“
Christ!” Napier flung the black
bonnet back on the bureau so hard that it slid off the edge onto
the floor. He reached out to grasp Sorcha by the wrist, giving her
a sharp shake. The brown eyes narrowed, but his dismay was still
evident. “How long have you known?”
Though Sorcha was still distressed and anxious, she
couldn’t help but savor her triumph of deduction. “I only realized
the truth the other night. In the chapel.” She refused to flinch
from his glance but knew that her cheeks were flushing. “No priest
would have taken me there, no matter what religion that chapel
serves.” Glancing down to where he still held her wrist, she smiled
faintly at the strong, brown fingers that circled her flesh. “I
can’t believe how blind I was! I should have guessed months ago,
back at Chartley, when I met Adam Napier along the road. From a
distance he looked exactly like you. And while he didn’t admit to
your acquaintanceship, he asked too many questions regarding your
whereabouts. The world may be riddled with coincidence, but two
Napiers hovering around the Queen of Scots tried my credulity.” She
wriggled her fingers, but he still held her wrist fast. “Don’t you
think,” Sorcha demanded, “that you should tell me the rest of your
strange tale?”
Napier’s jaw was set, and his eyes had turned hard.
But he finally let go of her wrist and sat down on the bed, shoving
the rumpled counterpane aside. “Your conjecture is damnably
accurate,” he admitted, indicating with an absent wave of his hand
that Sorcha should sit next to him. “Adam is my older brother. He
was ordained in France a few years after our family exiled itself
there.” Napier stopped speaking for a moment as Sorcha seated
herself on the bed, feet dangling a few inches above the
rush-covered floor. “Adam’s great ambition in life was to bring
unity to the Catholic clans of Scotland, so that they might join
forces against the presbyters. He had also pledged himself to serve
Mary Stuart as long as she lived. But,” he went on, a painful
expression crossing his face, “about two years ago, Adam was
captured by the Dutch. They tortured him. He was crippled. But at
last they finally let him go.”
Sorcha shuddered, recalling the cheerful countenance
of Adam Napier, who must have suffered unspeakably. “God’s teeth,”
she breathed, “how valiant he must be!”
Napier’s curt nod acknowledged the truth of her
statement. “He was sent back at last to Amiens. We were sure he
would die, but eventually he rallied, though he had lost the use of
his legs. Twice he set out for Scotland; twice he was forced to
return before taking ship from France. His health was still very
poor, and at last he asked me to take his place until he grew
stronger.”
The stumpy candle was almost out. Napier leaned
toward the little nightstand, extracted another candle from a
sandalwood box, and lighted it from the dying flame. “I was
reluctant to act out such a deceit, but I feared that if I did not
and Adam worsened, I would never forgive myself for refusing his
request. Nor,” he added, turning to Sorcha and dropping his voice
almost to a whisper, “was I certain that I, too, did not have a
priestly vocation. At the very least, I was—I am—as concerned about
the fate of the Catholic Church in Scotland and England as is my
brother. In time, I shall also find out if, like him, I am also
destined to take Holy Orders.”
The fearsome chill began to creep over Sorcha again.
“But … but you couldn’t be a priest! How could you, when you
love me?” She had to force herself to keep from clutching at
him.
“
Oh, Sorcha ….” Napier shook
his head, then rubbed his temple. “You open up my very soul! You
dig into the raw wounds of my heart! Can you not leave me be, for
the love of Christ?”
With a distress that matched his own, Sorcha saw the
haunted look surface in his eyes and the pallor that seemed to lurk
beneath his dark skin. “Why say that? I’m offering you my heart, my
life! You’ve already taken my body!”
Napier’s head sunk into his hands. “I know that!” His
response was strangled deep in his throat. “I wish to God I had
not! Then I would never have known how ….” He halted abruptly,
his head jerking up, his mouth locked tight.
Tentatively, Sorcha put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ve had so little time to think this through. Stay, my love, at
least for a few days. Please!” For a brief moment, she let her head
rest against his arm, feeling the rough serge cloak touch her
cheek. “Please,” she repeated, more softly this time.
Sorcha felt rather than saw him shake his whole body
in refusal. “I cannot. Mary Stuart is to die within the next few
days. The executioner is already on the road to Fotheringhay. My
brother waits but a quarter of an hour from here to take my place
and give the Queen the comfort of a true priest.”
For a moment, Sorcha was distracted from her own
problems. “Ah—then that is why you were supposedly ill—so no one
would wonder why you couldn’t walk.” She saw Napier give a single
nod. “But the Queen! Sweet Virgin, somehow after all this time, I
thought perhaps she would be spared!”
“
Nay, not with those English hounds
of hell on Elizabeth’s heels.” With a swift motion, Napier rose
from the bed to open one of the narrow castle windows. “The moon is
rising. I must be gone. I’d hoped to leave without Bourgoing
knowing, so that he could be honestly surprised if anything should
go awry.”
Sorcha was also on her feet. “Gavin!” she cried and
then stared at him openmouthed. “God’s teeth! I scarcely know
you!”
Napier started toward her but stopped, planting his
boots firmly among the rushes. “You know enough. But it’s best if
you forget. Oh, Sorcha,” he said on a long, plaintive sigh, “I’m
sorry!”
His assertion was so inadequate that Sorcha barely
took it in. It was impossible that he was leaving. She wanted no
highborn lairds, no wealthy noblemen, no royal princelings. Sorcha
had set her heart—and her mind—on this man who was picking his
bonnet up from the floor and adjusting the clasp of his serge
cloak.
Sorcha set her fists on her hips and dug her heels
into the rushes. “You will not go,” she averred, the green eyes
flashing. “Or if you do, you will not go without me.” Seeing his
big hand raised to refute her, Sorcha raced on. “I swear it, I’ll
bring the guards down upon you, and you’ll never be able to reach
your brother. I cannot lose you,” she asserted, ignoring the catch
in her throat, “for if I do, my world is ended.”
The haunted eyes seemed to clear. An uncertain smile
cut across the dark beard as Napier slowly moved toward Sorcha. “I
underestimated your obstinacy. Though I should tell you that if you
truly love me, you’ll let me go.” He uttered a short, hollow laugh.
“You will not listen though, I fear.”
As a wave of relief lifted Sorcha’s spirit, she
offered Napier a radiant smile and eagerly watched him reach out
his left hand to her. She never saw the right fist that came up to
catch her on the jaw. In the place where she dwelled for an
unaccounted time, there was only a lush green meadow and a silver
stream where Sorcha ran barefoot among the lilies and joyfully
proclaimed her love for Gavin Napier.
When Sorcha awoke, she was in Napier’s bed, and he
was gone.
T
he heavy scent of lilacs
mingled with the acrid odor of a hundred candles in the small stone
chapel of the Dominican convent at Le Petit Andely. Through narrow
windows wrought in exquisite stained glass, the morning sun cast a
warm glow over the community as its members chanted Terce in Latin.
In a pew near the back of the chapel, Sorcha knelt with Rosmairi,
whose profile was all but hidden by the postulant’s white flared
coif.
The rustle of linen habits and the soft slapping of
sandals on the stone floor were the only sounds when the service
ended. Sorcha watched the nuns file out in decorous silence, then
moved into line with Rosmairi behind the others.
Outside the chapel’s arched entrance, Sorcha took a
deep breath of the fragrant spring air and sighed. Beyond the
lovingly tended garden of vegetables, herbs, and flowers stood the
guest house with its slanting roof. Sorcha had resided there for
over a year in a small, sparsely furnished room that looked out on
the River Seine and across to the village of Le Petit Andely. She
had come to the convent to keep her sister company while Rosmairi
grappled with the festering wound of her aborted romance with
George Gordon. Yet if Rosmairi found balm at Sainte Vierge des
Andelys, Sorcha had few illusions about the religious life
providing a solution to her own problems. Gavin Napier was the only
answer, and Sorcha refused to believe she could ever find happiness
without him.
Still, she found a measure of tranquility within the
convent walls. Sainte Vierge des Andelys had been built on a small
wooded island in the middle of the languorous Seine, giving the
holy refuge an air of peaceful isolation.
Rosmairi was bending down to scold Marcel, an
ill-natured goose that constantly bedeviled the convent's other
geese and chickens. At eighteen, Rosmairi’s soft features had
turned more angular. If she had been a pretty child, she was
growing into a beautiful woman. But the red-gold hair was hidden
under a coif, the gracefully rounded body was concealed by a white
linen habit, and even her perfect complexion was less remarkable
without color to enhance it.
“
Ah, your sister, she is the only
one to make Marcel behave,’’ said a droll voice just behind Sorcha.
Mother Honorine’s bowed upper lip smiled in a curious way that
revealed only her two large front teeth. She paused, regarding
Sorcha with a frank, yet confidential gaze. “It would seem Rosmairi
has put misfortune behind her.”
Sorcha turned pensive eyes on Rosmairi, who had
joined one of the other postulants to scoop handfuls of grain from
a sturdy wooden tub. “I pray she has,” replied Sorcha with more
fervor than conviction. “She rarely speaks of the past.”
The bowed lips relaxed into a less jocular, though
pleasant, expression. “Praise the Lord you two are so close. It
must be a comfort.”
A sidelong glance revealed to Sorcha that Mother
Honorine wore no pious demeanor, nor rolled her eyes heavenward in
the assumption that the
Bon Dieu
was nodding approval of her
comments. Not only was the Mother Superior a Frenchwoman, but a
Guise by birth, and a blood relation to Mary, Queen of Scots. She
was a practical person imbued with sufficient worldliness to
discuss the basest of human frailties without flinching. She knew
why Rosmairi had come to the convent of Sainte Vierge des Andelys.
It was not the first time a young woman had fled there to mend a
broken heart. But Sorcha’s reason for joining her sister as a guest
in the convent had never been questioned. Until now.
“
We shall see in good time if
Rosmairi’s vocation is sincere or merely of convenience,” Mother
Honorine went on as they began to stroll along the stone path
between the rows of cabbage and lettuce seedlings. “As for you,
ma chère
, is your visit here gaining you spiritual or
temporal grace?”
The inquiry was so artful and unexpected that Sorcha
was caught off guard. She hesitated, distractedly watching Rosmairi
scatter grain among the geese. “My parents didn’t wish for Ros to
come to France alone. Even though our brother Rob is studying with
a kinsman at Compiègne, he isn’t close enough to visit much.”
Sorcha avoided Mother Honorine’s gaze, instead watching Rosmairi
walk sedately toward the henhouse.
“
Very sensible, yes.” Mother
Honorine nodded sagely, slipping her tapering fingers inside the
draperies of her white linen sleeves. “Unselfish, too, is it not
so?” She had turned to Sorcha, tilting her high-coiffed head to one
side. “That is, you are young and lovely. Most sisters, I fear,
would not surrender the days of their youth for the sake of
another. Instead,
les beaux hommes
would divert their time
and attention, eh?”
Sorcha knew her face had turned grim, and she was
annoyed by Mother Honorine’s perspicacity. “We are Highlanders,”
she said woodenly. “We keep close together.”
In her mind’s eye she could still envision Dallas
Fraser refusing to hear of Rosmairi’s professed desire to enter a
French convent. “One son heading for the priesthood, one daughter
in love with a man who is a priest and yet not a priest—and now
this, a budding nun! By the Virgin and all the saints, was ever a
mother so bereft of sensible children!” Dallas had stormed and
raged for the better part of two days, only to surrender when Iain
Fraser had threatened to marry each of his unwed offspring to the
first tinker or tart who asked for them.
“
Let the bairns find their own way
in the world, no matter how ill chosen it may seem to you,” he had
admonished his wild-eyed wife. “At least Magnus is well settled
with Jean Simpson. Didn’t we promise long ago not to manipulate our
children into futures they found repugnant?”
So, at last, Sorcha and Rosmairi had followed Rob to
the Continent, each sister nursing a broken heart. As the months
passed, Rosmairi became more like her former self, though with a
new aura of gentle dignity. Sorcha’s peace of mind proved more
elusive.
Rosmairi had disappeared inside the henhouse. Mother
Honorine turned back to Sorcha, as a pair of sparrow hawks darted
overhead, then soared toward the river. “Your sister has shown
signs of preferring a more contemplative life, perhaps.” The black
veil that fell from a stiffly starched linen crown fluttered in the
May breeze. “But you,
ma chère
, you might find yourself
suited to the role of a lay tertiary. I am told you get on very
well in the village. They call you
L’Écossaise Noire, n’est-ce
pas
?”