Island of the Swans (5 page)

S
EPTEMBER
1763

S
IMON
F
RASER SHIFTED HIS MASSIVE BULK UNCOMFORTABLY IN HIS
favorite chair. He was unaccustomed to entertaining female visitors in his down-at-the-heels Edinburgh townhouse, save for the occasional wench whom he spirited up the servants’ stairs to his private bedchamber. In any event, he was certainly not used to serving tea.

“A drop of brandy, perhaps, to ward off the chill, your ladyship?” he inquired hopefully.

“I find it quite warm for a September morn, Master Simon,” Magdalene Maxwell replied evenly. Her estranged husband’s perpetual drunkenness had given her a horror of spirits, and she nodded in the direction of a chipped teapot and cracked cup that sat on a scratched silver tray. “A bit of that tea would serve splendidly. You are so kind to let me impose upon you this way.”

She settled as comfortably as she could on the frayed, wing-backed chair provided her by her host. A brief survey of the other tattered furnishings in Colonel Fraser’s abode told her that the Master of Lovat was as strapped for funds as she was.

“Now that you have returned to us from the campaign against those wicked Frenchmen who are stirring up such trouble among the savages in America,” she commented, flashing her most charming smile, “I’m sure you agree with my earlier missive to you that we must attend to a tempest brewing right here in our own midst.”

Simon Fraser nursed his brandy and considered his guest closely. He’d tossed aside her ladyship’s letter hinting at her concern over the close friendship that had developed between his ward Thomas Fraser and that madcap Jane Maxwell. However, in the wilds of Canada, he’d been worried about saving his own scalp, not some Scottish chit’s hymen. That the brat had lost a finger through her own folly was none of his affair, and under no circumstances was Thomas ever going to be permitted to seek the penniless saucebox’s disfigured hand in marriage.

Observing Lady Maxwell’s vague discomfort in his dilapidated sitting room, he could sense his visitor was groping for a delicate way of phrasing her next words. Her eyes focused above his head on the paint peeling from the parlor walls.

“I have been quite firm with Jane these last years, but I am sure you agree that we must now execute our duty as guardians,” she averred, “and call a complete halt to the free and childish association that’s prevailed between Thomas and Jane.”

Simon noted she had the decency to blush slightly as she continued.

“They are approaching an age when the merest misstep could be disastrous… and could lead to… complications, which neither of us would welcome.”

Simon remained silent, pouring himself another two fingers of the bracing amber liquid he much preferred to lesser stimulants. As he settled back in his chair, the epaulets of his uniform nearly touched the plump lobes of his oversized ears. He looked at his visitor steadily for a moment longer and began to speak.

“My dear Lady Maxwell,” he said, “I am but a rough, unmannered soldier, late of the wilds of Canada and the 78th Fraser Highlanders. I am unused to such sitting room niceties. Let us, pray, be frank with one another.”

Lady Maxwell looked at him warily, but didn’t interrupt.

“I am well aware that you are a woman of shrewd judgment and tenacity, so let us put our cards on the table, shall we?”

Magdalene Maxwell nodded, her dark eyes narrowing.

“We each have in our care young wards whose futures we feel duty bound to protect,” Simon Fraser continued. “Both Thomas and Jane are bairns pleasing to the eye, with wit and spirit. Sadly, the fates thus far have provided them little else for their comfort and future prospects. In other circumstances, a union between our two families might well be thought advantageous.”

He noted with satisfaction that Lady Maxwell nodded in polite agreement.

“It is, therefore, imperative,” he continued, “if the ample gifts Jane and Thomas
do
possess are to be realized to the benefit both of themselves and of us, who have nurtured them so long, that steps be taken to prevent the natural order of things from reaching fruition.”

The veteran campaigner paused for breath and cocked his head to one side.

“Are we in agreement thus far?” he asked.

“Thus far,” affirmed Lady Maxwell, a relieved and knowing smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “Pray continue. What action do you recommend?”

“Ah…” Simon said, sipping his brandy slowly, pleased that he had accurately guessed the purpose behind Lady Maxwell’s uncharacteristic neighborliness. Although Thomas and Jane were mere striplings, he, too, had noted that since his recent return from the French and Indian campaigns, the two kept constant company whenever Lady Maxwell’s back was turned. For his part, Simon was equally anxious to prevent such adolescent attachment from one day blossoming into an unsuitable match, or worse, a bairn in the lass’s belly, which would then force his hand. Sir William Maxwell’s brat will be lucky if she has thruppence for a dowry, he mused.

Simon set down his brandy snifter and licked his lips. He would certainly see to it that Thomas and the other young Fraser bucks would repay his many kindnesses by selecting brides whose purses would advance the Fraser cause at court. Thus, one day, the lads would be awarded the honors due them as men in the inner circle of Simon Fraser,
Baron
Lovat.

I will have my lands and titles restored!
he thought to himself with grim determination.
And so may Thomas, if he marries properly!

It might take five years for George III to right the wrong perpetrated by the king’s grandfather against Simon the Fox and Sir Thomas Fraser of Struy after Prince Charlie’s fiasco on the battlefield… it might take ten. Simon could wait.

“I think, m’lady,” Simon continued aloud, “I should acquaint you with plans already underway to remove my ward to the Highlands very soon. He shall there assist my herdsman while learning to be handy with sword and firearms to ready him for army life when he comes of age. ’Tis the only route to advancement open to the poor boy, since God knows I have barely the means to keep this shabby abode in Edinburgh and to till the few acres left to me in the Highlands.”

“To be sure,” murmured Lady Maxwell in a patently false display of sympathy for the failed Stuart Cause, which Simon knew full well the Protestant Lowlander had always disdained. “And I support your hopes the lad will make a dashing officer someday—all the more likely to snare an heiress with his good looks and kind heart.”

Simon was surprised by Lady Maxwell’s boldness. Her words proved, however, that she understood his current plans for Thomas, which were quite similar, he supposed, to those she had plotted for that little polecat, Jane. Well, good luck to the lad who fell into this maternal trap.

“I thought, sir,” Lady Maxwell said with characteristic Lowland candor, “that Clan Fraser and all others who joined the Rebellion of Forty-five were still forbidden to own or carry arms, or even play the bagpipes. How will you advance young Thomas in these arts, given these restrictions?”

“These skills will be acquired
discreetly
, madam,” he replied testily, “and, as I am sure you understand full well, it may be some time before I can afford to purchase the lad a fair Commission in another regiment, as the Fraser Highlanders were disbanded after the Peace. Thomas will remain in the north till this be accomplished, however… you have my word on that!”

“A most sensible plan,” Lady Maxwell replied soothingly, calculating that Simon’s scheme would take at least a year or two to complete, by which time Jane would be fifteen and, she hoped, betrothed to the richest man in Edinburgh—whoever that might be. “And generous it ’tis,” she added for good measure, “to provide for the lad out of the portion left to you.”

She set down her teacup to signify their interview was over. Relief filled her heart.
There were no heights a beautiful woman could not scale, if she made the correct choices in life
, thought Magdalene, seeing before her Jane’s perfect oval face with its gently arched brows and high cheek bones.
Who had learned that lesson better than Magdalene herself?
she reflected bitterly. She recalled the day so many years earlier when she had succumbed to the charms of a hot-blooded, but ineffectual baronet with nothing but unproductive, marshy lands in Galloway and a disagreeable penchant for strong spirits.

“’Tis settled, then, to both our good accounts,” she said briskly, offering her hand at the door to the stocky soldier who seemed at a loss as to what to do with it.

“Aye, m’lady,” answered Simon, bowing awkwardly in the direction of the soft, white flesh extended toward his lips. “’Tis settled, to be sure.”

The narrow path paralleled the River Farrar, which separated Erchless from Struy Forest. Rising on a gentle slope to the right of Simon and Thomas was Culligran Wood, and behind it, the forbidding peaks of Cam Ban and Corry Deanie. The mountains were still capped in winter snow, although the riverbanks were inundated with icy water from the heavy spring thaw.

“To your left, laddie, as far as the eye can behold, was your land… Fraser of Struy territory,” Simon said quietly, pulling on his horse’s reins while gesturing to the south.

Thomas gazed pensively toward the thickly forested ridge that eventually tapered off into stark, steep, treeless mountains on the other side of the valley. Their summits, too, were blanketed in snow. Despite its being May, there was a biting wind, made even colder by dark, rain-filled clouds hovering overhead. A forlorn feeling permeated the entire region, intensified by the sight of the pinched, hungry faces Thomas and Simon had encountered when they rode through the village of Struy earlier in the day. Thomas had had his first glimpse of the fine manor house, just down the road, that his parents had called home before the Rebellion of ’45. Now it stood on a weed-strewn hill, windowless and bereft of any sign of life. The garden and orchards were likewise overrun as the result of years of neglect.

The past year and a half had been filled with many such desolate sights. Thomas had been given an extensive tour of the Highlands by his godfather, who pointed out scene after scene of ruined cottages and manor houses, burnt to the ground by the Duke of Cumberland’s men following the Crown’s triumph at the Battle of Culloden. Since that day, for these eighteen years, the kilt was forbidden unless worn in a Kings regiment, the pipes were banned as a “weapon of war,” and no Highlander could carry arms, not even a dirk, by order of the Crown.

But, for a year now, Simon had been secretly drilling his godson in the manly arts of firearms at sessions held high in the hills, far from prying eyes that might report such illegal activities to Crown authorities. He sent Thomas with his most trusted men high on the moors for several months to master the skill of sheepherding. Out of earshot, Thomas was allowed to practice with a genuine set of bagpipes whose sheepskin airbag was clothed in the outlawed bark brown Fraser hunting tartan. The young man, who had grown nine inches in eighteen months, reveled in being allowed to participate in such forbidden activities at the behest of his elders, and he often thought how much Jane Maxwell would enjoy being part of such clandestine occupations.

His meandering recollections of his time spent in the Highlands were interrupted when Simon pointed toward yet another barren peak dusted with a thick mantel of snow.

“We’re not far from the cave that sheltered the Bonnie Prince before his final rendezvous at Loch nan Uamh with
L’Heureux
, which took him back to France,” his godfather added solemnly.

“And where did my parents live after my father was released from prison?” Thomas asked carefully, his glance still fixed on the brooding forest stretching in a dark green line across Strathglass.

“That’s what I’ve come here to show you,” Simon said gruffly, digging his boot into the scrawny sides of his Highland pony that had suffered deprivation along with his rider.

The exhausted horses soon forded the stream and skirted Culligran Falls. For another half hour, their mounts stumbled over rocks and around boulders until the two riders crossed a spongy moor that brought them to a one-room crofter’s cottage, which lacked even a thatched roof and stood out starkly against the landscape. Simon dismounted and gestured for Thomas to do the same. The lad’s newly attained six-foot stature forced him to duck in order to pass through the low door that led into the stone hut. There was a startled rustle of wings as a grouse scurried to the window ledge of the gloomy chamber and escaped outside.

There was nothing to see, really, for the miserable cottage had long been stripped of anything of value, if anything of value had ever been housed within its thick stone walls to begin with.

“They both died on a bed that was pushed against that wall,” Simon said somberly, pointing toward a corner of the room graced only with a dirt floor. “First Sir Thomas, a few weeks before you were born, and then your mother, Marguerite, right after she… froze to death or starved, they told me. I found you in her arms over there, barely mewing, you were.” Simon turned his back to Thomas and his voice sounded hoarse. “I found a local lass to wet-nurse you, or you’d have died along with your kin, and that’s for sure.” Simon’s voice harsh with emotion. “You come from fine stock, laddie. Your da was the best friend a man could have, and your mother, a rare beauty, with her wine-colored tresses and loving ways.”