A Kiss for a Highlander

by Jane Godman

“Enough to take Fraser and Jack by force if they had discovered them,” Martha said in an oddly hollow little voice. She tried to gather up the cards, but, finding that her trembling fingers were likely to betray her, she gave up the task.

  “What’s this?” Tom said, from his watching position at the window. “Overton and his sergeant have paused partway down the drive. I can see their faces quite clearly, because the sergeant is holding a flaming torch aloft. Overton has waved the rest of the company to continue on ahead of them.”

  “What are they doing, Tom?” Martha thought her own voice sounded distant, as though calling to him from a long way off.

  “They are looking up at the attics.”

  “No! Oh, dear God, no.” Rosie covered her face with her hands.

  “They are coming back. Just Overton and the sergeant.”

  The hammering of the front-door knocker sounded doubly loud this time. Martha cast a warning glance at Rosie while Tom went to answer the door. When he returned, he brought Captain Overton and his sergeant in his wake.

  “Well, Captain?” Mr. Delacourt feigned a note of weariness.

  “Your pardon, sir,” Captain Overton said, with a return of his former polite manner. “But Sergeant Daly has just pointed out something odd to me which leads me to the conclusion that we need to investigate the attics again.”

  “And what is this ‘something odd’ to which you refer, my good man?” Mr. Delacourt addressed his question directly to the sergeant.

  “There is an extra window, sir,” the young man replied promptly. “I counted the attic windows from the inside while I was up there and there were twelve. But from the outside, there are thirteen.”

  “Odd indeed. But perhaps you miscounted?”

  “It is easily solved, however, sir. Sergeant Daly and I will simply check the attics again,” Captain Overton said.

  “This is nonsense.” Mr. Delacourt’s words of protest scarcely registered with the two soldiers, who were distracted by Rosie. Clearly distressed, she had risen from the table and moved swiftly toward the door. Martha hurried after her.

  “Stay where you are, please, Miss Delacourt.”

  “Captain Overton.” Mr. Delacourt drew the captain’s attention back to the table. “Kindly modify your tone when you address my daughter. You are not issuing orders to one of your men when you speak to her. You cannot be surprised at her anxiety after you have practically kept us prisoners in this room tonight. Now it appears you are proposing to repeat the performance. Well, I must inform you that I will be contacting the local magistrate on the morrow to complain about your conduct.”

  The captain bowed. “Nevertheless, sir, we will search the attics again.”

  “No, I cannot let you go up there.” All eyes turned to Rosie, who had paused by the door. Her voice was oddly calm, and she raised Tom’s old flintlock with hands that were perfectly steady.

  “Rosie, no!” Martha tried to grasp her arm to restrain her, but it was too late. The gun went off with a deafening retort, and Rosie was thrown backward with the force of it. At the same time, Captain Overton clutched his chest then, with a look of dawning surprise, pitched face forward onto the floor.

  Time seemed to stand still. Nobody moved, and it felt to Martha that, if they stayed that way, it might be as if nothing had happened. As if the captain were not lying on the floor with a slowly spreading crimson puddle beneath him. As if Rosie were not raising a shaking hand to her lips and turning stricken eyes to her cousin’s face.

  The spell was broken as the gun clattered to the floor, and with a strangled sob, Rosie hurled herself into Martha’s arms.

  “You’ve killed him.” Sergeant Daly turned to Rosie, his eyes widening in horror. “You’ve killed the captain. It was cold-blooded murder.”

  “No.” Mr. Delacourt rose to his feet, moving to his daughter’s side. “Dear Lord, you cannot believe that was her intention.”

  The sergeant thrust him aside and made a lunge toward Rosie. Beau, sensing that his mistress was in danger, roused himself from his position on the hearthrug and hurled himself at the sergeant, pinning him to the floor. As he struggled to shake off the dog, Tom hauled the sergeant to his feet by the front of his red coat. He crashed his fist into the young man’s face, knocking him unconscious, before dropping him back to the floor.

  “Go and get Jack and Fraser,” he instructed Harry as he knelt beside Captain Overton, turning his lifeless form over onto its back. “Martha, help me here, please.”

  Jack and Fraser burst into the room minutes later, alerted already to the situation by the sound of the shot and by a brief outline from Harry.

  “It was an accident.” Rosie’s voice was little more than a whisper. Her face was as white as the lace at her throat. Jack drew her into the circle of his arms. “I meant to warn him, to give you time to get away. I never meant to kill him.”

  “He is dead, nonetheless.” Tom stepped back from the body. He looked over at the sergeant. “And we have a witness. Sergeant Daly over there saw everything.”

  “Then we must make sure our fine sergeant here doubts his own eyes.” Fraser’s voice was decisive. “First things first. Let us get him trussed up and out of here so that we can lay some plans. Tom, d’ye have some rope? Help me carry him, Jack. And while we’re about it, this room is no place for a corpse. Martha—” he paused, realising his error, “—I mean, Miss Wantage, will ye no take Miss Rosie into the breakfast room and see if there is a wee drop a brandy to warm her? And maybe take one yourself?” His smile was reassuring, and she let out a soft sigh. Fraser would make it right. Somehow she knew he would.

  It seemed to take an age before the men joined them in the breakfast parlour. Rosie had passed through tears and shaking to a state of shocked numbness. She seemed comforted to have Jack near again, however, and he held her icy hands in his to warm them.

  “The cellars around here have seen a wide variety of prisoners these last months.” Fraser rubbed the back of his head reminiscently.

  “What is your plan?” Jack asked.

  “This Sir Clive ye speak of, he saw me at the stables the other day. He heard me speak so he knows I’m a Scot. Mr. Delacourt and Harry must let it be known that I have been holding ye all hostage. Ye were all too afraid of me to do aught but follow what I told you to do. Of Jack there is to be no mention. It must be as if he was never here.”

  “I will say nothing of the sort,” Mr. Delacourt objected. “I’ll not malign you in that way, Fraser. You have been a perfect gentleman in your dealings with us.”

  “Whisht now, you must do as I say in this, sir. It matters nought what anyone thinks of me. It’s Rosie we’ve to think of. Ye’re to say I have been holding ye all against your will ever since the stramash at Swarkestone Bridge. Tonight, when the soldiers came, I donned the disguise of a woman. ’Twas while I was wearing that guise that I shot the captain. When I am gone, you must release him and tell him all of this. Tell him Tom clouted him before I could shoot him as well.”

  Jack gave a snort of laughter. “You’d have the sergeant believe he mistook you for Rosie?”

  “And have you a better plan to put before us, my fine lord? Especially since Mr. Delacourt here will confirm that Rosie and Martha have been away for the last two days visiting friends in the northeast. Ye must insist that Rosie was’nae here when the captain was shot.”

  “Ah, now I see what you mean. If he cannot produce Rosie to support his claim, he cannot prove it. That settles it,” Jack said. “We must set off for the border at once and, married or not, Rosie must come with us. We have to get her away from here, sir. Tonight.”

  “But what of her reputation if she goes with you while you remain unwed?” Mr. Delacourt’s face was ashen with shock.

  “You need not fear for her, Cousin Henry.” Martha surprised everyone, including herself with her next words. “She will be safe. I guara
ntee it…because I will go with them as well, as her chaperone.”

  For Martha, the first two days of their journey had passed in a bleak blur of misty northern landscape. By the time they had gathered together what they needed for the journey, the midnight hour had been upon them. On leaving Delacourt Grange, they had travelled through the darkness and long into the next day until Derbyshire was a distant memory. Crossing the vast shire county of Yorkshire had taken several days, during which they had avoided the main turnpike roads and followed the canal-side tracks that led them past endless forests and dark, brooding hills. In determined silence, they had pressed onward through Durham. Now, as darkness was coming around again, they were on the soil of the ancient borderland where both Jack and Martha had been born. A light drizzle had welcomed them into Northumberland, and this had now become a steady downpour. The horses were bone tired and so were the four travellers. Jack had insisted on this strange, zigzag route across the country so that he could pass close to his estate at St. Anton.

  “Since I am a wanted man, I cannot very well march up to the door of my ancestral home and announce my presence,” he said, with a trace of sadness lingering in his voice. “But I would like to know that things are going well on the estate in my absence.”

  Mr. Delacourt had provided funds for the journey as well as horses, and almost a week after they left Delacourt Grange, they clattered wearily into the courtyard of a coaching inn in the medieval coastal town of Bamburgh. Fraser had chosen this humble place, pointing out that they could not afford to draw attention to themselves by spending time at one of the more prestigious inns along the main road into Scotland. Despite the humble exterior of the hostelry, Martha thought she had never seen anything quite as beautiful as the golden glow of the lighted sconces that beckoned a welcome in the doorway. Jack, with the natural authority of one born to a title, took charge and went inside to bespeak rooms and food. Fraser helped Rosie and then Martha to dismount.

  “Ye look exhausted, lass.” His voice was low so that only Martha could hear.

  She gave a quiet laugh and shook her head. “Don’t concern yourself about me. It is an odd circumstance, but I have become accustomed of late to managing with very little sleep.”

  He groaned in response. “Stop it, lass. Ye’ll have me dragging ye off to a barn and taking ye quick and rough to get rid of the ache I have for you in my loins.”

  Her own breathing quickened instantly in response. “You’ll not hear me complaining, Scotsman,” she murmured, breaking off the exchange abruptly as Jack came back to them.

  “The horses need rest, so I have taken rooms here for two nights. I know you want to be over the border as soon as we can, Fraser. But it will do us no good to wear our mounts into the ground before we even reach Hadrian’s Wall. It means we will have to kick our heels here tomorrow, but I intend to take Rosie to view St. Anton Court, the house she will one day call her home.” He took Rosie’s arm and they went inside.

  Martha was about to follow them, but Fraser forestalled her with a light grip on her elbow. “How far are we from your own home, lass?”

  “A mile or two, no more.” Her voice was quiet.

  “What is your wish for the morrow?”

  She thought for a moment. “I would like to go there,” she said, raising her eyes to his face. “But with only you for company, if you please.”

  “It shall be as you desire.” She wished, not for the first time, that she could read his expression when he looked at her in that way.

  The food was good, but Martha was so drowsy that she could not have said, ten minutes after the meal was cleared, what it was she had eaten. Within minutes of tumbling into the bed she and Rosie shared, she had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next day dawned bright and cold. The crisp Northumbrian air blowing in off the sea and over the moors carried with it a scent of salt and heather that reminded Martha of her childhood and brought back bittersweet memories.

  “Will you mind very much if I go with Jack to see his home at St. Anton?” Rosie asked her as they ate fresh bannocks for breakfast. “It is a long walk, but he said there is a spot on the hillside where we can look down on the house undisturbed. That will mean leaving you with Fraser for much of the day, and I know how much you dislike him.”

  “I will endeavour to tolerate his presence,” Martha said calmly.

  It was the strangest feeling, she thought later as, wrapping her cloak around her, she led Fraser across the village green. As if she was straddling both the past and the future. Northumberland was her past. Ahead of her, just across Hadrian’s Wall, lay Scotland and the future. She looked up at Fraser. Did he feature in anything other than her immediate future? There were too many uncertainties associated with the Jacobite cause to even consider the question. As if aware of her eyes upon him, he turned his head.

  “Why do you look at me that way sometimes?” The words had left her lips before she had time to consider them.

  “What way would that be, lass?”

  “As if you don’t know how to feel about me.”

  He didn’t answer, but a slight frown creased his brow. They walked on in silence, following a route past Bamburgh Castle. This vast monument to the county’s troubled past sprawled high on a rocky perch above the dramatic coastline. Their path took them along the top of fractured volcanic cliffs that swooped down to wide, curving beaches. Over to the southeast, the Farne Islands rose out of a dour sea, while to the west, the Cheviot Hills marched north to mark the end of the Pennines. The big skies and wide, empty spaces were pure Northumberland. Beyond lay an even wilder scene. This was the approach to Scotland. Martha shivered slightly. Tomorrow she would ride into a land that she had always believed was peopled by a race of barbaric demons. She risked a glance up at the man next to her. Had knowing Fraser changed her mind about the Scots?

  “Do you miss this land at all?” Fraser asked, interrupting her thoughts, as they took a path that swung inward toward the flat plain of fields.

  “No. My memories are those the reivers made for me. This is no longer my home. Derbyshire became the place I live, but I never allowed myself to call it home. I always knew that, when Rosie and Harry were grown and no longer needed me, I would have to move on and seek a new way for myself. I have never had a place to call home.”

  His face was unreadable as he looked down at her. “Did ye never think to marry and make a home of your own?”

  The incredulous look she gave him was her answer, and she was glad that he accepted it without further comment. Walking on in silence, they came at last to what remained of Martha’s childhood home. In the ten years or more since she had last been here, no attempt had been made to repair or rebuild the farmhouse. It was still a black, burned-out skeleton, a sad monument to what had once been a happy family dwelling.

  “My brother and I used to watch for my father coming down this path each evening,” she said, looking up at the remnants of the house. “When we saw him approach, we’d run out to him, and he’d throw us up or swing us around and then pretend that he’d hurt his back.” A little smile touched her lips at the memory. “And my mother would sit just about there—by the fire—with her sewing, and she’d sing to us before bedtime each evening. They slit her from her stomach to her throat…”

  She had told herself that she would not talk about that part of her life here. That, when she came here, she would concentrate only on the good memories. So those words, when they burst from her, startled Martha as much as they did Fraser. Without warning, she hurled herself into his arms. He caught her and held her close while raw, rasping sobs shook her frame as though trying to break her in two. Fraser lifted her and carried her to a fallen tree stump, where he sat with her, rocking her in his lap and holding her head against his shoulder as if she were an injured child, until at last her grief subsided.

  “Are you sorry you came back here today?” he a
sked her much later, when she had dried her eyes.

  “No, I’m glad. I feel—” she paused, searching for the right words, “—since that day I’ve felt as though my heart was enclosed behind prison walls. I’m not sure if it’s broken free yet, but I think it may finally be planning how to make its escape.” That was the best she could do to explain how releasing the storm of emotions had left her feeling. Fraser seemed to understand what she was trying to say. She didn’t add that perhaps the process had begun some time ago. Even as long ago as that day when she had touched her lips to his in the dusty darkness of the cellar.

  Martha’s step was lighter as she led Fraser back along a different route, past the clifftop convent of St. Justine where she had been taken to recover from her injuries. “When the people from the town arrived and put out the fire, they thought at first that I was dead. Then, when it was found that I was still breathing, they brought me here. The nuns nursed me back to health. I used to wish they had left me to die.”

  “Used to?” Fraser asked, studying her face as she looked up at the uninviting convent walls.

  The wind tugged a strand of hair loose from its pins and whipped it across her face. Martha brushed it aside. “I haven’t wished that recently,” she said. “Not since the day of the battle at Swarkestone Bridge.” It was the only way she could think of to thank him. Without looking at him, she turned away and continued along the narrow path.

  Chapter Twelve

  Scotland did not do things by halves. Her scenery was wild, restless and angry with high, towering hills, slashed through with steep valleys and dark, eerie lochs. Her weather ranged in untamed moods from soaring discontent to blazing sunshine with no thought of moderation between. Every blink of the eye, every turn of the head, brought in its wake more drama than anything the English sister this ancient Caledonian land so loved to hate had to offer.

  Fraser led the way now, directing them unerringly in a diagonal path across the country from southeast to northwest. They had spent six long, harsh days riding through glens blanketed in white, dotted here and there with stony grey cottages clinging high on bleak hillsides. The crisp scents of pine, heather and frost perfumed the wind. Stormy clouds choked the blue from the sky, and ice lay patchy and hard on the ground. At night they rested in the homes of clansmen sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. These stony-faced people welcomed Fraser and Jack with pleasure and regarded Martha and Rosie with a tight-lipped suspicion that deepened to hostility when they heard their English accents.