While Rory triumphantly located the heavy box addressed to
him among the riot of packages, Alyson produced the tiny silk bundle and handed
it to her father.
“It is not much, but it is all I had until you arrived.
Merry Christmas, Father.”
He accepted the gift without immediately opening it. “I met
your mother in this crumbling ruin, and she looked at me with those same large,
lovely eyes of yours. She had skin as fair and fine, her hair was the same dark
riot of curls, and I fell madly in love. You are much like her, but I see more
of your indomitable grandmother in you than there was in her.”
Having given her a gift of memory more precious than any
material object, he opened the small bundle.
Tears sprang to his eyes at sight of the locket, and he turned
away to wipe at his eyes. Fortunately, at that moment, Rory ripped open the
wrapping of his package, and his roar captured the attention of everyone within
hearing.
“By all that is holy, lass, how did ye know?” His joyous cry
rattled the rafters, and Alyson smiled at the way he stroked the elegant
leather bindings of the books. With trembling fingers he lifted the covers to
examine the freshly printed pages and beautifully drawn illustrations. Alyson
felt her heart being wrung dry at his rapt expression. There was the boy he had
once been, and she dropped to the floor at his feet, leaning her head against
his knee to examine the gift with him.
“Deirdre told me you were studying medicine and that you had
to leave your books behind when you left Scotland. I didn’t know what books
they were, but a friend of Deirdre’s told her what ones were most important. I
didn’t know if you would still want them, but I could think of nothing else.”
Her husband caressed her cheek as he turned the pages. “You
could have found no better gift had you read my mind, lass. I know I am truly
home now.” He set the books aside and lifted her into his arms, cradling her against
his shoulder and burying his face against her hair.
To cover this private moment, Dougall and Myra began a game
of chase with the children, with oranges as a prize. The screams and yells of
excitement returned the chatter to the room.
Warmed by Rory’s gratitude, Alyson studied his weathered
face and tugged at his auburn queue. “Myra can teach you to be a midwife,” she
informed him wickedly.
“Ach, and I thought all there was to do was lift up a
cabbage leaf.” Rory kissed her nose. He glanced toward their aristocratic
guest, who had retired to a relatively quiet corner. “What spell have you cast
over our noble visitor? He seems strangely absorbed in our small gathering.”
Reluctant to leave Rory’s arms, Alyson turned to see what he
spoke of. Her father’s expression left no doubt as to where his mind traveled. “It
is the past he is seeing, not us. He would not lie about marrying my mother,
would he?” This last she asked anxiously.
Rory hugged her, enjoying the fragrance of Alyson’s hair and
the welcoming softness of her body, wishing they were alone so he could say the
things he felt, things that he had kept buried too long to release easily.
Instead, he prattled nonsense meant to please, even while they spoke the truth.
“If your mother was anything like yourself, lass, he would need be a Bedlamite
not to marry her. Does he look a Bedlamite to you?”
Alyson laughed, kissed his cheek, and left to return her
father to the present. Rory watched her go with a hunger so deep and gnawing he
could almost cry out with the pain of it. Never before had he seen the crude
rawness of his life until his wife’s gentle beauty had invaded it. This cold
stone fortress surrounded by bare hills and icy blasts of wind was not the
setting she deserved. Ruefully Rory wondered if he should have kept her in
Barbados.
Preferring not to ruin the day with such thoughts, he sought
the packages addressed to Alyson. The silly wench had found so much enjoyment
in gifting others, it had not occurred to her that any might wish to return the
favor.
Gathering a procession of children to carry an assortment of
packages, Rory carried the larger bundles. Someone struck up a tune on a
fiddle, and other instruments materialized to add the first notes to a merry
song. Color leapt to Alyson’s cheeks once she realized she was the focus of all
this attention.
With a gallant, if somewhat overburdened bow, Rory laid his
gifts at her feet. Then, propping his arm against the massive timber over the
fireplace, he waited for her reaction.
Alyson looked from Rory leaning against the mantel to the
stack of gifts at her feet, and then to the circle of small expectant faces.
Grubby little hands clutched an assortment of oddities, all generously created
by loving hands for just this occasion. Her hands covered her lips in surprise,
and instead of opening the presents, she burst into tears.
Rory fell to his knees beside Alyson’s chair to gather his
weeping wife into his arms, shaken that he’d reduced her to tears. The earl
broke into gales of laughter.
“Just like her mother in that, she is. Never saw such a
woman for tears as Brianna. Even on our wedding night . . .” He
chuckled. “Enough said on that. She’s just happy, lad. What is it you Scots
say? Don’t ‘fash’ yourself?”
The children giggled at his attempt at a Scots dialect, and
Alyson granted them a watery smile. She stroked Rory’s hair, loosening strands
from the ties. For a brief moment, he looked into the shattering clarity of her
eyes, and happiness filled him at the joy he found there—the first heart-true
happiness he’d known since the slaughter of his family.
The contents of the packages mattered little in comparison
to the love with which they were given. Alyson exclaimed and laughed and
admired as Rory sat on the wool rug at her feet, handing her each one to open.
She cried over a lace christening gown and laughed over a rag-stuffed baby
doll. She kissed the top of Rory’s head over a lovely sapphire necklace that
matched the gown he had once bought for her, and then laughed with delight to
discover he had had another gown made of the same satin.
“It matches your eyes, lass,” he murmured when she sighed
over the silky fabric. “I like to see it on you.” That gained him another kiss.
The children’s gifts produced a kiss on each expectant face.
They went away with pockets filled with candied fruits and a ha’pence or two.
The music grew livelier, and chattering voices and laughter filled the
once-empty hall. Tray after tray of food was laid upon the long table where the
gifts had once been.
To Rory’s surprise, a final large package was spirited out
of some hiding place and laughingly dumped in his lap by Myra and Dougall. From
the conspiratorial looks exchanged, he gathered that his irrepressible wife was
involved, and he crooked an eyebrow in her direction.
“Should the laird be only giver and not receiver, my lord?”
Alyson questioned archly. “It seems I can remember being told not to look a
gift horse in the mouth, or some such faradiddle. Open it.”
Rory tore open the strings, only to find a dozen smaller
packages inside. Grinning at this extravagance, joining in the spirit of this
first Christmas celebrated since he was a child, he opened the bulkiest package
first.
Out fell a long frock coat of rich navy velvet, beautifully
embroidered in gold braid and thread on the narrow buff cuffs and along the
stiffened edges. It was a gentleman’s coat of the latest mode, fashionably
simple for ease in riding but tailored for elegance. A gift from Deirdre in
London, it suited Rory’s taste and need as well as the fashion.
Like a child, he shed his threadbare coat and donned the new
one, testing the tailoring by shifting his shoulders and standing over his
seated wife. “Do I look the part of laird now?” he asked, striking a pose with
hand over heart and head flung back. The strand of hair she’d loosened fell
across his cheek.
Alyson giggled. “If you should try on all your gifts as you
open them, you will provide a great deal of entertainment. Perhaps we ought to
retire upstairs before you open the next.” She lifted a smaller package and handed
it to him.
Their audience laughed as Rory broke the string on a
matching pair of breeches. These he held up and announced a perfect fit without
need to try them on. This announcement brought a roar of disappointment. To
appease the crowd, Alyson handed over an awkwardly wrapped bundle. Rory happily
removed the paper, revealing a black cocked hat trimmed in gold, complete with
gold pin to hold one side in place. Rory donned his new chapeau and chose the
next gift himself.
A bundle of hand-stitched linen shirts tumbled out. Alyson
leaned over to whisper that every woman in the household had worked at the
cutting and stitching of the fine fabric. In delight, Rory strode into the
crowd to buss every woman he encountered and swing her in a circle in time to
the music. By the time he made a wide swath through the room, there were red
cheeks all around and the dancing had begun in earnest.
The festivities lasted all day and into the night. Many of
the guests chose to sleep on makeshift pallets in the hall rather than to leave
in the fierce wind and darkness. Alyson retired early, leaving her father and
Rory to entertain the crowd. She was not surprised when the door opened shortly
after she sank into the softness of her feather bed.
Without any self-consciousness, Rory still wore pieces of
his new raiment mixed with the old. Over it all he had flung the illegal clan
tartan woven by the tenants of his former estate. Along with bagpipes and
weapons, the plaids had been forbidden after the ‘45 as being an incitement to
war. Rory had defiantly worn this gift since it was opened.
He sat on the side of the bed, and she slid her fingers over
his bare neck above his linen, loosening the rest of his queue until his unruly
hair fell loose over shirt and tartan. Against his dark face, the strands of
auburn and the bold plaid duplicated the image of his warrior ancestors.
“I always wondered what it would be like married to a
Highland laird,” she murmured, drawing him toward her.
Rory braced his arms on either side of her and brushed a
kiss across her welcoming lips. “Very demanding, I should say,” he whispered
against her ear. “Have you tired of the dream yet?”
“Give me another hundred years to think about it.” Wrapping
her arms about Rory’s neck as he lowered himself over her, Alyson stretched
luxuriously against his hard frame. He was her husband now. Whatever happened
in the future could never change that.
Joyously she returned his kiss and surrendered to the bliss
just his touch could produce.
***
A few miles distant, the merrymaking was of a less
innocent sort. George Drummond stretched his long booted legs before the fire,
swigged deeply of his brandy, flung the empty glass against the wall, then
plunged his hand down the bodice of the plump wench on his lap. He ignored her wince
at the sharpness of his pinch. He glanced across the hearth to his drinking
companion.
“Isn’t my gift to you a winsome wench? I thought her rather
handsome. I considered trying her myself, but I’m a generous man. Drink up,
Cranville. Think of the happy new year around the corner.”
Alex Hampton sat near the hearth, brooding. The skinny child
in his arms shivered every time he touched her. He found little pleasure in her
revulsion. He had spent the evening diligently drinking himself into a stupor.
He had succeeded only in summoning unwelcome images of a
black-haired female with innocent eyes that haunted his worst nightmares. He
could see her glaring at him with impatience as she poured scalding water down
his leg. He saw the terror turning those huge eyes to gray oceans as she leapt
from the bridge of her own ship. He saw her tiny, awkward figure drop in the
snow after a shot rang out.
She was pregnant. The bastard Scots adventurer had bedded
her and filled her with child and carried her off to these desolate hills so he
could continue his war on English aristocracy. Or so Drummond’s story went. It
seemed true enough from the evidence Hampton had seen around him.
The tenants had turned increasingly rebellious since the
Maclean had returned. Drummond’s house was nearly devoid of servants now. Simply
obtaining a meal had become a daily ritual of torture and humiliation. He ought
to leave, but he could not give up the image of that hapless female in the
Maclean’s grasp. It was his fault that she had fallen into the adventurer’s
trap, and to his horror, he had discovered he possessed a conscience.
Of course, his own empty home and bare coffers and Drummond’s
promises held an equal grip on him. There was nothing in Cornwall for him but
work, and he had never worked a day in his life. He scarcely knew how to go
about it.
Drummond’s hatred of the Maclean practically ensured the
adventurer’s death at some future date. Drummond was too clever to fail. He
only sought the right opportunity to prevent any implication of himself in the
death. Hampton had only to wait to rescue the heiress and carry her off with
him.
Only the tone of Drummond’s drunken promises had changed of
late. Through the haze of liquor, Hampton watched as his host lifted the skirts
of his reluctant playmate. Drummond spoke as if the girl weren’t there at all. Hampton
tried to concentrate on the actual words, but they faded in and out, to the
rhythm of Drummond’s crude fornication.
He squeezed the scarcely ripe breast of the child in his
arms. Through the blur of liquor and growing lust, he heard his host’s
chuckling promises.
“I wonder how that heiress of yours will feel when we get
her. Have you ever taken a pregnant woman before? Or shall we wait until she
pops the brat?”
Hampton shuddered and stumbled from the chair, carrying his “gift”
with him. He intended to be violently sick and go to bed.