A Hint of Rapture (2 page)

"Devil!" she spat and wiped her mouth with
the back of her hand. He merely grinned at her, his laughter echoing in the
hallway as he followed the last of his triumphant companions from the house.

Madeleine started when the colonel suddenly strode
through the open door. He glanced first in the drawing room, then where she and
Glenis sat in the dining room, as if to ensure his orders had been carried out.
He did not meet her eyes. Then he was gone, his horse's hooves pounding along
the drive as he rode away. She listened dully as the soldiers withdrew, the
sound of their marching feet fading into the distance.

A hush like the silence in a tomb settled over the
house. Madeleine could not find the strength to rise for a long time. She felt
numb. Glenis's sobbing finally spurred her into action. She had to escape it or
crumble herself.

She stood up and walked slowly into the entryway,
stepping over bits of furniture and a smashed mantel clock, and shut the front
door. Then she made her way in a daze to the drawing room.

She needed to be alone. She would survey the damage
later, but not now. Not now.

Madeleine closed the door behind her, righted an
overturned armchair, and slumped down on the soiled brocade. Her thoughts began
to roil and pitch, heated outrage gradually sweeping away the numbness.

Why had this happened? Why? Had the Highlands not
suffered enough? Would the horrors that had begun a month ago never cease?

She leaned her head back on the padded cushion,
recalling Glenis's sorrowful words that wretched day in April.

"Come away from the window, hinny. Ye know yer da
winna be comin' home. Come away, Maddie. 'Tis a hopeless thing ye're
doin'."

Yer da winna be
comin' home
. . . Her father . . .

Madeleine's hands clenched into tight fists as fresh
pain assaulted her, a jagged ache centered just over her heart. Her palms stung
where her nails bit into the smooth flesh. Tears glistened from spiky dark
lashes and spilled down her cheeks, staining the bodice of her gown.

She didn't care. She surrendered to the grief, anger
and frustration tormenting her, in this silent room where no one would see her
cry.

Yer da winna be
comin' home
. . .

The haunting words were so vivid, it could have been
yesterday when Glenis bid her to stand away from the tall window. But today was
the sixteenth of May, one month to the day since the Battle of Culloden was
fought on rain-swept Drummossie Moor, a scarce twenty miles from the valley of
Strathherrick. One month since she had learned from a kinsman that her father
had fallen in the bloody mire, never to rise again. One month since she had run
to the window in anguished disbelief, searching the muddy road that wound past
the estate for any sign of her father among the retreating Highlanders.

Madeleine sighed raggedly, her blurred gaze staring
straight ahead. Out of the many bold, strong lads who had rallied to the
Jacobite cause, fewer than half of her kinsmen had survived the merciless
slaughter at Culloden.

The fiery cross—the ancient signal to rally clansmen
for battle, formed by two yew branches that were first set alight, then doused
in goat's blood—had been carried to Strathherrick on a gray, misty morning last
autumn. It was the call of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat and the chief of Clan
Fraser. He had finally decided to come out for Bonnie Prince Charlie in the
young Stuart's bid to regain the throne of England, Scotland, and Ireland for
his father, the exiled King James III.

Her father, baronet Sir Hugh Fraser of Farraline and
cousin to Lord Lovat, had immediately taken up the call, summoning his tacksmen
and tenants from their warm hearth fires. The entire valley had participated in
a frenzied flurry of activity as the clansmen wholeheartedly prepared to join
the Jacobite prince and his burgeoning forces.

Madeleine smiled faintly and wiped the hot tears from
her face, tasting salt on her lips. She recalled the brave sight of the Frasers
of Strathherrick as they readied to march, wearing the clan badge of freshly
cut sprigs of yew in their bonnets. Her handsome father had been resplendent in
his kilt and tartan plaid of red and forest green, a bonnet sporting a white
cockade, the symbol of the Jacobite cause, atop his shining auburn hair.

How proud her dear mother, the bonnie Lady Jean, would
have been if she had lived to see that day. How fervently Madeleine had wished
at that moment that she had been born a son. She had cursed her sex and the
skirts she wore which forced her to remain behind in Farraline with the rest of
the women, instead of riding into battle at her father's side. Only his last
words to her had helped soothe her angry frustration.

"Ye're the mistress of Farraline now, Maddie,
whilst I'm gone to war. Tend to the needs of yer people in my stead. The women,
wee bairns, and men too old for battle depend upon yer care and good judgment.
Now give me a kiss and one of yer bonnie smiles, lass. We're off to fight for
the Stuarts!"

Enveloped in her father's fierce embrace, Madeleine had
never felt so honored or so trusted. Mistress of Farraline! Aye, she would make
her father proud, and more than live up to his faith in her.

Her slim shoulders were squared, her back was straight,
and her chin was held high as Sir Hugh Fraser walked proudly to the head of his
men and mounted his fine roan gelding. The skirl of bagpipes soared on the
whistling wind and resounded from the Monadhliath Mountains flanking the broad
valley, stirring the blood of all who heard it, as the men of Clan Fraser began
their long march toward Edinburgh.

With a rampant pounding in her breast, Madeleine had
stared after the heroic parade of clansmen until their tartans faded into the
distant slopes. She would never have believed it would be the last time she
would see her father.

During the months that followed, news was carried often
to Strathherrick on the progress of the Highland army under the command of
Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Madeleine hung on to every word.

There was the long victorious march into England as far
south as Derby, the cities of Carlisle, Preston, and Manchester falling under
the Jacobite standard. But instead of pressing on to London, the army decided
to retire to Scotland due to the massing of Hanoverian forces under the duke of
Cumberland, William Augustus, the corpulent third son of King George II. There
the Jacobites would make a stand on home ground.

Upon returning to Scotland, the army's hopes were
raised once again after the victory at the Battle of Falkirk in January and the
successful routs of English forts scattered throughout the Highlands. Then no
more was heard until news was brought that Bonnie Prince Charlie and his forces
were quartered at Inverness until spring, while the duke of Cumberland remained
in Aberdeen.

All seemed quiet until early April, when a large
company of men from Clan Cameron passed through Farraline on their way north to
Inverness and a rendezvous with the prince. Madeleine's excited inquiries
discovered nothing more than that Cumberland and his troops were on the move
toward Drummossie Moor, a barren, soggy plain to the west of the River Nairn.

Drummossie Moor. Why Madeleine felt a sudden chill
seize her at that news she would only understand a few days later, when word
arrived that the Battle of Culloden, from beginning to end lasting only an
hour, had been lost to the government forces.

"Damn them, damn them," Madeleine whispered.
She had only to think of the bastards who had mowed down the Highlands' finest
sons with their cannon, bayonets, and grapeshot, and she was filled with rage.

How she hated them. Englishmen. Redcoats. The devil's
own spawn. Murderers!

Since that bloody day Butcher Cumberland and his men
had wreaked their revenge on the Highlands, their brand of "justice"
to right the treasonous wrongs perpetrated against the Crown by the rebellious
clans. It was a reign of terror that still showed no signs of abating.

It had begun when the Butcher granted the fallen
clansmen no quarter on the battlefield. Both the wounded and the dead were
stripped where they lay, then those still alive were bayoneted or shot or
clubbed to death. Only a few were reserved for public punishment. A barn filled
with wounded who had dragged themselves from the field was locked and set on
fire, the unfortunate men inside suffering a grisly death.

It was several days before the dead were finally buried
in mass unmarked graves, denied the dignity of being laid to rest in their own
lands. How true Glenis's words had been. Her father would never come home
again.

Fleeing clansmen were pursued by dragoons all the way
to Inverness, the fearsome horsemen cutting down Jacobite soldiers as well as
innocent bystanders who chanced in their way, including women and children.
Only the Highlanders who fled in the opposite direction, south toward
Strathherrick and beyond into Badenoch, lived to become fugitives in their own
land, and they were hunted like wild beasts among the craggy hills.

Dougald Fraser was one of these desperate fugitives. A
distant cousin and childhood friend, he was the man her father had intended for
her to marry when the war had been won. Now there would be no wedding for a
long time, if at all. If Dougald or any other fugitives, including their Lord
Lovat, were caught, they faced imprisonment, deportation to the Colonies, or
hanging.

Their bonnie prince was also a hunted man, with a price
of thirty thousand pounds on his head. Madeleine knew in her heart that no
Highlander would betray him, even for such an outrageous sum. Although a
proclamation had been issued that anyone caught aiding the royal fugitive faced
certain death, tales abounded of those who had risked their lives harboring the
prince and his companions during the past four weeks.

All the atrocities had done little to curb the Butcher's
insatiable thirst for blood. He turned next on the Highland people who had been
left at home while their men fought the war. Operating from his newly regained
headquarters at Fort Augustus, south of Loch Ness, he ordered his soldiers to
strike out across the countryside and harry the glens.

Madeleine had heard horrible tales from fugitives
passing by night through Farraline; tales of cold-blooded killings and the rape
of young and old. Chieftains' houses were plundered and burned to the ground;
Lord Lovat's beloved Dounie Castle in Beauly was one of the first to be laid
waste. Even the rough, one-room cottages of the peasants were rarely spared the
torch.

Madeleine's gaze swept the scattered wreckage in the
room. After the senseless ferocity she had witnessed this morning, it was a
miracle that Mhor Manor had not been burned. She could only hope the colonel
would keep his word and spare the neighboring villages.

Bitter tears scalded her eyes, and she rose from the
chair to pace angrily.

As if this day's injustice and devastation were not
enough, what of the news that had come to Strathherrick only last week? The
estates of chieftains who had participated in the uprising were being
confiscated for the Crown, and Lord Lovat's lands were already forfeited and
being administered by a royal commissioner. It seemed the English were wasting
no time in their efforts to subdue the Highlands.

Worst of all, every Highland male was being forced to
swear an oath that he would never again wear the belted plaid, tartan or any
Highland garment—unless in a king's regiment—never possess a weapon, not even a
dirk, or play the bagpipes, now considered an instrument of war by the
government.

"If I were a man, I'd die before I'd swear that
cursed oath," Madeleine whispered vehemently. "And I'd wear the kilt
to my grave!"

She pulled aside a slashed curtain and looked out
across the weed-strewn lawn and disheveled garden. The fog had lifted,
revealing a pale blue sky streaked with shafts of golden sunlight. The beauty
of it did little to soothe her aching heart.

An unsettling thought struck her. Would the English
seize Mhor Manor as well?

The estate in Strathherrick had been in her family for
over a hundred years, deeded to the Frasers of Farraline by the tenth Lord
Lovat, the father of old Simon the Fox, their chief. Though he was the
heritable head of Clan Fraser, the land belonged not to him but to her father.

Madeleine sighed heavily. No, the land now belonged to
her. She was the mistress of Farraline.

Her attention was suddenly drawn to a mother and three
little boys, their heads bent, their clothing dirty and bedraggled, who hurried
along a footpath that cut across the estate. She recognized the woman as Flora
Chrystie, the wife of one of her father's tacksmen who had died at Culloden.
She guessed the young widow, who was seven months gone with child, had been
alerted to the soldiers' approach and was fleeing for the safety of the
mountains.

She watched as Flora turned her face, pinched and pale,
toward the manor house. The woman bowed her head slightly in respect, then
urged her children onward. Instead of scampering down the path, the boys clung
listlessly to their mother's skirts, lacking the energy to run. They suffered,
like so many others, because the plundering of their cattle and the destruction
of their crops left little food to appease the gnawing hunger in their bellies.

Madeleine's throat constricted painfully at the
pathetic sight, and defiant indignation seized her.

If something wasn't done soon, her people would starve!
Even if their homes were spared, what good were roofs over their heads if they
had no food to sustain life?

Her father's last words came back to her in a rush,
reviving her flagging spirit and giving her strength:

Ye're the mistress
of Farraline now, Maddie . . . . Tend to the needs of yer people . . . . They
depend upon yer care and good judgment.