Island of the Swans (77 page)

Jane smiled weakly as the bedraggled party quickly trooped next door into the welcome shelter of the Duke of Cumberland’s apartments.

Sipping a brandy in the comfort of the Duke of Cumberland’s sitting room, which nearly matched her own smoke-damaged chamber next door, Jane surveyed her daughters thoughtfully.

“While the workers are at their labors repairing our chambers, I think we should return to Gordon Castle.”

The five girls looked at each other uneasily. They would never forget their mother’s wounded cries echoing throughout Gordon Castle the night she discovered that harlot, Jean Christie, in their father’s bed.

“Your Papa narrowly escaped losing all of us in this near tragedy,” Jane said quietly. “Tis time the breach is healed.”

Her daughters gazed at her, wide-eyed.

“Can I rely on your help?” Jane asked simply.

The Gordon lasses solemnly nodded their assent.

Within the week, Jane had hired a stagecoach for her sole use. On the appointed day, her exclusively female household happily crammed themselves inside the conveyance and settled back to endure the long, demanding two-week journey north to the snow-covered Highlands.

Jane dreaded the last few miles of the journey from the village of Fochabers to the gates of Gordon Castle. They’d already fought their way through snowdrifts and endured the howling February winds along the Moray Firth, which rolled against the rocky shores near Inverness. But now, as the coach lumbered past the gates that stood sentry at the entrance of the castle grounds, Jane gave an involuntary shudder. She recalled all too clearly that previous nocturnal arrival less than a year before. Could she face the scene she imagined lay ahead of her? Her daughters were also subdued. They ceased chattering for the first time during the long day’s trip.

“We’ve discussed the situation, Mama,” Charlotte suddenly blurted in the silence of the darkened coach. “And we want to be with you when you see Papa.”

Jane was touched at her daughters’ concern, but she shook her head.

“I know, dearhearts, that you want this… meeting… to go well,” she said quietly, “but whatever happens, ’tis between your father and me. You’re not to blame for any of what’s gone on before, and ’tis not your problem to shoulder, even now.”

“But Papa consorts with that
serving wench
!” Charlotte said disdainfully. “The whole district knows about it!”

“Charlotte!” Jane said sternly with a glance at the younger children. “There are many things you don’t understand,” she continued in a gentler tone, “nor should you be expected to. ’Tis up to your father and me to see if we can find a way to make peace.” She kissed Charlotte lightly on the cheek. “But thank you for your concern, hinny. I’m hopeful we can sort it out,” she said with far more bravado than she actually felt.

As planned, they drew up in front of the heavy oak door to the castle just after midnight. Quickly, the six of them made their way stealthily into the mansion and crept quietly to their rooms. Shivers stole up Jane’s spine as she tread softly down the same corridor of the old wing of Gordon Castle that she had passed through so confidently the night she had come on Alex and Jean Christie in her marriage bed.

Surprise is my weapon
, she thought, steeling herself. No doubt there would be a terrible scene when she threw Jean Christie out of the bedchamber the strumpet had been sharing with her husband. Her breath caught at the sound of the creaking chamber door when she opened it. Then she tiptoed into the room. The flint was in its customary place on the small table beside the enormous four-poster. The bed was shrouded by its heavy velvet bed curtains drawn shut against the chill of the night. It seemed to Jane as if she had simply been thrust back to the terrible midnight hour almost one year ago when she had entered this room—unannounced.

The flint sparked, then flared as she lit the bedside candle. Her slim shadow danced on the wall behind her. Carefully she parted the drapery and then felt her heart turn over in her breast as the candlelight illuminated the square area of the enormous bed. Alex lay alone, his head cradled against a mountain of feather pillows.

He moved restlessly, but didn’t awake. He had kicked off the bed linen during the night. A tartan blanket lay tangled about his knees. Jane stared at his long, lean form, so familiar and yet so foreign after these many months. He wore no nightcap and his unpowdered hair looked dark as onyx, pulled back in a simple style. His face, expressionless in sleep, was handsome still, but Jane detected, even in the dim light, several lines furrowing his cheeks and faint cobwebs fanning out from the corners of his eyes. With an eerie sense of premonition, she glimpsed what this forty-four-year-old man would look like at sixty—even eighty, if they both lived that long. Her intuition told her that if his attitude toward life continued as dour and unforgiving as fresh lines on his face indicated, his aquiline nose would soon dominate his face, while his cheeks and eye sockets would sink into a deaths head as old age approached.

Jane shivered again and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Alex had shifted his weight slightly and appeared once again to be the man she had known so intimately for over twenty years. She chastised herself for her flight of fancy, created, no doubt, by the dark shadows cloaking the room. Alex lay naked across the big bed, now looking handsome and virile as ever, his upper body still trim and muscular, thanks to his continuing passion for the sport of archery. Her eyes traveled down past a nest of dark chest hairs to his slim waist and compact hips.

As she stood next to the bed, bathed in the candle’s murky light, she was totally unprepared for the rush of warmth that infused her cheeks. His unguarded nakedness produced in her a physical longing for the touch of his caresses that took her breath away. Whatever their problems had been over the years, the sight reminded Jane that Alex had been a consummate lover.

She quickly shed her garments with trembling fingers and stood next to the bed like a bride on her wedding night, unsure of what to do next. If he rejected her at this moment, it would be more than she could bear. Tears pricked her eyes. She felt she couldn’t fight him any longer. She couldn’t battle Alex’s unwillingness to accept her as she was: a complicated, independent woman who would always love Thomas Fraser in some dim recess of her soul, but who loved him also and wanted to forge a life together—for as long as they both should live—just as they’d promised in their marriage vows. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she buried her face in her hands, wondering desperately why she had ever come to this desolate house.

“Jean?” she heard Alex say sleepily. “Jeannie, are you all right, lass?”

His words reverberated like a knife thrust into her heart. Unable to choke back the sound, a sob erupted from her throat.

“No! Tis
not
your bonnie Jean…” she cried out, “’tis
I
, Jane Maxwell…
your wife!
”

She turned blindly to gather up her clothing and flee the wretched chamber when Alex leapt from bed and caught her arm.

“Jane!” he breathed, a look of complete astonishment on his face. “Please… don’t go… I never—”

“Expected me here,” she finished his sentence for him. “Obviously not!”

Despite her firm resolve, she began to weep inconsolably, sinking into a small chair positioned next to the bedside table. For several minutes, her sobs rent the silence in the room. She felt Alex’s hands on her shoulders and realized with some surprise he was kneeling next to her chair.

“A-as soon as I stop crying, I’ll l-leave you,” Jane stuttered tearfully, trying to regain some semblance of control. The thought of his calling out Jean Christie’s name into the chill darkness of the chamber was more than she could stand.

“Jane… Jane… poor poppet…” he soothed, cradling her against his naked chest. “You’ve come all this way in the bitter weather we’ve been having? Poor, poor poppet.”

He spoke to her as if she were a child, which was exactly how she felt: small and helpless. He stroked her hair and shoulders, his hands warm against her cold flesh, and, after a few minutes her breathing became less ragged and she realized that instinctively, she had been cleaving to him, clinging to the comfort offered by his calming touch.

He kissed each eyelid and brushed the back of his slender fingers against her cheek. Jane pulled away from his chest and stared up at him, attempting to blink away the tears welling from her eyes.

“You look beautiful,” he said suddenly.

“I’m th-thirty-eight,” she hiccupped. “You forgot my birthday.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, kissing her lightly on the ear.

“W-why isn’t Jean Christie here?” she sniffed.

“We’ve not been sleeping together these last months,” he replied evenly.

Jane’s breath caught in her throat. Alex’s whispered words blew softly against her earlobe and Jane found her mind slipping back to that night, an age ago, when he had wooed her sensuously among the climbing roses in Comely Gardens. It was the same balmy June evening that he had presented her with his grandmother’s diamond earrings. Now, these twenty-one years later, he was adeptly kissing her sensitive earlobes with increasing fervor.

“I’ve missed you, you know,” he murmured into her ear, easing his tongue into its shell. “You came here to join me in my bed, did you not?” he demanded huskily, yanking his head away from her body, leaving her feeling suspended on a precipice, dizzy with desire.

A torrent of words ran through her head… words that would explain how she had come to be sitting naked on a straight-backed chair in the dead of night within arm’s length of the bed her unclothed husband had recently shared with his mistress. His mistress. Jean Christie. The serving girl more than half his age, whose name he had whispered into the darkness, only moments ago. Incoherent thoughts collided in her brain and faded into the chilly night, unuttered. Jane merely continued to stare into Alex’s hypnotic dark eyes, trembling at the physical sensations cascading through her body.

“Say it!” he demanded roughly. “Say what you want me to do, Jane!”

“I… I…”

No words would come.

“
Say it!
”

He was almost shouting. It was their old dueling match once again.

“Yes! I
want
you!” she sobbed brokenly. “I want you and I want my family back. I was so frightened by the fire in London… we could have all been kill—”

His lips crushed hers, silencing her plea. He scooped her up off the chair and strode toward the four-poster. In a trice, they were on the bed, and in a remote part of her brain, Jane wondered how recently Jean Christie had vacated these embroidered sheets.

Alex’s body blanketed hers until she could no longer feel where her form ended and his began. He covered her with rough, furious kisses, though Jane could sense he was containing whatever anger he still felt toward her, lest it might spill over as it had that day in the burgundy silk bedchamber at Culloden House. What she had to say about the current chaos of their lives would have to wait until morning. The sensations he was coaxing from her body blotted out everything but the demand that she must have him inside her at all costs.

Slowly, with a kind of torturing deliberation, he sheathed himself within her by degrees.

“Jesu…” he groaned, acknowledging for the first time the pleasure she was affording him.

“’Tis like that, Alex,” Jane whispered defiantly, “because no man has touched me since you left my bed for
hers
!”

Alex stared down at her, and his expression suddenly darkened.

“You swear that, upon our children’s lives?”

“Yes, goddamn you!” she cried. “Will this never
end
! ’Tis
you
who’ve been the faithless one!”

His face drew into a grimace as he watched tears once again moisten her cheeks. He closed his eyes as if the sight of her weeping was unspeakably painful.

“I know, dearheart,” he whispered, as if he were a small, lost boy. “Please… please forgive me, Jane… I…”

His words trailed off and she was astonished to see tears in his eyes as he stared down at her. He looked like a man condemned to die at dawn.