Paxton and the Gypsy Blade (43 page)

The sweetness of the song stayed with her. Her eye followed the winding coastline, miles to the north and miles to the south, and beyond to the dazzling sea. What was the sea singing? What was the sea saying? Why was the ocean's endless blue so hypnotic? Like some exotic drug, it had her seeing things, believing things, harboring hopes too bold to express. She squinted through the peephole formed by her fist. Could she see the tip of a sail, a tiny dot of white jutting above the horizon? Could the distant vessel be the source of the song? She stared ahead. There
was
a ship coming to port. It was no illusion, no dream. The song was real and it was being sung for her. Finally, she allowed herself the thought:
He's on the ship. He's coming home. Home at last …

The thought frightened her. She had dreamed the dream before, and it had proven false. Instead, there had been ships of war, ships carrying death and destruction, ships of soldiers whom she viewed as cruel jailers, men commissioned by a foreign despot to tax and tyrannize a people deserving of their own freedom. These were thoughts, though, that she dared not utter, especially not to her father, whose wild Scottish temper would explode in fury. He already suspected her sentiments, and his suspicion was enough to cause her anguish. Colleen McClagan was not afraid of her patriotic convictions; quite to the contrary. Though born in America, she, too, had the heart and courage of a valiant Scot. It was only because she loved her father with such tenderness and compassion that she would rather bite her tongue than hurt him. She understood the depth of his pain. She was all that he had in the world.

I am close. I am coming to you. We'll be together soon
.

How could she deny the words to the song? The white speck on the horizon grew and blossomed like a lily until a full set of sails was visible. The melody set her heart racing. Was it just another cruel hoax, another unfulfilled fantasy? He had been gone forty-eight months, exactly fourteen hundred fifty days. She prayed that there would be no more numbers to count, no more surreptitious markings to hide each morning in the secret compartment of the miniature music box which, despite the fact that it had belonged to her mother, Colleen could never bring herself to destroy. She cherished the box and the tiny doll that danced atop its etched surface, just as she cherished the daily ritual of remembering him, his wildly curly hair as he …

“Colleen!” The voice of her father carried from their house at the southern foot of the hill. “You don't want to be late now, lass. Your Mr. Somerset won't want to be kept waiting. Come down here this very instant!”

“Yes, Papa!” she cried, catching one last glimpse of the ship—closer, it was coming closer—as she raced down the hill.

Dr. Roy Wallace McClagan studied the vision of loveliness running toward him. He couldn't help but see how, at age twenty, his daughter so closely resembled her mother, Sheena. At once, the thought delighted and alarmed him. It had been a decade and a half since Sheena had left him. Her desertion and the bloody battle of Cullodeen, during which, at age sixteen, he had seen his fellow Scotsmen mercilessly slaughtered at the hands of the English, had hardened his heart to wars and women. The single exception, though, was the girl who had grown into the woman who offered him the purest love he had known in his lonely lifetime. Watching Colleen—the wind playing with the long tresses of rich blond hair that danced beneath her bee-bright bonnet—he was almost frightened by her beauty.

Her face was illuminated by sparkling amber eyes that revealed a quick intelligence. Her forehead was noticeably high, her flawless skin the color of pearl. With prominent cheekbones accented by deep-set dimples, she expressed a sense of spirited motion. Her smile sang. Somewhat below average height, her slim waist and small breasts added to her youthful, fresh-faced appeal. Her lithe, limber body revealed both a daintiness and a daring. Was her beauty centered in her generous, alluring mouth or her thin, delicate neck? It was difficult to determine, for Colleen's physical appeal went beyond the elegance of her slender nose or the way in which her eyelashes fluttered and curled. In her fiery eyes, her father saw the sun rising over the Highlands of his native land. His daughter blazed with life.

How long could he keep her? When would she leave him? Her smile rivaled the radiance of summer as he watched her race toward him with the grace of a fawn. Well, now, he reminded himself, he had decided already; of course she'd marry, and marry soon, a marriage good for her and good for him. Buckley Somerset was a gentleman and, more to the point, he was wealthy. What more could a father ask for his daughter? Buckley's plantation was but a few miles from McClagan's humble farm. It would be fine indeed to watch his grandchildren grow up in such a secure and opulent setting.

“Good morning, Papa,” Colleen said breathlessly, kissing him on his salt-and-pepper whiskers. His brow, normally knit in a series of nervous furrows, relaxed for the first time that day. “Don't worry,” she added. “I'll be on time.”

“But will you be civil to the gentleman?”

“Civil and sweet,” she promised.

“And sincere,” he reminded her. “'Tis a rare quality in a woman, lass. A quality far more precious than gold.”

Colleen looked into her father's kind but weary eyes. At fifty, he looked at least twenty years older. He reminded her of a frail bird. His back was bent into a painful stoop. Without his customary wig, his thin strands of white hair were tossed about by the wind, making him seem especially vulnerable. He often spoke of quitting his practice, but Colleen never believed him: he would never abandon the suffering children whom he so lovingly attended, the elderly men and women, even the stray puppies and kittens, the ailing birds and horses, toward all of whom he felt a personal and compelling responsibility to nurture back to health. When his remedies failed, he was despondent for days. But when his cures took, his heart filled with gladness.

Colleen just didn't have the heart to tell her father how Buckley Somerset, for all his power and wealth, bored her to tears. Somehow, sometime later she would tell him that he was absolutely unacceptable to her as anything more than a polite escort. But not on the day of the annual Brandborough Spring Fair, a sprawling picnic that promised an afternoon and evening filled with pleasant diversions. “What a lovely spring morning,” she said, taking her father's arm and heading toward the house. “You can see practically all the way across the ocean.”

“What I want to see is you all prim and proper, so hurry and dress. This is no occasion for skimping, mind you. I've set Portia to heating water for your bath, so run along. And dress in your best. I'd wear that white silk headdress if I were you. Indeed, I would.”

She didn't bother to answer. With no intention of wearing a headdress and veil more befitting a wedding than a picnic, she dismissed the thought and, pausing only to look over her shoulder, hurried to the house.

The house that she and her father shared stood at the base of the hill. It was a simple structure, yet spoke volumes of its master. The front rooms were for sitting and dining, and the spacious back room, which faced the great hill, was used as the doctor's study. In between were two bedrooms. Colleen's faced the open sea and her father's looked toward their farmland to the west. The entire house was dominated by Roy's profession, and smelled of an apothecary. Dozens of jars of ointments and salves stood on shelves in the hallway and along window ledges. Medical tomes lay open on every available surface—tables and stools, desks and chairs. A large variety of anatomical diagrams hung from the walls of his study, the hallways, even the small kitchen. Portia, their loquacious housekeeper, complained constantly about the macabre figures, but to no avail. Dr. McClagan was a man obsessed with his work, and his work followed him from room to room. Because he was a physician of greater instinct than organization, his surgical tools—pewter syringes, tortoiseshell tweezers, scalpels, screw tourniquets—might be found anywhere.

Colleen appreciated her father's impassioned relationship to his work. His compelling concern to broaden his knowledge, hone his skills, and cure the world's ills was the finer side of his character. It was exhilarating to live in a household where learning and healing were unending preoccupations. The overwhelming presence of medical paraphernalia, however, no matter how intriguing, could also be oppressive.

In all the house, Colleen's bedroom was her refuge, a space of her own special decor and design. The room was serene and feminine, and had been decorated largely by her paternal aunt, Rianne, who in many ways served as her friend, mother, and confidante. Rianne had come to America to care for Colleen some fifteen years earlier when Sheena McClagan had shocked everyone by abandoning her husband and young daughter. Rianne hadn't been surprised. A spinster, she'd expected the worse from the moment her brother had set sail for the colonies in 1750. She knew her brother, knew that he was of a breed that seemed to attract misfortune, so she waited. When he wrote with joyous expectations of being apprenticed to a surgeon, she waited. When he told her of his marriage to a brown-eyed beauty of Scottish descent, she waited. When word reached her, in 1760, of Colleen's birth, she tempered her joy with gloomy premonitions. Her brother was too happy, things were going too well. At last, the missive summoning her to the colonies had arrived: Sheena McClagan had run off with a wild-eyed woodsman, leaving Roy to raise a daughter alone. Six months to the day after receiving the letter, Rianne arrived in Brandborough, and in short order became Roy's housekeeper, and Colleen's friend, mother, and confidante.

The new world opened new vistas for Rianne, as it had for so many others. Always a willful, independent woman, she soon had found that domestic duties couldn't satisfy her love of worldy commerce, and within a year she had become the proprietess of a dressmaking shop in Brandborough. By the time Colleen was fifteen, even Brandborough wasn't big enough for her, and she made preparations to move to Charleston, thirty miles north along the coast. Roy had roared in protest, but Rianne was convinced that Colleen no longer required her presence, and her brother's mannerisms had become less and less to her liking. She loathed the smells of his medicines, she deplored his reclusive, studious ways, and found his temper intolerable. She respected his deep humanity and devotion to the sick and wounded, but that wasn't enough.

For Colleen, the lure of moving to Charleston was almost overwhelming, but Roy had refused her permission to accompany her aunt because the big city was too sophisticated and rife with pretense and decadence. Even more than his daughter's beauty, he treasured her natural, untarnished personality. He thought of her as a lovely country lass, an innocent farm girl who shouldn't be exposed to the sinful society of city life. What frightened him the most, however, was that Rianne had become a Patriot, and he wasn't about to let his darling daughter get involved with politics. “Mark me well,” he'd warned his younger sister as her carriage, loaded with all her earthly possessions, pulled out of the yard. “Those half-crazed notions of yours will get you shot.”

“Say what you will, brother,” Rianne had called back, “but no dim-witted Tory will intimidate the likes of me or keep me from making a pretty pound.”

She had proven to be right. Her shop was soon deemed one of Charleston's finest. Her designs were copied from the latest fashion dolls laboriously acquired from London and Paris, and her needlework was unparalleled. Even during the war years, with fabrics scarce and the value of currency uncertain, Rianne managed to prosper. She caught the attention of the most socially prominent, and within less than a year found herself an accepted member of Charleston's artistic elite. That she was a shameless but discreet gossip did her little harm. Her female customers loved her not only for her speed and craftsmanship, but for her titillating news as well. Her acquaintances numbered beyond mere society. She seemed to be on intimate terms with every artisan and artist in the city. Her passion for the arts—for music and painting, for cabinetry and poetry—was insatiable and sincere. And because she refused to return to Brandborough and its provincial ways, Roy and Colleen, at Colleen's insistence, were forced to visit her in Charleston.

The trips became the highlights of Colleen's year. On one such stay, Colleen met Ephraim Kramer, a master printer with whom she would later collaborate politically. And on another trip, Rianne arranged for Josiah Claypool, a craftsman whose skills rivaled those of the great Thomas Chippendale himself, to design for her niece a four-poster bed and secretary-wardrobe of rare beauty.

Of all Colleen's possessions, from great to small, she loved the furniture the most. Fashioned from gleaming cedar and cypress, the two pieces were perfectly matched. Neatly tied chaffs of wheat had been delicately, painstakingly sculpted along the thin posters, which sat upon carved claw feet. It was there, beneath a floral canopy, where she dreamed, but it was at her desk where she wrote and read.

And what a magnificent desk it was! With a chest of drawers below and a wardrobe above, the writing surface folded out from the furniture's center and contained a dozen tiny compartments and miniature drawers that Colleen kept filled with the deepest expressions of her secret heart. There was room for books:
Tom Jones
and
Pamela
, recently devoured with a passion that surprised even herself, had been presents from Rianne; Pope's wicked
Rape of the Lock
sat at the bottom of the pile, so that her father might not notice.

That she was reading such literature might well upset him, but, even if discovered, she was sure he would grudgingly understand because he knew that, as much as she loved the farm, she loved words, ideas, and poetic images even more. He was aware that she invented verse of her own, and though he considered such endeavors foolish and inappropriate for young ladies, he realized that there was little he could do to stop her: like his sister, his daughter had a flair for the artistic.