Joan Wolf

by The Scottish Lord

  Margaret turned to look at her, a desolate look in her dark eyes. “No one can help me, Frances.”

  “Darling, don’t look like that.” Frances crossed the room to put comforting arms around her young sister-in-law. “It can’t be as bad as that.”

  “It is. If I marry the man I love I’ll become a pariah to my family. And I will never love anyone but Jamie. You may not believe me, but it is true.”

  “I believe you,” Frances said quietly.

  Something in the quality of her voice pierced through Margaret’s self-enclosed misery and she raised her eyes. “Yes, you would,” she answered slowly. “It’s always been Ian for you, hasn’t it, Frances?”

  Frances’ head was averted and there was something almost austere in the pure lines of her profile. “Yes,” she said.

  Margaret’s eyes were steady on her. “But you married someone else.”

  Frances turned to face Margaret’s dark, searching eyes. There was a look of stretched transparency about her face that Margaret noticed for the first time. She frowned in concern. “Never mind, Frances. I didn’t mean to question you.”

  “It is all right,” Frances replied in a contained voice. “Like Othello, I was one who loved not wisely but too well. I sent Ian away, an action I came to regret bitterly. I should hate to see you make the same mistake.”

  “But everything has worked out all right. I mean, you are together now.”

  “Sometimes, Maggie, you can’t undo the past. The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season. If the right season for love is allowed to pass, it may prove difficult to recapture at a later time.”

  “That’s not true for you!” Margaret cried.

  “I don’t know.” Frances said tiredly.

  There was silence in the room then Margaret asked, “Does Ian suspect about us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He has become impossible lately. He—he was extremely rude to Jamie yesterday. And Jamie has been so helpful to him about the loan!”

  “I know. He used to like Mr. Campbell very much.”

  Margaret’s face looked stark. “He must know something. Oh God, Frances, what am I going to do?”

  “Give it a little more time, Maggie.”

  “I’ll be eighteen next week,” the girl replied. Green eyes met brown in perfect comprehension.

  “Yes,” said Frances. “It would be so much nicer, though, to have your brother’s consent.”

  “I know. And Mama—how can I do that to her, Frances? She’s already lost two sons.”

  “I’ll tell you something, Maggie,” Frances said with sudden bitterness. “Love isn’t all it is cracked up to be.”

  “No,” replied-Margaret in the same tone, “it’s much more pleasant in novels.”

  * * * *

  Meanwhile the cause of all their problems was suffering from the same malady himself. He couldn’t be happy with Frances nor could he leave her alone. Nell had returned, but her presence did nothing to alleviate the strife that had arisen between him and Frances. He was domineering and autocratic and she resented it. But he could not help himself. The only time he felt she was truly his was when he made love to her. Then all his fears receded and she was once more his own sweet love. But this kind of dual life could not continue.

  The evening of her conversation with Margaret, Frances was sitting in bed reading a book when she heard Ian come into the room next door. She frowned. He was supposed to have been dining at Brooks’ with Douglas. The door to her room opened and he came in, his face looking dark against the opened collar of his white shirt.

  “What are you doing home so early?” she asked.

  “I got bored. What about you?”

  “I told you I was staying home tonight.” She had, and one of the reasons he had come back was to check up on her. He crossed the room and stood beside the bed, regarding her lazily from his height.

  “Don’t tell me you’re bored too? You’ll need to acquire a few new admirers to brighten things up. I don’t know how you are going to survive when we go home to Lochaber.”

  Her eyes were like emeralds in her translucent face. “Why are you like this?” she whispered, and clenched her hands together.

  “Like what?” he said, deliberately misunderstanding her. “Don’t you want to go home to Lochaber, Frances?”

  She closed her book and put it down. “What do you want, Ian?” she asked coldly. His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer to her when she said sharply, “No!”

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  “You cannot alternately bully me and ignore me by day, and expect to come in here and sleep with me at night. You must see that you are making life impossible for me.”

  “I thought you liked to sleep with me,” he said deliberately.

  Color stained her cheeks and her voice shook as she replied, “If you get into bed with me, Ian, it will be against my will. I cannot scream and fight you, not with our daughter sleeping two doors, down from here. But I want you to leave me alone!”

  There was a ruthless look about his mouth. “If I leave here I have somewhere else to go,” he said.

  “Then go!” she cried passionately.

  He turned on his heel and left the room.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  But had I wist, before I kist

  That love had been so ill to win,

  I had lock’d my heart in a case o’ gowd

  And pinn’d it wi’ a siller pin

  —ANONYMOUS

  A week after Margaret’s conversation with Frances she and James Campbell met at a ball given by Mrs. Drummond Burrell. He asked her to dance and they waltzed in silence for some minutes before he said in a stifled voice, “Margaret, I am going out of my mind. I must talk to you.”

  Her black lashes lifted and she shot a fleeting look at him. He was very pale, his eyes sparkling like blue diamonds in his set face. Her breath began to come faster.

  “All right,” she said.

  “We can slip out into the garden. Will you be too cold?”

  She shook her head and he began to circle the dance floor purposefully until they were by the tall French doors. With scarcely a break in tempo they moved through the doorway and out into the garden.

  Frances, on the other side of the room dancing with the Marquis of Bermington, saw them go.

  They stood together under the stars and James Campbell of Ardkinglas said fiercely, “I cannot go on like this any longer. I love you. I want to marry you. Let me talk to your brother!”

  “He will say no,” said Margaret shakily. “You’ve seen the way he has been acting these past few weeks.”

  There was a tense silence and then Campbell picked up her long-fingered hand. He kissed it passionately. “Marry me anyway,” he said.

  “How can I?” Margaret answered brokenly.

  He felt so frustrated he wanted to smash his fist into Ian Macdonald’s face. “The Campbells are good enough to guarantee his loan for him, but not good enough to marry his sister. Is that it?”

  “Jamie!” She flung herself into his arms and he could feel her slender body shaking with sobs. “It isn’t just Ian.”

  He rested his lips against her hair and closed his eyes. He knew that. It was Margaret herself, bound by ties of family and of clan and of loyalties he, who was Highland, perfectly understood. If her brother, the head of her family and her race, gave her permission to marry a Campbell, it would make such an action possible. If he did not, their marriage would be a breach of clan loyalty that was almost impossible to one of Margaret Macdonald’s upbringing. He could not ask it of her.

  “I will talk to him,” Campbell said through his teeth. “We have to know. We can’t go on like this much longer.”

  At this the door to the ballroom opened and Frances came out into the garden. She had Douglas with her. James Campbell released Margaret slowly and they turned to face the new arrivals. “I think Margaret should return to the ballroom, Mr. Campbell,” Frances said
. He looked for a minute into her sympathetic eyes and then he nodded.

  “Lady Lochaber is right, m’eudail,” he said softly to Margaret.

  Douglas put a gentle hand on his cousin’s arm. “Come along, Maggie. Let me get you something to drink.”

  She drew herself up to her slim height and nodded. Without looking again at Campbell or Frances she allowed Douglas to lead her back into the ballroom. He procured them both glasses of champagne and found them seats in a little recess off the anteroom. Margaret sipped her wine, then raised her eyes to say something to Douglas and was struck by the look of despair on his face. “Douglas!” she cried. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Then as she continued to look at him in concern he smiled painfully. “I was just remembering a scene very similar to the one just now in the garden.”

  “What happened?” she asked softly.

  “Nothing remarkable. Then it was Ian and Frances who left the ballroom together just as you and Ardkinglas did tonight?”

  “They slipped out into the garden too?”

  Douglas laughed and the sound shocked Margaret. “When did you ever know Ian to do anything surreptitiously? No, he stalked into the ballroom and virtually dragged Frances off the floor with him. I had to go and bring her back, just as we came to fetch you tonight.”

  “Oh.”

  He turned to look at her. “Do you love that young man, Maggie?”

  “Yes. I love that young man.”

  “Why, then, does he not ask for you?”

  “He wants to. He will. But I don’t think Ian will give his consent.” She was staring down into her lap. “He has changed. There is something wrong between him and Frances. I don’t know what it is, but Frances is deeply unhappy. She doesn’t say anything but one can tell.”

  “I know,” he answered bleakly.

  “He is seeing that ridiculous Condessa,” Margaret said furiously. “How can he be so stupid? You would think that any man lucky enough to have Frances ...”

  She broke off as Douglas raised a hand briefly to his eyes. “Douglas!” There was an appalled silence as Margaret stared at his shielded face. She swallowed, “You love her, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, and when he did his voice sounded perfectly normal. “Forever, it seems.”

  She reached out to cover his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” There was a pause and then she asked directly, “Does she?”

  He shocked his head. “You have seen it. Your mother has seen it. But Frances—she has never really noticed any other man but Ian. I don’t think it has ever occurred to her that the rest of us are flesh and blood.”

  “What about Robert Sedburgh?”

  “Perhaps Robert Sedburgh. She could not fail to notice him. But she never looked at him the way I have seen her look at Ian.”

  “Well, the looks she is giving Ian these days are hardly loving,” Margaret said bracingly. “And I don’t blame her. He is behaving atrociously.”

  “Something is bothering him. Let me talk to him, Maggie. Perhaps I can help.”

  She smiled at him. “If Ian will listen to anyone it will be to you, Douglas. Thank you.”

  ****

  Frances and James Campbell remained in the garden for a few minutes after Margaret and Douglas left, and then they returned together to the ballroom. They stood for a moment inside the door, and Campbell bent his head to say something to her. In response she smiled and briefly placed a comforting hand on his arm. A shadow loomed over them and they both looked up to see Ian’s great height standing between them and the rest of the room. His black brows were drawn together, his dark face looked distinctly menacing. “Where were you?” he demanded of Frances.

  She raised her chin. “In the garden,” she responded coolly. “It was stuffy in here and Mr. Campbell kindly escorted me out to get some air.”

  He put a hand on her arm and her eyes, long and very green under dark lashes, met his steadily. There was a warning in those eyes, clear to Ian and to the watching Campbell. Do not touch me, they said. Noli me tangere. Deliberately he slid his hand down her arm and then raised her hand to his mouth. He turned to look at James Campbell, such open hostility on his face that Campbell involuntarily stepped back a pace. Murder was looking at him out of Ian Macdonald’s eyes and Campbell, dimly, began to perceive what it was that was wrong with the Earl of Lochaber.

  “But where is the Condessa?” Frances said. “You mustn’t let us keep you from her side, Ian.”

  His eyes were coal black and dangerously narrow as they moved from James Campbell back to Frances. The two pairs of eyes met and locked and Frances suddenly shivered. Her nails drove into the palms of her hands but she refused to turn away from the challenge she read in his look. “I’ll see you later,” he said softly and turned away leaving her alone with James Campbell by the window.

  Frances began to shake, and James Campbell considerately moved to shield her from the eyes of the rest of the room. Ian had left the ballroom, walking past the Condessa as if he had not seen her. As, indeed, he hadn’t. “Are you all right, Lady Lochaber?” Campbell asked in concern. He was shaken himself by the intense unspoken emotions of that brief scene he had just witnessed. He could not understand how Lochaber could behave so brutally to his serenely beautiful and gentle wife.

  With heroic effort Frances forced down her rising temper. She schooled her face to an expression of aloof reserve and looked at James Campbell. “I am perfectly fine, Mr. Campbell,” she said evenly.

  But she could not disguise her eyes and Campbell, looking at their brilliant, glittering green, experienced another shock. Panther’s eyes, Douglas had called them, and it was a description James Campbell would have agreed with. He thought, suddenly, that he would not like to cross swords with Frances Macdonald. Unexpectedly he felt a flicker of sympathy for Ian.

  * * * *

  Ian walked right past Margaret and Douglas without seeing them either. “Dhé!” said Margaret. “What is wrong with Ian?”

  “I don’t know, Maggie,” returned Douglas. “I think we ought to find Frances, though. She is the only person with the power to make him look like that.”

  Frances, however, was uncommunicative when asked about Ian. “Perhaps he had an argument with the Condessa,” she said dulcetly. And only for an instant had the daggers shown in her cool green eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The long love that in my thought doth harbour,

  And in mine heart doth keep his residence,

  —SIR THOMAS WYATT

  Frances stayed at the ball until almost two in the morning. She was silent in the carriage on the way home, but she had been more silent than usual these past few weeks, so Margaret was not unduly worried. She herself was not in the mood for chatter.

  Ian had not yet arrived home. When she received this information from the night footman Frances merely nodded. Ian had not been home until early morning all this week and she knew it. She knew, also, where he was. The fact that she herself had sent him there did not make her blame him any the less. All week she had treated him with gentle, cold courtesy, shutting him out as effectively as if he had been a stranger with whom she had no desire to become better acquainted. He had not tried to come near her again. But tonight. . . . She remembered his words and for the first time in their marriage, she locked the connecting door between their rooms.

  She was very tired, worn out with nerves and pregnancy and the lateness of the hour. She closed her eyes while her maid brushed her hair and only opened them when the woman lifted the heavy, palely gleaming mass to plait it. “Leave it, Mary,” she said wearily. “I’m too tired to sit here any longer.”

  “Very well, my lady,” Mary answered obediently. She took the rich velvet robe that Frances handed her and watched as her mistress, clad only in a thin white hand-embroidered nightgown got into bed. “Goodnight, my lady,” she said then.

  “Goodnight, Mary,” Frances said sleepily. As the door closed behind the m
aid Frances snuggled down under the covers. In ten minutes she was asleep.

  Ian came home at three. He had gone to Brooks’ after leaving the ball and the intervening time he had spent drinking. Drinking and thinking of Frances. By the time he reached Mount Street he was in a savage mood. He went upstairs to his bedroom, allowed his valet to help him off with his coat, and then suddenly dismissed him. He waited until the man had gone down the hall before he moved with decision to the door that connected his room to Frances’s.

  It was locked.

  For a stunned moment Ian didn’t realize what was the matter. Impatiently he rattled the knob, but nothing happened. Slowly it dawned on him. She had locked him out.

  White-hot temper seared through his veins. He put his shoulder against the door, testing. Then, with three strong thrusts that sounded thunderous in the quiet of the sleeping house, he forced the door open.

  Frances was sitting up in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, her wide eyes fixed on the door. “What do you think you are doing?” she asked in a low, trembling voice.

  He was standing in front of the open door, a candle in his hand. With his free hand he reached behind him to close the door. It crashed, shuddering, into its frame and he walked a few more paces into the room, his eyes on his wife. He held the candle up so he could see her better and then said softly, “Come here.”

  Suddenly Frances was afraid. She had never seen him this angry before, and the fact that his voice had been carefully controlled only made him seem more dangerous. “Ian,” she said. “Please ...”

  He put the candle down carefully. She could see that his fists were clenched. Her heart was hammering. “I said ‘come here,’ “ he said again in that same frighteningly level tone.

  Slowly she got out of bed until she stood, barefoot, on the cold floor. He didn’t move and she came across the room to stand before him, her eyes enormous in her pale face. She was afraid of what he was going to do and said the only thing she could think of to stop him. “Ian. Please. I’m going to have a baby.”