The Gathering Storm (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 3) (34 page)

Alex looked around the room for clues as to the peculiar behaviour of his wife, took in the shattered vase, soaked floor and broken flowers. Understanding dawned.

“Ah,” he said. “Angus. Did ye manage to actually hit him wi’ the vase then, or did he get out of the way in time?”

Beth snorted, red in the face, but even so she might have been able to resist going off into another fit if Angus hadn’t unfortunately chosen that moment to enter, having become aware of Alex’s return.

He took in the scene of amusement before him, and opened his mouth to ask the cause of it. Alex looked up at him.

“What have ye been up to, ye wee gomerel?” he asked.

Angus’s open-mouthed look of mingled confusion and outraged innocence was too much. Beth melted into helpless giggles again, joined by Duncan.

“Aye,” she choked after a minute, almost unintelligibly, tears pouring down her face. “Brothers can have that effect…” she caught Duncan’s eye, and they both set off again, while Angus and Alex looked on, giggling themselves even while they wondered why.

It took a full ten minutes for Beth and Duncan to calm down completely, during which time Angus, having convinced Alex of his complete ignorance as to what on earth was going on, went off to fetch tea and wine.

“How did your meeting go, then, when you’d stopped walking into walls?” Beth giggled, covering it up by taking a gulp of tea. She bit down hard on her lip.

“I’ll wait until Iain and Maggie come back,” Alex said. “I’d rather tell ye all together. Tell me what happened that was so amusing this afternoon. I could do wi’ a laugh.”

Duncan and Beth looked at each other.

“Dinna start again,” Alex warned with mock severity.

“I’m not,” Beth said. “It wasn’t really funny at all.”

She explained about Richard’s visit, growing more serious as she did.

“I should have thrown the vase at him, instead of waiting until after he’d gone,” she said. “I quite liked that vase. At least I’d have got some satisfaction by drenching him.”

“D’ye think he’d have hit ye if ye had?” Alex said.

“Probably,” she replied. “I’m surprised he didn’t anyway, to be honest. He’s not renowned for controlling his temper and I provoked him enough. He certainly wanted to.”

“I’m glad he didna,” said Alex thoughtfully. “I’d have had to call him out if he had.”

“No you wouldn’t,” she said. “Sir Anthony would just wail and moan a lot, and maybe threaten to put in a bad word for him with his commanding officer.”

“Let me rephrase it then,” said Alex. “I
would
have called him out if he’d hit ye. But it’d be awkward, and I’d rather no’ have to. I dinna think Sir Anthony could get away wi’ two accidental duelling deaths, and I dinna think Richard’s a man to give up if ye only wounded him.”

“No he isn’t,” she agreed, shuddering. When she’d been arguing with her brother, she hadn’t thought of the possibility of Alex calling Richard out. “No, I did call him a coward once, a long time ago, but I was wrong. He’s a bully, certainly and most bullies
are
cowards, but I don’t think Richard is. Anyway, he didn’t hit me so there’s no harm done. And I doubt he’ll come back to be humiliated again.”

“What do you think he will do?” asked Angus.

“Nothing,” she said. “What can he do? He’s got no hold over me any more. All my friends are independent of him now. The most he can do is find someone else to lend him the money for his commission, although he must have already asked everyone he can think of. He wouldn’t have come to me except as a last resort, I’m sure of that. If he does manage to get the money though, he’ll no doubt flaunt it in my face that he got his commission anyway, without my help. That won’t bother me. I couldn’t care less if he ends up a general, although I’d feel sorry for the soldiers under his command. Good,” she said, as she heard the front door open. “That’ll be Maggie and Iain. Now we can forget about Richard and have dinner, and then talk about your meeting instead.”

“They willna commit themselves,” said Alex later. “No’ in the way that Charles wants. Broughton wanted to get their commitment in writing. Well, I knew I didna have a hope in hell of them putting their signatures to anything. They’ve already been questioned more than once by the authorities, and the only reason they havena been charged is that there isna any concrete evidence against them.”

“Like bits of paper,” said Beth.

“Exactly. So I gave up on that idea straight away. It’s as well I did, because I’ve had the devil’s own job to get them to agree to anything at all, even verbally.”

“Why are they so reluctant?” asked Iain. “After all they agreed to rise last year, did they no’, when the French made landfall?”

“Aye, they did,” agreed Alex. “But the French
didna
make landfall, did they, so we’ve no way of knowing whether they’d have fulfilled their promise or no’.”

“You mean you don’t think the English will rise
at all
, no matter what happens?” Beth said, shocked.

“I didna say that, although I do sometimes wonder if they’ll wait until Charles reaches London afore they do,” Alex said. “Ye ken, there’s a big difference between drinking toasts and singing songs to the King across the Water, and risking everything ye own and your life too.”

“But look at what they’ve got to gain, if we win,” said Angus.

“Aye, but look at what they’ve got to lose, if we fail,” said Alex. “Life is different in England, and in lowland Scotland, too. People are more comfortable, and it never ceases to amaze me what enormous liberties people will allow themselves to be deprived of in order to hang on to wee comforts they’ve become accustomed to, but could do without. And it doesna matter to the English whether the Union’s repealed or no’, as it does tae us. They’ve no’ got the same incentive to rise as the clans have, and that’s one thing that worries me.”

“What’s the other?” asked Duncan.

“Barrymore, Cotton and Wynne themselves. They’re all running scared since
Habeas Corpus
was suspended. Dinna forget, Cotton only escaped being arrested because another man was mistaken for him. He’s a big man, taller than me even, but he’s no’ a fighter. He’s awfu’ fat, and soft. He even protested to the French that they shouldna invade in January because it was too cold!” he said contemptuously. “Then there’s Barrymore, who
was
arrested, of course, and who got out of trouble by telling parliament that he wouldna risk the loss of the poorest acre of his land to defend the title of any king in Europe, which is no’ exactly reassuring.”

“Yes, but people will say anything to get out of prison, won’t they?” reasoned Beth. “I mean, he didn’t give anyone else up, did he?”

“No, he didna,” Alex conceded. “But he’s nearly eighty, Beth. He must be thinking more of making his peace wi’ God than leading a rebellion.”

“What about Wynne, then?” said Iain.

“Ah, well now, he’s a different matter. He’s younger than Barrymore, in his fifties, and fitter than Cotton. And more powerful than both of them. He’s the most powerful man in North Wales, as well as being the MP for Denbigh. He’s raised a good following for the Stuarts among the Welsh. I think the Welsh are more likely to rise than the English. After all, there’s a good deal of resentment that Wales is generally considered part of England instead of a principality in its own right, as it should be. That’s the way Scotland’ll go, too, if the English have their way,” he said sourly.

“Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?” Beth said. “Not that Scotland will become part of England, I mean, but that the Welsh are for James.”

“Aye, but Wynne’s leading them. And while of the three, he’s the one I like the most, he’s awfu’ cautious, too cautious for me. Maybe I’m misjudging the man, and he will rise as he says, although I think he’ll wait until the rising’s well under way afore he does, but he’ll no’ commit to it without French help, and I canna argue wi’ him there, because the clans dinna want to, either. It seems Charles is on his own in thinking he can take the throne wi’ his single footman.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Maggie.

“I send a report of my negotiations to Broughton and the others, and tell them what I think. And then I think we’ve nae choice but to make it verra clear to the prince that he must not, under any circumstances, come to Britain without the French at his back.”

Christmas Eve 1744 passed by peacefully, even pleasantly, the MacGregor family having refused all social invitations, determined to enjoy the festive season ensconced in their warm and cosy rented London home.

Beth, who had been almost paranoiacally superstitious that, following the pattern of the previous two years, some unexpected violent event was going to occur, breathed a sigh of relief as the clock chimed midnight with no more disastrous occurrence than the burning of the morning’s porridge, which, as Beth had been in charge of preparing it, was hardly unexpected.

Maggie, now starting her sixth month of pregnancy, often felt tired and breathless, and suffered spasmodically from severe backache which she tried stoically to ignore. Beth had taken to watching her carefully for excessive yawning or grimacing and massaging of her lower back, whereupon she would pack the protesting young woman off to sit in the library with a hot drink, and would take over whatever task she had been engaged in. Which had resulted in the burning of the Christmas Eve porridge and several long and increasingly heated arguments with Maggie, who protested that Beth was treating her as though she was made of glass.

“I’m not one of your pampered society women,” she said one morning early in the New Year, when Beth had found her resolutely scrubbing the kitchen floor, dark shadows of fatigue under her eyes and one hand firmly clamped on the small of her back. “If we were at home, I’d no’ be able to lie down in the library every day. I’d just have tae get on wi’ it.”

“I know, but you’re not at home, and you don’t have to get on with it,” Beth protested, bending down and trying to wrest the scrubbing brush out of Maggie’s hand.

Maggie, considerably taller and stronger than Beth, maintained a firm grip on the brush.

“I feel better if I’m doing something,” she insisted. “I’m no’ one for lying about in the middle of the day. It doesna feel right.”

“You have to think of your baby, though,” reasoned Beth, kneeling down beside Maggie, heedless of the wet floor. “And it’s not the middle of the day. It’s not even seven o’clock yet. It’s still dark, for God’s sake!”

“My baby’s fine, he’s kicking away merrily in there. And I was awake and didna want to disturb Iain, so I thought I might as well make myself useful.”

“How much sleep have you had?” Beth asked, concerned.

“Almost none at all, if all her tossing and turning was anything to go by,” said Iain sleepily from the doorway. “I know I didna get more than an hour or so.”

“I’m sorry,” said his wife, sitting back on her heels and brushing a strand of fiery red hair from her face. “But the bairn’s lying strangely, and it’s awfu’ uncomfortable. He’ll move soon, I’m sure, and I’ll be fine.” She dipped the brush in the bucket of soapy water and prepared to continue her task.

“Iain, will you reason with her?” said Beth. “She should be relaxing if she’s tired and in pain, not scrubbing a floor that’s already clean!”

“I tellt ye, I’m fine…hey!” she protested as Iain plucked the brush neatly from her hand, passed it to Beth, and then scooped his wife firmly up into his arms. “Put me down!”

“I’m wi’ Beth on this,” he said, ignoring his wife’s struggles and protests as he carried her past a surprised Alex, who was coming down the stairs as Iain marched down the hall to the library. “Ye’ve no need tae wear yourself out,
a ghràidh.
” He plonked her down on the sofa, plumping up some cushions behind her. “I’ll make up the fire,” he said, “and ye can have a wee rest.”

“I’ve only just got up!” she protested angrily, making to rise. He pushed her back down firmly.

“Well find something else to do, then,” he said. “Something that involves sitting down.”

“There isna anything,” she replied stubbornly. “Will ye stop treating me as though I’m going to break! I’m sick of it. I’m having a baby, that’s all. Thousands of women do it. It’s natural. I’ve lost my waistline, no’ my senses. If I get tired, I’ll go to bed.”

“Maggie, please,” Iain said pleadingly, his uncharacteristic burst of husbandly dominance exhausted. “Ye must be tired. There’s nae harm in lying down occasionally.”

“Aye, but if you had your way I’d have lost the use of my legs wi’ lying down by now,” she said. She got to her feet and glared at Beth. “You scrub the floor then, if ye’ve such a mind to,” she said. “I’ll make up the fire, then I’ll come and start the porridge.”

Iain looked helplessly at Beth. Much as he loved his wife, she was stubborn and unreasonable at times, and had become even more so as her pregnancy advanced. She seemed acutely aware that she was having it easy compared to her fellow clanswomen in Scotland and was determined not to let anyone pamper her in any way at all.

“Angus is making the porridge,” Alex said, striding briskly into the room, carrying an armful of material. “And Iain is lighting the fire,” he continued with such a tone of command that Iain turned to the task immediately, gratefully relinquishing his mutinous wife to the other man.

Alex dumped his burden down on the floor by the side of the sofa and turned to Maggie.

“I…” she started.

He took her by the shoulders and propelled her firmly back on to the sofa.

“And you,” he said, “will do as ye’re tellt for once. These,” he gestured to the pile of shirts and stockings, “need mending. And that’s what ye’re going to do.”

Maggie picked up one of the stockings, which sported a hole in the heel.

“These are Sir Anthony’s,” she said. “Sir Anthony doesna wear mended stockings. He buys new ones.”

“He does wear mended stockings if ye canna see the darn,” Alex said. “His sponsor’s no’ got a money tree growing in his garden. It’s about time Sir Anthony economised a wee bit.”

Maggie looked up at him, undaunted.

“You’re just inventing work for me,” she said. “And anyway, Beth’s the one for the needlework, not me, as ye ken verra well.”