Scottish Brides
Page 24
Coinneach’s voice rose once more, its tone designed to lift the hair from the back of the neck of any Sinclair currently listening. The problem was, all of them were rapt with attention. They should have been drinking; it was a night of toasts and slow but certain drunkenness. His cousin, James, had wed, and the happy union was being celebrated. Instead, Coinneach was using this occasion to make mischief, and accomplishing his task well.
“And when it comes to pass that the Sinclair will lament over his fate, and the loss of all his unborn sons, only then will he be allowed to sink into his grave. The last of his possessions will be inherited by a Campbell.” At this, there was a collective hiss of disbelief. The Campbells and the Sinclairs had been enemies for as long as any could remember. “I see the Bride standing before me,” Coinneach interjected quickly. “She knows the secret of life. She’ll be claw-footed and have a voice like a banshee, but she’ll save the clan Sinclair.”
Lachlan sat up straighter. “Is that what’s wrong with her, old man? She limps and screams? Is that why her father so willingly bargains her?”
Coinneach frowned at him. “He wants an end to the raiding, Lachlan. Your promise for his daughter.”
The Sinclairs had been making mischief on the border for generations, but ever since the ’45 it had been a sheer pleasure to tweak the nose of the English. In the last year, however, the raids had taken on a desperate turn. The cattle they’d stolen had been less for sport than to augment the dwindling Sinclair herds.
Lachlan settled back against the heavily carved chair that had been his father’s and his father’s father’s. He’d been raised with tales of Sinclair feats since he was a small boy, regaled with the history of his clan in this very room. He was laird, a position that seemed to mean less and less among the clans of late. But it had been a sacred duty to his father, and to all the Sinclairs who’d come before him. And it meant something to him. The responsibility he bore for his clan’s survival was a constant burden.
His land was starkly beautiful, a succession of softly undulating hills and deeply shrouded valleys giving way to high, bleak peaks. A place of refuge that had always supported its people even in difficult political times. After the ’45, it seemed as if the boot of England had continually been at Scotland’s neck. No Scot was allowed to forget that his country had rebelled and lost. Roads were built and marched upon by red-coated English soldiers; forts were erected, and cannon stood ready; tariffs were extracted, and laws were made to banish or ban or expunge all that was a matter of pride to his countrymen.
In the last few years, it seemed as if the fate of the Sinclairs was as dismal as Scotland’s. Their cattle had not flourished; their land yielded only barley. No wonder so many of his people were leaving.
All that Lachlan Sinclair saw when he looked out into the large hall of his home was what needed to be done, not what could be accomplished.
The Legend loomed larger and larger in his mind. Almost every day bore some additional reminder of his responsibilities. He was beginning to believe, like some daft seer him-self, that this marriage might be the only way for the Sinclairs to prosper after all.
The Legend of the Glenlyon Bride had been whispered about from his birth. Old Mab, the midwife, had had a dream about his future, it was said, one closely tied to the clan’s. The determination had been made that the old woman had dreamed of prophecy, and Coinneach had only exploited the tale. Over the years, however, the Legend had grown in importance. He was sure each member of his clan would admit to believing it. They trusted that a stranger’s presence would signal an end to the hardship that had plagued them. It would not be his cunning that lifted his clan away from desperation, or his knowledge, or even his daring. She would be the answer, this shadowy figure of a woman who dared to stand on the periphery of his vision as if she mocked him even now. He’d rather raid her land and steal her cattle than wed the witch.
Her father had made the offer but a week before. Already, rumor had furnished him details her father had not. Harriet. Even her name was ugly. Coinneach’s words only made fast his fears. A stern harridan of a bride, but with a dowry fat enough to feed his people.
He reached for his cup and drained it. There was no more whiskey; the last of the barrels in the castle cellar had been tapped for this occasion. A Scot without whiskey was like a river without water. One merely enhanced the other. Things were never so bad that a taste of the spirit couldn’t make it better. He was very much afraid that the lack of whiskey would be one more sign to his people that the last days of the Sinclairs were here.
Angus had been in charge of the distilling, but Angus had died unexpectedly a month earlier. A tragedy in more ways than one, that. Not only had Lachlan lost a clansman, but he’d lost all the knowledge Angus had possessed, and, therefore, the only thing Lachlan might have been able to smuggle and turn into a tidy profit.
There were always those who would pay dearly for good Scots whiskey. Even Englishmen. But the fact of the matter was that the excise tax stripped even the smallest of profits from such a venture. It was commonplace, therefore, to simply avoid the tax. Some would label it smuggling. Lachlan preferred to call it smart commerce. The buyer was pleased with a superior product. The seller made a reasonable profit. The only people who weren’t in favor of forestalling the punitive tax were the excise men.
But without the whiskey, he had nothing else to smuggle, trade, or barter. Glenlyon possessed only two things in abundance: barley and hope.
He stood and toasted his cousin, raising his empty cup high. Laughter followed his greeting to the happy couple. His own smile was more forced. He turned and left the room.
What he needed was a miracle. Or a Legend. He stopped, halted by a physical sensation so sharp it was not unlike a dagger spearing his chest. Certainty, that’s what it was. Or destiny. He was going to have to wed the Englishwoman to save his clan.
But he wasn’t going to do so until he’d had a look at the witch.
Squire Hanson’s House
England
It would be a full moon tonight. A reiver’s moon, her father had called it. A moon for dreaming, lass. Close your eyes and feel it ’neath your lids. ’Tis magic, Janet. She needed a touch of magic. Anything to dispel this awful feeling of being trapped within her skin. Screaming without a sound.
“Janet, may I fetch you a shawl? You are shivering.”
She turned, and Jeremy Hanson was there again. As he was most times. So close she was grateful for the muslin fichu across her bodice. She pulled it up discreetly with two fingers. She shook her head.
“Are you ill?”
“No, just having an errant thought,” she said, forcing a smile.
“Then you should not think such troubling things.” His smile was sincere; the look in his eyes, one of deep devotion. He was a truly nice young man, tall and slender, with hazel eyes and light brown hair. Everything about Jeremy was agreeable, neither too glaring or out of place. But the truth of the matter was that he was too solicitous of her, a fact that would displease his family greatly if they were to realize. She was no more than a poor relation, a companion to the daughter of the house.
“Jeremy, come and see what I’ve done. I’ve quite captured the garden in spring, I think. What do you say?” Harriet called out, separating them.
Janet did not doubt that the other woman had intended it just so. Or perhaps she judged Harriet too sharply. She had spent seven years in service to her, enough time to get to know a person, but under approaching still slipped through her fingers like water. There were times at which she thought Harriet genuinely kind, still other occasions when she suspected that Harriet waited until she was feeling her lowest to offer up criticism and censure.
Lately, Harriet’s mood had been worse than usual. The reason for it had been hard to discern until she’d overheard a conversation. The manor house was cavernous, so much so that even whispers had a tendency to float from unexpected places. She’d learned, accidentally, that Squire H
anson had made peace with the Scot who had made a practice of coming over the border to bedevil him for the last few years. The squire had offered up his daughter and her dowry as an incentive for the Scot to cease stealing his cattle.
Harriet was to wed the laird of the Sinclairs. Now that was a surprise.
Janet could not help but wonder, however, if Harriet’s father absented himself until the nuptials a month from now solely to avoid the unpleasantness of Harriet’s mood. Her irritation about her upcoming nuptials seemed destined to last until the very day she was wed.
Janet turned back to the window, wishing that she had the power to ease herself through the glass and escape into the night like a shadow. She would hide among the trees, peer around a thick trunk, and run into the woods like a forest creature. Away. Where she could not be told that her accent was common or her coloring odd or her fingers clumsy. Where there was music, perhaps, and the sound of laughter. Happiness, wrapped into a parcel of night and bound together with a bow made of acceptance.
She was so lonely sometimes. But for the first time in seven years, she was promised an end to it. She had learned, the day she’d heard of Harriet’s wedding, that she was to accompany Harriet to Scotland after she became a bride. To be home once more, to set her feet on Scottish soil. She anxiously counted the days.
“Come away from that window, Janet. I need you.” Harriet’s voice once again called her to duty.
Janet moved across the room and sat on the chair beside Harriet. She would be quite attractive, Janet thought, if she was not forever scowling at the world. Harriet had hair of a deep chestnut color that curled despite the weather, and was possessed of the softest blue eyes. She was short of stature and small of frame, giving the impression of weakness or fragility, something delicate to be protected. Harriet, however, possessed a will of iron. It was never overt, never demonstrated in screaming fits or tirades. It was simply there, like the sky or the earth.
“You’ve been pining all evening. What, some Scots holiday we’ve neglected to celebrate? Something altogether holy?”
Janet shook her head. It was better to never respond to one of Harriet’s jibes—a lesson she’d learned in the last seven years. She had only been fifteen when she’d come to England. Her parents were dead, their village decimated by influenza. People had begun to leave prior to the epidemic; afterward, it was as if only ghosts inhabited Tarlogie.
She had been given the choice of being a companion to Harriet or starving in the streets. There were some days when she knew she had made the wrong choice.
Still, it could be worse. Her duties were not onerous. She’d learned to ignore most of Harriet’s complaints, even though the nasal whine of her voice made that almost impossible. She was allowed an hour here and there to spend among the flowers, to read a book borrowed surreptitiously from Squire Hanson’s library. If she had no prospects or future, it was not Harriet’s fault.
“You give yourself airs with my brother,” Harriet said now. Her voice had softened to a grating whisper, inaudible to Jeremy, who sat on the other side of the room, reading. Periodically, he would look up and send a sweet smile in Janet’s direction.
“I was but pleasant, I think. He asked me a question; I answered it.”
Was disposition passed from father to child? Was that why Harriet frowned so much and seemed so unhappy? If so, why was Jeremy not more like his father?
No, that was not quite fair, was it? Harriet’s parents were quite nice people. Squire Hanson was a blustery sort of man who harrumphed a great deal and who was obviously more comfortable in the presence of animals than people. Harriet’s mother, Louisa Hanson, was bedridden and removed from most of the activity in the house. She was a sweet lady, with a habit of sniffing into a lace handkerchief, and she had always been kind, in a slightly absentminded way. Janet would not have been surprised if the other inhabitants of the house forgot about her presence for long stretches at a time, just as Mrs. Hanson, no doubt, forgot about hers.
“I’ve seen the way you smile at him, Janet,” Harriet said. “As if you would charm him.”
“I was but being polite.”
“Practice your wiles on the groom, Janet. Or the footmen. Else I will have no choice but to mention your wild behavior to my father.”
Wild? A small smile was born secretly. She dipped her head in case it blossomed forth and betrayed her amusement. Oh, Harriet, if you would know what wildness is, see inside my heart. That is wild.
There, it was out, then. The truth, unadorned and without pretense. She did not want to be here, in this place, eternally a servant while her life drained away. She wanted to be home again, in Tarlogie. She wanted to hear her father’s rich laughter and her mother’s sweet voice. Her mother’s mother had been English, and it was through her grandmother that she claimed kin to the Hansons and, because of that relation, had a home of any sort. But, oh, it was so difficult to pretend to like being English.
All her life, she’d been raised to prize her heritage, to find in herself those things that linked her to a proud people. She was her parents’ only child, and one who was beset with curiosity, her father had said. Perhaps that was why he’d let her tag along with him, learning his trade as well as any apprentice. She’d grown too accustomed to saying what she thought, to laughing immoderately, to seeing the best side of life.
To be so again, that’s what she wished. To dance among the heather, to see a sunrise over the Highlands. To hear the sound of the Gaelic, to smell the acrid scent of peat smoke. That’s what being wild felt like.
During the last seven years, she’d made herself into another person. The Janet who’d lived with her parents in the small village outside Tain had disappeared. She barely remembered her Gaelic, the tunes she’d hummed as a child. But then, there was no further cause for laughter, no reason to smile. Even her speech had changed. She sounded more English than Scots.
Oh, but inside, her heart beat with wildness.
“Are you pouting, Janet? It’s very unbecoming in a servant. Hand me my case,” Harriet said.
Janet bent to reach the embroidery basket. She offered it up mutely, said nothing as Harriet took her time selecting the next thread to use.
“Hold the basket steady, Janet. Your hands are trembling.”
Janet braced the heavy basket on her knees.
“I detest this shade of blue thread you selected. Whatever were you thinking?” Harriet picked through the threads. It was one of Janet’s duties to rearrange them every night, to wind them around the little spools arranged for just such a purpose. “Are you hoping to rid yourself of doing errands by showing such poor judgment?”
“It is exactly what you asked for, Harriet. A shade of blue for delphiniums.”
Harriet looked over at her, her frown deepening.
“Are you telling me I’m wrong, Janet? I cannot believe you would be so foolish.”
“If you do not like the shade I selected, Harriet,” she said calmly, “perhaps it would be better if you went to the village the next time.”
Janet looked down at the floor, horrified at her own words. A full moon, that’s what it was. Had she forgotten her place? Yes, oh, yes, she had. Gloriously so. Enough that for once, she’d spoken the truth. Honesty bubbled up from her toes, capped only through will and prudence. Her words could get her dismissed despite any familial ties. Where would she be then? On the road with less future than she had now.
“Forgive me, Harriet,” she said softly.
“You must be ill, Janet, to speak so foolishly. That is it, isn’t it? Ring for Mrs. Thomas and have her bring you some Dover’s Powder.”
“It is nothing, Harriet,” she said quickly. “Perhaps I am simply tired.” Even if she had been feeling ill, she would have denied it to escape a dosing of Dover’s. It made her stomach lurch and then induced the most bizarre dreams. The last time she’d been forced to take it, she’d awakened drenched from her own perspiration and vowing never to succumb to the medicine again.
“Perhaps you’re correct,” Janet said. “I could be sickening.”
“How very inconsiderate of you to be ill while in my presence. Leave me, then.”
Janet replaced the embroidery chest on the floor beside Harriet and nodded to her. Then, before Jeremy could wish her a soft good night, she escaped.
But not to bed. The night was young; the moon was just rising; the enchantment of an early spring breeze was too alluring to resist. The moment was too precious; the freedom too rare to waste.
She would be wild, if only for a moment.
* * *
A shallow stream ran through the Hansons’ property to the east of the house. In the morning, it looked as if it glowed; the rays of the sun struck it just so. It reminded her of Tarlogie and the burn that flowed past their small cottage. It had winked in the morning light just like this one, before disappearing into the ground again.
Now the stream was black, lit only by a glimpse of moon. She turned and faced north, wishing that she might be like a bird and fly over the ground, finding a nest among the trees bordering a loch. She could almost feel Scotland call her from here, as if she knew that one of her children was missing. It was in her blood, this longing, so deep and so sharp that it made her wish to weep sometimes. You can take a Scot from the land, but never the land from the Scot—a saying she’d heard as a child, but whose actual meaning she’d never known until separated from the land of her birth.
She sat on the bank of the small stream, on the mossy ground cover. There were trees around her, shading the moonlit darkness still further. The night was welcoming, as if it approved of her escape into wildness. Just this once. A few moments out of seven years. Then she would return to being sober Janet.