Moray had listened to this lengthy, impassioned
speech with rapt attention, his eyes never leaving Sorcha’s face.
“I’m told the King wishes us to wed. You must take on the raising
of five bairns you’ve scarcely even seen. As for my possessions, I
trust we’ll have children of our own, and while my earldom may be a
grand one, in truth, I’m not a man of great means.” He spread his
hands in an appealing, self-deprecating manner. “More to the point,
I can offer you only myself—and as your husband, not your leman. I
love you, Sorcha. I have always loved you, from that first night at
Doune.”
Sorcha sighed deeply, contemplating the sincerity of
Moray’s words. It would be cruel to dismiss his love out of hand.
Love was too rare, too fragile, to throw away. Reality told her
that if one Pope had refused an annulment, another might do the
same. Her child would be born in June, just five short months away.
If she married Moray, her babe would have a name and she would have
her honor, albeit tarnished. She knew what kind of pressure her
parents—at least her mother—would bring to bear upon her to accept
Moray’s suit. What she didn’t know was how Gavin Napier would
react. With his commitment to virtue, might he not be as determined
as Dallas that their child be born in holy wedlock? Would it not be
in character for him to persuade her to save her name and her honor
by sacrificing him so that she could marry Moray?
Sorcha sighed again and briefly closed her eyes.
“Give me a day or two. My Lord. I must think—and pray—upon this
momentous matter.” The green eyes were wide open as she gazed at
Moray. He lifted her hand and put it to his lips; then he started
to speak, apparently considered that further words might do more
harm than good, and got to his feet to bow his way out of the
study.
To Sorcha’s immense surprise, Gavin Napier received
the news of her pregnancy with a minimal expression of shock. Over
the twenty-four hour period following his return to Gosford’s End
and his unsettling reunion with Sorcha, he’d taken time to reflect
in solitude, as well as to confide in Father Adam. While neither
brother had guessed that Sorcha was with child, both had concluded
that she was deeply disturbed over something of such magnitude that
it even impinged upon her limitless love for Gavin Napier.
So, when Sorcha revealed the truth to Napier that
evening in the small parlor, her brief, forthright explanation
brought enlightenment rather than astonishment. Sorcha was seated
on the settle in front of the hearth, while Napier stood with his
back to one of the two bookcases that flanked the stone fireplace.
He was silent at first, his face darkening as he clenched and
unclenched one hand. While Sorcha sat with her fingers clasped
together in her lap and her head held high, Napier went to one knee
in front of her.
“
I am filled with joy that you will
bear my babe,” he declared, his features softening. He placed his
hands on her thighs, though it was the touch of affection rather
than desire. “I have never loved you more than I do now.” He
paused, the white teeth capturing his lower lip as he pondered his
next words. “I am about to lose you, am I not?” He spoke barely
above a whisper, and there was a catch on the final
syllable.
Sorcha could scarcely look at him. Her heart felt
heavy and dull in her breast, and her own voice quavered when she
answered him. “I don’t know yet.” With a trembling hand, she
touched his hair. “My lord of Moray has asked me to be his wife.”
The green eyes were questioning, helpless. “What shall I tell
him?”
Napier’s face twisted as if it were following the
convoluted pattern of his thoughts. For several moments, he gazed
beyond Sorcha, seeking an answer in the far shadows of the little
room. Then, with an agonized smile, his eyes fixed on her pale
face. “Does he … know?” Napier watched Sorcha as she nodded
once. “Then,” he said, in that same low voice, “you must
consent.”
It was what Sorcha had expected him to say, but now,
after the words had been given life, she cried out in protest,
“Nay! I will not!” Sorcha took Napier’s head in her hands, all but
shaking it back and forth. “The annulment! You said we could submit
the case again! I’ll go away, I’ll bear the babe somewhere else,
I’ll wait forever, if need be! Please, Gavin—you don’t really want
me to marry Moray!”
Grasping her firmly by the wrist, he took her hands
away from his temples. ‘‘Of course I don’t want you to marry him.
But you must marry, and while I’d do anything—anything at all—to
make it so that I could marry you, I fear our chances are virtually
nonexistent.” Sadly, he shook his head. “I once told you that
Marie-Louise might as well have cast a spell on me. For a time, I
thought you’d broken it. But,” he went on, his voice rising, yet
hollow, “I’ve come to believe that I shall live out the rest of my
life in thrall to her.”
“
Don’t believe it,” Sorcha enjoined
him. She was leaning so far forward in the chair that their
foreheads almost touched. “The reckless life she leads, the trail
of death and destruction she leaves behind her—no one can go on
forever living on the precipice as she does.”
Outside, the wind howled, heralding a new storm.
Though the drapes were drawn, Sorcha could feel a draft blowing
across the room. It had started to snow again just before supper,
and no doubt by now the drifts were piling up outside the manor
house. Winter, like her suffering, seemed to go on forever.
Napier kissed the palms of her hands and uttered a
sharp little laugh. “What you say may be true, my love. But what
you mean is that we should wait for Marie-Louise’s death.” The
hunter’s gaze fixed her squarely. “That is the reality, is it not?
I can’t live like that, waiting for someone else to die. I don’t
think you can, either.”
The intensity of his stare forced Sorcha to look
away. “You’re right,” she murmured, “I cannot.”
They were quiet for a few minutes while the fire
hissed in the grate and the wild cry of the wind swept over the
moors and through the glen. I should weep, Sorcha thought, yet I
have no tears. I feel drained, empty, aimless.
Still on his knees, Gavin Napier had shifted his
weight. Tenderly, he put his hands on her curving abdomen. “My
bairn,” he said, and gave Sorcha a smile that held the warmth of
summer and the pride of mankind. Desperately, she tried to summon
an answering smile, but before her lips could do more than tremble,
Gavin Napier laid his head in her lap, and the broad shoulders
shuddered with emotion. At last, Sorcha felt the tears fill her
eyes and roll down her cheeks, like snow melting in a sudden thaw.
She wrapped her fingers in Napier’s dark hair, and when he finally
lifted his face to look at her, his own eyes brimmed with tears.
Startled by his unabashed feelings, Sorcha wiped one cheek with the
back of her hand, then pressed Napier’s face, mingling her love as
well as her grief with his.
“
I will not say good-bye,” Napier
said in that low, rumbling voice Sorcha knew so well, though now it
was touched by a faint tremor. “I will only ask that God hold
you—and the bairn—in His hands.”
“
Where are you going?” Sorcha’s
question was a choked, rasping jumble of words.
Napier had gotten to his feet, looming tall and
broad, blocking out the persistent draft, though the wind still
shrilled outside the windows. “I don’t know yet. But I’ll be gone
by morning.” He was under control again, speaking tersely, his long
face arranging itself into the mask he would show the world beyond
the little parlor’s door.
For more long moments, they gazed at each other, as
if trying to commit every detail to memory. For one searing second,
Sorcha considered flinging herself into Napier’s arms for a last
embrace. But she willed herself to remain seated; she knew that
once in each other’s arms, they might never again be pried apart.
And, for the sake of their babe, that could not happen.
Finally, he tore his eyes from her, though he made no
move to leave. Motionless, he stood staring at a small Italian
marble statue of the Madonna and Child that rested on a slender
teak pedestal across the room. Sorcha didn’t have to turn her head
to discover the object of Napier’s unblinking attention. Silently,
she offered her own prayers to the Virgin and her Divine Son.
Gavin Napier didn’t speak again, nor did he look at
Sorcha. He wheeled about with a swift, sure movement and crossed
the little room in four long strides. Sorcha continued to sit very
still, her hands folded against the curve where their child grew.
Even after Napier had closed the door behind him, she remained as
she was, while the fire in the grate flickered out and the wind
howled its mournful song far into the night.
I
ronically, the mid-January
blizzard had presaged an early spring in the Highlands. In less
than a week, a mild, if relentless rain had washed away all but the
most secret, hidden patches of snow. Eager yellow primroses
appeared in the forests around Loch Ness, the black grouse fanned
its tail in anticipation of the mating ritual, and the wildcat
crept back up into the hills.
While most Highlanders rejoiced at cruel winter’s
end, for Sorcha it meant that her wedding day would come much
sooner than she’d expected. The last week of January was spent in a
frenzy of preparation, with seamstresses brought in from Inverness,
arrangements worked out by Iain Fraser for Sorcha’s dowry, trunks
being packed, and a rapid, if chaotic exchange of letters between
Gosford’s End and Moray’s house at Donibristle. The latter caused
the most consternation within the Fraser household. While Moray
made no demands concerning the dowry, he was insistent upon being
married in a Protestant ceremony. Father Adam, who had once more
retreated to Beauly Priory, this time in Gavin Napier’s company,
was consulted. The only comfort he could give was to suggest that
perhaps once the ceremony had taken place, Moray might be persuaded
to convert to Catholicism so that he and Sorcha could be remarried
in the Church of Rome. After much soul-searching, Lord and Lady
Fraser agreed that such was their best—and only—hope. Sorcha was
frank to admit that she didn’t much care. If she could not be
married to Gavin Napier, then the rites under which she wed with
another were of no importance.
The family was scheduled to leave Gosford’s End on
the third day of February, but late in the afternoon of the
preceding day, a messenger arrived saying that Magnus’s Jeannie had
gone into premature labor. Magnus begged his mother to come to the
Muir of Ord. Torn between her children’s needs, Dallas raced about
the manor house in a flurry of indecision and fell down the main
staircase, spraining her ankle. Gritting her teeth against the
pain, she insisted on traveling to Magnus and Jeannie’s home by
litter, but Iain Fraser refused to let her go unless he went with
her. Her parents were visibly distressed at abandoning Sorcha and
parted from her with unusual tenderness. But Sorcha sensed a hint
of relief in them both, as if neither parent truly wanted to be a
witness to an occasion of which, deep down, they didn’t
approve.
Yet Sorcha wasn’t terribly upset by Lord and Lady
Fraser’s defection. Indeed, the days that had followed Gavin
Napier’s departure from Gosford’s End were a blur. Nothing seemed
quite real. It was as if Sorcha were watching some other young
woman prepare for her wedding while she observed from a distance,
indifferent, detached, with only a perfunctory acknowledgement of
the events that surged around her.
Rosmairi and Armand, however, would accompany her,
along with the indispensable Ailis and a half dozen Fraser
retainers. Little Adam would remain in the care of his nurse and
Marthe at Gosford’s End. So it was that on a cool but sunny
February morning, Sorcha set out for Donibristle House in the
ancient kingdom of Fife, where she would become the Countess of
Moray and try to put her past behind her.
Yet, even as they rode out of Fraser country toward
the shimmering lochs and high, rugged peaks of her mother’s Cameron
clan, Sorcha knew that she carried the past within her. At that
moment, she felt a fluttering in her abdomen and let out a little
gasp of astonished awe, then gently touched the place where the
babe had moved. No, thought Sorcha, the past lives and will be with
me always, and I rejoice in the gift of life Gavin Napier has given
me.
Sorcha crossed herself devoutly and let the swaying
of the litter lull her to sleep.
It took almost five days to reach Donibristle House,
high above the Firth of Forth, where the waters narrowed before
sweeping inland toward Edinburgh. This close to the sea, winter
still had its grip on the countryside, with ice floating on the
little pond in the courtyard and a brisk wind blowing down from the
east.
Sorcha and her companions had been greeted by an
oddly distracted Earl of Moray. While he seemed delighted to
welcome his bride to Donibristle, there was an unwonted tenseness
in his manner, an unexplained air of expectancy. At supper in the
manor house’s handsome dining hall, Sorcha attempted to draw out
her future husband, but he turned aside each question with a merry
jest. Finally, she gave up, concentrating instead on the roasted
boar and haunch of beef that constituted the main courses.
Though avoiding Sorcha’s inquiries, Moray was
otherwise talkative. Now that she had arrived safely under his
roof, he planned to hold their wedding the following afternoon.
“The preparations have been completed,” he told Sorcha as servants
removed their plates from the table. “Now that you’re here, I see
no reason to delay.” His warm fingers stroked her palm, and the
blue eyes twinkled.
“
I suppose that’s so,” Sorcha
responded, trying to work up an enthusiasm she didn’t feel. Gazing
at the high, timbered ceiling, she changed the subject by remarking
upon the excellent proportions of the house. “Doune is barnlike, by
comparison,” she said, catching Rosmairi’s sympathetic eye across
the table. “I should think it more pleasant to reside
here.”