Napier’s peat-brown eyes regarded Sorcha keenly. “I
commend you on your wit. As for your fortitude,” he went on, easing
himself back from the table, “I would test it by inquiring as to
how you enjoyed your fine supper.”
“
Mightily,” replied Sorcha, folding
her arms across her breast. “I find eating most
satisfactory.”
“
Ah.” Napier nodded solemnly while
Magnus fingered his chin and looked on with amusement. “And,” the
priest continued, inclining his head toward Sorcha’s plate, “did
you find the Master of Ness satisfactory eating as
well?”
Sorcha’s green eyes widened with horror. She glanced
from Napier to her empty plate and back again. Abruptly, she
slapped a hand over her mouth, struggled with the voluminous skirts
that were caught under the table, and awkwardly hurtled out of her
chair to flee the dining hall.
Sorcha was sick three times after she reached the
herb garden by the kitchen entrance. Steadying herself against the
walls of Gosford’s End, she wiped away tears of distress and anger
with her fingertips. She hated Father Gavin Napier, hated his lack
of priestly manners, hated his relentless taunting, hated his bold,
unholy gaze, and most of all, she hated his cruel amusement over
serving the Master of Ness for supper. He was not just a hunter,
but a destroyer.
Sorcha turned her face to the brisk autumn wind, as
she wrenched the prickly ruff from her gown and crumpled it in her
hands. She would not, could not, go back into the dining hall.
Naturally, her parents would be angry with her for leaving so
hastily. But they would understand when she told them about the
Master of Ness. At least her father would. She hoped.
It was chilly in the garden, but Sorcha needed the
fresh, damp air to revive herself. Without conscious thought, she
found her footsteps leading toward the stables.
Niall was just coming out, a pair of riding gloves in
one hand. He froze in place when he saw Sorcha.
“
Don’t go,” she called to him in a
hoarse voice. “Please. I’ve been ill.”
He moved forward slightly but again stopped. In the
moonlight she could see his face working, as if he were trying to
find the right words, but knew there was nothing he could say
because he had been compelled to speak not at all.
“
They made me eat the Master of
Ness,” Sorcha cried out to him, shaking the crumpled ruff in one
hand. “It made me sick! Please, Niall, give me a drink of
water!”
Niall shifted from one foot to the other, obviously
torn by the commands of his master and the need of his beloved. He
fervently wished he had succumbed to his impulse and run away from
Gosford’s End when Iain Fraser had ordered him to avoid his
daughter’s company henceforth.
Before Niall could respond in any manner, Sorcha
heard her father’s voice cut into the night: “Sorcha! Come
here!”
She stood motionless for several moments, staring at
Niall’s outline against the stable door. He seemed as transfixed as
she, the two of them fixed in time and place, with the shadow of
Iain Fraser somewhere deep in the garden. At last, she raised the
hand that held the ruff, dashed it to the ground, and turned toward
her father.
T
he summons to join her
mother at daybreak boded ill; Dallas rarely attempted to cope with
the world until at least nine o’clock. Upon those rare occasions
when she rose early, her mood was invariably stormy and irascible.
Apprehensively, Sorcha made her way to her mother’s chamber. There
were circles under her green eyes, and the olive skin was pale.
Although her father had not upbraided her the previous evening
after her brief explanation about the Master of Ness, she knew he
had merely put his wrath in check while his guests awaited him in
the dining hall.
Indeed, Sorcha was faintly surprised that it was her
mother and not her father who commanded her presence so early on
this gloomy autumn morning. During the night the wind had blown
storm clouds in from the sea, though the rains had not yet started
to pelt the Highland countryside.
Dallas was lying on her divan, fretting at the folds
of a deep blue peignoir trimmed in miniver. She appeared somewhat
sallow, and her own hair was almost unruly as her daughter’s.
Indicating that Sorcha should sit on a footstool next to her,
Dallas put aside a tray of food that apparently had proved
unappetizing.
“
Your father has gone to Inverness,”
she said in a displeased tone. “Some fool of a Dutchman stole one
of his ships.”
For one fleeting moment, Sorcha was grateful for the
Dutchman’s greed. At least her father wasn’t able to vent his
anger, and experience told Sorcha that the longer the wait, the
lesser the punishment.
Dallas, however, was biting her lip and frowning.
“Your father and I stayed up late last night discussing certain
matters. You were one of them.”
“
Me?” The green eyes
flickered.
“
Aye. We wish you to go to Edinburgh
for a time, to live with your aunts and Uncle Donald.”
Sorcha’s hand flew to her breast. “So soon! Must
I?”
Dallas slowly but firmly nodded her head. “I have
just learned that your Aunt Glennie has sold her house and moved in
with Aunt Tarrill and Uncle Donald, yet they still have ample room
in their fine Canongate residence.”
“
I shall hate it,” Sorcha blurted,
putting her hands out to her mother in a pleading gesture. “I shall
suffocate.”
Dallas sighed wearily. “You shall not. Oh, daughter,”
she exclaimed, “I will never understand how you prize these
Highlands so greatly! They’re desolate, wild, lonely places where
the wind soughs through the hills and tears out your heart! There
is no comfort here, only an empty echo from the Ness to
Norway!”
Startled by her mother’s intensity and passion,
Sorcha shook her head in jerky, rapid movements. “No, no, ’tis not
like that—’tis balm in the wind, succor in the hills. The very
ground soothes my soul. I know not city ways, nor do I care to
learn. Please, my Lady Mother, let me bide here at Gosford’s
End.”
Dallas seemed to have depleted herself with the
tirade against the Highlands. She lay back against the brocaded
cushions, her hair atangle, her eyes overbright. “Nay, dear Sorcha,
that cannot be. Your father says you must go.” She cleared her
throat before looking straight into Sorcha’s eyes. “Your sire is
hard, but just. You know why you must keep away from Niall. But
Niall does not know, nor will he be told. Since you persist in
seeing him—or trying to, as you did last night—one of you must
leave for a time. Your father believes it would not be fair to ask
Niall, in his innocence, to go. Therefore, it must be you.”
“
Fair!” Sorcha spat out the word.
“It’s not fair at all!” Her infatuation with Niall suddenly seemed
remote, unreal. “Or am I in disgrace over faithless Johnny
Grant?”
A faint smile played at Dallas’s wide mouth. “You
forget, Niall is your father’s son.” She lowered her eyes, the slim
fingers tracing a sketchy path on the arm of the divan. Dallas
chose her next words with care. “As for young Grant, to discuss him
further is a waste of breath. He has ceased to exist in the world
your father and I inhabit.”
Sorcha kneaded her muslin skirt as Dallas looked
directly at her daughter. “I’ve a mind to send Rosmairi, too, but
dislike straining my kin’s hospitality. I’m afraid Ros has come
down with a fatal fascination for George Gordon of Huntly.” Dallas
made a face, looking very much as if she’d swallowed sour milk.
“George, in turn, must covet your father’s commercial trade. Or,
perish the thought, his properties.”
Sorcha’s green eyes flickered. “Oh?” Was the
explanation so simple? For once, Sorcha doubted her mother’s
perspicacity.
Dallas mistook Sorcha’s reticence for not wanting to
criticize her sister’s lamentable taste in men. “Fie, how Ros
rattled on last night! ‘So braw, so gallant, so kind, so courtly!’
And Ros always such a shy one with the laddies! George is
twenty-three to her fifteen and has the wit of wool! I pray to
Saint Anne he’s not leading her a merry chase.”
“
So do I,” murmured Sorcha, wishing
her mother would show as much concern over Johnny Grant’s rude
treatment. But her own immediate future was Edinburgh, and Sorcha
forced herself to face it. “It has been some time since I’ve seen
my aunts and Uncle Donald.”
“
They’re good, kindly people,”
Dallas said, her face softening at the thought of her kinfolk.
“Uncle Donald has done right well in the banking business, all
things considered.”
Indeed, Donald McVurrich’s humble beginnings had
shown no sign of his future prosperity and financial acumen. He had
been raised on a farm at Dunbar but had found himself unsuited to
the agrarian life. For a time, under Dallas’s tutelage, Donald
McVurrich had served in the Queen’s guards. But eventually his
natural talent for figures had surfaced, leading to a place in the
royal almoner’s household. A few years after his marriage to
Tarrill, Donald had gone into the banking business, where he had
prospered almost without notice. Reticent, stolid, cautious Donald
McVurrich somehow had managed to outwit—and outlast—his more
flamboyant brethren in the major financial centers of Europe. He
and Tarrill had five children, four boys and a girl. As for
Glennie, the older of Dallas’s sisters, she was now a widow twice
over, her two sons grown to manhood, with families of their
own.
“
Uncle Donald is oversomber,” Sorcha
protested. “He is Presbyterian to the toes.”
“
A common failing,” Dallas murmured,
“but Tarrill keeps the faith in which she was raised. At least as
much of it as she can, given the odious restrictions enforced by
the Protestants. You’ll not find it a gloomy household. No place
where Tarrill dwells could be that.”
Yet Sorcha’s memories of their visits to the house in
the Canongate were of children lacking in frivolity, of hymns sung
before supper, and of an absence of laughter whenever Uncle Donald
was present. Except for Aunt Tarrill’s more relaxed, good-humored
approach to life, Sorcha could think of little that appealed to her
within the McVurrich residence. For the first time, she reflected
upon her mother’s confinement to the Highlands. Though Dallas was
scarcely reluctant to complain, her words of criticism were so
commonplace that no one—at least not Sorcha—took them very
seriously. But, Sorcha realized, her mother must have gone through
difficult times, wrenched away from her beloved city and her only
relatives. It was a measure of her devotion to Iain Fraser that she
had ventured north at all; it was proof of her love that she had
stayed for almost twenty years.
Dallas now avoided her daughter’s gaze. “The roads
should be passable for at least another month. It’s best that you
leave for Edinburgh soon. Rob will be traveling with you.”
“
He will?” Sorcha tried to evince
interest. “That’s … reassuring,” she said tonelessly, and for
a long time, neither mother nor daughter spoke at all.
Only upon rare occasion did Sorcha have difficulty
sleeping. That night, however, she found herself tossing and
turning, no longer so sure of herself in the quiet hours of
darkness as by the light of day. Sometime before midnight, she got
out of bed to stand by her window and gaze at the moonlit
landscape.
Across the valley, the shutters of Inverness were
closed for the night. Nearby, the stables lay in shadow, as the
persistent autumn wind stirred the leaves in the plane trees. Yet
there was a strange movement close by the Italian fountain—a form
that she began to discern as horse and rider, edging toward the
manor house. Within a few more yards the rider dismounted and
tethered the horse to a sapling by the fish pond.
It was a man, seemingly young, tall and broad of
shoulder. Sorcha recognized something familiar about him as he
moved toward one of the rear entrances. Sure enough, a door opened
and the man slipped inside. Sorcha pulled away from the casement,
absently untangling her hair with her fingers. Someone from the
Fraser farmhouses, perhaps, enjoying a nocturnal liaison with a
serving wench. While such activity wasn’t condoned, it was doubtful
that either Lord or Lady Fraser would interrupt a sound sleep to
exert disciplinary action.
Slowly, Sorcha made her way back to bed. To her
immense relief, she fell asleep almost immediately. The following
day, she didn’t even remember the stranger’s visit, nor was it
alluded to by anyone in the household.
But that night, as she lay abed reading a volume of
newly published French sonnets, there was a tentative rap on her
door. Irritated, she flung back the covers and crossed the room on
bare feet. Rosmairi stood on the threshold, her pink cheeks
aglow.
“
You must come,” she whispered
urgently. “George and I are to be married this very
night!”
Sorcha gaped at her sister. It was impossible. Had
she fallen asleep and was dreaming? Shaking herself, Sorcha grabbed
Rosmairi by the arm and hauled her inside the room. “Are you daft,
Ros? How can you be married tonight? Have the banns been announced?
Do our parents know?”
Still basking in romantic euphoria, Rosmairi shook
her head. “ ’Tis a secret. George fears interference from high
places should anyone find out our intentions.”
Noting that her sister was dressed in a mauve riding
habit with her red-gold hair plaited under a high-crowned hat,
Sorcha gazed down at her own night shift and bare feet. “I must
dress,” she muttered and started for her wardrobe before abruptly
turning to face Rosmairi once more. “Nay, Ros, ’tis madness! Our
parents will skewer George and pack you off to a convent! Think on
it. Gordon chieftain or not, George owes you an honorable wedding
day with clan and kin in attendance.”