CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 10

Spring had come to the Highlands as well. Frances MacIan sniffed the air with pleasure as she bent over a bed of daffodils in the walled garden Alasdair had built for her some years ago. She finished her gardening and walked slowly back to the house, gazing around her with intense appreciation for the sun-bathed landscape of mountain and loch. All of the hardships of her life in the highlands had always been mitigated by this great natural beauty among which she lived.

She came into her own small sitting room, stripping off her gloves and throwing them down on a table. It was a moment before her eye spotted the letter on her writing desk. Frances recognized the signature of the Earl of Linton on the frank and smiled with pleasure. Van had been rather dilatory about writing recently. Frances took the letter over to the window and opened it.

She read it through completely three times. Then she folded it and stared blindly out at the mountains that loomed so closely behind the castle.

Van and the Earl of Linton. Frances couldn't believe it. The thought, of course, had crossed her mind once or twice, idly, speculatively, but she had never considered it at all seriously.

Good God, Frances thought distractedly, what was Alasdair going to say?

She looked down at the letter once more. "I know you will all find it difficult to believe," Van had written. "But I love him, Mother. I love him—and where he is, that is where I want to be also. You, I think, will understand that."

Frances let out her breath and began to pace the room, her brow furrowed. If Van felt like that, then she must marry Linton. In fact, Frances thought ruefully, were it not for Alasdair, she would be delighted by such news. Van was far more suited to be the Countess of Linton than she was to be Lady MacDonald of Lochaber. Of course, Alasdair would never see that.

Alasdair. It all came back to Alasdair. He would be furious at this news. Furious at Van and furious at her. Frances shivered. In all their married life she had never had anything from Alasdair but tenderness and love. How could she possibly oppose him on this matter of Van's marriage?

She would have to. She knew, unerringly, that his instinct would be to demand Van's immediate return home. Her daughter was counting on her for help. Van's letter had made that clear.

Van had said that Linton had written to Alasdair. God in heaven, Frances thought with cold horror, what if Alasdair also found out that Linton was a Whig? Van had to know, although she had never written a word on the subject. Everyone in Britain knew of the Romneys, Frances thought a little wildly, everyone except the chiefs of the Western Highlands, to whom the English nobility were as alien as Turks.

Alasdair had gone to Achnacarry a few days ago on one of his endless conferences about the mythical French invasion they were all so anxiously awaiting. Of course, there would be no French invasion. Frances knew that and it seemed as if reality was finally penetrating into the glens of the Highlands as well. The King of France was not interested in restoring the Stuarts to the throne of Britain.

Her husband would be home tomorrow. All her married life, Frances had looked forward eagerly to his returns; it was an odd and frightening feeling to find herself dreading seeing him again.

He arrived the following evening. At this time of year the light reversed itself and instead of the endless nights of winter there were apparently endless days. It was perfectly bright when the Earl of Morar arrived home at nine o'clock on a chill June evening. He sought his wife out immediately.

"How are you, m'eudail?" he asked, bending to kiss her mouth.

"Very well," she replied. They were alone. Niall was visiting in Lochaber for the week.

Alasdair began to unfasten the shoulder brooch of his plaid. "It's good to be home," he said, his gray eyes devouring her with a sort of hunger—hunger for peace, for respite. "I'm so weary of listening to promises." He tossed his plaid on a chair and sat down in his favorite chair. His dark head, so distinctive and arresting, was outlined against its high back.

"The French are not coming," he said, an expression of brooding bitterness on his face. "Say what the prince will, there will be no French landing in Scotland."

"Oh, darling," Frances said out of an aching throat. His whole life had been dedicated to this cause. She herself was only glad to see it ended, but her heart was torn for him. And now, on top of this, to give him the news about Van!

Perhaps she should wait. Let him relax, take her to bed, then tomorrow... She looked at his face and knew she could not do that. He would be angry enough, but if she withheld the news from him it would be worse.

"Alasdair," she said steadily, "a letter came for you yesterday. From the Earl of Linton. I think you should read it." She got up and went over to the mantelpiece where she had propped it. She put it into his outstretched hand.

There was a very long silence. Finally he looked up. "Do you know what this contains?" he demanded. His black brows were drawn almost together.

"Yes. I had a letter from Van."

His mouth was thin and hard. "Let me see it."

"It's in my desk," she replied. "I'll go and get it."

He was rereading Linton's letter when she came back into the drawing room. He stretched out an imperative hand, his eyes still on the sheet in front of him. Frances gave him his daughter's letter and sat down once again. She stared blindly at the fire.

He cursed in Gaelic, long and fluently. Then he looked at his wife. "This is what has come of sending her to England," he said harshly. "I should never have let you talk me into it."

Frances swallowed. "It isn't so very terrible, darling," she began, but he cut her off.

"Not so very terrible! My daughter and a Sassenach!" His eyes narrowed. "I hope you do not expect me to allow this... this mesalliance, Frances? Van is to come home immediately."

Frances forced herself to sustain that hard gaze. "Why, Alasdair? You read her letter. She loves him."

"She thinks she loves him, you mean." He threw the letter down contemptuously on the table beside him. "We sent her away with no one of her own to be a companion to her, to advise her. She was lonely, of course. And this Linton took advantage of the situation." His voice was as hard and as cold as his face. "I'm disappointed in Van," he said, "but I blame myself more than I blame her. I knew I should not have sent her."

"No," Frances disagreed strongly, "we were right to send her, Alasdair. She was not lonely. She's had a wonderful time. Her letters have been full of all her activities: parties, dances, music lessons, concerts, opera."

He made a curt gesture of dismissal. "She would never tell you she was lonely. She knew how much you wanted her to go. Van loves you too much to want to disappoint you." He got to his feet, his movements at age fifty as lithe and quick as those of a man twenty years younger. "She will come home," he repeated. "I will communicate that to Linton and to her in no uncertain terms."

"No." Frances spoke very quietly, but the effect of her words was instantaneous. He swung around to stare at her. Her blue eyes were deadly serious. "Van is my daughter too, Alasdair, and I say she should marry Edward Romney. She loves him."

There was a flicker of surprise in his gray eyes. Never, in all the years of their marriage, had she seriously opposed him. "I know what it means, Alasdair, to fall in love with a man one's parents disapprove of. I know what it means to face the heartbreak of giving him up, the anguish of defying one's father." She took a step closer to him. "Don't you remember, darling?" Her voice quivered for the first time. "After all, you married a Sassenach."

There was a white line around his mouth. "That was not the same thing."

"Not for you. I was the one who had to come to your world. Well, your daughter is a woman and she too will have to go to the world of her husband."

"She will marry Alan MacDonald and stay in the Highlands."

"The same way my father wanted me to marry Charles Trusdale and stay in England?"

Alasdair's black brows were straight above his shadowed eyes and his lips pressed together before he answered at last, "There can be no comparison between you and me and Van and the Earl of Linton."

"Why not?" Frances pressed him relentlessly. "She is our daughter, Alasdair. God knows, she should be capable of loving a man!"

He turned on his heel and left the room.

Frances stayed up for a long time, until the fire had nearly burned to ash, before she finally went upstairs to their room. Alasdair was in bed asleep. Frances had earlier sent all the servants to bed, so she undressed alone in the chill evening air and, leaving her hair unbrushed, climbed into bed beside Alasdair. She was cold and normally she would have curled up next to his warm back for comfort and warmth, but tonight she could not do that. She had put a wedge between them as effectively as if she had in fact built a physical wall.

She had won her point. She had known that the minute he left the room. He had not had an answer for her. He would not dash off a letter tomorrow demanding Van's instant return.

She had won. Would he ever forgive her?

Alasdair said nothing to her the following day about Van, nor the day after that either. Frances too held her tongue. He had not written to Linton one way or the other; she must be content with that for the moment.

He had understood her point of comparison. He didn't like it, but she had forced him to see it and, because he was so essentially a just man, he could not ignore it. The Earl of Linton wanted to steal his daughter in much the same way he had stolen his own wife more than twenty years ago. The way he looked at Frances made her think, very bleakly, that at the moment Alasdair was regretting his choice.

Niall came home and was told the news. He sought out Frances in her sitting room after his interview with Alasdair in the study.

"Mother," he demanded imperatively as he came in the door. "What is all this Father has been telling me about Van and that Sassenach Linton? Surely she can't seriously wish to marry him?"

"Yes, Niall," Frances replied calmly, "I'm afraid she does."

"But what has gotten into her?" Niall sounded more bewildered than angry. "This Linton has nothing to do with us. He is a Sassenach. A Whig. An enemy."

Frances felt a thrill of fear. "What do you know about Linton's politics?"

"I know they are all Whigs down there in England," he returned fiercely. "You saw Van's letters to Father. They will none of them stir a finger to restore their rightful king to his throne. I wouldn't soil my hands by taking a sip of water from any of them—no, not if I were dying of thirst! And for Van to wish to marry one! Van!"

Frances had known this was going to be difficult. Niall and Van were much closer than the ordinary brother and sister. They had spent the greatest part of their childhood with only each other for companionship. They had shared the same tutor. They had never been separated until Niall went to Paris at the age of eighteen. Frances looked at her son and said gently, "What does the heart understand of politics, Niall? She loves him."

"She can't."

"I think Van is the best judge of that."

"What of Alan?" he demanded furiously. "I thought she and Alan would marry. He loves her."

"Well, Van does not love him."

Niall stared at his mother. His face, for once, had lost all of its youthful exuberance. He looked uncannily like his father. "You can't let her do this. She will listen to you, Mother. Write and tell her to come home. I will go and fetch her myself."

Frances' heart ached for him, but she shook her head. "No, Niall. I will not tell her to come home. If she loves the Earl of Linton, and I believe she does, then she should marry him."

"If she does," Niall said, his mouth thin and straight-lipped, "then she is no longer my sister." And he flung himself out of the room.

The following week was the worst time Frances had ever lived through. Worse, even, than that horrible year when she had set her will against her father to win her love. Well, she had won him. She had trampled her parents' love and concern into the dust under her feet and she had prevailed. She supposed she couldn't complain that after twenty-four years of happiness she was being called on to pay the piper.

She had no doubt that Alasdair and Niall were wrong and she was right. Men, when it came to hearts other than their own, were so blind. Niall was worse than Alasdair. Alasdair, at least, had some understanding of why she was acting as she was.

He said to her one evening as they were seated in front of the drawing-room fire, "I will write to Linton and give him my permission, if that is what you wish." His gray eyes on her were hard and accusing. "I will not write to Van. Since she has chosen to cut herself off from Morar, so be it."

His look was like a blow at her heart. "Just because she has chosen another way of life doesn't mean she has cut her ties with us, Alasdair. The place you grew up in, the people you spent your childhood with, they are always home to you. No matter where Van goes, Morar will be home. And she will never forget you and me, or these mountains and lochs and skies and seas. We are all a part of her, forever."

"Has Morar ever been home to you, Frances?" There was no softness about his mouth. "You went away from your childhood place as surely as Van will."

Her fair skin was faintly flushed by the heat from the fire, her neck and shoulders lovely in the low-cut bodice of her evening dress. Her blue eyes on his were large and filled with longing. "You are home to me," she said softly.

His eyes fell away from her gaze. He stood up. "I have some work to do in the study," he said. And left.

She had a nightmare that night, a terrible, frightening nightmare. She dreamed that Alasdair had died. She woke to the sound of his voice.

"Frances. Frances. Wake up. You're dreaming. It's all right. You're safe. Wake up."

Her eyes opened and he was there, his worried face bending over hers. She could see him clearly in the slanting moonlight coming in through the open window.

"Oh, Alasdair!" She threw her arms around his neck and held him convulsively. She was trembling all over.

"What were you dreaming, heart of my heart, to frighten you so?" His voice was soft and gentle, a voice she had not heard in weeks. "Shh, now. Shh." This as she began to weep. "It's all right." His hand gently stroked her long brown hair away from her forehead. "You're safe."

"I dreamed I lost you." Her voice was muffled against his chest.

"Frances."

There was a new note in his voice now and she looked up. "Frances," he said again, and then he kissed her.

The relief that flooded through her at the touch of his mouth was overwhelming. It was all right. It was over. He was hers again. Her lips opened under the urgent pressure of his and her hands moved up and down his lean, muscled back. It had been unendurable, to be shut out from him like that. His body was coming over hers and she welcomed him with utter joy.