Christian stared at her. “You are telling me you want to outfit the entire Scottish Highlands with a road system?”
Grace smiled. “Not singlehandedly, of course. I was thinking instead of making a request to the Crown for a grant of monies.”
Suddenly an image presented itself to Christian, of Grace standing before England’s own indolent and arrogant King George IV, dressed in her Scottish woolens, trying to convince the newly crowned king that he should cease spending Crown money on his ridiculous palace at Brighton and instead give it over to the aide of the Scottish peasantry.
Good God, Christian realized—she would do it, too. Was this the same frightened young woman who had viewed a London ballroom as if it were a lion’s den? Or had Grace never actually been that person? Had it only seemed so because it was the role he had expected her to play? He hadn’t given her credit for the ability to pour a proper cup of tea, yet here he stood, in a castle she had almost singlehandedly refurbished, before scores of people who worshipped her, listening as she exuberantly laid out plans for spending Crown money.
Somewhere in the past months, in a way that could not be attributed to any one feature like a different way of wearing her hair or a new gown, Grace had blossomed. It was in the way she moved about the estate and spoke with the people with confidence, contentment, and ease—and even more, with a happiness that had freed her to smile as he had not seen her do before. He found himself wondering what he might do to make her smile at him in that same way.
All during that morning, he had watched her as she struggled to speak in Gaelic with several of the women who were spinning the wool or as she listened intently while a young child had repeated his latest English lessons. Grace truly listened to what each person who came to her had to say. If they spoke to her in Gaelic, she did her best to comprehend and did not scorn them for not having a grasp of English. Grace knew each one of the crofters by name, from the eldest grandmother to the tiniest babe. She knew if they had been ill, if it was nearing their birthday. Watching her thus only made Christian realize his own inadequacy.
He did not know much more than the surnames of those who peopled his own family holdings. It was a reserve that had served to keep him apart from them, detached; it was something he had been taught by his grandfather from an early age. “If you become too familiar with them, they will no longer respect you. Without respect, you cannot hope to rule.”
The difference was that Grace had no desire to rule these people. Yet the respect they had for her, the allegiance they gave her, was more than he could ever hope for from his own tenants, people who had lived on and tended his family’s lands for generations. These people had known Grace for only a matter of weeks and it was clear they would willingly fight for her, defend her as they would their own—to the death, if necessary. It was a fact made even more evident by the distrustful glances they had given him when Grace had introduced him as her husband and the new laird of Skynegal.
Christian had never before felt as uncomfortable in his own clothes as he had when he had stood among this population of Highlanders. His dress was not pretentious by London society’s standards, but here in the rugged Highlands, his velvet coat and nankeen breeches seemed almost flagrant compared to the crofter’s woolens, woolens that Grace had adopted in lieu of fine silk. They all wore the same tartan—the Skynegal tartan, Grace had told him—modeled after a scrap of the tartan of her grandmother’s family, the MacRaths, which she had found while rooting around in the castle’s upper garret. To the people of Skynegal, it was a symbol of their allegiance, of belonging, and it only made him feel even more the outsider.
What Grace was doing here, rebuilding the estate and coming to the aide of the people, felt right in every way. It had reason. It had purpose. If he refused Grace the funds to compel her to return to London out of financial necessity, the separation and distrust that already existed between them would only become worse. He knew in that moment that he would never be able to refuse her the money she needed for Skynegal. He didn’t want to refuse her. In fact, he wanted to be a part of it.
“Grace, you will have a difficult time convincing the Crown to grant you monies for the road-building project.”
She frowned at his defeatism. “I will not know for certain unless I try. And I do plan to try, Christian.”
He held up a hand. “You didn’t allow me to finish. What I was going to say is that you would stand a better chance of getting a grant if the idea were presented to the House of Lords instead.”
“The Lords?” She furrowed her brow. “I rather doubt they would be willing to listen to the whims of a woman, no matter how sensible those whims might be.”
“Perhaps, but they would be willing to listen to one or more of its members.”
Grace looked at Christian, staring at him with an expression that showed she clearly suspected what he was offering to do and prayed she wasn’t mistaken. ‘ “Let me help you, Grace. I would discuss your idea with Robert. He also holds a place with the Lords and, as a Scottish landowner, he would obviously have an interest in the project. He might manage to influence some of the other Scottish lords to lend support to the idea as well.”
Grace could hardly contain her exhilaration. She came around the desk and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. “Oh, Christian, thank you… thank you…”
The touch of her body, the smell of her hair, impacted upon Christian in an instant. He told himself to step away from her even as he tightened his arms around her. For weeks while she had been gone, he had never once known a sexual thought. Ballrooms filled with variously lovely women hadn’t so much as given him a stir. Now as he stood there, he could scarcely breathe and his only thought was that of having her naked and gasping beneath him.
When she tipped her head up to look at him, she wore that same smile he had longed for earlier. It was to be his undoing. The area around them grew suddenly warm and charged with awareness. His only possible response was to lower his head and touch his lips to hers.
It was a kiss that held all the emotions they had both forsaken the past months. It was long and deep and utterly sense stealing. And it was interrupted all too soon.
“Oh—good heavens, my lady, my lord—I had no idea.”
It was Alastair, of course, simply following Grace’s wish that he should not feel the need to knock before entering the castle office. His face was cherry red with embarrassment.
Grace immediately broke away from Christian’s embrace. “It is all right, Alastair. I am supposed to be helping Deirdre with the children’s reading lesson now.”
She looked at Christian briefly, her smile gone to discontent, before she skirted around him and out the door.
An awkward silence fell over the room the moment she had gone.
“My apologies, my lord. I seem to suffer the curse of bad timing.”
Christian shook his head, patting Alastair on the shoulder even as he thought that at that particular moment that he couldn’t have agreed more. He headed for the outside courtyard on a hope that the Highland air was brisk enough to cool the fire that was still burning through his veins.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Christian passed the better part of the next two days riding about the estate with Robert and Alastair. He had discussed Grace’s idea of putting the Highlanders to the work of building roads with Robert, who enthusiastically supported it. Together, they would prevail upon some of the other members of the House and present a proposal for it at their next session.
It would mean that Christian would have to remain longer at Skynegal to get a more accurate scope of the landscape the estate comprised and to set down a clear plan-for the building of the roads. There was still the situation with Eleanor and Lord Herrick to consider, and he had spent the night before doing just that to no happy conclusion. No matter how he tried to find a way around it, he kept coming back to the same inevitable conclusion. He was going to have to revoke the one thing he had always
promised his sister she would have. He would have to bring an early end to Eleanor’s first season and summon her and Lady Frances to Skynegal. He had no other choice.
As they rode along the brae to the east, Alastair educated Christian on the particulars of Skynegal and its neighboring estates. According to the Scotsman, Skynegal was not a vast holding by Scottish standards such as that of Sunterglen to the north and east, but what Skynegal lacked in proportion, it more than claimed in physical beauty.
Touching on the mist-covered shore of Loch Skynegal, the estate moved inland across a verdant glen following the River Kerry eastward toward Dubh Loch. It was glorious country, mottled here and there with dense deer forest, shimmering loch, and the occasional ancient broch. Along with the beauty, Christian received a firsthand view of the burnt-out cottages that littered the silent and deserted hillside close by to the border of the neighboring estate where the Highlanders had once worked and lived, where stories had been handed down around a smoky peat fire, and where memories had been made.
Christian stood beneath a sober drizzle, oblivious of the rain, caught by the sight of a tattered scrap of tartan waving in the breeze from a tree branch that had been stuck in the ground beside one of the deserted cottages, a last proud symbol of a time that was seemingly gone forever. He wondered at how the British people could know more of what was happening across an ocean in America, but had heard nothing of the injustice being wrought here. The British had fought for so many years to keep other countries and peoples from being oppressed by the likes of Napoleon, yet at home they would oppress their own. The hypocrisy of it sickened him.
” ‘Tis difficult for the landlords to understand,” Alastair said, staring at the makeshift tartan flag. “We Scots think on our past and our native land with a passionate attachment. Many of us have lived on land that has been occupied by our fathers and grandfathers before us. In the beginning, the landlords promised improvement. They offered lots to replace those that were formerly occupied, but they did this by driving the people from their fertile land in the glen to new homes perched upon rock and moorland, with far less arable land than what they had originally.”
“Could the Scots not resist, and apply to the authorities for intervention?” Christian asked.
Alastair shook his head. “Unfortunately, my lord, it is these same landlords and their factors who serve as the justices of the peace. The Scots are a devout people and some of our ministers have even begun to exhort the people to submit and quiet their protest, telling them that the clearances are punishment from God for the sins of the Jacobite uprisings.”
As he listened to the Scotsman’s words, Christian began to more fully understand Grace’s commitment to what she had begun here at Skynegal. She was on a singular crusade to save the Highland populace from destruction. “It would seem there must be some way to bring charges against those who have treated the tenants so inhumanely.”
“Aye, my lord, the people did manage it—once. ‘Twas the most notorious factor of them all, Patrick Sellar, back in ‘16. Ne’er a more callous man has come to the Highlands since Cumberland in the ‘45. E’en the mention of his name will bring the lassies to tears.”
“I remember reading that he was brought to trial for his misdeeds,” Robert said.
“Aye, your grace, and summarily acquitted, too.” Christian looked to Robert. “And you have seen nothing of this at Rosmorigh?”
“We had heard of the clearances, but they have thus far not extended near to Rosmorigh. Had they, you could wager your last pound Catriona would be making every bit the effort Grace is. My wife was raised as a crofter. It is not until one is faced with it like this that one can comprehend the fact that such a thing has happened.”
They had been riding at a slow walk, talking as they made their way around the eastern border of Skynegal to circle to the north before heading back to the castle. The horses came around a small copse of oak trees and Christian spotted something lying discarded in a bog ditch. At his first glance of it, he had thought it merely a bundle of rags left behind by one of the evicted crofters. Looking closer, though, he realized that out of that bundle of rags there reached a single pale hand.
He pulled his mount to a halt and dismounted, hastening over to the ditch. He took the outstretched hand and felt along the wrist for a pulse. He found a faint beat beneath the covering of icy-cold skin. He called to the others for help before gently urging the figure over to face him.
Christian sucked in his breath when he saw what appeared to be a woman, perhaps thirty, her hair matted and disheveled about her dirt-smudged face, a face so gaunt she appeared to have not eaten in days. She moaned when Christian moved her, as if her very bones threatened to crumble. Alastair handed Christian a small flask of water he’d brought along and Christian touched it to the woman’s mouth. “Here, miss, drink.”
After a moment or two, her eyelids began to flutter and she slowly opened her eyes, squinting against the harsh light of the day. But when she focused on Christian,‘s face, she let out an unearthly howl, struggling weakly to get away from him as she said over and over, “Oh! Sin Starke! Sin Starke!”
A moment later, her body went limp in his arms, her cries suddenly silent.
“She’s fainted, my lord,” Alastair said, shaking his head dolefully. “She must come from Sunterglen many miles north of here. She thought you were Mr. Starke, the factor of the Sunterglen estate, a man as feared as Patrick Sellar ever was.” He shook his head. “Poor thing. I fear she’s lost her mind.”
Christian knelt down and took the woman up in his arms. She whimpered at the sudden movement before she fell silent again. She weighed no more than a child.
“Help me to get her onto my mount, Robert. We will take her back to Skynegal and get her some warm clothing and something to eat.”
Grace was standing in the courtyard with Deirdre, discussing the list of food supplies that needed to be purchased when next McFee and McGee made the trip to Ullapool. Deirdre had just set some of the older children to peeling the potatoes for that evening’s supper. “We’ll be needin’ some salt to cure the cod afore the winter comes and—”
The Scotswoman fell suddenly silent, staring over Grace’s shoulder with an expression that was in one moment curious, and in the next moment filled with dread.
Grace turned and saw that several figures were approaching down the hillside on horseback, no doubt Christian, Robert, and Alastair returning from their ride. She started across the courtyard to meet them, shielding her eyes against the sunlight. She recognized Alastair first atop his pony, for his bright tartan suit made him the most conspicuous. Robert rode beside him on Bayard, his stallion, but Grace barely took account of him, for she was focused completely upon Christian. He seemed to be carrying something before him on his horse and then she realized it was not something he carried, but someone.
“Deirdre, come!”
Together the two women hurried to meet them.
“Christian, good heavens, what has happened?”
“We found her near the east border. She is unconscious.”
He pulled his horse to a halt at the small door leading inside the castle, where Flora at that moment stuck out her head, no doubt wondering what the commotion was about.
As the others followed, Robert and Alastair quickly told Grace of how they had found the woman lying near dead and delusional at the other side of the estate, a distance of nearly two miles. Christian took the woman to the warmest room in the keep, the kitchen, and lay her in the pine box bed that was built into the wall, where Flora usually slept. As Christian stepped away, Deirdre came forward to see to the woman. As soon as she turned her face into the light, Deirdre let out a gasp.
“Gun sealladh Dia oirnn!”
Grace knew that expression. God have mercy upon us.
“What is it, Deirdre?”
Deirdre’s eyes were wide with fear. “She is Seonag, my Tom’s sister.”
Just then the woman, Seonag, cried out
, conscious now, clutching at her belly. “Leanabh!”
And in that instant, Grace froze for she had recognized the Gaelic word for babe.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Seonag moaned as another pain tightened within her. For several long moments, it grew and swelled, bringing the bedraggled woman upright on the crude box bed in a shadowed corner of the castle kitchen. Day had given over to night, leaving them with only the light from the fire and a scattering of candles set about the snug room.
“Feumaidh tu dean laighe,” Deirdre murmured, urging Seonag back on the bed. “You must lie down, piuthar.”
Seonag’s cheeks were heat flushed, her hair wet and sticking to the sides of her face. She struggled for a breath, fighting against the contraction as she threw her head back with a weakened wail that echoed up to the rafters of the great hall.
Deirdre spoke soothing words to her in Gaelic, smoothing a cool water cloth over her brow while Flora set to boiling water, fetching clean cloths, lighting another candle, anything to keep herself occupied in the midst of the prolonged chaos.
They had removed Seonag’s clothing and washed the mud and soot from her before dressing her in a large man’s sark. A sheet covered her from the belly down and a swathe-band had been placed beneath her back and under her arms so that Flora and one of the other women might lift her slightly from the bed to ease when it came time for her to bear down.
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