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“I don’t travel much for work.” Seemed a pathetic excuse, all things considered.
Harlow grinned. “Get a new job.”
I laughed a little too loudly at her ready solution. She might as well have suggested I fly without the valium. Not going to happen.
Following Lewis’s instruction not to drag our feet, I hurried back outside, but the grounds caught my attention. Ivy covered a low garden wall that protected sweet little flowers in purples, reds, and oranges. I could have spent my whole vacation in the lodge’s yard, breathing in the scent of wildflowers. All I needed was a blanket and a book, and I’d be set.
When I joined the others by the bus, Duncan lifted one teasing eyebrow at me. “Really? That little garden is worth chronicling?”
I swatted his arm. “It’s picturesque.”
“Half of it’s weeds.”
“Hush.”
We climbed into the most Scottish mini-bus in all of the U.K., and Lewis navigated the short drive through Inverness to Culloden.
“Have you been to the battlefield before?” I asked Duncan, who had slid into the seat next to me again.
“Yes, but not since I was a boy.”
I tried to picture him as a child but couldn’t do it. Not when confronted by his bushy beard and wide shoulders. “Don’t you mean lad?”
“Oh, aye, I was a wee sprite of a lad the last time I was here, my kilt barely scraped the ground.” He laid his accent on thick, and I laughed at the change.
The travel book I’d skimmed included a lengthy sidebar about the battle at Culloden. In the 1700s, it had been the last battle in the struggle to retake the crown from King George, and a decisive defeat for the Highlanders.
If I were being honest, I didn’t look forward to this leg of the tour. Loch Ness would be fascinating for its legendary beauty, but a battlefield where hundreds of soldiers had died would hardly be the pick-me-up I’d hoped to get from the trip.
Even if Jill had asked me to take a dozen pictures forOutlander-related reasons.
At the battlefield, we joined a guided tour of the grounds. We strolled the paths that snaked through open fields while our young guide explained some of the political history of Scotland and England before ending with the crushing defeat at Culloden. As expected, it made for an immensely depressing story.
She led us to a giant memorial cairn, but smaller stones with clan names carved into them dotted the field. The guide explained that they marked where the men of those names had fallen in battle. All told, some twelve hundred men had died in less than an hour that day so long ago. Here in the field where they’d been cut down, unexpected sorrow washed over me, and tears pricked behind my eyes.
“After their victory, the government determined to destroy the Highland way of life.” The guide’s voice sounded thick with emotion as though she might cry, too, even though she must give the same speech several times a day. “They sent their armies across Scotland punishing anyone suspected of sympathizing with the uprising. The clan system was dismantled, their lands and weapons seized, and kilts and tartans were banned.”
A mournful hush fell over the group. Eventually, we split up and walked through the battlefield at our own pace, my party lost among other tourists. I stared at a clan marker and feigned reverent contemplation when really, I was just willing myself not to break down into a puddle of tears.
I had no ties to Scotland that I knew of, no long-lost family members who’d been killed here, but standing in the middle of Culloden, the sad history reached through the mists of hundreds of years to take hold. I didn’t know the right or wrong of it, but the thought of so many lives lost so brutally weighed on me.
Duncan came up beside me to read the marker name but stopped when I didn’t move along to the next.
“Do you have family with this clan name?” he asked.
I’d been pretending to contemplate the marker for so long, it would have made sense if I had. I shook my head, brushing ridiculous tears from my cheeks.
He examined me and moved a step closer. “Are you all right?”
Ugh, that gentleness in his voice. Did I look so torn up as that?
“I’m just—” I gestured at the battlefield surrounding us, ending with the marker.Donald. “It’s a terrible story.”
“It was terrible. The battle, and how the people and their way of life suffered under forced acclimation. It’s a dark time in our history.”
I tried to laugh at my weepiness, but it came out a strangled sob. “I don’t know why it’s affecting me like this. I guess Scotland’s getting to me.”
He watched me with a tenderness that made my embarrassment evaporate. Wasn’t that why he had come here? To commune with history? He briefly placed a hand on my arm, offering comfort.
