Island of the Swans (94 page)

As soon as Jane had paid the bills from the wedding, she departed alone for Kinrara. She could think of no way—other than quizzing Lord Cornwallis, which was out of the question—of discovering where Captain Fraser and his son might be lodging while in London. Her only hope was to seek them in the Highlands.

And do what?

Jane stared out the coach window as the familiar scenery of the Spey Valley rolled by. Thomas had finally made his choice to build a life in America. Now he was widowed, but her husband was still very much alive. She was a forty-seven-year-old woman, the mother of seven children, estranged for nearly a decade from one of the most powerful aristocrats in Scotland. She lived on the slim proceeds of her sheep operation, supplemented by an allowance grudgingly granted her by the duke—and likely to be reduced now that most of the children were wed.

It occurred to her, as her eyes drank in the glorious moors blanketed in soft, spring grasses and colorful wildflowers, that she had spent the many years that Thomas had lived off and on in America in a kind of tug-of-war. All these years, the glitter of her life in the highest circles of London had been balanced by its opposite: the simplicity of an existence in the Highlands, which was dedicated to hard work, maintaining Kinrara, and to helping those who lived on Gordon lands to survive the rigors of climate and history. What had Thomas and her life to do with each other now—except for the fact that they had loved and lost each other time and again, over some thirty years? After halting their ridiculous duel, she’d sent both men off in their carriages to their respective beds, and, perhaps, that was the best place for them.

’Tis almost comical
, she thought, pulling on her gloves as the coach bumped along the familiar lane. Why had she rushed north from London? What did she hope to find? Wasn’t she better off to accept what had always seemed to be the truth about Thomas and her: that God or the Fates or the Highland Fairies had decreed that their paths should be forever separate along life’s highway?

A well-remembered turn in the road loomed ahead. Soon the chimneys of Kinrara House were visible above the larch and silver birch trees lining the gravel drive. Through the bright green leaves loomed the cream-colored walls and gray slate roof of the stately country house. Jane felt a surge of happiness every time she beheld the residence’s classical lines and graceful proportions, which were in total harmony with its rustic setting.

The carriage passed into the wooded field near the various outbuildings dotting the grounds. Jane peered down the narrow lane on her left that led to Angus Grant’s cottage. Flora had died the previous winter and Jane was anxious to see how the old man was doing, now that he was terribly crippled by rheumatism in all his joints.

A nagging worry about how she would cope without his expert husbandry pushed forward in her thoughts as she most probably would come to depend increasingly on the small, unreliable income garnered from her sheep herds.

A shaggy Highland pony was tethered outside the estate factor’s door. As the coach clattered by, Jane caught a glimpse of the door opening. A tall figure ducked past the low frame.

Quickly, Jane knocked her fan against the ceiling of the carriage, ordering the horses to halt. She flung open the coach door, commanding the driver to proceed to the stables without her. Puzzled, he did as he was told, shrugging his shoulders at a duchess who would visit her factor before resting, after such a grueling journey from London on a quagmire of muddy roads soaked by a series of relentless spring showers.

But on this day, the warm sunshine was casting shafts of golden light through the tall trees as Jane trod swiftly along the spring moss lining the path to Angus’s stone croft. Then, she halted at the cottage gate, staring wordlessly at the man who had shut the door behind him and was walking steadily toward her. Without a thought for who might be watching, she bolted the last few steps separating her from Thomas and flung herself into his arms, feeling she would surely die if he didn’t hold her.

At the sight of him, the burden of leaden disappointments that so long had seemed to weigh her down, simply melted and drained away. She was conscious only of the joy she felt to be embraced by him, to be engulfed by the blessed comfort of his being. Her tears felt sweet on her cheeks.

Thomas had come back to Kinrara.

“You’re not carrying a pistol today, are you, hinny?” Thomas murmured into her hair, holding her gently.

“I found your letter six years ago,” she whispered, ignoring his jest. “I came to you in Struy, but it was too late…”

“I know… I know,” he soothed. “I’ve been back to that dreary, forsaken place and found the parchment gone. I guessed you’d come to me. My heart broke that I wasn’t there to greet you.”

“You waited three years for me in such desolation,” she said, unable to stem the tears coursing down her cheeks, painfully recalling his crumbling crofter’s hut at the end of the weed-strewn lane. “You’ve always had to wait for me, Thomas… and I for you. We’ve spent a lifetime like this!” His face swam before her as a fresh well of tears began to fill her eyes. She was swept along by an overwhelming urge to try to explain to him the opposing currents that had constituted her life all these years, a life she felt was beyond his comprehension.

“I simply couldn’t come to you after that night I left you at Simon’s. It wasn’t my feelings for Alex that stayed my hand, but the—”

“Your children,” he interrupted gently, holding her against the wide expanse of his chest and stroking her hair. “Until I had bairns of my own, I don’t think I understood how you must have been torn in two… wantin’ to be with me and with your babes also.“ He gently clasped her chin in his hands and kissed her softly on the lips. “They are flesh of one’s flesh, and I doubt a person ever feels another bond like that in life.”

Jane felt as if an enormous weight had lifted from her shoulders that he should understand so perfectly her life’s dilemma. Miraculously, he seemed to grasp the awful fragmentation she had endured for what seemed forever.

“You even felt a bond with Louisa, didn’t you?” she murmured, standing away from him to meet his gaze. “After all these years, you had to witness her safely wed, even if you’d never laid eyes on her.”

“Oh, I’d seen her,” he said with a smile that reflected both pride and pain. He took Jane’s hand in his own and led her down a narrow path behind Angus’s cottage, past the kitchen garden and the well. As they walked down a slope that angled toward the Spey, he told her of the day so many years earlier when he had seen the youthful Louisa at the Church Street Inn in Inverness.

“My beard then, and unkempt hair made me appear a wild man to her, I’ll wager,” he laughed ruefully, “though at the wedding, I feared for a moment she might dimly recall the meeting.”

He related to Jane how he had overheard William Marshall tell Angus that the Duke had taken Jean Christie as his mistress and that the Gordon lasses were being sent to London to their mother.

“I thought then, perhaps you’d come to me,” he said without reproach. “I waited in the single-minded manner of a long-single man. But, of course, I couldn’t know, yet, that ’twasn’t just the matter of Alex that held you fast. When Struy House was finally beyond my grasp and you hadn’t come after three years, I felt there was nothing left for me here…”

They had reached the verdant banks of the river. A path of stones protruded above furiously tumbling water, which was being fed by a spring thaw of melting snow.

Before Jane could point out to Thomas how unfit her slippers were for such uncertain footing, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her across the rocks in the swift-flowing stream, heedless of the frigid water swirling around them. He set her down gently on the far bank and encircled her with his arms. She stared into his eyes, which looked greener than ever as the soft June sun slanted across his face.

“So you went to America,” she said, thinking silently of Arabella, who had been both loved and buried by this man standing before her. “You went to Antrim Hall.”

“Aye,” he answered, clasping her hand once again and continuing along the lane that lead toward Loch-an-Eilean.

“And your son… Maxwell… is Arabella’s child?” she confirmed. “You two were married?”

“Aye, though she never saw the lad,” he answered, staring ahead at a stand of pines clinging to a rocky rise on their right.

“Yet, before she died, she asked that he be named Maxwell,” Jane said hesitantly. “Why?”

Thomas halted their progress and turned to look at her.

“In fact, she
insisted
, if it were a boy, that he be called after you. Actually, ’twas very strange…” Thomas said pensively, “almost as if it were a kind of penance, I think, for having failed to post my letter to you so long ago. She knew she could never undo that wrong, but she wanted to make some kind of outward gesture to me, and perhaps even to you, to somehow make amends.”

“Oh God, Thomas!” Jane blurted. “I’ve hated her for so long and blamed her for so much of my life’s misery… ’tis hard to hear she must have loved you as much as I did! I wanted her to remain the selfish vixen you once considered her! We can be so disloyal to our own sex!”

Thomas framed Jane’s face between his large palms, his eyes clear with hard-won understanding.

“Such wisdom often comes rather late to make good use of it,” he agreed soberly. “I’ve been a lucky man, Jenny. ’Tis only recently I’ve seen that I’ve been granted so much in my life… when all I used to contemplate was how much I’ve lost.”

“You’ve suffered many losses, Thomas!” she answered fiercely. “Don’t write them off so easily! And so have I, though you’ve had far the worst of it. First your family in the starving… then your lands and titles lost… then me… then Arabella… and then you nearly lost your life
again
, accepting Alex’s challenge for my sake.” She stared up at him with ferocious intensity. “When I learned you’d failed in your fight over Simon’s will and lost your home, I wondered just how much loss you could sustain without going mad.” She grasped his hands tightly. “And now to learn of your wife’s death…” She reached up and traced the scar that ran along his cheekbone. “With all my heart,” she said, feeling a healing balm pour through her, “I’m sorry for your loss of Arabella.”

Thomas acknowledged her statement with a sober nod.

“I’ve been doubly blessed to love and be loved by two such women as you,” he said quietly. “In the end, ’twas my strange and curious life which taught me the truth of what good fortune has been mine all along. That knowledge quite makes up for the lack of a noble house and the honor of being called a lord.”

Jane kissed the backs of his hands and held them to her cheek for a long moment.

“How are you managing with the little lad on your own?” she asked finally as they continued along the path.

“Maxwell, of course, never knew his mother, and so he had to make do with me and ’Bella’s maid, Mehitabel.” A slight scowl clouded his countenance. “’Bella’s brother Beven has been the worst sort of… partner.”

“Why is that?” Jane asked, glimpsing a patch of blue water between the trees.

“’Tis simple,” he said with a tinge of bitterness. “He’s perpetually in his cups. Needless-to-say, he hasn’t taken well to my safeguarding Maxwell’s half inheritance of Antrim Hall. In fact, Cornwallis’s summons came at an extremely propitious moment, I must say,” Thomas mused as his eyes scanned the curving bank of Loch-an-Eilean just coming into view. “I fear that Beven and I would have come to blows ’ere long. ’Tis just as well I stay away from Antrim Hall for a while. The factor I hired to look out for Maxwell’s interests has been well paid to maintain the place while we’re in Scotland.”

“And how long will that be?” Jane asked, her breath catching in her throat.

Thomas didn’t answer her immediately, for the two of them caught their first clear view of the tiny castle nestled on its island in the middle of the loch. The fortress’s single tower glistened in the filtered sunlight. Tenacious vines clung to the lower walls and flowering clematis entwined the tower in a colorful, leafy net. Thomas halted on the path skirting the lake. He turned to face her, his hands firmly gripping her shoulders.

“I told myself I would depart as soon as I had shown Struy Village and my former home to Max. Then, I decided to pay a call on Angus Grant, merely dreaming of finding you here, but not expecting it at all.” He looked at her intently, as if searching for something he would discover in her expression. “Angus and Flora were as kind as parents to me when I struggled through my darkest days, living in that barren cottage in Struy, and coming here occasionally to visit them when I knew you’d be in London or Fochabers. I wanted them to meet Max. Now I’m so sad for Angus. He seems lost without Flora.”

“Aye…” she brooded. “’Tis one reason I came from London as quickly as I could.”

And you, Thomas Fraser. I came because of you
, she thought.

“I must decide what to do about poor Angus.” She shook her head as if to clear her mind of such a disturbing problem. “Where is the lad?” she asked, changing the subject once again. “Where is Master Max?”

“With some old friends in the wool trade up the road in Grantown-on-Spey. They have a son near his age. The lads get on famously and seemed so suited. I left him there for a few days. I merely came back today to say farewell to Angus. I had supposed you’d stay in London till later in the summer…”

“Well, I didn’t,” Jane said abruptly.

So he had not come to Kinrara to find her, but had only come to say good-bye… and certainly not to her.

“Will you be putting Max in school in England?” she asked, searching for a safe topic, while she attempted to cope with the familiar feeling of disappointment darkening her thoughts.

“Not if I can’t find one that doesn’t beat the boys and call it ‘discipline.’”

“Aye,” she said, sighing. “I kept Huntly and Alexander with me as long as I could and tutored them myself. Lord Huntly was quite a lad by the time we sent him off to Eton… and he was all the better for it. I may not be so successful with the youngest. Keep your boy with you as long as you can,” she advised with a sad smile.