Joan Wolf (12 page)

“Next week, then. I’ll get a special license.”

“All right,” she said with a semblance of her old serenity. “It might be a little hard on Nell. You’ll have to have patience with her. But she’ll get used to it.”

“We’ll have her name changed to Macdonald.” he said purposefully.

He saw her stiffen. “No,” she said quickly.

He frowned. “What do you mean ‘no’? I am her father. She should have my name.”

   “Oh, Ian,” she said helplessly, “can’t you understand? She is yours by birth and she will be yours by upbringing, too, but for the first two years of her life she was Rob’s. He gave her the protection of his name at a time when she desperately needed it. And he loved her so. I can’t do that to him, Ian. It would be like saying he never existed.’’

“But she is a Macdonald!” Centuries of tribal pride sounded in those words.

“Nevertheless, her name will remain Sedburgh.” There was an expression on his face that she did not like at all. “Besides,” she added, “if we change her name people may suspect the truth and that would not do at all.” She was sorry she had not thought of that reason first.

“If no one has guessed by now they are hardly likely to at this late date,” he said impatiently.

“Who said no one had guessed?”

He gave her a long straight look. “Who?” he asked abruptly.

“Douglas.”

“Oh, Douglas.” There was a pause. “How did he know?”

“You may not have noticed, my love,” she said softly, “but when Nell smiles she is the image of you. It is a similarity that is not going to go unrecognized. I think we can pass it off as imitation, since it is a similarity of expression and not of features. But I wouldn’t want to give any more food to the gossip mongers.’’

“I suppose so,” he said unwillingly.

   There was the sound of a door closing and voices in the hall. Then the door to the drawing room opened and Sir Donal Stewart came in. “Ian! Thank God you’ve come home. We have all been so worried about you.”

   There was a slight tinge of reproof in Sir Donal’s gentle tone. He had never totally approved of Ian. Robert Sedburgh had been much more to his taste. However, he smiled kindly and asked about the Macdonald family. Nor did he show any sign of disappointment when Frances told him about the upcoming marriage. He had long since resigned himself to the inevitable. Though he had never said anything to Frances, Sir Donal had not missed Nell’s occasional resemblance to Ian. “Well, that news should cheer your mother up immeasurably,” he said merely. “She has been longing to have a son married for years.”

“Don’t I know it,” groaned Frances. “Really, Ian, I feel like Helen of Troy meeting Hecuba every time I have to face her. It wasn’t my fault Charlie wanted to marry me. I certainly didn’t encourage him.”

Ian shouted with laughter. “Well, all will be forgiven now, I’m sure, once I tell her I’m going to do my duty by the family and marry you.”

Her green eyes mocked him. “Your nobility overwhelms me, my lord.”

“It does me too,” he replied cheerfully. Then he looked at her more carefully. “Seriously, Frances, do you think you could live with my mother? I don’t think I can ask her to leave Castle Hunter ...”

“Good God!” She sounded appalled. “Of course you can’t ask her to leave. It is her home. We will get along fine. We always did, until this business of Charlie came up.”

Twin devils danced in his eyes. “And Douglas too,” he said.

She looked startled. “Douglas? Surely she doesn’t think Douglas wants to marry me?’’

“Douglas and at least eight other men of her personal acquaintance. Not to mention the dozens more that are scattered around London.”

“She didn’t say that.”

   “She did. What is more my sister informed me that she didn’t think even Mary Queen of Scots had as many suitors as you.”

She gave him an austere look. “Then you can count yourself fortunate, my lord, to have won such a prize.”

“You always did like pirates,” he replied smoothly. “It must run in the family.”

Chapter Fifteen

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

—
ROBERT
BURNS

There was universal rejoicing among the mothers of Edinburgh and London when Frances Sedburgh married Ian Macdonald, fifth Earl of Lochaber. The ceremony took place in the small chapel at Castle Hunter, there being a marked shortage of Catholic churches in Edinburgh. The happiest mother of all—the Dowager Countess of Lochaber—was in attendance.

Lady Lochaber had embraced Ian with enthusiasm when he had told her the good news. “I am so happy, Ian! You know how I have always loved Frances.”

There was amusement in his eyes, but he held his peace. “Frances voiced the same sentiments about you, Mama,” he said merely.

Lady Lochaber shot him a look. “I know what you’re thinking, so get that smug expression off your face.”

He laughed. “She did, though. She also said that she would enjoy very much sharing a house with you. You know Frances, Mama. She meant it.”

His mother smiled a little mistily. “I know. Frances has always had a disposition as lovely as her face. She has never said an unpleasant word to me and I must admit I was not overly sympathetic about her rejection of Charlie.”

Ian grinned. “Frances saves all her bad temper for me. That is why she is such an angel to everyone else.”

“You would put the virgin herself into a temper,” Lady Lochaber said tartly. “I hope you mean to settle down and mend your ways.”

He assumed such a pious expression that his sister, who had just come into the room, giggled. “I am a ‘reformed man. Mother.” he said gravely.

“Hmm,” his mother replied. “We shall see.”

    Frances and Ian spent the two weeks of their honeymoon at the Macdonalds’ lodge on Loch Shiel. The late summer weather was warm and clear and they spent a great deal of time sailing and fishing, both activities that Ian loved and had- sorely missed. His tropical tan returned and even Frances’s skin turned a pale golden hue. They were having lunch out of a picnic basket one afternoon a few days before they were due to leave when the subject of the clearances came up. Ian had stretched himself out on the ground while Frances packed up the remains of the lunch. He propped his chin on his hands and watched her for a moment in silence. She had her hair tied up in a topknot secured by a green ribbon that matched her eyes. Her cheeks were the color of peaches from the sun. “I think I am going to pay a visit to the Duke of Argyll,” he said slowly.

She dropped the napkin she was holding. “Argyll!” she said in a startled tone. “Why, Ian?”

“Because I will need help if I am going to save Lochaber.” His voice was grim.

There was a long silence. “Charlie spent a lot of money,” she said finally.

“He did.”

“Your mother won’t like it,” she said positively. “No one will like it, Ian. Mac Caileinmhor!”

He gave a twisted smile. “You might as well be saying ‘Satan’ from your tone.”

“I might as well,” she agreed. “That is how the Campbells are regarded in Lochaber.”

He rolled over on his back, put his hands behind his head, and narrowed his eyes against the sky. “I learned one thing in Venezuela, Frances,” he said in a quiet voice. “And that is if a nation cannot unite to fight a common enemy, it is doomed. The Highlands are besieged. Argyll is one of the great Highland leaders and you tell me he is resisting the land clearances. I want to resist the land clearances. It makes sense that we work together. The past is over with; it is the present that matters now. And the future.” He paused then said neutrally, “Can you understand that, Frances?”

“Yes,” she replied slowly. “Yes, I can. But what about the rest of the clan? What will they think? It might be the best thing for the Highlands, as you say, but it won’t necessarily be the best thing for you, Ian.”

   He looked amused. “Jesus, sweetheart, when have you ever known me to do the thing that ‘was best for me?” His eyes closed. “But I wanted you to understand,” he said sleepily. “The rest of them will come around eventually.”

He went to sleep and she finished packing the basket, then sat beside him looking down at his quiet face. He had been restless last night, waking her with his tossing. He had been muttering something in Spanish that she had not been able to understand. But he was sleeping peacefully now, and she sat thankfully, listening to the gentle lapping of the loch against the shore, her eyes on his unguarded, tranquil face. They were leaving Loch Shiel for Lochaber in two days’ time and Frances realized suddenly that she did not want to go. Even Nell seemed so far removed from her now. She was too filled with Ian.

For five years she had submerged her feelings for him and now they raged like a mountain burn in springtime. She reached out and gently touched the shock of thick black hair that had fallen over his forehead. She loved him. More—she adored him. She always had. She always would. She was pleased that he wanted her to understand about his approaching the Campbells, but he needn’t have worried. She would have agreed to anything he proposed. The only time she had ever held out against him was over the matter of his joining the army. She had been wrong, she thought now, sitting on the quiet shore of Loch Shiel. Douglas had been right when he told her that she was trying to smash the very qualities in Ian that she loved.

Robert Sedburgh had been the kind of husband she had wanted Ian to be. She had come to care for Rob, but she had not grown dizzy and wild whenever he came near her. He was not like Ian. No one was like Ian.

   His lashes lifted and she found herself looking into the dark depths of his eyes. “Did you have a nice sleep?” she asked.       

“Mmm.” He held out a hand to her. “Lie down with me.”

She read correctly the look in his eyes and glanced around her nervously.

“There’s no one here,” he said in his deep, slow voice.

“What if someone should come by,” she protested, but she let him draw her down beside him. The grass was warm under her back. She felt his hands on the buttons of her dress, then his lips found her warm flesh. She quivered and he looked up. Her eyes were green as the grass she was lying on. Through the haze of passion she heard his voice. “You are so sweet, Frances. So sweet ...”

* * * *

The day they were to return to Castle Hunter, Ian woke early. They had not drawn the curtains last night, and the sun poured in the window, spilling over Frances’s ash gold hair on the pillow beside him. He turned and regarded her slender back. He kissed her ear and she burrowed deeper into the pillow. “Wake up,” he said inexorably. “We have to make an early start.”

She made noises of protest then, when his hand pulled the warm cover off her shoulder, she yelped in indignation. “Wake up,” he said again.

Reluctantly she rolled over and stared at him reproachfully. “I wouldn’t be so tired in the morning if you’d let me sleep at night.”

Ian laughed softly, low in his throat, stretched himself and yawned. “You never complain at night,” he said.

She cast her eyes down meekly. “That’s because I’m a dutiful wife.”

His dark eyes were full of laughter. “I can think of many adjectives to describe you,
mo chridhe,”
he said, “and none of them is ‘dutiful.’”

“What adjectives would you use?” she asked sweetly.

“Stubborn,” he replied. “Obstinate, self-willed, immovable ...”

“Stop!” Her eyes rested on him inscrutably. “You’re not very flattering.”

He stretched and yawned again, shoulder muscles bunching lazily with the slow movement of his arms. “I never flatter you,” he said.

“No. You don’t.”

He turned at the tone of her voice. There was a warm half-sleepy remoteness in her beauty that caused him to lean toward her. Her eyes glinted. “I thought you were in a hurry.”

“I am.” He bent and kissed her with a casual possessiveness that deepened in intensity as she responded. He raised his head and a very faint smile lifted her lips as she gazed limpidly back.

He looked amused. “You are a devil,” he said softly.

Her eyes widened. “Well, are we making an early start?” she asked innocently.

“Castle Hunter can wait,” he murmured. “I just thought of something I have to do first.”

* * * *

Ian’s mother and sister were not as amenable as Frances to his decision to seek help from the Duke of Argyll.                                                           “You cannot mean it!” Margaret exclaimed when he mentioned at dinner he was going to Inverary.

“I do,” he replied imperturbably as he cut his meat.

His mother put down her wine glass and stared at him with compressed lips. “Have you forgotten what the Campbells have done to this nation, to this family? You have been away for too long, my son, if you talk of making common cause with Mac Caileinmhor. It was the Campbells who rose up and massacred our innocent people in 1692. It was the Campbells who fought with the German king against Prince Charles in 1745. It was the Campbells who grew rich as the loyal chiefs were stripped of their lands and their power after Culloden. They are the enemy, Ian. I would rather starve than take a bite of food from the hands of a Campbell.”

Ian had listened to his mother attentively and now he put down his fork and looked at her for a moment in silence. She was dressed in a fashionable evening gown. Her hair was arranged simply but in excellent taste. She looked like the essence of civilization as she sat at the polished table in the beautifully paneled room. But she was a Highlander, Cameron by birth and Macdonald by marriage. She had tribal loyalties never dreamed of by the polished sophisticates of the south.

Well, he had them too. It was not going to be easy to go, hat in hand, to his hereditary enemy. But what he had seen in Venezuela had made a profound impression on Ian Macdonald. “I need money, Mother,” he said finally. “I have an idea that might help put Lochaber back on its feet again, economically. But to put it into practice will require more money than I can lay my hands on.”