The Chieftain

by Martin, Caroline

  She washed in warm scented water and dressed in a neat grey silk gown, and tidied her hair away under a little frilled cap. She could scarcely breathe for the constricting whalebones of the bodice, laced tightly across her, and the buckled shoes were harsh to her feet after the soft deerskin she had discarded. She had felt out of place before. Now she felt stiff and awkward and uncomfortable.

  The same constraint silenced her when John had taken his leave, promising to call again in the morning, and she was alone at last with her parents. She had longed for this moment, prayed for it desperately ever since Hector had snatched her away, and now it was as if it had somehow all gone wrong.

  There was so much to tell them, so much they wanted to know, yet she did not know where to begin. Nor was she sure that she could ever make them understand even a little of all that had happened to her. Here, with her beloved parents, she felt suddenly more lonely, more isolated than she had during the long months at Ardshee.

  Tears filled her eyes as she sat at the fireside, hands clasped tightly in her lap. She answered her parents’ questions in subdued monosyllables, aware of their puzzled concern. What is the matter with me? she thought desperately.

  ‘You must be very tired,’ said her mother at last, after a longer silence than usual. ‘When you have slept you will feel better, and then we can talk.’

  She steered Isobel gently upstairs again, and helped her to undress. And then she tucked her daughter into bed, murmuring soothingly:

  ‘You are home now, my lamb. Home and safe, and no one shall ever take you from us again.’

  Later, when Isobel lay alone in the dark, she thought of her mother’s words. And it struck her, chillingly, that she had already been taken from home, and that the enforced parting had in a way been final and irrevocable. This orderly house was no longer home to her, and never would be again. Her parents’ love was real, but it could not reach her. The dream she had cherished was an illusion.

  She turned on her side and closed her eyes and the misery that should have ended with her homecoming lay cold and heavy on her heart.

  Chapter Ten

  When Isobel woke next morning she felt a little more cheerful. She climbed out of bed, threw a wrap about her shoulders and crossed to the window. It was a crisp sunny morning, the air bright with the distinctive clarity of the eastern sky, quite unlike the soft misty light of the west that she had known at Ardshee.

  It was only to be expected, she thought, that it would take her a little time to grow used to being at home. She had been away for a long time, and such a great deal had happened to her meanwhile. The strangeness would pass after a day or two.

  She dressed and went down to the sunlit parlour to breakfast. Her parents were as attentive as ever, hovering solicitously over her, urging her to eat, watching every mouthful for signs that her appetite was not all it should be, and her face for traces of sleeplessness or unhappiness.

  At last she could bear it no longer. She put down her cup and raised her eyes to their anxious faces, and said:

  ‘Don’t watch me all the time like that! You must believe that I am well, and very soon, I expect, I shall grow used to being at home. But,’ she bent her head abruptly, as the tears filled her eyes, ‘but just now I... I...’ And then, not knowing what she would have said, overcome by an uncontrollable flood of tears, she ran from the room and threw herself on her bed.

  Much later, red-eyed but composed again, Isobel joined her mother by the fire in the best parlour, bringing some long-neglected needlework to occupy her hands while she sat. Margaret Reid looked up as her daughter came in, but said nothing, waiting patiently for Isobel herself to speak when she chose. They sewed vigorously, needles flashing in the sunlight, the embroidered patterns on their work steadily growing. The soft crackle and hiss of the burning logs, the occasional sound of a passing carriage or hurrying feet outside, only emphasised the silence.

  In the end Margaret could bear it no longer. ‘It is nearly eleven,’ she said, glancing at the ornate clock on the mantelpiece. ‘John Campbell said he would call this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Isobel, without discernible emotion.

  Margaret’s hands fell to her lap and lay still.

  ‘Isobel,’ she began gently, ‘you have suffered greatly. But the nightmare is over now. Very soon you will realise that. We shall take every step in our power to help you to put it all behind you, as if it had never been. I am only sorry that you have been forced to...’ her eyes travelled briefly to Isobel’s stomach ‘...to carry the consequences. It is so unjust! But we can try to make even that easier for you. You must bear the child, of course: that is unavoidable. But once it is born we can send it away. There are plenty of poor women glad to give their services to unwanted infants, for a fee. Then it will be as if you had never met that dreadful man.’

  Dismayed, Isobel raised her head, her eyes on her mother’s face.

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed, with a force that took her mother - and herself - by surprise. ‘No, mother. I don’t want that. I want this baby, I want to hold him in my arms and care for him and love him as long as he needs me.’

  Margaret listened in amazement.

  ‘But, Isobel, you will not be able to look on the child without remembering how it came to be conceived. What if it should resemble its father?’

  Isobel had a sudden clear mental picture of herself lying in bed, looking down at the tiny defenceless creature cradled in her arms, seeing Hector’s dark eyes gazing up at her from beneath long lashes and the soft fuzz of dark curls covering the little head, feeling the small fingers, long for one so small, clutching at her own…

  Her heart lurched, and then settled into a quickened beat. She came back to the present, to her hands at rest on her sewing, her empty lap, and was swept with longing for the moment when the child growing within her should be a reality at last.

  She looked up. ‘I want this baby,’ she said stubbornly.

  Her mother sighed, close to exasperation. ‘I don’t understand you, Isobel.’

  Nor do I, reflected Isobel, slowly resuming her sewing. For her mother’s plan made sense. She wanted desperately to put the past behind her, to start again as if it had never been. She had wanted that from the moment Hector seized her in the wood. But with Hector’s child in her arms she would never be able to forget. Particularly not if, as her imagination just now had suggested, the child were to resemble him. Yet some wayward part of herself, against all reason, wanted to see that likeness in the newborn child. She found it inexplicable, beyond understanding. How then could she ever expect her mother to understand?

  She shrugged hopelessly, and sewed doggedly on.

  It was John Campbell’s arrival that broke the lengthening silence.

  ‘I am glad to see you looking more rested,’ he said, bowing over Isobel’s hand. Secretly he thought she looked as harassed and exhausted as she had done last night. Yet she should have been more at peace now than when he had come on her at Ardshee.

  He greeted Margaret with his accustomed courtesy, and she rang for refreshment as he took his seat between them.

  Isobel watched him while his attention was on her mother. He sat at his ease, knowing he was welcome and among friends, yet even in relaxation his body was a little awkward, ungraceful. She could not imagine him dancing in the firelight to the music of the pipes. She even smiled a little at the thought, and he turned his head at that moment and caught her expression.

  ‘I am glad to see that smile!’ he said warmly. ‘That is more like the old Isobel - Mrs Carnegie, I mean—’ His words tailed off in confusion.

  ‘Mrs MacLean,’ she corrected him steadily, and was astonished to detect a note almost of pride in her voice. So Hector himself might have spoken, full of his sense of family honour.

  Perhaps, she thought, I am rather enjoying all this concern on my behalf. Perhaps I am quite glad to have achieved such notoriety, to have gone through all these adventures, far removed from the experience of most girls o
f my age. But she sensed that this was not the whole explanation, nor even possibly a part of it. There was something there that she did not want to recognise or to accept at present.

  She turned her attention to Janet, coming in just then with a tray of madeira and almond biscuits.

  But John was not so readily distracted. He waited until Janet had gone again, clearly impatient to speak, and then burst out: ‘We shall rid you of that name, my dear. You can be Mrs Carnegie again, as if all this had never happened.’

  That phrase again! But Isobel said nothing, only giving John her full attention, grave and silent.

  ‘You see,’ he explained, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, ‘by law your marriage was no marriage, and may be set aside—’

  ‘But I am with child,’ protested Isobel.

  ‘Ah!’ John raised his hand in reassurance. Clearly the lawyer in him was enjoying the situation. ‘That is beside the point. If the marriage was forced upon you against your will, and consummated by an act of rape, then it is no marriage. Consent, freely given, is the essential factor in the legality of any bond entered into by a man and a woman. In your case there was clearly no consent. It was a brutal act forced upon you with violence by a man who wanted only - one assumes - to acquire your considerable fortune. To set that marriage aside, even after several months, will, in your case, be little more than a formality.’

  Isobel gazed down at her hands, indefinably depressed by the cool analysis of her situation, the dry lawyer’s language. Then a new aspect of her predicament struck her.

  ‘But that would make my baby a bastard!’ she protested. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

  Before John could reply her mother gently intervened. ‘You see, my dear, that is why it would be better for the child to be sent away. Better for everyone.’

  Isobel stared at her. Better for her parents, she acknowledged, for they would not then have to face the shame of having a bastard growing up under their roof. For herself, too, it might arguably be better, in spite of what she felt, for she would be able to start a new life. But for the child—

  Even with her limited experience of such matters she knew that to put a child out to nurse as her mother had suggested was often a tidy, discreet way of conniving at its death. Unwanted babies born to erring but respectable mothers were often despatched to wetnurses in the full knowledge that half-hearted care, neglect even, would generally quickly rid them of the embarrassment. Better far, Isobel thought, that her baby should have the care of a woman such as Mairi MacLean, honoured to be trusted with the upbringing of a son of her chieftain.

  She shook her head with renewed vehemence. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You will not send my child away. I am his mother, and his place is with me.’

  John reached out and took her hand in his.

  ‘Isobel,’ he implored earnestly, ‘your feelings do you credit. You have a good, kind heart, and it is natural that you should want to do the best for your unborn child, however unhappy may have been the circumstances of its conception. But think, I beg of you, if it would indeed be the best, even for the infant, to rear it as your own among your own people. Remember who the father was - though I know it must pain you to have that brought to mind - remember what blood it is that will run in your infant’s veins. The child comes of tainted stock, Isobel.

  ‘Do you indeed want to rear the latest in a line of lying, murderous cattle thieves? For blood will out, my dear, believe me. Do what you will, the evil strain is there. You know a little of what my own line has suffered at the hands of a MacLean of Ardshee. But we are not alone. There have been many before and since who have cursed the fate that caused their path to cross with some scion of that evil house. No, the truly kind course is to harden your heart and let the line end with you. Root out the evil, destroy it, let the name of MacLean be lost to Ardshee, as dust in the wind.’

  The light blue eyes gleamed with a cold light that sent a shiver down Isobel’s spine. John was suddenly a stranger, no longer the kindly friend who had counselled and supported her through many anxieties and troubles. She recoiled, drawing her hand from his, repelled that he should so callously urge her to murder her child. For that, she knew, was what his words implied.

  Even her mother evidently thought he had gone too far, for Isobel saw her touch his arm, murmuring ‘John—!’ as if in gentle protest.

  ‘Do you not think my blood is more than a match for any MacLean infusion?’ Isobel demanded indignantly.

  All at once John looked confused, his colour rising a little.

  ‘Of course, but—’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘No matter. There will be time enough for us to decide what to do before the child is born. For now you need only concern yourself with the annulment of your marriage. It should not require a great deal on your part: a brief court appearance at the most, and no judge would look on you with anything but the deepest sympathy. Then, the formalities over, you may call yourself Isobel Carnegie once again and you will be free. And able, of course—’ He paused, recollecting himself, and then went on smoothly: ‘But that can wait. The wheels are already set in motion. It should not take long—’

  Isobel felt dazed and bewildered. She felt as if she were being pushed inexorably into some course of action she did not want to follow. Yet it was, surely, what she wished above all?

  ‘I need time,’ she faltered. ‘Let me have time to think.’

  ‘To think of what?’ John asked in surprise. ‘There is no difficulty that I can see. A slight formality, as I said—’

  ‘I don’t know...’ she returned hesitantly.

  Her mother broke in. ‘I think Isobel is still very tired. She is not herself. Come and talk it over again tomorrow, John, when she is a little more rested. I think that would be best.’

  With obvious reluctance, John abandoned the subject and began to talk of the weather. Isobel relapsed into a relieved silence, and let the talk circulate about her confused brain, taking in nothing that was said. For the first time in her life she was thankful when John took his leave of them.

  She felt inexpressibly weary by the end of the morning, as if the effort of talking and listening and explaining had all been too much for her. She ate little at midday, and was grateful when her mother suggested she should lie down.

  ‘In your condition,’ observed Margaret Reid, ‘you cannot expect to be as active as you once were.’

  Isobel remembered how she had walked at Ardshee, and how confinement had chafed her. She had been energetic enough there. But of course there had been the long journey since then, and the excitement, and the many demands on her emotions. She allowed her mother to tuck her into bed and pull the curtains around her and leave her alone with her thoughts.

  One thing only was clear, as it had been since her mother had first broached the subject. She wanted this child. No one, she determined, should ever succeed in shaking her resolution to cherish and love him as if his conception had been entirely normal and happy.

  But of course, she realised suddenly, his conception had indeed been happy! Eyes closed, she brought that last night with Hector to mind. Until now she had only remembered its ending, his calculating demands on her, his savage anger, his vindictiveness in making her a close prisoner.

  Now she thought of the moment when he had come home, and a new warmth had seemed to spring up between them. It had been a delusion, she knew that now, for he had acted the part of the ardent lover to win her to his will. But that did not make her own feelings the less real because he had so coldly used them.

  No, she had been happy then, for those few sweet hours. Happy as she had not thought it was possible to be, completely, ecstatically happy. This unborn child within her had been conceived in joy, at the moment when her whole world had been suffused in a golden light. It was, she thought now, as if for that little while she had been whole and complete as never before nor since. In Hector’s approval, in his seeming warmth, in his arms, she had, fleetingly, found her home.

  That then, she understoo
d, as her heart beat faster, was why Hector’s deceit, and his anger, had hurt her so much. That was why her pleasure in being at Ardshee had been so shattered by his going. That, above all, was why this place where she now lay could never be home to her again.

  Everything fell into place, neatly, inexorably.

  She loved Hector. Whatever he had done, whatever he was, she loved him. And without him, whether at Ardshee or in the parlour downstairs, she was lost and alone, for in his arms that one night she had found her heart’s desire.

  She knew, too, with relentless clarity, that until she could win her way back to that lost paradise she would never truly be happy again. It was an impossible dream, but it was her only hope.

  And then she remembered the child - Hector’s child - growing within her, and she felt a leap of joy. For surely, surely, Hector must come to care for her, once he knew? Surely he must learn to love the woman who was to bear his child? Somehow she must go to him, and tell him the news, and let him see her pride and happiness in it.

  For that, she knew, she would need all her strength.

  Stubbornly, full of new determination, she set herself to empty her mind of all thought, and to relax, and so drift slowly into healing sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Isobel had to admit next morning that all was not well. Despite the long hours of rest she felt draggingly tired, and her back and limbs ached unbearably. She would very much have liked to stay in bed all day. But she had no intention of allowing her parents to know how she felt. Full of determination, she dressed and went downstairs and dismissed any comments on her grey face and general air of exhaustion. She knew that today, as soon as possible, she must make them all understand what she meant to do.