Legacy Read Free Page A

Traquair’s repair bills were probably stupendous.
    It was obvious that the house had been well maintained. Stucco covered the original stone and mortar, but the dozens of rectangular, small-paned windows looked like the real thing. The grounds were exquisite with acres of manicured green lawns reaching past the gates to a forest of pine and black oak. A maze with shrubbery over twelve feet high grew in the back garden, and everywhere I looked squirrels and cotton-tailed rabbits stared at me from a healthy margin of safety.
    Traquair House had been home to the Maxwells since the beginning of Scottish history. Once again I marveled at how I could have bypassed such a wonderful relic from the past. A simple diversion of ten miles on the way to Edinburgh would have brought me directly to the front gates.
    My nose felt numb. Grateful for my wool pants and lined jacket, I slipped my hands into my pockets and increased my pace. Scotland was always cold. While the rest of the world celebrated the advent of summer, the first green shoots of spring were barely visible in glens north of the Firth of Forth. Even here in the borders where the temperature was ten degrees warmer, winds blew with the promise of snow and ice-covered lochs showed no inclination to thaw.
    With my shoulders hunched and my head buried in the collar of my jacket, I would have walked right past the gates if Ian Douglas’s voice hadn’t stopped me.
    Years later, I would recall the timing of that moment with pristine clarity. I would remember the crisp air and the leaden late-afternoon sky. I would smell the clean scent of pine, taste snow on the wind, and see stalks of gorse, golden and russet, growing wild beyond the tilled fields of Traquair. I would speculate on the odds of our meeting at all. What would have happened to the two of us if I’d explored the garden maze or the brewhouse instead of the gates? What if I’d taken a wrong turn or walked in the opposite direction?
    I always shudder with grateful relief that none of those things happened. One small moment in time had determined my destiny. Or had it? Was it really such a coincidence or had fate woven its tapestry, capturing Ian and me with silken fingers, forever entwining our lives in the mystery of the stone?
    “Hello, there.” Firm hands gripped my shoulders. “At that pace you’ll miss the gates altogether.”
    I blinked and then stared. Could this apparition possibly be real? He came from nowhere, a man legends are made of. He was dark from the sun, with dramatic bone structure, a high-bridged curving nose and piercing blue eyes. Thick, sun-streaked hair fell across his forehead. The look on his face was flattering. I’m not the kind of woman men follow with their eyes, or anything else for that matter. I’m attractive enough, I suppose, slim and tall with a talent for wearing whatever is currently in style. I’ve got thick hair and good bones and teeth, a blend, someone once said, between wholesome and elegant. But I’d been told more than once there’s a reserve about me, an old-world standoffishness, that puts men off. It had certainly put one off, even after fifteen years of marriage. I swallowed the lump in my throat that thinking of Stephen never failed to bring up.
    “That is what you came to see, isn’t it, the Bear Gates?” He smiled and dropped his hands to his sides. Tiny lines around his eyes and mouth deepened.
    I swallowed. “Yes, it is. I mean, they are.” I laughed, flustered by an unfamiliar awkwardness. He laughed with me, amused by my obvious embarrassment. He was older than I first thought, somewhere in his mid-thirties, a man with a sense of humor, a man comfortable with himself and with women.
    “I can’t place your accent,” he said. “You’re not English?”
    “American.”
    He looked thoughtfully at me. “You don’t sound like an American.”
    “I’m from Boston. We speak a different sort of English in eastern Massachusetts.”
    “Perhaps that