Read In Praise of Younger Men Online
Authors: Jaclyn Reding
Tags: #Fiction, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors)
Lightning flashed against the darkness of the sky and thunder that rivaled the trembling of the earth crashed above them the moment Tristan joined their bodies as one. Harriet no longer cared for she was at the very place she belonged. A deluge could unleash its fury on the rest of the world outside that cave, but nothing was going to prevent her from loving this man for the rest of her life. She twined her fingers through his hair. She nestled further into the circle of his arms. Forever after, the sounds of the storm would be their own passionate serenade.
A tempest the likes of which Edinburgh hadn’t seen in decades rocked the Scottish capital city throughout the night. Streets flooded, trees were felled, while in a cave high above the turmoil, two lovers endured another fury ...
. . . that most beautiful fury of all.
There is one thing . . . which a man can always do,
if he chooses, and that is, his duty;
not by maneuvering and finessing,
but by vigour and resolution.
—Emma,
Jane Austen
When morning dawned, Harriet awoke in the arms of the man she knew she was destined to love. The sun was shining, birds trilled in the trees. Peace and harmony reigned over the land. The world had not ceased its spinning overnight. The oceans had not risen up in protest. Everything was precisely as it should be.
They dressed slowly, undressed again, and then dressed again an hour later. Together they descended the heights of that incredible mountain and walked hand in hand through the city streets all the way to Charlotte Square. A tender peace filled Harriet, a complete and utter happiness with all that her world had become. No longer did she question her future, no longer did she struggle in search of her destiny. Her destiny, she knew, stood right beside her.
The peace and the calm, however, were to be shattered the moment they walked through the front door.
“Harriet!”
Geoffrey’s booming voice, coupled with that of her father rose up to greet them. Harriet and Tristan looked at one another before they stepped into the doorway to the parlor where it seemed all of Edinburgh society had converged.
Sir Hugh, Geoffrey, and Devorgilla took up the far corner, while Sir Duncan and Lady Harrington, complete with her cat, huddled on the settee. Tristan’s godfather, Mr. Scott, stood at the window and had no doubt seen them approaching off the square. All the party lacked was the presence of Miss Flavia Blum to make it complete.
“I expect you will do the honorable thing, Ravenshall,” Sir Hugh said before Harriet could utter a single word. Devorgilla kept silent, sitting in the corner chair by the window. Her face, however, was openly ominous.
“I have every intention of it, sir,” answered Tristan, setting his arm more closely about Harriet’s waist.
Lady Harrington stood, her eyes fixed on Harriet as she crossed the room. Her face was a mask of non-expression.
“Lady Harrington, I—”
“Tut, tut, dear,” the viscountess said. “I am just relieved to see you are safe.” She smiled. “Everything else is just as it should be.” She turned to her nephew. “Come, Duncan, we must go home and inform Lord H. that our friend is safely home, and leave this family to their privacy.”
Duncan shot Harriet a nervous glance as he crossed the room.
“Duncan,” she said, stopping him, “I am sorry if I led you to thinking my feelings for you were more than those of friendship. I truly have enjoyed meeting you. I hope that this won’t mean an end to our acquaintance.”
He shook his head. “Not at all, Harriet. Like a pair of gloves, a person knows when something doesn’t fit. We weren’t a right fit. We might have managed, as some people do with a pair of gloves where the fingers are just a little too long, but two people should never end up together because of desperate circumstances. It makes for a lifetime of regrets.”
Harriet smiled at him, startled by his unusual wisdom. She realized then there was more to Sir Duncan Harrington than she’d ever allowed herself to see and she hoped, truly hoped, he would find his “right fit” someday.
After they’d gone, Harriet turned to her father. “Father, I have something to tell you.”
�And I have something to tell you, too, Harriet Macquair Drynan. I’ll have no more of this nonsense of younger husbands. Tristan is a good man. The only man good enough for my daughter. What does it matter if he was born February the twenty-eighth or not?”
“If I may interject a moment . . .”
Everyone turned at once to where Tristan’s godfather still stood at the window.
“Right before you two arrived, moments before really, Harriet’s aunt was telling me the story of your family’s legend, of this curse prophesizing that Harriet must marry a younger man—”
“It doesn’t matter, sir,” Harriet broke in. “I have every intention of spending my life with Tristan.” She looked at her aunt. “Please, Auntie Gill, you of all people must understand. What is life without love? Without happiness? It isn’t a life at all. Somehow I just know I am meant to be with Tristan. I know he isn’t younger than I am, but he’s close enough.”
Devorgilla looked at her, tears filling her eyes. She nodded quietly as if to say what would be ... would be.
“Truth be told, Miss Drynan,” Mr. Scott said, then, “Tristan really is younger than you are.”
“What?” It was a collective response that came from everyone else in the room.
“Tristan was born on February the twenty-ninth, a Leap Year Day. I know this well. I was there, and if you seek out the Ravenshall parish register, Tristan, you will see that I speak the truth. Your parents simply decided to celebrate the occasion on the twenty-eighth, to avoid the confusion that would come about with every fourth year.”
Tristan stared at his godfather, clearly as stunned as the rest of them. “They never told me that.”
Mr. Scott simply shrugged. “After a while, years of always celebrating the occasion on the twenty-eighth, no doubt they simply forgot about it. It wasn’t as if that one day was going to make any difference.” He chuckled. “Of course, they could never have foreseen these particular circumstances.”
Harriet was grinning as she turned to face Tristan. “So you really are younger than I am.”
“It would seem so, my love. By a day.”
“So all this trouble was for nothing?”
“No, not for nothing.” He took her into his embrace. “If anything, it proves that what is destined to be, will be. We were both willing to risk anything, even the wrath of an ancient sorceress’s curse, to be together.” He smiled at her. “Otherwise, I might never have known if you truly loved me, or if you had married me simply because I happened to be younger than you.”
“Tristan . . .” Harriet said.
“Yes, my love?”
“Happy birthday.” She reached up to give him a kiss. She giggled when she stepped away a moment later. “Now let me go fetch that red petticoat . . .”
A heroine returning, at the close of her career,
to her native village, all in the triumph of recovered
reputation and all the dignity of the countess.
—Northanger Abbey,
Jane Austen
Ravenshall Tower, 1818
Harriet strode into the breakfast parlor, her eyes glued to a letter she’d received from Lady Harrington in that morning’s post. Tristan was there, as was the nursery maid who was feeding their daughter Viola her morning porridge. Harriet stopped to press a kiss to the little one’s sunshine-kissed red curls before lowering into the chair beside her.
“Lady Harrington has invited us to a wedding, Tristan.” She looked at her husband. “It seems Duncan has asked Miss Blum to be his wife, and she has accepted.”
Tristan nodded over his toast and jam. “A fine couple, although, actually, I’m surprised it took Lady H. this long.”
Harriet set aside the letter. It was then she noticed the package sitting beside her breakfast plate. “What is this?”
“That, my dear, arrived for you by courier just a little while ago,” Tristan replied as he poured her a cup of her favorite tea. He took her hand and kissed it. “It comes to you from Edinburgh.”
Harriet narrowed her eyes on him. “Why do I sense you already know something about this?”
Tristan simply took a bite of his toast, saying nothing.
Harriet took up the package and untied the string that held it. Inside was a small, leather-bound book wrapped in a brown paper cover. Printed on the front page, its title read:
Rob Roy, by the Author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, and The Antiquary
.
She looked at Tristan. “Who is this from?”
“Why don’t you read the inscription inside and find out?”
Harriet scowled at him, then turned the page to where the following words had been written.
To Dearest Harriet, My gratitude for the suggestion.
It was signed simply,
Walter Scott
.
Harriet blinked. She read it again.
Mr. Scott, Tristan’s godfather
?
Harriet looked at Tristan, stunned. “Walter Scott? Your godfather, Mr. Scott, is the author, Walter Scott?”
He nodded. “Aye, one and the same.”
“But why did you never tell me before? We’ve spoken of him often. He was present at our wedding, for heaven’s sake . . . yet you’ve never told me his first name!”
Tristan grinned, his blue eyes twinkling as he looked at her. “Did you think your family was the only one to have its secrets?”
In the Scottish capital city of Edinburgh, in the middle of the Princes Street Gardens, there stands a monument over two hundred feet tall erected in memory of Sir Walter Scott. There are two hundred and eighty-seven steps to the top, and carved into the monument are sixty-four niches in which statuettes of many of his characters can be found. Beneath its gothic arches stands a white marble statue of Scott with his faithful deerhound, Maida, sitting at his side.
Scott’s novels are steeped in the traditions and customs of Scotland. Although this story is purely a work of my imagination, his authorship of what are now called the Waverley Novels was indeed, as I indicated, unknown for many years. It is a mystery that Scott himself seems to have enjoyed prolonging; he didn’t officially reveal himself as the author until 1827, at a public dinner in Edinburgh held at the same Assembly Rooms in which Harriet first searched for a husband.
I recently had the privilege of visiting Abbottsford, Scott’s country home located south of Edinburgh, after I’d already finished writing this story. It is an incredible place. In his lifetime Scott acquired such items as Rob Roy’s own broadsword, dirk, and pistol, which are displayed on the walls. I spent hours there, imagining Scott sitting at the very desk where he wrote his wonderful stories, the hallways echoing with the laughter of his children and the barking of his numerous dogs.
As I walked through the last room on our tour, I happened to catch a glimpse of a portrait of Scott’s wife, Charlotte, that hung on a wall in the dining room. Her name was engraved on the plate beneath it, along with the dates of her birth and death. As I stood admiring her image, I noticed something I had never realized before, but that gave me that shiver of wonder authors sometimes get when everything about a story suddenly falls into place.
Scott was born in 1771.
His wife, Charlotte, was born in 1770.
Sir Walter Scott was married to a woman who was older than he.
From the time she read
Harriet the Spy
at age seven, Jaclyn Reding knew she wanted to be a writer. The leap from child spy to novelist was fostered in years of concealing paperbacks behind her high school textbooks, and in her college studies of English history and literature. Jaclyn believes there is no better career than that of a writer. “Accountants,” one of which she is married to, she says, “don’t get paid to daydream, can’t go to work in their pajamas, and certainly aren’t allowed to write off their fifteenth rental of a Jane Austen video on their tax returns.”
Born in the Midwest, Jaclyn makes her home in Arizona with her husband, young son, and various other domestic creatures. In addition to writing, her passions include playing her flute very badly, haunting antique bookshops, and making a spectacle of herself by cheering very loudly at her son’s hockey games.
You can visit her on the Web at:
http://www.jaclynreding.com