Island of the Swans (9 page)

“A Fraser Highlander is always
MacShimi’s
man,” Jane said in a low voice, using the Gaelic word for “son of Simon.” “And
MacShimi’s
men obey.”

Thomas stared down at the little mole at the base of Jane’s slender throat. He had an uneasy feeling that much of what this girl, poised on the brink of womanhood, said was true.

“Well, one thing I’ve already decided,” he said with a smile, veering away from the volatile subject of Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, “and that is, I missed you something terrible when I was away!”

There. He’d said it. Thomas
had
missed seeing her daily in Edinburgh since his return. And it was not his lifelong playmate for which he pined. He had missed her as a woman. He and Jane were children no longer, and Thomas suspected that Lady Maxwell had long been calculating the worth of her comely progeny.

As Thomas stared down at Jane’s lovely face, he wondered if she were aware that she faced a stormy future. Lady Maxwell had treated him coldly from the day he had carried the injured girl back to Hyndford Close after her accident with the apple cart. And Simon’s gruff manner whenever the name Jane Maxwell was mentioned indicated to Thomas that the daughter of an impecunious, dissipated baronet was far from the matrimonial prize the ambitious brigadier had in mind for his ward. Yet, Thomas found himself drawn to Jane like a horseshoe to a magnet since his return from the Highlands. Despite his earlier reaction to her outspoken views, he realized now as he gazed into her blazing brown eyes, that his feelings of fierce loyalty and friendship had changed to something even stronger.

Thomas let the silence settle between them. He recalled how often he had thought of Jane during the years he was away from Edinburgh. She would come to mind during those lingering Highland evenings when, after days of riding deep into the green and mauve hills above the ancient Fraser seat of Beauly and his home village of Struy, he’d slept on the ground with the sheep and cattle, subsisting on bannocks and wild berries. She was there in a quiet corner of his mind, comforting him, especially whenever he caught a glimpse of his former home, perched broken and abandoned at the end of an overgrown lane, its windows shattered like his father’s dreams.

Looking at her now, pinned beneath him, he ached to hold her in his arms. On New Year’s Eve she’d be sixteen. Lasses married at sixteen, and even younger, in the Highlands. His mind drifted back to a memory of the wild, wailing sounds made by Simon’s own piper as they echoed through Glencannich. Thomas’s throat would close with emotion as the shrill, plaintive notes clung to the fading northern sun. It was the same, heart-stopping feeling that was invading his chest this misty morning as he gripped Jane’s waist with his thighs and gazed down at her, half-buried in the straw.

Jane stared up at him, wide-eyed. He could see she was also sensing something akin to the giddiness coursing through his body. Paralyzed by the clash of feelings welling up in him, he continued to meet her quizzical stare.

“Thomas?”

It wasn’t really a question, it was confirmation.

Slowly, carefully, so as not to frighten her, he settled his weight slightly to the left of her and lowered himself onto his elbow, his right hand toying with a loose piece of straw. He smiled at her, tentatively at first, and then broadly, tracing the bridge of her nose and the lines of her lips with the prickly chaff.

“Aye, Jenny, lass,” he said quietly, lightly stroking her soft, luxuriant hair. “Everything
is
different now, ’tisn’t it? Different… and yet the same.”

With a swift movement, Jane’s arms broke from the layers of straw and came up around his back, knocking him off balance. He felt her clasp his body fiercely as it fell against her own. It had been so long since a woman had held him close. The few whose charms he’d sampled felt nothing like Jane. Her arms clamped tight around him, half child’s grip, half woman’s embrace, as she buried her head under his chin, snuggling beneath him and pushing her body instinctively toward his.

“Please don’t let Simon rule your life,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. “He’ll send you where it pleases him… where it suits his grand plan for the Frasers.”

“Jenny… ah, Jenny, love,” Thomas murmured in her hair. “no one’s going to keep us apart. Not even Simon Fraser… not even your ma…”

His bold words surprised even himself, but he knew with a certainty forged through the years of their shared childhood that there would never be another woman for him like Jane Maxwell. Somewhere deep inside he had known it when she was just six. Now that she was nearly sixteen, and he, a man, he felt like shouting it to all of Edinburgh. He bent down and kissed her with a tenderness and deliberation that sent shock waves through them both.

“I know ’tis a wee bit sudden, Mistress Maxwell,” he said huskily, “but will you one day do me the honor of becoming my bride?”

Jane reached up, tracing the line of his cheekbone with the back of her hand.

“’Tis not sudden, Thomas,” she said, her brown eyes boring into his. “I’ve loved you one way or t’other since we were bairns. ’
Tis
different now, though… the feelings that come over me when I see your dear face, or you take me in your arms—” She fell silent, continuing to stare at him as if she expected him suddenly to vanish. “I’ll be a soldier’s wife, or live in a cave in Struy Forest, but I’ll do what I have to, to have you, Thomas Fraser!” she whispered fiercely.

“You might even one day be called Lady Jane if I get back what’s rightly mine,” Thomas said half-mockingly.

“Don’t waste your dreams on that,” Jane said flatly. “I just want
you
, title or not, and I don’t care
who
tries to keep us apart!”

“We shall have to be discreet, Jenny,” he said thoughtfully, “until my Commission comes through and Simon can’t call the tune.”

“Outfox Simon?” she asked gloomily. “I don’t think him so simple a fool.”

“He’s not, to be sure,” Thomas replied, “but we musn’t arouse his or your mother’s suspicions that we plan to marry until I take my training and am given my lieutenancy. Do you think we can keep a secret for that long, dearheart?”

Jane looked as if she wanted to challenge the plan he had outlined, but, instead, she put her arms around him and pulled his body down along the length of hers. For a long moment they clung to each other, savoring the feeling of safety and warmth. A slight shuddering passed through them both as he nuzzled her soft pink ear lobe. Jane turned her head slightly, brushing his lips lightly with hers with the same curious wonderment they had felt as children discovering a nest of newborn sparrows in the arbor.

At exactly the same moment, Thomas and Jane became aware of a new sensation growing between them. It was Thomas’s turn to become wide-eyed and he stared at her, embarrassed.

“Thomas,” Jane smiled gently, “I
do
know… about what happens to men who take a fancy to a certain lass, you may be surprised to learn.… Aunt Elizabeth explained everything.” Teasing him lightly with her hips, she added in a saucy whisper, “and I did sneak out one early morn to watch when Da brought the McCullough stud to court Catherine’s pony at Monreith… so what’s happening to you now is not such a mystery to me as you might suppose—”

Thomas kissed her again slowly, experimenting with the amount of pressure he put to her lips. Jane responded immediately, sensing what moves he would make and falling in stride with him. The straw, the stable, the world enveloping them both seemed to fall away and Thomas was only aware of an overwhelming desire to press his lips to the tiny mole at the base of her throat, to touch her soft breasts beneath her gown and to meld his body into hers.

“Jenny, Jenny, darlin’ girl…” he whispered, trailing kisses down to pillows of flesh straining against her disheveled linen bodice.

“Thomas…” Jane murmured, shifting her weight in needy response to his caresses.

Suddenly, penetrating the fog of passion swirling around them both, came the creak, creak, creak of Hector Chisholm’s wheelbarrow rolling across the yard into the stable stall. Agonized, Thomas pulled away from Jane, forcing himself to listen intently.

“Shh!” he whispered fiercely, putting a finger to his lips.

Jane’s puzzled look changed instantly to one of recognition and she reacted quickly, throwing handfuls of straw over the two of them lying in the loft. They both froze in place, trying not to sneeze or even breathe. Thomas and Jane could hear, but not see, old Hector carefully piling the horse leavings into his wheelbarrow. Jane cast a desperate glance at Thomas, whose weight was becoming oppressive against her slender frame. At last, Hector put his rake in the wheelbarrow and departed, muttering about “young lads who dinna unsaddle their ponies straightaway.”

Brushing the straw from their clothes in the dim light of the stable, Thomas and Jane knelt before one another, seeing themselves reflected in the other’s eyes for the first time.

“I wanted… I wanted to…” Thomas faltered as he pulled the last piece of straw from Jane’s dark tresses.

Her hand grazed the soft copper hair peeking through the laces of his linen shirt as she flicked the remnants of hay off his chest.

“I wanted to, too,” she said simply. Then she smiled, adding with a wry smile. “I probably owe my virtue to old Hector.” She looked away briefly and then asked with uncharacteristic diffidence, “’Tis it proper to consider myself a lass who’s betrothed?”

“Aye… consider yourself as good as my wife, my Jenny of Monreith,” he replied, wondering silently what Simon Fraser and Lady Maxwell would do if they knew of how he and Jane had plighted their troth in this dark, gloomy byre. To Simon, he owed his life. The question was, how high a price would his godfather demand for it?

Five

D
ECEMBER
1765

S
IMON
F
RASER
, M
ASTER OF
L
OVAT, LOOKED FORWARD TO MAKING
his appearance at Sir Algernon Dick’s Hogmanay Ball at Prestonfield House as a newly promoted Brigadier General in the British Army. It was no mean achievement for a man whose father had been beheaded in the Tower of London by order of King George II.

Standing in the candlelight on this, the last evening of 1765, clad in his Scottish regimental uniform that he was loath to admit was now worn in service to the British crown, he admired his reflection with uncharacteristic vanity. He fingered the lacy jabot that frothed at his massive neck and admired his new kilt, all the while musing on the market value of a daughter of an inconsequential baronet.

In the weeks since he and Thomas had returned to Edinburgh from what was left of his Highland estates, Simon had made it his business to ascertain that the lad spent every free minute with that strumpet from down the road.

What a wonderful irony, Simon reflected, that the lass’s
own
uncle would provide him the means of removing Thomas from Miss Maxwell’s clutches. Indeed, Simon took pleasure in the fact that James Maxwell—a captain in the 42nd Regiment—was using his influence to secure a place for Simon’s ward in the Black Watch. ’Twas a pity, Simon mused, that his own Fraser Highlanders had been disbanded following the Peace of Paris in 1763 ending the Seven Years’ War, but the Forty-second would do nicely for Thomas—for the present. Such a lieutenancy would, most likely, result in a post for the lad in the Colonies.
The sooner Thomas was removed a safe distance from that penniless and unpredictable wench, the better
, he thought grimly.

A sardonic smile creased his own reflection. A couple of years’ seasoning in the Black Watch in North America, and young Thomas would be ready to take his place alongside Simon’s much younger half brother Archibald and the other young lads as a member
of MacShimïs
men—Fraser kith and kin loyal only to
him
! The next time a prime minister asked Simon to raise a regiment, he would do it—for a price—and most of Inverness-shire would be Fraser land once again.

Keeping time with the tip of his heavy black buckled shoe, Simon experimented with the first steps of “Miss Cahoon’s Reel.” He looked up just as young Thomas entered his dressing room.

“Well, aren’t you the fine peacock, m’lad,” he said, eyeing his ward’s new suit of buff-colored breeches and coat of brocade rust satin—all of which had cost Simon a pretty farthing. “I’ll wager all the young ladies will be praying to St. Ninian that you’ll be askin’ ’em to dance!’

“Thank you, sir,” replied Thomas, flushing slightly. “And thank you for the gift of the new clothes.”

“The better to snare an heiress, eh lad!” Simon boomed. “There’s nothing to be lost if a man
looks
prosperous!”

“Aye, sir…” Thomas replied, vaguely disturbed by the implication of his godfather’s words. “May I say, you’re looking quite magnificent in your dress regimentals,” he added, trying to steer Simon away from any specific instructions as to how he was to spend his evening.