"Sorry," he mumbled.
One would think, at least one from England would think, that the hills and dales would be a rich emerald green. Scotland resides, after all, on the same isle, and by all accounts suffers from the same rain that plagues England.
I am told that these strange beige hills are called tablelands, and they are bleak and brown and desolate. And yet they stir the soul.
"That was when I was rather high up in elevation," he explained. "When you"re lower, or near the lochs, it"s quite different."
Penelope turned to him and gave him a look.
"Sorry," he mumbled.
"Maybe you"d be more comfortable if you didn"t read over my shoulder?" she suggested.
He blinked in surprise.
"I would think you"ve already read all this before." At his blank stare, she added, "So you don"t need to read it now." She waited for a reaction and got none. "So you don"t need to hover over my shoulder," she finally finished.
"Oh." He inched away. "Sorry."
Penelope eyed him dubiously. "Off the bed, Colin."
Looking much chastened, Colin pushed himself off the bed and flopped into a chair in the far corner of the room, crossing his arms and tapping his foot in a mad dance of impatience.
Tap tap tap. Tappity tap tap tap.
"Colin!"
He looked up in honest surprise. "What?"
"Stop tapping your foot!"
He looked down as if his foot were a foreign object. "Was I tapping it?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He pulled his arms in more tightly against his chest. "Sorry."
Penelope refocused her attention on the journal.
Tap tap.
Penelope jerked head up. "Colin!"
He planted his feet down firmly on the carpet. "I couldn"t help myself. Didn"t even realize I was doing it." He uncrossed his arms, resting them on the upholstered side of the chair, but he didn"t look relaxed; the fingers on both of his hands were tense and arched.
She stared at him for several moments, waiting to see if he was truly going to be able to hold still.
"I won"t do it again," he a.s.sured her. "I promise." She gave him one last a.s.sessing stare, then turned her attention back to the words in front of her.
As a people, the Scots despise the English, and many would say rightfully so. But individually, they are quite warm and friendly, eager to share a gla.s.s of whisky, a hot meal, or to offer a warm place to sleep. A group of Englishmen-or, in truth, any Englishman in any sort of uniform-will not find a warm welcome in a Scottish village. But should a lone Sa.s.senach amble down their High Street-the local population will greet him with open arms and broad smiles.
Such was the case when I happened upon Inveraray, upon the banks of Loch Fyne. A neat, well-planned town that was designed by Robert Adam when the Duke of Argyll decided to move the entire village to accommodate his new castle, it sits on the edge of water, its whitewashed buildings in neat rows that meet at right angles (surely a strangely ordered existence for one such as I, brought up amid the crooked intersections of London).
I was partaking of my evening meal at the George Hotel, enjoying a fine whisky instead of the usual ale one might drink at a similar establishment in England, when I realized that I had no idea how to get to my next destination, nor any clue how long it would take to get there. I approached the proprietor (one Mr. Clark), explained my intention to visit Blair Castle, and then could do nothing but blink in wonder and confusion as the rest of the inn"s occupants chimed in with advice. "Blair Castle?" Mr. Clark boomed. (He was a booming sort of man, not given to soft speech.) "Well, now, if ye"re wanting to go to Blair Castle, ye"II certainly be wanting to head west toward Pitlochry and then north from there."
This was met by a chorus of approval-and an equally loud echo of disapproval.
"Och, no!" yelled another (whose name I later learned was MacBogel). "He"II be having to cross Loch Toy, and a greater recipe for disaster has never been tasted. Better to head north now, and then move west."
"Aye," chimed in a third, "but then he"ll be having Ben Nevis in his way. Are you saying a mountain is a lesser obstacle than a puny loch? "
"Are you calling Loch Toy puny? I"ll be telling you I was born on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Toy, and no one will be calling it puny in my presence." (I have no idea who said this, or indeed, almost everything forthwith, but it was all said with great feeling and conviction.) "He doesn"t need to go all the way to Ben Nevis. He can turn west at Glencoe."
"Oh, ho, ho, and a bottle of whisky. There isn"t a decent road heading west from Glencoe. Are you trying to kill the poor lad? "
And so on and so forth. If the reader has noticed that I stopped writing who said what, it is because the din of voices was so overwhelming that it was impossible to tell anyone apart, and this continued for at least ten minutes until finally, old Angus Campbell, eighty years if he was a day, spoke, and out of respect, everyone quieted down.
"What he needs to do," Angus wheezed, "is travel south to Kintyre, turn back north and cross the Firth of Lome to Mull so that he can scoot out to Iona, sail up to Skye, cross over to the mainland to Ullapool, back down to Inverness, pay his respects at Culloden, and from there, he can proceed south to Blair Castle, stopping in Grampian if he chooses so he can see how a proper bottle of whisky is made."
Absolute silence met this p.r.o.nouncement. Finally, one brave man pointed out, "But that"ll take months."
"And who"s saying it won"t?" old Campbell said, with the barest trace of belligerence. "The Sa.s.senach is here to see Scotland. Are you telling me he can say he"s done that if all he"s done is taken a straight line from here to Perthshire? "
I found myself smiling, and made my decision on the spot. I would follow his exact route, and when I returned to London, I would know in my heart that I knew Scotland.
Colin watched Penelope as she read. Every now and then she would smile, and his heart would leap, and then suddenly he realized that her smile had become permanent, and her lips were puckering as if she were suppressing a laugh.
Colin realized he was smiling, too.
He"d been so surprised by her reaction the first time she"d read his writing; her response had been so pa.s.sionate, and yet she"d been so a.n.a.lytical and precise when she spoke to him about it. It all made sense now, of course. She was a writer, too, probably a better one than he, and of all the things she understood in this world, she understood words.
It was hard to believe it had taken him this long to ask for her advice. Fear, he supposed, had stopped him. Fear and worry and all those stupid emotions he"d pretended were beneath him.
Who would have guessed that one woman"s opinion would become so important to him? He"d worked on his journals for years, carefully recording his travels, trying to capture more than what he saw and did, trying to capture what he felt. And he"d never once showed them to anyone.
Until now.
There had been no one he"d wanted to show them to. No, that wasn"t true. Deep down, he"d wanted to show them to a number of people, but the time had never seemed right, or he thought they would lie and say something was good when it wasn"t, just to spare his feelings.
But Penelope was different. She was a writer. She was a d.a.m.ned good one, too. And if she said his journal entries were good, he could almost believe that it was true.
She pursed her lips slightly as she turned a page, then frowned as her fingers couldn"t find purchase. After licking her middle finger, she caught hold of the errant page and began to read again.
And smiled again.
Colin let out a breath he didn"t realize he"d been holding.
Finally, she laid the book down in her lap, leaving it open to the section she"d been reading. Looking up, she said, "I a.s.sume you wanted me to stop at the end of the entry?"
It wasn"t quite what he"d expected her to say, and that befuddled him. "Er, if you want to," he stammered. "If you want to read more, that would be fine, I guess."
It was as if the sun had suddenly taken up residence in her smile. "Of course I want to read more," she gushed. "I can"t wait to see what happened when you went to Kintyre and Mull and"-frowning, she checked the open book-"and Skye and Ullapool and Culloden and Grampian"-she glanced back down at the book again-"oh, yes, and Blair Castle, of course, if you ever made it. I a.s.sume you were planning to visit friends."
He nodded. "Murray," he said, referring to a school chum whose brother was the Duke of Atholl. "But I should tell you, I didn"t end up following the exact route prescribed by old Angus Campbell. For one thing, I didn"t even find roads connecting half the places he mentioned."
"Maybe," she said, her eyes growing dreamy, "that is where we ought to go for our honeymoon trip."
"Scotland?" he asked, thoroughly surprised. "Don"t you want to travel someplace warm and exotic?"
"To one who has never traveled more than one hundred miles from London," she said pertly, "Scotland is exotic."
"I can a.s.sure you," he said with a smile as he walked across the room and perched on the edge of the bed, "that Italy is more exotic. And more romantic."
She blushed, which delighted him. "Oh," she said, looking vaguely embarra.s.sed. (He wondered how long he"d be able to embarra.s.s her with talk of romance and love and all the splendid activities that went with them.) "We"ll go to Scotland another time," he a.s.sured her. "I usually find myself heading north every few years or so to visit Francesca, anyway."
"I was surprised that you asked for my opinion," Penelope said after a short silence.
"Who else would I ask?"
"I don"t know," she replied, suddenly very interested in the way her fingers were plucking at the bedcovers. "Your brothers, I suppose."
He laid his hand on hers. "What do they know about writing?"
Her chin lifted and her eyes, clear, warm, and brown, met his. "I know you value their opinions."
"That is true," he acceded, "but I value yours more."
He watched her face closely, as emotions played across her features. "But you don"t like my writing," she said, her voice hesitant and hopeful at the same time.
He moved his hand to the curve of her cheek, holding it there gently, making sure that she was looking at him as he spoke. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, a burning intensity firing his words. "I think you are a marvelous writer.
You cut right into the essence of a person with a simplicity and wit that is matchless. For ten years, you have made people laugh. You"ve made them wince. You"ve made them think, Penelope. You have made people think. I don"t know what could be a higher achievement.
"Not to mention," he continued, almost as if he couldn"t quite stop now that he"d gotten started, "that you write about society, of all things. You write about society, and you make it fun and interesting and witty, when we all know that more often than not it"s beyond dull."
For the longest time, Penelope couldn"t say anything. She had been proud of her work for years, and had secretly smiled whenever she had heard someone reciting from one of her columns or laughing at one of her quips. But she"d had no one with whom to share her triumphs.
Being anonymous had been a lonely prospect.
But now she had Colin. And even though the world would never know that Lady Whistledown was actually plain, overlooked, spinster-until-the-last-possible-moment Penelope Featherington, Colin knew. And Penelope was coming to realize that even if that wasn"t all that mattered, it was what mattered most.
But she still didn"t understand his actions.
"Why, then," she asked him, her words slow and carefully measured, "do you grow so distant and cold every time I bring it up?"
When he spoke, his words were close to a mumble. "It"s difficult to explain."
"I"m a good listener," she said softly.
His hand, which had been cradling her face so lovingly, dropped to his lap. And he said the one thing she never would have expected.
"I"m jealous." He shrugged helplessly. "I"m so sorry."
"I don"t know what you mean," she said, not intending to whisper, but lacking the voice to do anything else.
"Look at yourself, Penelope." He took both of her hands in his and twisted so that they were facing one another. "You"re a huge success."
"An anonymous success," she reminded him.
"But you know, and I know, and besides, that"s not what I"m talking about." He let go of one of her hands, raking his fingers through his hair as he searched for words. "You have done something. You have a body of work."
"But you have-"
"What do I have, Penelope?" he interrupted, his voice growing agitated as he rose to his feet and began to pace. "What do I have?"
"Well, you have me," she said, but her words lacked force. She knew that wasn"t what he meant.
He looked at her wearily. "I"m not talking about that, Penelope-"
"I know."
"-I need something I can point to," he said, right on top of her soft sentence. "I need a purpose. Anthony has one, and Benedict has one, but I"m at odds and ends."
"Colin, you"re not. You"re-"
"I"m tired of being thought of as nothing but an-" He stopped short.
"What, Colin?" she asked, a bit startled by the disgusted expression that suddenly crossed his face.
"Christ above," he swore, his voice low, the S hissing from his lips.
Her eyes widened. Colin was not one for frequent profanity.
"I can"t believe it," he muttered, his head moving jerkily to the left, almost as if he was flinching.
"I complained to you," he said incredulously. "I complained to you about Lady Whistledown."
She grimaced. "A lot of people have done that, Colin. I"m used to it."
"I can"t believe it. I complained to you about how Lady Whistledown called me charming."
"She called me an overripe citrus fruit," Penelope said, attempting levity.
He stopped his pacing for just long enough to shoot her an annoyed look. "Were you laughing at me the whole time I was moaning about how the only way I would be remembered by future generations was in Whistledown columns?"
"No!" she exclaimed. "I would hope you know me better than that."
He shook his head in a disbelieving manner. "I can"t believe I sat there, complaining to you that I had no accomplishments, when you had all of Whistledown."