The Heart Queen (26 page)

“You have seen Angus?” she asked.

Jock nodded. “I can work wi‘ the mon. He knows his farming.”

“We can produce enough to pay the taxes?”

“Aye, with enough sheep and cattle. There are few enough in this area. They will bring a foine price at Inverness and Glasgow. It will be taking four or five years to build herds but with good dogs, ye need but a few herders. And the tenants should produce enough to keep themselves,
sell a bit, and provide a share for you.”

“My family ... might try to hinder you.”

“My lord told me as much,” Jock replied. “But ‘e told me I make the decisions, and I will make the best I can for ye.”

She was satisfied. As satisfied as she could be under the circumstances. Lochaene’s people, she felt, would be safe with this man. He would not be easily intimidated.

But safe for whom? Jock Forbes’s loyalty would be to his employer, not to her. If Braemoor wanted Lochaene to succeed, she had no doubts it would. But then would he leave it for her son, for Lochaene’s true heir?

She could only try to return as soon as possible. Mayhap even convince Cumberland that her son needed no male guardian, that it was an imposition on Braemoor. Mayhap if she made so much trouble, Braemoor would want to get rid of her.

She said good night to Jock Forbes, who seemed uncomfortable in the manor. He would be even more so when he met the other members of the household, but she felt he could hold his own.

She still knew a deep resentment, though, that all control was being taken from her, that she was given no choices of her own. She also feared she did not know Braemoor’s true motives and intent. It most certainly was, as Marjorie had conjectured, not marriage. He had demonstrated his lack of interest in her over and over again. The desolation that had swept over her eight years earlier at his rejection still lingered painfully.

She turned to him. “When do we leave?”

“First light,” he said. “It will take us at least two days with the chaise.”

She nodded and turned toward the steps.

“My lady?”

She stopped but did not turn back.

He hesitated long enough that she knew he had reconsidered whatever he meant to say. “Good evening,” he said simply.

She wanted to retort that being forced to leave her home was not inducive to a good night, but thought better of it. Better to allow him to believe she had accepted his decision.

Janet, the Countess of Lochaene, mounted the stairs with as much dignity as she could manage.

Neil watched Janet ascend the stairs with no little dignity. Neil had been both amused and impressed by Janet’s performance at supper, and then at the meeting with Jock. She was a strong-willed lass.

After she disappeared down the hall, he walked over to the stable. With Tim, he inspected every inch of the post chaise he planned to take the next day. The coach was faded, the interior scarred and the cushions slightly soiled, but it should get them to Braemoor. He then examined the harness and traces. He did not want any more accidents.

When he was ready to leave, he asked Tim to sleep near the coach rather than the back room the lad shared with Kevin and, since his return, Tim’s brother, Dicken.

“I willna take my eyes from it,” he said.

“Kevin will be driving the coach,” Braemoor said. “I want you to stay here and help Jock. If there is any trouble, come for me.”

Tim’s face fell. It was obvious that he had wanted to accompany them. “I need you here more,” Neil said softly. “And you will be here to teach Dicken what he needs to know.”

Tim’s eyes brightened. “Aye, my lord.”

“I hope to leave at daybreak,” Neil said.

Tim nodded, a red forelock falling onto his forehead. He was all freckles and bright blue eyes. At thirteen, Dicken was a younger version of him. Neither boy, Braemoor knew, had been to school; their labor had been needed too badly. But both were quick in mind, and Braemoor intended to provide a tutor who could teach them as well as the lasses.

When it was safe enough.

How long would he have the torture of seeing Janet every day, to watch her bend over her son with such tenderness and hear her stories when she put the bairns to bed? How long could he resist kissing her again, or holding out his hand to her? Knowing that she was taking it only under duress.

He returned to the manor house. Only a few lights flickered in the hallway. He wished there was a library here. He went into the withdrawing room. The fire was almost out. He placed a new log on it and watched a small flame begin to lick at it, then started to blaze. It had just been waiting for fuel.

He felt like that flame. The embers had been barely glowing inside, but a few days with Janet—with the children— that small flicker had grown into an inferno of need.

Neil poured himself a glass of brandy from the bottle always kept there, and watched the fire burn.

Janet had a lapful of children. She sat in the middle of one seat. Annabella was asleep, her head buried in Janet’s skirts. Rachel had likewise stretched across the left side of the seat, her head resting next to her sister’s.

Grace sat primly on the opposite bench, valiantly trying to read a book. Next to her was Clara, who held Colin. Looking wretched after the jolting, cold day-long ride, Lucy sat next to Clara, her hands clasping at the side of the carriage as it lurched along a muddy road. Samson sat curled up next to Rachel, and Delilah was safe in a basket on the floor.

Rain pounded on the carriage roof, and thunder roared. Each new volley changed the lurch of the carriage a little more as the horses strained against the harness, obviously ready to bolt.

Braemoor had stopped the chaise just as the thunder started and climbed aboard the driver’s bench with Kevin. Janet knew both man and lad must be soaked, and it could not be good for Braemoor, who was still weak.

Blast the man for his stubbornness. They never should have left this morning with the heavy overhanging clouds, the thick smell of moisture, the electricity in the air. But a woman could never tell a man anything.

She wished she could keep from thinking of him being up on that platform just days after a near-fatal fever.

Yet she knew there was no place to stop along this toll road for another ten miles. They had seen only one soul and that was a frowning, crooked stick of a man who had hobbled out to collect the due. There had been no inn, no shelter.

She knew there was a far swifter way across the mountains, but the chaise could not navigate it even if bandits did not control the only pass.

Janet tried not to worry and concentrated on devising a plan of her own. She had to demonstrate to Cumberland that she was fully capable of taking care of her own affairs. But how? She did not know. Not yet. But she did know she would go to hell before she married again.

She could do little while the Duke of Cumberland was in London. But Braemoor’s odd experience in the mountain had made her wonder. She kept puzzling over the fact that the bandit had released him without asking ransom. He must be a very odd bandit indeed.

Or a fugitive Jacobite who had somehow escaped detection for more than a year.

If so, he might be of assistance to her, and she to him.

It would be a fine line. She could be putting herself and the children in danger. And yet she was obviously already in danger. Her family? Or Braemoor? Both?

Of the two, Braemoor was the more likely suspect. Reginald was too bungling, his wife too concerned with clothes, and his mother ...

Thunder roared again, and she felt the horses straining against the traces. The coach came to a lurching stop and Janet had to grab Annabella to keep her from falling. Samson barked. Janet opened the wood shutters, which covered the windows and had kept the rain out. The rain was so thick she barely saw the cloaked form approach.

“We canna go farther,” Braemoor said. “The road is too slippery. I’ve pulled off and Kevin and I am going to tie the horses until the lighting stops.” Through the pouring rain, she saw the strain in his face, the lines that had not been there this morning. He must have been braking with his wounded leg.

She gently rearranged the two girls on the coach seat and stepped out of the chaise, immediately stepping into mud and nearly falling as her feet slipped. She looked toward the front of the four-horse team. Kevin and Braemoor were both trying to sooth them as thunder boomed and lightning streaked across the dull gray hills cloaked by the falling rain.

A lantern hanging from a post shone eerily through the heavy rain.

One of the horses struck out, and she tried to soothe him.

“Go back inside, Janet,” Braemoor said. “We are going to have to unhitch them. There’s no place to tie them with the carriage attached, and we cannot risk them bolting.”

Janet shivered. She knew how impossible was the task. But he was right. They would have to take the horses far off the road, and there was no way the carriage could make it over the soggy ground.

But instead of obeying him, she ran her hand along the neck of the lead horse which was quivering. “Quiet, my love,” she crooned to him. “You have done so well and soon you will have a nice warm stall and lots of oats.” The gelding shuddered but quieted at the sound of a familiar voice. She had visited them often at Lochaene and was familiar to them.

Once the lead horse calmed, the others followed suit. She continued to run her hands along his neck as Braemoor and Kevin freed them from the harness and led them into some shelter under the trees. He ran a line between them and hurried back to the chaise.

“Get inside,” he said.

“Not unless you and Kevin do.”

“There is no room. We can stay up in the seats with the oil cloth,” he said.

“Aye, there is room. You or Kevin will have to hold one of the children but you will not stay out here.”

He nodded, ruefully accepting her order. “Ah, you care, madam.”

“Only in that I do not wish to stay here forever,” she said, not wishing to show that she did, indeed, care.

He finally shrugged. He climbed back up onto the seat and took off the lantern, carrying it inside the carriage where he hung it on a hook and dimmed the light. He gave her what she thought might be intended as a smile but really was a grimace. He was shaking with cold. Still, he held the chaise door open for her, and held out his hand to help her in. She ignored it and climbed in again, picking up blankets from the floor as Braemoor and Kevin stepped in, water dripping from them in great puddles.

Braemoor had no business on the drivers’ bench so soon after surviving such a grievous wound. Stubborn mule of a man! Why did men always believe they were invincible and leave it to the women to clean up after them?

Kevin was also concerned. His gaze met Janet’s as they covered the marquis with the spare blankets as well as the one she’d used. The lad’s concern was obvious.

Braemoor tried to protest but neither paid any attention to him.

Annabella stirred because of all the movement and she tried to crawl over to Braemoor’s lap. Janet started to stop her but Braemoor shook his head and held out his arms. The little girl snuggled into his lap.

Human warmth was the best thing for him, Janet knew, and yet she was surprised at Annabella’s boldness. Her youngest daughter had been warming up to Braemoor ever since her dog wet on him, but this was the first time she had made a physical overture. She was even more startled by the look in Braemoor’s eyes. They were red-rimmed from exhaustion, but those dark, usually unfathomable eyes looked both grateful and inexpressively tender even as his body continued to shiver.

His shivering gradually eased. She wished she had something warm to give him to drink but their only food and drink was strapped atop the coach. Thank God it was protected by oilskin covers, but there was no possibility of heating anything.

She leaned over and pulled one of the blankets closer around him. Her fingers touched his arm, and they were ice cold.

Janet wanted to rail at him—far more out of concern for him than for themselves—but then, none of them would have been able to predict how heavy and steady this rain would be. Still, they could have waited.

He had wanted her away from Lochaene. That much was clear. She still was not sure of his reasoning. Had it been for her sake or his? But now it did not matter. For these minutes or these hours, he needed warmth. Would it ever be thus? Whenever she thought she could dismiss her feelings for him, something reached down and battered her heart.

Was that love? Did it truly never die? Even if it was not returned?

And how did one love a man she believed dishonorable? Who had proved himself dishonorable?

Looking at him now, her heart contracted. His hair was plastered to his head, his face was red, his mouth a grim slash of pain. She saw him wince as he shifted his legs, and she knew the price he must have paid in working the brake. Annabella’s weight must be agonizing. And yet his hands were firmly around her, and when Janet reached to take her daughter, he shook his head.

She sat back. Apparently, Annabella gave him more pleasure than discomfort.

His eyes closed for several moments as Annabella snuggled closer to him. Kevin looked immensely uncomfortable, squeezed tightly between the marquis and Lucy who obviously adored him. Grace had moved to sit between Janet and Clara, who held Colin, while Janet held Rachel. Samson was trying to find a place between feet.

Rain pounded down at the chaise. It was late afternoon, and it was going to be a long afternoon and longer night. A chill had seeped into the carriage and small legs—and large ones—would soon become cramped.

Worse of all was the enforced intimacy. She had welcomed Braemoor’s decision this morning to ride his horse rather than ride inside the chaise. But now their legs touched, their bodies were inches apart and when he had taken Annabella in his arms her heart had started to pound erratically.

She tried to turn her thoughts away from his dominating presence in the chaise. There were problems other than stiff legs and a lack of privacy ... and the problem of Braemoor himself. He had been far too weak to make this journey at all, much less tolerate the rain and cold winds.