Highland Sunset Page 11

  "I will not return," Charles Edward said firmly. "In a few days' time, with the few friends I have, I will erect the royal standard and proclaim to the people of Britain that Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, to win it, or to perish in the attempt. Morar and Lochiel may stay at home if they will, and learn from the newspapers the fate of their prince."

  It was too much for Donald Cameron. "No," he replied. "I'll share the fate of my prince; and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune has given me power."

  They all turned to Alasdair. His face was grave but there was a faint glow in his eyes as he looked at Charles Edward. "I will raise the clan," he said.

  Frances could not believe her ears when Alasdair told her what he had done. "You cannot be serious," she said incredulously. "You said yourself that it was folly, that without the French there was no hope of success."

  "I don't know, Frances." She had been in bed when he returned and now he went to the window, threw it open, and looked up at the still-luminous sky. He turned back to her. "He is all Stuart," he said. "With a prince like this to lead us, I believe we can do anything."

  "To lead you?" She leaned toward him, her hair streaming over her shoulders. "Alasdair, this boy is scarcely older than Niall. He has never seen a battlefield. He has no idea of what he is asking you to do. He has no right to ask this of you!"

  "He is my prince," he returned, and now there was an undercurrent of steel in his voice. "He has the right to ask me for anything he chooses."

  "Not your life," she flung back at him. "Dear God, Alasdair, the clans don't even have artillery."

  "Yes," he said. "Even my life."

  She thrust her hair away from her face. "/ have some small stake in your life, I believe." For the first time there was bitterness in her voice.

  "Frances." His voice was low but the steel was even more evident. "Do not try to come between me and my duty."

  "Your duty. Alasdair, your duty is to your family and your clan. You cannot ask over one thousand men to throw their lives away for a dream, a fantasy!"

  Alasdair stood there facing her, feet apart, his arresting dark head poised in the fashion of an animal when it scents danger. "A dream?" he said.

  "Yes, a dream. You read Van's letters. There is no hope the Stuarts will regain the British throne—not even with a French army behind them."

  He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. "I never knew you felt this way."

  "Alasdair." She was frantic to reach him. Couldn't he see the disaster he was bringing down on them all? "Think, darling. You are much too clever not to see the probable outcome of all this."

  "No," he said, his voice hard and cold. "It's you who are the clever one. For all these years you have been letting me think you were one with me on this."

  He was looking at her as if she revolted him. Her palms felt suddenly clammy. "I was with you," she said. "Then. But now is different."

  "The cause has not changed. It is as just today as it was twenty years ago."

  "There is more involved here than the justice of the cause!"

  "For you, perhaps. Not for me." He walked to the bedroom door. "I will send the fiery cross around tomorrow to raise the clan. And Niall is leaving in the morning for England to bring Van home."

  He closed the door behind him and she was alone.

  Word of Charles Edward's landing reached London three days after Alasdair's meeting with the prince. Edward and Van were preparing to go for a drive in the park when a messenger came to Linton House with a summons from the prime minister. Edward read the brief letter and looked up at her. All the good humor had vanished from his face.

  Van was instantly alarmed. "What has happened?"

  "I'm afraid I can't take you driving." His face was white under its coat of summer tan. "Van," he said, and stopped.

  She stepped closer to him. "For God's sake, Edward, what is it? You're frightening me."

  "Charles Edward has landed in Scotland," he said bleakly.

  "Dhia gleidh sinn," said Van, and sat abruptly in the nearest chair.

  "I quite agree." He sounded bitter.

  Her eyes clung to his. "Has he brought an army?"

  "I don't think so. He can't have. An army could not have sailed without our knowing it." He crumpled the letter in his hand. "Van, I must go. Pelham wants to hold a meeting of the government immediately. I shall find out there exactly what is happening."

  Her eyes were wide and curiously blank-looking. She nodded. "Yes. Go. You must go."

  He hesitated, then came over to her chair and kissed her quick and hard on the mouth before he went out.

  Van sat for a long time, staring blindly into space, her mind scarcely working at all. All she felt at present was a terrible sense of foreboding. Finally she got to her feet and went into the drawing room to the harpsichord. She sat down at the instrument and let her fingers pick out a single chord over and over. As always, this simple exercise freed her mind. The suffocating sense of fear receded and she was able to think.

  The prince had landed. Alone. What would her father do?

  The answer was immediate and certain. Her father's entire life had been dedicated to the Stuart cause. To him, it was sacred. If his prince called upon him, he would go.

  They had heard nothing from Morar since she and Edward had written almost a month ago. Van had begun to think that perhaps her father might countenance their marriage after all. The fact that he had not ordered her home immediately was a very auspicious sign.

  But... now, everything was different. The prince was here, upon Scottish soil.

  There was no way out of it. She would have to go home.

  Edward's meeting with the prime minister and other government ministers went on until late in the night. One of the government's chief Scottish advisers, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, was present and it was his evaluation of the situation that most interested Edward.

  "My understanding is that neither Clanranald nor Macleod will lift a finger in this matter," Forbes told the half-dozen men Lord Pelham had called upon to decide the government's course of action.

  "Just how many fighting men can the chiefs put into the field?" Edward asked grimly.

  "I would say that the total fighting strength of the Highlands does not number less than thirty thousand men, my lord. Of course, this includes the Campbells, who will most certainly come out for the government. The Sutherlands will remain loyal to us as well."

  Edward's blue eyes were cold. "How many men are likely to follow the pretender, Forbes? Clanranald and Macleod are neutral, you say. So—how much of an army is that extremely irritating young man likely to raise?"

  "That depends, my lord," came the deliberate reply. "If Morar and Lochiel go out, perhaps half the others will follow."

  Every eye in the room was on Edward's face. He and Van had made no formal engagement announcement, but these last few weeks in London had made clear to all the ton that such an announcement would certainly be forthcoming.

  Edward's blue eyes, hard as diamonds, flicked once around the council. His face showed absolutely no emotion. "And if Morar and Lochiel stay out of it?"

  "It cannot go forward without Morar and Lochiel." Forbes was positive. "They are the leaders."

  "What if one goes out and the other does not?" Lord Pelham asked abruptly.

  "I do not think that will happen. They will act in concert."

  "What do you think is going to happen, Forbes?" Edward's deep voice was forcibly calm.

  "I have met both men," Duncan Forbes of Culloden returned slowly, "but I know Morar better." His eyes went from face to face around the table and stopped at the Earl of Linton's. "He is a man from another world, another time. His sense of honor is sacred to him. If that honor is in question, I do not think that he will count the cost." Duncan Forbes paused and then said quietly, "I think Morar will go out."

  Edward's face was brutally composed but Forbes, watching him closely, saw a muscle jump
in his jaw. Then Edward said very grimly, "Well, gentlemen, it looks as if we have a rebellion on our hands."

  Edward came home through the dimly lit streets of London with murder in his heart. He longed with a savagery that would have put him right at home among any clansmen, to have Charles Stuart's neck between his fingers. And the emotion that fueled his anger was mainly fear.

  He was not afraid of the rebellion succeeding. It might be a little chancy at first, for most of England's army was across the channel, but the ultimate outcome would be success for the government.

  It would be disaster for the Highlands. He had sensed that in the council meeting tonight. The government was tired of Jacobite plots, tired of chiefs who lived as a law unto themselves, tired of having what they considered an uncivilized tribal society only four hundred miles from London. Another rebellion would serve as a perfect excuse to crush the Highlands once and for all.

  This was not a solution Edward would ever have favored, but the situation now held far more than political significance for him.

  He could not let Van go back.

  A pulse was throbbing in his temple as he walked from the stable around to the front door of Linton House. How to keep her out of it? Keep her safe. Keep her with him.

  He let himself in with a latchkey. The candles were lit in the hall against his return. He took a candlestick and went along to the library, where he sat behind a desk containing the law cases he had been studying earlier in the day. As lord lieutenant he functioned as chief justice of the peace for his county. He decided he needed a glass of wine.

  He drank a bottle of claret slowly and abstractedly, his mind on only one thing—the girl asleep upstairs.

  How to keep her? How to keep her?

  Finally he rose, picked up his candle once again, and climbed the stairs to the bedroom floor. He opened Van's door without knocking and closed it again behind him. She stirred in the big bed at the sound.

  "Van." He came into the room until he was standing at the foot of her bed. "Van," he said again, his voice low but authoritative.

  She pushed herself up on her elbow and blinked. Then she saw him at the foot of the bed. "Edward!" she said in astonishment. "What are you doing here?"

  "I thought perhaps you'd want to know what happened tonight."

  She sat up. Her long hair streamed over her shoulders and down her back, a shining mantle of black silk. The throat that rose above the round neck of her thin cotton nightdress was so slender... her body was slender too, but the feel of it against his was so soft. To take off that nightdress, to have her naked beneath him... to be inside of her...

  "Edward?" Her voice seemed to come from very far away. "What happened?"

  He fought to get a grip on himself. "There is no French army." His voice was harsh. "The prince is depending upon the clans to come out for him."

  She had drawn her knees up under the bedclothes and now she bowed her head down upon them. "What is the government going to do?" she asked in a muffled voice.

  "We have issued a reward for his capture."

  At that her head snapped up. "Dhé. He is not a criminal, Edward!"

  "In my opinion, he's worse," came the bitter reply. He walked around to the side of the bed and put his candle down on a table. He looked down into her upturned face.

  "Van," he said.

  Van had no question at all about what she saw looking at her out of Edward's eyes. Desire. Hungry, intense, stark. Desire.

  In that split second as they looked into each other's eyes, Van realized the decision was hers. He had not come in here to tell her about the meeting. She could send him away, however. No matter how he looked, Edward was far too civilized a man to use force on a woman.

  Why now? she wondered. When he had exercised such restraint all these weeks, why now?

  The answer came in a flash of intuition. He was afraid of losing her. He was afraid of losing her and this was the way he had chosen to bind her to him.

  He couldn't do that, of course. But at least she would have the memory of this to hold on to. So she looked fearlessly into those burning eyes and said, "I love you." He bent and his mouth locked on hers.

  A tidal wave of desire flooded through her at the touch of his mouth. She clung to him and after a minute he pressed her back onto the pillows, his body following hers, coming down on top of her, hard, strong, urgent.

  The tidal wave swelled. She moved her hands up and down on his shoulders. Her mouth was open to him, her body rejoiced in the powerful weight of his. He pulled away from her and she almost cried out with dismay.

  But he was only stripping off his coat. She watched as he threw it to the floor, followed quickly by the rest of his clothes. He stood for a moment then, looking down at her, and she looked back out of dark and smoky eyes.

  He was so beautiful as he stood there, beautiful with the potent and powerful beauty of a stallion. For a brief moment a picture of Marcus and the mare flashed into her mind. She began to tremble.

  How she wanted him, longed for him. When finally he came into her the pain was as nothing compared to the great waves of pleasure that rolled through her with his movement. She clung to him, to the strength of him, the power. And then the night splintered into the shattering white light of pure sensation.

  As they lay together, his arms still around her, his golden head pillowed on her breast, for the first time Van felt fear. She ran her fingers caressingly through his hair. It clung to her fingers, thick and gilt-colored in the candlelight. He kissed her breast and pushed himself up on his elbow to look down at her.

  "I had wanted to be so gentle," he said. "I'm sorry, my love. Did I hurt you?"

  She gazed at the great muscled shoulders, the broad expanse of chest. She had not wanted gentleness from him tonight. "No," she said. "You didn't hurt me."

  He kissed her tenderly and then gathered her into the crook of his arm. She lay with her head pillowed in the slightly damp hollow of his shoulder and tried to beat back her fear.

  He had done this to bind her to him, and he had succeeded. She would leave him still—she had no choice about that. But she was his as surely as if he had put his brand upon her.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the beat of his heart against her ear. He murmured something to her and she half-smiled. Fool, she thought to herself achingly. Oh, Van, you fool. You have made everything so much worse for yourself.

  And the worst part was, she would do it all again.

  CHAPTER 12

  Edward left her before dawn and Van finally went to sleep. She awoke late, for her, and had chocolate and bread and butter in bed before she dressed for the day. A note from Edward had come in with her breakfast tray telling her he had been summoned to a meeting with the king and would see her when he returned to Grosvenor Square.

  Van sat at the harpsichord and picked out, one-handed, the MacIan battle song. It was one of the most famous in the Highlands, having been composed a hundred years earlier by the great piper Patrick Mor Mac Crimmon. It sounded strange on the harpsichord and Van imagined the notes as they sounded on the pipes, wild and heart-lifting, ringing out their challenge to mountain and sea and sky: Buaidh no Bas! Buaidh no Bas! Victory or Death! Victory or Death!

  Edward had gone to see the king. Nothing else could have made clearer to her the impossibility of her present situation. This was not a fight she could stand aloof from, not when those she loved were so deeply— and divisively—involved.

  She was still at the harpsichord when Niall knocked at the front door. He had made it from Morar in four days, galloping the whole way, changing horses at every posting stop, scarcely stopping to sleep. Van swung around on her stool, eyes wide with shock, when Fenton announced behind her, "Lord MacIan."

  "Niall!" said Van, and jumped to her feet. "Whatever are you doing here?"

  He looked her up and down before he replied. She had put on a thin mauve-colored dress that morning and her hair was worn in a mass of loose ringlets threaded through with a pi
nk ribbon. She looked lovelier than Niall had ever seen her. His mouth set in a hard line. "Father sent me to bring you home," he said baldly.

  "I see." Van returned his look. He wore a brown riding coat and breeches and his boots were covered with dust from the road. "Father has raised the clan, then?"

  "Yes." He came a few steps closer to her. "Did you doubt that he would?"

  "No." Her face was grave. "No, I did not doubt it."

  "The standard is to be raised at Glenfinnan in two weeks' time. I must be there. We must leave immediately." His eyes, the same color as hers although not so large, bored into her. "This business between you and Linton is over, Van."

  She was so still, so intensely still. He frowned a little and said, louder, "Van. Did you hear me, Van?"

  Her eyes were on him but he did not think she saw him. Her voice, however, was steady. "Yes, I heard you, Niall. Do you have a coach or are we traveling by horse?"

  He felt an immense rush of relief. He was not sure what he would have done if she refused to come with him.

  "Would you mind traveling on horseback? It's faster."

  "No," Van said, and for the first time since he had come in, he smiled.

  "Good girl."

  "Vanessa dear," came Lady Linton's voice from the door. "Fenton tells me your brother is here."

  "Yes, Cousin Katherine. May I present my brother, Niall, Lord MacIan. Niall, this is Mother's cousin, Lady Linton."

  Niall bowed slightly. "Ma'am," he said stiffly.

  Katherine Romney raised her lovely violet eyes to his face and smiled. "My, how alike you and Vanessa are."

  Niall's face was not friendly. "We resemble our father," he said, and deliberately stressed the last word. Lady Linton looked at Van.

  "I am very sorry, Cousin Katherine, but I must leave for Scotland immediately. My father sent Niall to escort me. He has raised the clan for Prince Charles."

  "Oh, my dear God." Katherine Romney's cheeks were pale.

  "I'm sorry," Van repeated. She made an indecisive gesture. "There is nothing I can do."