Joan Wolf (20 page)

   “Campbell appears to have said a great many sensible things. Good God—Frances. Why even when she is furious with you, as she has been these past weeks, still she has no thought for any man else.”

“She did—once,” Ian replied in a low tone. He still refused to meet Douglas’ eyes.

There was a very long silence. “Ian. Are you jealous of Robert Sedburgh?” Douglas finally asked quietly. There was no reply and Douglas began to laugh softly. “Poor Frances,” he said, shaking his head in rueful wonder. “So history repeats itself.”

At that Ian raised his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Robert Sedburgh was jealous of you. And with far more reason, I might add.”

A flame flickered in Ian’s eyes. “Do you mean that, Douglas?”

“I do.” Douglas sighed and leaned back in his chair. “She was a good wife to him, I think. I even think she was—content. I don’t know. The only one who has ever really penetrated that unruffled serenity Frances presents to the world is you. There may have been love in her for Robert Sedburgh. But not passion. That belongs to only you.”

 He removed his eyes from the mantelpiece and looked at Ian. “She waited for you. She could have had anyone but she waited for you. You weren’t home three weeks before she married you. How could you have doubted her, Ian?”

“Christ, Douglas, I don’t know. It has been eating away at me. Why did she marry him? Why didn’t she send for me?”

“She was very, very angry with you.”

“Yes, I suppose she was.” He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “She is just as angry at me now. And she has a right to be,” he added honestly.

“What are you going to do?”

“Follow her to Edinburgh and grovel at her feet,” Ian said wryly. “Nothing less than that will do, I’m afraid.”

Douglas smiled faintly. “Just don’t bully her, Ian;”

“Bully her!” Ian rose to his intimidating height. “Didn’t I just say I planned to grovel?”

“Yes. That is what you said.”

Ian stared at him suspiciously for a minute and then moved toward the door. “You don’t have a boat at your disposal I take it?”

“No, I do not.”

Ian put his hand on the doorknob and his face was surprisingly vulnerable. “What if she won’t listen to me, Douglas? She said she would never forgive me.”

Douglas bent his head. “I don’t think there is anything Frances would not forgive you, Ian. But it seems you are the only one who cannot see that.” When he looked up his cousin had gone.

Chapter Twenty-five

Retume the hairt, hameward agane,

And byd quhair thou was wont to be

—
ALEXANDER
SCOTT

Ardkinglas had found a boat whose owner was willing to hire it out for a trip to Scotland, so they were only two days behind Frances and Margaret. Their yacht docked at Leith, one of Edinburgh’s principal ports, and Ian hired a carriage and drove directly to Lochaber House on the Canongate. Frances was not there. With a somewhat grim look about his mouth, Ian offered a night’s hospitality to James Campbell. Campbell accepted and was comfortably ensconced in the Macdonald library when Ian left for Frances’s father’s house in Charlotte Square. Here he had better luck.

“Lord Lochaber!” Sir Donal’s butler looked first surprised to see him, and then distinctly nervous.           “Is my wife here?” Ian asked uncompromisingly.

   “Well—er—yes, my lord. But I do not know if she is in at present.”

“I’ll just see for myself, thank you,” said Ian, and he shouldered his way past the butler and down the hall to the drawing room. He threw open the door and she was there, sitting empty-handed in front of the fireplace. She rose slowly, her hand holding to the back of her chair, as if for support.

“How did you get here?” The knuckles of her hand showed white.

“Ardkinglas found us a boat.” Her brows rose at the mention of Campbell’s name, but she said nothing. “I must talk to you,” he said. “Please, Frances.”

There was a brief pause and then she nodded slowly. “That will be all, Weldon, thank you.” The butler withdrew from the room, closing the door behind him, and Ian was left facing his wife. Her face was contained. There was nothing in it to tell him what she would say or do after he had spoken. He began slowly. “The last time we met in this room there was five years of separation between us. The gap, now, seems so much wider.”

“Yes,” she said merely.

He took a deep breath. “Frances. I’ve come to beg you to forgive me. I don’t know what got into me to make me say such things to you.” Her face never changed and he continued, in a rush, bitterly, “No, that’s not true. I do know what was wrong with me. I was jealous.”

“Jealous?” She sounded unbelieving.

“Yes. I thought you were in love with Ardkinglas.”

“You thought? ...” Anger began to sparkle in her eyes. “Were you out of your mind?”

“Yes,” he replied somberly. “I rather think I was.”

“And what disabused you of this extremely odd notion?” she said coldly.

“Ardkinglas did. He told me he wanted to marry Maggie.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes, of course,” he replied impatiently. “What possible objection could I have to Ardkinglas?”

“Well, you were perfectly beastly to him,” she said warmly.

“I know, I know.” He ran his hand through his thick hair. “But don’t you see, Frances, I thought it was you he was interested in? He seemed to be constantly around you. Everywhere I went I was tripping over him. And you wouldn’t tell me why you were suddenly so interested in him, why you spent so much time in conversation with him.” His dark eyes were intent on her face. “Men have been falling in love with you for years. You can’t blame me for not seeing he was after Maggie.”

“You never before suspected
me,”
she said carefully.

He paced to the window and back, his long, lion’s prowl of a walk making the room seem like a cage. He stopped at the writing desk and stared with interest at the inkwell. “It wasn’t just Ardkinglas,” he said in such a low voice that she had to strain to hear him.

“I see.” She sat back down in her chair. “You had better tell me the whole.”

“It is Sedburgh,” he said in the same low voice.

She was frowning now, her eyes fixed on his down-looking face. “What do you mean, Ian? Surely you haven’t been jealous of Rob?”

He didn’t answer, but the flicker of a muscle in his cheek betrayed him.

“But he has been dead for two years!” she said in astonishment.

“Has he been, Frances? To you?”

“Ian!”

At that he turned to look at her. “Why else won’t you let Nell give up his name?” As she stared at him, speechless, he went on doggedly. “Why else did you marry him, Frances?”

The room was filled with an aching silence then Frances said, “I told you why I married him. Because of Nell.”

“You should have sent for me,” he replied stubbornly.

“Yes.” She rose from her chair and went to poke for a minute at the fire. She sat back down again on the sofa and said quite simply, as if very tired, “The truth is, Ian, I married him to spite you.”

“What?”

“Yes. It is not something I’m proud of but it is the truth.” She met his eyes and her own were full of pain. “I was jealous too. I couldn’t forgive you for not putting me first, for needing something else besides me. And so when I found out I was pregnant, I took my revenge.”

“Frances.” He came across the room slowly and dropped down on one knee beside her, his gaze fixed intently on her face. Her eyes looked gray and cloudy.

“You wanted to know why I didn’t send for you?” She spoke with bitter truth. “Well that is the reason.” She swallowed. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t let me change Nell’s name?” he asked gently. “Because you still haven’t forgiven me?”

“No!” she cried in distress. “You don’t understand.”

He sat down beside her on the sofa. “Tell me, then.”

“Rob was a wonderful man, Ian,” she said in an aching voice. “A strong, gentle, fine man. He loved me. He would have done anything for me. And I had so little left to give him.”

As he listened to her Ian felt as if the hard, hurting knot that had lodged within him for so long was slowly dissolving.

“He deserved so much more than he ever got from me,” she was saying. “I couldn’t even give him a child.”

A stab of fierce pride went through him. He had gotten her with child twice. She lifted her face to him and there were tears on it. “That was why I couldn’t take Nell from him. He loved her so. She was the only real thing I ever gave him. And even she belongs to you.”

He put his arms around her. “Don’t cry
, mo chridhe.
I understand.”

“I tried to make him happy,” she sobbed into his shoulder.

“Sweetheart, I am so sorry.” His lips were in her hair. “I have been so stupid.”

She shook her head. “No. It was all my fault. My dreadful temper. I never should have married him. I knew that and I did it anyway.”

“Shh, It’s all right now.”

“Then you came back,” she said in muffled tones. “And I was so happy. At Loch Shiel and at Castle Hunter. Then you changed ...”

“I know.” He held her closer. “I’m so sorry. I said such unforgivable things to you. I could tear my tongue out.” She merely shook her head and sobbed harder. He loosened his hold on her after a little and said with a hint of amusement in his voice, “I think we’ve played this scene before. How many more times do you want me to say I’m sorry?”

The sobbing slowed. Finally she said with a watery chuckle, “I always cry a lot when I’m pregnant.”

“For nine months?” he said in mock horror.

She laughed and sat up. “No. It’s always worse at the beginning.” She took the handkerchief he offered and began mopping up. When she had finished she turned to look at him and what she saw on his face made her feel suddenly weak.

“I love you, Frances. There has never been anyone else for me. There never will be. Will you come back to me? We’ll put these weeks in London behind us and go back to what we had at Loch Shiel. Can you do that?”

She looked at him with misty eyes. “Oh, Ian. I’ll do anything you want. You know that.”

His dark face lit with his blazing smile. “The amazing thing, Frances, is that you really believe that.”

“Of course I do!” she said indignantly. “What do you mean?” But he shook his head and wouldn’t answer.

* * * *

When Sir Donal came home with Nell his butler informed him quietly that Lord Lochaber had arrived and was in the drawing room with Lady Lochaber. Sir Donal sent Nell upstairs and walked cautiously to the door of the room. He heard Frances crying and put his hand on the doorknob. Then came Ian’s voice, deep and gentle with a note in it that Sir Donal had never heard before. He hesitated, then took his hand away and went instead to his library.

   Fifteen minutes later Nell came back downstairs and went to the drawing room to look for her mother. She opened the door and stood for a minute in stunned surprise. Ian was sitting in her grandfather’s big chair and Frances was on his lap. His lips were next to her ear and he was murmuring to her in Gaelic. Frances looked absolutely beautiful. “Mama!” said Nell. “Why are you sitting on Dada’s lap?”

The two adults started at her voice and after a moment Frances said, “It’s all right, darling. Dada and I have made up our quarrel.” She tried to get up but a strong arm held her down.

“Come join us, sweetheart,” said Ian and Nell trotted over and unselfconsciously climbed up on the chair and squeezed herself in beside Frances on Ian’s lap.

“This is nice,” she said contentedly. “I don’t like it when you fight.”

“We’ve decided we don’t either,” replied Ian gravely. “We’re going to try to be better in future.”

“If you try your hardest you will always succeed,” said Nell, parroting one of her mother’s favorite child-rearing maxims. Frances began to laugh and Nell squirmed around to look at her. “That’s what you always say to me, Mama.”

“I know, darling.” Frances rested her head contentedly against Ian’s hard upper arm. “And it’s the truth. I promise.”

Copyright © 1981 by Joan Wolf

Originally published by Signet (ISBN 0451112733)

Electronically published in 2007 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.