by Louise Clark
Sensation was all she knew until she fell asleep much, much later.
*
The road along which the horses plodded was little more than a track, winding upward into bleak, desolate mountains. James had traveled this route many times, but with Thea beside him he considered the journey from a fresh viewpoint. He was now vividly aware of the boredom and physical exhaustion caused by the long hours in the saddle, riding along a path that was both dangerous and deceptively easy. He knew that there were places where the horses could run, making better time and adding some excitement to the ride, and he could pinpoint those spots where the scenery could be spectacular when the heather was in flower and the mountains loomed broodingly against a clear blue sky. But the miles to be covered ground away enthusiasm, so that the ride soon became an exercise in endurance.
The weather was once again a continuous drizzle, made more unpleasant by the wind. The track became too slippery to allow the horses to gallop, and the mountains rose stark and cold against the gray of the sky. To the distance was added the discomfort of the cold wind and their wet clothing.
Then, too, he was seeing things along the road that chilled him deep into his soul. There were scars that had not existed the last time he had traveled this route, scars that must have occurred as a result of the reprisals inflicted on Scotland after the rebellion. Anger simmered in him, anger against the English army, against the Hanovarian dynasty in London, and against the English race as a whole.
Around mid-afternoon they emerged from a mountain pass into the relative calm of the valley beyond. The buffeting wind didn’t still completely, but it did die down a trifle. The rain continued to fall, but it no longer bit at their faces, making it unpleasant to be sure, but bearable. A thread of smoke appeared on the horizon, and James urged the chestnut forward. He wasn’t sure who lived in the dwelling, but Thea needed rest. Her cheeks were flushed from the wind, but her lips were pale and pinched.
As they neared, James saw that the place was a narrow, single-story shack made of squared-off blocks of peat. James drew to a stop in front of it. Thea automatically did the same.
“James,” she said huskily, “why do we stop here?”
He shot her a quick, all-encompassing glance. “You need rest Thea, and food. There is nowhere else.”
She stared at the dwelling, the exhaustion in her expression tinged with amazement, and not a little distaste. James was about to explain some basic Highland customs when a fierce-looking man, clothed in rough woolen breeches, a tartan cloak wrapped around his torso, emerged from the doorway of the little hut. Thea’s expression deepened to pure horror as her eyes were riveted on the glitter of steel beneath his covering. He was carrying a sword.
Ignoring Thea’s dismay, James spoke to the man in Gaelic. At first the words came haltingly, for it had been years since he’d used the language, but he was pleased to see the man’s face break into a smile as he offered them the hospitality of his house and gestured inside the croft.
James dismounted and came over to Firefly to help Thea from the horse. As his hands wrapped around her waist and he lifted her from the saddle, she demanded, “Why did you speakâwhat was it? Frenchâto that man?”
“It was Gaelic, and I spoke it to prove to him that we aren’t…” He began to say “English,” but quickly altered the phrase. “To prove we aren’t a danger to him.”
Her feet touched the soggy ground, but Thea made no effort to move away from James’s side. He looked down at her. She was staring at the croft and the huge Highlander. Intermittently, her body shook with shivers she couldn’t quite contain. James wanted to get her into the hut and out of the rain. Thea had other ideas.
“You were about to say something else. What was it?”
Impatience added a bite to his voice. “Thea!”
“What was it, James? Please tell me!” Her voice had risen. James could hear the edge of fear in it.
Reluctantly, he said, “Highlanders are no longer allowed to wear the tartan or own weapons. This man has violated both laws. I wanted to assure him we would not turn him in to the authorities.”
“Otherwise?”
“He’ll protect his own, Thea,” James explained grimly. “It’s not in the nature of the Highlander to tamely submit to injustice.”
She put her hand to her mouth in a frightened gesture. “And you want to stop here! How can you be sure we won’t be murdered for our horses and the gold we carry?”
Until this moment James had stopped thinking of Thea as English, or as the daughter of an English general. Now, he remembered that she was both. “This man is offering us the hospitality of his house. He won’t violate it by harming us, no matter who we are or how rude we happen to be!” With that he spun on his heel, too angry to say anything more. He led the two weary horses to the side of the hut, where he tethered them with the help of the fierce-looking Scot and fed them a small amount of grain to add to the meager grazing available. Then he turned back to Thea, who was standing where he’d left her, her back straight, her head high, and her gaze haughty.
He paused for a moment, watching her. He knew she was exhausted, cold, wet, and above all, frightened, but none of this showed in her expression or in her stance. She was every inch a powerful English lady, who would not be daunted by the experience she faced, no matter how difficult it was. A slow smile curled his lips, for he admired his wife’s indomitable spirit.
Returning to Thea’s side, he bowed gracefully and held out his arm. “Madam, will you join me inside?”
She shot him a look he couldn’t define, then tentatively put her hand on his. He covered it in a reassuring way, then led her into the croft.
The interior was dark and smoky, lit only by the doorway and a fire burning brightly in a fire pit in the earthen floor. Over the fire hung a large black iron pot, bubbling with some sort of food. As James’s eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, he saw a woman, wearing a simple woolen dress, standing stiffly beside two little girls in one corner of the roomâthe crofter’s family.
James politely introduced Thea and asked if there was any food. The woman came forward, smiling with warm sincerity.
“Our food is simple,” she said in halting English, gesturing toward the fire. “Both you and your wife are welcome to whatever we have, and to sit beside our fire and try to dry yourselves.”
A little of the tension that had been knotting itself in James’s belly eased as Thea smiled and thanked the woman, then stepped gingerly to the blaze. Their hostess spoke sharply to the two little girls, and in a flurry of activity, they pulled a wooden bench close to the fire. Gratefully, Thea sank down on it, holding out her hands to the heat.
For the duration of their visit, through a meal of thick oatmeal porridge topped with last summer’s honey, and slices of unleavened bread, James and the Highlander conversed in the musical cadences of Gaelic speech. James let the man talk, coaxing from him information on the changes caused by the rebellion. What the Scot told him was similar to other stories, but hearing it here, in the depths of the devastated region, chilled James as nothing had before. He began to fear what he would find at Glenmuir. How many would be dead or deported to the colonies? What devastation had been wrought by the marauding English armies? Would he find a crop of fair-haired babies as evidence of the depredations?
He glanced at Thea. For the most part, her golden hair was bound up in a knot and hidden beneath her hat, but a few rebellious strands had escaped and were curling around her face in the warmth of the fire. She was eating the tasteless, but filling, oatmeal with great concentration, as if she didn’t like the food, but knew she had no option but to consume it. The color was returning to her face and her body was beginning to slump as her tension eased.
Thea was English, he thought. These strangers had treated her kindly, because she was with him, but he wondered now if his clansmen would accept her freely. He’d been so determined to get to Glenmuir that he had brushed aside the very real possibility t
hat she would not be welcome.
The thought disturbed him. He knew what it was like to be an outsider, accepted under duress, never really wanted.
He would not force Thea into that sort of life. She deserved better.
Chapter 11
As Thea mounted Firefly, she shivered, but not with the cold. The people in the hut had seemed unaware she was not a Scot, as her husband was. How generous would they have been if they had discovered she was English, a member of the nation that made the laws they so blatantly flouted?
When she was in Edinburgh, she’d known she would be a stranger amongst the Scottish clansmen, but she’d never expected they would not speak her language. Already she felt isolated, walking a thin, dangerous line drawn by events and traditions she didn’t understand. Here in the Highlands she was an intruder in a harsh, unforgiving world. How would she survive?
With the rain pelting down, Thea drew the hood of her cloak down over her eyes in a vain attempt to protect her face. She turned when her husband spoke. Although he didn’t smile, there was a watchful care in his gaze as he looked at her.
“Ready?”
The word was simple, the question was not. Thea nodded, warmed far more than she had been in the little croft. As difficult as their journey was, no matter what the reception she received when she reached Glenmuir, James would be there. He kicked the big chestnut into motion, and Thea followed suit, urging Firefly to a little more speed so that she could ride beside her husband. This time when he looked over at her, he smiled, and Thea smiled back before she turned to face the road ahead.
The journey through the bleak mountains lasted four days. The weather, although it favored them enough to cease raining after the second day out, remained cool, the sky overcast. Thea’s mood seesawed from hope to despair through those long days. At times she felt as if she was one of James’s soldiers, on a forced march to fight a battle against an unseen enemy, for he drove them mercilessly, demanding extra speed even as she drooped wearily in the saddle. Yet at night he was gentle and tender, concerned over her well-being, insistent that she rest as much as possible.
There were no inns along their route, so they spent the nights in private homes, some more elaborate than others, all much finer than the humble croft. In this isolated area, where visitors brought news of the outside, James was welcomed with great pleasure, and the conversations he had with his hosts were wide-ranging and intense, while Thea’s were shallow and strained. Used to being a part of discussions in Edinburgh, Thea saw this reserve as evidence that the Highlanders found her strange and alien, but were too polite to say so. The evenings fueled the fears that she was trying so very hard to ignore.
As the days passed, Thea’s fears increased and her mood darkened, although she could sense a growing optimism in her husband. She could not forget that while she was blindly moving into the unknown, James was coming home to a way of life he had been willing to sacrifice everything to regain. And at those times when he bluntly ordered her to hurry up or mind where Firefly was putting her feet, when she wanted nothing more than to stop and rest, Thea wondered with aching regret if one of his sacrifices had been the loss of his freedom. For to return to his beloved Highlands he’d had to take a wife, an English wife. Although he made no reference to it, Thea could not forget.
On the fourth day their route led them steeply uphill into the thick, rolling mountains. After several days spent in the never-ending procession of steep rises and sharp, narrow valleys, Thea had a rough idea of their purpose. They were climbing toward a pass, a notch between two higher peaks that led into a valley beyond. They rode slowly, letting the horses pick their way along the broken track.
It was nearly dusk when James reined in, scanning the land ahead of them. Thea stopped beside him, happy for a chance to rest. He looked at her, suppressed excitement in his blue eyes. “Lonan Pass. We’re almost home.”
Thea caught her breath and smiled tremulously. “I’m glad.” She leaned forward to stroke the mare. “Firefly is a lovely animal and a delight to ride, but my body aches. And we are both tired. She wants a rest as much as I do.”
“I can’t promise you much comfort, Thea.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “The house being prepared for us will be small and the furniture will be made in the valley. When the castle was burned after Culloden, all of the furnishings were destroyed as well. When my father knew that I would be returning to Scotland, he asked Gregor MacLonan to order what was necessary, but…”
Culloden. Thea shivered and peered down at the valley below. The battle had scarred this land in ways that would linger far too long. She drew herself up, facing what could not be changed. “Where is the village? I cannot see it.” In the gray light she could distinguish little beyond the dark vegetation that lined the steep hillside.
“The glen is long and thin, shaped like a finger crooked at the final joint. The village,”âhe hesitatedâ“and the castle are about a third of the way up the valley, beyond the point where it bends north.” He put his heels to his horse’s flanks. “Come. We still have some distance to travel and I fancy reaching our destination before dark.”
As they picked their way down the slope Thea looked about her, curious at the first sight of her new home. There was a heavy, waiting stillness over the deserted land, as if nothing and no one lived there. The only sounds were the creaking of the saddle leather, the jingle of harness, and the muted thump of the horses’ hooves on the ground. Irrational, primitive fear raised the hairs on the nape of Thea’s neck. Ruthlessly, she fought down the errant emotion.
She had almost persuaded herself that the ominous quiet merely presaged a storm, when they came to what had once been a broad stand of trees. Now all that remained were twisted and blackened skeletons, some still upright, more charred stumps or blackened logs on the ground. The carnage had been the result of a fierce fire.
A glance at her husband’s set face informed her that this devastation was recent, and unhappy intuition told her it was part of the havoc wreaked after Culloden. Uneasily, she moistened dry, nervous lips, then took heart from the new growth that was springing up over the dead layer. One day the tiny seedlings would be as large as the trees that had been burned. Eventually the scar would disappear. Glancing at James, she wondered if time would ever heal his anger and bitterness.
Gradually, they made their way up the valley, haunted by the unnatural quiet and the grim devastation. Thea decided she would be glad when they had passed through this section and rounded the bend into the populated portion of Glenmuir. She was unprepared for the sight that met her eyes when they did so.
A long, narrow lake, or loch, as the Scots would call it, extended most of the length of the valley. At the moment it was a forbidding gunmetal gray, its surface ruffled by the wind that had followed them throughout their journey. On the western shore loomed the Castle, and at the sight of it James roughly jerked his chestnut stallion to a halt. The animal snorted and tossed its fine head in annoyance. James didn’t notice, for he was gazing with fixed concentration at what remained of Glenmuir Castle. Thea’s grip on the reins slackened as she too stared ahead with fascinated horror. The mare obediently stopped beside the other horse, arching its dapple gray neck and playing with the bit.
The Castle was little more than a blackened shell of what it must have once been. A fortified manor house with corner towers and few windows, the structure had been built by a MacLonan ancestor nearly two centuries before. Now the roof and living space inside had been destroyed, leaving only the stone shell reaching pointing fingers of decay into the sky.
Emotion swelled in Thea as she stared at the wreck of a once-proud houseâanger at the wanton destruction, and fear of a future spent in this desolate place. Beneath was a reluctant but growing understanding of why one nation could hate another so wholeheartedly.
She looked over at James. He continued to study the ruin with a grim concentration that hurt to look at. Taking a deep breath, Thea said quietly, “James, do y
ou know where the cottage is?”
For a moment he turned from his scrutiny of the damage done his childhood home. “No. Gregor MacLonan, the steward, has been notified we are coming. He will show us.” With that curt statement, James went back to his bleak examination.
Thea looked around the empty countryside. She said doubtfully, “He may know we are coming, but does he know when?”
“Yes, of course he does! I sent a message before we were married giving him a rough calculation of when I expected to arrive. We’re a few days later than I claimed, thanks to the poor weather, but nothing to signify.”
Thea bit her lip as she looked around her. “If we are expected, wouldn’t there be someone watching for us?”
That caught his attention. He took one last, lingering look at the Castle ruin, then urged his horse into motion and trotted off in the direction of the cluster of buildings that made up the small village of Glenmuir.
The wind was stronger now, biting through their enveloping cloaks. As they neared the habitations, Thea wondered if the entire place had been deserted.
Suddenly, their way was barred by a short, thickset man with a bushy beard and a shock of lank, dark hair. The chestnut snorted and tried to rise on its hind legs. James fought it down. The man waited until the horse was calm before saying in the rolling accent of the Highlands, “Are you looking for someone?” Shrewd gray eyes noted the wealth of their dress, and he added, “There’s been no one at the castle for years. Not since…” Recognition suddenly halted his tongue. “Master James?”
“Indeed,” James replied curtly. “I gather you did not expect me. My messenger must have met with an accident.”
“We received your letter, sir, near two months ago. But we thought you’d changed your mind.”
James’s eyes bored into the other man’s. “Explain yourself, Gregor MacLonan.”
The steward stared calmly back. “We had a second letter, sir, saying you would be staying in Edinburgh.” He glanced at Thea when she gasped. Her gray mare began to prance irritably. Gregor thoughtfully took hold of the bridle, ignoring the horse as it shook its head and snorted.
