“
Oh, aye, I never really doubted
that.” Sorcha nodded with less enthusiasm than she would have
wished for. She felt his hands slip down to cup her breasts, now
grown even more full and ripe with pregnancy. Yet she flinched at
his touch and saw the sudden surprised mixture of pain and
puzzlement on his face.
“
Sorcha—what is it?” He leaned
backward, though his hands remained on her breasts. “Do you find
me … repugnant?” The idea struck him as so unlikely, so
incredible, that he laughed outright. “Good Christ, sweetheart,
what troubles you?” Noting the strained, grave expression, he
sobered immediately. “Is it Marie-Louise? Has she done something to
turn your heart against me?”
Sorcha vehemently shook her head and put both her
hands over his. “Never that. Never. I love you as much as before.”
But his question had summoned up the vital information she had
forgotten to relay. Her own troubles had seemed so overwhelming
that they had all but erased everything else from her mind. “The
King gave a letter of Fire and Sword to Marie-Louise to convey to
George Gordon. I tried to follow her from Edinburgh, but I … I
lost her.”
Napier was frowning, not just in dismay over this
most recent development, but in perplexity at his beloved’s failure
to keep up with Marie-Louise. Sorcha was as expert a horsewoman as
Marie-Louise. Not for the first time in his life did Napier wonder
if his estranged wife’s self-proclaimed magical prowess was all too
real.
“
Did Marie-Louise somehow obscure
her path?” Napier asked, finally taking his hands away from her
breasts to clasp her fingers in his.
Put off by the question. Sorcha groped for words. “It
was … snowing,” she explained, truthfully enough. “I suspect
she reached Strathbogie or whichever Gordon stronghold she was
heading for a week or more ago.”
Since Gordon had obviously not known about the letter
of Fire and Sword during the encounter at Glenlivet, it was
apparent to Napier that Marie-Louise had sought the Earl of Huntly
at one of his more distant residences. Yet even this foreboding
news didn’t explain Sorcha’s lack of ardor. “I suspect you have
much more to tell me,” Napier said, the words etched with meaning.
“Shall we talk now, or should I see how my brother fares?”
“
Father Adam is no doubt eager to
see you,” Sorcha replied too quickly. Seeing the rejection well up
again in the peat-brown eyes, Sorcha squeezed his fingers. “Gavin,
my dearest love, don’t think I’m being coy or changeable. But right
now, with the news from the Pope being so fresh, I can’t … I
just can’t give myself to you.” The green eyes pleaded for
understanding. “Surely you—of all people—can comprehend
that?”
Taking in the pale, unhappy face and fervid speech,
Gavin Napier knew he should be able to accept her feelings in good
faith. She was, after all, quite correct about his own earlier
ambivalence. Yet now, coming from Sorcha, he found her reluctance
almost impossible to take in. It was out of character; it was
wrong; it struck a jangling, harsh chord, like a trumpet blaring
over the soft, mellifluous strings of a harp.
Yet he had no choice but to accede to her wishes.
Even if they had not been under her parents’ roof, Gavin Napier was
not the sort of man to force his embrace on any woman—not even the
one who had sworn to love him through eternity. Nor was he the type
to conceal the pain. There had been a time—long years, in fact—when
he had kept all his emotions, even his identity, hidden behind a
curtain of cynicism, arrogance, indifference, even deceit. But
Sorcha had managed to break through that aloof, dispassionate
barrier. Though Gavin Napier might mask his feelings from the rest
of the world, Sorcha’s love had stripped him of pretense.
Or so he had thought—until now. For Sorcha herself
was concealing something, and for the first time he sensed an
erosion of the mutual trust they had shared. He could beg and
badger her to confide in him. He could threaten and bellow. He
could even shake the truth out of her by sheer brute strength. But
that would defeat his own code of honor. Instead, he disengaged his
fingers from hers and shrugged.
“
I’ll try to understand,” he said in
a dull, heavy voice. Then he turned his back and was
gone.
It cost Sorcha dearly to attend the celebration in
the great hall that evening. By the time she arrived, another fifty
or more Frasers had made their way through the drifting snow to
applaud the return of Iain Fraser. At least half the company was
well-nigh raucous with drink, and even Johnny Grant wore a silly
grin above his long, whiskey-stained beard. At the far end of the
table, Gavin Napier sat next to his brother. With the exception of
Iain Fraser himself, they seemed to be the only two whose wits were
not befuddled by strong spirits. Even Magnus and Armand were
engaged in a seemingly hilarious arm-wrestling match, which Dallas
and Rosmairi eyed with wary good humor.
Sorcha squeezed into a place at the long table
between a Fraser she didn’t recognize and a Grant she had seen
several times in Johnny’s company. She was exchanging pleasantries
with them both when she realized that the Earl of Moray was sitting
almost directly opposite, his handsome face neither drunk nor
sober. Tentatively, she lifted a hand to wave at him. He smiled
back broadly, making lazy arcs with his whiskey cup. His mouth
formed several words that Sorcha was unable to make out over the
din. The great hall smelled of roasted fowl, meat fat, overheated
bodies, drying wool, wood smoke, wine, and whiskey. Though Sorcha’s
nausea had passed now that she was in the fourth month of her
pregnancy, she took one look at a pig’s head wearing a garland of
cranberries and fervently wished she’d had the sense to stay in her
room.
After toying with a bit of Flemish cheese and a glass
of Rhine wine, Sorcha excused herself, aware that Moray’s eyes
followed her from the table and that Gavin Napier’s did not. Napier
had moved from his brother’s side to sit with Iain Fraser. The two
men were speaking earnestly, no doubt of the King’s letter of Fire
and Sword. As Sorcha escaped through a side door, she wondered if
her father would announce this latest piece of news to the
assemblage. Probably not, since—assuming any of them were still
capable of reasoning—it would dull the festive tone considerably.
Most would spend the night within the walls of Gosford’s End,
bedding down on the floor of the great hall, sleeping like bricks
until well past dawn. That would be soon enough to inform the men
of Fraser and Grant that George Gordon was not only still in the
King’s good graces but that he had been empowered to exact Jamie’s
justice. The recent triumph over George Gordon would turn to ash,
like the giant logs that even now burned down in the great hall’s
vast fireplace.
Back in her room Sorcha poured out her heart to
Ailis, who listened with stoic patience, evincing surprise only at
the news of Pope Innocent’s refusal to grant an annulment. “You’ll
find a solution,” Ailis said when Sorcha had finally worn herself
out with talking. “Justice is sometimes slow,” the maid went on in
her brusque, yet sympathetic manner, “but eventually, it runs its
course.”
Burrowing down between the sheets to find the places
touched by the warming pan, Sorcha took comfort in Ailis’s words.
As she closed her eyes in search of sleep, she remembered back to
her childhood, to a sunny April morning when she and Magnus had
disobeyed their mother and gone too far into the forest. After an
hour of fearing that they were utterly lost and would be eaten by
wolves, they had discovered a gurgling spring. Excitedly, they
began to follow the trickle of water until it joined forces with
other springs and became a tumbling burn, hurtling down the
hillside. Yet once it reached level ground, in the shadow of the
tall firs and pine trees, the stream seemed to backtrack, to flow
in circles, to wind among the evergreens like a tangled skein of
thread. The children had plodded through marshland, across a meadow
where the dew still clung to the long grass, fighting their way
among the blackthorn bushes, the leafless branches catching at
their clothes. At last, when they were weary and exhausted and the
sun was riding high in the flawless April sky, they found that the
burn flowed heedlessly into Beauly Firth, not more than half a
league from the manor house. So it seemed that this was how her
love for Gavin wound its way in search of a happy ending—through
darkness and sunlight, through fear and hope. Yet someday, like
those long-ago children following the burn that led them home,
Sorcha and Gavin must finally come to rest.
All but a few stragglers had cleared out of Gosford’s
End by noon of the following day. As Sorcha had guessed, Iain
Fraser had waited until morning to pass on the word about George
Gordon and the letter of Fire and Sword. Even then, he had confided
only in Moray and Johnny Grant. There was no use in weighing down
the others with such alarming news until after they had completed
the cold, icy journey to their various far-flung destinations.
Sorcha had spent the morning visiting with Magnus
before his departure for his home at Ord, and then playing with
Rosmairi and little Adam in the nursery. The old nurse, Marthe, her
joints now so stiff and painful that she had to be conveyed in a
chair, joined them for the better part of an hour, elated, as
always, that she had lived to see yet another generation of Fraser
and Camron offspring. Adam had just upset his bowl of porridge on
Rosmairi’s pink lawn skirts when Cummings summoned Sorcha to join
her parents in the study. With a sense of apprehension, Sorcha made
her way downstairs, while Rosmairi scolded wee Adam, and Marthe
soothed them both in her ancient cracked, wheezing voice.
Opening the door to the study, Sorcha took a deep
breath before stepping over the threshold. Drifted snow piled up
outside the windows, and in the grate, a trio of logs glowed but
refused to burn. While her mother’s perfume lingered and her
father’s newly acquired clay pipe sat on the desk, neither parent
was in the room. Instead, the Earl of Moray sat in one of the
armchairs, his booted legs crossed in an attempt to appear at
ease.
“
Please, Sorcha, don’t look so
upset,” he urged, the blue eyes warm and candid. “Close the door
and sit, I pray you. Your parents thought it best if we spoke
privately.”
“
God’s teeth,” Sorcha murmured, then
saw the wounded look on Moray’s face and was repentant. She shut
the door, careful not to let it slam lest Moray mistake such a
gesture for anger. “Well?” she asked, vainly trying to keep her
voice light. She sat down opposite Moray in the matching armchair
and deliberately turned away from her father’s vacant place, as if
somehow he could still observe her.
Moray leaned forward, his hands draped across his
knees. “I wish I lived up to my own legend as the ‘braw
gallant,’ ” he declared, the blue eyes quite still. “Rather, I
feel like a clumsy country lout, possessed of few words and no wit
at all.” He made a wry face, moved one hand as if to reach for
hers, apparently thought better of it, and ran his fingers through
his wavy auburn hair. “I’m here to ask formally for you in
marriage. I greatly fear you’re going to refuse me, but be
forewarned, I intend to persist.”
Sorcha went rigid in the chair, her green eyes wide.
She should have guessed, of course. Somehow, she had assumed that
Moray had ridden out earlier with the others. Yet here he was, not
two feet away, looking abject yet vaguely hopeful. Sorcha used both
hands to brush back the stray hair that had escaped from her
heart-shaped linen cap. “It’s impossible. You must know I love
another,” she asserted, her green eyes fixed on his face. “There is
no way I can become your bride. My parents must have misled
you.”
This time Moray took the risk of touching her knee.
Gentle, undemanding, comforting—no doubt, thought Sorcha, the same
gesture he’d use with an ailing mare. “I assure you, they have
neither misled nor deceived me. This morning, they explained your
plight, that you carry the child of a man who cannot marry you.
I’ve waited five years, Sorcha. I don’t intend to wait any
longer.”
From any other man, the words would have sounded not
merely precipitate but callous. The Countess of Moray had been dead
for less than three months. She had borne him five children, graced
his name with her quiet goodness, dignified his title with her
gentle beauty. Yet here he was, admitting to his long-standing
desire for another woman. Yet it was Moray’s frankness of heart,
his lack of hypocrisy, that prevented Sorcha from being shocked by
his proposal.
Behind her hand, Sorcha murmured a foul oath and
hoped Moray hadn’t heard. If he had, he gave no indication, the
handsome face still serious and searching. If he were impatient for
some sign of favor, he gave no sign of that, either; his features
were as controlled as his emotions.
“
I don’t know what to say,” Sorcha
admitted at last, settling her chin in the palm of her hand. “Sweet
Virgin, has any woman ever suffered from such a dilemma? Why
couldn’t Gavin and I—or even you and I—have met, fallen in love,
and gotten married? Like Rosmairi and Armand, like Magnus and
Jeannie, like a thousand other people in this sad, sorry world? See
here, My Lord,” she went on, the words coming rapidly, “if I
married you, I’d forever long for Gavin. You’d be forced to bring
up a bastard who has no claim to either your name or your property.
People would laugh at you behind their hands; they’d call you
cuckold. Besides,” Sorcha added with her usual practicality, “while
you might have once wanted me as your mistress, what makes you
believe you’d be equally delighted to take me to wife? They are two
quite different things.”