Gosford's Daughter (4 page)

Her initial reaction was negative. Yet Sorcha had
learned that she could respond to a man’s touch. Even with the heat
of Fraser’s anger still upon her, surely what she felt for Niall
must be more than impersonal animal lust.

But to say so out loud would bring down the wrath of
both parents. Suddenly it didn’t matter. Johnny Grant had jilted
her. Only Niall mattered—and he was worth fighting for. “I care for
him, yes. And he cares for me.” She sat up straight, brushing the
tears away with her hand, looking first at her father, then at her
mother. They both wore expressions of stony reproach.

Dallas was the first to explode into words. “Fie,
Iain, tell her! We can’t permit this. And she must know why!”

“
Christ.” Fraser set the whiskey
tumbler down on the table and shook his head. “Christ,” he
repeated, this time more softly, the heavy dark brows coming close
together. “All right,” he said, settling one booted leg across the
other and facing his distraught, mystified daughter. “You must put
Niall from your mind. What may be worse is that you must never tell
him why. Some things are better left that way.” He paused to take a
swallow of whiskey, while Dallas pleated her napkin in her lap.
Sorcha heard herself sniffle but vowed to stop crying, no matter
what her father said. Was there madness in Niall’s family? Had he
been handfasted to someone else? Was he not the normal, virile
young man he appeared to be, but given to unnatural affections such
as King James was said to pursue? She held her breath as her father
resumed speaking:

“
The only way you can ever love
Niall is as a brother. You see, Sorcha, Niall is my
son.”

O
nly after the enforced
separation did Sorcha realize how much time she had spent in
Niall’s company over the years and how precious those hours had
been. Indeed, it had almost seemed as if they had been brother and
sister all along; the intimacy they had shared had been little less
than that between herself and her acknowledged brothers, Magnus and
Rob.

Yet a much different feeling for Niall had emerged
during their ardent encounter in the stable. Sorcha had sensed the
power of love—and of being loved. And then the raw, fledgling
emotion she had experienced with such delight had been snuffed
out.

There were moments when Sorcha considered that her
disappointment over Niall hurt more than the humiliation dealt her
by Johnny Grant. But pride intervened; being discarded by Johnny
still rankled.

After her father’s anger had cooled, Sorcha had
sought him out in his study. It was early evening, with the sun
setting over the gaunt hills to the west, casting a burnished
crimson glow through the mullioned windows.

“
I am surprised, sir, that Johnny
Grant’s dishonor of our family hasn’t provoked you to wrath,”
Sorcha began. “Are we so wedged between Grants and Gordons that our
own clan lacks importance or power?”

Iain Fraser looked up from his inventory of the
annual harvest. He surveyed his daughter with cool hazel eyes. “I’d
hold no man to a bond he’d chafe at keeping. Would you prefer that
I haul Johnny here in chains and force him to wed with you?”

Sorcha noted that while her father’s face was
serious, there was a touch of humor in his question. While she
didn’t wish him to turn his anger on her, she half hoped he might
be incited to take revenge on Johnny Grant. “He’s done me a great
injury,” she complained, surprised to discover that her voice was
unsteady.

Fraser leaned across the paper-strewn desk. “To your
feelings or your pride?”

Sorcha rubbed at her nose with her fist. “My
p-pride,” she mumbled.

“
Did you truly care for him?” Fraser
reclined in his chair, long legs outstretched under the
desk.

As if in answer, in her mind’s eye Sorcha saw Niall,
not Johnny. “We got on well enough,” she replied, sniffling against
her fist. “Or so I thought.”

Fraser nodded, his lean mouth turned up at the
corners. “Lassie,” he said, now smiling affectionately, “don’t fash
yourself over hapless Johnny Grant. Neither your mother nor I would
wish for you to marry a man you didn’t love.”

Sorcha frowned, unable to meet her father’s wry gaze,
though she sensed the rightness of what he said. Yet she was
confused, not because of Johnny Grant, who had stirred no more than
amiable companionship, but on Niall’s account, and the mutual ardor
between them.

Noting the confusion etched on her face, Fraser came
around the desk to put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Let me clarify
a point,” he said in the indolent way so familiar to Sorcha.
“Passion wears false faces. Be very careful, lassie. Always.”

For the briefest instant, Sorcha let her head rest
against her father’s chest. She wasn’t sure that she might not pine
for Niall, nor was she convinced that Johnny Grant didn’t deserve
retribution. But the one thing she knew for certain was that while
parents were often dense, they were almost always a comfort.

Sorcha did not talk to her father about Niall—or
Johnny—again, but she had spent part of an afternoon with her
mother discussing her half brother’s background. Niall had been
conceived during a period of estrangement in the early years of her
parents’ marriage. While Dallas lived at court, Iain had spent some
time at his former home nearby at Beauly, where Sorcha’s late aunt
had maintained the household.

“
As you know, ’tis not unusual for a
gentleman to dally with a serving girl,” Dallas had explained in an
even voice. “Your father was no different than most, and he’d just
returned from a long sea voyage.” She’d paused and looked out
through the window toward the darkened cluster of buildings that
was Inverness. Her mother’s face was in shadow, and Sorcha thought
that memory was holding back her tongue. But Dallas continued
speaking as she picked up a small porcelain jar and began smoothing
a honey-colored cream on her neck and bosom: “Catriona was a pretty
wench, and your father fell prey to temptation. He didn’t know
about Niall’s birth until we moved here from Edinburgh the year
before you were born.”

Sorcha remained silent for a few moments. It was
disconcerting to hear her mother discuss her father’s infidelity,
impossible to see Iain Fraser as anything but her father and the
husband of her mother.

“
He told you, then?” Sorcha finally
asked.

“
I guessed. When Niall was very
young, he greatly resembled your father. In any event, your sire
wanted to see that the lad was brought up properly. When I inquired
as to Niall’s parentage, he told me the truth.” Dallas replaced the
lacquered lid of the jar and smiled fondly at Sorcha. “It’s so
ironic that you should have been attracted to him. And he to
you.”

It was not Niall, but Catriona whom Sorcha considered
later as she walked her favorite mare, Thisbe, across the ripe,
heath-covered moor toward the River Ness. A stout, fair-haired
woman with cheeks that seemed perpetually warmed by the manor house
ovens, Catriona supervised her domain with a kind but firm hand.
She had three younger children, all apparently fathered by the man
who had been her husband until his death the previous spring.
Cummings, his name had been, distant kin to the Frasers’ majordomo
of many years. And so the other three children were called, but
Niall had retained the Fraser surname. Strange that Sorcha had
never thought to ask why. But then half the inhabitants around
Inverness were named Fraser.

Thisbe had stopped to munch at a tussock of grass
that sprang up between clumps of claret-colored heather. At least,
Sorcha consoled herself as Thisbe began meandering down the gentle
slope to the river, there had been no more said about Edinburgh. A
drop of rain on her cheek made her look up at the sky; dark clouds
had moved down from the north without warning.

Guiding Thisbe among the pine trees, Sorcha paused to
gaze at the wooded isles that stood like primeval ships in the
broad, brown Ness. It was a view she had loved since childhood,
with the rippling waters, the heavy scent of pine, the backdrop of
blue hills marching like a giant staircase to the distant
mountaintops, where the snow never quite disappeared, even under
the hottest summer sun.

A sudden movement nearby made Thisbe tense. Sorcha
turned in the saddle to see a six-point stag standing aloof in
motionless splendor. She knew the stag well. Two years earlier, her
father and Magnus had determined to see which of them would bag the
magnificent animal. But he had evaded them both, in a taunting,
cunning match of human and animal wit. In deference to his victory,
the Fraser menfolk had vowed never to kill the stag they had come
to call the Master of Ness. Strangely enough, the animal had seemed
to sense their concession and had boldly appeared before them at
least a half dozen times the previous autumn. Sorcha lifted her
head to touch her cap in salute as Thisbe’s ears twitched in
apparent awe.

“
Stay still,” Sorcha whispered,
patting her mare’s neck. “He’ll go. It’s his way of telling us he’s
guarding the Ness.”

The stag turned slightly, antlers tipped back like a
primitive diadem. Sorcha was still smiling with admiration when the
arrow soared through the pine trees and found its mark.

It seemed as if at least a full minute passed before
the stag’s long legs buckled and he crashed onto the peaty ground.
Horrified, Sorcha screamed and Thisbe reared up. Instinct alone
saved her from being thrown as she clung to the mare’s neck and
uttered a sharp command.

Sorcha leapt from the saddle, running to the stag,
which was already in the last stage of its death throes. It was
useless to remove the arrow; it had gone straight to the heart.
Sorcha was too angry to cry, too outraged to be surprised by the
tall, imposing figure that emerged from the pine trees carrying a
huge bow in one hand and a dirk in the other.

“
You killed him!” she cried. “You
killed the Master of Ness!”

The man looked more bemused than concerned. “Strange,
it looks like a stag to me.” He bent down to make sure the animal
was dead, then sheathed his dirk. “Was he your pet?” The dark eyes
were the color of the river itself, unrevealing and every bit as
deep, set in a long face that struck Sorcha as wolflike.

His skin was dark, too, and the wavy hair was brown
as a bog. The short-cropped beard and mustache made him seem older
than he probably was. Not yet thirty, Sorcha gauged, and realized
she was staring.

“
Aye, he was, in his way. A family
pet.” She gripped one of the antlers and glared defiantly at the
man. “Why did you do that? There are so many other deer
nearby.”

The man stood up and sighed. He was very tall and
broad shouldered under the long black cape that covered him from
neck to ankle. The beard, the cape, the guarded features,
momentarily deflected Sorcha’s attention from the slain stag. There
was something clandestine about the man, as if his all-enveloping
attire shielded him from much more than the weather. But his words
were frank enough, if tinged with irony: “I didn’t know I had to
request an introduction to a stag before I shot him. Most do not
have names. Or families.”

“
Well, this one did. We all were
particularly fond of him.” Sorcha brushed at her damp cheeks, lest
he mistake raindrops for tears. She suddenly felt very young and
vaguely foolish. “Do you have a name?”

The smile he gave her was surprisingly candid. “I do.
It’s Napier. Gavin Napier. And you?”

“
I’m Sorcha Fraser of Gosford’s
End.” She paused, waiting for the usual acknowledgment of her
family’s prestige. But Napier said nothing; he just continued to
gaze at her from those deep, dark brown eyes. She shifted her
weight from one foot to the other, wondering if Gavin Napier lived
close by. But most of their clan came from much farther south, near
Loch Lomond.

Before any coherent words could take form, Napier
whistled. Within seconds, a handsome gray stallion trotted through
the trees to stand by his master. “At least my horse is obedient,”
Napier said with a trace of impatience. “Now where are the
others?”

“
You are with a hunting party?”
Sorcha inquired as the rain began to pelt down in stinging
drops.

“
Of sorts.” He turned away, and she
noticed that his profile was strongly etched, from the high
forehead to the long nose, which had apparently been broken more
than once, to the wide mouth with its slightly elongated lower lip.
It was not a handsome face, Sorcha decided; it was too rough-hewn,
too uneven. And definitely wolflike. But for some reason, she could
not take her eyes from him.

“
Damn.” He uttered the word with
resignation. “They must have gone farther upriver, to the loch.” He
unsheathed his dirk again and looked at Sorcha. “I don’t suppose
you’d care to watch me gut your friend?”

“
Oh!” Sorcha clapped her hands to
her cheeks. “No! No, not this one!” The mere idea shocked her. Yet
she wanted Gavin Napier to know that she had not only watched but
gutted many a stag in her time. It seemed vitally important that he
should not mistake her for a fatuous, squeamish child.

“
Then turn the other way or head on
home.” He had knelt down once more and was rolling the stag over
onto its back. Napier moved with practiced assurance, reminding
Sorcha of the poachers her father often winked at when he caught
them on Fraser property. Napier obviously was no local poacher, but
there was the aura of the hunter about him.

The rain was beginning to pierce the thick fabric of
her woolen skirt. Sorcha was suddenly tempted to take Thisbe and
flee to the manor house. But sheer willpower and a determination to
prove herself forced a different decision.