"Your grandfather was a practical man!" Peregrine said with a chuckle, when the toast had been duly solemnized.
"He certainly knew what was really worth having out of life," McLeod replied, and cocked an eye at the young artist. "How about it, laddie? Have you any pearls of wisdom you'd like to contribute on this festive occasion?"
"I might," Peregrine said. He thought a moment, then recited:
Once again the three friends lifted glasses to their lips. "I think this makes it your turn, Adam," Peregrine said, as he set down his glass.
"Very well," Adam said. "Since I'm off to the West, I have in mind a Gaelic blessing. Somehow it seems appropriate:
Breaking off, he smiled at his companions. "It's going to be up to you to keep the peace while I'm away. But I know you're equal to the task. Slainte var!"
"Slainte var!" the two of them repeated, as they drank the ancient toast.
It was still dark the following morning when Adam set out for the airport, driven by his faithful valet-butler, Humphrey. An overnight drop in the temperature, with the attendant promise of ice on the roads, made the steel-blue Range Rover, with its four-wheel drive, the only choice of vehicle. As they nosed out of the stable mews, high-performance tires crunching on a white carpet of frost, the windscreen wipers only barely kept at bay a moist ground-fog that was verging on a drizzle. Looking back over his shoulder as they crawled down the drive, Adam could see the turrets and gables of Strathmourne silhouetted against a crystalline backdrop of morning stars. The windows in the kitchen wing showed a scattering of lights where Mrs. Gilchrist, his cook and housekeeper, was clearing up the remains of a frugal breakfast.
The avenue leading to the gates passed between sentinel ranks of copper beech trees, their branches black and bare against the pre-dawn sky. Off to his left, through the passenger window, Adam glimpsed another cluster of lights marking the location of a stout, stone-built steading held by one of his tenant farmers. A gentle bend in the road brought them abreast of the gate lodge, its darkened windows confirming that Peregrine and Julia, his bride of seven months, were still asleep.
Hunching down contentedly in his topcoat, Adam let his thoughts touch fondly on the couple as Humphrey eased the big car quietly past their front door and swung onto the main road. Peregrine had been still a bachelor when he first accepted Adam's invitation to take up residence in the gate lodge, in exchange for what Adam quaintly termed a "peppercorn rent." The fair Julia had come to share her husband's affection for the little house, and considered Adam to be the most agreeable and charming of landlords, but both Lovats eventually realized that they were going to need more room if they ever intended to have a family.
Toward that end, with Adam's help and encouragement, the pair had recently purchased a decommissioned chapel, but a few miles away, and had happily begun working on plans for its conversion into a residence. That alone might take upwards of a year, sandwiched in between Peregrine's portrait commissions; and Adam guessed that completion of the work might take another year or even two.
Even so, the Lovats would ultimately be moving - not far, but Adam still would be sorry to see them go. Quite apart from the convenience of having another member of the Hunting Lodge so close at hand, Peregrine had taken on aspects of close friend, star-pupil, favorite nephew, the younger brother Adam had never had, and the son he wished one day to father.
The wistful notion of a son of his own, a child of his body as well as his heart and soul, turned his thoughts to the woman he hoped could be persuaded to share his life and bear that child. Thus preoccupied, and still lulled by the early hour, he failed to notice a flicker of movement among the shadows clustering under the trees outside the gates - and Humphrey was focused on road conditions. As the Range Rover carefully picked up speed, its tail-lamps receding in the wet, pre-dawn darkness, a black-clad figure rose from cover behind a stand of broad oak trees and raised a wrist-strapped micro-corn to the mouth-opening of a black ski mask. The wearer's report was rendered in a clipped undertone, after which he settled back to resume his surveillance of the gates and the lodge beyond.
Some five miles ahead, at a wooded junction where the narrow country back road to Strathmourne connected with the A-route to Edinburgh, a head-scarfed woman in a dark grey Volvo set aside a similar comlink and sat up straighter, peering through the screen of trees that hid the car from the road. Only when the blue Range Rover had whispered past did she smile a mirthless smile in the darkness, reaching down to start the engine and then pulling quietly onto the road to follow.
The ground fog had mostly dissipated by the time Humphrey pulled the Range Rover onto the M90. Local traffic was light at first, but increased steadily as they headed south toward Edinburgh. Content to leave the driving to Humphrey, and made somewhat drowsy by the rhythmic hiss of tires on pavement and the hypnotic sweep of the windscreen wipers, Adam leaned back against the headrest and lost himself in fond reflections of the woman he was on his way to see, letting himself drift, searching for Ximena wherever she was to be found amid memories of past joys and parting sorrows.
With an ease born of habitual longing, his mind's eye lit upon Ximena as he first had seen her. In that hospital setting, kitted out in surgical green, she had been all brisk, well-scrubbed efficiency, as supple and well-honed as a steel blade, with a wit to match and a keen sense of humor that gently teased but never mocked. It cost him a pang to recall how that bright resilience had later melted under the reverent caress of his hands and lips, revealing a warm responsiveness of flesh vibrant with laughter and desire.
The memory brought a wistful smile to his lips. With almost painful immediacy he found himself recalling the way her dark, unbound hair spilled like silk through his fingers, the porcelain quality of her skin, smoothly drawn over the finely chiselled bones of her face. Of all the women he had ever known, she alone seemed to have the power to release him from the convoluted toils of his own intellect, to set him free to enjoy the simplicity of the present moment. In exchange for such a gift, he was willing to offer everything he himself had to give. But he was by no means certain that she would find it in herself to take it. And while her father lived, Adam's conscience would not allow him to argue his own case.
His mood of introspection did not go unnoticed by Humphrey, though the older man was well accustomed to his employer's silences and had learned not to let his own vigilance be distracted. Trained in the driving techniques necessary for executive protection, as well as the skills that made him an outstanding butler and valet, Humphrey made automatic note of the dark grey Volvo keeping pace with them along the M90; but any real concern evaporated when the vehicle in question turned off at the exit for Dunfermline and Kincardine.
Relaxing a little, he concentrated thereafter on minding the traffic along the approach to the Forth Road Bridge. When a black Edinburgh taxi nosed in behind them in the queue for the bridge tollbooth, its appearance was so commonplace that Humphrey hardly spared it a second glance.