The Adventurer (23 page)

She looked at him. A moment stretched into two.

Finally she said, “My name ... is Isabella.
Lady
Isabella Drayton.”

It was nothing more than he had already suspected. “So you are a Sassenach.”

Her face darkened. “And so that makes me the enemy?”

“Everyone is the enemy, lass.”

He looked at her, stretched the truth just a little. “I’ve heard of the name Drayton. Your father is a duke.”

He only really knew this because of the crest imprinted on the seal of her letter.

Isabella straightened. “Yes, he is a duke. An
English
duke, or as you prefer to call it a Sassenach duke. My sister, however, is married to a Scot. Douglas Dúbh MacKinnon of Dunakin on Skye.”

Calum was unable to hide his surprise. This was the “Bess” she had written of?

“Your sister is the Lady MacKinnon who helped the prince make his escape?”

Now she was the one surprised. “How do you know about that?”

“Everyone knows of it, lass. It is legend about the Highlands. Lady MacKinnon is said to have entertained a Hanoverian general and his captain in her parlor while at the same time her husband helped to spirit the prince away right under their very noses.”

“So you see not everything is either black or white.”

She referred to the two cockades of the rebellion. White for the Jacobites, and black for the Hanoverians.

“Your sister put her life at great risk to help the prince,” Calum said.

“What else was she to do? Elizabeth knew if they caught him, he would be killed. She would do anything to protect her family.”

“Family?”

Isabella nodded, moved to sit on the edge of his desk. “Yes. Although
officially
my father’s lineage is known to history to have descended from Sinclair Drayton of Parbroath, in truth, his great-great-grandfather was the only surviving male child of Henry VIII.”

Calum considered her words. “He was a bastard?”

“He was one of the lesser known illegitimate children of the king. For that he was granted a dukedom upon his reaching his twenty-first year. Society, it seems, is kinder to the by-blows of a sovereign. So although it isn’t a legitimate connection, it is widely known that my father descends from the house of Tudor, thus we are connected by blood to the Stuarts, who also descend from the Tudors through Henry’s sister, Margaret.”

“As do the Hanoverians.”

She merely said, “This is true.”

Calum tried to take this all in. She, and her family, were in a unique position, for at any time they could claim allegiance to each of the warring sides. And then he realized, “So had the union of Henry and his paramour been legitimatized, your father could now be king, and you could very well be a crown princess.”

She took a breath. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”

A princess. Calum took a moment to adjust to the idea. She had told him more, far more than even he had expected. She wanted his trust very badly. He wondered how much more she would be willing to reveal.

Calum stood, facing her, facing her so closely her knees brushed his thighs beneath the fabric of the kilt he wore. He reached toward her, saw her swallow nervously as he lifted the stone from where it lay against her breast, nearly hidden behind the folds of her nightdress.

She didn’t even flinch.

“Who gave you the stone, lass?”

His voice was nearly a whisper. He looked into her eyes, watching as she blinked.

She didn’t respond. She didn’t want to tell him, perhaps had been told not to, yet she was seeking a way to convince him he should trust her. Finally she said, “It was a man called le Comte de St. Germain.”

He shook his head. “I have never heard of this man.”

“Nor had I. I was traveling back to England from Paris and stopped for a night at Versailles, to convey my father’s regards to the king.”

“You met Louis?”

“Yes,” she said as if she had just told him she had met a flower seller on the corner of the village high street. “My father had sent the king a gift, which I was to present to him. After my introduction to the king, Madame de Pompadour invited me to supper. It was there I met Monsieur le Comte de St. Germain. He is, apparently, quite close within the king’s circle.”

A man, quite close to the French king, had had the stone of his ancestors, the stone his father had died carrying into battle. The tale was only growing more mysterious.

“What did he look like, this comte?”

“He was a most intriguing man. They claim he does not age, that he has lived for centuries, and that he can manufacture potions to sustain youth, can even make precious jewels out of stone. He is an accomplished artist. It was he who gave me the stone. He told me it needed to be returned to the rightful MacAoidh, that it had been taken from the clan. He charged me with the task of bringing it back. That is how I knew who you were.”

“But why did he choose you for this task?”

“He said the stone had chosen me.”

Somehow, Calum believed her.

He leaned in closer to her, his fingers still holding the stone. “So then why do you no’ give the stone to me? I am Mackay, and the stone has led you to me.”

Their faces were close, so close that their breaths mingled. Calum wondered if he should kiss her, crush his mouth to hers and kiss her until she was breathless and swaying against him.

Kiss her until she gave him that stone.

But he didn’t.

She blinked. “I cannot give you the stone, Calum. The comte said I would know when it was time, when it was right. He said that I would have to make a choice, between two. He said it would become clear to me in time, but that until it did, I daren’t take the stone from around my neck. Else ...”

“Else what?”

“Else the circumstances would be dire for all concerned.”

“And you believe him?”

He could already see that she did, but he asked it anyway.

“At first, I admit, I thought it all an elaborate ruse. But too many things have come to fit what the comte told me that night. You. How the stone disappeared. And there is no accounting for the glowing of the stone when I touch it. The only thing that doesn’t fit is the reference the comte made to the need to make a choice.
Between the two,
he said.” She shook her head. “Try as I might, I just cannot decipher what that means.” She looked at him. “Can you?”

Yes, he could.

Calum gazed at her deeply. He wanted to tell her, wanted to tell her everything. She had been so honest with him and perhaps, in the end, what he might tell her wouldn’t matter. Perhaps the stone would come to him and then he would know. Even so, in the end, he held back.

He lied.

“No, lass, I cannot.”

It was the only answer he could offer her.

The face that answered the door upon their knocking was far from a welcoming one.

It was old and it was weathered, lined from decades of glowering at the world into which it had been born.

“Who’re you?” the man said, his fierce gaze traveling up and then down the intruders standing before him.

He wore a servant’s clothes, plain shirt and plain breeches with stockings that were dingy above scuffed and worn shoes. His hair, what there was of it, was thin and white, sticking out from his head like the bristles of a brush. He was apparently unimpressed by what he saw, because the grimace on his mouth only twisted all the more.

“MacKinnon of Dunakin,” Douglas said, unaffected by the man’s rudeness, although he was surprised by it. Highland hospitality was a thing of honor, a matter of great pride and tradition. This dour reception was markedly out of place. “We request to see the chief.”

The man didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink. “The Mackay is not receiving any visitors.”

Douglas opened his mouth to respond, but found himself suddenly getting shoved aside by the thickheaded Kentigern St. Clive, who came charging forward, dangerously in the face of the sentry.

“Now see here, old man. My affianced wife has been stolen and we’ve information that your
Mackay”
—he accented the word in a taunting mimicry of the Scots brogue—“has knowledge of her whereabouts. I demand to see him. And I demand to see him
now.”

The man looked at St. Clive briefly, then turned his glance amusedly to Douglas. “Who’s the whelp?”

“Whelp!?” St. Clive nearly screeched. “Do you know who my father is, you Scottish piece of—?”

Douglas took him by the arm and pulled him back before he ended up with a claymore running through his fine brocaded waistcoat. “Silence,
amadan.”

St. Clive’s face turned red. He didn’t know what Douglas had just called him, but he was perceptive enough to know it wasn’t anything at all flattering. “Who do you think you—”

Douglas rounded on him, grabbed him by the lace of his cravat, and pulled him forward until his face was just inches away from his own. “I said silence. Whether you like it or no’ you’re in Scotland now, you ignorant
gheeho.
Your father’s title and name have no significance here.”

Douglas had spoken no louder than a whisper but it had the effect of a menacing war cry. St. Clive narrowed his eyes hotly, but didn’t say another word.

“Douglas.”

Douglas looked over St. Clive’s trembling shoulder to where his father-in-law stood, watching the exchange. The look on the duke’s face questioned whether he should step in.

“I’ll manage this, your grace.”

The duke simply nodded.

Douglas released St. Clive and then turned back to the door. The sentry was looking at him with a newfound appreciation in his eyes.

This time when Douglas spoke, he did so in Gaelic.

“What the
amadan
says is true, man. A lass has been taken and we’ve reason to believe the Mackay can assist us in finding her. This lass is the sister to my wife, Lady MacKinnon. I’m very concerned about her.”

“The prince’s Lady MacKinnon?”

And in that moment, Douglas knew they’d be admitted, for while the House of Mackay was famously Hanoverian, courage and cunning held a special place in the heart of every Scotsman, Jacobite or no.

“Aye, she is the one. Now I give you my word we only wish to speak with the Mackay to see if he might be able to help us identify who the perpetrators might be.”

The man gave it an extra moment’s consideration for good measure, then he said, “Wait here.”

He’d only been gone a moment before St. Clive was piping up again.

“That was wholly unnecessary, MacKinnon. You could have—”

“Shut up.”

Douglas decided right then that if Isabella so much as considered marrying this
dowf,
he would kidnap her himself ... and lock her in a tower. A very high tower. On a deserted island ...

Douglas had never seen his wife more beside herself with indignation and outrage as she had been when her parents had announced to the whole of the family who had gathered in Edinburgh to meet Isabella of their choice of St. Clive for her husband.

Elizabeth had been so very angry, she had nearly thrown her slipper across the room.

“You cannot have her marry
him!
Anyone, heaven’s sake, even Caroline’s pig Homer would be a better husband than
him!”

She had practically shouted it at the duke and duchess, without the slightest concern that the very object of her aversion had been standing right beside her, in the same room, having traveled with the Draytons in their coach to propose to Isabella formally.

In the duke and duchess’s defense, they had had no notion of the events that had taken place that long-ago summer. Even Douglas wasn’t entirely clear about what had happened, although he knew it had something to do with Isabella having had her young heart crushed after finding St. Clive frolicking amidst the fields with someone named Maggie the Deflowered.

The duke and duchess had simply remembered that Isabella had once held tender feelings for the blond future earl, thought, too, that she would be overjoyed that they had arranged for her to become the wife of the young man she had always pined for. They were sincerely astonished when Elizabeth revealed all in candid detail (down to the man’s grass-stained breeches) of what had taken place that day at the fair.

The duke and duchess, however, were suddenly left with a most awkward dilemma.

Because they had thought him the best candidate, the Duke and Duchess of Sudeleigh had already entered into a tentative and somewhat legal agreement of marriage with St. Clive and his father, the Earl of Chilton. Faced with the Draytons’ sudden and obvious disapproval of his past behavior toward their daughter, St. Clive, blackguard that he was, had tried to wave the entire episode off as a boyhood sowing of oats, nothing more, all while Elizabeth stood there with unquestionable murder in her eyes.

But there was a way out.

Blessedly, Douglas’s in-laws had included as part of the marriage agreement the requirement of Isabella’s consent to the match. If Bella was to refuse St. Clive’s proposal—which she certainly would, or Elizabeth would likely kill her before she could ever marry the cad—the contract would be off.

St. Clive, however, was not so certain of Isabella’s refusal.

He actually believed he could gain her consent, if only he could talk to her. And it was his confidence in himself that had made him insist upon accompanying Douglas and the duke to the north to search for her. St. Clive was merely posturing, Douglas knew. It wasn’t Isabella, or her love, that he sought to secure. The dowry he’d been promised consisted of some thousands of acres of the land that lay between the Chilton and Drayton estates, fine arable land that would assure him a healthy yearly allowance. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if Isabella had been abducted by Hades himself. St. Clive only wanted the land, and would, Douglas suspected, beg, plead, and threaten Isabella so he could get it.

Douglas, however, was determined not to give him the chance.

He’d promised Elizabeth that when he found Isabella—which he fully intended to do—he would bring her straight to Dunakin, and would not allow her to make any decisions about the marriage until she had spoken to Elizabeth first.