His fists clenched by his side as he stared into the flames. An emerald ring that was over five hundred years old. Just as he hoped it was grief making Andrew wish to keep what belonged to their family. Finn understood it was grief more than anything driving his mother to act this way. And thank the lord she’d given birth safely to her son not long after Wen’s funeral. Emily was married and her husband, the Duke of Paisley, was shouldering her grief. Now it would be Emily’s, and he wondered how his younger sister, Wen’s twin, felt about it all. He still could not believe Wen would have no daughter to give it to. His laughing, sweet, younger sister was dead.Ĭampbell was his mother’s maiden name, and it was a Campbell heirloom passed down from mother to daughter through the centuries that was the cause of this disagreement with his brother-in-law. He wanted to keep his sorrow buried deep inside, but this talk of the Campbell emerald made him remember that Wen was dead.

The fact the ring was Wen’s made his heart heavy. If I am dead it comes to your sister, Emily.” He stood, running a hand through his hair and wishing he was out riding his estate along the bank of the River Ness, rather than dealing with his mother’s obsessive desire to reclaim a family heirloom. The marriage contract clearly states that if Wen died without a daughter, the ring returned to me. I gave that to your sister to be handed down from mother to daughter. “Why?” How did he tell his mother that all the note contained was the word ‘no’? “Well, my boy, you will have to go to Banff Castle and retrieve the ring. “He has refused?” Finn’s mother could not believe it either. However, on top of Wen’s death he would never have thought his best friend would dishonor his late sister’s marriage contract. Wishing his sister had never married and left home. He leaned on the mantle wishing the last two months had never happened. Inverness, Scotland, June 1819 Finn threw the missive in the fire and wished his anger burned as bright as the flames, but all he felt was despair.

A Dream of Redemption by Bronwen Evans