Island of the Swans (75 page)

“The duke has taken offense of Her Grace’s patronage of that poet?” Angus asked warily.

“Aye… and His Grace has taken a
mistress
as well,” Marshall retorted with a leer. “Jean Christie’s her name. The younger sister of the serving wench standing out there with the lassies… but a far sight more comely, if you take my meaning. Her Grace had the misfortune to come upon them in… ah… well, the duchess arrived unexpectedly at Fochabers in the dead of night a few days ago. I, m’self, knew nothing of the tempest until I arrived with their ladyships in the second coach two days later.”

“What’s to happen?” Angus asked worriedly, with a glance toward the melancholy children standing outside the inn’s entrance. In his distress, he had ignored the presence of Thomas, who remained not ten feet from him.

“Oh… ’twill all blow by, I expect,” Marshall said with a shrug. “The lasses will stay with the duchess in London, but the duke has kept both lads with him, in case Her Grace has any notions of running off with what’s his name… that Rabbie Burns fellow. He’s all the rage in Edinburgh these days.”

Unnoticed by Kinrara’s estate factor, Thomas leapt to his feet. His blood raced and he had to restrain himself from beating the backbiting Marshall to a bloody pulp. He stalked past the two men, shouldering his way through the knot of passengers gathered outside near the stagecoach.

So, Thomas thought as he strode into the fading sunlight, the Duke of Gordon was obviously jealous—but not of
him
this time. Thomas didn’t wonder that Jane attracted many admirers. He tried to subdue the nagging doubts swirling in his head. Had she shunned his own most recent overtures, only to succumb to a writer of rhymes? And what of her marriage? The duke had apparently taken a mistress, and the House of Gordon was openly divided.

In the secret place Thomas held Jane most dear, he was confident she hadn’t fallen for the charms of this Robert Burns, whoever he might be. Her pride in herself and her abiding loyalty to those she loved would never allow her to forsake her family in such tawdry fashion.

He sighed. Jane’s husband would wreak much grief in his married life if he didn’t understand
that
much about his wife. Instinctively, Thomas’s heart ached for the pain Jane must be feeling at the discovery that the man she’d sacrificed so much for had shunned her for a serving wench.

The damnable blighter doesn’t deserve her!
Thomas fumed as a wave of anger rushed over him.

His eyes rested on an apricot silk bonnet a few feet away from where he stood.

“May I?” he asked softly of Louisa, who was clutching a heavy carpetbag. “May I give this to the footman, m’lady?”

The youngster stared up at him in wonder and silently released her hold on the baggage.

“Who are you?” demanded the girl’s younger sister imperiously.

Thomas was suddenly aware of how disheveled he must look to the children.

“You see before you a-a friend of Angus Grant, the factor at Kinrara,” Thomas answered quickly with a smile. “I’ve been living on the moors this past winter, so you must forgive my appearance. ’Tis my first trip to Inverness in many a month.”

“You have funny red hair, sir!” the younger sister said speculatively, surveying his unkempt locks. “’Tis much worse than yours, Louisa!”

Louisa shot Thomas a mortified look and flushed crimson.

He smiled down softly at his daughter. “We flame-haired ones must hold our heads proudly. ’Tis a reminder to everyone else what fire and spirit we have
inside
ourselves with which to face the difficulties life presents us, eh, wee one?”

Louisa bestowed on him a grateful smile, one that warmed him as no other had in his entire life. The lass had Jane’s dark brown eyes set off with flecks of green to make them sparkle when she was happy. If Thomas were shorn of his scraggly beard, the shape of his face with its high cheekbones and straight nose would match Louisa’s own.

“Am I right that your name is Lady Louisa?” Thomas confirmed, wanting to be certain.

“Yes, sir,” Louisa replied, looking up at Thomas with timid curiosity.

“And you, m’lady?” he asked of her younger sister. “What’s your name?”

“Georgina!” the child answered promptly. “
Lady
Georgina.”

“Heigh-ho!” shouted the coach driver. “Is everybody aboard?”

In an instant, Thomas scooped up Georgina by her waist and deposited the dainty lass inside the crowded coach beside the maid named Nancy Christie. He bowed solemnly to Louisa and offered her his hand as if she were a full-grown woman.

“Adieu, m’lady,” he said quietly, brushing his lips against the lass’s soft, sweet-smelling fingers. “A safe journey to you,” he added, assisting her up the step. “God speed you to your mother.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said without the trace of a Scottish accent.

A Fraser speaking the King’s English, thanks to tutors hired by the Duke of Gordon! Thomas’s mind was reeling from the day’s discoveries. He raised his arm to bid farewell as the cumbersome vehicle began to move away from the inn. Louisa’s face reflected puzzlement as she looked through the coach window at the man she had no way of knowing was her father. Then, finally, the team of horses strained against the loaded carriage and trundled down Church Street, accompanied by the creak of turning axles. William Marshall and Angus Grant came up behind Thomas in time to see the coach turn the corner, as it headed for the Edinburgh Road.

“Good riddance,” breathed the Gordons’ butler.

“How so?” said Angus Grant angrily.

“Oh, not
them
,” Marshall corrected himself quickly. “But I won’t miss taking orders from their mother, I can tell you that!”

“She’s a fine, fair lady, and a grand duchess, and I won’t hear you talking such rot in front of strangers!” the estate factor exploded, glowering up at William Marshall.

“The whole district knows what happened!” Marshall retorted defensively. “Everybody’s heard about the duchess and Rabbie Burns. I’ve not been spreading secrets, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Come, Fraser,” the old man bellowed even more loudly and turned his back on the stooped-shouldered William Marshall. “I feel the need of something stronger than ale to wash away the taste of all of this.
Whiskey
, my lad! That’s what we need! I’ll buy you a whiskey to help us forget such scum!”

Thomas and his new acquaintance left William Marshall, speechless with surprise and indignation, at the entrance of the Church Street Inn. The butler’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Thomas’s retreating figure. His gaze focused speculatively on the shaggy russet hair tied loosely at the nape of the neck of the man whose face he now recognized from Captain Fraser’s days at Gordon Castle prior to his and Hamilton Maxwell’s departure for America. Very interesting, he thought, rubbing his bony chin. The man who’d risen from the grave and caused his master such grief still dwelled in the Highlands.

Inside the tavern, old Angus patted Thomas on the elbow.

“You must come down to Kinrara one day, laddie,” he said, hailing the tavern wench and ordering two whiskeys. “Have you heard about the Wolf o’ Badenoch? Your flamin’ mane puts me in mind of ’im. He dwelt at Loch-an-Eilean many years ago. Kinrara’s a piece of heaven ’twould make the Lord himself forget such scoundrels like that man Marshall! You must come down to see it sometime, m’lad. M’wife, Flora, would be ever so pleased to make you welcome.”

Two exhausted children watched Nancy Christie wearily ring the brass bell outside the leased apartments belonging to the Marquess of Buckingham in London’s Pall Mall. It was Jane herself who answered the door. She stared at her wide-eyed daughter Louisa, who stood uncertainly next to five-year-old Georgina on the front stoop.

“And little Alexander?” Jane queried anxiously after hugging both daughters fiercely. She attempted to keep the quaver out of her voice. “Where is he, sweetlings?”

“Mr. Marshall told us that Papa says that Alexander is to remain at Gordon Castle. Papa said for Nancy to bring Georgina and me to you here.”

But Alexander’s only eighteen months old!
her heart cried out.
He’s a wee bairn, yet!

“Did you see Papa in your time at Gordon Castle?” she asked, swallowing hard.

Jane hardly trusted herself to speak without weeping. She had spent two weeks in complete retirement in London in an attempt to recover from the shock of what had happened at Gordon Castle and to gird herself for the lonely months and years to come.

“No, Mama. Papa never even visited the nursery,” Louisa said in a near whisper, averting her eyes. “But Mr. Marshall asked me to give you this packet. ’Tis a bank draft and some sterling, he said, for our m-m-mainte-nance.” Louisa’s rich burgundy hair fanned out in a halo that reached her slim shoulders. She looked up at Jane with eyes that were filled with pain and bit her lip bravely. “What is ’maintenance,’ Mama?” she asked, tears starting to spill down her cheeks.

A wall of misery rose up and nearly suffocated Jane as she gazed down at the unhappy faces of her two youngest daughters. Charlotte, Madelina, and Susan were huddled together, silent and equally morose, on the settee in the sitting room across the foyer.

“Maintenance, pet, is what your Papa shares with us from the Gordon Estates so we can pay tradesmen and live together in this house,” she replied carefully, fighting a wave of cold rage that had begun to clutch at her.

It was a rage born of the knowledge that she and the children were, under British law, merely chattel of the Duke of Gordon, to be dispensed with in whatever manner the lord of the manor should choose, like his sheep and horses and retainers. And despite her contributions to the Gordon Estates by her sensible counsel on such matters as the wool, the weaving, and logging industries—enterprises that had had greatly enhanced Alex’s coffers over the years—Jane was, in essence, penniless and powerless in her current situation, totally dependent on whatever goodwill—or lack of it—Alex chose to extend. Jane had learned this lesson all too well during her own childhood.

The boys against the girls
, her heart mourned.

Alex had apparently decided to keep the two Georges and little Alexander with him as hostages and to abandon her and the girls to whatever life he ultimately condescended to provide for them. Her rage deepened as she recalled the years of genteel poverty her mother and her sisters had endured in Hyndford Close in frighteningly similar circumstances.

He’s just like my father!
she thought suddenly, anguished by the memory of the heartless behavior of Baronet Maxwell, so many years ago.

Bitter thoughts, long buried—thoughts she had held back during the agonizing fortnight she had spent since arriving in London—now rushed to her consciousness, making her dizzy with anger and regret.

How in God’s name had things come to such an impasse?
she wondered, sick at heart. She held the short, formal note accompanying the packet in her unsteady hand.

I will arrive in London at the end of the month, soon to depart for the Continent with Lord Huntly. Enclosed is a draft for funds sufficient for your keep until then. Gordon.

Gordon!
she thought, with another explosion of anger bubbling to her lips. Alex signed his last name
only
when addressing missives to servants and hirelings! She clamped her eyes shut, fighting the jumble of emotions churning inside her. Nancy Christie hung in the background, twisting a corner of her traveling cloak.

“Nancy, see to the lassies’ suppers, will you, please?” Jane mumbled to the gaunt servant who, herself, was still reeling from the events of the past few weeks.

Jane quickly retrieved her own cloak and hurried down the short flight of stairs, which led to Pall Mall, anxious to escape into the chill air so her children wouldn’t see the tears that finally overwhelmed her.

Alex arrived in London in early June and prepared to depart for the Continent with seventeen-year-old Lord Huntly in tow. Jane communicated almost nothing to her husband during the few days he remained in town, except to pass along what Prime Minister William Pitt had told her of the rumors of unrest in Paris. Apparently, crowds of angry French citizens were chanting in the streets for bread.