So in Love (14 page)

He assumed responsibility easily and was a born leader. His only mistake was in occasionally attempting to lead his brothers, all of whom were possessed of the same strong personality.

“Margaret is about,” Alisdair said, scanning the glen for signs of his niece.

“I know where she is,” Douglas said, looking ahead. Across the land bridge that connected the promontory of Gilmuir to the glen was a hill they called Iseabal’s Knoll. Over the years a path had been carved in the glen and through the forest and he took it now, bidding Alisdair farewell for a time.

A small green scarf had been wrapped around a sapling,
a clue that he was correct in assuming Margaret was there. His mother had often spoken of this hill, telling stories of how his great-uncle had dared the English by playing his pipes here.

The hill had been the first place he’d brought Margaret on their very first trip to Gilmuir. She’d been two years old, still too thin but healthy. He’d held her up so that she could see everything in front of her. “It’s Gilmuir, Meggie. It belongs to you, and to every MacRae.”

Although Alisdair had rebuilt the fortress, using a substantial portion of the legacy from his English inheritance to do so, he had insisted on altering the ownership of Gilmuir after the memorial service for their parents. The brothers had signed the papers in front of a solicitor, taking ownership of a share of the ancestral estate. Despite the fact that each of them had created homes in other parts of Scotland, they were now linked to Gilmuir legally.

The forest was shadowed even though it was noon and the sun directly overhead. The cool air was redolent with the heavy, sharp scent of decaying leaves and musty earth. Moss growing on one side of a few sapling trunks attested to the fact that it had been a damp spring.

He continued upward, the stillness of the forest a balm to his spirit. He found himself relaxing, the concerns he brought with him from Edinburgh being lost in the greater expanse of nature around him.

He took a deep breath and felt some of the tension leave him. Being at Gilmuir relaxed him, or perhaps it was only that he was going to see Margaret soon. This year she’d begged to be able to spend some extra time with Mary and Hamish and he’d allowed her a three-week visit before the Gathering began. His life, carefully proscribed, had continued without her, but there was something missing in Edinburgh, some sense of happiness, of rightness.

It was not strictly for Margaret that he worked so hard as
much as it was his sense of himself. He had obligations, true, but his driving ambition urged him to continue thinking, advancing, and conquering one obstacle after another. Even when he had sailed with Hamish, acting as captain aboard his brother’s ship, he’d pushed himself to learn all that he could. Now Douglas owned a fleet of MacRae-built vessels.

There were times, like now, with the journey to Gilmuir fresh in his mind, and the glint of the sea visible through the towering pines, that he still yearned to be at sea. When Margaret was three, however, he’d traded living aboard ship with a rolling deck, imminent threats of fierce storms, or becalmed seas for a more conventional existence in Edinburgh.

He had created a happy life for himself and his daughter, at least until he’d seen Jeanne du Marchand again.

Douglas stopped, looked around him as if to ascertain that only the squirrels and foxes and other feral creatures were witness to his confusion. There she was again, in the midst of his mind. Just when he thought himself free of her, she had popped in, diverting his thoughts, leading him from relaxation to irritation.

Go away, Jeanne.

He could almost see her in the filtered sunlight. She was standing there, an ethereal figure, a ghost of his imagination. She held out one hand as if to entreat him to follow her. Where? To perdition, no doubt.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, the better to banish her. Margaret was waiting.

Swiftly, he began walking again, cutting across the path to a less-well-known trail that led past a shadowed cave to his left. The cave, too, featured prominently in his parents’ tales.

He found it difficult to remember that an English fort had stood beside Gilmuir on the promontory. But it had
been picked clean, dismantled brick by brick after the English had left MacRae land. Traces of it weren’t even visible anymore, since Alisdair had constructed part of the new Gilmuir over the ruins.

That’s what he should do with his life—build something on the ruins of it. Perhaps he should marry. Find a woman who suited both him and Margaret and create a new existence, one not dependent upon memory.

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a flicker of material. Or a ghost again?

Go away, Jeanne. Take your sad eyes and hint of mystery and leave me alone.

Pushing through the thick growth of trees, he emerged at the top of the hill. Here, he’d been told, a large pine had once stood. Over the years, the earth had been flattened by wind and rain and was now covered in a thick layer of pine needles.

She wasn’t there, but he knew she was nearby. He heard a giggle and smiled. Margaret never walked when she could run, and never simply smiled when she could laugh. She was so filled with life that Douglas felt energized in her presence.

“Papa!” Suddenly she was hurtling herself toward him. He opened his arms and grabbed her and was enveloped at the same time in a smothering embrace, her arms wrapped around his neck, her warm cheek pressed against his. She squeezed tightly as if to never let him go.

A moment later she pulled back and glared at him accusingly. “You took so very long to get here.”

“I took the right amount of time, Meggie,” he said. “In fact, I’m early.”

She frowned at him, her entire face revealing her displeasure. Her mother’s beauty was in the shape of her nose and the curve of her chin. She had Jeanne’s hands, long-
fingered and elegant even though her nails were filled with dirt at the moment.

Margaret was, despite the resemblance to either of her parents, quintessentially herself.

“Yes, but it just seemed so very long. You cannot measure how long something
seems,
Papa.”

He set her down on the ground and she immediately placed her hand in his. She was taller than most girls her age, a fact that occasionally caused her some discomfort.

“It’s because I was a picky eater as a baby,” he’d heard her say once to a group of teasing cousins. “They fed me and fed me and fed me. I couldn’t help but grow tall, could I?”

“It seemed long for me, too,” he said now. “Have you enjoyed your summer?”

She looked at him, eyes shining. “Oh, yes, Papa, it’s been the most wondrous time.”

Suddenly she reminded him of the girl he’d known in Paris. Jeanne had such vivacity, so much enthusiasm for life. Where had that personality gone? What had life done to Jeanne that had subdued her so very much?

He remembered the scars on her back, and her words about the convent.

I did something that earned my father’s displeasure.

Had the Comte discovered her actions? Had he, too, been sickened by what Jeanne had done?

He wanted to hate her for being complex when she should have been uncomplicatedly evil. He wanted to hate her for piercing the armor of his self-restraint, and his façade of indifference. He wanted to hate her for weeping, for being scarred, for her aura of sorrow, for his unexpected and unwanted curiosity about those missing ten years. Above all, he wanted to hate her for the fact that she made him care.

“It feels like we’re on the edge of the world,” Margaret said, staring out at the vista before them.

Her hand tightened within his and he felt a surge of protectiveness for her. When he was little more than a child himself, he had held her within his arms, feeling revulsion for what her mother had done. Now that revulsion was directed at himself. He had made love tenderly and with great passion to a woman who had cared so little for her own child that she had sent her to her death.

Now that child looked up at him worshipfully, confident that he could order her world and make everything right for her.

He would die trying.

“It does feel as if we’re on the edge of the world, doesn’t it?” he said. “Or at least the only world that matters.”

“I wish we might be able to live here forever,” Margaret said, her voice holding a note of wistfulness.

“Unfortunately, we cannot.”

She nodded quickly. “Because your business is in Edinburgh.”

“And our home, don’t forget that.”

“But couldn’t you build something here?” Her glance encompassed the far glen. The prosperous village seemed to expand up the hillside every year. The road leading to Inverness had once only been a track but was now paved. Upward of two hundred people lived at Gilmuir, a great many of them employed at the shipyards.

“I’m sorry, Meggie,” he said. “But I have business in Edinburgh.”

“You always have business in Edinburgh,” she said, sighing deeply to let him know she wasn’t pleased.

He hid his smile.

“I’d like to come and see Gilmuir in winter, Papa. Robbie says the ice hangs all over the trees and the forest looks magical. I want to come back then. Could we, please?”

It was the first time she’d ever expressed a desire to return to Gilmuir in the winter.

“The winds are cold and bitter in winter,” he said, having made the journey more than once.

“I don’t care. The fireplaces at Gilmuir are huge. They’ll keep us warm.”

“We’ll see,” he said and she sighed again, sending him an admonitory glance.

He grinned, placed his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up until they were eye level. He kissed her soundly on the nose, his heart lighting at the sight of her grin.

“Do try, Papa,” she said somberly. She tilted her head back and studied him, and in that instant he saw her mother in the child’s face.

Go away, Jeanne.

The ghost in his mind only smiled.

Jeanne dressed and, as she usually did, rearranged her neckline so that her mother’s pendant wouldn’t show. Her hand flattened against the base of her throat as she remembered that she’d left it behind. Although not an especially pretty piece of jewelry, it was a last link to her mother, the last link to Vallans, and perhaps even to her past. As much as she valued it, however, she wouldn’t be so foolish as to return to the Hartley home, not when she’d taken such pains to escape it.

At breakfast the staff was in their usual talkative mood, the conversation turning, as it usually did, to Douglas and Margaret.

“When do you expect them to return?” Jeanne asked when, one by one, the staff dispersed. Her heart beat quicker as she waited for Betty to answer.

“The Gathering lasts a month, so they’ll be back then. Mr. Douglas never takes more time away from his busi
ness. Even though,” she added, “Miss Margaret often stays longer. This year, for example, she went with Mr. Hamish and his wife three weeks early. Very close with them, she is.

“The time will pass quickly enough, you’ll see,” Betty said, as if she knew how discomfited Jeanne was by that information. “Cook is practicing some new recipes for Miss Margaret and I’m busy with my own set of errands. One day they’ll be back and you’ll wonder where the time went.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jeanne asked, looking around the immaculate kitchen. Even at the convent she’d been given tasks to accomplish. The unoccupied hours since Douglas had left had given her too much time to think about him.

“Oh, no, miss, we have it all in hand. You should enjoy your free hours. There’s a sweet little park on the corner. You might wish to take a walk and enjoy the day. I myself have plans to do the very same. Have you ever noticed that the air is so much clearer after a storm?”

Jeanne watched as Betty wiped down the already spotless table, washed the rag, and spread it out to dry. “Would you be going toward town?” she asked. “If so, I have a favor to ask.”

Betty glanced at her curiously. “What is it, miss?”

“I’ve left my locket where I used to work. I need someone to retrieve it for me.”

“Used to work?”

Jeanne clasped her hands before her, wondering if it was a wise thing to mention the necklace. How much else would she have to divulge? “I was employed as a governess to Robert Hartley’s oldest child.”

“I had no idea you’d been in service here in Edinburgh,” Betty said. The other woman had perfected the art of revealing nothing. Her round face was carefully devoid of expression and her eyes held no emotion at all. “Mr. Douglas only told us you were from France.”

Jeanne took refuge in silence. Betty had been friendly to her from the first, but there was a decided chill to the air now as she twisted the rag she’d just smoothed across the work surface.

“You’ve the time to go yourself if you wish, miss.”

Jeanne stood and walked to the window. A series of shelves stretched across the view of the tiny garden. For a moment neither woman spoke, but the interval wasn’t peaceful. Instead, the silence seemed to hum with questions.

“I’d rather not return to the Hartley home,” Jeanne said finally.

Betty glanced at her sharply.

Jeanne took a deep breath and faced the other woman. “I had no choice but to leave, Betty. Or perhaps I did,” Jeanne corrected. “I chose to leave rather than to stay under difficult circumstances.”

“And what circumstances would those be?” Betty’s eyes narrowed.

“Is that important?”

Betty didn’t glance away. “Are these circumstances any better, miss?”

In that moment Jeanne realized there were no secrets in this household. Not only did the servants probably know that she had shared Douglas’s bed but they’d given their tacit approval. At least, until this moment.

She felt her cheeks warm under Betty’s continued scrutiny. Finally, Jeanne answered her. “I will welcome a man to my bed or refuse him, Betty. It is my decision and mine alone. I will not be forced into it.” And that was it, wasn’t it? Not whether or not she was considered virtuous, but whether it was her own choice. For years, she’d had that luxury taken from her. She had vowed never to be a prisoner again, even if it was only of the will.