by Mary Daheim
Crossing herself, Sorcha frowned. What had she asked God to do for her? How could she expect Him to hear her prayers if she had sinned by surrendering herself to Gavin Napier? Worse yet, she had all but coerced Gavin into sin as well. He had struggled against temptation, while she had yielded to it. And now they were paying the price of disobeying God.
Except that God was merciful and forgiving, Sorcha reminded herself, edging off the bed and going to the window. Surely her sin had grown out of love, not—as with Marie-Louise—out of hate. Marie-Louise was a harbinger of death and destruction, killing a king, Armand’s family, even the babe she and Gavin had conceived. How could God let such a vicious creature prosper? Why hadn’t He struck her down long ago, before she could blaze such a trail of mayhem and murder?
The white landscape was dotted with prints made by men and horses: Father Adam and his companions; the Fraser servants; and even now, Rosmairi, Armand, and little Adam, romping in the snow. Through the leaded glass, Sorcha could just make out their voices, raised in happy banter. Wee Adam, who had learned to walk in the past two months, was tumbling about, sprawling and sliding until his heavy clothing was almost as white as the ground itself.
A bittersweet smile touched Sorcha’s lips as she watched the merry scene. Was it possible that she and Gavin would never be together to see their own child frisk about under the loving gaze of both his parents? She turned away from the window, trying to tell herself there must be another solution to her problems. Perhaps that was where the answer lay, not with God, but with herself. She recalled once having flippantly told Gavin Napier that justice shouldn’t be left to the Lord, since He had enough to do already. If that were true, if Sorcha actually believed her own words, then it was a waste of time waiting for divine intervention.
At least, she told herself, going back to lie down on the bed, Father Adam hadn’t brought the news she’d dreaded most—that Gavin was dead. As for the papal decree, she should have paid more attention to its wording. Vaguely, she recalled that her mother had indicated it didn’t seem to make sense. Maybe it could be appealed; if Pope Innocent were indeed a dying man, they might seek another ruling after a new Pope was elected. Yet time was running out. The baby would be born in June. Sorcha drummed her fingers on the counterpane and wondered if Rob would be able to return to Rome in the spring.
Moments later, the sound of voices and the jingle of harness could be heard outside. Sorcha hurried back to the window, where she saw Rosmairi and Armand, the baby high on his shoulder, greeting a troop of men. The tallest of the company was Gavin Napier; her father and the Earl of Moray flanked his weary black gelding, with Magnus and Johnny Grant at the rear of the little van.
Ever mindful of the precious burden she carried, Sorcha again made cautious haste down the central stairway. Dallas was already in the entrance hall, with Cummings trailing in her wake, like a longboat being towed by a galleon. Iain Fraser was the first through the door, bracing his feet for his wife’s welcoming onslaught. Before Sorcha could set foot on the bottom stair, the hall was filled with at least fifty men, a dozen Fraser servants, and several barking dogs. From his unrivaled vantage point, little Adam burbled with excitement, while the snow dropped from the men’s boots and clothing to melt in small puddles on the flagstone floor.
Still clinging to the balustrade, Sorcha took a deep breath. As relieved as she was to see her father and her brother safely home, she saw only one person in that cluster of humanity. Gavin Napier, still clad in chain mail and helmet, with the snow clinging to his beard and the heavy gloves frozen almost stiff, was making his way through the crush of people.
“My love!” Napier breathed with a big grin as he lifted Sorcha into his arms almost as effortlessly as Armand had picked up little Adam. He held her so that their faces almost touched. “You look wan,” he said, the grin fading. “Surely you knew we’d prevail?”
“Oh, aye, I had great confidence in all of you.” She forced a smile and lowered her lashes. Through the soft wool of her winter gown, she could feel the caked snow on his gloves, and it made her shiver. He brushed her cheek with his cold lips, then set her on her feet.
“I’m not suitable for a loving reunion,” he said with a rueful little laugh. “Nor is this the place.” He turned swiftly to look at the others, but most of the gathering had focused on Iain Fraser and Moray, who seemed to be taking turns telling how George Gordon had suddenly decided to withdraw his troops from Darnaway.
“It seems,” said Fraser dryly, “that he preferred the company of Patrick Gray to ours. I can’t imagine why—Magnus and I are much more amusing.”
He offered his listeners that familiar crooked grin and squeezed his wife’s shoulders. “To be candid,” he continued, as Dallas reached out to bring Magnus into the family group, “Darnaway is too difficult to assault in winter weather. Mayhap we should have kept Gray as a hostage against attack when spring comes.”
“We gave our word otherwise,” Moray remarked, while Johnny Grant scowled at his side. “Two Frasers … and the Laird of Freuchie,” he added hastily noting Grant’s unhappy expression at being relegated to the background, “are thirty times the value of one Master of Gray.”
Moray’s words evoked a hearty cheer from the little crowd. Young Adam squealed deliriously, bouncing in his father’s firm grasp. The gathering was breaking up into smaller groups, with some of the men already being led away by Cummings to the great hall, where food and drink would be served as soon as Catriona could marshal the kitchen forces. Magnus was inquiring after the welfare of his wife, Jeannie, who was eight months gone with their second child and had been unable to travel to Gosford’s End to wait out the vigil with her husband’s kin.
Napier slipped an arm around Sorcha as they discreetly climbed the stairs to her bedchamber, where he washed up and changed clothes. Now, away from the noisy rejoicing of the Fraser household, Gavin Napier pulled Sorcha into his arms and kissed her hungrily on the lips. She responded with affection, yet Napier sensed she was holding back—her body was stiff, her fingers lax around his neck. The assertive passion Napier had come to expect and delight in was missing, supplanted by a detachment that mystified him.
At last, he released her mouth and held her at arm’s length. “Is my memory playing tricks on me?” he asked with a wry little smile. “I seem to recall leaving behind a much more hot-blooded lass.”
The unintended irony of his words made Sorcha’s mouth twist upward with humor that had nothing to do with mirth. Gavin Napier had ridden north from Edinburgh with no idea that his seed had borne fruit in Sorcha, or that Pope Innocent would rule against him in Rome. Now, in the wake of his triumphant return to Gosford’s End, Sorcha, so normally glib, couldn’t find the words to tell him the shattering news.
With his hands still resting lightly on her shoulders, she met his gaze. “Your brother’s here,” she said in a flat voice. “He arrived from Beauly Priory no more than an hour ago.”
Napier’s big hands slid down from Sorcha’s shoulders to hang awkwardly at his sides. “Is he ill? Has he worsened?” The peat-brown eyes clouded over with anxiety.
Sorcha shook her head. “Nay, he’s the same.” She swallowed hard, lilting her chin as if to give herself the inner courage she had suddenly found so uncharacteristically lacking. “He received word from Rob that Pope Innocent has refused to grant the annulment.”
Napier’s big body seemed to shrivel under the weight of her words. He was silent for some time; the only sound in the room was the ticking of the little clock on the mantelpiece. When he finally spoke, his voice was sharp and jerky. “It’s impossible. We … Adam, Rob and I … we prepared such a reasonable, logical case.” Napier lapsed into silence again, his hands now clenched into fists. Then, like an unexpected crash of thunder during a winter snow storm, he whirled about, battering the oak paneled walls until the very room seemed to quake under his assault. “Sweet Christ!” he cried, “does the Church itself—the Church I’ve risked all to defend—opp
ose my life, my love, my very salvation?” Seemingly spent, he leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
Hesitantly, Sorcha edged toward him. Her throat felt constricted, her hands like lead. How could she tell him about the child when he was already so distressed? Later, perhaps, after he’d had time to absorb this dreadful blow.
She had come within a foot of where he stood, now rubbing his beard with agitated fingers and striving to collect his thoughts. Instinctively, Sorcha put a hand over her abdomen. Under the artful draping of her gown, the curve of her belly could not be detected yet, and Sorcha was thankful.
“Why can’t we plead the case again?” she asked, still not daring to touch him. “It’s said that Innocent is very ill.”
Napier regarded her with concentrated effort. His self-control was all but regained, though the hunter’s gaze held that haunted look Sorcha had not seen in some time. “It’s possible.” He moved away from the wall, reaching out to hike a lock of Sorcha’s dark hair in his fingers and tuck it under her pearl-edged bandeau. “It would be the greatest folly to give up now.” From the depths of his inner strength, he resurrected a smile that held more confidence than he could justify. “We’ve waited this long to become man and wife. What does it matter if we must bide a few more months?”
“None.” The single syllable dropped between them like a rock in an empty bucket. Sorcha licked her dry lips and tried to form them into a cheerful expression. “Shouldn’t we go down to the banquet hall? They must be serving by now, and I know you’re ravenous.”
“I am at that.” The white teeth showed in the dark beard; the brown eyes glinted with yearning. Napier hooked his thumbs in the strips of brown braid that marched down Sorcha’s bodice, molding the outline of her breasts. “Food can wait, though,” he asserted, pulling her close and kissing her forehead. “ ’Tis you I’ve hungered for all these months.” He searched her face, noting the unwonted pallor and fatigue that showed up around her eyes. “You’ve been worrying too much, my love. Surely you knew we’d manage to outwit George Gordon.”
“Oh, aye, I never really doubted that.” Sorcha nodded with less enthusiasm than she would have wished for. She felt his hands slip down to cup her breasts, now grown even more full and ripe with pregnancy. Yet she flinched at his touch and saw the sudden surprised mixture of pain and puzzlement on his face.
“Sorcha—what is it?” He leaned backward, though his hands remained on her breasts. “Do you find me … repugnant?” The idea struck him as so unlikely, so incredible, that he laughed outright. “Good Christ, sweetheart, what troubles you?” Noting the strained, grave expression, he sobered immediately. “Is it Marie-Louise? Has she done something to turn your heart against me?”
Sorcha vehemently shook her head and put both her hands over his. “Never that. Never. I love you as much as before.” But his question had summoned up the vital information she had forgotten to relay. Her own troubles had seemed so overwhelming that they had all but erased everything else from her mind. “The King gave a letter of Fire and Sword to Marie-Louise to convey to George Gordon. I tried to follow her from Edinburgh, but I … I lost her.”
Napier was frowning, not just in dismay over this most recent development, but in perplexity at his beloved’s failure to keep up with Marie-Louise. Sorcha was as expert a horsewoman as Marie-Louise. Not for the first time in his life did Napier wonder if his estranged wife’s self-proclaimed magical prowess was all too real.
“Did Marie-Louise somehow obscure her path?” Napier asked, finally taking his hands away from her breasts to clasp her fingers in his.
Put off by the question. Sorcha groped for words. “It was … snowing,” she explained, truthfully enough. “I suspect she reached Strathbogie or whichever Gordon stronghold she was heading for a week or more ago.”
Since Gordon had obviously not known about the letter of Fire and Sword during the encounter at Glenlivet, it was apparent to Napier that Marie-Louise had sought the Earl of Huntly at one of his more distant residences. Yet even this foreboding news didn’t explain Sorcha’s lack of ardor. “I suspect you have much more to tell me,” Napier said, the words etched with meaning. “Shall we talk now, or should I see how my brother fares?”
“Father Adam is no doubt eager to see you,” Sorcha replied too quickly. Seeing the rejection well up again in the peat-brown eyes, Sorcha squeezed his fingers. “Gavin, my dearest love, don’t think I’m being coy or changeable. But right now, with the news from the Pope being so fresh, I can’t … I just can’t give myself to you.” The green eyes pleaded for understanding. “Surely you—of all people—can comprehend that?”
Taking in the pale, unhappy face and fervid speech, Gavin Napier knew he should be able to accept her feelings in good faith. She was, after all, quite correct about his own earlier ambivalence. Yet now, coming from Sorcha, he found her reluctance almost impossible to take in. It was out of character; it was wrong; it struck a jangling, harsh chord, like a trumpet blaring over the soft, mellifluous strings of a harp.
Yet he had no choice but to accede to her wishes. Even if they had not been under her parents’ roof, Gavin Napier was not the sort of man to force his embrace on any woman—not even the one who had sworn to love him through eternity. Nor was he the type to conceal the pain. There had been a time—long years, in fact—when he had kept all his emotions, even his identity, hidden behind a curtain of cynicism, arrogance, indifference, even deceit. But Sorcha had managed to break through that aloof, dispassionate barrier. Though Gavin Napier might mask his feelings from the rest of the world, Sorcha’s love had stripped him of pretense.
Or so he had thought—until now. For Sorcha herself was concealing something, and for the first time he sensed an erosion of the mutual trust they had shared. He could beg and badger her to confide in him. He could threaten and bellow. He could even shake the truth out of her by sheer brute strength. But that would defeat his own code of honor. Instead, he disengaged his fingers from hers and shrugged.
“I’ll try to understand,” he said in a dull, heavy voice. Then he turned his back and was gone.
It cost Sorcha dearly to attend the celebration in the great hall that evening. By the time she arrived, another fifty or more Frasers had made their way through the drifting snow to applaud the return of Iain Fraser. At least half the company was well-nigh raucous with drink, and even Johnny Grant wore a silly grin above his long, whiskey-stained beard. At the far end of the table, Gavin Napier sat next to his brother. With the exception of Iain Fraser himself, they seemed to be the only two whose wits were not befuddled by strong spirits. Even Magnus and Armand were engaged in a seemingly hilarious arm-wrestling match, which Dallas and Rosmairi eyed with wary good humor.
Sorcha squeezed into a place at the long table between a Fraser she didn’t recognize and a Grant she had seen several times in Johnny’s company. She was exchanging pleasantries with them both when she realized that the Earl of Moray was sitting almost directly opposite, his handsome face neither drunk nor sober. Tentatively, she lifted a hand to wave at him. He smiled back broadly, making lazy arcs with his whiskey cup. His mouth formed several words that Sorcha was unable to make out over the din. The great hall smelled of roasted fowl, meat fat, overheated bodies, drying wool, wood smoke, wine, and whiskey. Though Sorcha’s nausea had passed now that she was in the fourth month of her pregnancy, she took one look at a pig’s head wearing a garland of cranberries and fervently wished she’d had the sense to stay in her room.
After toying with a bit of Flemish cheese and a glass of Rhine wine, Sorcha excused herself, aware that Moray’s eyes followed her from the table and that Gavin Napier’s did not. Napier had moved from his brother’s side to sit with Iain Fraser. The two men were speaking earnestly, no doubt of the King’s letter of Fire and Sword. As Sorcha escaped through a side door, she wondered if her father would announce this latest piece of news to the assemblage. Probably not, since—assuming any of them were still capable of reasoning—it would d
ull the festive tone considerably. Most would spend the night within the walls of Gosford’s End, bedding down on the floor of the great hall, sleeping like bricks until well past dawn. That would be soon enough to inform the men of Fraser and Grant that George Gordon was not only still in the King’s good graces but that he had been empowered to exact Jamie’s justice. The recent triumph over George Gordon would turn to ash, like the giant logs that even now burned down in the great hall’s vast fireplace.
Back in her room Sorcha poured out her heart to Ailis, who listened with stoic patience, evincing surprise only at the news of Pope Innocent’s refusal to grant an annulment. “You’ll find a solution,” Ailis said when Sorcha had finally worn herself out with talking. “Justice is sometimes slow,” the maid went on in her brusque, yet sympathetic manner, “but eventually, it runs its course.”
Burrowing down between the sheets to find the places touched by the warming pan, Sorcha took comfort in Ailis’s words. As she closed her eyes in search of sleep, she remembered back to her childhood, to a sunny April morning when she and Magnus had disobeyed their mother and gone too far into the forest. After an hour of fearing that they were utterly lost and would be eaten by wolves, they had discovered a gurgling spring. Excitedly, they began to follow the trickle of water until it joined forces with other springs and became a tumbling burn, hurtling down the hillside. Yet once it reached level ground, in the shadow of the tall firs and pine trees, the stream seemed to backtrack, to flow in circles, to wind among the evergreens like a tangled skein of thread. The children had plodded through marshland, across a meadow where the dew still clung to the long grass, fighting their way among the blackthorn bushes, the leafless branches catching at their clothes. At last, when they were weary and exhausted and the sun was riding high in the flawless April sky, they found that the burn flowed heedlessly into Beauly Firth, not more than half a league from the manor house. So it seemed that this was how her love for Gavin wound its way in search of a happy ending—through darkness and sunlight, through fear and hope. Yet someday, like those long-ago children following the burn that led them home, Sorcha and Gavin must finally come to rest.