A Bound Heart

by Laura Frantz

  As he was seldom at the Thistle, no seat was familiar, and he wished himself back in his book-lined study, boots up on a leather stool. Betimes the tavern left him wanting a bath in the nearest loch.

  “Ho, yer lairdship!” Several voices rang out, and Magnus nodded a greeting, intent on the captain’s corner.

  An extra chair was brought along with a pint of ale.

  “So what brings ye?” the captain asked.

  “News of the run.”

  “Three hundred ankers sent inland.”

  “Minus the one in my study.”

  “Aye. The Philistines are off the island and the spy’s been dealt with. We merely lashed him at Lark’s request.”

  “She requested ye lash him?” Magnus queried, eyebrow raised.

  “Nay.” The captain laughed and called for another pint. “She requested we do nothing, lamed as he is. But ye well ken some punishment must be dealt. The man has earned a few stripes for loose lips.”

  Magnus took a long drink of the heady brew. The knowledge sat like gravel in his gut. As laird, he was concerned foremost with every islander’s well-being, yet here he sat listening to news of a lashing that was more likely vengeful beating.

  “’Tis Lark that most concerns me,” Magnus said.

  The captain’s smugness shifted to concern. “She’s well?”

  “Aye.” Magnus still felt the warmth of her singing in the stillroom. He cut to the chase. “I dinna want her involved in any more free trading.”

  “Nay? I asked her to leave yer stable doors unlocked this last time. But she refused.”

  “As she should.”

  “Given they’re yer stables and yer horses, I think it matters little. I’ll not forget how ye were caught violating the Dress Act a twelve-month ago. No fine was forthcoming. Ye walked away.”

  “Free trading isna looked on so kindly as being kilted. Ye’ll likely hang.”

  The captain shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Then leave Lark out of it.” Magnus underscored his words with a direct gaze that the captain did not hold.

  Eyes averted, the captain swallowed more ale. “They wouldna hang a woman.”

  “They would indeed. I’ve seen it done in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.” It had been a public spectacle of which he wanted no part. Though the woman was unknown to him, he’d felt sick to his boots.

  “We’re to sail for the Isle of Man once the weather clears.” The captain recovered his good humor. “East India and Dutch goods. Virginia tobacco—fine pigtail and coarse roll. Spanish brandy from Barcelona.”

  “I’d rather leave the spirits alone. ’Tis a form of slavery. Besides, there’s talk in Edinburgh of sending more cruisers into the channel to target the Isle of Man’s smugglers who load cargo there.”

  The captain leaned back in his chair. “As I said, I’ll take my chances.”

  “Then do so without Lark,” Magnus restated in parting.

  11

  I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.

  Jane Austen

  “You’ve received a summons from the mistress.” Rhona seemed none too pleased with the unusual message delivered below stairs, which simply caught Lark by surprise.

  Wiping her hands on her apron, Lark left the stillroom and followed Isla’s lady’s maid into the castle by way of the garden door beneath the laird’s study window. Magnus stood looking down at them, book in hand and expression unreadable, or mayhap her glance at him was too fleeting to register his mood.

  The gloom of the castle was in stark contrast to the outright gaiety of the sunlit garden. Or was it because of who was in residence? Lark shook off the thought, only to have it resurface as she climbed the servants’ stair to Isla’s chambers. Behind them a door shut. In seconds a catapulting, furry creature nearly buckled her knees as Nonesuch came bounding from behind, Magnus in her wake.

  With a quiet reprimand to the collie, he took the hall to his turret room, further befuddling Lark. Something was afoot. Today the castle seemed especially weighty, even unfriendly, the servants coming and going with downcast eyes and light feet.

  A sharp rap by Rhona announced their arrival at the bedchamber door. The immense room was even darker than the hall, drapes drawn, a single, smoking candle lit. Lark felt an odd revulsion at the stale air tainted with . . . laudanum tincture?

  “At last. How long does it take you to climb those stairs?” Isla questioned with less fire than before.

  Lark stifled a hasty retort, her gaze swinging from the rumpled bed where Isla usually reclined to a settee beneath a window, her new resting place, a pug in her lap. Lark had an overwhelming urge to push back the drapes and throw open the windows. Instead she fixed her attention on a small glass bottle at Isla’s right. But ’twas Isla’s next words that most dismayed her.

  “My sleep is fitful so I summoned Dr. Burns.”

  The island’s foremost bamboozler? “Burns . . .” Lark would not even call him a physic. “He lacks training. Dr. Hunter is far more able.”

  “But he is not here, is he? I need relief. Not even your herbs will do.” Isla stroked the sleeping pug. “Don’t stand there looking at me like that. You remind me of Magnus, all fire and brimstone.”

  Rhona passed into the dressing room, tending to some task, and Lark approached the table bearing the strange bottle. “Ye must give the herbs I distilled room to work,” she said, voice soft. “They’re far better for ye than this.” Picking up the tincture, a blend of opium in wine, she held it aloft, gauging the contents in the feeble light. Fresh alarm took hold. Had the bottle been full? ’Twas now nearly empty.

  “Are the contents not made from poppies?” Isla asked. “You have the very same in the kitchen garden, am I right? Bright red ones.”

  “Those are common poppies, not medicinal ones.”

  “Then what of this talk about opium tea Cook mentions?”

  Lark nearly sighed. Cook spoke too freely oftentimes. “’Tis sometimes given to counter the most persistent aches and pains. Cook’s rheumatism and the like.”

  “Well then. What benefits Cook shall surely be of benefit to me.”

  Lark studied the bottle. “How much of this have ye taken?”

  Isla lifted thin shoulders and yawned. “Enough to make me deliciously drowsy.”

  “What does yer husband say to this?” Lark set the tincture down, unwilling to be in the middle of a family fray yet increasingly concerned for all involved.

  Into the prolonged silence came an unexpected answer. “Her husband has sent Dr. Burns away, and his dangerous remedies along with him but for this, which was hidden from me.” Passing behind Lark, Magnus retrieved the tincture, examining it with a critical eye.

  “Dr. Burns has brought me more relief than Dr. Hunter or your stillroom altogether.” Isla’s voice rose like a wave before cresting. “Would you deny me my one comfort?”

  “There is comfort to be had beyond this bottle.” Going to a window, Magnus thrust the drapes open. The sunlight pushing back the darkness was so profound Isla winced. “’Tis now July, Kerrera’s kindest month. Why not ride or walk about? See to needs in the village? Enjoy the garden I had planted for yer wedding gift?”

  Isla looked aghast at his outburst. Used to his moods, Lark stood perfectly still as a small war waged around her.

  Isla folded her arms. “Dr. Hunter prescribed complete bed rest.”

  “Even bed rest must have an end.” He handed Lark the bottle. “Lock it in the stillroom. Throw it in the sea. Whatever ye will.” Turning back to Isla, he issued a final ultimatum. “I expect ye to be dressed and in the dining room for dinner at eight o’clock, as we’re expecting guests.”

  “Guests!” She flung the word at him like a curse. “I am in no mood to entertain!”

  “Have yer maid prop ye up then.” He cast a baleful eye about the shadowy room. “Where is she?”

  “Here, sir.”

  Lark had never seen Rhona so m
eek. Head bowed, she stood in the doorway as if awaiting execution. Even Lark felt a qualm. Isla was in no condition to be at table, propped up or otherwise. She gave him a rare warning glance.

  Magnus seemed unmoved. “If yer mistress isna ready to dine at the appointed hour, I’ll see ye Edinburgh bound come morning.” To Lark, he said, “We’ll misuse ye no longer. Return to the stillroom and whatever it was ye were doing there before ye were needlessly interrupted.”

  With a nod, Lark fled the bedchamber, fire to her heels. Nonesuch sat in the hallway, thumping her plumy tail in adoration. It was for her master she waited, as if sensing his disquiet.

  Still clutching the bottle, Lark hurried out of the castle past footmen and maids and through a maze of corridors. She did not stop till she stood on the cliffside, the sheer drop making her head spin. Not a foot away was two hundred feet of air and churning surf. She hurled the bottle over the precipice and into the salty spray, wanting to do the same with Magnus’s heated displeasure and Isla’s predicament and the captain’s maddening talk of America.

  She returned to the sanctuary of the walled, sun-warmed kitchen garden but saw all that was wrong with it too. A midge-ridden bed of kale. A rhododendron broken in the last windstorm. A rusted garden gate in need of fixing. Damsel bugs in the struggling vegetables. ’Twas a woefully fallen world. She tried to return to her fermenting, but it seemed as sour as their circumstances.

  She pulled a commonplace book from a stillroom cupboard, then sought a secluded garden bench amid the bees and began searching, turning pages, the sun warming her bent head. Receipts of all sorts were penned in her hand, many told to her by her granny.

  Lord, the right remedy. Please.

  One was marked womb. Milk thistle. Raspberry leaf. Goldenseal. Was this what Granny had given her and she’d placed in a cupboard? She retrieved the bottle and uncorked it, again breathing in the scent and spilling some of the mixture on a snowy linen cloth.

  The ingredients lined up with the book’s receipt save one unidentifiable addition. Try as she might, Lark couldn’t discern it, and this was what kept the bottle cupboard bound. Till she determined just what it was, she could not share it. And Granny, sadly, could not remember.

  Magnus eyed Isla through the golden wink of candlelight. Seated to his right, she was trying her best to be polite to their guests. But failing. Her slender hand with its silver fork trembled, at least to his steady observation. ’Twas clear she had no appetite. Her troubled gaze held a glassiness he found especially troubling. The lingering effects of opium tincture?

  The only saving grace was the high spirits of their guests, so sated with food and drink—and themselves—they seemed oblivious to his wife’s fragile state. Watching her, he felt a strange thawing. For once the hard, crusted shell of his heart regarding Isla cracked enough to allow empathy in. How must it feel to be barren? To listen to conversation about guests’ children around this crowded table without comment? Though childlessness carried little of the scorn of the Old Testament, the burden was heavy to bear. And though he’d not belittled Isla himself, his silence had oftentimes been harsh.

  Had he not despised her in his heart?

  Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.

  Regrettably, theirs was no love match, though few were among the gentry. Pondering it, he brought an end to the lengthy supper, and when plates were whisked away, the ladies retired to the adjoining sitting room while the gentlemen lingered in the dining room to take up less genteel topics and their smoking pipes. Through the adjoining door he could see Isla seated on a settee, looking a bit more composed, Rhona near at hand. If nothing else, he wanted to shield Isla from the inflammatory talk of the blustering laird from Mull.

  “I’d always rather deal with sheep than people,” Hugh Sinclair said. “The crofters and cottars must go. I’ve just given notice of eviction to forty-five families.”

  Forty-five? Some two hundred souls? Magnus felt the news like a blow. “Are ye not being rash with so many?” he questioned quietly. “Denying them the right to labor and live out their lives honestly and independently on the land of their forefathers?”

  “Aye, at my everlasting expense,” Sinclair all but growled. “My plan is to convert these small crofts into larger, more profitable farms.”

  “Sheep farms? What of the very young and the very auld tenants?”

  “Let them apply to the Relief Committee. Or emigrate. Canada and the Americas are wide open.”

  “Last I heard, a great many crofters and cottars who were turned out fell victim to cholera aboard ship or were left to die on foreign shores.”

  “’Tis their choice to sail or no. They can always stay on in the cities instead. Glasgow. Edinburgh. Aberdeen.” Sinclair took a drink of brandy with one hand and then a long draw on his pipe with the other. “Mark my word, ye’ll one day do the same. There’s far more profit to be made clearing these tenants than ye’ll find maintaining them on this rocky isle of yers. How many inhabit Kerrera?”

  Magnus hesitated, aware of the equally heated side conversations of the other gentlemen swirling around them. “At last count, three hundred twenty-six souls.”

  “A small isle, to be sure. If not for Kerrera’s meager crops, ye’d be in considerable debt, so I’ve heard.”

  “Dinna believe hearsay,” Magnus replied. “Fishing is our mainstay—and sheep. Both are steady.”

  “What about all that free trading the western isles are guilty of? The dragoons are out in greater numbers, and some of the revenue men are going about in disguise.”

  “I’m now cautioning the islanders against any free trading in hopes to turn the tide against it, but ’tis a long-standing tradition amongst generations all over Britain, like it or not.”

  “’Tis smuggle or starve, that I understand. But free trading is a perilous occupation for all involved. Another reason to be rid of those islanders and thus the worry they cause ye.”

  Magnus digested this without comment, and talk turned to more mundane matters. When the men rejoined the ladies, Isla seemed more herself, waving the lace fan he’d given her for her name day and speaking of a coming fete in Edinburgh.

  For early July, the drawing room was close, the dampness beneath his collar telling. Aside from the tenants’ balls, they rarely entertained, saving most of their socializing for Edinburgh. This was an obligatory evening, hosting local lairds to discuss local matters.

  The clock struck midnight. He stood by a window once the guests retired to their rooms, Isla among them. Through the sooty blackness of night shone a tiny light from Lark’s croft. He looked beyond that to the beach, scouring every rocky outcropping and sandbar.

  Another landing by the captain was imminent, so he’d heard. Did MacPherson know of the increased presence of dragoons and tax men? Mayhap it didn’t matter. The captain showed a callous indifference to danger. Did his life matter so little? Would he heed Magnus’s warning about Lark being left out of it?

  Her light nettled him, as if it was a beacon of sorts, a piece of the coming haul’s dangerous puzzle. Leaving the drawing room, he spoke a word to his valet that he’d soon return before he trod the path to the lighted croft.

  A soft but distinct rap at the door gained him entry. Granny sat by the window, a cup of tea before her. She seemed not at all surprised by the late hour or his appearing, her toothless smile welcoming. “Come in, laddie, and have a wee rest. My rheumatism is keeping me awake.” Her gaze ran up and down him. “Yer dressed proud as Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.”

  “Guests,” he said simply, casting a discreet glance about the tiny dwelling place. No Lark?

  “She’s gone out with the howdie. ’Tis her cousin’s time.”

  Relief and disappointment pummeled him. Relief she was not a part of the coming debacle on the beach. Disappointment she was not here, eyes a-glitter, taking tea as in days of old.

  “Sit ye down.”

  He sat just as Granny got up, none too quickly, and
served him the steaming brew in a chipped ceramic mug once used by Lark’s father. The tiny cracks in the salt glaze bespoke time and constant use. The handle was large enough to fit four fingers through. Lachlan MacDougall had been burly. Braw. Before the sea had taken him and not given him back.

  Granny surveyed him with a canny eye. “Yer wearing the look ye used to as a lad when something was troubling ye.”

  “Yer eyesight’s keen.”

  “Hardly. Betimes I sense things. What weighs ye down so, m’laird? The state of her ladyship and no heir?”

  “Always.” All that was left of his line was he himself. Was it any wonder he wanted a child? The castle remained empty while a simple croft on Kerrera’s south shore was bursting with bairns, and Lark had gone to welcome another. He swallowed some tea, finding it more satisfying than all the heavy supper on crested china that had come before. “But this is different. ’Tis something I canna name. A darkness. A foreboding.”

  Usually if he felt it, he could pinpoint its source. But not this time. Not this hovering, malevolent blackness as if they were all on the verge of some unseen calamity. Some soul-shattering change.

  “Yer roots go down so deep on Kerrera, ’tis no wonder ye have a sort of sense about things. I well remember me Lachlan.”

  He set down his mug, numbed by the recollection as she continued speaking of Lark’s father.

  “The eve of his dying ye sat here just as ye are right now, looking twice as grieved, yet naught had happened yet. No news brought.”

  Twelve years it had been. Granny was right. The foreboding had been much the same. Inexplicable. Intense. A violent storm, one of the worst in the island’s history, had come out of nowhere and wreaked untold havoc. He’d felt that strange foreboding again before the death of his father in battle, his mother and sister soon after.

  Even as he thought it, the queer restlessness, that ugly dread thickened, ushering in a timely, little understood Scripture. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.