White Regency 03 - White Knight (33 page)

When he realized she was there, he let out
a wail.

Grace looked around the kitchen, wondering
why he had been left unattended. “Deirdre?” she called but received
no response. What if he were hungry, she thought. What if he needed a changing?

Grace left the kitchen and walked out into
the courtyard, searching for someone, anyone, to tell her what had happened.
Inside the kitchen, Iain’s cries grew louder.

“Deirdre!” she called out.
“Seonag!”

No one came in response to her summons.
Behind her, Iain had begun to scream.

“Is anyone here?” she called,
shouting up to the castle
towers, but again no
response. Her heart was pounding inside her chest as she began to truly fear
something terrible had happened. Realizing that no one was coming, Grace
quickly retraced her steps to the kitchen. Iain had worked himself into a
wailing fury, his tiny face now a bright red. Grace knew a moment of panic—she
hadn’t the faintest idea what she should do. She had such little experience
with babies. She quickly grew frightened.

“Deirdre, please—” Her voice
cracked with her fear. “Where are you? I need your help in here.
Please!”

She leaned over the cradle, hoping to
quiet the infant’s cries. “Shhh, everything is all right, Iain. I’m sure
your momma or Aunt Deirdre will be back very soon.”

Please let them come back very soon.

But Iain only cried all the louder, and
soon was hiccuping harshly on his screams.

In a full panic now, Grace did the only
thing she could think of. She reached inside the cradle and took, the infant up
to her. The moment he felt the warmth of her body, Iain quieted. Slowly Grace
began to rock him in her arms the way she had seen Seonag do so many times.

By the time Christian returned, Grace had
come to realize exactly what he had done. In the weeks since losing their
child, Grace had found herself unwilling to look on the face of a child without
feeling a sickness in her stomach. If she’d ever had to walk near Iain’s
cradle, she would take another direction so as to avoid going near him. She
purposely avoided the nursery that had been set up off the great hall, choosing
instead to take the south stairs to her bedchamber.

And because of this, Christian had
arranged for her to be left alone with Iain, knowing she would be forced to put
aside her hopelessness to tend to him.

Grace wasn’t angry at what he had done and
she told him so when he came slowly into the kitchen where she had just placed
the sleeping Iain in his cradle.

When she saw him, saw the anxiety on his
face, she could only admonish herself for how she had treated him. “I am
so sorry, Christian. I have been terrible to you and—”

“Shh.” He drew her into his
arms, burying his face in her hair. “I am just relieved to see Deirdre’s
idea proved
a sound one. She said it had taken much the same
action for her to come to terms with her own such loss. Still, I worried you
would resent me for having allowed this.”

Grace shook her head. “How could I
ever resent you for giving me back what I thought forever lost? I can only be
grateful to you, Christian, for what you have done. In bringing me to this, you
have given me back my heart.”

Christian felt a well of emotion surge up
inside of him—happiness, gratitude, relief, and for the first time in nearly a
month, he smiled down into the eyes of the woman he loved more than life,
thanking the heavens, the saints, and even Cliodna for giving her back to him.

“No, Grace, it is you who have given
me my heart.”

And then slowly, he lowered his mouth to
hers.

Summer had given way to autumn, burnishing
the Highlands in splashes of orange and gold. As was the custom, the festivities
for the harvest day ceilidh would begin at dusk after the day’s tasks had been
seen to and the animals had been fed and bedded down for the night.

Earlier that morning, on the bluff
overlooking the loch, the sun had cast its dawning light on a ceremony that had
joined Andrew and Liza, and Alastair and Flora in marriage. For luck, the
brides had carried tufts of white heather in their bridal bouquets and when the
vows had been exchanged, there was a rush by the young men in the company to
get the first kiss of the newly wedded wives.

Afterward, as the people of Skynegal made
their way back to the castle, they’d each placed a stone upon a cairn built to
commemorate the day. Christian and Grace, the laird and his lady, had placed
the first two stones, followed after by the newly wedded couples, and then the
others. When the last stone had been set by one of the children whom Christian
had lifted up to reach it, the cairn had stood nearly eight feet tall. The
company had cheered
Nis!
Nis! Nis!
while the morning sun
struggled through the mist and the birds of Cliodna soared overhead, calling
out their legendary song.

The mood of celebration had continued
throughout the day and with the coming of night’s shadows, rush torches had
been lit about the courtyard, while small
cruisgeans,
or crusie lamps,
shone from the various wooden tables that were set out with food and drink. The
children had gathered in a small circle, sucking on
sweet aniseed gundy
sticks, eyes wide as they listened to McGee telling one of the many adventures
of Rob Roy, told to him by his father who’d heard them from his father before.
The elder tenants watched on, reminiscing about their own carefree days of
youth while McFee and several of his contemporaries assembled at the opposite end
of the courtyard, readying to play upon a motley orchestra of fiddles, pipes,
and drums.

The darker the night sky grew, the more
spirited the gathering became. By the time the moon was high and full above
them, everyone had eaten their fill, the ale and whiskey were flowing freely,
and a lively circle of dancers were hopping and turning about the courtyard to
the hoots and whistles of those clapping their hands.

High upon the near tower, watching down on
the merriment below, were the laird and his lady. It was a chill night and they
were each dressed in the Skynegal tartan. Christian stood with his arms wrapped
protectively around Grace, her head tucked snugly beneath his chin as they
looked out onto the scene in the courtyard.

It had been a day filled with
celebrations, and there was yet one more celebration to come—over the news of
the tiny life that lay nestled inside of her. Deirdre had calculated that the
child would be making his appearance some time the following spring. And as
Grace looked down on this place and these people that she loved so much, as she
felt the protective strength of Christian’s arms around her and knew the touch
of a Skynegal breeze against her face, she could only think that Nonny had been
right all along. Perfect knights did certainly exist, dreams weren’t given
without the possibility of coming true—and a miracle is always only a belief
away from happening.

Slowly Grace turned to face him, this man
she loved more than she ever thought possible, a knowing smile lighting her
eyes. “Christian, I have something to tell you…”

In the course of my research, I will
sometimes come across some tidbit from history that will draw my attention more
than others. I will often pursue that same tidbit until it eventually ends up
becoming a part of one of my stories. For
White Knight,
that tidbit was
the Scottish Highland Clearances.

They began as early as the late-1700s and
continued in some areas of the Highlands for nearly a century. Imagine that you
are living on a small, barely surviving farm. You have lived on this land all
of your life, as had your father and his father before him. You do not own this
land, yet you were raised with an innate love for it, a respect for the clan
traditions of your ancestors and a pride in your heritage. You pledge
allegiance to your chief, the great landowner, and for centuries your people
have protected him and his kin in times of war and attack, oftentimes
sacrificing their lives for him. This pride and love you feel isn’t something
recently come by; it is centuries in the making.

Despite what hardship may come to your
tiny place in this remote ancient land—war, poverty, or disease— the thought to
abandon your heritage never crosses your mind.

Now imagine one bleak rainy Highland day.
You are a farmer and thus you have already begun cultivating your small plot of
leased land to grow the crop of oat, barley, or potato that will sustain your
family through the coming year. You have invested everything you have in
it—your time, your labor, your money. It is your life’s calling, this farming,
the work of both your heart and your soul.

Imagine, just as the crops have managed
yet again to break their way through the harsh and oftentimes unforgiving
Highland soil, your laird’s factor comes to pay you a visit. He hands you a
document written in a language you cannot read, still he manages to breach the
communication barrier enough to deliver the horrible news that your home and
the land it sits upon will no longer be made available for you. Even before
your precious crop can be harvested, you will be made to vacate with your
family and possessions. If you are one of the more fortunate, you might be
offered an alternate plot of land on the estate, but it is likely a bare
fraction of the size you occupied before. Your sole source of income is now
terribly depleted. When you mention this to the factor, he tells you that you
should abandon your farming, this work of your heart, and become a fisherman on
the coast, only you have never known this work and there is no one to teach
you. You make do as best you can, until the day the factor comes again, bearing
another unreadable document, ordering you off the land again, only this time
there is no alternate plot. You are simply expected to leave, abandoning the gravesites
of your family, your heritage, the land you so love, so that the laird may
bring in a new tenant to replace you, the sheep that will bring him a tidier
profit.

The instances of the Clearances I have
illustrated in this story, the evictions, the burnings, are all based upon
actual accounts from the time period. Some have argued that the evictions were
carried out “for the good of the people being displaced,” that the
Highlanders were a “lazy, indolent people who were satisfied to live in
poverty rather than seek new and improved ways of making a living.” What
these individuals fail to appreciate is that it wasn’t the impoverished state
of living the Highlanders clung to. It was the land and their connection to it,
a quality as much a part of their character as the mist is to the heathery
Scottish hills, a characteristic that has made legend of the personages of
William Wallace and Robert Roy MacGregor.

While my heroine, Grace, is a completely
fictional character, some of her ideals were shared with other humanitarians of
the time, those few who saw the immorality of the “Improvements” and
sought alternate ways of nourishing the Highland economy. Dowager Lady
MacKenzie of Gairloch was indeed responsible for organizing relief efforts
through the building of roads in Wester Ross after the potato famine struck the
Highlands in the mid-1840s. From all accounts, this great lady was a woman of
character and vision. She taught herself Gaelic as well as ensuring that her
sons would learn the language from their Gaelic-speaking nursemaid. She saw
that they were then tutored at home instead of sending them away to university
so they could better understand their people and thus manage their estates more
successfully than the non-Gaelic speaking landowners could. Still other
landowners provided housing and food for the displaced Highlanders, taking them
onto their own estates as tenants, even if it meant bankrupting themselves in
the process, all in the name of humanity.

If you are interested in learning more
about the Scottish Clearances, there has been a memorial fund established.
It’s
purpose is purely educational; the founders seek to
inform the world of this often overlooked period of time in Scottish history.
Their vision is to erect a permanent memorial to serve as a reminder “to
the world of this unnecessary human tragedy.” I invite my interested
readers to contact me by mail or through my website for additional information
about the Highland Clearances Memorial Fund.

I hope you enjoyed reading Christian and Grace’s
story. As many of my readers will already know, this is the third book of what
I had originally planned as a trilogy. However…

While I was finishing this story, there
came a voice from the text that begged to be heard. The voice was that of
Christian’s sister, Lady Eleanor Wycliffe. She will take us to the mysterious
Western Isles of Scotland, a mythical setting peopled with eccentric
characters, charming customs, and even an ancient curse. I hope you will look
for her story, entitled
White Mist,
in the coming year.

I love to hear from my readers. Please
write to me through my website at
http://www.jacklynreding.com
or c/o
Post Office Box 1771, Chandler, AZ 85244-1771.
Thank you for sharing your time with me, and with
Christian and Grace from
White Knight.
Until
we
meet
again some day, at
another time,
in
another
story.
..

— J.R.