Moon Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  Those items that could be found locally began arriving within the week. Alyson watched in satisfaction as the blanket chests began to fill with fine woolens and the linen wardrobes with finely woven sheets. Dried and salted meats, potatoes, and sacks of oatmeal filled the empty pantries and cellars. Next year there would be gardens and jams and jellies from the fruits her grandmother had said were to be found. For now, such luxuries would have to come from afar. Alyson signed still another invoice for the latest shipment of plain woolen yard goods and posted it to Mr. Farnley. Let him make what he would of it, along with the other lists of necessities she had sent to him.

  Alyson suspected Rory still managed her finances. The post to him from London was formidable. If he did not wish to discuss it with her, she would not lower her pride to inquire. He would just have to discover her purchases from Mr. Farnley.

  Slowly she learned the names of the servants and their various capabilities. They all knew her story, knew her for a sailor’s bastard, but they still held a respect for the Maclnneses and a wariness of the memory of her grandmother. Often she caught them watching her with suspicion when she drifted through a room without speaking, her mind on other things. But as rumors of her pregnancy made the rounds, they relaxed their guard, and she actually caught an occasional smile on their faces.

  There were no smiles the night the rain turned to wailing winds and sleet, and Alyson discovered a more heartbreaking facet of this life. She shivered at the howling storm even though workmen had lined the windows with paneled shutters, and a seamstress had sewn heavy draperies to cover the shutters. Fires burned in all the grates, but nothing kept out the howl of the wind. Terrified for Rory’s safety, Alyson walked the floors and refused to be comforted.

  The noise outside was such that she almost didn’t hear the faint pounding at the great oaken door. Since the castle overlooked a cliff, there was only one entrance to the tower. Rory would not have lingered to knock at his own gate.

  The servants had retired to the warmth of the kitchen, leaving Alyson to struggle with the massive door. A gust of wind blew it wide once she had it unlatched, sending her staggering backward. In the doorway stood two forlorn figures, one carrying a tattered woolen shawl in her arms, protecting the tiny form wrapped inside against her breast.

  Alyson studied the two scarecrow women, while hurriedly ushering them in out of the cold. They wore no cloaks or coats, and their tartans had frozen into shapeless mounds around their shoulders. In the meagre warmth of the hall, the ice coating them began to drip from their garments. Alyson gasped in horror as she realized both women wore nothing but rags on their feet. Her gaze flew to the weathered, worn lines of the older woman’s face and read the bleakness there.

  “They say the Maclean has returned,” the visitor managed to croak through cracked lips, speaking slowly but in a thick accent. “Is he here?”

  “He should be here soon. You must come in and dry yourselves.” Alyson couldn’t help observing the younger woman clutching the infant. The child hadn’t moved or uttered a cry since they entered. She had never tended a baby, had never had close contact with one, and her hands itched to touch the tiny bundle, to see the child’s face. The young mother’s expression had frozen at sight of Alyson, but she limped toward the warmth of the fire.

  Their tattered rags left a trail of water across the planked floor. Obeying an urge that had no voice, Alyson took off her shawl. She slipped the warm wool around the frozen bundle and lifted the child from its mother’s arms. The young woman stood helplessly, her large eyes dark in an emaciated face, as she watched Alyson cuddle the child in her arms.

  It was only when Alyson removed the soggy wool covering the infant’s face that the horror crept into her bones. She glanced past the young mother, to the older woman, who met her gaze with unflinching sadness.

  “Hush, Mary,” the older woman said to the whimpering younger one. “The lady will only take Jamie to the kitchen to get warm. Everything’s fine now.”

  Alyson caught the warning in the woman’s carefully pronounced words, and grateful for any excuse to flee, practically ran from the room.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, she opened her mouth to call for help as she entered the kitchen, but nothing emerged. The servants sitting around the fire stared as she wordlessly held the bundle of rags. Her expression apparently smote them with helplessness, until the elderly housekeeper recovered and shouted to Alyson’s young maid.

  “Meg! Take Lady Alyson upstairs.” The housekeeper removed the rags from Alyson’s arms, and then exclaimed in Gaelic, causing several of the others to jump to their feet.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Alyson asked, her eyes searching the other woman’s for verification as she reluctantly surrendered her small burden.

  “Aye, lass. Many a bairn born this time o’ the year has not the strength to live. Yer own will be born in the spring, and a fine time that will be. He’ll be a big strapping lad, ye will see. Dinna fash yerself o’er it nae. Yer man willna be likin’ to see ye so.”

  The girl Meg tried to lead Alyson away, but the emptiness in her arms where the infant had been would not let her leave. Unaware of the tears still streaming down her cheeks, she silently returned to the waiting women, scarcely aware that Meg still followed.

  When she returned to the front room without the infant, the mother began a wail in a dialect Alyson did not need language skills to understand. She met the older woman’s gaze with a sorrow that ate right through her heart. The woman nodded in understanding and proceeded to reassure the young mother in an incomprehensible accent.

  Alyson turned to give Meg orders for warm clothing and blankets. The front door slammed open and Rory fell into the hall with a burst of wind and rain. The high keening wails drew him to the front room once he had the door closed. The rage and weariness on his face deepened at the scene before him.

  “What the devil is this about?” he roared. He threw his soaked cloak over a massive carved mahogany chair with utter disregard for its antiquity. Meg instantly blocked Alyson as if to protect her from his fury.

  Alyson could see her husband’s frustration color his already chapped and reddened jaw but she did not fear his fury.

  He was a man of practicality, a man who used logic and action to attain his goals. She realized he had buried emotion with his brother and father and had no notion how to deal with it. She waited while he struggled to regain control. He had married her, a woman who communicated in emotions he could not comprehend.

  The look of anguish on his face was as raw and painful as she felt. But he could not express it. Turning from her, he spoke sharply in Gaelic to the two women by the fire.

  As if knowing Alyson could not understand what they said, the older woman glanced at her with compassion and spoke to her as well as Rory, using her halting English.

  “The child was forced on her by one of Drummond’s men. When she grew too big to work, they threw her out of the house. I took her in, but the bairn was born sickly, and she had no milk for it. The roof leaked and the mold got in the oats. I had nothing to give them. When we heard the Maclean had returned, I told her he would help, he would remember Gregor. So we came here.”

  This last came on a note of defiance, as if daring them to have forgotten the man Gregor or to think that she begged. Alyson understood at once and glanced to Rory, praying that he knew of whom she spoke. She should not have doubted.

  “Gregor! How could I forget the man who gave me my first claymore and showed me how to use it? He had a lass that was only knee-high when last I saw her. And this is Mary, then?”

  Perhaps compassion could not be heard in the tone of his voice, but it was in his words, and Alyson sighed with relief. Rory would make things right. If she gave it thought, she would realize that this Mary was much the same age as herself, and had fate decreed differently, Rory might never have left the Highlands but stayed in his family home and married this daughter of his old friend. She could not allow her thoughts t
o follow those lines, but concentrated on what must be done now.

  The conversation had gone on without her, but Alyson understood enough to realize Rory offered the women a home and positions in the household and looked now to her for assistance. With a nod of her head, Alyson sent Meg on the errands she had ordered earlier. Then she turned to the sobbing woman.

  “I know you would wish to live near where your little boy will be buried. You have a home here, as he will. When you are strong again, we can talk of what you can do. I don’t suppose either of you knows aught of weaving?”

  Rory looked surprised at this change of topic, but the older woman looked relieved. “If you have looms, my lady, I know the trade, and Mary is very quick.”

  Alyson smiled absently and nodded. “Good. There are no sheep now, but there will be. It is too costly to rely on others for what we can provide ourselves.” Without changing the tone of her voice, she greeted the maid who entered with warm blankets. “Meg, can you find Mary and her friend a bed and some hot porridge? They will be staying.”

  Seeing the newcomers led off, Alyson began to drift off after them, but Rory blocked her passage. She gazed up at him without surprise.

  “What is this talk of a child to be buried?” His voice was gruff, but his hands resting on her shoulders were gentle.

  “Her baby died. They are tending it now in the kitchen.”

  He could still see the streaks of tears on her face, but she had concealed her feelings behind that damned vague look she wore to protect herself. Rory realized she was protecting herself against him as well, and the raw ache throbbed painfully.

  Rory knew what he should do. He should take her in his arms and kiss the tears from her cheeks and hold her until she let go of the pain and cried out her fears for their own child. But he also knew that to do that would release this painful need of his own, and he had forfeited the right to do that.

  There was only one other offer he could make, the only certain way he knew to protect Alyson and the child from the cruelty of this world as he knew it. Sadly he brushed a strand of silky ebony from her face.

  “Dougall will be arriving soon with the Witch. He can take you back to London by sea. You and the child will be warm and safe, and there will be physicians aplenty if they are needed. Our child will be fine, lass, you will see.”

  Alyson shook her head. “No, Maclean, you will not rid yourself of me that easily. All my life I’ve lived in a cocoon, sheltered from the world. I cannot complain, because I never knew any other way to live. I was not necessary to anyone, anywhere, then. But I know differently now, and I cannot go on hiding from the way things are. Did you think I could go forever watching people starve and babies die and do nothing? If you do not mean to use my inheritance to help, then someone must. Good night, Rory.”

  She walked out and up the stairs to the bed they no longer shared, leaving Rory staring after her with a longing so deep that he knew he would never recover.

  The beautiful child he had carried away and shown the world had become a woman at last, but a woman who no longer needed him.

  He, on the other hand, was back where he had started, admiring a lovely object he could never have, fearful that his jaded touch would destroy her.

  29

  “He’s not evil. The devil is evil. Drummond is just greedy, like most English lords.”

  “He’s a devil! You have not seen him as I have! A cross should be driven through his black heart, and he should be burned at the stake!”

  “Perhaps Lady Maclean could put a curse on him,” a third voice snickered.

  With a sigh at the overheard conversation, Alyson entered the kitchen. The senseless argument instantly quieted as the servants returned to preparing dinner. Alyson glanced toward Mary, surprised to find the girl already out of her sickbed. She was wearing one of the serviceable woolen gowns Alyson had ordered made for the staff, but at the time it had not occurred to her to order materials for shoes. She made a mental note of that lack as she observed the bundle wrapped about Mary’s feet to warm them on the cold stone floors.

  The girl didn’t look her way, but Alyson knew she had been the one driving the argument. After a bath and a few days’ rest, she could be seen as attractive in a harsh-boned manner. She was still much too thin, and the spots of pink on her cheeks warned that fever lingered, but she was diligently kneading a large bowl of dough without any sign of weakness.

  Alyson did not know who had made the comment about the curse. Her gaze lingered on a young girl scrubbing a pot near the fire, and the child blushed, but spying on the servants had not been her intention.

  “We will need extra for dinner tonight, enough for another twenty men, I would say. Can we do it?”

  Unlike her grandfather’s trained English staff, these people were inclined to question orders and offer opinions without being asked. All in all, Alyson found it much simpler to consider their opinions before imposing her own.

  “Twenty men?” The cook and established ruler of the kitchen looked to her in surprise. A stocky, hearty woman in her forties, but with dark hair already graying, she had worked in these kitchens before Alyson was born. She remembered Alyson’s mother and grandmother and was less likely than the others to argue when Alyson caught her by surprise like this. “Has there been a messenger, then?”

  That was one of the problems with living in such isolation. Nothing went on without everyone knowing it. They knew there had been no messenger.

  “Rory is expecting his ship to arrive. If it is not today, then we will have to preserve what we can for the morrow. I am certain there are mouths enough to eat what we cannot save.”

  That was an unarguable statement, and, satisfied, the cook agreed they could provide the meal. Even though she had given them what she considered adequate explanation, Alyson could hear a voice pipe up as soon as she left the room.

  “She has the gift, I tell you. The laird’s been expecting that ship for days. I heard him say so. And did you see the way she looked right at me? She knew!”

  “Mackle-mouth, anyone would know your whining! Get that pot scrubbed and start on the potatoes.”

  Alyson took a deep breath and sailed down the hall. She had told Rory she no longer wanted the cotton batting that had protected her all her life, but there were times when she wondered if she hadn’t been just a little hasty in her declaration of independence.

  Climbing to the second floor to see what progress had been made in refurbishing their private apartments, Alyson was surprised to discover Rory still at his desk. When he had appropriated this room for his study, she had ordered draperies for it. A fire was kept burning to keep his books and papers dry and to maintain a reasonable temperature whenever he chose to use the room. Alyson didn’t know if he noticed the improvements, much less appreciated them. She raised her eyebrows when he rose and performed a courtly bow before speaking directly to her thoughts.

  “I had not realized the difference a little wool and a fire can make until I tried to work downstairs in the hall. I have spent too much time in the West Indies these last years to be comfortable in the cold for long, I fear.”

  Rory didn’t advance on Alyson, but drank in her heavenly scent of heather as she drifted into his room. He had few opportunities to be alone with her anymore, a circumstance he had devised for his own protection. Just her presence sent his head swimming, and his gaze hungrily devoured her translucent face. Her dark-fringed, mirrored eyes held him captivated. With her lovely figure bundled in high-necked woolens and shawls, he could not readily see the signs of the child growing within her.

  He longed for just the touch of her hand to ease his day, a small kiss to make the sun shine again, but he dared not. He had forced his way into her life, shattered her trust, and now reaped the consequences. She shied from his touch, his look, his very presence. He hid his disappointment as she walked past him to contemplate the newly hung draperies.

  “This place was built by men of war with no thought other than to
protect themselves. I wonder that they felt such a life worth protecting.” Alyson pushed aside the heavy gold fabric to gaze down upon the harbor below. “Men died down there, fighting over this land. Are material things worth dying over?”

  Rory knew what she asked, but not why. It had nothing to do with the men who died down there and much to do with his fight with his cousin, but he had no way of knowing how much she knew or guessed.

  “Life is worth nothing if it cannot be lived as a free man. Those who lose their land often lose their freedom. It is not the land so much as the idea that men fight for.”

  Dropping that argument, Alyson turned and gazed at the stack of bills piled on Rory’s desk. “What keeps you here today?”

  Rory gave a ragged sigh and shoved a loosened strand of hair behind his ear. He lifted the stack of invoices for her to examine. “There was no need to have these sent to Mr. Farnley, Alyson. He only returns them to me for approval. I did not imagine the improvements around here appeared by magic.”

  He had wrestled with these accounts and his conscience all the morning. Had he come to Scotland alone, he could have lived on bread and water, with no need for servants and draperies and fires in all the rooms. His income could be diverted almost entirely to feeding and clothing his clansmen and the tenants of what had once been his estates. He did not look on it as charity, but as a means of gaining their support when it came time to drive Drummond out of his holdings. But Alyson had changed that simple plan into something much more complex and, likewise, expensive.

  He had to admit he enjoyed the warmth of the fires, the comfort of clean, unmended linen, the nicety of food waiting on the table for him, but the cost of such would eat into the capital needed to buy back his estate. Alyson meant for him to use her wealth for these things she ordered, but that meant he could not even provide for himself or his wife. That thought angered him.

  “If you do not wish to be troubled with my extravagances, you need only tell Mr. Farnley to pay whatever I send to him. Surely I cannot have spent everything we own.”