by Sara Bennett
“Then we must stop him. You must stop him!”
“I have promised to help you, madam,” he said impatiently, “but even I cannot make a miracle.”
“I am paying you!”
“Can you pay enough for a miracle?”
“If I must.”
He laughed, half in frustration, half amused.
Meg leaned forward, intent upon his eyes beneath their slashing black brows. His eyes narrowed on her own, and the smile faded from his lips. A long, red curl slipped from its pins and fell, soft against her cheek. She ignored it, her fingers clasped tightly together, as she concentrated upon his face and what she was saying.
“I do not want to marry him. He may be urbane and charming on the outside, but there is something cold inside him. Something brittle. Something…menacing. I think it is true, what Shona says—he feels a need to break a woman’s spirit. I do not like him. I do not trust him. He frightens me. Surely in such circumstances any agreement would be rendered invalid?”
“Only if you can prove he really did murder his wife.”
“But we cannot prove that, unless Shona speaks out!”
“I know, ’tis the word of a common Highland woman against a duke. The odds on believing her are not high, Lady Meg.”
“And to put her in such danger…”
“Even so, it may be the only way.”
“But—”
“Of course, if you were to—” If you were to marry someone else, the Duke would no’ be able to force his own marriage on you.
Gregor stopped abruptly, shocked, staring at her. Marry someone else? He cleared his throat, and his gaze dropped away, unable to meet any longer the confused questions in her own. He reached for his claret and took a sip, and cleared his throat again. What in God’s name had possessed him even to think such a thing? Marry someone else? Who? Who could they find to stand against a man like Abercauldy? And would Meg, so finicky when it came to a bridegroom, marry someone else anyway?
And who was this “someone else”?
He took another sip, his hand shaking. He was playing a game with himself. Because he knew who it was, aye, Gregor knew very well who this hypothetical man was….
Meg was still staring, bemused, though she had drawn back, and tucked the loose curl behind her ear. “What?” she demanded. “What is it? What were you going to say?”
He shook his head, but then, as if he could not help it, he looked at her once more. The intensity of his stare seemed to catch and hold her fast. Her lips, reddened by the strawberries, parted, and for a moment he struggled with the mad urge to kiss them.
“I had a thought, but it will not do,” he said with quiet and deadly seriousness. “It will not do at all, my lady.”
Meg hesitated, clearly still curious as to what he had been thinking to make him react so, and then reluctantly she let it go. Her green silk gown shimmered in the candlelight, the gauze scarf slipping to show the full swell of her breasts above the square bodice. He wanted her to straighten it, to cover herself modestly again, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts.
Gregor finished his wine with a gulp. At least he had not spoken the words aloud. At least he did not have to worry about extricating himself from such a blunder as that. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had laughed in his face, or ordered him from the house….
She picked up another strawberry.
Suddenly Gregor couldn’t take any more. He rose abruptly to his feet.
“I would like to see the general now.”
Meg rose with a noisy rustle of silk, obviously startled by his haste. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”
He strode to the door, opened it, and waited for her.
Glancing at him nervously, she passed through into the Great Hall, hurrying to the staircase. “Follow me, Captain Grant. We will go together. I, too, would very much like to hear what my father has to say to you.”
He hardly heard her. He was in the past again, sinking back in time with each step he climbed. The general. There were memories in those two words, painful memories he had held prisoner for many years, just as the young Gregor had been a prisoner. But now those memories had broken free….
“And how is young Gregor Grant today?”
Gregor lifted his head. The other men in the cell shifted to make way for the general, most of them good-naturedly, one or two grumbling. The general was a regular visitor to the gaol, taking an interest in the prisoners, speaking with them, offering to get news home to their loved ones. He did a fair job of it, in Gregor’s opinion, even if some of the others said he was not worth spitting upon, because he had fought on the side of the English king in the 1715 Rebellion.
No, Gregor decided, the general was a just and fair man, which was more than the Jacobites had expected to find when they were led here in chains after the Battle of Preston. The general may have fought against them, but it was their ideals he disliked, their politics he disagreed with, not the men themselves.
The general seemed to have a particular fondness for Gregor. It stemmed from the fact that Gregor’s father, who had come to the prison with his son, had died here. Apoplexy. He had died in Gregor’s arms, unable to speak, staring wildly, hardly aware of those around him. Gregor had been distraught; the general had stepped neatly into the shoes of surrogate father.
“Will you have a game of chess with me this evening, young Gregor?” The general stood on his heels, rocking back and forth in the small space allowed him by the men who sat and crouched and knelt. He was beaming down into Gregor’s wan and dirty face, as if there were nothing odd in such a scene.
Gregor knew he had lice, but everyone else had them too. The conditions in the prison were worse than anything he had seen in a Highland hovel. Indeed, most Highland hovels were palaces compared to this. The General had commented adversely on the state of the place, he had complained to the governor, he had even written to parliament. No one cared. They were Jacobites after all, rebels, and in the eyes of most of the population, they deserved what they got.
Gregor had grown used to living within sight and hearing of twenty other men, but he enjoyed the general’s visits. His only other escape was within his own mind. He could take himself off to Glen Dhui whenever he wanted to. His memories of his home were so clear that he could recall every curve in the hills, every patch of heather, every stone.
He took himself off to Glen Dhui often.
“Thank you, sir, I would like to play chess this evening,” he said now, politely, but without any real warmth. He did not like to be singled out like this, but neither would he give up his chess evenings with the general because some of the others didn’t like it.
“Remember what he and his like stand for! A friend of German George who calls himself our king, that’s what he is, Gregor. Spit in his eye, laddie!”
“Aye, he’s German Georgie’s man.”
“Mabbe he likes ’em young, huh? Has he ever tried to kiss you, laddie?”
They all said things like that, although MacIlvrey was probably the worst. MacIlvrey was bitter, turned half mad by what had happened to his wife and child when they were left behind, after the beaten Jacobite army fled into the north.
Their words made Gregor feel angry and sick, but he would not be drawn into a fight. He pretended to listen to their arguments and the coarse jokes, and after a time they let him be, allowed him to go off without further trouble. Sometimes he pretended to grumble, as if he didn’t reallywant to go and play chess, but it was just a ruse. The evenings away from this crowded, smelly cell were like paradise, the peace and warmth of the room the general used as his chamber on such occasions were almost as good as dreaming of Glen Dhui.
Sometimes the general would pour him a glass of Rhenish, and expound on the state of Scotland. Sometimes he would try and persuade Gregor to his point of view, never realizing that his protégé had made up his own mind, long before he was taken prisoner, that the Stuart cause was not for him.
But loyalty to his fath
er and the other prisoners kept him silent.
“Good, good!” The general beamed now at his acceptance, his genial smile making the creases in his face sink deeper. He had the bluest, most direct gaze Gregor had ever encountered. It seemed to see straight into his soul, and yet it was not invasive. It was comforting.
The general was looking down at him. They didn’t see it coming. Suddenly MacIlvrey rose up behind him like a man-mountain, all six foot five of him, and put his hands around the general’s throat.
“I’ll kill ye, ye Sassenach bastard!” he shouted, and began to squeeze.
The guards were at ease outside the door. There had never been trouble before, everyone seemed to accept the general. The men in the cell were either too startled to do much, or ambivalent about the whole thing. Gregor saw what was about to happen, and only Gregor acted.
He came around the general like a whirlwind, fists flying, feet kicking. Through sheer luck he landed a blow to the unhealed wound on MacIlvrey’s leg, and the man gave a keening sound and let the general go. The general fell, gasping, choking into Gregor’s arms, his face the color of a pomegranate, just as the guards came running.
For a time there was confusion. Gregor was thought to be the attacker, and he was taken to another cell, jostled and struck, his eye blackened and his lip bloodied. It was only some time later that the General, able at last to speak, had explained how Gregor had saved his life, not threatened it, and came himself to see the boy released from his confinement.
“I thank you,” he had said, taking Gregor’s hands in his, with eyes a mixture of pity for the boy’s state and anger that it was so. “I’ll not forget this, Gregor lad.”
Gregor ducked his head, and felt the tears in his eyes. He would not cry. He had not cried since his father died in his arms.
But the general seemed to understand. “Don’t worry, lad,” he said quietly, “I’ll get you out of here.”
And so he had.
When Gregor’s sentence was read, stating he be sent to the American plantations as indentured labor, the general moved heaven and earth, and somehow found a sympathetic ear. Gregor was pardoned and released. He was free. Even if freedom hadn’t meant very much to him then, with time he came to realize that the general might well have saved his life.
A fair exchange.
“Captain?”
Gregor blinked, looked down at the curious face turned to his. Meg was watching him, and he wondered how long he had been standing here in the shadows, lost in the past.
Her green silk gown shivered with color and light, as though she were under the ocean. With her hair and her strange, pale eyes, she was even more like a mermaid than before.
“Morvoren.”
“Captain Grant?”
He had not realized he said it aloud. Embarrassed, bemused, he shook his head. He was tired, that was all. It had been a long, long day and his arm was aching. He needed to get this over with so that he could sleep. Tomorrow did not promise to be any easier, but it may feel so if he was rested.
“My father awaits within,” she was reminding him. “Are you ready?”
Gregor nodded, and she reached for the door and opened it, and led him quietly into the room.
Chapter 12
Inside the general’s room it was dim, with only a single branch of candles. There was a meager fire in the hearth, and the window was ajar, the smell of the glen wafting in. The man who sat by the sill was not stooped; he sat straight as a poker, his gray head turned slightly toward the sound of their entry.
“Meg?” he said, and his voice was so familiar Gregor felt dizzy. As if he were walking on some uneven, unsafe surface that might at any moment give way and plummet him down into darkness.
“Yes, father. I have Captain Grant with me.”
“Good, good. Bring him here to me.”
Meg glanced back at Gregor, where he stood just inside the door, and raised a questioning eyebrow. “Captain Grant?” He realized then that he was behaving strangely, and followed her down the long room.
“Your daughter tells me you haven’t been well, sir,” he spoke as he drew closer. “I am sorry to hear that.”
The face turned to his went still with shock, and then all its creases and grooves deepened in a broad, beautiful smile. “Gregor! I’d know your voice, even now.”
“I hope it’s deepened a wee bit, sir.”
He had reached the general now, and looking down into his face realized he might be more worn—older certainly—[ ]but he was still the same man he had been twelve years ago. The blue eyes turned up to his were staring directly at him.
“I am grateful that you have come back to Glen Dhui with my daughter. Meg? Have you informed him of our problems?”
He turned, head cocked to one side, listening rather than looking for Meg. The action was unusual and Gregor frowned, suddenly watchful.
Meg took a step forward, brushing her fingers against her father’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture. “I am here, father. And yes, I have told him.”
“Good, good.” The general nodded and then sighed. He looked up at Gregor again, but now his gaze was slightly to one side of Gregor, aimed beyond him, into the corner of the room.
“I dinna realize,” Gregor said hoarsely. “I am so sorry, sir. I dinna realize you could not see….”
The general lifted a hand to stop him. “A foolish complaint, Gregor. It began as a cloudiness, a fine mist across my sight, but as time passed it grew thicker. I am in a permanent fog now, but I have my memories, and they are as clear to me as they ever were.”
“Father,” Meg began gently, “what is it you have to say to Captain Grant? It is very late, and the day has been a long one.”
The general nodded. “Very well, Meg, very well. Do not be impatient, girl. I will speak to Gregor alone.”
Her pale eyes narrowed. “I think it is my right to hear what you have to say,” she said woodenly.
The general snorted. “Right? You are my daughter, Meg, and therefore you obey me. I will speak to Gregor alone. You have brought him to me, and for that I thank you, but now what must be said is between us men.”
Color whipped into her cheeks, anger flared in her eyes, her mouth trembled on the verge of harsh words, or sobs, Gregor wasn’t sure which. He felt an acute sympathy for her, a sense of fellow feeling. It seemed most ungenerous of her father to send her from the room like a child, after all she had been through to please him.
“Perhaps Lady Meg might stay,” he ventured.
“No.” The general’s mouth closed in a stubborn line, and suddenly he looked very much like his daughter.
Meg flashed him a look, but Gregor shrugged his shoulders. What could he do? He had no rights here, not over the general and certainly not over Meg.
Meg didn’t value such lukewarm support. With a final glare in his direction, she strode from the room, slamming the door behind her. They heard her footsteps moving away at a rapid pace.
The general chuckled softly, admiring of his daughter’s temper. “Meg is a termagant. A fighter. No wishy-washy miss, my girl, eh, Gregor?”
“I would not call her a wishy-washy miss, sir, no.”
The general chuckled again at the dry note in Gregor’s voice. “You like a bit of spirit, do you not? I cannot imagine you wanting a woman who jumped to your every word, Gregor. Might as well marry one of your soldiers, eh?”
“You’re right, General Mackintosh.” Gregor pulled a chair closer. He was bone weary, his arm was throbbing, and he felt dizzy in the head. If the general did not get to the point soon it was quite likely he would fall over, and they would have to call the servants to drag him, feet-first, to his bed.
The general said, with the uncanny perception of a blind man, “Before you sit down, Gregor, there is some whiskey there that isn’t too bad. They have been making it in a still near Cragan Dhui from the dawn of time, but you would know that. Pour us both a dram, would you? Meg waters it down; she thinks I don’t know. She thinks I
drink too much of it. She tries to make me drink that devilish tea that is becoming all the fashion now—psst! Well, maybe it’s true, maybe I do drink too much whiskey, but what else is there to do to help pass the long nights?”
Gregor poured the drinks, and then sat down in a chair facing the old man. The whiskey was raw and strong, and its warmth coursed through him, reawakening his tired brain. He watched the general drink his own, seeming to manage with ease despite his lack of sight. For a moment they sat companionably by the window, as if they hadn’t just met after so long apart.
“So you know about the Duke of Abercauldy?” The general’s voice was weary, resigned, repentant.
“I know as much as Meg has told me.”
“Ah, Meg is it?” A smile curled his mouth, but soon faded again. His head bowed gloomily, his straight back slumped. “I believed he was a fine fellow; I realize now that was what he wanted me to believe. I was easy meat for that crow, Gregor! Feeling sorry for myself, feeling old and worn out. He puffed me up with tales of my own vanity and self-importance, and in return I agreed to let him marry my daughter! Even knowing she would be furious with me for doing so. I told myself I had her best interests at heart, that eventually she would thank me for it.”
He shook his head mournfully and continued. “I do worry for her. That is my excuse, though it is a poor one. I worry what will become of her when I am gone. She will be alone, a little lamb surrounded by the circling wolves. I convinced myself that the duke would protect her, cherish her, and give her everything she deserved. I wanted to see her happy and content, Gregor. Is that so terrible?”
“I can understand that, sir.”
“Can you?” the old man demanded eagerly.
“Aye, ’tis not such an outlandish wish for a father to make.”
“Meg was so angry I don’t think she spoke to me for a fortnight,” he went on, the misery seeping back into his face and voice. “And she wept in her room night after night. It broke my heart, Gregor, I can tell you. If I ever thought to be a strict and stern father to her, then that was my undoing….