The Heart Queen

by Patricia Potter

  Over her dead body.

  Or his.

  And he’d known it. His eyes had narrowed after he’d left the bed.

  “You haven’t learned obedience to your lord yet, my dear. How many lessons do you require, stupid wench?”

  She’d glared helplessly at him just as a knock came at the door.

  Alasdair opened it to MacKnight, his valet. He had a bottle of brandy on a tray. His eyes widened as she frantically tried to cover up her body with torn clothes.

  “A little lesson, MacKnight. One you need to remember if you are so foolish as to marry.”

  Janet had learned two years earlier not to give Alasdair the satisfaction of tears. But as the door closed, she said, “Someone is going to kill you someday.”

  “A threat, my dear?”

  “Nay, a promise, if you hurt the children again.”

  “I will do as I wish with my children. You will not interfere again. I will expect you at supper this evening. I have some guests.”

  He left then, the door closing behind him with deceptive softness.

  Janet lay still for a moment, her body aching from his abuse. She refused to cry. That would give him power. Even if he was not there to see it. After several moments, she rose, dressed painfully, then went to see the children.

  The lasses were huddled in the corner, and her son was screaming. Fixing a smile on her face, she’d told them they would have a picnic the next day. She soothed her son, feathering his face with kisses. When he’d finally calmed, she put him down in his bed and helped the lasses into their nightclothes. She stayed to tell them a story and sing a lullaby. Finally, their eyes closed.

  She sat next to her son, watching him sleep. Less than a year old and he already flinched at the sight of his father. She feared that one day Alasdair would lose his temper and seriously hurt one of the children. She’d seen him do that to a puppy that wandered in his way. She’d nursed it, found it a good home. She’d never allowed the children another pet.

  She swallowed hard … and thought of Neil Forbes, of how different she’d once believed her life would be. But then she’d been nineteen, and believed love really existed. She’d believed in his gentleness, in his kisses, in his awkward but seemingly honest words, the sweet explosiveness between them. She’d been ready to give up everything for him. The disillusionment had been bitter and long lasting.

  He’d had little then. And he had not been willing to settle for what little dowry she would bring. Now he was one of the wealthiest men in Scotland. He’d inherited the title of Marquis of Braemoor after the death of his cousin at the hands of the notorious Black Knave. His lands had expanded through his cousin’s marriage. He was said to have the ear of Butcher Cumberland.

  He hadn’t needed her at all.

  But he hadn’t married. She knew that. There had been talk of trying to interest him in her husband’s younger sister. Braemoor had rebuffed all overtures. He obviously was hoping for an even more advantageous marriage.

  He could have anyone in Scotland now. Not only was he wealthy, but he also cut a fine figure. She remembered his height, his raven hair that had curled around her fingers, the dark eyes that were always cautious until they looked into hers.

  She shook her head of the memories. He had not been what she had thought. He was probably no better than her husband.

  Then why did he haunt her dreams so?

  Loneliness sliced through Neil as sharply as the blade tore through the meat on the table at the wedding party.

  He stood in a corner and watched the merriment as one of his tenants danced with his new bride. A fiddler played a lively tune and ale flowed like a river.

  He would leave soon. He knew he was not an enlivening influence on the celebration. He knew he was respected though not particularly liked. He’d been alone too long, wary too many years to relax and enjoy the company of others.

  It was one of his greatest regrets. Only recently had Neil discovered how deep his cousin’s friendships had run, what great loyalty he’d inspired. Neil had learned that all too late. He wished now he’d looked behind his cousin’s outer facade to the man beneath.

  Rory, Neil knew, would have felt right at home here where he—well—felt like an intruder.

  He’d felt an intruder all his life, even now that he was Marquis of Braemoor. It was a position that he’d always wanted and even thought should be his. He’d thought he cared more for the land and people than Rory had. In truth, Neil now knew it was he, Neil, who hadn’t had the slightest idea of honor or courage or commitment.

  In the months since Rory’s supposed death, Neil had tried to rectify his own life, to make it mean something, but he didn’t know how to make a friend, or keep one. He didn’t know how to relax over a tankard of ale. When he tried, he’d been discomfitted and knew everyone with him was, too.

  And so he maintained his distance. He tried to do the right thing by his tenants, keeping them on the land rather than evicting them as so many other landlords were doing. The last vestiges of the clan system had been broken at Culloden Moor. Clearances were common. He had to pay heavy taxes to the crown to keep the land, which meant he had to produce revenue. Like others, he’d turned some land over to grazing, but he’d tried not to turn anyone out.

  The tenants knew that. Still, he realized he was never going to be their friend.

  He gazed around at the whirling figures. No bagpipes. They’d been outlawed by Cumberland, as had been plaids. Instead, the men wore rawhide brogans and cheap breeches.

  The music stopped and the dancers huddled in small groups, none of them near him. He sighed, then forcing his lips into a smile went up to young Hiram Forbes and handed him a small purse. “For you and your bride,” he said.

  The girl curtsied and Hiram looked surprised, then pleased. “Thank ye, my lord.”

  “I wish you many bairns,” Neil said, even as he felt the emptiness in his own soul, in his life. He would never have bairns, nor a wife looking at him as the young lass looked at her new husband. ’Twas obviously a love match, and he ached inside that he could never see that look again.

  Once. He’d seen it once. He’d seen himself in eyes shining with love, and he’d felt ten feet tall. He’d never felt that way since.

  He turned and walked away, well aware that no one asked him to linger. He mounted his waiting horse, Jack. Back to the tower house?

  That was a lonely thought. Since Rory and his wife, Bethia, left, the life seemed drained from the stone structure. On a rare impulse, he headed Jack toward the loch up beyond the hill, the one where he’d met Janet years earlier. Nine years and three months earlier, to be exact. She was married now, to a Campbell. She had a son.

  The thought brought a familiar ache to his heart. He’d kept up with the gossip about her. He’d heard that her brother had fallen at Culloden where he’d fought for Prince Charlie. He knew that her father had died shortly afterward and that all his estates had been forfeit. He also knew that Janet’s husband had not received the Leslie estates, probably because he had not joined Cumberland at Culloden. Instead, they’d reverted to the king who had awarded them to an Englishman who had fought with him.

  He’d remember how much she’d loved her father. Unfamiliar with prayer, he nonetheless had stopped in the small chapel next to the tower house and prayed for her and the man he’d once hoped would be his father-in-law. He doubted whether God had heeded his prayer; he’d not been practiced at such an undertaking. And he had his own doubts about the value of prayer and even the very existence of God. He’d seen too much cruelty, too much inequality, too much killing. If God permitted such injustices, then what use was He?

  Still, for Janet’s sake, he’d tried. Little enough.

  It was very late afternoon when he reached the loch. The sun was setting, spreading streaks of color across a cinnamon sky. The last rays colored the loch with a sprinkling of gold and the surrounding hills were dark with heather.

  The quiet serenity of the Highlands us
ually quenched the ache inside him. Tonight, it sharpened the pain, deepened it until it overtook everything he was. It smothered him. He saw Janet Leslie, her brown hair framing a serious yet delicate face, her eyes banked with quiet fires of passion. He saw the shy smile, thought of the sweetness of her touch, remembered how it had turned sensuous, yet never lost its gentleness.

  God, how he longed for her, for someone to touch, to talk to, to share the simple pleasure of a sunset.

  “You and me, Jack,” he said to the horse. He’d named the beast as a reminder of Rory. The stallion was as duplicitous as his cousin—calm one moment, all rebellion the next. Wild and longing to be free.

  Everything Neil wanted to be but couldn’t. He was grounded in responsibility, in practicality.

  Rory’s disguises from his days as the Black Knave were still hidden in a cottage now abandoned. Neil knew he should destroy them, but he’d never quite been able to do so. They represented something to him, a reminder that never again should he judge another human being so heedlessly.

  He watched the sunset fade into dusk. A mist rose over the lake, softly eclipsing it.

  He turned Jack toward Braemoor and thought again of Rory. Would he ever be as courageous as his cousin? As bold? Even as honorable? Or was he just fated to plod along, waiting for the madness that had overtaken his mother?

  He walked Jack down the treacherous path back to rolling land, then mounted. He urged the animal into a trot, then a canter and finally a gallop. He wanted to leave the ghosts behind.

  But he knew they would always lurk deep inside.

  Alasdair Campbell, the Earl of Lochaene, died in the wee hours of a Friday. He died in agonizing pain.

  Janet had been summoned by a servant and hurried to his bedside. His mother and one of his brothers were at his side.

  “The physician has been summoned,” Alasdair’s mother, the dowager countess, said.

  The earl was no longer handsome. His face was pale and distorted, his hair lank, his body twisted with agony. He screamed with pain.

  “Dear God,” Janet whispered. “What happened?”

  The dowager countess, Marjorie, looked at her with suspicion in her eyes. “He was well earlier.”

  As mistress of Lochaene, Janet had often attended sick and wounded members of the household. She’d done the same back at her own home.

  She was alarmed at the white in her husband’s eyes, the obvious pain he felt. For all his faults, Alasdair was not one to moan. If he said he was sick, he was really sick. She recalled her thoughts three days earlier. She’d wanted him dead.

  But now faced with just that, she knew she didn’t want it at all. She did not want to be responsible for another’s death, even that of one she despised.

  She had no idea, though, what was wrong with him. His servant said he’d been sick since last evening with pain in his stomach, that he’d been vomiting.

  Marjorie glared at her. “What did you do to him?”

  A chill ran down Janet’s back. “Nothing. I have not seen him today, and he was fine yesterday.”

  “Exactly,” the dowager countess said. “Nigel said you were in his room yesterday when he took up a tray.”

  Janet nodded. Her husband had been drinking. He’d commanded her presence along with another bottle of brandy after a day of hunting with his brother, Reginald. She’d been forced to stand as he had steadily drunk its contents, as he’d recounted all her failures as mistress, wife and mother. He’d then ordered her to his bed, but thank God he’d passed out before he could do anything. She’d left, retreating to the safety of her own chamber after checking the children. Colin had been awake, staring solemnly up at her from the cradle she’d insisted on keeping in her room. She distrusted Molly, the woman her husband had employed to care for the children. The woman, Janet thought, had been employed more to keep her husband’s bed warm rather than to take care of the children.

  She’d been grateful for that in the beginning. It meant fewer visits to her bed. But then she’d seen the woman strike Annabella. She’d tried to discharge her but Alasdair would not hear of it.

  “I will get some herbs,” Janet said.

  “No,” her husband said. He groaned, then looked up at her with wide pain-filled eyes. “What did you do?” he asked. “What did you put in the brandy?”

  All the eyes in the room went to her. She felt the blood drain from her.

  She started to shake her head in denial.

  “Get her out of here,” her husband said.

  Reginald glared at her, then took the several steps to her side. “Ye’d best leave,” he said.

  Janet realized instantly that she had no choice. “The physician?” she said, knowing that the only one was in Inverness, hours away.

  “He has been sent for,” the dowager said, her brown eyes glittering with malice. She’d never liked Janet, had shown only disdain for her Jacobite family. Janet knew her husband would never have married her without the dowry her father had provided, along with hopes that he would some day inherit her family’s property. The fact that it had been taken by the English king had been a bitter disappointment.

  Only the birth of her son had kept him from divorcing her. He’d wanted a son more than he wanted to be rid of her.

  What a bitter bargain she’d made.

  She didn’t know what time it was, only that it was predawn. Colin was asleep in the nursery, the lasses in the room next to his, and she did not want to wake them. Nor did she wish to return to her chamber. She lit a candle from one in the hallway and carried it up the steps to the parapet of the sprawling ancestral home of the Campbells of Lochaene. ’Twas a smaller dwelling then her childhood home, smaller even than Braemoor. The rock edifice was built for defense, not for comfort, and its rooms were small and bare, the circular stairs steep and uneven. No tapestries warned the rooms, nor carpets the floors.

  When she’d come to Lochaene as a bride, she’d tried to convince her husband to purchase a carpet for the nursery. The floors were so cold and the wind often cut through the windows. She’d discovered then that he cared far less for the comfort of his children than he did for his frequent trips into Edinburgh and the horses he’d buy, then often ruin.

  But now she wanted, needed, the cold jolt of night air. She left the candle inside the door so it would not flare out, then went out onto the parapet. The sky was threatening. Large bulbous clouds rushed across the sky and masked the stars, though torches lit the courtyard this night. She couldn’t see beyond them, but she knew the land well. Mostly bare moors and low lying hills, the land had been cleared of its farms and the crofts and turned to shaggy cattle and sheep. It was a lonely place, dark and gloomy with none of the wild scenic beauty of her home.

  Forced by the cold to return to the questionable warmth of the interior, she went to the nursery. Colin was still asleep. She next checked on the lasses.

  “Mama,” Grace said from her bed, wriggling to a sitting position. Grace, at seven, was the oldest of the sisters, a grave, slender waif of a child who, though timid on her own behalf, could be fierce in defense of her sisters and baby brother.

  She loved the lasses as much as if they had come from her own body. Grace with her quiet dignity, Rachel who wanted nothing as much as to love and be loved, and little Annabella who was all mischief.

  Janet went over to Grace and placed the candle on the table. She sat carefully as not to wake the other two girls, then gathered Grace in her arms, holding her tight. She felt the lass relax and snuggle deep against her. In minutes, the lass was asleep, but Janet couldn’t relax. She wanted to be downstairs in Alasdair’s room. She knew what he had implied, but she couldn’t believe he really meant it.

  It was still dark when she heard a knock on her door. She gently replaced Grace into the bed and padded over to the door, opening it.

  Molly stood there, her face drawn and pale. “I was sent to tell ye. The earl is dead.”

  Chapter Two

  The day of the funeral was
as dark and dismal as the event.

  Alasdair had been dead for four days. Janet had forced herself to perform the necessary tasks expected of a wife. She’d closed his eyes and placed coins on the eyelids to keep them closed. She washed and anointed the body and clad it in the deid-claes.

  A joiner had straightened out the body and measured it for a coffin. It had arrived earlier today.

  Janet attended to it all in a state of numbness. She kept remembering the wish she’d made days earlier. Guilt warred with relief that he was gone, that the children would be safe.

  He looked different. Even peaceful. He’d been a handsome man when she’d wed him. In four years, he’d grown large and his face red and puffy with drink. Now he looked as she had first seen him. It made her wonder whether she’d had anything to do with his descent into drink and cruelty or if he had always had it in him. Certainly, his family was short on love and compassion.

  Word had gone out about the funeral. She realized that there would be numerous people attending, if not out of love for or respect for the Earl of Lochaene, then out of curiosity about his widow.

  She knew about the rumors. She knew they were being spread by her sister-in-law and the dowager countess. Murder was whispered. Gossiped. Passed on from family to family in the Highlands.

  Poison was mentioned. Arsenic. Caffeine. Belladonna. Opium. But the physician who arrived after the death could not swear to its cause.

  When the local sheriff arrived, murder was mentioned but nothing could be proven. A servant had overheard her threatening the earl; the earl was a healthy man who suddenly succumbed to an unknown ailment. Both facts cast suspicion, but nothing was conclusive.

  It was suggested that Janet’s room be searched, and the sheriff had done so. They found nothing in her room but did find arsenic in her sister-in-law’s room since she used it for her complexion. It was a substance Janet had disdained and now was relieved she had.