Island of the Swans (37 page)

Jane spun away, out of his grasp, and then turned, fists clenched at her side.

“That’s true enough,” she said bitterly, “and for that lack of faith, I can only blame myself. But you, too, played your part in this disaster,” she said, her eyes flashing. “If only you’d never left before marrying me!” she exclaimed furiously. “I begged you to elope to Gretna Green, but you played lackey to Simon, letting him whisk you to the coach straight from the ball. ’Twas
ambition
that seduced you, Thomas, not your Jenny of Monreith. You thought you could have me
and
your lieutenancy
and
, someday, your lands and title back, didn’t you? But it didn’t come to pass. You
didn’t fight
for me, Thomas Fraser… your
ambition
called the tune… your ambition and that bastard, Simon Fraser!”

Jane whirled on her heel and darted blindly for the spiral staircase, running as fast as she could. Thomas raced to catch up with her, taking the twisting steps two at a time.

“Jenny… Jenny… wait… please wait!” he shouted, filled with a sense of dread he had never experienced before. He half expected her to be poised on the parapet, high over the loch, but, instead, he found her leaning, defeated, against the stone tower’s curved wall, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, as she gasped for breath.

“I’m here, Jenny,” he said softly. “I don’t ever want to leave you again. Please, love, look at me… I’ve a plan you should know… a plan that can mean a new life for us both.”

Wearily, Jane opened her eyes and looked at him sadly. She didn’t speak.

“All during my ride from Beauly, I thought about what possible remedies there might be for this… this nightmare, as you call it…” he began. “And… there
is
a way we can be together.” He walked toward her, but hesitated to touch her. Her eyes seemed almost glazed, as if her body were there with him on the tower, but her mind was floating far off like a swan on the wing.

“Jenny, lass,” he begged earnestly, “we can go to America. I’ve money put by, plus a small cache my godfather has given me over the years. I can resign my Commission and we can go to Maryland or Pennsylvania, where my travels took me. Annapolis is a fine, fair city, much like many here in Scotland… but a wee bit warmer,” he said, smiling before he realized she wouldn’t understand his little joke about Maryland’s steaming summers. He tried to stir her from her peculiar lethargy. “You say you love me… that you’ll always love me… well… here’s your chance to change the fates which deceived us so cruelly! Come with me to America!” he pleaded.

Without waiting for her reply, he strode to her side and folded her in his arms. Her body trembled for a few moments as she buried her cheek against his shoulder. It was difficult to embrace her fully because of the bulky folds of her cloak. Jane continued to rest her head against him, before finally pulling away.

“I love you, Thomas. I never stopped loving you, nor will I—ever,” she said quietly. Her eyes, having lost their glazed look, stared at him from their sable depths. “But I cannot go with you,” she said, barely above a whisper. She parted her cloak to reveal a belly swelling firmly against the fabric of her fine woolen dress. Soon its waistline would be too tight for her and she would have to have larger clothes made for her rapidly expanding figure. “’Tis the duke’s heir… four months along. I expect ’twill be born in September, just before we mark one year of marriage,” she said with finality.

Thomas stared at her rounded abdomen, dizzy from a wave of bitterness that engulfed him.

“That should be
my
bairn growing inside of you!” he cried in anguish, grabbing her shoulders roughly. “
Mine’s
the seed that should be planted in your womb! That bastard duke has stolen every blessed thing…”

With a strangled cry, he crushed her lips to his, seeking to infuse her with the same hopelessness and rage that he feared would accompany him from this day forward. He realized he was probably hurting her, but he clasped Jane in a crushing embrace. The Gordons had now robbed him of everything. Thanks to the faithlessness of families like the Gordons toward the Bonnie Prince in 1745, the Frasers had lost it all: their homes, their lands, their patrimony. And now Thomas Fraser had lost Jane to the Fourth Duke of Gordon.

Jane whimpered softly beneath his torturous embrace, but she didn’t fight against him. Suddenly both were weeping, clinging to each other, giving vent to the months of anxiety and longing they had endured since the day, two years earlier, they had parted in the golden twilight aboard the
Providence.

The swans, forty feet beneath the castle tower of the Wolf of Badenoch, rustled uneasily in the reedy grass. Then, with lightning grace, the birds pushed off, swimming in agitated circles around their five offspring, who poked their tiny heads below the surface of the water, imitating their parents in their search for food.

Jane and Thomas appeared at the arched stone entrance to the keep, their faces ashen and still moist with the tears they had shed together. The swans cocked their heads and waited, watching warily as Thomas tied his boat to the stern of Jane’s. He handed her into the first bateau and climbed in, taking a seat opposite her and reaching for the oars. As the two craft came around the far end of the island, the largest swan followed at a safe distance behind the boats, shadowed by the rest of his family.

By now, the spring sunshine was fast losing ground to the mists, which had been held in abeyance for a few hours. The cooler air had simply overpowered the lukewarm rays of the sun with a new blanket of fog. The swans glided back and forth in the smoky waters off shore, staking out the perimeter of their island territory. Wordlessly, Thomas offered his hand to Jane to assist her out of the skiff, securing the boats to their moorings on the gravelly beach.

“They’re safe in their island home,” Jane said, gazing at the picturesque grouping of swans and their young. “If only we could have been
them
, in this remote place… away from… everything.” Gently, Jane placed her gloved hand on Thomas’s arm. “Let them be us,” she said softly, watching the larger swan usher his family back toward the castle walls. “Let our minds fly back to them whenever we feel sad or lonely… whenever we feel that longing for each other that will never go away…”

Thomas remained silent.

With a stifled sob, Jane threw her arms around him, holding him close. His arms remained at his side and she knew he was aware of the unfamiliar hardness of her rounded belly pressing against him. Tenderly, she pulled his head toward hers, tasting the saltiness of their mingled tears.

“We’re like the swans, Thomas,” she said softly. “’Tis for a lifetime I’ve chosen to love you—and you, me.”

Their eyes locked, and, finally, Thomas unclenched his fists and wrapped his arms around her hooded figure. They stood together silently for some moments and then pulled away from each other and walked side-by-side into the woods. Their two horses were grazing peacefully, oblivious to the cold mists swooping down from the crags above.

Gently, Thomas placed Jane sidesaddle on her palfrey and led the sweet-tempered mare toward the path Jane had taken from the old farmhouse at Kinrara. The hood of her cloak nearly hid her face from his sight until she turned toward him in her saddle and nodded a brief, melancholy farewell. With a tap of her boot, she urged her pony forward.

Slowly he watched her form melt like an apparition into the cloud of moisture curling along a stand of pines that edged the loch. When he looked back across the water, Loch-an-Eilean and the swans had disappeared from view behind a billowing gray blanket of fog.

Weary to the marrow of his bones, Thomas mounted his horse and headed in the opposite direction.

Jane was shivering with cold by the time her pony reached the whitewashed crofter’s cottage nestled in a hollow near the River Spey on the duke’s estate at Kinrara. As she entered the simple abode, the Gordon nursemaid, Nancy Christie, gave her a concerned look and pulled back the bed linen on the straw-filled pallet that rested in a dim corner of the chamber. The one-room cottage was plain and functional, but a welcoming fire glowed in the grate. Jane stood forlornly in the middle of the humble dwelling. Suddenly, she sneezed—once, twice, three times—and then put her hand to her throat, which felt painful and raw.

“You’ve caught a chill, Your Grace,” said Nancy anxiously, hanging Jane’s tartan cloak on a peg next to the door. “Let’s get you out of those clothes and into bed while I just put some barley broth on to heat.”

“Sick?” piped a small voice from the shadows.

“Aye, Geordie,” Nancy replied tersely. “The duchess is feeling poorly, so you must be extra good, lad, and not disturb her ladyship.”

The little boy stared at Jane solemnly and, once Nancy had tucked her into bed, he sat cross-legged on the floor, stroking her hot and feverish hand, which lay on the homespun counterpane.

In the days that followed, Jane permitted herself the luxury of feeling miserable, preferring to concentrate on her physical discomforts instead of allowing herself to dwell on the fact that she would probably never see Thomas Fraser again.

Never see Thomas again.

Her congestion traveled to her chest and she grew wan and listless. Sleeping nearly around the clock, Jane found herself drifting into a semiconscious state in which she could mercifully hide from the finality of Thomas’s departure for Ireland.

She survived for several days in this condition, until one morning, when she was already noticeably overdue at Gordon castle, she heard the jingling of harnesses outside the small window of Kinrara cottage. Male voices mingled in the chill spring air with little Geordie’s high-pitched shouts of welcome.

“She’s had a bout of ague, Your Grace,” she heard Nancy say as footsteps resounded on the wooden floor near her bed. “But she’s much improved, m’lord…” the maid added nervously. “We thought to travel to Fochabers the day after tomorrow.”

“What the devil were you doing here in the first place?” Alex’s voice asked gruffly. “Never mind. Will you please leave me to attend Her Grace,” he added shortly.

Jane heard Nancy and Geordie depart the cottage and then the sound of a chair being dragged toward her sickbed.

Silence.

Jane listened to her own uneven breathing.

“Jane… Jane? Are you awake?”

“Yes,” she replied weakly, keeping her eyes closed.

“Would you please tell me why you are here, living like a peasant in a one-room crofter’s cottage?”

Jane sighed and opened her eyes. Alex still had his traveling cloak draped around his shoulders and he was in the process of removing his gloves. His features were as she remembered them during their long separation: patrician and impassive. She hadn’t a clue what was passing through his mind. His manner was cool, and utterly controlled, and he spoke to her in the tone one would use to address a willful child or a disobedient servant.

Jane sat up in bed and immediately regretted the abrupt movement. Alex’s face became a gray blank for a moment until her dizzy spell passed.

“I came here for several reasons, Your Grace,” she said finally, “not the least of which was that I couldn’t stand Gordon Castle one more second! I waited weeks for you to come, or write, or give me some signal, and you did nothing!”

“There doesn’t seem much we can do, does there?” Alex said unemotionally. “You love Thomas Fraser, but, unfortunately, you are married to me.”

Jane looked at him, feeling her anger rise with each clipped, careful sentence he uttered.

“That’s right!” she retorted. “I am married to you: Alexander, Fourth Duke of Gordon. And that’s why I came to Kinrara. To tell Thomas Fraser that I couldn’t run away from this marriage. That I wouldn’t abandon my vows and go to America with him.”

Alex’s eyes revealed that he was far from the unruffled inquisitor he had, at first, appeared.

“You’ve seen him? Here?” he growled, his eyes darting around the dimly lit cottage.

“No, not here,” she said quietly. “No one saw us. Thomas has rejoined his regiment in Ireland. ’Tis finished, Alex.”