Page 56 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“Aye,” he agreed with a shrug.
Bernadette looked again at the crates, more than twenty in all, trying to understand what would compel men to risk so much. It was so dangerous! “Have you no care for your person?” she asked sincerely.
“I think you’ve guessed the answer by now.”
“But this—”
“This is how we’ve kept our clan,” he said. “It has been necessary.”
“Necessary to go against the law?”
He shook his head. “You donna understand, Bernadette. When Scotland and England were unified, the crown used that opportunity to assess taxes on goods we’d long purchased at a fair price. Taxes so high that our people couldna afford life’s necessities. Candles, wine, tea, tobacco,” he said, gesturing with his hand to indicate a rather long list. “My father found a way to afford it for them. My brothers and I have carried on with it.”
“Bysmuggling?” Bernadette said softly, suddenly alarmed that someone might overhear her.
“We prefer to call it free trading.”
Her blood began to race. She wanted out of this small cave, away from the evidence of his crime. “What if you are caught?”
“What if I am?” he said with a shrug. “What have I to lose?”
She suddenly lurched for the door, now desperate to be away from the smuggled goods. She brushed past him and stumbled into sunlight, breathing in fresh air.
She heard him behind her, heard him replace the bush that hid the entrance to the cave. And then he was before her, peering at her with concern. “Are you ill?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “A bit shocked.”
He clucked his tongue at her. “You’ve no right to judge us, lass. You’ve no’ lived the life we have, aye? You’ve no’ watched entire hamlets disappear. You’ve no’ watched the people of your clan pack their belongings and leave the Highlands because of fear or hunger. You’ve lived a life of leisure,” he said, his voice tinged with disdain.
“You’ve no idea what sort of life I’ve led.”
“I’ve an idea of it—my mother is English, aye?”
“And therefore, you know all there is to know of me. If you know all, then you must know that I’ve not lived a life of leisure. Far from it.” She began to walk down the hill to return to the path.
Mackenzie followed her, and as they reached the path, he took hold of her hand. Bernadette did not try and remove it, because she liked how he held it, his fingers clasped firmly around hers. “What are you doing?”
“This way,” he said, and turned away from the house, headed toward the loch.
“Where are we going?” She felt uneasy, her thoughts warring with her heart over all the things she ought to do in this moment and all the things she wanted to do. “I should return to Killeaven. I’ve been gone too long. I’ve seen too much.”
“There is one more thing I’d have you see,” he said, and hooked her hand into the crook of his arm to pull her closer. Again, Bernadette did not resist him. She liked the feel of him beside her.
He led her along the edge of the loch, down a well-worn path that rose up from the water’s edge and climbed a small hill. At the top of the hill was a lone oak. It looked almost abandoned there, as if a forest had once stood around it and had deserted it. Mackenzie paused and looked up at the tree.
So did Bernadette. She knew, without a word passing between them, what it was about this tree that drew him. Strangely enough, she could almost feel the sorrow here, could almost picture a man hanging by his neck from the limb that stretched away from the other tree limbs toward the sea. She could well imagine how shockingly disheartening it must have been for the Highlanders to see the man hanging here, to understand what had become of those who had joined the rebellion against the king.
Mackenzie’s expression was blank.
“Why do you come?” she asked.
“To remember. To no’ forget.”
“But it’s...heartbreaking.”
“Aye. Sorrow has become a way of life.”
She could see the sorrow in his eyes, the lines of it in his face. Bernadette had lived with debilitating sorrow for a very long time. “It doesn’t have to be so,” she said quietly.
