Island of the Swans (23 page)

Jane was spellbound by the tumult surrounding her. Behind the line of dancers scurrying for cover on the stage, a phalanx of men, whom Jane took to be performers, appeared from backstage with flimsy-looking weapons she assumed were theater props. They’d split into two groups—each led by an actor dressed for the part of Romeo—and were battling each other with blows to the head and shoulders.

It seemed to Jane as if a whirlwind had descended on the Canongate Playhouse, complete with thunder and lightning and levitating furniture. Another lighted sconce sailed overhead, landing on stage near the hem of the massive drapes. Through the hole in the curtain bounced Juliet’s bed, followed by the shrieking figure of a portly actress, Mrs. Baker, decked out in the diaphanous costume of the ill-fated Capulet heroine.

“
That
is Juliet?” Alexander shouted at Jane. “No wonder they’re protesting!” he cried, reaching for her gloved hand. Turning to Charles, he bellowed, “My dear Gordon, I think we should adjourn this revel for the evening. Perhaps you would escort Sir Algernon and Lady Mary out of your box… Fordyce will look after his bride… come, Mistress Maxwell, we’d best be off.”

In a graceful arc, Alexander leapt over the box’s low railing and turned to assist Jane’s escape, but she had already vaulted over the banister, unassisted.

“Follow me,” she cried. “I know a way out behind that curtain.”

Without waiting for his assent, Jane disappeared behind a curtained doorway as Alexander hurried to keep up with her. An arm, sheathed in white satin, reached back through the drapes and grabbed his sleeve.

“Quickly, Yer Grace…
this
way!” Jane panted, unceremoniously tugging him along with her gloved hand. “There’s a passage on your left that lets out behind Watson’s Close. We’ve got to escape this mob!” Reaching the safety of outdoors, Jane and the Duke of Gordon unceremoniously sprinted down a narrow alley. “Have you seen my sister Catherine or the others?” Jane shouted back over her shoulder.

“I spotted them departing through the other exit,” Alexander replied tersely, surveying the angry throng spilling out a side door fifty feet farther up the alley.

The two of them turned away from the mob and bolted down the ill-lit close that veered off sharply from Canongate and the playhouse. A loud crash, followed by a roar from the crowd inside the building, echoed in their wake. Soon the air was filled with high-pitched screams.

“My God!” Alexander exclaimed, picking up speed. “It sounds as if half the roof collapsed!”

“Or the chandelier fell. Come! This way!”

Jane abruptly darted to her left, leading Alexander down another narrow winding passage. He dared not consider what alien, squishy, yielding matter he felt under foot as they fled the ugly scene. It was past the hour of ten when Edinburgh residents were wont to holler “Gardylou,” the Scots’ equivalent of
Gardez l’eau
—“watch out for the water”—and toss all matter of refuse out their windows into the street. As the pair slowed to a trot, the stench in the street was so malodorous, Alexander felt himself about to gag.

“You seem to know your way around these back alleys pretty well, Mistress Maxwell,” he said between clenched teeth, trying to avoid inhaling an ounce more of the fetid air than necessary. As she led them away from the tumult, he marveled at her deft sense of direction.

“You forget, m’lord… I grew up on the High Street,” she replied, between gasps for breath. Slowing her pace to match his, Jane led Alexander down another narrow passageway to what appeared to be an enclosed square. On one side was a row of townhouses that apparently faced one of the larger wynds. “My friends and I used to creep backstage to watch the performances when we were children,” she said, breathing heavily. “I’ve probably explored every inch of the city.”

“I should hope that that redheaded Highlander escorted you when you ventured out like this… and I should hope you chose a less treacherous time than the hour of Gardylou!” he declared between gasps for air.

Panting heavily, Jane halted on the edge of the stone-sided square they’d just entered. Her dark eyes were framed by thick sable lashes. The high planes of her cheekbones were set off by a softly rounded chin. Masses of chestnut hair were swept back from her forehead, piled in a natural style. Alexander found his eyes wandering to the shy little strands that had escaped during their flight and played gently across her ear lobes. From everything he knew of her and had observed for himself, Jane Maxwell was anything but shy. But tonight, in spite of her bravura, he sensed a remoteness about the young woman that bordered on despair.

“You remember Thomas well?” she asked unevenly. “You only encountered him once or twice, I thought.”

“How could I ever forget that famous pig race?” Alex replied, trying to catch his breath. “He must have been a mere twelve or thirteen, and damnably rude, if I remember rightly. I myself was hardly a man, and acted equally arrogant, I’ll wager. And, of course, the two of us almost shared a dance with you the evening of your sixteenth birthday.”

Jane vividly recalled Thomas’s anger when he discovered her on the dance floor with the duke. She wondered whether Alexander had witnessed her passionate embrace with Thomas in the library, when the duke had returned to retrieve his kid gloves.

Alexander paused to scrape he dared not guess
what
from one of his diamond-buckled brogues on the edge of a granite step. Jane bent over, pushing her wide-hooped skirts flat against her thighs, and rubbed the ankle of her right leg. Alex couldn’t help noticing the rounded cleavage exposed by her movements. He marveled at the fullness of her maturing figure and the narrowness of her waist, no larger than a small, porcelain dinner plate.

“Have you hurt yourself?” he asked.

“Just twisted it a bit,” she replied, continuing to massage her leg. There was a moment’s silence. Then: “I suppose you know
how
Thomas Fraser died?” she asked with a catch in her voice. Her head remained bowed over her leg.

“Charles Gordon told me he was killed in an Indian massacre in America last autumn,” he answered quietly.

Jane glanced up at him and their eyes met. At that moment, Alexander wondered how much knowledge of her relationship with Thomas he should reveal. When he had queried his solicitor, Charles Gordon, about the lovely lass he’d seen the previous two New Year’s Eves, he’d discovered it was common knowledge she and Thomas Fraser intended to marry, despite the rumored objections of both Simon Fraser and Lady Maxwell.

“As I said earlier this evening, I was so very sorry to hear the news. I’m told he was a decent chap, if a bit impetuous, and that he was destined to have an excellent career in the military.”

There was no point in speaking ill of the dead, Alexander thought, watching Jane carefully. Actually, he judged Lieutenant Fraser to be a hotheaded rogue who, like the rest of his clan, had a penchant for lost causes.

Jane straightened up, allowing the sweeping folds of her white satin gown to fall back into place.

“If Thomas acted rudely toward Your Grace that evening, ’twas because he was jealous of you,” she replied, tilting her chin defiantly. “Did you know we were to be wed?”

“That I did, which must make your loss doubly hard,” Alex said stiffly.

Jane nodded, holding back tears that had suddenly welled up in her eyes. She reached down and pulled off one of her dainty satin slippers, its raised heel covered with stains.

“These were made for dancing, not mucking about,” she said, veering away from the subject of Thomas.

“Why don’t we get to a place where you can sit down,” he urged. “The Devil knows where my coach has got to! Since you know the neighborhood so well… do you have any notion where we are?”

Jane gazed up at the towering buildings flanking them on all sides.

“Chessel’s Court, I should think…” she said, looking for landmarks that would serve as positive identification. “Aye, that’s where we are… just a few closes over from St. Mary’s Wynd and the Red Lion Inn.”

“If it wouldn’t destroy your reputation,” Alexander said wearily, “I could certainly use a brandy.”

“The Red Lion Inn it is, then,” she said. “I’ve been a patron there since I was six… or rather a
visitor
!” she amended hastily at the sight of Alexander’s cocked eyebrow. Jane clasped his arm tightly and, replacing her slipper, tentatively put weight on her right foot. Taking a gingerly step, she asked soberly, “Do you think everyone in our boxes escaped the theater?”

“They got out, all right,” he assured her, and when he saw that she still looked troubled, added, “Don’t worry, Jane, my dear.” He was aware of using her Christian name for the first time. “My man Charles Gordon said he would lead them to safety and I’ll wager you a new pair of satin slippers he has done just that. And what would I do with a new pair of satin slippers?” he teased.

Her warm, generous smile in response to his jest radically altered her appearance. Its radiance was like the northern sun unexpectedly emerging from a dull gray sky, shimmering on Lock Alvie or Loch-an-Eilean, where his Highland swans spent their winters. He and Jane walked in companionable silence across a narrow field behind several tall buildings fronting on the High Street. Eventually they turned right into another courtyard that led to St. Mary’s Wynd and the welcoming glow of the Red Lion Inn.

The convivial crowd inside whispered behind their tankards as Jane and Alexander entered in their evening finery, looking both elegant and disheveled.

“It might damage
your
reputation to be seen in such an unfashionable place,” she whispered mischievously. “I think I’ll introduce you as plain Alex Gordon!”

Jane waved at the barman and, still limping, headed for a table at the back of the tavern where ladies were welcome and the high-backed benches afforded a certain amount of privacy. Many of the patrons recognized her, and they greeted her genially, commenting on her curious appearance.

“We’ve just been in a riot!” she announced to proprietor Peter Ramsay as the patrons hushed to hear more.

“The advocates and the medical students had a row over who should play Romeo at the playhouse tonight. They tore the place to bits… or at least we
assume
they did. We left after the chandelier came down.”

“Aye,” said Ramsay, shaking his head. “I’ve just had a word with the constable. The fire was doused, but there was considerable damage to the playhouse. The real miracle is no one got killed.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” murmured Alexander, relieved that the entertainment in his name had not created any new widows or orphans.

“You should have seen the food fly!” Jane said excitedly. “Poor old Mistress Baker… Romeo’s ‘Juliet’ dodged a joint of beef before retreating to the tiring room, I can tell you that!”

Her eyes sparkled with pleasure as her audience savored the description of the cheeky students in the balcony pouring perfectly good claret down onto their tutors’ wigs. Alexander, meanwhile, stood off to one side, watching Jane’s animated performance with a look of faint amusement. Finally she turned to him and presented the publican.

“Peter, this is… ah… Alex Gordon,” she said. “We escaped the mob together.”

“The truth is, she
saved
me from it,” Alexander interjected, enjoying his commoner status.

Ramsay surveyed the young man’s smartly cut suit with interest.

“Well, a wee dram for the survivors, and then, Mistress Jane, I think you should soon be gettin’ home. Her ladyship may be worried o’er you.”

Ramsay shot a baleful look in Alexander’s direction. It plagued him not to be able to place this Gordon fellow. Nevertheless, he retreated to pour the brandies, thinking to himself how good it was to see Jane once again with a smile on her face. It had tugged at his heart the few times he’d glimpsed her moping in the back garden or lingering in the shed where Thomas used to keep his horse. As Ramsay funneled the amber liquid into snifters, he wondered what was to become of the beautiful Jane Maxwell, now that Thomas was gone. The publican made his way back across the crowded tavern to the rear table where Jane and her mysterious companion were engrossed in conversation and delivered their brandies.

“To survival,” Alex said, touching Jane’s raised glass. Their eyes met briefly, and Jane sipped a portion of the fiery liquid. “Tell me what it was like, growing up in this teeming metropolis,” he went on. “As a youth I only came to Edinburgh occasionally… and now visit only when I have business to attend to.”

Jane gave him a surprised look.

“Don’t you
like
Edinburgh?” she asked sharply.

Clearly
she
did.

“I don’t know it terribly well, as you observed this evening. That’s why I’m curious about your childhood here.”

Jane leaned against the back of her bench and toyed with her glass. Her eyes had a dreamy quality about them, as if she were contemplating a painted landscape.

“’Twas wonderful to grow up in the town. From the time I was six, Catherine and I went anywhere we wished, since Father had decided to spend most of his time in Monreith. Until we were a bit older, Mother had her mind solely on making ends meet, and pretty much let us do as we wished—” Jane looked at Alexander challengingly. “With two households and six children, there was hardly a farthing to spare—but still, we girls had wonderful fun. Thomas lived three doors away and we went everywhere together. He taught me to climb trees and plant turnips in the kitchen garden… he taught me how to ride in Holyrood Park and showed me where to find the sweetest wells in the city. We played golf together at dawn’s light at Musselburgh Links. He even taught me how to drink spirits… how to hold my liquor!” she laughed, downing her brandy with a gulp and then signaling for another.

“Did he teach you to dance?” Alexander asked gently. “I’ve been told you’re quite the best dancer in Edinburgh, and after our brief encounter in the Prestonfield ballroom, I formed the same opinion.”

“No, Thomas and I learned dancing together.” She smiled, startled by Alex’s bold compliment and by the fact that he’d obviously been talking to someone else about her. “Master Davie Strange taught us all the steps at his school in Todrick’s Wynd. Thomas practiced with me for hours and hours. I haven’t danced since his death… I just… can’t…”