Joan Wolf Page 10

  “He did.”

  “Your mother won’t like it,” she said positively. “No one will like it, Ian. Mac Caileinmhor!”

  He gave a twisted smile. “You might as well be saying ‘Satan’ from your tone.”

  “I might as well,” she agreed. “That is how the Campbells are regarded in Lochaber.”

  He rolled over on his back, put his hands behind his head, and narrowed his eyes against the sky. “I learned one thing in Venezuela, Frances,” he said in a quiet voice. “And that is if a nation cannot unite to fight a common enemy, it is doomed. The Highlands are besieged. Argyll is one of the great Highland leaders and you tell me he is resisting the land clearances. I want to resist the land clearances. It makes sense that we work together. The past is over with; it is the present that matters now. And the future.” He paused then said neutrally, “Can you understand that, Frances?”

  “Yes,” she replied slowly. “Yes, I can. But what about the rest of the clan? What will they think? It might be the best thing for the Highlands, as you say, but it won’t necessarily be the best thing for you, Ian.”

  He looked amused. “Jesus, sweetheart, when have you ever known me to do the thing that ‘was best for me?” His eyes closed. “But I wanted you to understand,” he said sleepily. “The rest of them will come around eventually.”

  He went to sleep and she finished packing the basket, then sat beside him looking down at his quiet face. He had been restless last night, waking her with his tossing. He had been muttering something in Spanish that she had not been able to understand. But he was sleeping peacefully now, and she sat thankfully, listening to the gentle lapping of the loch against the shore, her eyes on his unguarded, tranquil face. They were leaving Loch Shiel for Lochaber in two days’ time and Frances realized suddenly that she did not want to go. Even Nell seemed so far removed from her now. She was too filled with Ian.

  For five years she had submerged her feelings for him and now they raged like a mountain burn in springtime. She reached out and gently touched the shock of thick black hair that had fallen over his forehead. She loved him. More—she adored him. She always had. She always would. She was pleased that he wanted her to understand about his approaching the Campbells, but he needn’t have worried. She would have agreed to anything he proposed. The only time she had ever held out against him was over the matter of his joining the army. She had been wrong, she thought now, sitting on the quiet shore of Loch Shiel. Douglas had been right when he told her that she was trying to smash the very qualities in Ian that she loved.

  Robert Sedburgh had been the kind of husband she had wanted Ian to be. She had come to care for Rob, but she had not grown dizzy and wild whenever he came near her. He was not like Ian. No one was like Ian.

  His lashes lifted and she found herself looking into the dark depths of his eyes. “Did you have a nice sleep?” she asked.

  “Mmm.” He held out a hand to her. “Lie down with me.”

  She read correctly the look in his eyes and glanced around her nervously.

  “There’s no one here,” he said in his deep, slow voice.

  “What if someone should come by,” she protested, but she let him draw her down beside him. The grass was warm under her back. She felt his hands on the buttons of her dress, then his lips found her warm flesh. She quivered and he looked up. Her eyes were green as the grass she was lying on. Through the haze of passion she heard his voice. “You are so sweet, Frances. So sweet ...”

  * * * *

  The day they were to return to Castle Hunter, Ian woke early. They had not drawn the curtains last night, and the sun poured in the window, spilling over Frances’s ash gold hair on the pillow beside him. He turned and regarded her slender back. He kissed her ear and she burrowed deeper into the pillow. “Wake up,” he said inexorably. “We have to make an early start.”

  She made noises of protest then, when his hand pulled the warm cover off her shoulder, she yelped in indignation. “Wake up,” he said again.

  Reluctantly she rolled over and stared at him reproachfully. “I wouldn’t be so tired in the morning if you’d let me sleep at night.”

  Ian laughed softly, low in his throat, stretched himself and yawned. “You never complain at night,” he said.

  She cast her eyes down meekly. “That’s because I’m a dutiful wife.”

  His dark eyes were full of laughter. “I can think of many adjectives to describe you, mo chridhe,” he said, “and none of them is ‘dutiful.’”

  “What adjectives would you use?” she asked sweetly.

  “Stubborn,” he replied. “Obstinate, self-willed, immovable ...”

  “Stop!” Her eyes rested on him inscrutably. “You’re not very flattering.”

  He stretched and yawned again, shoulder muscles bunching lazily with the slow movement of his arms. “I never flatter you,” he said.

  “No. You don’t.”

  He turned at the tone of her voice. There was a warm half-sleepy remoteness in her beauty that caused him to lean toward her. Her eyes glinted. “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “I am.” He bent and kissed her with a casual possessiveness that deepened in intensity as she responded. He raised his head and a very faint smile lifted her lips as she gazed limpidly back.

  He looked amused. “You are a devil,” he said softly.

  Her eyes widened. “Well, are we making an early start?” she asked innocently.

  “Castle Hunter can wait,” he murmured. “I just thought of something I have to do first.”

  * * * *

  Ian’s mother and sister were not as amenable as Frances to his decision to seek help from the Duke of Argyll. “You cannot mean it!” Margaret exclaimed when he mentioned at dinner he was going to Inverary.

  “I do,” he replied imperturbably as he cut his meat.

  His mother put down her wine glass and stared at him with compressed lips. “Have you forgotten what the Campbells have done to this nation, to this family? You have been away for too long, my son, if you talk of making common cause with Mac Caileinmhor. It was the Campbells who rose up and massacred our innocent people in 1692. It was the Campbells who fought with the German king against Prince Charles in 1745. It was the Campbells who grew rich as the loyal chiefs were stripped of their lands and their power after Culloden. They are the enemy, Ian. I would rather starve than take a bite of food from the hands of a Campbell.”

  Ian had listened to his mother attentively and now he put down his fork and looked at her for a moment in silence. She was dressed in a fashionable evening gown. Her hair was arranged simply but in excellent taste. She looked like the essence of civilization as she sat at the polished table in the beautifully paneled room. But she was a Highlander, Cameron by birth and Macdonald by marriage. She had tribal loyalties never dreamed of by the polished sophisticates of the south.

  Well, he had them too. It was not going to be easy to go, hat in hand, to his hereditary enemy. But what he had seen in Venezuela had made a profound impression on Ian Macdonald. “I need money, Mother,” he said finally. “I have an idea that might help put Lochaber back on its feet again, economically. But to put it into practice will require more money than I can lay my hands on.”

  “You are going to ask Mac Caileinmhor if you can borrow money from him?” Margaret sounded incredulous.

  “I want to borrow money from a bank,” he replied patiently. “But I am an unknown factor. If the Duke of Argyll gives me a reference, I will have a much better chance of getting the money I need.”

  “The last time the Macdonalds went to Inverary it was in the army of the great Marquis of Montrose. Your great-great-grandfather,” Lady Lochaber said as she turned to Frances. “They went to bring fire and sword to the Campbells in their own land, and they chased Mac Caileinmhor out of his own castle.” She paused. “What do you think of this, Frances?”

  Frances’s face maintained its expression of unruffled serenity. “I think Ian is right, Godmama. The Campbells
have used us for long enough. Now it is time for us to use them.”

  Lady Lochaber looked thoughtful and Ian shot his wife a glance of amused respect. Trust Frances to find the right way of putting it. Wisely he said no more, and after a minute Lady Lochaber changed the subject. He left a week later for Inverary.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Argyll has raised a hunder men,

  An hunder hamess’d rarely,

  And he’s awa’ by the back of Dunkell

  To plunder the castle of Airlie.

  —ANONYMOUS

  The week before he left for Campbell country, Ian devoted to trying to win over Nell. It was uphill work but he persevered with a patience that Frances had not known he possessed.

  Nell was not happy about her mother’s marriage. Frances had known it would be a difficult time for her, but she hadn’t realized the extent to which Nell would be upset. It had begun as soon as Frances broke the news to her. “My Papa is dead,” Nell had said stubbornly. “I don’t want another Papa.” And nothing Frances could say would soften her.

  The news that they would be leaving Charlotte Square to go live at Castle Hunter, was, if anything, even more traumatic. Nell began to cling to Frances in the way she had after Robert Sedburgh’s death. She didn’t want to leave the house. She followed her grandfather about like a determined shadow and she showed a face of implacable hostility to Ian.

  “I don’t want you to marry my mother!” she shouted at him the afternoon before he left for Lochaber. “You aren’t my Papa!”

  The bleak look that had settled over Ian’s face pulled at Frances’s heart. She had taken Nell upstairs and then returned to find him in front of the mantel staring down into the empty grate. He looked relaxed but his white knuckles on the mantelpiece gave him away. “You are going to have to be patient with Nell, Ian,” she said, looking anxiously at his bent head. “She has had some very hard things to cope with for such a little girl. This isn’t easy for her.”

  “So I see.” His voice was level.

  “She adored Rob, you see,” she went on, conscious that she was inflicting hurt but aware of the necessity for it. “She was only two when he died but she was old enough to miss him and to grieve for him. We stayed at Aysgarth, which helped. Rob’s parents love her and have always paid a lot of attention to her, which helped also. Then we came back home to Edinburgh and she was uprooted and upset again.”

  He had turned to look at her. “Why did you leave Aysgarth, Frances?”

  She shrugged a little. “There was no place for me there with Rob gone. And a good excuse for going presented itself.”

  “What was that?”

  “Rob’s brother.”

  His eyes narrowed a little, with irony. “Did he want to marry you too?”

  “I didn’t stay long enough to find out,” she replied composedly.

  “I see. And so Nell was devastated to leave the Sedburghs.” He sounded cool enough but Frances caught the sudden unguarded flicker of his eyelids. She spoke quickly, wanting to get it over with.”

  “It was not easy, of course. But she soon settled in here. And she had my father.” She made a helpless gesture. “You know how he was with me, Ian. How he still is. Well, it is the same with Nell. He thinks she is perfect. He spoils her shamefully. She adores him.”

  “ ‘Poppy,’ in fact, has taken the place of Papa,’” Ian said.

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence and then Ian asked, “What do you advise me to do, Frances? I do not relish the thought of my daughter hating me.”

  She winced slightly at what she heard in his voice. “She will come around, Ian. She is, basically, thank God, a very adaptable child. You must have patience, though.”

  And patience he certainly had, Frances thought as she watched him with Nell all during the week between their return from Loch Shiel and his departure for Inverary. Sir Donal had left for Edinburgh two days before Frances and Ian returned to Castle Hunter, so Nell had been left in the care of Ian’s mother and sister. They both wore themselves out trying to entertain her, but when Frances came into the upstairs drawing room, Nell had flung herself into her mother’s arms like an abandoned child.

  She stuck to Frances like a leech for the next few days, but since Frances spent most of her time with Ian, the two were thrown together. He put aside all the affairs that were clamoring to be attended to and devoted himself to wooing his daughter. Together, he and Frances showed her all the haunts of their own mutual childhood and made her laugh with the stories of their adventures. Ian built a dam with her in a Highland stream, both of them getting extremely wet in the process. He let her help him row a boat. He taught her how to skip stones and how to climb a tree. Frances watched with a smile in her eyes as he won over their daughter the same way he had won her years ago.

  The reward for all his trouble came the day before he left. He came into the sitting room that adjoined Frances’s bedroom where she was sorting through a box of books. Nell was with her, fidgeting around the window, looking out at the mountains shimmering in the clear sun.

  “I’m going fishing,” he announced. “Do you care to come with me, Frances?”

  She looked from him to Nell and then shook her head. “No, I want to finish unpacking these books. Then I promised to go over the house with your mother.’’

  “Very well.” He took a step toward the door and then turned to Nell. “Would you like to come fishing with me, Nell?”

  “I’ve never been fishing,” the little girl answered cautiously.

  “I’ll teach you,” he responded promptly. “I taught your mother when she was a little girl. I always thought she was the only girl I’d ever go fishing with because she knows how to keep quiet.” He frowned suddenly. “Do you think you could be quiet?” he asked anxiously.

  Nell looked scornful. “Of course.”

  “That’s all right then. Do you want to come?”

  The child hesitated, looking at her mother for guidance. But Frances’s face was expressionless. “It is up to you, Nell,” she said. “You may go or stay, just as you please.”

  Nell wavered, obviously reluctant to leave the safety of Frances’s side. But the promise of fishing and the blazing life in Ian’s eyes were too strong a lure. “I think I’ll go fishing,” she said.

  “Fine,” replied Frances, careful to keep the relief from her voice. “Be sure you’re back in time for dinner.”

  “Maybe I’ll catch a fish for you to eat, Mama,” said Nell excitedly.

  “That would be fun, my love. There is nothing as good as fish from a Highland loch.”

  “I know,” Nell said importantly, and Ian laughed.

  “Get a jacket, Nell,” he advised. “It can get chilly out on the water.”

  “All right. Wait for me, I’ll be right back!” She darted out of the room and they could hear her running down the hall. They barely had a chance to exchange a glance of mutual congratulation before she was back with her jacket. Frances watched from the window as they left the castle together, and tears stung her eyes. Then, laughing at her own emotion, she returned to unpacking her books.

  Ian rode by himself when he left for Inverary the next morning. His mother had wanted him to take a tail of gillies with him to demonstrate his importance, but he had refused. “I don’t want any incidents, mother, and Lochaber Macdonalds do not mix well with the members of Clan Diarmed.” This was indisputably true and so it was a solitary horseman who left Castle Hunter on that fine September morning.

  He rode through Glen Etive to the ferry on the northern shore of the beautiful loch of the same name where he was rowed across the quiet, blue water. He stopped at the hostelry on the other side for something to eat, then proceeded on his way toward Argyll through the Pass of Brander. Mighty Ben Cruachan towered above him on one side, and on the other was the deep black water of the Awe as it streamed toward Loch Etive. He stopped at the inn in Dalmally for a meal and then turned his horse south, toward Loch Fyne, the long sea l
och at whose head stood Inverary Castle, ancient seat of Mac Caileinmhor, the Duke of Argyll, chief of the Campbells, the hated Clan Diarmed, the blood enemies of the Macdonalds of Lochaber.

  * * * *

  The Duke was not in residence and Ian was received by his nephew, James Campbell of Ardkinglas. The Ardkinglas Campbells were from Loch Goil, a few miles to the east of Inverary and Loch Fyne. James Campbell had a fine estate of his own, but in his uncle’s absence he came periodically to Inverary to consult with the Duke’s factor and to send word to his uncle. It was morning, as Ian had spent the night at the inn in town. He had come to ask for Campbell help, but he did not want to be put in the position of having to ask for Campbell hospitality.

  James Campbell was the same age as Ian and had been up at Cambridge with him, although at a different college. He had been profoundly surprised when the major-domo had announced the Earl of Lochaber. The Macdonalds of Lochaber had been for centuries the chief rivals and enemies of his clan. They were Catholic and Jacobite while the Campbells were Protestant and Hanoverian. They could never rival the Campbells in wealth but their prestige among the Scottish nobility was enormous. People listened to the Campbells out of fear. They listened to the Macdonalds out of affection and pride. ‘Loyal as Lochaber’ was a saying heard not infrequently on the streets of Edinburgh. So it was an occasion of some magnitude that the Earl of Lochaber should present himself at Inverary Castle.

  James Campbell told the major-domo to bring the Earl to him in the library and then stood looking at the door, a faint frown between his brows. He was, in fact, a little in awe of Ian Macdonald and was trying to conceal it as best he could.

  To the older nobility of England and Scotland, Ian was an unknown quantity. To his peers who had been at school with him, he was a legend. At Eton he had been the best fighter in the school. Even in his first year the older boys had left him alone. And he had been unequalled in sports. By the time he graduated he had been the acknowledged king of the school. It had been the same at Cambridge.