by Mary Daheim
Gosford’s Daughter
Mary Daheim
Seattle, WA
Camel Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
For more information go to: www.camelpress.com
www.authormarydaheim.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. While parts of the story deal with actual events, occurrences, and historical figures, it should in no way be construed as factual.
Cover design by Sabrina Sun
Gosford’s Daughter
Copyright © 1988, 2015 by Mary Daheim
Originally printed by Avon Press under the title Passion’s Triumph
ISBN: 978-1-60381-963-3 (Trade Paper)
ISBN: 978-1-60381-964-0 (eBook)
LOC Control Number: 2014957746
Produced in the United States of America
Dear Reader:
Why does any author write a sequel to a story that appears to have already been told?
The characters, that’s why. At least in my case. Over the course of what was originally 850 manuscript pages and I don’t know how many years to create them, I became so immersed in Dallas’s and Iain’s Frasers that I couldn’t get them out of my mind. Love’s Pirate (reissued last year as The Royal Mile) was my first published book. In fact, it was the first book I’d tried to get published. Frankly, I was curious to see what happened to them—and to their family—in later years.
Quite a lot, it seemed. The Frasers lived in perilous times, especially for the Catholic minority. When we left them at the end of the first book, they’d sought sanctuary at Gosford’s End, in the far north of the Scottish Highlands. To be candid, I wanted to find out how Dallas and Iain had fared during those turbulent years of James VI’s minority. All things considered, they’d done rather well, mainly by keeping a low profile.
But that couldn’t last forever. Not with the turbulent Scots and their history of clan feuds. As with all my historical books, I stayed closed to fact. Oh, yes, some of the real figures would get involved with my fictitious characters. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be a story to tell. And I assure you there is. I hope you enjoy going along for the ride in the Frasers’ later adventures.
—Mary Daheim, 2014
Author’s Note
Since Mary, Queen of Scots, clung to her French heritage and used the French spelling of Stuart, I’ve followed suit. In the case of others connected with her house, I’ve used the more familiar Scottish spelling of Stewart.
PART ONE
1585-86
Chapter 1
The pebbles at the bottom of the burn glinted copper in the afternoon sun; the silver flash of the salmon broke water. Sorcha snapped her fingers in annoyance. She knew she should have come prepared to fish. The salmon going upriver from Beauly Firth were of a good size and wholesome color.
Tucking her faded serge skirt beneath her, Sorcha knelt at the burn’s edge, savoring the dark earth’s peaty smell, letting her heavy black hair swing free a scant inch above the rippling water. Two more salmon darted by, swimming effortlessly against the current. The pair must weigh at least a stone, she calculated, enough to provide supper for her parents, two brothers, and her sister.
Not that Iain Fraser’s family would go hungry without the fish. Lord Fraser of Beauly had made a comfortable fortune from his seafaring enterprises, both legal and otherwise. Though it was whispered that Lady Fraser had done her best to spend his profits, they lived an affluent life in a fine home near Inverness. Too affluent, Iain Fraser often reminded his offspring; it was well for all of them, including Sorcha and her sister, Rosmairi, to learn survival should it ever be necessary.
The lessons were lost on Rosmairi, however, whose gentle nature precluded fishing or hunting. As second son, Rob felt compelled to keep up with his adventuresome older brother, Magnus. Yet Rob’s heart never seemed quite in league with his arm when he sent the arrow soaring into a fine stag’s neck or was asked to deliver the dagger’s death blow to a wounded boar.
But Sorcha had taken to the hunt like a hound to the scent of fresh meat. “ ‘Sons of the hounds,’ ” her mother, Dallas, had often quoted, “ ‘come and get flesh.’ ” It was her MacKintosh clan motto, and Dallas Cameron Fraser often recalled it to her elder daughter. But Lady Fraser’s tongue also had a sharp edge that was as legendary in the Highlands as the voluptuous attraction she retained into middle age and as acclaimed as the book learning she’d passed down to her children. Sorcha loved and admired her mother, but at seventeen, it was embarrassing to say so. Indeed, only that afternoon, Lady Fraser had lectured her daughter on her unkempt appearance. Still smarting from her mother’s rebuke, Sorcha thought of reprisals.
By chance, another silver flash cut through the water, giving Sorcha inspiration. Her green eyes glinted as she stood up quickly, reaching under her serge skirts to rip off her tattered petticoat. The fish was only a few feet away, moving smoothly over the copper-colored pebbles. Timing her movements perfectly, she leapt into the rippling burn, plunged her arms into the cold water up to her elbows, and ensnared the salmon in the folds of white cloth.
Sorcha staggered in the water, her feet slipping on the pebbles; the fish fought for its life inside the lace-edged trap. It was of handsome size, and fought fiercely, tail thudding against Sorcha’s thighs, head trying to force its way back under water. Sorcha dug her heels into the peat between the pebbles and gritted her teeth.
The fish’s obstinacy matched her own. Its lurching movements became more frantic, and Sorcha almost lost her balance. “God’s teeth!” she swore under her breath, but at last she managed to wrap the salmon securely in her petticoat. Its movements slowed at once. Sorcha caught her breath, regained her balance, and carefully made her way out of the burn and onto the rock-strewn verge.
Weary from her exertions, she collapsed on the damp ground, hands still clutching at the heaving fish. Through the flame-colored leaves of the plane trees, she could make out the chimney pots of Gosford’s End some three hundred yards away. She wondered if she could haul the fish that far, but the ominously slow pace of its breathing told her it was too late to put it back in the burn. She had no cudgel, but a jagged rock lay within reach. Sorcha grasped the stone and, summoning all her waning strength, dashed it against the bulge in her petticoat. The salmon quivered and went slack. Sorcha let out a heavy sigh and pushed the thick black hair from her face. The sun was beginning to set behind Gosford’s End, out over the great green glens to the west, and the air had suddenly grown chill. Sorcha got to her feet, bent to pick up the fish, and, with caution, carried it toward her family home.
Dallas Fraser was seated in her favorite armchair, a French import with ivory brocaded cushions. At her feet were three of their servants’ children, two boys and a girl, all about ten years old, receiving instructions in grammar. All four stared at Sorcha as she entered the room with her muslin-wrapped burden held out like a sacrificial offering.
“Pray excuse my interruption, Lady Mother,” Sorcha said with unwonted deference, “but I’ve brought fish for supper.” Without preamble, she marched to her mother’s chair and unrolled the muslin, dumping the bloody salmon at Lady Fraser’s pearl-gray hem.
“Good God Almighty!” shrieked Dallas, leaping to her feet as the three children yelped in astonishment. “Get that wretched thing out of here! Sorcha, are you daft?”
Sorcha gave her mother the most innocent of limpid-eyed gazes. “I merely wanted to make up for my contentiousness this afternoon.”
Sorcha stood aside as the three children wrestled with the slippery salmon. At last, the two boys managed to carry it between them, and doing their best to salute Lady Fraser with brief, clumsy bows, left the sitting room, with the little girl trailing behind.
After the door had closed with an irritating creak, Dallas turned to her daughter. “I suppose you think I’ve lost my sense of humor?” But Sorcha noted that her mother’s anger was waning. Though she was at least an inch taller than Lady Fraser, her mother seemed to tower over her, an intimidating silver-clad figure not unlike an ancient image of Saint Margaret of Scotland in the chapel at Beaufort Castle. Yet there was nothing saintly about Dallas Cameron Fraser. If ever a woman seemed rooted firmly in the rocky soil of Scotland, it was she. And like the native heath, Dallas seemed to thrive on adversity.
For a brief moment, Sorcha saw Dallas not as just her mother, but as a woman. Reflecting on her parents’ past, Sorcha considered how Lady Fraser had grown up as a tutor’s daughter, and had been left impoverished upon her father’s death. She had been determined to provide a living for herself, her two sisters, and a pair of young nephews. Dallas had made a strange bargain with a man named Iain Fraser, whose dual role as courtier and pirate had been matched only by the mystery that had shrouded his birthright. Dallas had parlayed her knowledge of Fraser’s piracy into a profitable if seemingly loveless marriage. But what had begun in brazen blackmail had ended in mutual passion. And Fraser had finally learned that he was the son of King James V of Scotland, the first of that profligate king’s bastard sons, and thus a rival to the ambitions of James Stewart, Earl of Moray, and acknowledged illegitimate half brother to Mary, Queen of Scots.
After Mary Stuart had been deposed by James of Moray, Iain and Dallas and their two sons had moved north to Inverness to escape the vicious intrigues of the court. They had also fled from persecution of the Catholic minority. While Iain was not a religious man and Dallas was more worldly than devout, both held fast to the old faith that had been uprooted by James of Moray and other staunch Protestants. For the past eighteen years, Lord and Lady Fraser had lived in relative peace at Inverness, bringing their two daughters into the world, creating a gracious home overlooking the River Ness, and only occasionally venturing south to Dallas’s beloved Edinburgh. Fraser had given up piracy for commercial trade. Or so he insisted, though Sorcha knew from her mother’s ironic glances that perhaps not every cargo had been secured by honest means.
Still, such allusions only added to Iain Fraser’s mystique in the eyes of his eldest daughter. And lawful or not, the lengthy trips at sea had bequeathed the burden of raising their family to Dallas. While quick tempered and sharp tongued, she was essentially not a disciplinarian. It had been left up to Fraser to restore some semblance of order to his unruly brood between voyages. But to be fair, Sorcha also knew that it had not been easy for her mother to carry a disproportionate share of the children’s upbringing.
Even as she stood before her mother, the tension evaporated between them. Dallas, in fact, had gone to a side table to pour herself a glass of wine. Sorcha flopped down onto one of the pillows vacated by the children.
“I suppose you were vexed by my lecture about your appearance,” Dallas said, settling not in her armchair but on one of the pillows next to Sorcha.
Sorcha sighed. “Who do you think is going to see me, some poacher who’s more grime laden than I?”
Dallas wagged a finger in her daughter’s face. “It’s not a matter of grime, but of attending to your toilette. You’re no longer a bairn, Sorcha, but a woman.” She gazed down at her goblet, and a faint smile touched her lips. “I used to be rather careless about such niceties myself. Before I met your father.”
“You were?” Sorcha’s round-eyed look was now genuine. “Weren’t you always modish?”
“Modish!” Dallas all but spat out the ruby claret. “I’ve told you a thousand times, we were poor! I had two dresses before I married your father. Two!” She made the number sound vulgar. Dallas put the wine goblet down on the Moroccan carpet and rested her hand on Sorcha’s arm. “Now consider, you’re quite bonnie, with those big green eyes and your olive skin and that wavy black hair. Closer to beauty than I ever was, and never mind comparing yourself to Rosmairi’s red-gold locks and petal-pink complexion, you’re just as different from her as Magnus and Rob are from each other.”
That was true enough: like Sorcha, Magnus had inherited the dark coloring of his parents, but both Rob and Rosmairi had taken after their royal grandfather. Still, at fifteen, it was Rosmairi who drew the admiring stares of the local lads, whether they be Fraser kinsmen or sheep herders returned from their shielings. But Rosmairi turned to stone if one of them spoke—even George Gordon, the braw young Earl of Huntly, who caused her to heave great sighs of yearning. Sorcha was puzzled as to why her sister grew so tongue-tied. “What’s the mystery, Ros?” she’d asked a dozen times. “Laddies like George want to talk of hunting and fishing and throwing the caber—and of themselves. Especially themselves.”
But Rosmairi would only turn more pink than usual and shake her red-gold head. Hopeless, Sorcha would think, and knew instinctively that her mother agreed.
Somehow, Sorcha had managed to lose the thread of Dallas’s discourse. Only the last few words caught her attention: “… Then, after Magnus’s marriage to Jean Simpson, your father and I have agreed to concentrate on yours.”
Sorcha’s jaw dropped. “God’s teeth! What of Johnny Grant? I thought the matter was decided.”
Dallas waved her hands, the dying light catching a huge diamond set in silver. “Don’t curse so, Sorcha. Johnny isn’t suitable. Indeed,” she added, getting up and going to a small, ornate silver casket where she kept her correspondence, “Johnny has written us the most appalling letter.” Dallas unfurled the parchment and straightened it with a bat of her hand. “Heed this, Sorcha. ‘Being that my grandsire is in poor health and that upon his departure from this vale of woe, I shall take on the burdensome duties as Laird of Freuchie, it will be incumbent upon me to choose a right-minded bride. This decision comes not lightly to me, but is made after much soul-searching.’ ”
Dallas raised flashing eyes from the letter. “You see—the witless wretch refuses a Catholic wife. Snaggle-toothed viper!” She flung the letter aside.
Sorcha sat very still, trying to absorb this shattering news. All her life, there had been a number of comforting certainties; it would snow in winter, the flowers would bloom in spring, the salmon would spawn in the Ness—and she would marry Johnny Grant. It was an ideal match, rooted in old if uneasy alliances with Dallas’s MacKintosh clan. The Grants’ native ground lay to the east and west of Fraser country, making marriage more feasible than war. Sorcha’s dowry included a large parcel of land around Stratherrick’s wild yet arable ground.
As for Johnny Grant, he was a personable, honest, intelligent youth, who—despite her mother’s scathing remark—suffered from no worse a physical impairment than slightly crooked front teeth. Indeed, Sorcha found his fresh blond appearance rather attractive, especially since he had grown old enough to sport a jaunty beard. He was the same age as Sorcha, but had been left fatherless three years earlier, forcing him to grow up before his time. Unfortunately, the result was stodginess rather than maturity. While he visited Gosford’s End no more than twice a year, he and Sorcha always found it remarkably easy to resume their camaraderie. Marriage to Johnny Grant seemed natural, comfortable, even inevitable. Until now.
“Is this Johnny’s idea?” Sorcha demanded as anger began to overc
ome shock.
Dallas sat down on the cushions. “I don’t know. The present Laird of Freuchie—as well as Johnny’s father—always favored the match.” She paused, casting a speculative glance at her daughter. “Mayhap seeing himself about to inherit the Freuchie lands and title, he is inclined to demonstrate his independence.”
The green eyes glittered. “Or has found some other bride he thinks more comely?” Sorcha’s words were tinged with bitterness.
“More Protestant,” Dallas sniffed in response. “Your father and I would wager that young Johnny is casting his lot with the ruling majority.”
Over the years, the Protestants in Scotland had become more firmly entrenched. Queen Mary’s son, James VI, had been but a babe when his uncle had put him on the throne in his mother’s place. James of Moray had carefully groomed little King Jamie to love the Presbyters and loathe the Church of Rome. Only now, Sorcha reflected, as Jamie grew from boy to man, was he beginning to demonstrate that while he might be an unwavering Protestant, he was learning to use one faction against the other. Yet the Catholics were clearly a minority, having lost ground even in their former Highland stronghold. It was no wonder that Johnny Grant was eager to show his allegiance to the reformed religion. But for Sorcha, it was no comfort.
She leaned toward her mother, chin jutting. “Will Father avenge this insult?”
Dallas actually retreated a few inches on the cushions. “Insult? Oh—well, nay, you know how he feels about unnecessary bloodshed. Besides,” she added hastily, seeing the fire in Sorcha’s eyes turn to ice, “there was never a formal betrothal. It was all … just understood.”