Read Online Waterfall Glen by Davie Henderson - Free Book Online

Even sixty or seventy years later, he was obviously still deeply disconcerted by the incident. “What happened?” she asked.
    “Mr. Colin and I were climbing up Jamie’s Crag…” he nodded to the rocky outcrop on the other side of the tiny hanging valley. “We got almost to the top, and that’s when we heard it.”
    Again the memory seemed to have overtaken him, and Kate had to prompt him with, “Heard what?”
    “It sounded like a pibroch—a bagpipe lament—coming from Jamie’s Cottage.”
    “Couldn’t it just have been the wind whistling through the ruins—I’m sure that can make an eerie sound.”
    “It can indeed. But the thing is that there was barely enough breeze to ruffle our hair that day, let alone enough wind to make music. I thought I might have been imagining things, but then I looked at Colin and he was looking back at me from a face that was white as a sheet. We scrambled back down the crag like a couple of startled rabbits and never climbed it again, or even talked about it.”
    “Now I’ve got to go up there,” Kate said.
    “Unfortunately we don’t have time today,” Finlay told her, not sounding in the slightest sorry.
    “Maybe we can go there another day,” Kate said, looking up at the ruin.
    “Aye, maybe,” Finlay said without conviction.
    “You said something yesterday about the cottage not belonging to me—who does it belong to?” Kate asked.
    “A man by the name of Cameron Fraser, apparently. I got the impression that Archie Cunningham had found out more about this Mr. Fraser than just his name, but for some reason he wouldn’t let on what it was. He just said: ‘I’d rather have you make your own mind up about the gentleman, and not be influenced by anything I say,’ whatever that might mean.”
    “I can’t begin to imagine what it means,” Kate said thoughtfully, looking up at the cottage.
    “You should have a word with Miss Weir, then—she’s been doing enough imagining about it for two people.”
    Kate smiled.
    “Anyway, never mind about Jamie’s Cottage and Cameron Fraser, whoever he might be; I want to show you my favourite place in the world.” He led Kate to the end of the path, where they were level with the tops of the trees lining the banks of the hanging valley. She followed him down a wooden-sleepered staircase that wound through the trees and led to an old stone bridge spanning the river just before it plunged into the glen below. An enormous rock sat in the middle of the fast-flowing water, dividing it into two forks and forming the foundation for the central pillar of the small, twin-arched bridge.
    Kate walked to the center of the bridge, speechless, and leaned on the stone parapet. Castle Crag towered high above the trees to her right, with Greystane just visible atop it…
    Jamie’s Crag, with its ruined cottage, rose to her left…
    And the river thundered beneath her feet, running from the hanging valley at her back to cascade over the falls just ahead. The dark lochan fed by the waterfall stretched away into the distance in the glen below.
    “Finlay, this is beautiful,” Kate told him when she was finally able to speak. “It’s just perfect.”
    “It’s the secret weapon in my little campaign to persuade you to hang on to Greystane and not sell it to those English carpetbaggers.”
    “Who?”
    “I’ll leave it to Mr. Cunningham to explain it to you thisafternoon. When he does, and you think about whether or not to sell, Lady Kate, just remember this place.”
    “I couldn’t forget it if I tried,” she told him.
    “I wish we could stay here longer but there’s a lot more to show you, and you said you were wanting to know about the story behind the ‘curse’.”
    “Yes, I am.”
    Finlay led her back up the sleepered staircase, along the path at the back of the rocky summit of Castle Crag, and then down the track they’d driven up in the Land Rover the day before. They paused at a gentle flapping above them and looked up