Island of the Swans (76 page)

“Nonsense!” Alex replied curtly when Jane found him at his desk in the library one morning. He didn’t even look up from his papers.

Jane stood in front of the fireplace, the full-length Reynolds portrait at her back. The silence between them grew oppressive.

“Alex?” Jane said at length. “Couldn’t we at least talk about…”

She couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence as memories of the buxom Jean Christie lying on her side in their canopied bed came back with a rush.

“Talk about what?” Alex said, looking up from his papers warily.

“About the
disaster
our life together has become!” she challenged.

“Before our marriage? After our marriage? Before Thomas Fraser rose from the dead? After you saw him last?
Where do we start, Jane!
” he replied, his voice rising ominously.

“How about commencing from the moment I found that harlot in our bed, ’neath our monogrammed linen!” Jane spat back.

Alex studied her with narrowed eyes, unable to mask a flint of triumph.

“So… your pride is hurt, is it?”

“My
pride
!” she replied, outraged. “Is that all you think is at stake here? My
pride
!” Jane paced in front of her portrait, attempting to gain control of her turbulent emotions. “I found a
child
in my bed, Alex!” she exploded. “I had come to Gordon Castle to tell you…
beg
you to allow me to be your wife again… to plead with you on behalf of Huntly and the girls, and you betrayed me with a
child
!”

“Ah… so you’ve found betrayal as bitter as I have!” he retorted.

Jane stared at him helplessly, unable to sort out in words the vast differences she felt existed between the events leading to Louisa’s birth, and Alex’s bedding of a seventeen-year-old serving wench as a means of seeking retribution for long-held hurts.

“Do you care for Jean Christie?” Jane whispered at length, tears welling up in her chest.

Alex stared at her stonily.

“That, my dear duchess, is none of your affair,” he replied cuttingly, revealing a satisfied smile.

“Well then,” she said bitterly, barely able to control her voice, “I can see there’s nothing left to discuss. I pray you will protect our son from getting a disease in whatever brothels you lead him to. For I have no doubt that is the purpose of these father-son Grand Tours upon the Continent!”

Fearful she would disgrace herself by bursting into tears, the Duchess of Gordon stormed out of the chamber before the duke could summon a reply.

Twenty-Eight

S
EPTEMBER
1787

B
Y AUTUMN,
A
LEX HAD RETURNED WITH
L
ORD
H
UNTLY FROM
abroad and headed directly for Scotland. Jane, meanwhile, had again plunged into London’s dizzying social whirl. She sought out anything and everything to try to ease the gnawing pain of Alex’s public rejection and the humiliation she felt whenever she allowed herself to think of Jean Christie and her husband fornicating in the bed in which Jane had borne her children.

She invited her sister Eglantine to spend the winter with her, and together they went from morning until far into the night, attending routs and balls, hazarding at faro and piquet, and keeping up with the Parliamentary debates on the growing menace of revolution in France.

In the midst of the hectic social life into which Jane had thrust herself, and unnoticed by the rest of the family, Lady Madelina attracted the eye of one Sir Robert Sinclair, a baronet. Not long after he began paying court, Sir Robert appeared one autumn afternoon to ask for the young woman’s hand.

“She’s barely fifteen,” Jane said to him bluntly as her daughter’s suitor gazed at her anxiously across a desk in Alex’s deserted library piled high with unpaid bills. “I would like you to be unofficially engaged for one year to be sure you know each other’s hearts. Is that agreeable?”

Actually, she knew she required Alex’s approval for any formal betrothal, but Sinclair needn’t know that. He seemed a nice enough chap, not taken to drink, and provided with an ample inheritance for Madelina’s sensible tastes. What’s more, since their return from Gordon Castle, the lass seemed smitten.

Sir Robert smiled broadly, a look of relief etched on his plain features. “That is
most
agreeable, Your Grace. You’re very kind,” he added.

How simple all this was for the lad, she thought enviously. He and Madelina had fallen in love. He’d asked for her hand. He’d been accepted, and they would be married in a year. A pang of jealousy twisted Jane’s heart. How different life had been for her and Thomas…

Her thoughts quickly turned to Charlotte, who would need to forge an acceptable alliance quickly, now that her younger sister was spoken for. Then, a moment later, Jane paused, feeling a sense of shame at her increasingly unromantic view of marriage. She was becoming a regular matchmaker, just like her mother, whom she arranged to visit as seldom as possible.
What had become of the lass who flew like the wind to the shores of Loch-an-Eilean?
she wondered sadly.

She forced such fruitless thoughts from her mind and turned her attentions to matters at hand. Thankfully, marrying off Maddy to Sinclair would mean one less lass to worry about and fewer bills to pay. Bidding the young man adieu, she was left feeling faintly ashamed of the new cynicism she could feel creeping into her bones.

Oh well
, Jane thought, watching Robert Sinclair close the library door after himself, ’
twas done.

December came and went with little but perfunctory communications between Alex and Jane, although he did give his written consent to Madelina’s nuptials, scheduled for the following October. Jane celebrated her thirty-eighth birthday and the dawn of 1788 on her own at a quiet Hogmanay party she hosted in her Pall Mall residence. Though her figure was trim and her dark hair as luxuriant as ever, giving her the appearance of not being a day over thirty, she felt the weight of her years and the burden of her sorrows throughout the dark, bitter-cold days of January.

Late in the month, her neighbor next door, the Duke of Cumberland, brother of King George III, invited her to a small supper. He had recently rented the adjacent apartments on Pall Mall, and was hosting his nephews, the Prince of Wales, and the Prince’s brother, the Duke of York. Jane supposed she was to be included as a means of livening up the festivities without creating scandal.

However, as the time approached to depart for the engagement, Jane found herself sitting in her room, half-dressed, a kind of numbing depression deadening her body. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything.

Around seven, she sent a short note to her host, the Duke of Cumberland, pleading a severe headache, and took to her four-poster bed with a copy of James Boswell’s
Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
for cold comfort.

“Is there anything else I can get you, Your Grace?” inquired Nancy Christie, a look of concern etched on her hawklike features.

Despite Jane’s abiding hatred for the woman’s mother and younger sister, her affection for the young maid turned housekeeper hadn’t wavered, and it had been returned in full measure over the years.

“No, thank you, Nancy,” Jane replied wearily. “I’ll read by the candle here till I fall asleep.” She hesitated a moment, and then added, “I know these last months have been trying for you as well, lass. I do so much appreciate your loyalty.”

Nancy Christie sighed.

“’Tis shame I feel for the Christie name, Your Grace,” she murmured. “And I thank you for your confidence.”

Jane smiled at her wanly.

“That will be all, Nancy.”

Jane had turned only a few pages of the book before she felt herself nodding off.

Ghostly images of empty corridors and the eerie sound of footsteps filled her frightening dreams. Her unconscious mind wandered down, down, down into the bowels of Gordon Castle, through room after room of half-constructed furniture and broken clocks, until she reached a dungeon that was dank and cold.

Thomas lay on a pallet of filthy straw shackled to the wall by iron cuffs branded with a stag’s head crest and the letter
G.
His Fraser Highlander kilt was ripped to shreds and blood trickled from a wound slashed across his prominent cheekbone. She tried to scream, horrified at the sight of him. She was sure he had been tortured, but no sound would issue from her throat. The blood on Thomas’s face began to spurt up like a hideous fountain, until the bleak, stone cell was filled to overflowing. His blood was hot to the touch, a deeper crimson than any she had ever seen. She could hear someone faintly pounding on the trap door that had closed over her head, blocking her escape from the dungeon. She tried to scream again, terrified that she would drown in her lover’s blood. Finally, a piercing wail tore from her chest, awakening her. She was drenched in a bath of sweat.

The first thing she was conscious of was that her bedchamber was filled with smoke and heat. Flames from her bedside candle, which had fallen out of its brass holder, were licking at the velvet hangings on the four-poster, and the wall behind her was alive with fire.

“Duchess! Duchess!” she heard voices shouting.

It took her several moments to realize someone was pounding downstairs on the front door.

Sheer instinct for survival prompted Jane to roll out of bed and drop to the floor. Her lungs were choking with smoke, but she crawled on her hands and knees to the door of her bedchamber, burning her hand on the brass doorknob as she yanked it open.

“Fire! Fire!” she screamed, as she pounded on the doors of her daughters’ rooms. “Quickly! Quickly! Come, darlings! We must escape!”

The sounds of heavy footsteps thundered toward her.

“Dear heavens. Your Grace, are you all right?” demanded a gruff voice whose owner was shrouded in the thick smoke now pouring from Jane’s bedchamber door.

“Yes… I’m fine,” she replied shakily. “Just help me rouse the lassies!”

“Frederick, thank God we stayed at Uncle’s for that last glass of claret,” shouted a second familiar voice.

Jane stared through the gloom at the gentleman whose elegant, elaborate linen and starched high collar could only belong to the Prince of Wales himself. He might be a wastrel and a scamp when it came to his bed partners, but Jane had never been so glad to see the young man in her life!

“Dear lady, let me assist you,” he said gallantly, grasping her by the arm as Madelina, Charlotte, and Susan appeared in the hallway. All three gave little gasps of shock as they recognized their future sovereign and his brother, the Duke of York. Smoke was billowing out of the open door to Jane’s bedchamber and the sound of crackling flames grew more intense.

“Georgina and Louisa!” Jane gasped hoarsely, pointing at another room farther down the corridor. “We must find them!”

At that moment, Jane’s two youngest daughters padded into the smoke-filled passageway looking dazed and bewildered. Jane flung her arms around their thin shoulders, crying with relief.

“Come, come, Mama… ’tis all right… we’re all fine, Mama darling,” Charlotte soothed, urging her Mother and the rest of the small crowd to hurry downstairs.

“I’ve roused all your servants. Your Grace,” chimed the Duke of York as they poured into the foyer. “They should be seeing to the coach and horses in the mews.”

“And I’ve raised the alarm,” puffed the gout-ridden Duke of Cumberland, reaching their side as they stood shivering in the street. “The army and the Palace fire brigade will be here in a tick!”

The duke was as good as his word. The fire was promptly put out with the worst damage confined to Jane’s bedchamber and adjoining dressing room.

“Come, m’ladies,” said the Prince of Wales heartily, “shall we adjourn this soiree to Uncle’s for a shot of whiskey? I’m glad you decided to come to our little party after all, Duchess,” he added with a rakish twinkle in his eye. “I was
desolait
when I learned you’d taken to your bed and would not be joining us.”