Island of the Swans (74 page)

“I told you,
don’t
!” Alex repeated hoarsely. “You must leave at once.
Leave here at once, do you hear me!
” he shouted.

Dumbfounded by the vehemence of his tone, she stumbled back a few steps. Her breath came in ragged gulps. A knot of anguish rose in her breast and she fumbled for the flint that Alex invariably kept on the side table.

“Who
is
that?” she screamed at him. “Who in God’s name
is
that in our bed?”

The candle’s wick flared, illuminating the interior of the room. Alex, oblivious to the fact that he was stark naked, leapt out from the far side of the bed and wrested the candlestick out of her hand. Before its light sputtered out, Jane glimpsed a form huddled beneath bed sheets which bore a large, monogrammed
G
flanked by an embroidered
A
and a
J.

“Dear God, not
her
!” Jane gasped, her arms rigid at her sides.

Just before the room plunged back into darkness, she had clearly caught sight of the wide-eyed, winsome housemaid Jean Christie, Nancy’s younger, much prettier sister.

Jane half-ran, half-stumbled down the hallway, stifling her sobs with the back of her hand. Her mind reeled at the memory of little Jean Christie, a plump, pleasing five-year-old sitting on the tartan blanket with Jane’s small daughters Susan and Madelina. It was the day, more than a decade ago, when the two Geordies found themselves marooned on the scaffolding that had encased the new wing of the castle during its construction.

Alex had taken to bed a seventeen-year-old chit, twenty years younger than his wife! Jane glanced back wildly at Alex, who, still bare-chested, had hurriedly donned a pair of riding breeches and was pursuing her down the passageway.

“
She’s younger than Charlotte!
” she screamed, hurtling herself inside his dressing room.

“I
told
you not to come in!” Alex shouted at her as he slammed the door behind them.

A cry like that of a wounded animal tore at Jane’s throat. She sank to the floor, pressing her face into the folds of Alex’s silk dressing gown, which was draped over a chair. A hand rested lightly on her shoulder.

“Jane, I—” Alex began.

“Oh, please, go away,” Jane moaned. “Go away. I can’t bear the sight of you.”

A pale, peach dawn stole over the parkland of Gordon Castle. Charlotte, Madelina, and Susan tiptoed downstairs and stood silently in front of the forbidding entrance to the massive house, waiting for their mother to join them. Jane appeared at the door, staring straight ahead. Her eyes were sunken hollows. Wordlessly, the quartet wedged themselves back into the hired livery whose uncomprehending driver sat ready to depart, whip in hand. Jane sagged against the worn upholstery of the conveyance as the carriage wheels twisted in the graveled driveway and the coach lurched forward.

London… London… London
was the only thought that registered in Jane’s brain as the coach rocked to and fro and the wheels crunched past the stone gates.

The future… I must make some sort of life for myself… for the children… I must… I must… I must…

Unable to think anymore, Jane sank into the oblivion of exhausted sleep while her daughters looked at each other with frightened eyes.

Twenty-Seven

M
AY
1787

D
AWN WAS JUST BREAKING THROUGH THE TALL PINES AND
T
HOMAS
could smell wood smoke from one of the few crofters’ cottages still inhabited along the glen. His eyes skimmed over the bracken-covered rocks and underbrush that flanked the deserted narrow lane. If matters continued as they had these last years, he thought grimly, the population of the entire valley of Struy would soon emigrate to the New World, including himself.

Thomas grazed his leather whip across the flanks of his cadaverous cart horse and cursed under his breath. The pathetically thin steed strained between the wooden shafts encasing its emaciated form and plodded stoically down the path at a snail’s pace. Soon the cart rolled past the one-room stone thatched cottage Thomas had called home for more than a year, and headed toward the Inverness Road.

He glanced back at the four skimpy bags of wool bound together in the cart and wondered why he bothered. What more would it take to convince him Jane wasn’t coming? Why didn’t he simply put the remainder of his money into ship’s passage to Baltimore? The last winter in the Highlands had been so bitter, he’d lost a third of his small flock. Between buying new lambs and paying the solicitor he’d hired to clear his title to Struy House and the rest of his father’s former estate, he’d be lucky if he had a farthing left at the end of this day to buy himself a tankard of ale at the Church Street Inn! As far as restoring his title…

Sir Thomas Fraser of Struy…. ’twas laughable…

The broad-shouldered Highlander gazed through the morning mist at the shrouded outlines of his family’s former homestead perched at the top of a rise. The acreage surrounding it lay fallow, devoid of braying sheep and shaggy cattle. The land and deserted manse looked as desolate as his mood this chilly May morning. The case to settle the intent of Simon’s will continued to drag on, winding its way through this Commission, and that Chancery Court, and yet another hearing. Thomas’s solicitor, who prepared the case, and the barrister, who represented him in court, were forever promising the end was in sight, and that the entire Struy estate would soon be his again, all the while asking for further funds to pursue the matter. Thomas had no choice but to wait—and to pay.

The wooden cart creaked over Struy Bridge as Thomas hiked his moth-eaten kilt more comfortably around his hips and trudged on along the pitted road, which ran parallel to the River Beauly.

He rubbed the beard he’d grown during the long, dark winter. The russet growth on his face collided at his ears with his dark red hair. But what concern was it of his if he looked like some deranged Viking and would no longer be admitted to civilized drawing rooms in Edinburgh and London—or even Inverness, for that matter? He’d just as soon his old friends and acquaintances remained ignorant of the ill-fortune besetting him these days. ’
Twas lucky Sir Thomas was not alive to see the condition of his son and heir
, he thought gloomily.

It was well past noon when Thomas yanked on the cart horse’s bridle in the market square. After months of solitude, subsisting on the miserably few acres left to him, his senses were assaulted by the sights, smells, and sounds of this bustling market town. He wedged his cart into one of the few spaces available and began to call out his wares at a price he hoped would garner some interested buyers.

“Merino, is it?” asked a gnarled old man Thomas nearly took to be a dwarf. “Good quality, ye say?”

“Aye… ’tis from merino sheep,” Thomas replied, looking down at his questioner. The top of the canny bargainer’s grizzled head barely came up to his own belt buckle. “As for the quality, I’d have to call it only fair. We’ve had a bleak, bitter time of it this year.”

“I know, lad… I know,” the old man sympathized, “and I appreciate your being honest wi’me. Let’s see what you’ve got there.”

Thomas pulled on the ropes and opened his four meager bags of wool for the old man’s inspection.

“I’ll buy the whole lot from you, for the price I’ve paid everyone else,” he said slowly. “Yours is no better and certainly no worse than what’s been sold to me by the braggarts I’ve met here today.”

In a twinkling, the two men agreed on the price and Thomas felt the comforting weight of several heavy coins in the leather pouch he wore around his neck.

“I’ve finished here as well, lad,” his patron said. “You look like a wild savage and you may frighten the lassies in the town, but will you join me in an ale to seal the bargain? M’name’s Angus Grant, estate factor at Kinrara down in Spey Valley. We’ll be spinnin’ yarn and makin’ hose from what I’ve bought from you and the others. Our good duchess, you may know, has encouraged such industry on Gordon lands to keep the tenants from emigrating.”

Thomas stood rooted to the spot next to his cart as if struck dumb.
Angus Grant!
This was the wisp of a man Jane had told him about years ago who ran the Kinrara Estate with such vigor and care. It suddenly galled him to think his winter’s labors would enhance the coffers of the Duke of Gordon. But perhaps, he quickly rationalized to himself, a little of the profit the duke made from spinning Fraser wool would buy something for the daughter Thomas had never seen… something Louisa would hold dear: a doll, or a ribbon for her hair.

“Well, laddie? What do you say?” Angus asked impatiently, interrupting Thomas’s reverie. “You’ll be my guest, if that’s what’s bothering you…”

“No! Of course not,” Thomas countered quickly. “The name’s Thomas Fraser and the Church Street Inn it is!”

The tavern section of the inn was crowded with refugees from market day, so Angus suggested they take their tankards into the quieter chamber where guests lodging at the inn were made welcome. The two men chatted amiably, although Thomas was careful not to indicate he knew much about the Spey Valley or Kinrara. Before long, a spare, dour, middle-aged man shepherded two young lasses of about eleven and seven years old, respectively, through the room. They were followed by a young servant girl with a thin, pinched face.

“Well, sink me, if ’tisn’t William Marshall, without his fiddle!” hailed Angus Grant with a surprised look on his face. He rose and quickly crossed the small space separating him from the somber quartet making its way toward the door and awaiting the coach outside.

Thomas watched with curiosity as the old man slipped off his woolen cap and made a courtly bow to the two young misses in the other man’s charge.

“Good day to you, m’ladies,” Angus said with a look of genuine affection. “And where might you be off to in such a fine coach?”

“M-Mama came to Gordon Castle ahead of us, and now she’s
gone
!” the littler lass wailed. “We just arrived at Fochabers and now we have to
leave…
’tis not fair wee Alex can be with Papa and we can’t stay too!”

“That will be
enough
, missy!” William Marshall said gruffly. “The duke has seen to your affairs as he deems fit. Now, out with you! Nancy, see that the footman puts all the baggage aboard. Hurry, now. Otherwise, the coach’ll leave without you!”

Thomas stared at the two well-dressed lasses who reluctantly made their way toward the coach where several other passengers were waiting to take their seats.

The duke has seen to your affairs…

These, then, were two of Jane’s children! His mind was racing. The older one… which was she? Thomas’s thoughts whirled at a dizzying pace, as he recalled the few tendrils of soft, burgundy-colored hair that had escaped from the lass’s silk bonnet. If she was ten or eleven years old, as she looked to be, that meant that she would have been born around 1776. He closed his eyes to brace himself from the cascade of memories careening within his brain.

Kinrara. The tiny castle at Loch-an-Eilean. Three days of the most exquisite lovemaking he had ever known.

Jane… dear God, Jane… this is our daughter!

He breathed deeply to calm his racing pulse. He stared through the entrance of the inn at the child he knew to be his own Louisa. It
must
be she! The lass who stood not twenty paces from him was his own flesh and blood… his own daughter… the proof of the love he had tried to erase from his life.

Oh God, Jane! Louisa
…

“There’s been a terrible row at Gordon Castle,” William Marshall was confiding to Angus Grant with a certain degree of relish. “Her Grace has found to her distress that what’s good for the goose ’tis not so good for the gander!”

“Be plain, man!” Angus snorted. “You’re not speaking ill of the mistress, are you?”

“No more than the rest of Edinburgh, where her
patronage
of that ploughman poet, with his swaggering ways, was the talk of the town!” Marshall replied acidly.