A Desperate Fortune (41 page)

“That,” he said, “they tell me is the oldest stone bridge left in Rome. It has a proper name but you will hear it called most often here the
Ponte
Rotto
, meaning ‘Broken Bridge.’”

A view that, at the moment, seemed appropriate, so Mary thought. A bridge that none could cross, that nevermore would lead a traveler home. She moved her hand to shield her gaze more closely, blinking back the stinging of her eyes. “Why is it broken?”

“Because it stands just where the current is strongest. No matter how often they try to rebuild it the river keeps beating away at it, taking it piece by piece.”

“And yet it stands.” She said that in a small voice that was nothing like her own, and she was not sure why she said it.

It was only that just then, she felt a kinship with that ancient bridge that was forever being carried off in tiny pieces by the unrelenting current, and yet did not have the sense to yield, to let go of the shore and simply fall. It stood, as she had done her whole life, trying to stay hopeful in the face of what she’d lost; and as their king had done through all the changes in his fortunes that had brought him to this distant place. As Hugh had done, so stubbornly repairing things and setting them to rights when all he loved had been reduced to ash and memories.

The Earl Marischal had turned towards her, unable to hear her for the rushing of the river underneath them. “What was that, my dear?”

She told him in a stronger voice, “I said the bridge still stands.” She let her hand fall to her side and looked at him. “And surely every broken thing can be rebuilt.”

The earl stood regarding her much as her uncle regarded a wine that surprised him with quality.

“Yes, Mistress Dundas, I’d like to believe so.”

She noticed his gaze had gone past her, and turning she saw the tall man now approaching the bridge from behind her.

“I’d very much like to believe so,” the earl said again, as he lifted his hand and called out to MacPherson, who’d noticed them both by this time and was coming towards them with slow, even strides.

No more shall I find their steps in the heath, or hear their voice…

—Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Three

Rome

May 15, 1732

Mary tried to compose herself, grateful the light was now softening so if she turned from the lowering sun Hugh might not have a definite view of her features, for although her traitorous moment at hearing the news he would soon be departing had passed, and she was in control of her face and emotions, she could not be certain he’d not see some lingering trace of it and she had no wish to show him such weakness.

He wore not his fine Highland clothes but a more common suit of a deep earthen red that looked well with the old Roman bricks of the bridge as he set foot upon it. His own face gave nothing away of his thoughts.

The Earl Marischal greeted him first with, “Did you find the man you were after?”

“Aye.” Hugh looked at Mary, and he gave the short nod of greeting she’d come to miss while he’d been gone. Then he turned his impassive gaze back to the earl as a pupil might look to his tutor to lay bare the meaning of something inscrutable.

The earl offered nothing but, “And did he finish the work that you paid him to do?”

Hugh nodded curtly.

“Good. All is well, then.” The earl, with an elegant ease that told Mary he was long accustomed to facing Hugh’s silences, added, “I feared I might have missed the time I’d told you I would be here, for at the Castel Sant’Angelo I chanced to meet Captain Hay and as usual we fell to talking. A fortunate delay, as it turned out, for it gained me the company of this enchanting young lady.” Smiling briefly at Mary, he told Hugh confidingly, “I see now why you were so disapproving of the men put forward to escort Mistress Dundas back to Saint-Germain, and why you did advise Lord Inverness he should choose none of them, for had I been her guide so long, as you were, I would also wish to choose with care the man who was to take my place.”

He might as well have spoken to a statue but he did not seem bothered. He cast an unhurried glance skyward and lifted his eyebrows. “But it appears my delay, although fortunate, makes it impossible for us to do as I’d planned, for I have not the time for it now, else I’ll risk disappointing the little duke.” He turned to Mary. “Have you had the pleasure yet to be presented to our two young princes? No? The younger, Henry, Duke of York, is serious for one so small. I never saw any child comparable to him.” His tone held indulgence. “The Prince of Wales, his brother Charles, is already unruly, but the little duke is so determined to be on his good behavior that he’s ordered a journal be kept of his actions, that I may see and tell the world how well he does behave. He made me promise to buy him a special book just for this purpose and bring it to him before bedtime tonight, so I must buy one now else he’ll count me a man of no honor at all.” Looking at Hugh again he asked, “There was not a stationer’s shop, by chance, near to your silversmith?”

In watching Hugh, Mary had noticed a faint line that showed in his hard cheek when he was amused or, much more commonly, exasperated, and she saw it now. He told the earl, “No.”

“Ah.”

Mary said, “There is a stationer quite near the Corso, where I bought a journal for myself just yesterday.” Bound with bright colorful boards and tooled leather it was much more decorative than the one Colette had given her, and yet she doubted she ever would hold it so dear.

She thought of Hugh standing at Fontainebleau holding her journal within his hands, and wondered what he would think, with his practical Highland ways, of the impractical manner in which she had ended that book today, writing:

In truth there is but one man in the whole of Rome whose honor I am certain of, whose friendship I have come now to rely upon, and if it were my choice to make I would lay all my heart before him and refuse to leave his side.

A most foolish sentiment, surely, she told herself, and one he’d hardly have welcomed, but as she had gone on herself to acknowledge, her father’s dour philosophy of life had been a true one:
for
though
my
aunt
once
reassured
me
I
would
always
have
a
choice, if there is one before me now I do confess I cannot see it, so instead I must—

And here, having run out of space in the first journal, Mary had opened her new one and inked her pen carefully and marked the date again and carried on:

—content myself with having briefly touched that wider sky that Mistress Jamieson did speak of, for being brought to earth again I’d rather have the memory of flight and bear the pain of losing it, than to have never flown at all.

Brave words, she thought, and tried to match her actions to them now as she gave the Earl Marischal directions to the stationer’s.

He thanked her and bowed gallantly and kissed her hand and said, “I have enjoyed our walk. I trust MacPherson will at least approve himself to be your escort back to your hotel, since he seems loath to recommend another.”

With a final nod to Hugh he wished them both a pleasant evening and walked off in the direction of the Corso and the palace, leaving Hugh and Mary standing on the bridge.

She watched the earl’s departing back and thought she understood why Hugh would serve a man like that—a man of decency and honor and intelligence. And given that the earl belonged, as he himself had owned, to a more noble branch of Hugh’s own clan, by serving him Hugh could quite rightly claim to be no broken man, but one who was yet bound by faith and duty to his family.

She had gained a deeper understanding of MacPherson this past hour, as these past weeks had given her a deeper knowledge of her feelings for him, yet she could share none of it but held it all within her as she faced him in the fading light. Behind him the whole western sky had now softened to pink streaked with turquoise, and Mary knew they would not have long to talk, so she wasted no time.

“If you truly are given a say in whom Lord Inverness will select as my guide, I would ask you a favor.”

He neither denied nor confirmed his involvement, but waited with evident patience for her to continue.

Mary said, “I would not give you trouble…” Then she caught herself, remembering the times she’d been a bother to him on their journey down, and added, “Though I do suppose that it is rather late for that.”

Again the line showed for a moment in his cheek. He told her, “Name the favor.”

“Mr. Thomson claims he will be set at liberty quite soon, and I would rather not be sent to travel in his company.”

Hugh did not ask her to explain, so she was spared the complicated task of giving voice to her unsettled view of Thomson and his character; her indecision whether he was a good but misguided man or a dissembling traitor.

Hugh said only, “Then ye’ll not be. I will see to it.”

She thanked him, and although she’d learned in childhood that no good would come of prodding at a wound, she could not keep herself from saying, “It is too bad the Earl Marischal is not inclined to travel north to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, instead of south to Spain.”

Mary thought she saw a small change to the angle of his head as though he counted it of interest that the earl would so divulge their plans. He took a step towards her, thoughtfully. “The earl,” he said, “prefers a warmer climate, and he has few friends at Saint-Germain.”

She sympathized. “In that respect, the earl and I are equal.”

He’d come to a spot an arm’s length from her, and now he stood there and studied her face. “You were born there.”

“But I have not lived there since I was a child.” She had not intended the words to sound wistful, but Hugh seemed more focused on what she had said than the way she had said it.

He frowned. “When I took ye from Paris, ye told me in plain terms ye were to go back to your family. The whole way to Lyon ye seemed fair determined,” he said, “to go home.”

Mary gave a little shrug and looked deliberately away. “Home, as you once told me, is not always where you left it.”

She did not wish to speak to Hugh about her family. He already knew—had known from the beginning—who her elder brother was, and doubtless he would then know something of her family’s past. And having made inquiries here in Rome about her father and her other brothers, he would also know how little she had figured in their lives. He did not need her to remind him of how easily they’d left her, for he was about to do the same himself.

Hugh had said nothing in reply, and Mary—knowing he had no great love of conversation—took that as a sign he wished to bring an end to this one and deliver her to her hotel in safety, for the sun had crept yet lower and the turquoise color in the sky was bleeding through the softer pink and washing it away, and soon the twilight would descend.

“Shall we start back?” she asked him with a brightness that she did not feel. “I’m sure that Frisque will be beside himself with joy to see you, he has been so bored these past weeks.”
As
have
I
, she nearly added, but she held her tongue.

“I have a gift for ye.”

It was, as speeches from the Scotsman went, so strange and unexpected that she was not sure she’d heard him right. “A what?”

He did not bother to repeat the comment, for he had already pushed his sword hilt to the side to gain him access to the pocket of his dark red coat, from which he drew his hand out in a half-closed fist. He held that fist towards her, and his fingers opened to reveal a thing so purely beautiful that Mary could do naught but stare.

It was an equipage—a silver clip of four open-work hearts so set together that they seemed to form a butterfly, and hanging from them by three dainty silver chains she saw a tiny watch key, and the little watch that went with it, and something small and round suspended in a cage of silver wire.

She looked at it and could not speak.

She thought of what the earl had asked him earlier, about whether the man Hugh had met had completed the work he’d been paid for, and vaguely her mind resurrected the earl’s idle mention of shops and a silversmith, but it seemed incredible that Hugh would go to so much trouble and expense on her account. And then she looked at the watch and another thought, still more incredible, struck her. She asked him, “You made this?”

He nodded. “I had a man here do the chains and the clip for me, for I had not the right tools.”

Any words she might have said at that moment all seemed to be caught in a lump at the base of her throat, so she did not say anything, letting Hugh show her the watch—how the glass front would open, as would the bright silver-cased back, and the way it was meant to be wound with the key.

With his head bent, intent on instructing her, he said, “It must be wound once a day, though it will run for six hours beyond that if ye do forget it.”

She managed to say in a small voice, “I will not forget.”

She did not mean the watch, but she stared at it anyway, noting the miniature scrollwork that weighted the delicate hands on its white porcelain face with the numerals marked simply in black.

“The face is a plain one,” said Hugh, “but the workings inside will not fail ye.”

Her gaze lifted slightly and focused on Hugh—on the serious line of his brow and the slash of a shadow his eyelashes made on his strong angled cheekbones, and Mary could not then imagine how she could have ever thought Hugh unattractive. “It is a handsome face,” she told him, and again she was not speaking of the watch.

He took no notice, gathering the bits of silver and the chains that ran like liquid over his hard palm, and passing all into her smaller hand.

The turquoise sky was flaming now to duller gray, and Mary had to lift her hand to see the details of the silver chains and what they held. She gently rolled the little silver cage to better see the flattened ball within. “Is this a bullet?”

“It is.”

She glanced up, mutely questioning, and Hugh explained, “I killed the wolf with that shot. It protected ye once, and it may yet have power to keep ye from harm.”

Her eyes started to fill and she quickly looked down. She’d been cared for and loved by her uncle and aunt, but she’d never had anyone show such concern for her welfare as this hardened man of the Highlands, who’d taken the trouble to fashion a charm with the sole aim of keeping her safe in the time when he would not be able to do it himself. When he would not be there at her side.

Blinking hard at the butterfly hearts, she began to believe she had seen a design like that somewhere before…and then suddenly she knew exactly where she’d seen those hearts, and her gaze slipped in mixed disbelief and dismay to the basket-like hilt of Hugh’s sword, and the open space where now one piece of the wrought silver basket was missing, then back again to the increasingly valuable gift in her hand.

Her fingers closed around it and she had to fight and concentrate to keep the tears from spilling over from her blurring eyes, and it was all for naught because a single tear squeezed through her lashes anyway and slowly tracked a path down her averted cheek. She blinked again to force the others back and breathed a steady breath and willed herself to show him nothing but the strength he’d told her he admired.

Hugh was watching her. He asked, “Is something wrong?”

Everything’s wrong
, Mary wanted to say.
You
are
going
away.
But she shook her head. Found her voice. “No.” Not
exactly
her voice, so she cleared her throat lightly and tried again. “No, it is only that this is a beautiful gift, and I’ve nothing to give you at all in return.”

There was silence a moment, as though he were thinking. “A story will do.”

Mary brought her head up at that, grateful he’d given her something to smile at. “My stories,” she said, “are in no measure equal to this, and you know it.”

He looked at the silver that gleamed in the hand she’d held up as her evidence, and with a stubborn shrug told her, “I’d count them above it.”