An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (52 page)

She moved as she spoke until she was out of earshot. They could see the flickering of her lantern like a tiny eye in the darkness, but in the starlight Iona could still faintly discern the outline of Hector’s face.

“There is not time to say much,” he said quietly, “and no words that I could find would begin to express my gratitude, Iona. But my escape will cause trouble and it is you I am worrying about. If you are certain Arkrae is for us, waste no time but hurry back to France with the news.”

“I had not the slightest idea what His Grace felt until this evening.” Iona replied, “when he deliberately showed me a duplicate key of the Keep and made it possible for me to rescue you. It was fine of him, but I have a feeling that he, too, is in danger.”

“Arkrae can look after himself – you can’t. Get back to France as quickly as you can,” Hector said urgently. “Promise me?” He put out his hands and took hold of Iona’s. “Promise me?” he repeated.

“I have not yet found the ‘Tears of Torrish’,” Iona reminded him.

“Arkrae is prize enough,” Hector replied impatiently, “and there’s one other thing. You will be in France before me, and besides, there’s always the chance of my being captured again. Will you take this notebook and see that it reaches Brett as soon as possible?”

He drew the little book from inside his coat and put it into Iona’s hand.

“I had planned to hide it before they handed me over to the English,” he said. “The contents are too valuable for it to be destroyed except as a last resource, but at the same time it would be dangerous for it to be discovered in one’s possession. If you are not leaving at once try and get it into the keeping of Dr. Farquharson of Inverness.”

“Dr. Farquharson,” Iona repeated reflectively. “That is the man whom Colonel Brett told me to get in touch with when I was ready to return to France.”

“Then he may already have heard of you,” Hector said. “Ask him to dispatch the notebook to Paris and, better still, you with it as speedily as can be arranged.”

He looked out of the open door into the night.

“There’s no sign of Dughall and in a way I’m glad. He has risked too much for me already. I shall swim for it.”

“The water will be very cold,” Iona said, realising that she was shivering in the chilly air.

“It will freshen me up and keep me awake,” Hector smiled. “Goodbye, my dear.”

He put his arms round her and gave her another affectionate, passionless hug. Iona was growing increasingly familiar with this individual form of endearment and it no longer embarrassed her. Instead she clung to him, reluctant to move from the warm shelter of his arms.

“Take care of yourself, my dear.”

Hector released her and sat down on the floor. He dangled his legs over the water before lowering himself slowly, finding a foothold here and there until he was halfway down the side of the castle. Then he jumped.

Iona, leaning out of the open door, heard the splash, but it was too dark to see him in the water.

“May God gang wi’ him!” Cathy’s voice said in her ear.

Iona strained her eyes into the darkness. She could hear a soft movement in the water, then there was silence.

The further shore seemed dark and foreboding. She felt Cathy’s hand pull her and was obedient to its insistence. There was nothing more she could do, but even as she moved Iona knew with a clear unshakable certainty that Hector was all right. He would win through, serve the Prince and return safely to France. She was as sure of this as she was sure of life itself.

Hector would succeed, but for herself there was no such certainty.

With the greatest difficulty, both Iona and Cathy exerting all their strength, they managed to shut home the bolts on the door, and lift the wooden bar into position. As Cathy turned back towards the staircase, Iona remembered the key of the Keep.

“You must take me first to the Duke’s sitting room,” she whispered.

The twisting staircase brought them to the first floor. After a few minutes’ walking the passages widened, became carpeted and furnished and Iona recognised where she was. Moving silently, they reached the Duke’s sitting room and found it in darkness save for the glow from a few flickering embers left in the dying fire. It took Iona only a second to slip the key back into the drawer of the writing table from where she had taken it. But as she closed the drawer, she paused for a moment, conscious that the room was filled with the heavy fragrance of tobacco smoke. As she stood there with her fingers touching the smooth polished wood where his arms had so often rested, it brought her a vivid picture of the Duke, of his grey eyes, cold and almost expressionless, looking down into hers.

Now she was no longer afraid of him. He had saved Hector. He had shown her all too clearly that under that mask of proud indifference he was human – and understanding.

“Thank you, thank you,” Iona whispered into the darkness.

Then she turned and crept from the room.

10

Lady Wrexham lay on a chaise longue in the boudoir that led out of her bedroom. It was a big room, light and gay, for the panelling had been painted white and inset with silk brocade and the curtains were of rose damask. The sunshine coming through the closed windows filled the room with a golden radiance, dimming the flames that leapt high from the logs burning in the chimneypiece.

Beatrice lay near the fire, a rug of ermine covering her legs, her head against satin cushions. She was wearing a negligée of Chinese silk, fine as a spider’s web and so transparent that its soft folds concealed few of her voluptuous charms. Her golden hair, unpowdered and drawn back from her low forehead, was caught simply in a twisted coil at the nape of her neck and held only with two jewelled pins.

Even when she rested, Beatrice wore same of her jewels, and a ruby as big as a pigeon’s egg glittered on one hand, on the other there was a sapphire, somnolent as the sea on a calm day. When Beatrice moved her hinds, the ruby glittered as if she had awakened some strange fire within it, and after a time she fixed her eyes on it as if it were a crystal which would reveal to her the secrets of the future.

Beatrice’s eyelids were heavy over the Elysium blue of her eyes, yet she was not tired. She was planning and plotting but for once her scheming had no connection with her instructions from the Marquis of Severn but was solely and completely personal.

A loud knocking interrupted her reverie, but before she could ring the bell by her side and summon her maid, the door opened and Lord Niall came into the room. He was in riding dress, the polish of his high boots reflecting the sunlight as he crossed the room, the chains on his spurs making a jingling musical accompaniment to his footsteps.

“There is no sign of the damned fellow,” he announced angrily.

Beatrice’s expression had not changed at his entry. She had merely raised her eyes from the contemplation of her ring, and now without smiling she asked slowly in a voice that was curiously dull,

“Is it of such consequence that he should be recaptured?”

Lord Niall made a gesture, which seemed to combine both astonishment and exasperation.

“You know it is of the utmost import,” he replied. “The fellow was a Jacobite, there was no doubt about it, and anything might have been disclosed in an examination of him. But instead, he has vanished – disappeared into thin air. By God, if I can find out how he escaped, I would kill those who helped him with my own hands.”

Lord Niall spoke savagely and the fury in his eyes was murderous. Beatrice gave a tiny yawn.

“Why perturb yourself unduly? He may not have been as significant as you think.”

“’Pon my soul, you amaze me, Beatrice,” Lord Niall exclaimed. “That man is without doubt, an exile who has slipped back to Scotland to sow dissension and discontent, and what is more, I am convinced that under torture we should have learnt that Ewan is in league with him. It was an opportunity we may never have again, and now without any evidence of how it has been contrived the prisoner disappears overnight from the Keep. I’ll swear that Ewan must have had a hand in this, but the Devil knows how I am to prove it.”

“If the Duke let him out,” Beatrice suggested, “it must surely have been through the door or a window.”

“There are no windows,” Lord Niall said sullenly, “only arrow slits which one could not squeeze a rat through, let alone a grown man.”

“Then the door?”

“I had the key of the door.”

“You?”

For the first time since Lord Niall had come into the room Beatrice smiled, then she laughed.

“You had the key! Oh, poor Niall, I do see how exasperating it must be for you.”

“Exasperating! It’s enough to send me crazed,” Lord Niall cried.

Like a spoilt child he flung himself down on the armchair, his face sullen and puckered with discontent.

“Have you inquired of the Duke if he has any explanation of this mystery?” Beatrice asked.

“Yes, I have asked him,” Lord Niall replied, “and he admits that on his orders the prisoner was given food and wine. But to make certain that the rascal should not escape while his gaoler was absent Ewan took charge of the key. That information is of little help when I myself went down to the Keep later in the evening, inspected the prisoner, through the peephole in the door and took the key away with me.”

“It was with you all night?” Beatrice asked.

“All night,” Lord Niall answered, “and I slept alone, you will remember.” He looked at her and his face softened. “I did not sleep well,” he added, “and you know the reason.”

Beatrice met his eyes for a second, then returned to the contemplation of her ruby ring.

“We must be careful, Niall,” she said. “I have warned you more than once that you are too possessive – and too familiar in your attitude towards me.”

“Can you wonder at it,” he asked quickly, “when I ache to hold you, when my lips burn for the touch of yours?”

“I beg of you to be more careful.”

“Oh, hell, what does it matter?” Lord Niall inquired. “If only things would go right, if only I could have a modicum of good fortune on my side, I would be able to take you in my arms and let the whole damned world see me do it!

When I think that this swine that escaped might have been instrumental in incriminating Ewan, I could in sheer rage pull the whole damned place down about our ears.”

“You cannot be certain the Duke was in league with him,” Beatrice argued. “After all, you have nothing to go on, and even if he were a Jacobite, there are plenty of them about. Most of them are slinking around in fear of their lives, of danger to no one but themselves. Suppose we admit that this Hugo Thomson, or whatever he called himself, was a returned exile, what proof have we that he made contact with the Duke?”

“I have no actual proof,” Lord Niall admitted sullenly, “but I am convinced he would not have come here and risked recognition had he not wished to convey information of some sort to Ewan. He was with the girl at the hotel in Inverness – I told you how I surprised them there – and she met him again in the woods yesterday afternoon.”

“Then I imagine that it is but an ordinary case of frustrated love,” Beatrice sneered. “You are exaggerating the whole incident, Niall, and I am ready to wager there is nothing more to it than a lovers’ meeting.”

Lord Niall jumped to his feet and walked over to the window.

“You are deliberately trying to ridicule me and make me appear a fool,” he said angrily. “If you are right, why should the fellow have been in such a hurry to escape? And again, how could he have done so without the assistance of someone inside the castle? Could the girl, a stranger here without money or influence have contrived that? No, it was Ewan, I tell you, Ewan who by some authority or devilish ingenuity of which we know nothing has managed to spirit a grown man out of the Keep and leave no trace of how it was done.”

Beatrice yawned again, but her eyes were reflective.

“What does the man who was guarding him say?” she asked at length. “And can you trust him to speak the truth?”

“I would not trust my own shadow at the moment,” Lord Niall retorted. “Eachann, the man on guard, is a fool, but I have no reason to suspect him of treachery. He is full of tales of ghosts and spirits and other nonsensical bunkum. These people are ridiculously superstitious. My great, great grandfather, MacCraggan Mor, is popularly supposed by the household to have wafted the prisoner through the walls or the keyhole, though why the old gentleman should have wanted to save a Jacobite, no one can explain.”

“Does anyone pretend to have seen him do it?” Beatrice asked.

“No, of course not. It’s all talk and those dolts chatter amongst themselves until they believe anything. Eachann keeps averring that he felt the MacCraggan Mor’s presence by the Keep although he will not admit to seeing him. I had him flogged to see if I could learn more, but he swore that no one visited him the whole night, though he confesses to having fallen asleep for an hour or two.”

“And so you are back where you started,” Beatrice said lightly. “An empty cage and the bird flown.”

Lord Niall turned from the window and crossed the room to her side.

“Can you not understand why I mind so greatly?” he asked. “Can you not realise why I pin my hopes on finding that Ewan and this Jacobite were in league?”

“Do you really want me to answer that question?” Beatrice asked.

“No, because you know the answer,” he said, his tone suddenly fierce and domineering. “It is because of you that I can wait no longer, because I want you and because the mere sight of you drives me mad.”

He dropped down on his knees beside her to look close at her face, his eyes burning as if he were in a fever.

“I want you,” he repeated hoarsely. “God, how I want you! All my life I have wished to be the Duke of Arkrae, I have desired the power and prestige that the position would bring me, but now I want it for one reason and one reason alone, and that reason is you, my love – you and only you.”

He bent forward to kiss her lips, but Beatrice turned her face aside. For one moment he was still, then his hands went out to grip her bare shoulders and to draw her closer and still closer to him. With a surprising strength Beatrice thrust him away.