White Regency 03 - White Knight (31 page)

Grace knelt before Christian.
“Christian, can I ask why you have refused to consent to a marriage
between Eleanor and Lord Herrick?”

Christian’s expression grew clouded. Grace
carefully pressed on. “I know you love her very much and would never do
anything to hurt her. Is there something more? Something about Lord Herrick you
are not telling me? Is he a blackguard?”

Christian sat forward in his chair, raking
his fingers through his hair as he rested his elbows on his knees. He was
extremely troubled, more so than Grace should have thought.

Finally he looked at her. “Do you
remember when I told you about my father’s death?”

She nodded.

“I told you how my father had fought
a duel against a man whom my mother had pursued a relationship with. Grace, the
reason I cannot give my consent for Eleanor to wed Lord Herrick is because he
is the son of the man who killed my father. He is the eldest and
legitimate
son
of the man my mother had a liaison with.”

It only took Grace a moment longer to
realize the import of what he was saying. “Good God, Lord Herrick is
Eleanor’s half-brother.”

Christian nodded, closing his eyes.
“So now you see why she cannot marry him. The worst part of it is I must
tell her my reasons. I must tell Eleanor of her illegitimacy and the
circumstances of her birth. If I don’t, she might decide to run off and wed him
without my consent. My mother already suspects as much, so she has asked me to
tell Eleanor everything. There is no other choice. I will have to tell my
sister that I killed the man who was her true father.”

“You did not kill anyone.”

Neither Grace nor Christian had heard the
duke come into the room.

“I should have told you the truth
long ago, Christian. I don’t know why I didn’t. I was so broken after
Christopher’s death. I wanted you to hate your mother, blame her as I did. It
took me twenty years to realize it wasn’t her fault. Your father knew Frances
didn’t love him when he asked her to marry him. Her family was in financial
straits. They needed her to marry well. Christopher convinced her that she
would grow to love him one day; he thought he could love enough for both of
them.” He shook his head. “He only smothered her.”

Christian looked at the duke. “But
what does that have to do with the fact that I shot Lord Herrick’s
father?”

“Your shot went wide that morning,
Christian. I saw it strike the tree behind. It was my shot that killed
him.”

Christian’s eyes narrowed on the duke with
loathing. “You allowed me to believe all these years that I had

killed
him. You are a bastard.”

“I will not deny that, Christian. My
biggest regret is that it took me twenty years to tell you the truth. I can’t
expect that you would understand. I was an angry, bitter man. Losing Grace’s grandmother
was the biggest mistake of my life. Then I lost Christopher, and with him any
chance to really know him. We had spent so long fighting each other over his
marriage to your mother. I never found the time to tell him that I loved him.
One
can never know what it is to lose something precious until it is gone.”

“You…” Christian suddenly
said, stunned. “You left that message at the door, didn’t you?” The
duke nodded.

“I thought it was Herrick, that he
knew that I had killed his father. In fact, I was convinced he was courting
Eleanor in an effort to exact some sort of revenge.”

The duke shook his head. “No, that
message had nothing to do with Herrick or his father. I was trying to tell you
not to throw away the chance you had for happiness. I have made many mistakes
in my life and I am ashamed of most everything I am. I am stubborn and proud
and arrogant. I am also a fool. But there is one thing I am not ashamed of, the
one thing I did right in life—bringing you and Grace together.”

By the time the following morning dawned,
Eleanor was gone.

She had slipped away some time during the
night, going unnoticed by her maid or anyone else in the great hall. She had
taken a small bag with some of her things and Christian’s horse, leaving him
with only the slower Highland ponies to go after her.

“I should have suspected she would do
this,” Christian said as he stalked about the stables, saddling the
largest of the ponies, a bright bay named Torquil who was just under fifteen
hands. “She has several hours lead on me. She could be halfway to
Edinburgh by now. I will never catch up to her on this nag.”

Torquil quirked his ears at the insult.
Grace tried to give Christian hope. “These are the Highlands, not the
grasslands of England. Torquil has a surer foot than Eleanor’s mount on this
terrain and you are more familiar with the landscape than she.”

Christian barely heard her as he slammed a
fist against the stall post, causing the ponies to jerk up their heads and
nicker in alarm. “Damnation! I should have known this would happen. She
was too quiet last night when I talked to her, too accepting of the
circumstances of her birth.”

“You don’t think she has gone to
Herrick, do you?” “No. I destroyed any thought she had of that last
night when I told her the truth about my father’s death. Good God, what have I
done? I took away her identity. I blithely informed her she is not the person
she believed she was all her life. Why did I leave her alone last night? Why
didn’t I have my mother stay with her?”

Grace touched him gently on the arm.
“You could have no way of knowing she would run.”

“I should have realized it, Grace. I
told her she is for all intents and purposes a bastard and she never so much as
shed a single tear. She just looked at me as if to say I was the one who was
supposed to have protected her from all this. I’ve failed her.”

“No, Christian, you did not fail her.
You gave her a life and respectability she would never have otherwise known. If
not for you she would have suffered the judgment of society.”

Christian stood a moment at the stable
door, staring out at the hills in the distance. He turned to Grace, taking her
by the arms. “I have to try to find her, Grace. If something happens to
her, I will never forgive myself.”

Grace wished she could do something to
ease the burden of guilt that was so obviously consuming him inside. “I
know, Christian. And you will find her.”

Less than an hour later, Grace stood in
the courtyard with Frances, Deirdre, Liza, and the duke watching as Christian
hoisted himself into the saddle.

The duke went before him. “Whatever
it takes, Christian, we will find her. I’ve already sent off to Bow
Street.”

Christian added, “I’ll be back as
soon as I can.” Grace reached up to him, giving him a farewell kiss.
“We will postpone the ceilidh until you return with her.” Christian
spurred the pony around and headed off at a canter across the courtyard. How
long would he be gone? A day? A week? Would he search the ends of the earth
until he found her? Grace did not look away until he had vanished into the
morning mist. In the moment he was gone, she was seized by a feeling of utter
emptiness. Already she wished him back.

Liza must have sensed her despondency
because she came to Grace and set her arm around her shoulder. “Don’t you
fret a bit, my lady. The laird will be back with Lady Eleanor very soon. You’ll
see. All will be well.”

Grace looked at her, this woman who was
more friend than maid, and smiled with a flagging optimism. “I truly hope
so, Liza.”

As they turned to head back inside the
castle, Grace noticed Liza staring across the courtyard to where Andrew
MacAlister was chopping wood, bare-chested with only his Skynegal kilt to cover
him. His sinewy arms flexed and moved as he lifted the axe high above his head,
pulling it down to split the helpless log cleanly in half. Andrew caught the
maid’s stare and gave her a grin that could have melted the mist off the
mountains.

“I believe I may have to forbid
Andrew from working out in the open like that. Either that or you’ll have to
start mending my stockings out here!”

Liza blushed at having been caught so
obviously appreciating the Highlander’s physical charms. Grace smiled.
“Perhaps you should see if Andrew would like some cold ale. He looks as if
he could use some.”

Liza started off across the courtyard and
Grace watched as they chatted together. The attraction between the stalwart
Highlander and the maid had blossomed into a sweet romance. Andrew brought out
a femininity in Liza that she had previously kept hidden behind talk of
planting “facers.” Liza softened the loneliness Andrew had had to
confront after his family had immigrated to America. Most in the castle thought
it only a matter of time before the two were wed. Given the fact that Liza had
recently posted a letter to her mother asking for “bridal night”
advice, Grace would think a proposal very near indeed. As she turned, she saw
Alastair strolling past holding a bunch of wildflowers as he whistled a happy
tune. Grace wondered whether he and Flora just might manage to see to the task
of getting wed before the other two.

The sound of her name pulled Grace from
her thoughts and she turned to see the young stable lad Micheil running across
the courtyard toward her.

“What is it, Micheil?”

“Did you forget we were to go a’gatherin’
today? I’ve got the pony cart a’ready.”

In all the turmoil surrounding Eleanor’s
disappearance that morning, Grace had forgotten that she had promised to take
Micheil with her to the other side of the glen to gather some of the herbs and
various other plants she had read about in Hannah MacRath’s herbal. He
was just learning how to
direct the ponies at the cart and was anxious to show her his skill. Perhaps it
would offer a welcome diversion from worrying about Christian and Eleanor.

“Let me change and fetch a shawl and
some food to bring along with us and we shall go.”

A half hour later, Grace set the last of
the supplies onto the pony cart before turning to speak to Deirdre behind her.
Since they would likely be digging about on the forest floor, Grace had dressed
more plainly than usual in gray serge skirts and a linen smock, her hair
twisted up beneath a kerchief covering. Grace smiled in an effort to mollify
Deirdre’s uneasy expression. Since learning of the babe, Deirdre had become
more protective of her, growing uneasy whenever Grace wandered out of sight.

“Do not worry, Deirdre, we will be
back by dusk. I will have Liza and Micheil with me. The grove Hannah wrote
about in her journal is but two miles to the east. We will simply go and see if
any of the plant life from Hannah’s garden still flourishes there.”

Micheil clambered up to the driver’s seat
on the small pony wagon while Grace and Liza, with Dubhar between them, settled
into the back with the supplies. A crack of the whip and a “Get on now,”
and they were rolling slowly out of the courtyard onto the worn cart path that
traversed the estate to the east.

The three chatted freely as they teetered
along the rutted path. Grace enjoyed the serenity of the summer’s day, the sun
shining on her cheeks, and the song of the crossbills flitting about the pines.
As Micheil teased Liza about her romance with Andrew, Grace’s thoughts turned
to Christian. She wondered whether he had found Eleanor already, if they might
at that same moment be riding back across the braes to Skynegal. She sent a
silent kiss his way, imagining the touch of his lips in return while counting
the hours until he would come back to her.

They had just come over a crest on the
cart path when Micheil unexpectedly pulled the ponies to a halt.

“Micheil, what is it?” Grace
turned to look ahead of the cart at what had caused them to stop. A figure was
racing toward them on
the cart path, waving its arms frantically and calling out to them in Gaelic,
“Cuidich
lei Cuidich le!
Help! Help!”

They climbed down to meet what proved to
be a young boy of perhaps ten years of age. As he neared, Grace could see that
his face was nearly black from dirt and soot, his feet bare, his body naked
except for a ragged shirt that only covered him from shoulder to mid-thigh.
When he reached them, his eyes had a wild light to them, quite like a caged
animal and he was babbling in Gaelic, shaking his head and swinging his arms.

Micheil spoke to him.
“De tha
cedrr?
What is the matter?”

The boy spoke too frantically for Grace to
understand more than the random word. When she recognized “fire” and
“soldiers” and “Starke” among them, she realized he was
speaking of the evictions that were taking place on the Sunterglen estate.

Micheil quickly answered him, his tone calm.
He pointed to Grace as he said
“Aingeal na Gaidhealthachd.
Angel of
the Highlands.”

The boy’s eyes went white against the
grime that covered his skin. He fell against her, wrapping his arms around her
skirts as he thanked the heavens for bringing him to her.

“He says the soldiers are marching on
the part of the Sunterglen estate that borders Skynegal. There is an old widow,
his
grannam,
who lives alone and cannot walk because her legs are too
frail. His family are all away taking their cattle to the hills and he cannot
move her on his own. He fears the soldiers will burn her alive.”

Grace stiffened against an all too
familiar shiver. “Then we must go and stop them.”

“But my lady,” Liza broke in,
“that is Sunterglen land.”

“What they are threatening is murder,
Liza. We can’t just stand by and allow them to kill an innocent person.”
She turned to Micheil. “Can you ask the boy to lead us while you
drive?”

“Aye, my lady, I will.”

The pony cart jostled over the rutted glen
floor as they headed for the cottage where the widow lived. By
the time they reached
the small croft, two soldiers were already setting their torches to the thatch
on the roof. Another stood at the door, pounding upon it and hollering,
“We’ve put the light to the thatch, woman. Tis the last time I’ll tell
ye
. Ye’d best get yerself out from there!”

Grace scurried down from the pony cart and
ran for the cottage. The soldier at the door glanced at her, his lip curling in
disdain. “What d’ye want ‘ere,
hizzie?”

In her coarse clothing, Grace realized he
thought her one of the Highlanders. “What in God’s name are you doing?
There is a woman inside!”

He looked momentarily surprised by her
well-spoken English, but quickly changed his expression to one of contempt.
“I be the captain of this company and we’ve come to clear this croft. She
was issued a Writ of Removal and has refused to vacate.”

He shoved a crumpled sheet of parchment at
her. Grace took it, giving it glance. “It is written in English! These
people can only speak Gaelic! She doesn’t understand why you are here!”

” ‘Tis
what they get for bein’ uncivilized idlers like they
are. That old Scots witch has lived long enough. Let ‘er burn.”

Grace glared at the man in a moment of
disbelieving rage before she took both hands up and shoved him hard, knocking
him off his feet to the ground. As his company of soldiers stood watching and
laughing, Grace flung the door to the cottage wide. Before she could scramble
in to look for the widow, she felt herself being seized from behind, locked in
the captain’s grip.

“Get you gone, you Scots bitch, afore
I lock you in to burn along wit’ her.”

Grace struggled against him, trying to
free herself. Dubhar began barking furiously and lunged from the cart. In the
next second, he was knocked cold by the butt of one of the other soldiers’
muskets. The flames had already spread across to the middle of the roof,
licking at the vulnerable thatch as a column of black smoke burgeoned overhead.

Liza scurried up, calling to Micheil to go
for her basket in the cart while she pulled at the captain’s arms.

“See here, you bloody bastard, free
her now! You’ve no right to hold her!”

The captain let go of one of Grace’s arms
as he lashed outward, shoving Liza back. In that second, Grace balled both
hands together before her and jerked her elbow back, striking the captain hard
in his fleshy middle. She could hear the sound of his breath rushing from his
mouth and yanked herself free from his hold. She turned just as the man was
gaining his feet, drew back her fist just like Liza had taught her, and planted
him a facer that knocked him flat on his back in the dust.

One of the other soldiers lunged forward,
halting a moment later when Liza took the basket from Micheil and quickly
removed a pistol from inside.

“Liza! Where did you get that?”

“Deirdre pressed it upon me afore we
left today. I think she might have had a premonition that we could meet with
trouble.”

Liza trained the pistol’s barrel on one of
the soldiers who looked to be advancing. “Neither of ye move else ye’ll
know the wrath of the laird of Skynegal whose wife you have just
affronted!”