop her horse and dismount, to roll on the ground and absorb the glory of nature into her body. It was only the fact that she knew Gregor would not approve—especially in his current disgruntled mood—that she resisted. There would be other times.
Here and there they passed stone boundaries and clusters of sheep. Gregor glowered at the poor creatures, as if they were his enemy.
Eventually they came within sight of a tumbledown farmhouse and outbuildings—a shell of a house nestled in the pretty valley. Jessie was about to comment on it when she noticed the set of his mouth.
More than that, it was the pain in his eyes that struck her. Her chest tightened.
This was the place he was bringing her to.
Peering at the remaining stones, she could see that the house had been uninhabited for many years. The door frame was charred as if by fire, and the roof was stripped bare. The patch of land that had once been a garden was barren.
“What is this place?”
He continued to stare over at the sparse wreckage for several long moments before he replied. “Strathbahn. My home.”
She looked at it again, then back at him. This was going to be difficult. His reluctance to speak had grown along the way. Now misery and fury marked his expression in equal measures. Jessie was beginning to feel the true depth of his need for revenge.
The horses wandered the last few feet, and when Gregor dismounted, she followed. He did not even stop to secure the animals, and she hurriedly gath
ered their reins and tethered them to a post at the boundary wall of the old farmhouse.
It was as if the place called to him now, and he walked as if drawn by a rope. She hurried after him. By the time she caught up, he had ducked his head and gone through the doorway.
Inside, the place was just as desolate and uncared for, with weeds growing through the walls and dried bracken in the corners where it had been blow in windy weather. Two remaining beams overhead showed signs of fire, the charred logs stretched precariously across the open space. Gregor stood staring fixedly at the hearth, or what remained of it.
Jessie picked her way carefully across the rubble. “You lived here with your mother?”
He shook his head. “The cough took her from us when I was four years of age. Agatha was her name. My father used to take me to visit her grave every Sunday after the service. Aside from that I scarcely remember her. However,” he added bitterly, “I’m glad that she did not survive to witness what happened to us.”
The bitterness he felt seemed to give him some strength. He forced his head up and she noticed he glared at the charred beams with hatred. His handsome mouth was tightly shut, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the place. Had his enemy done this? Had Ivor Wallace burned down their home?
“It was my father who brought me up.”
Jessie could feel the depth of his emotion, the pain and sorrow that swelled within him, filling the broken-down house with bad feeling. “Your father?”
“Yes. Hugh Ramsay was his name. He was a good man, and he brought me up well, teaching me everything he knew. But sometimes good people are vulnerable, because they are kind and try to help others.”
Jessie could scarcely breathe. His words and the tense set of his shoulders boded badly, and she feared she had done the wrong thing, forcing him to explain.
“This land had been owned and worked by our line for three generations. Every day he told me that he worked it so that I could be proud of it, as he was. Then, one day, he stopped saying that.”
“I was eighteen or so when I realized that he was worried.” Gregor continued to speak, but it took effort and he spoke slowly. “The best of our cattle died, you see. He did not tell me until much later that they had been poisoned.”
Gregor paused. Jessie realized how hard that must have been.
“I worked the land with him, but he kept secret how badly he was suffering. At first he was forced to sell Wallace part of the far fields. That’s what he really wanted, the land. Wallace’s goal was to own the whole area, and he would turn people out of their homes if he had to. Bad deeds were done at his hands.”
Gregor had wandered closer to the hearth and put his hand on the stone mantel above it. “His methods to obtain the land of others were underhanded. He destroyed crops and stole cattle. Then Wallace would come in like a benevolent neighbor and offer coin where it was needed. We were not the first, but with my father he was particularly cruel, for they had been friends once.”
“When he forced Da to sign over the remaining land and our home, he told him that he had arranged the whole pitiful downfall. Laughed in his face, he did.”
Jessie ached for Gregor. She went to reach out to him, but it was as if she was not there. His reflections had taken him back to that time, far away from her.
“My father could not live with the shame. Nor could he face me. He’d lost all we had to Wallace. I came home from Craigduff that night and it was all over. He left me a letter, explaining what had happened, and he left me an apology for letting Wallace ruin our lot.” Gregor lifted his hand, pointing to a burned beam overhead. “I found him here.” His voice had dropped, scarcely above a whisper. “He’d hanged himself.”
“Oh, Gregor, no.” Jessie reeled with shock.
It was as if a veil had been lifted, and now she could understand him—and understand him she did. This was what had driven him to make enough of a fortune to come back here and seek his revenge. As a bairn she had not been able to be strong for her mother, and she could see that Gregor carried a similar burden, only his was much greater. She’d been a helpless child when her mother was put to death. He’d been older and perhaps could have helped, had he known. She stared at the charred beam, imagining how he might have felt, seeing his beloved father hanging there.