Once Upon a Star Read online

  “Are we going home now?” Jamie whispered.

  There was a sound like the rushing of wind, and then the room went eerily silent.

  While the others looked on without comprehension, Rob helped Estelle to her feet, then drew her into his arms, where she wept uncontrollably.

  Epilogue

  THE HOUSE WAS strangely silent. For a while the grounds of Castle Clough had been turned into a media circus as news photographers vied for glimpses of the notorious Griffin Mackenzie being led away. The authorities had conducted endless hours of interviews. A score of security officials from the government had already taken the Star of Scotland to a safe place, until the government could work out with Lord Cameron the details of its future. Though all agreed that the priceless treasure was the property of the Cameron clan, Rob had generously suggested that it was too important to be locked away in a vault. In time it would be put on view, presumably in a public building, for the whole world to admire.

  Even now Rob and his lawyers were in the library meeting with representatives of both the government and the bank, and historians from several museums, reviewing the legalities involved.

  Estelle folded the ivory wool dress and set it in her suitcase. She thought of the night she had worn it, then turned toward the window, deep in thought. Who would have ever believed that a few short weeks in Scotland would change her life so dramatically? She had lost her heart and for a while thought she was losing her mind. She would never see life in quite the same narrow way again.

  Upon hearing the knock on the door she looked up.

  Fergus entered, carrying an armload of logs. Without a word he bent and tended the fire, then stood, wiping his hands on his pants.

  “Thank you, Fergus.” She managed a smile. “I’ll be finished packing soon. I’m expecting a car and driver within the hour. Could you come back shortly and carry my luggage downstairs?”

  He nodded, then walked out of the room.

  A few minutes later Estelle heard a knock at the door and hurried over. Sir Charles was seated in his wheelchair, with Fergus behind him.

  “May I come in, my dear?”

  “Of course, Sir Charles.” She held the door while Fergus pushed him across the threshold.

  Once inside, he waved the lad away.

  “So.” He glanced at her luggage. “It’s as Fergus told me. You’re leaving.”

  She nodded, no longer curious as to how the lad communicated. Perhaps he spoke. Maybe he used sign language. It wouldn’t surprise her if he simply transferred his thoughts to others. Here in this fanciful place, anything was possible. “My work here is over, Sir Charles.”

  “Is it?” He pushed on the wheels of his chair, propelling himself around the room. “What about Rob?” He turned his head to study her carefully. “Do you love him?”

  She swallowed. “Yes, but…”

  “Do you think he loves you?”

  “I think…” She chose her words carefully. “I think, now that his debt has been cleared, he will want some time to himself. Time to think about the future. As for me, it’s time I got back to New York. To reality.” A reality that didn’t include life in a castle with a wealthy, handsome Highland lord. That was for novels. It didn’t happen in real life. Like everyone and everything else in this place, she had simply fallen under a spell.

  “Ah, yes. New York. I’m sure one must be strong and…firmly grounded to survive there.”

  “Exactly. After a lifetime there, I know a little about survival.”

  He smiled then and halted his chair in front of her dresser. For long moments he stared at the framed picture of a young Estelle with a beautiful, auburn-haired woman. His smile faded, and he plucked the photo from her dresser.

  She saw him trace his finger over the woman in the picture. “What are you doing, Sir Charles?”

  “Remembering.” He looked up. “I should have known. You look like her, you know.”

  “My aunt?”

  “Aye. Rose. I wasn’t certain, of course. You’d never told me her name. But the moment I saw you, I thought it was a possibility.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I told you I was in love once, and for that one brief summer, I was deliriously happy. But events happened that changed the course of both our lives forever. Her sister and brother-in-law died, and there was a child to raise. And my own family was in need of me.”

  Estelle’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Finally she managed to whisper, “You and Aunt Rose?”

  “Aye, lass. Did she never speak of it?”

  Estelle shook her head. “She said only that she had loved once, and it was enough to sustain her for a lifetime. I always thought it too painful for her to talk about. But I never dreamed…”

  “It was the same for me. It’s the curse of Castle Clough, my dear. Cameron men love too deeply. They give their hearts but once. And that one woman is loved with a depth of passion that is all-consuming. So you see, when you wondered aloud if your aunt had a hand in getting you here, you now have the answer. You were meant to be here. With Rob.” He pressed the photo to his heart. “And I was meant to learn the truth. My beloved Rose never married another. She went to her grave loving only me. Which means that if we couldn’t be together in this life, we will surely be together in the next.” He looked up at Estelle. “Do you know what love, true love, really means?”

  “I think I do.”

  “If you do, you must know that Rob is under the same curse. If you go, you’ll condemn him to a life of loneliness. Is that what you want?”

  “I want…I want to do what’s right. I want to give Rob a chance to enjoy this new freedom. I want…” She was too overcome to speak. All she could do was shake her head. Suddenly chilled to the bone, she went to the fireplace and stood staring into the flames.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there. But when she turned, Sir Charles was gone. And Rob was standing behind her.

  “Estelle.” He saw the pain and confusion in her eyes and clenched a fist at his side. “I wanted to come to you sooner.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “So many demands on my time. So many interruptions. But all I really wanted was to be here with you. I can see that you’ve been deeply disturbed by all that has happened. For that I’m truly sorry.”

  She turned back to stare at the flames. “It really happened, didn’t it, Rob? Even though the others swore they didn’t see or hear any of it, we didn’t just dream it, did we?”

  “It truly happened. Jamie’s gone, love. Our little scamp has finally gone home. And though I’m happy for him, I’ll miss him.”

  When she started to weep silently, he drew her close. Against her hair he whispered, “Maybe we’ll be blessed with a little scamp of our own. That is, if you’d be willing to uproot yourself and make your life with a country farmer in this lonely, out-of-the-way village in the middle of the Highlands.”

  “How can you…” She tried to laugh, but it came out in a sob. “…be so sure? After all we’ve been through?”

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. And though the time isn’t right, and the setting isn’t romantic, I’m humbly asking you to marry me.”

  “Oh, Rob.” She offered her lips, and he kissed her with such tenderness, she felt her heart nearly break. “I don’t need sweet words or romantic settings. What you’ve just described sounds like pure heaven. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend the rest of my life here in this magical, wonderful place with you.”

  “Estelle. My little star. I love you desperately.” He pressed slow, deliberate kisses on each of her eyelids, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. “I couldn’t bear to spend even one night without you. If you agree, I’ll have the mayor of Dunfield do the honors tomorrow.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave a little laugh of pure delight. Then she caught his hand. “Come on, Rob. We’ll go and tell your uncle. He’ll be so happy.”

  “In a while, love.”
He lifted a hand to the buttons of her prim, high-necked blouse and slowly unfastened each one before pressing his lips to the hollow of her throat. “But first I just want to love you. The way all the Camerons have loved their women, from the beginning of time.”

  As she lost herself in his kisses, Estelle found herself blessing the one who had put such a tantalizing curse on Castle Clough. Because of it, she would one day die the happiest of women. But not young, she vowed. For that wasn’t a part of the curse at all. The curse was love. Enough love to last a lifetime and beyond. Or at least until they had filled these lonely rooms with enough Camerons to carry on the tradition for generations to come.

  STARRY, STARRY NIGHT

  Marianne Willman

  For my sisters, Jane Clark, Elizabeth Clancy-Brown, and Lowell Montgomery Clark

  For my other sisters—Nora Roberts, Ruth Ryan Langan, Jill Gregory, Karen Katz, and Laura Sparrow

  And for every dreamer who ever hoped and wished upon a star

  1

  Cornwall

  LILY KENDALL WAS lost.

  What had been a pleasant evening walk between the dramatic Cornish cliffs and the dark, foaming waves had become a dangerous venture. She’d strayed too far.

  One moment the evening sky was a Van Gogh painting, all sapphire depths and bright, swirling stars. The next it was a blank gray canvas, as the fog came sweeping in from the bay. The sparkling indigo sea had vanished, and the craggy walls of lichen-covered rock had as well. It had seemed to happen in a literal blink of the eye.

  And in the same time span, she had transformed herself from a sophisticated American traveler into a silly tourist caricature.

  Somewhere behind her, the picturesque village with its narrow houses tiled in colorful slate and steep, cobbled streets was nestled cozily against a sharp upthrust of land. Somewhere ahead—not too far, Lily prayed—lay the gentle slope up from the bay and along the strand to the lovely old hotel where she was staying. Exactly where, was the question. And the way back was strewn with great boulders and slippery, ankle-twisting stones.

  Taking the shortcut along the base of the cliffs had been a miscalculation. A bad one. In fact, she thought distractedly, this whole trip was turning out to be a huge mistake.

  She wished she were back home in her apartment in Washington, D.C., curled up in her fuzzy robe, watching an old movie on video. She would even trade her present adventure in for her familiar workaday world of fluorescent lights and gray filing cabinets, beige computers and worn metal desks.

  But lately she had been feeling just as lost there, as if she were being smothered by layers of rules and protocol. The offer of promotion into the ranks of upper management had thrown her into a panic.

  “My advice to you, Miss Kendall,” her supervisor had told her, “is to take all your accumulated vacation days. Rethink your priorities. If you turn down this promotion, then they are certainly not here at the Department of Transportation.”

  This wild Cornish coast was as far removed from Washington’s corridors of power as anything could be. The heavy mist clung to Lily, slid over her skin like a cool caress as she worked her way across the slippery strand. The breeze teased wisps out of her long blond braid as she struggled to get her bearings—a task that was increasingly impossible in the distorting layers of thickening fog.

  Her supervisor’s words had shaken her. She’d envisioned herself years from now, her identity gone, fossilized in the artificial world of work and career. How had she gotten so far from the dreams she’d woven for herself in college?

  The decision of where to go to do this rethinking of priorities hadn’t been difficult. Caribbean beaches seemed to be made for honeymooning couples, and the idea of joining a tour group lacked appeal. Her mother’s ancestors had come from Cornwall. With its fantastic nineteenth-century bridge spanning the Tamar, its legends of Ygraine, King Arthur, and Merlin, that westernmost tip of Great Britain had always called to her—and how could she resist exploring a place with quaint names like Lostwithiel, Rump’s Point, Land’s End, and Mousehole?

  She now stood on a shingle beach in a foreign country, lost, with an impenetrable mist rising like ancient wraiths around her.

  Lily forced herself to listen. She could hear the sound of the waves rolling in to her right, could sense the massive bulk of the granite headland to her left, from the echoes bouncing back. A strange yearning filled her, a deep and terrible loneliness, as if she were the last person on the face of the earth. Wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, she headed in the direction that she thought led to the granite base of the cliffs.

  The fog thickened and took on the texture and density of a damp wool sock. She was cold, cocooned in a narrow, alien world that was devoid of shape and color. The sound of her footsteps on the shingle beach was muffled, swallowed up by the thickening atmosphere. The sound of the wind was like a chorus of whispers, filled with a desperate, infinite longing. A shiver danced up her back.

  Lily knew she had no business taking unknown routes in an unfamiliar landscape. She was a city girl, born and bred to concrete, asphalt, and taxis, to museums and theaters and high-rise apartments, and Chinese takeout on the corner. But hadn’t that been part of the reason she’d come here to Cornwall, because it was far removed from her workaday life and totally different?

  “Picturesque, and very restful,” the travel agent had told her. “Calm.”

  A slimy tendril of seaweed snaked around Lily’s bare ankle, and she yelped in alarm. “Calm, my ass!”

  She kicked the attacking weed away. No need to panic. She was an intelligent and resourceful adult—and, she tried to tell herself, she was having an adventure. “I’ll laugh at myself in the morning!”

  The sound of her own voice was so comforting that Lily almost convinced herself. Then another cold wave crashed against the shore, stronger than the last. It came hissing through the shingle as if it were alive, tugging at her ankles, urging her to follow it home to the sea.

  Her canvas summer shoes filled with water, and before she could take them off to shake it out, another wave came swirling in. The sand sucked at her feet, and the cold water stung her bare legs. The lower half of her expensive embroidered linen dress was soaked and dripping. This wasn’t the pleasant bay she’d seen in the brochures. Not by a long shot.

  Squelching along in her sodden shoes, Lily moved up the beach toward the relative safety of the bluffs. Anything to get away from the increasing roar of the waves, the reach of the hungry sea.

  All she had to do now was find the base of the cliffs and follow the headland around to the other side—without breaking a leg, getting caught by the tide, or succumbing to hypothermia.

  Her right foot skittered on something slimy, and she recoiled. God only knew what disgusting things the waves might have cast up! Another wave slammed up the steep shore, and she lost her footing. The swirling, foaming water undercut the rocks beneath her feet.

  One moment she was fighting to keep her balance, the next she was caught in a cold, salty wall of water, being sucked out toward the blackness of the bay.

  Gut-wrenching fear gripped Rees Tregarrick as he braved the strong wind. No one from the village was fool enough to stray past Yearning Head by night. But there was a woman down at the base of the cliffs, picking her way through rocks as if she were out on a Sunday shell-gathering expedition.

  He knew, beyond a doubt, that it was the woman who haunted his dreams. Whether ghost or reality, he had to know. If she was real, her danger was acute.

  Atop the headland, the sky was unusually clear and filled with the largest, most scintillating stars he’d ever seen—even at sea. The stars had drawn him out of the house toward the cliff’s very edge. He hadn’t gone there in the three years of his recuperation. Of his self-imposed sentence and exile. The house was his world. The sea—once his mistress, his lover—formed the bars of his invisible prison, locking him away on land.

  But tonight he’d been drawn to the headland. No, had a
lmost been forced here. While his mind was filled with tortured thoughts of loneliness and death…of Catherine…she had come lightly down the shingle beach, lost and out of her element, like a sea-maiden cast up from the waves onto the shore.

  It was still a long way to the stairs carved into the granite of the headland. His stomach clenched. Would he get there in time, or would she be washed out with the undertow before his very eyes? He didn’t think he could bear to see her white body thrown against the rocks. The urge to flee back to the safety of the house was almost as potent as the urge to save her.

  Rees Tregarrick stumbled and cursed his way through the dark, wondering if he would be in time to rescue her from the cold, dark sea.

  Lily’s skirt snagged on the edge of a rock, and she wedged herself against it with all her might. When the wave retreated, she struggled to her feet again, barely managing to keep her shoes from being washed away.

  Shivering in her light dress, chest heaving with exertion and fear, she scrambled away from the bay. Her situation was desperate, and she prayed to find her way safely back to the resort. Instead of a prayer, a jingle she’d learned in her grade-school days floated into Lily’s mind:

  Little star, do not hide

  Please come out and be my guide.

  Through rain and snow and darkest night,

  Guide me with your shining light.

  Lily lifted her eyes…and there it was!

  It was incredible, the largest star she’d ever seen. And the only one visible through the shifting layers of fog overhead. Instinct urged her to follow it, and she obeyed. With every step the light led her farther away from the restless murmur of the sea.