As High as the Heavens (2 page)

"Gae awa wi' ye!" Robert Gordon exclaimed with a
chuckle, falling back on a more primitive form of speech
to express his incredulity. "Have my ears finally failed me,
now to hear ye complain of a few hours spent with yer
books? It's past time, then, I send off for a new supply.
Ye must surely have exhausted our meager offerings to
speak now so disparagingly."

"Nay, Father. It's but the weather of late, and the time
of year." Heather's smile faded. "And the fact it's the
first winter I've spent without Mither too. No matter
how close to my wit's end I'd become when the snow
lay long on the ground and the cold kept us indoors,
she used always to have some plan to pass the bleak,
boring hours."

"Aye, that she did, lass." Robert's mouth tightened, and
a wistful look flared in his eyes. "That she did. Though
my bonny Margery has been gone all of eight months
now, I, too, find some days without her harder to bear
than others."

He stepped close and wrapped an arm about Heather's
shoulders. "Come, lass," he said, guiding her back into
the library's confines and shutting the door. "What I've
next to say to ye will, I'd wager, win yer interest for a
time. There's trouble afoot and much I must discuss
with ye."

"Indeed?" Heather shot her father a worried look.
Though she was well aware today's meeting had been
convened hastily and with the utmost secrecy, her respect
and loyalty to her father had precluded any queries or
idle curiosity.

"Has this trouble, then, aught to do with this day's
council with the lords and other nobles?"

"Aye, it does." He led her to two box-seated, panelbacked oak armchairs standing before the small hearth
fire. "Sit, lass," he urged, "while I warm this frigid room
a bit."

Heather settled herself on the farthest chair's green,
blue, and yellow tartan-covered seat, snugged her shawl
more securely up about her shoulders, and waited while
her father knelt and added a few logs to the fire. It was
strange, she mused, how cold the room had become in
the hours she had waited. She hadn't noticed it before.
Somehow, though, as she sat in tense anticipation of
what was to come, her fingers suddenly felt like little
blocks of ice and her cheeks and ears stung with what
almost seemed like chilblains.

In the span of but a few minutes of prodding and poking, the feeble flames were coaxed back to their former
intensity. Heat surged forth to bathe the little room in
comforting warmth. Setting aside the iron poker, Robert
Gordon then rose, walked over, and took the seat opposite his daughter.

Though Heather waited patiently for her father to
speak, he failed to do so for what seemed an interminable
length of time. Instead he stared down at his hands,
hands that, as if they possessed a mind of their own, ceaselessly clenched and unclenched in his lap. Finally,
Robert Gordon cleared his throat, lifted his gaze, and
fixed her with a resolute stare.

"What I next tell ye, lass, ye must swear on yer mither's
grave not to reveal to a soul. Swear it now, or I can't tell
ye a word more."

Apprehension plucked at Heather. This was far, far
worse than she had imagined.

"Aye, Father," she said softly. "If it's of such import to
ye, I give ye my word. I'll not tell a soul. But I'd like also
to know why ye require such a solemn oath."

He averted his gaze, seemingly finding sudden interest in the fat, fluffy snowflakes beginning to fall outside
the library window. For a moment Heather's gaze joined
his. The ethereal beauty of the crystalline forms floating
languorously past the windowpanes caught her up, holding her in thrall. How exquisitely beautiful they were,
she thought, yet, conversely, how painfully deadly if one
was ever caught unprotected outside in a storm.

Beauty and pain ...

The bitter contrast evoked memories of the day her
mother had summoned Heather to her deathbed. Margery had sent the servants from the room, then pulled
Heather close. The sickeningly sweet smell of death had
tainted the air, and only her deep, abiding love for her
mother had kept Heather there.

"A word ... with ye," Margery had whispered. "Of life
... love ... and a woman's lot."

Heather swallowed hard and nodded. "Aye,
Mither?"

"I've always loved yer father. Who wouldn't ... love him?" Her mother's eyes misted with tears. "He was
always so braw ... so bonny."

Taking her mother's hand in hers, Heather waited.

"H-he never loved me, though. Leastwise, not as I
wished him to." A fat tear rolled down Margery's cheek.
"Aye ... just as Rose's man never loved her. . ."

She clutched Heather's hand, as if afraid that letting
her daughter go just then would be to surrender her to
a similar fate. "Beware, my bonny Heather ... beware
of giving yer love to a man. They cannot help themselves
... cannot help breaking yer heart and crushing yer spirit
... aye, and even killing ye."

Disbelief, then horror, swamped Heather. Could it be?
Had both her mother and older sister fallen prey to the
same fate?

Rose had wed but two years ago. Donald Campbell had
been every woman's dream-dashing and handsome, if
a trifle shallow. Her sister had fallen wildly, passionately
in love. After a brief courtship they had been wed. Rose
had quickly become pregnant.

Donald, however, though he greatly valued the Gordon
fortune Rose would one day inherit, put no such store
in his vows of marital fidelity. One night, when his wife
was only weeks from her childbed, he had become careless. Rose found him with one of her serving maids. In
the terrible fight that ensued, she had somehow lost her
balance chasing him and fallen down the stairs. Rose
and her babe had died three days later.

Yet, though her sister's death had been a terrible blow,
now to discover her mother's long-kept, devastating secret was an even greater shock. All these years, Heather hadn't imagined her mother unhappy in her marriage,
but then, when had she ever closely thought much on
it? She had always been so engrossed in her books and,
in her youthful naivete, she had just assumed ...

"Nay, not Father." Heather choked out the words. "Not
Father."

"Aye, lass." Her eyes burning pits of agony, her mother
managed a weak nod. "Even my braw, bonny Robert."

Beauty and pain ...

The rich, tangy scent of wood smoke wafted by. The
familiar odor only intensified Heather's awareness of
the contrast between the now warm and cozy room
and the sense of uncertainty and betrayal in the world
outside. Uncertainty and betrayal so perfectly exemplified by a beloved father, an unfaithful brother-in-law,
and the God who had allowed such a travesty of justice
in the world.

As if for the first time, Heather saw her father with a
new perspective. Saw him, in the rapidly waning light,
as a man besieged by cares that had aged him in ways
she had never before noted. Saw him as a man who,
perhaps with the best of intentions, used others for his
own means.

They cannot help themselves ...

At the memory of her mother's sorrowing words, guilt
at her own disloyalty, followed swiftly by a fierce resolve,
flooded Heather. She was a woman in a man's world, and
not even God would come to her aid. She had no other
choice. Her father was all she had and, like her mother
before her, she'd stand by him.

She would just never allow him, or any man, to pierce the barriers she had been forced-in the aftermath of her
sister's and mother's deaths-to build about her heart.
The belated realization of their marital torment had been
hard enough to bear. She'd not play the fool and risk that
same pain and betrayal herself.

"Tell me, Father." Leaning forward, Heather took her
sire's hand in hers and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
"Ye know I can be trusted. Ye know, as well, that I'll do
aught ye ask." She managed a taut little smile. "When
everything's said and done, we are, now that Rose and
Mither are gone, all that is left of the Gordons of Dunscroft."

He smiled sadly and patted her cheek. "Aye, my poor,
bonny Rose and dear, sweet Margery. Well, it won't be
long now, will it, before ye're wed?" His brow clouded
in thought. "The ceremony's but five months away, isn't
it? And once ye've wed that handsome son of Alastair
Seton, ye'll soon see to bairns running about within these
old walls again. Then I'll truly be content, what with my
daughter and her husband and their bairns brightening
Dunscroft once more."

She knew he meant well, knew he had done what any
conscientious father would do, in betrothing her, as his
now only child and heir, to Charles Seton. Of good stock
and breeding, Charlie was also a younger son who stood
greatly to gain in joining with the prosperous Gordons.
And, if the truth were told, there were many men far less
pleasing than Charlie. Indeed, in the few visits they had
shared in the past months, Heather had found him to
be quite pleasant and well-read. He seemed, if nothing
else, a man who'd treat her kindly.

The fact that Heather didn't love him, or even find him
particularly exciting, must never be permitted to influence her acceptance of the betrothal. Indeed, the fact
she didn't love him was perhaps for the best. She'd make
no errors clouded by love-neither those that broke the
spirit nor the body. Still in her heart of hearts, Heather
wondered if there wasn't-shouldn't be-more. More to
a relationship between a man and a woman. More to
life itself.

But such thoughts were far from the issue just now.
What mattered was hearing what her father had come to
say, and supporting him in whatever he desired. Heather
turned to the hand that lingered on the side of her face,
kissed it, then pulled away.

"Tell me, Father. Tell me and be done with it."

He leaned back then and sighed. "It's the queen. She
must be freed from Lochleven."

"Aye, that she must." Heather frowned. Though she
was well aware her father was part of a group of loyalists who had never accepted Mary's abdication, she had
hoped he'd have allowed the younger, more hotheaded
members of the faction to lead any plot to rescue the
queen. It was beginning to appear, however, that that
wouldn't be the case.

"What has that to do with me," she prodded when no
reply was forthcoming, "or with the secret ye asked me
to keep?"

"We can't rescue her with force of men. Lochleven is
too well fortified. It would withstand us long enough for
Moray to send a superior army against us. We must, in stead, enter the castle by more devious means and spirit
away Mary before they can sound the alarm."

"A wise plan."

Her hands outstretched, Heather leaned toward the
fire to warm fingers again gone suddenly cold. The flickering light bathed her hands in red-gold hues, casting
them into brilliant illumination, then shadow.

"It'll take a clever scheme, however," she said, "to fool
Lochleven's chatelaine, the Lady Margaret Douglas, and
her son William. They know the Gordons are loyal to the
queen. We can't just float up to the castle and ask their
permission to visit Mary."

"Nay, we can't," her father admitted. "In fact, we can't
appear to be in any way involved in the queen's rescue.
If the plot should fail, Moray's vengeance would be swift
and harsh. But we can send a man the Douglases view as
friend and ally into Lochleven to aid in Mary's escape. A
man who, though they assume him loyal to their cause,
is, in truth, loyal instead to the queen."

Her hands still spread to the fire, Heather glanced
over her shoulder at her father. "Indeed? And who would
such a man be?"

Robert Gordon smiled. "A man the exact double of
that young fop Colin Stewart. Ye remember him from
yer days at Court, don't ye? As luck would have it, the
Lady Margaret dotes on him."

"A man who looks exactly like Colin?"

Heather turned to face her father. She was well acquainted with the handsome if dissolute Colin Stewart.
For the past two years, he had been in attendance at
Mary's Court the same months Heather and her father were there. He had even for a time been a suitor for her
hand, until her father had adamantly squelched that. His
vast estates and noble lineage notwithstanding, Colin
Stewart's conversion to the new church headed by John
Knox had been more than the Catholic Lord Gordon
could stomach.

"A man the exact double of Colin?" she repeated, forcing the memory of Colin Stewart's flattering if rather
superficial courtship from her mind. "But how can that
be? And how did ye come to know of this man?"

"It's a long story." An enigmatic expression shuttered
his eyes.

"Well, I've the time to hear it, if ye've the time to tell
it. 11

Her father grinned. "Ye've yer mither's blunt way of
speech. I like that. Unlike her, though, ye know when to
temper it with good grace."

Warmth stole into Heather's cheeks. Her mother,
Margery Mackenzie, though of noble birth, had been a
Highlander through and through. She had been as feisty
and fiery as they came, leastwise until her unrequited
love for Robert Gordon had finally crushed her spirit.
Yet though Heather strove hard "to temper with good
grace" her own tendency to the same bluff ways as her
mother's forbearers, on occasion those inclinations escaped to betray her.

"I try, Father," she murmured, "to be all ye wish of
me. Truly, I do."

"I know ye do, lass. As I know ye won't fail me in this,
either." He sighed and settled more comfortably in his
chair. "The man I spoke of... the double of Colin Stewart ... lives in the Highlands amongst Clan Mackenzies. He's
more, though, than just an uncanny double for Colin.
He is, in fact, Colin's twin brother."

"How is that possible?" The shock of such a revelation
sent Heather's heart to pounding. "In all the times I spoke
with him, Colin never once mentioned a brother. Indeed,
he said his mither had died birthing just him."