White Regency 03 - White Knight

by Jaclyn Reding

  The sound of her name pulled Grace from her thoughts and she turned to see the young stable lad Micheil running across the courtyard toward her.

  “What is it, Micheil?”

  “Did you forget we were to go a’gatherin’ today? I’ve got the pony cart a’ready.”

  In all the turmoil surrounding Eleanor’s disappearance that morning, Grace had forgotten that she had promised to take Micheil with her to the other side of the glen to gather some of the herbs and various other plants she had read about in Hannah MacRath’s herbal. He was just learning how to direct the ponies at the cart and was anxious to show her his skill. Perhaps it would offer a welcome diversion from worrying about Christian and Eleanor.

  “Let me change and fetch a shawl and some food to bring along with us and we shall go.”

  A half hour later, Grace set the last of the supplies onto the pony cart before turning to speak to Deirdre behind her. Since they would likely be digging about on the forest floor, Grace had dressed more plainly than usual in gray serge skirts and a linen smock, her hair twisted up beneath a kerchief covering. Grace smiled in an effort to mollify Deirdre’s uneasy expression. Since learning of the babe, Deirdre had become more protective of her, growing uneasy whenever Grace wandered out of sight.

  “Do not worry, Deirdre, we will be back by dusk. I will have Liza and Micheil with me. The grove Hannah wrote about in her journal is but two miles to the east. We will simply go and see if any of the plant life from Hannah’s garden still flourishes there.”

  Micheil clambered up to the driver’s seat on the small pony wagon while Grace and Liza, with Dubhar between them, settled into the back with the supplies. A crack of the whip and a “Get on now,” and they were rolling slowly out of the courtyard onto the worn cart path that traversed the estate to the east.

  The three chatted freely as they teetered along the rutted path. Grace enjoyed the serenity of the summer’s day, the sun shining on her cheeks, and the song of the crossbills flitting about the pines. As Micheil teased Liza about her romance with Andrew, Grace’s thoughts turned to Christian. She wondered whether he had found Eleanor already, if they might at that same moment be riding back across the braes to Skynegal. She sent a silent kiss his way, imagining the touch of his lips in return while counting the hours until he would come back to her.

  They had just come over a crest on the cart path when Micheil unexpectedly pulled the ponies to a halt.

  “Micheil, what is it?” Grace turned to look ahead of the cart at what had caused them to stop. A figure was racing toward them on the cart path, waving its arms frantically and calling out to them in Gaelic, “Cuidich lei Cuidich le! Help! Help!”

  They climbed down to meet what proved to be a young boy of perhaps ten years of age. As he neared, Grace could see that his face was nearly black from dirt and soot, his feet bare, his body naked except for a ragged shirt that only covered him from shoulder to mid-thigh. When he reached them, his eyes had a wild light to them, quite like a caged animal and he was babbling in Gaelic, shaking his head and swinging his arms.

  Micheil spoke to him. “De tha cedrr? What is the matter?”

  The boy spoke too frantically for Grace to understand more than the random word. When she recognized “fire” and “soldiers” and “Starke” among them, she realized he was speaking of the evictions that were taking place on the Sunterglen estate.

  Micheil quickly answered him, his tone calm. He pointed to Grace as he said “Aingeal na Gaidhealthachd. Angel of the Highlands.”

  The boy’s eyes went white against the grime that covered his skin. He fell against her, wrapping his arms around her skirts as he thanked the heavens for bringing him to her.

  “He says the soldiers are marching on the part of the Sunterglen estate that borders Skynegal. There is an old widow, his grannam, who lives alone and cannot walk because her legs are too frail. His family are all away taking their cattle to the hills and he cannot move her on his own. He fears the soldiers will burn her alive.”

  Grace stiffened against an all too familiar shiver. “Then we must go and stop them.”

  “But my lady,” Liza broke in, “that is Sunterglen land.”

  “What they are threatening is murder, Liza. We can’t just stand by and allow them to kill an innocent person.” She turned to Micheil. “Can you ask the boy to lead us while you drive?”

  “Aye, my lady, I will.”

  The pony cart jostled over the rutted glen floor as they headed for the cottage where the widow lived. By the time they reached the small croft, two soldiers were already setting their torches to the thatch on the roof. Another stood at the door, pounding upon it and hollering, “We’ve put the light to the thatch, woman. Tis the last time I’ll tell ye. Ye’d best get yerself out from there!”

  Grace scurried down from the pony cart and ran for the cottage. The soldier at the door glanced at her, his lip curling in disdain. “What d’ye want ‘ere, hizzie?”

  In her coarse clothing, Grace realized he thought her one of the Highlanders. “What in God’s name are you doing? There is a woman inside!”

  He looked momentarily surprised by her well-spoken English, but quickly changed his expression to one of contempt. “I be the captain of this company and we’ve come to clear this croft. She was issued a Writ of Removal and has refused to vacate.”

  He shoved a crumpled sheet of parchment at her. Grace took it, giving it glance. “It is written in English! These people can only speak Gaelic! She doesn’t understand why you are here!”

  ” ‘Tis what they get for bein’ uncivilized idlers like they are. That old Scots witch has lived long enough. Let ‘er burn.”

  Grace glared at the man in a moment of disbelieving rage before she took both hands up and shoved him hard, knocking him off his feet to the ground. As his company of soldiers stood watching and laughing, Grace flung the door to the cottage wide. Before she could scramble in to look for the widow, she felt herself being seized from behind, locked in the captain’s grip.

  “Get you gone, you Scots bitch, afore I lock you in to burn along wit’ her.”

  Grace struggled against him, trying to free herself. Dubhar began barking furiously and lunged from the cart. In the next second, he was knocked cold by the butt of one of the other soldiers’ muskets. The flames had already spread across to the middle of the roof, licking at the vulnerable thatch as a column of black smoke burgeoned overhead.

  Liza scurried up, calling to Micheil to go for her basket in the cart while she pulled at the captain’s arms.

  “See here, you bloody bastard, free her now! You’ve no right to hold her!”

  The captain let go of one of Grace’s arms as he lashed outward, shoving Liza back. In that second, Grace balled both hands together before her and jerked her elbow back, striking the captain hard in his fleshy middle. She could hear the sound of his breath rushing from his mouth and yanked herself free from his hold. She turned just as the man was gaining his feet, drew back her fist just like Liza had taught her, and planted him a facer that knocked him flat on his back in the dust.

  One of the other soldiers lunged forward, halting a moment later when Liza took the basket from Micheil and quickly removed a pistol from inside.

  “Liza! Where did you get that?”

  “Deirdre pressed it upon me afore we left today. I think she might have had a premonition that we could meet with trouble.”

  Liza trained the pistol’s barrel on one of the soldiers who looked to be advancing. “Neither of ye move else ye’ll know the wrath of the laird of Skynegal whose wife you have just affronted!”

  The soldier hesitated, weighing her words. He turned to his companion, “Hoy, Owen, I’m for leaving’!”

  Owen merely said “Aye,” and the two of them turned and trotted off for the hills.

  The fire was now blazing, tossing bits of burning thatch all about them as the wind suddenly picked up. The air was thick with the smell of the fire. “Liza, come, help me
find the widow!”

  Inside, the cottage was filled with a heavy veil of smoke that immediately stung their eyes to tears. Grace coughed against the burning it brought to her throat and quickly tugged the kerchief from her hair, placing it over her mouth and nose so that she might breathe easier. She urged Liza to do the same and together they searched, stumbling over the furnishings inside the darkness of the cottage.

  “Micheil!” Grace called to the outside, “ask the boy where his grannam is! I cannot find her!”

  The two boys came into the cottage then, snaking through the smoke, flitting toward the back of the dwelling.

  “Micheil, no!”

  “It is all right, my lady. She is here!” Grace and Liza shuffled their way toward where Micheil had called to them. In the shadowed corner, they found a crude box bed. Inside lay the figure of a woman too weak to utter more than a struggling cry.

  “Liza, help me to carry her outside!” Grace reached under the widow’s frail shoulders, speaking very softly to her in Gaelic, assuring her that they were there-to help her. The widow moaned when they lifted her from the bed and slowly, carefully, they carried her from the cottage as burning chunks of thatch rained down upon them from overhead.

  They bore her across the yard to the pony cart where Micheil took up a blanket and spread it upon the ground for her to lie upon. Grace turned and started to retrace their steps, hoping to save some of the widow’s belongings from the fire, but within seconds, the roof had collapsed inside the cottage. She was left to stand, unable to do anything more than watch as the flames roiled out of control, the smoke billowing angrily across the horizon.

  “The captain!” Micheil shouted. “He is gone!”

  Grace turned from the burning cottage. “Let us get the widow and her grandson into the cart and leave before the soldiers return. We will bring them back to Skynegal with us.”

  A small pallet was quickly prepared for the widow, made of soft sedge grass and bracken strewn under the blanket in the back of the cart.

  “Come, Liza, help me lift her.”

  But as Grace stooped to take the woman under her shoulders, she felt a sudden rush of liquid warmth between her legs. Her focus blurred and she stumbled back against the pony cart before falling to the ground. She lay there as the darkness closed in, the voices around her fast growing dim.

  “My lady!”

  “Has she fainted?”

  “Oh my God, there is blood!”

  “The babe…”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Flowers.

  Grace sat in an open field that was filled with flowers—aspodel and primrose of every imaginable hue, brilliant red and orange, pale yellow and pink. The colors were more vivid than she could ever imagine. The wind was blowing in off the loch, whispering through the tall grass that grew along the embankment. The sun was shining. Cliodna’s birds in the tower were calling and soaring. Somewhere, everywhere she heard laughter, children, happiness. She stood and the hem of her tartan gown ruffled in the breeze. She laughed. Away in the distance she searched for Christian. He was to return to her today…

  A shadow fell suddenly across the sun, darkening the sky and blotting out its light from overhead. The wind quickened, pulling at the fragile blossoms around her ankles, hissing snakelike through the grass. The laughter she heard no longer sounded childlike, but instead was wicked and ugly. She frowned at the sudden and unwelcome change and called to the sun to return, but it did not heed her. Instead the wind blew faster and she turned at the sound of someone approaching behind her, smiling for she knew it was Christian. He had come for her, to chase away the clouds, and she put her hand back for him, reaching…

  A terrible force struck her, throwing her forward. She fell into the flowers, but they were no longer primroses, instead barbed thorns that bit into her hands. She struggled to regain her feet and a blackness came for her, billowing like smoky fingers reaching out to take her. She could not lift her hands to push them away. She could only watch as the darkness drew nearer and nearer…

  A glimmer then that shone for but a moment’s time in the terrible darkness. It sparkled like a guardian star in the midnight sky, a symbol of hope… but then the smoky fingers took hold of it, pulling it away. The laughter grew, louder, more frightening, echoing now, thundering above her, threatening her… suddenly, softly through the roar, she heard him. He was calling for her. It was her knight and he had come back to save her, just as she had always known he would…

  “Grace?”

  Slowly her eyes flickered open. She stared a moment, waiting for her vision to focus, trying to decide where she was. The field and the flowers were no longer there. Gone was the laughter and singing. Instead she was in her chamber at Skynegal, lying on her bed. Daylight broke inside the windows, casting tiny halos of light about the room, giving it an ethereal air. It was very quiet, not even the sound of the birds outside. Odd, she thought fleetingly, why have Cliodna’s birds gone silent?

  “Grace, can you hear me?”

  She turned her head, wincing when it felt weighted somehow. Christian was there, just as she had known in her dream, but he wasn’t her brilliant shining knight. His eyes were shot with red and shadowed underneath. His face was darkened with the beginnings of a beard, his hair mussed about his head. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. Grace lifted her hand and touched it to his roughened cheek as she smiled softly to him. The dream, the darkness, none of it mattered. Christian was there with her now. Everything would be safe and good.

  “You came back,” she whispered to him, wondering why her voice sounded so foreign to her ears.

  His brow furrowed and the muscle in his jaw worked as if he were fighting hard against some unknown emotion. He did not smile. He did not speak. Instead his eyes were darkened with torment.

  “Christian, what is it? What is wrong. Has something happened? Did you find Eleanor?”

  Christian shook his head and clasped her hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing it as he closed his eyes. A single tear fell down his cheek. “She has not been found.”

  “You are so troubled. But it is not Eleanor, is it? What is wrong?”

  Grace thought for a moment. Remember…

  A boy. A wagon bumping along a cart path. She recalled a fire, Liza shouting with fear, the soldier’s wicked laughter. “The widow,” she said softly. Tears stung at the back of her eyes.

  “The soldiers responsible for the fire have been arrested and charged, under direct order of Lord and Lady Sunterglen, who have just returned from London and profess to have known nothing of the tactics of their factor, Mr. Starke. I have their every assurance that the people involved, including Mr. Starke, will be made an example of.”

  She looked to Christian. “What of Micheil? Liza? The others?”

  “They are well. Liza was a bit shaken by it all, but she was unharmed. The widow is convalescing and her family has arrived to be with her. Micheil is very worried about you.”

  In that same second, Dubhar came to rest his muzzle on the edge of the bed.

  Grace smiled. She closed her eyes a moment, collecting her strength. She was so very tired. She looked to Christian again. An image then, a memory of falling to the ground, weakness, a hot and sticky wetness against her legs. There had been a pain deep in her belly and blood, very red, so much blood…

  Grace felt her breath leave her as the mental images grew clearer. Tears fell over her cheeks and her throat tightened convulsively against the words she feared speaking but could not ignore. “Christian… what of the babe?”

  Christian bit down on his lip, his eyes filling as he squeezed her hand tightly in his.

  Grace swallowed. Why wasn’t he answering her? Why wasn’t he assuring her the babe was well? “Christian, please… tell me the babe is unharmed.”

  Christian stared into her eyes and silently shook his head, his expression utterly hopeless. “You lost the babe, Grace. There was nothing anyone could do.”

  Oh, God, no�
�

  Grace shook her head against his words, wailing out against a pulling in her chest that she knew had to be the rending of her heart. No, please, no, not the babe… please let him be wrong…

  “It cannot be … no … no …”

  Christian drew Grace up brokenly against him, muffling her anguished cries against his shoulder as she confronted the terrible reality of his words. He held her there tightly, taking her sobs into himself, until finally his fragile resistance gave way and he lost himself to his own weeping.

  Christian stood just inside the doorway leading out to the castle courtyard, watching where Grace sat alone amid the lengthening twilight shadows. He frowned. It had been three weeks since she had lost the babe, three weeks of watching her sit at that same spot, staring off at nobody-knew-what while the rest of the world went on living around her.

  She had grown markedly thin, eating barely enough to sustain her each day. She no longer saw to or even cared about the happenings of the estate. She had abandoned all society, shunning the company of others, keeping to her bedchamber by day, only emerging at this time of the night when everyone else was off eating their supper and preparing for bed.

  It was just that morning that Christian had come to the very real conclusion that slowly, deliberately, she was killing herself. And he wasn’t about to stand by and watch her do it.

  Christian stepped out onto the courtyard, watching for Grace to notice his approach while knowing she would not. It was the same every night. He would come and sit beside her. He would talk to her, tell her of the events of the day, read to her the letters she had received from the Highlanders who had immigrated to America, until the moon rose high in the evening sky. She never responded. She never gave the slightest indication she had heard him. She just sat on that rock bench, staring off at the nothingness, willing herself to die.