A Year and a Day (37 page)

Cait watched the scene with a bittersweet smile, and then accepted the return of her child with arms that were hungry to hold him again.

“What are you going to call him?” Lady Frasure asked, still unable to keep her hands entirely away. She stroked the baby’s forehead. “He does look so like my little Robert,” she whispered.

Cait looked up, surprised by the wistfulness in the old woman’s heart. It felt almost cruel to be parading her own healthy child in front of a woman who had lost so much
,
but no one was forcing Lady Frasure to stay.

“Robert,” Cait repeated quietly. “It’s a bonnie name.”

“It is,” Lady Frasure said, excitement flushing her cheeks. “I think it might suit the wee laddie.”

Robert
, Cait repeated inside her head, deciding that she approved it. “Robert James,” she finally said, deciding that she couldn’t very well name the baby after Ewan himself, but that she wanted some connection to his father.

Apparently disapproving, the baby began to kick and fuss.

“He’s hungry!” the Lady announced, although this was obvious for Cait. She tugged open the front of her nightgown and steered him toward her breast, where he began to nurse. Cait smiled at him as she listened to the happy, greedy little sucks and sighs that he made as he had his meal.

“He’s going to be a strapping one, that lad,” the old lady said, sighing herself. “Was his father a very large man?”

Cait gasped and looked up. She hadn’t anticipated the question- but she quickly covered, “Aye. Tall and broad,”
and perfect…
She thought but didn’t speak aloud.

Isobel nodded. “Did he ken you were having the wee bairn?”

Cait shook her head, uncomfortable by the line of questioning, but fathoming no polite way to extract herself. “No,” she admitted slowly, “He didn’t know.”

“A pity,” Lady Frasure said, “Sometimes a baby can bring out the good in a man- if there’s any good to find.”

“Aye,” Cait answered quietly, but didn’t say more. Perhaps taking the hint, Lady Frasure didn’t press. She kissed the pair of them goodbye, and then slipped out of the room.

Left alone at last with her baby, Cait felt another surge of longing for her husband. He shouldn’t be missing this! No matter what Ewan felt about her, and even if he viewed the baby as a political inconvenience, she couldn’t imagine that he would hate the baby himself. How could anyone hate her son- her little Robert? Cait thought, her heart positively melting as the child looked up at her with his huge, unfocused blue eyes.

“We’re going to be just fine,” Cait spoke aloud, though whether to herself or to the baby she wasn’t entirely sure. She herself had grown up without a father, so she felt confident in announcing, “We are going to make it. You’ll miss you papa, but everything will turn out okay. You’re going to be a Frasure…” she said, never having thought of that odd truth before. She and the baby w
ould be folded into the neighbo
ring clan. It was almost amusing to think that the Cameron’s Tanist’s son would be wearing another clan’s tartan.

As the days passed, Cait’s love for little Robert grew more and more. He couldn’t do
anything
for himself. Rather than being annoyed and harried by his demands, however, she revelled in the sense of being needed, especially by someone she held so dear.

He was
so like
Ewan, she thought, surprised that she could see her son’s personality so clearly so soon. At only three months old, he was already a consummate ladies’ man, saving his brightest smiles and happiest gurgles for Lady Frasure and the pretty kitchen maids.

Before becoming a mother, Cait had a sense that babies were simply “babies” for a time- but he was different every single day- and it broke her heart that Ewan was missing it.

Still, even though her baby reminded her of her husband- her
ex
-husband, by now
, she supposed
- Robert did have the happy effect of filling up a tiny bit of the hole that Ewan had left in her heart. She wasn’t alone any longer. There was someone to receive all of the love bubbling out of her heart and, although he couldn’t express it, she had an inkling
that Robert
loved her too.

Cait’s duties at the castle were amended from “Ladies Maid” to to “Assistant Housekeeper”- a position which seemed (intentionally) to have very few duties other than to bring Robert to sit with Lady Frasure in the long afternoons and, occasionally (so occasionally as to seem to exist only to justify her title) to assist with shopping and the preparation of large feasts. She attributed the
promotion
more to Lady Frasure’s friendship than to her own abilities. Sh
e couldn’t account for the favo
r, even though she was grateful for it.

Cait expected the happy arrangement to continue indefinitely- or at least for the duration of Lady Frasure’s life. In fairness, she was an old woman- old enough to be Cait’s grandmother!- but appeared in perfect health. Being at the castle was a little like being in a family, something Cait hadn’t known since her girlhood days at Glen Mohr with Muira
.
She was grateful for every moment, and actively courted the old woman’s company- which is why she didn’t know quite what to say when, one Sunday afternoon after Mass- her mistress announced, “We’re going on a journey!”

“
Laird
Cameron?
Laird
and Lady MacRae have arrived sir. Lady MacRae bid me tell you that she’ll be along as soon as she has the children settled.”

“Aye,” Ewan said, without looking up from the stack of papers he was reviewing. He hesitated for just a moment, “Have the
MacLeods
arrived yet?”

“No, sir,” the maid, a matronly woman with steel-grey hair replied, “I don’t believe the
MacLeod
s are due for another two days, sir.”

“Aye, aye,” Ewan said, and then waved her away, feigning interest in the paperwork again. He listened until the maid’s footsteps had faded away, and then ran a hand wearily through his hair.

He was making a terrible mistake.

He was getting married- and to a woman he didn’t even know!

Ewan slumped down to the desk and tried to remember how things had happened so fast. It was a day after his anniversary with Cait- a day
after
he was meant to reaffirm or renounce his vows to her forever- when his sister had first, very carefully, raised the issue that he would have to marry again.

Of course, Ewan knew that what she said was true. As
Laird
Cameron, he had a duty to provide an heir. The tension within the clan between the septs
- particularly the MacEantachs- was already thick enough to cut with a knife. He couldn’t risk an excuse for his people to fall apart. His first instinct had been to rage against the unfairness. However, after he had calmed, he was anxious to get it over with as soon as possible.

He was never going to fall in love again. After spending thirty years, bouncing from bed to bed, infatuated with every woman that he saw, Ewan admitted that this notion was comical- but it was also true. When he fell for Cait, he had fallen hard. He didn’t
want
to move on with his life- and so it made sense to marry a woman that he didn’t love at all- and who would understand this arrangement from the very start.

The
MacMillan
s were lowlanders. Their political astuteness, particularly in dealings with the English, could buy badly-needed protection for his clan while the Camerons rebuilt. All things considered, Ewan deemed that it was worth the sacrifice.

Laird
MacMillan
’s niece was widowed. She had a pair of children of her own, and- in carefully polite letters that were exchanged between herself and Ewan- professed that she was looking for a father for her children, and a home of her own, more than everlasting love. She appeared to understand both the boundaries and the rationale of what Ewan was offering, and so the clans had struck a deal.

With Lady MacRae’s help, a wedding had been swiftly arranged. Unlike his first marriage, it was meant to be a society affair. The joining of a highland and a lowland clan was an event of great circumstance- and the guest list reflected it. He had invited the heads of all the neighbouring clans and their retainers for the event. The feasting and games to accompany the wedding were expected to go on for several days.

Ewan was enjoying the calm before the storm. Muira had arrived early to help prepare for the imminent arrival of their guests, and to make last minute arrangements as they arose. Soon, the castle would be thronging with people. There would be so many, in fact, that only baby Ewan
Graem
had been brought along for the week- and only because he needed to nurse. Even the nursery was being used to accommodate their many important guests.

Caught up in the whirlwind of events, Ewan knew that it was much to late to undo what he had began, but
that didn’t
staunch his regrets. Rather than being numbed by the busyness, he thought of Cait every moment now: remembering her smile,
longing for
her laugh, and knowing that
Mary
MacMillan
- the
new
Lady Cameron-to-be, could never compare.

“
A journey to where?” Cait asked, her heart skipping a beat, a strange sense of foreboding settling over her body as she waited for her mistress to reply. She felt almost as if she had anticipated the words when the lady replied:

“Why, Castle Cameron. Have you ever been there before?”

Cait must have muttered some reply, because the other woman smiled and continued to talk. Cait, however, was reeling. She didn’t want to
leave the cozy comforts of her
new home- but, if that was necessary, at
least
it didn’t have to be to the worst place that she could possibly go!

“Surely your other maids could better attend you?” Cait suggested hopefully. “After all- I would have to bring Robert along.”

“Well, of course you’ll bring him!” Lady Frasure said quickly. “That’s part of the point. I don’t think that I could bear to be away from the little darling so long! They change so quickly. If I didn’t see him for two weeks, I don’t
know that
I’d recognize
him
when I got home.”

“Two weeks?” Cait repeated, feeling a cold sweat breaking out all over her body. It wasn’t as long as
some
visits she had heard of, but it would be all but impossible to keep herself
hidden
for so long.

“Aye,” the lady replied. “It’s a three day journey, and then there’s a week of game
s
before the wedding.”

“Wedding?” Cait said breathlessly. “Who is getting married?”
James
, she begged silently, even though she logically knew that couldn’t be the case- no one would hold a week of games to celebrate the marriage of the
Laird
’s little brother.

“
Laird
Cameron is finally going to take a wife,” Lady Frasure said, “a
MacMillan
girl. You can imagine- it’s quite a to-do,” she smiled sweetly at Cait, but frowned when she caught the other woman’s eyes. “Cait? What’s

wrong? You don’t look well!”

“I’m fine!” Cait said quickly. Then, without meaning to, she continued, “Just surprised.”

“Surprised?” Lady Frasure narrowed her eyes in confusion, “Did you know about the Camerons?”
 

Cait held her breath, aware that she was on dangerous ground. Anything she said might betray her past. She wished that she could say nothing. However, as her mistress was clearly expecting an answer, she replied, “I…thought that the Cameron
Laird
was already married.”

“Oh?” Isobel scrunched her nose, looking as if she were trying to recall something in her mind, “Well…you know, I think that I might have heard something about an attachment he had- some poor girl killed off in the border raids last year- but I don’t know that he actually
married
her. If he did, it wasn’t done properly. We were certainly never notified.”