The Gathering Storm (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 3)

by Julia Brannan

  “Ye could hae taken him then, Angus, his right side was unprotected!” Alex said, shaking his head. Angus acknowledged the truth of this with a rueful smile, not taking his eyes off his opponent, and shook his head. Droplets of sweat flew in all directions.

  “What happened?” Beth said after a minute.

  “What? Oh, well, we took it in turns to use the claymore, swinging it about like mad things while the other one leapt away or used his dirk to parry. Christ, we were stupid, were we no’? It’s a miracle one of us wasna killed.” Duncan smiled at his brother, remembering.

  “So you hit him with your father’s claymore?” Beth asked.

  “No,” Alex cut in. “He did it wi’ his dirk. We’d both had them as presents a few weeks before, and we were awfu’ proud. We kept them razor-sharp. Well, a claymore’s a mighty heavy weapon, around fifteen pounds or so, but da used to wield it as though it was a feather. After a wee while of swinging it around and running at him, I got tired, so I planted the sword in the ground for a wee rest.”

  “Just as I went for him wi’ my dirk. He couldna get his arm up in time, and I laid his hand open to the bone,” Duncan said. “I thought I’d cut it off at first, there was that much blood.”

  “Aye, and while I was bleeding to death on the grass, all he could think of was that Da’d kill him when he found out what we’d been up to!” Alex laughed.

  “I did tear up my best shirt to bind it up with!” Duncan protested. “Ma never forgave me for that. And I’ve still got the scars from the flogging I got, too.”

  Alex looked at him sceptically.

  “Scars of the mind,” Duncan said firmly.

  “We both got those,” Alex said. “Da flogged Duncan that evening. I thought I’d get away wi’ it, being injured an’ all, but he just waited till my hand was healed before he beat me. That was worse. Not only did I get a beating, but I got to look forward to it for a week as well. And that wasna the end of it, either.”

  Duncan creased his brow in puzzlement.

  “I dinna remember anything else from it,” he said.

  “Aye, well, ye werena there when the scar got me a broken nose, were ye?” Alex said, looking at Beth, who coloured violently.

  “You asked for it,” she said. “You should have told me who you were before you married me.”

  “I didna get the chance, wi’ Isabella and co fluttering around morning, noon and night. And anyway, I needed to have the legal power as your husband to lock ye away if ye’d taken exception to marrying a Jacobite traitor.”

  “Would you really have done that?” she asked.

  “I dinna ken. Aye, probably. For a while. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. You’re here, and you’re happy, are ye no’?”

  “I suppose so,” she said, with intentional insincerity. She was happy. In fact she could not remember when she’d been happier. She thought she’d like nothing better than to live like this for the rest of her life, looking after Alex and his brothers, enjoying the affectionate bickering, sitting round the fire at night drinking whisky and telling stories, before returning to her own home to make love to her strong, gentle husband. Of course life was not always peaceful like this, she was continually being told. Hence the ‘playfighting’ between the two sweating protagonists in front of her, which now appeared to have turned into a wrestling contest, their weapons having been abandoned on the grass. Dougal had just managed to trap Angus’s arm over his shoulder, and was in a perfect position to break it, although he obviously had no intention of following through and doing so, to Beth’s relief.

  Duncan leaned over and picked up the skin of ale from the shadow at the side of the rock.

  “This is where Angus should really kick Dougal in the balls,” he explained to Beth, taking a deep pull from the flask before passing it to her.

  Both combatants heard the advice, and Angus shifted position slightly.

  “You try it, ye wee gomerel, and it’s your neck I’ll break, no’ your arm,” Dougal growled.

  The two brothers on the rock groaned in unison, half a second before Angus did just what he’d been warned not to do, as they’d known he would. Dougal let go of his adversary, twisting his lower body to deflect the blow, which caught him on the thigh. Then he leapt at Angus, gripping him round the waist and driving him backwards to the edge of the grassy clearing. The two men teetered on the edge of the slope for a moment, then lost their balance and fell over the side, rolling off down the hill in a flurry of oaths, green and brown plaid and bare buttocks, before disappearing out of sight.

  Beth let out a cry of alarm, and dropping the flask, made to run after them. Alex deftly caught the flask with one hand and Beth’s arm with the other, pulling her back down onto the stone.

  “Leave him,” he said. “He’ll be all right. He’ll no’ appreciate a nursemaid.” He lay back on the stone, keeping a hold of his wife’s arm. Duncan followed suit.

  She looked from one brother to the other, both of them wearing unconcerned expressions.

  “It’s a long way to the bottom of the hill,” she pointed out. The way they’d fallen, there was also a sheer drop half way down onto jagged rocks fifty feet below. Why weren’t they worried? Hadn’t they remembered? Angus and Dougal would be killed, or at least badly injured. She tried to get to her feet again, but Duncan caught her other arm and she was trapped between them.

  “They’ll no’ get as far as the cliff edge,” he said, showing that he had remembered. “They’ll stop in a minute, ye’ll hear them.”

  “How can you possibly know…?” she began.

  Her sentence was cut off by an agonised shriek from the side of the hill, followed by a torrent of cursing in Gaelic that proved Duncan right. Whatever had happened, Angus and Dougal were definitely not dead, nor, by the strength of their voices, about to be.

  “Gorse,” explained Alex, closing his eyes. “A wee bit prickly,” he added with spectacular understatement.

  “Aye, they’ll think twice before they launch themselves off the hill again,” Duncan observed.

  Unable to do anything else, Beth lay back between the two men.

  “Aren’t you being a bit heartless?” she said, smiling now. The torrent of swearing had now diminished into irritated bickering as the two men presumably tried to extricate themselves from the spikes. A peal of youthful laughter drifted upwards on the warm air, by which Beth surmised that Angus had been successful in freeing himself, at least, and that Dougal had not.

  “We’re being practical,” Alex said drowsily. “It’s essential to know the terrain of any battlefield. Choosing the place that makes the most of your army’s particular skills is one of the most important jobs of any general. If he gets that wrong, you’re fuc…ah…lost. And when he’s chosen the site any soldier worth his salt will go out and familiarise himself with it before the battle, if he’s the time to. Many a battle’s won or lost by the terrain rather than the army. Next time they two’ll think about the ground as well as the enemy.”

  “Mmm,” murmured Duncan blissfully. “What a rare day. Let’s hope it keeps like this for the wedding party.”

  Silence reigned for a while. Alex’s arm slid under Beth’s neck, pulling her head into his shoulder. She closed her eyes. Time passed. Alex’s hand roamed warmly up her leg under her skirt and she started, looking round. Duncan had gone. They were alone. Alex was propped up on one elbow, looking down at her, his eyes dark and smiling. He cupped one firm buttock and put his other arm round her shoulders, moving her smoothly off the stone onto the soft grass, bunching her skirts up round her thighs as he did so. As was normal, he wore nothing under his kilted plaid; there was no clumsy fumbling at breeches to interrupt the smoothness of his action as he sheathed himself in her in one fluid movement. She gasped softly.

  “What if…?” she began.

  “Wheesht,” he murmured. “There’s no one here. And even if there was, it’s natural.”

  He began to move, subtly, tantalisingly, driving all worries about bein
g disturbed from her mind. So successful was he that she did not notice when Angus and Dougal finally reappeared at the top of the hill, saw what was happening, retrieved their weapons silently and wandered off, smiling.

  It was natural. That was something else she had to get used to. In such a close-knit community, privacy was virtually unheard of. People wandered in and out of each other’s houses without knocking or being introduced by footmen. Whole families slept in one room, and no one turned a hair if two of the occupants of the room decided to become intimate under their blanket. Or slid off into the shadows of the communal fire at night. Providing they were married to each other, of course.

  In a similar fashion, ideas of decency in dress could not be further removed from that of London society. Beth smiled as she remembered Isabella’s shock at seeing the servant Abernathy bare-legged and minus his waistcoat.

  What they would make of the sight of women wading in the river, skirts kilted up past their knees, or the not infrequent glimpse of a pair of male buttocks or genitals as the wind gusted or his plaid became disarranged, Beth could not imagine. Nobody thought anything of it. Regardless of their semi-nudity, everyone behaved with absolute decorum. Her mother had been right. All Highlanders considered themselves to be gentlemen or ladies, and their state of dress or undress did not detract from the natural dignity with which they carried themselves and which was the birthright of every clansman or woman.

  Fine clothes do not a gentleman make. Who had said that? Ah, yes, Lord Winter, Beth remembered, at Versailles, referring to Louis XIV. It was true, although Sir Anthony would dispute it vehemently. Alex, standing now in front of the fire clad only in a thin shirt which left little to the imagination, would not.

  She had almost forgotten Sir Anthony and the life she had to return to in a few weeks. Gloom suffused her, and she instead forced herself to concentrate on the task she was supposed to be giving her full attention to. She leaned forward and carefully extricated a vicious-looking thorn from her brother-in-law’s backside.

  He craned his head back over his shoulder to see how she was doing.

  “Christ, have ye no’ finished yet? I thought we’d got them all out on the hill,” he said, his face flushed scarlet with embarrassment, made all the more acute by the unsympathetic grins of his siblings and the cool one-eyed scrutiny of MacGregor, sitting by the fireside, tail waving slowly from side to side.

  “Nearly,” she said. “You’ll be sorry if I miss one and it goes nasty. I’m sure Dougal’s going through the same ordeal even as we speak.”

  “Aye, but it’ll be Dougal’s wife doing it for him, which is a different thing entirely. Now, if it was Morag doing the honours…”

  “You keep your lecherous paws off her,” Alex warned. “I’m no’ judging in a dispute between you and her father, Ye touch her, ye marry her. Or preferably the other way round.”

  Angus cast a look of outraged innocence at his brother.

  “I havena so much as kissed the lassie,” he said. “I’m no’ ready for marrying yet. I ken the rules. Anyway, I’m waiting to see what the MacDonald lassies are like. They’ll be here in a day or so.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Alex. “And you’ll keep your lecherous hands off them, as well. The MacDonalds are our friends, and we’ve few enough of them. I’d keep them so. Ye can dance wi’ them, ye can talk wi’ them, and that’s all, d’ye understand?”

  “There,” said Beth, delivering a smart slap to Angus’s bottom before pulling down his plaid, causing him to screech in surprise. “Finished. You’ll have no trouble sitting down tomorrow, anyway. Now if you’re thinking of doing anything else, I’d better inspect the other parts as well.” She smiled evilly, brandishing the tweezers and eyeing the parts she had in mind, now decently covered by tartan wool.

  “No,” he said hurriedly, backing away. “I’ve checked them myself already. And it seems I’ll no’ get a chance to use them anyway until we go back to London, wi’ you lot watching me like hawks.”

  “Abstinence is good for ye,” said Alex in his best strict parental tone. “When I was your age, I was…”

  “Whoring your way around Paris,” interrupted Angus. “I was only twelve at the time, but I understood enough to get the general idea when ye came home and were whispering wi’ Duncan about what ye’d been up to. I learnt a lot frae those conversations. In fact, it was because of you that I ken how to…” He broke off as Alex made a threatening gesture, and skipped lightly off into the kitchen, chuckling.

  Beth and Duncan laughed in unison at Alex’s blood-red face. It was rare for Angus to turn the tables so neatly on his older brother.

  “Aye,” said Duncan, looking after him. “He’s becoming a man all right.”

  “No, it doesn’t bother me,” Beth said later that night, in bed. “You didn’t get the pox, did you?”

  “No,” he said. In spite of the darkness, she could feel the heat of his blushes, and smiled to herself.

  “What you did before you married me is no concern of mine,” she said. “I’d have been surprised if you hadn’t been with the odd prostitute. You’re a red-blooded male, after all.” Now it was her turn to blush as she thought of just how she knew that. “I’d rather you did that than get some girl pregnant, then abandon her.”

  “I’d never have done that!” he retorted.

  “I know. And I don’t think Angus will, either. He knows where to draw the line. He might be reckless at times, but he’s not an idiot. Neither are you, I hope. Because now we are married, and if I ever find out you’ve been…”

  He put a finger lightly on her lips.

  “There’s nae danger of that, I’ve tellt ye already. I take my wedding vows seriously. Forsaking all others. Unlike yourself.”

  “What!”

  “Ye promised to obey, as I remember.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, relaxing back. “Well, I do, mostly. Some of the time, anyway. I have good intentions.”

  “Do ye now?” he said. “Well I dinna. And I’ll thank ye to obey me, by…”

  The rest of the sentence was muffled as he drew the blankets up over them both. Feminine giggles drifted out from under the covers as she did, indeed, obey him for once, with enthusiasm. With the result that they both overslept the following morning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The MacDonalds arrived the next day. Beth had expected maybe two or three of her nearest relations to come, but as they started to make their way down the hill to the MacGregor settlement, led by their piper and clad in plaids of various hues, a sprig of heather in their bonnets and armed as though for war, she realised that there were a good many more than that; about thirty or so, at a rough estimate. They greeted the MacGregor chieftain warmly, allaying Beth’s fears that they had come to raid rather than celebrate, then turned to Beth.

  “You’ll be the bride, then,” one of them, a stocky swarthy man with dark hair and beard said to her. It was not a question, and she wondered how he knew, because Alex had not yet introduced her, and she was standing amidst a group of other women. The MacDonald saw her perplexity and smiled.

  “Ye’ve the look of the clan about ye,” he explained.

  As all the members of the clan so far appeared to be brown or red-haired, and stocky of build, this puzzled Beth even more.

  “What Donald means is you look like your mother, and your grandmother, and all her kin,” clarified his wife, who had made her way to his side, a small child balanced comfortably on her hip. “They all have the same hair, and are small and feeble-looking, like yourself. We used to say they were changelings.”

  Alex cast his wife a warning look, willing her not to react, but she hardly noticed the comment, being so delighted that there were others who resembled her amongst the clan, even if they had chosen not to attend the wedding celebrations.

  “They’re no’ feeble, though, whatever their appearance,” remarked another man. “Christ, they can be stubborn, vicious bastards when crossed!”

  “That’s Beth’s
family all right, then,” said Angus from somewhere in the background, and everyone laughed.

  Formal greetings over with, the MacDonalds repaired to the various homes they were to stay in to freshen up and have something to eat. Beth wandered off with Alex to their house, with Duncan and Angus following behind. The actual wedding party was fixed for tomorrow, but there would be a good deal of alcohol drunk tonight. Alex had a dual purpose in inviting the MacDonalds; as well as pleasing his wife, it would improve cordial relations between the two clans, always a good thing when the mutual Campbell enemy was so strong and numerous. Having said that, Beth’s look of ecstasy as she skipped along beside him was on its own worth all the extra food and whisky that would be consumed over the next couple of days.

  “It’s a shame that none of my actual direct blood kin could come,” Beth said as they arrived home.

  “They are coming,” said Alex. “They’ve just taken the longer route, that’s all.”

  “Are they?” cried Beth. “That’s wonderful! I wonder why they’ve taken the long route?”

  “Because one of them’s as bloody-minded as yourself,” Alex said, but in spite of her cajoling, would not explain further, saying only that she would see why for herself in an hour or so when they turned up.

  She did. When they arrived there were five of them, two men and three women, and they were in a carriage of sorts, which was why they’d taken the long way. Any thoughts that this might be due to some misguided delusion of grandeur was dispelled when the two men, both flaxen-haired and slender of build, leapt down from the coach, and with great care and tenderness assisted a woman down to the ground. The other two women jumped down unassisted. They were also blonde, although their hair was more honey-coloured than silver.

  The woman they were assisting was silver-haired, but this was due to her extreme age. Even so, once safely on the ground she stood unaided, frail but erect, her blue eyes shrewd and intelligent as she surveyed the settlement and the people who had come out to greet her on hearing the coach. Beth, who was amongst them, and who in fact had been glued to the doorway listening for their arrival ever since Alex’s enigmatic words, gasped. This woman was so like her mother, or like her mother would have been had she lived to old age, that the sight of her brought tears to Beth’s eyes. She felt Alex’s comforting hand on her shoulder and swallowed back the tears. Then she moved forward to greet her relation, trying to work out who she could possibly be. Her mother, who would have been fifty-four now, had she lived, had had no sisters, and this woman was older than that anyway, maybe seventy. Her great-aunt, perhaps? Yet Beth’s grandmother, after whom Beth was named, had been thirty when Ann was born, and had been the youngest of her family.