Island of the Swans (47 page)

Nineteen

D
ECEMBER
31, 1775

T
HE SOUND OF A FESTIVE TUNE PLAYED ON
W
ILLIAM
M
ARSHALL’S
fiddle wafted under the crack of Jane’s bedchamber door, borne along by the December drafts that perpetually chilled the inhabitants of Gordon Castle. A soft knock at her door announced Nancy Christie, who entered the room to help with her mistress’s dress and attend to her coiffure.

“The children are nearly daft with excitement, ma’am, waitin’ to gift you with the trinkets they’ve made for your birthday,” Nancy said cheerfully, pulling the laces of Jane’s stays tight. Jane winced. Her breasts, so tender to the touch lately, were pushed up to a fashionable but nonetheless uncomfortable height.

Nancy scooped up the voluminous rose silk gown and lifted it over Jane’s head. Its panniers weighed heavily against her pinched waist, and yards of the material making up the overskirt settled around her hips in deep folds like soft spokes on a wheel. The music downstairs blared momentarily as the door opened again, and Alexander stood framed at the threshold of his wife’s bedchamber.

“’Tis the perfect shade with your hair and coloring, my dear,” he said, advancing into the room. “Our friends await you downstairs. Hamilton has arrived with several fellow officers, and the children are in an absolute lather to present you with your birthday gifts. They have commanded me to escort you to the drawing room immediately.” His eyes absorbed the sight of Jane’s décolletage spilling over the top of the evening gown. “I must say, ’tis an assignment I undertake with some relish,” he continued. “You look magnificent, Jane.”

At that, he turned to Nancy, who was putting the finishing touches on Jane’s coiffeur. He relieved her of Jane’s silver-plated hairbrush, and nodded a signal of dismissal.

“There are just a few wee strands here,” he said to Jane in a low, intimate voice. With light, feathery strokes, he caressed her hair forward with the soft bristles of the hairbrush and then bent down and grazed his lips along the same path just below her hairline. Jane stiffened at his touch, but remained silent. “Ham has asked permission for several companies of the 71st to assemble here in February, once their training is completed,” he commented casually, continuing to nuzzle her neck with soft kisses. “From the castle, they’ll march south to their ships.”

Jane’s eyes widened at this startling bit of intelligence. Would Thomas’s company be among these men? Would she be forced once again to encounter him in the confines of a crowded room or perhaps to bid him a final farewell from across a parade field? Especially considering the nightmare at Culloden House, she knew it would be dangerous for all concerned to place Alexander and Thomas anywhere near each other, let alone under the same roof.

Ignoring Alex’s attempt to smooth things over between them, Jane rose abruptly from the padded satin stool stationed in front of her looking glass and walked toward a dresser containing her jewelry.

During the ten days following her return from Kinrara, Alexander—much to her relief—had been sleeping on the daybed in his dressing room after late evenings alone in his study or in the company of the ubiquitous musical butler, Mr. Marshall. Not once had Alex broached the subject of his brutal treatment of her at Culloden House, nor had she mentioned her sojourn to Kinrara. A profound sense of bereavement had enveloped Jane after Thomas’s departure to regimental headquarters at Inverness. It numbed what would otherwise have been a feeling of tremendous guilt for the betrayal of her marriage vows. Her deep bond with Thomas only complicated the anger she had harbored toward Alexander as a result of her husband’s act of cruelty. She found herself utterly unable even to respond appropriately in casual conversation since the debacle of their violent evening together.

Now, on the eve of his wife’s twenty-sixth birthday, Alex leaned one palm on her dressing table and silently watched Jane rummage through yet another velvet box until, at length, she retrieved a pair of tourmaline earrings and a matching necklace. She tried unsuccessfully to fasten the necklace, but her truncated forefinger made snapping the platinum clasp difficult. She glanced up at Alex, her chin jutting slightly in the air as she anticipated reproval.

“Here, let me help with that,” he said quietly, startling her with an unexpectedly gentle tone. He flicked the catch closed and once again kissed the nape of her neck. “You look so lovely tonight,” he said, his eyes searching her face. “Every year, it seems, you grow more beautiful.” He drew her close to him and savored her appearance. “You have that look, again, Jane,” he said huskily. “The voluptuous appearance of a woman with the spark of new life growing inside her. Tis a look that can heat a man’s blood beyond endurance.”

His hazel eyes bore into hers, and with one swift motion, he pressed his hand and gold signet ring between her cleavage, the signal they’d shared during their eight-year marriage of his desire to make love.

“’Twill never be like Culloden House again, Jane,” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss her lips. “I swear it! Let’s start the year anew, for the bairn’s sake.”

“No!” she spat, “don’t be daft! I am
not
with child!” She fiercely clasped his wrist with her hand and flung his arm away from her breasts in a violent movement. “No, no,
no
!” she shouted, her voice rising to an hysterical pitch. “I’ll not bare a bairn conceived in your hatred!”

She rushed out of the room without seeing the stricken look etched across her husband’s features, and ran down the stone staircase into the drawing room filled with family and friends.

A shaft of pale afternoon sun struggled to pierce the leaden skies arching over the grounds of Gordon Castle. A small band of pipers and rows of kilted soldiers fanned out in a sea of scarlet coats, marching smartly in step before their senior officers. The pipers’ regimental tune, “Morair Sim,” dubbed “Lord Lovat’s Welcome,” was played in honor of their commander, General Simon Fraser.

Jane shivered beneath her heavy cloak and looked down at her four children, plus the Duke’s George. They seemed unmindful of the frigid February air sweeping over the impromptu parade grounds, and gazed with rapt attention at the members of their Uncle Hamilton’s company passing in review.

In spite of the celebratory atmosphere, Jane was feeling queasy. The steady beat of the regimental drummers and the skirl of the pipes aggravated her headache, and the greasy mutton stew she’d had at the noonday meal rested uneasily in her stomach. She longed for the privacy of her bedchamber, especially since Captain Thomas Fraser was among those officers quartered in Fochabers in anticipation of the 71st’s final departure at dawn tomorrow. Jane grew faint at the thought of the calamity enveloping her. She found herself swaying. The heel of her slipper sank into the soggy ground.

Alex had been right. She was pregnant again. Of that there could be no doubt. Her courses had stopped following that fateful week in early December, when both her husband and Thomas had taken her to bed within a few days of each other. Since then, she and Alex had slept apart, but the simple truth was, the baby growing inside her could be either man’s.

Jane thought back to the ecstasy of those precious days with Thomas at Kinrara and Loch-an-Eilean. How sure she had been back then that only Thomas’s seed could have created life in her. She had been positive that Alex’s degrading assault at Culloden House would come to naught. But now… now that the reality of her condition had engulfed her, she couldn’t bear to contemplate that the child was anyone but Thomas’s!

But there was half a chance it might not be his…

For the first time in five pregnancies, attacks of violent nausea plagued her during every waking hour. Seven months of cruel uncertainty stretched ahead, before she would be in a position to guess who was the father of this child.

Jane clenched her skirts between white knuckles as Thomas’s company of eighty-nine men approached the reviewing stand. The last few weeks had been sheer torment. She’d caught only fleeting glimpses of her lover as he sipped brandy with his fellow officers, or barked orders at the raw recruits under his charge while they drilled in formation under her bedroom window. The greatest shock of all was that Alex had been astoundingly civil to Thomas. He had proffered him the best cognac and treated him with the same easy graciousness he extended to all the officers.

Whose baby am I carrying?
cried Jane silently, as a brisk wind snapped the edges of her cloak.

The Fraser company halted directly in front of her. Thomas himself stood at attention not fifty yards from where she was stationed, feeling miserable and chilled to the bone. Her throat constricted at the sight of his beloved profile and tears misted her eyes. She turned toward Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, seated imperiously astride his black stallion, wearing his scarlet uniform with its general’s epaulets. He complacently surveyed the ranks of his soldiers—all clad in his family tartan.

“Clansmen, kinsmen, brothers all,” Simon shouted in a booming voice. “You will go forth from this day to reclaim in America the glory denied you in Scotland for so long by circumstances best left forgotten. However,
never
forget,” he said fiercely, “that you wear the colors of Clan Fraser and carry the glorious history of a thousand years of Highlanders in your veins.”

Simon surveyed the field of men who gazed up at him with rapt attention. To Jane’s consternation, Thomas, too, was among those who stared at their leader with a look of awe as he addressed the throng gathered in his name under his family’s coat of arms.

“Remember, you are
MacShimi’s
men—the sons of Simon—not merely bonded to me by blood or fealty, but bonded to all Frasers who came before.”

Jane suddenly felt the bile rise within her. Stayed by the thought of disgracing herself in front of everyone, she mumbled something to Alexander about feeling ill and took refuge behind the stout trunk of the Duchess Tree. Then, with as much dignity as she could muster, Jane escaped through the side door of the west wing and disappeared inside the castle without a word.

Three hours later, the door of her bedchamber opened quietly, and she lifted her head weakly from the pillow. She held a cold cloth pressed against her closed eyelids.

“Feeling any better, my dear?” inquired Alex’s voice.

“A little,” she replied, although the truth was she felt wretched.

She felt Alex’s weight press against the mattress of their large four-poster as he sat beside her.

“You’re having quite a time with this one, aren’t you, poor dear?”

Jane didn’t answer, hoping Alex would think her too weak to reply.

“Dr. Ogilvy advises me that within another month or so, your indisposition should abate.”

“Dr. Ogilvy has
had
a baby? He knows these things?” Jane replied sarcastically, breaking her temporary vow of silence.

She removed the compress from her eyes and stared moodily at Alex. Perhaps the misery of this pregnancy was a form of punishment meted out by the Highland Fairies for the hours of bliss she’d spent with Thomas.
One always seems to pay a price for joy
, she thought desolately, reminded of dour Presbyterian dictums drummed into her as a child. ’She is A Joy Who Doth Obey,’ her tattered sampler had once prophesied. It was certainly evident, she concluded morosely, that obedience was not in her character.

“Dr. Ogilvy’s delivered many a bairn,” Alexander replied pleasantly, interrupting the stillness that had grown between them, “so I suppose he does know something about these things.”

“Did he deliver your George for Bathia Largue?” Jane inquired with a nasty edge to her voice. “He was so drunk last time, he nearly dropped Susan.”

“You may engage anyone you wish, Jane,” Alex answered evenly, his features remaining as composed as his tone. “The most important thing is that you have someone looking after you who gives you confidence.”

“I suppose Ogilvy’s as good as the next man in this godforsaken place,” Jane responded sullenly.