Island of the Swans (72 page)

“I’ll take sixteen copies!” chimed in the Countess of Glencairn, not to be outdone.

“Will the duke be joining us?” Creech asked pointedly, as if the literary fancies of women were of no particular import. “He’s a fine master of rhymes, and since I have an inkling all of you here tonight will try to persuade me to wager good silver on this young bard, I’d like to have His Grace’s opinion of the work.”

“I would be most happy to comply,” a voice behind Jane interjected sharply. Alex had suddenly appeared in the drawing room and greeted Creech cordially. “I’m just as curious—and skeptical—about our guest of honor, my good fellow.”

To Jane’s annoyance, Alex proceeded to lead Creech to a far corner. She assumed the two of them would trade quips about the foolishness of taking such an untutored writer seriously.

Jane returned her attention to the entrance to the drawing room. Framed by the door’s graceful molding stood a well-proportioned young man of about twenty-seven or eight. The new arrival stared at his hostess with dark eyes that glowed with peculiar intensity as he surveyed the room. His luminous gaze paused momentarily on her lemon-colored bodice trimmed with white lace stitched around the scooped neckline, and lingered a second too long for delicacy. Jane sensed an almost animal-like magnetism about the man she immediately surmised was Robert Burns. He exuded a vibrant force that seemed to be alerting her that here was an artist who, despite his humble origins, and despite the fact he was possibly ten years her junior, might feel himself entitled to lure her into any compromising situation of his choosing.

She felt a prickling on her skin as she stared at Burns’s strong, even features and unpowdered, dark brown hair pulled back simply in periwig fashion. Her face felt unaccountably flushed as he approached her, his eyes locking glances with hers, and refusing to look away.

His buckskin breeches stretched tautly over his muscular thighs, which were developed to outsized proportions, presumably by years of pushing a plow on his farm near Mauchline in the south. His blue coat, studded with brass buttons, was obviously new, as was his yellow-striped waistcoat and the snowy linen and ruffles that gathered at his massive throat. His unmistakable maleness was not diminished by such recently purchased finery suitable for an aristocratic drawing room in Edinburgh. Despite the cut of his coat, nothing could mask an essential earthiness in the man.

Burns strode to Jane’s side and inclined his head in greeting. With unexpected grace, he reached for her hand and kissed it. Much to her horror and chagrin, Jane found herself conjuring up an image of this beautiful specimen of manhood lying naked in a hay barn.

“My Lowland countrywoman…” he murmured over her hand, his breath blowing sensuously through the sheer cambric handkerchief she held tightly, as always, to hide her injured finger.

Startled by his forwardness, she assumed he was referring to the fact that Ayrshire lay hard by the county of Galloway and her father’s rundown estates in Monreith. Alex, having witnessed the unusual and intense manner in which the poet had greeted his wife, smiled sardonically.

“Jane, my dear, please introduce me to our guest of honor,” he said.

“W-why certainly,” Jane stammered, furious with herself for her obvious lack of composure.

“Good evening, Your Grace,” Burns said cheerfully to his host, as if undressing the duchess with his eyes was a perfectly acceptable way of paying a compliment to her duke. “’Tis extremely kind of you both to welcome such a poor poet as m’self to this grand town.”

“No doubt, it is,” Alex replied dryly, making his own survey of the man’s slightly rustic but commanding presence.

“Please take some refreshment, Mr. Burns,” Jane interposed quickly, regaining her sense of self-control. “Marshall!” she called sharply to the butler. “See to Mr. Burns.”

Before long, the entire company settled themselves in the chairs Jane had ordered placed in the drawing room, so as to create a small, cozy theater. Burns stood in the center of the flowered carpet and appeared remarkably unselfconscious in such august company. He withdrew several sheafs of what Jane took to be his handwritten poems. In a deep, resonating voice, interspersed with the rich inflections of his native Ayrshire dialect, he began to read from a work titled “Winter Night.”

Jane sank into a wing-backed chair and rested her feet on a small, needlepoint footstool. She allowed the poet’s roiling cadences to sweep over her.

…
Blow, blow, you winds with heavier gust!

And freeze thou bitter, biting frost!

Descend, you chilly, smothering snows

Not all your rage, as now united, shows

More unkindness, unrelenting.

Vengeful, malice unrepenting

Than heaven-illumed Man on

Brother man bestows!

The poet seemed to be suspended in a half-conscious state. He was no longer even looking at his written poem, but reciting from memory, his eyes slightly closed, his face like chiseled marble. The brilliance of his words, their melody, their power moved Jane deeply. Her eyes grew moist, though she was at a loss to know whether it was due to the poem itself, the riveting manner in which Burns recited it, or the unshed tears of loss she’d been holding back so many months.

When Burns finished “Winter Night” there was awestruck silence. Then the room burst into applause.

“Splendid!” roared old Lord Monboddo. “Simply splendid!” he repeated, amid a chorus of general praise.

Burns’s ruddy faced glowed with pleasure. He thanked everyone with a simple grace and seemed genuinely surprised when several members of his audience begged to hear more of his work.

As he began the first lines of a poem he called “My Highland Lassie,” Burns’s words flowed easily, and he stared intently in Jane’s direction. Alex’s immobile features gave no hint of his judgment of the work. Although the poetic lines were clearly about Burns’s own lost love, Jane had the uncanny sense that the poet was staring at her so intently because, somehow, he knew that this particular poem characterized the woman she had been at eighteen. Perhaps, he instinctively recognized she had suffered great loss. In any event, the words he recited in his deep clear voice spoke to her of a woman’s love for the wild Scottish countryside and the visceral pull exerted by the woods and lochs and braes of the Highlands. The biblical phrase,
and he knew her
, with all its emotional and sexual connotations, floated through her head as she listened to him recite. She was mesmerized by his compelling manner and button black eyes, which were fastened unflinchingly on hers.

When he had completed his recitation, the chamber suddenly erupted with more applause and praise for the ploughman poet. Startled from her former state of suspended animation, Jane quickly glanced around the room at the excited assembly and noticed that Alex had slipped out of the room at some point during the poet’s remarkable performance.

Robert Burns accepted another glass of Gordon punch from an uncharacteristically jovial William Marshall. He nodded his thanks for the butler’s compliments and walked directly toward Jane, who was still seated in her wing-backed chair. He smiled down at her, his dark eyes kindling with frank admiration.

“Well, madam?” he said, his tone both challenging and diffident.

“That Highland lass… must have touched you greatly,” Jane said quietly.

“Aye, that she did,” he replied, his voice a peculiar blend of tenderness and sensuality.

“And you took great pleasure in… ah… knowing her,” she added, unsettled by the man’s silent but unrelenting appraisal of her face and figure.

“I sometimes feel that way about beautiful lassies, aye,” he said, a mischievous smile playing across his well-defined lips.

The cheek of the peasant
, she thought, suddenly annoyed at his presumption. She told herself that she felt an odd attraction to him only because he was a talented, handsome devil, and because Alex and she had been sleeping apart these many months. She interrupted her thoughts midstream and abruptly stood up.

“You’ve met the Dowager Countess of Glencairn?” Jane declared with forced politeness, nodding her head toward the least beautiful example of womanhood in nearly all of Edinburgh. “She’s quite an admirer of yours,” she added with deliberate condescension.

“But are
you
?” Robert Burns asked boldly, his gaze lingering once again on her bodice.

“An admirer of your rhymes?” she asked, feigning an innocent interest in his writing. “I am no judge of things literary, of course, but I quite like what I’ve heard. Do you write cheerful ones as well?”

“Aye, Duchess…” he murmured. “Mayhap you’ll permit me to present them to you sometime soon. I’d very much like that…” he added, his meaning unmistakable.

Before she could summon a tart dismissal to her lips, the parsimonious publisher, William Creech, approached them. After a few moments, he nodded curtly to his hostess and led Burns away to confer in a corner.

“I doubt much these poems of yours will sell, mind you,” he began, “but I might be willing to print an edition, if we could come to an equitable arrangement.”

Within a month, Robert Burns and his poetry were the rage of Edinburgh. The party given at the home of the Duke and Duchess of Gordon had launched the farmer from Ayrshire into a whirlwind of social activity and acclaim. With his lightning wit and brilliant, if sometimes impertinent conversation, he wooed the city like a brazen lover. When he wasn’t basking in the praise of duchesses and countesses, he was singing drunken songs (whose lyrics he was more than likely to have scribbled down hastily with a borrowed quill) in half the taverns along the High Street.

As the new year wore on, Jane found herself increasingly enjoying Burns’s company. Despite the man’s impudence, she was dazzled by his talent and found it amusing to introduce the poet to the cream of Edinburgh society. At the Caledonian Hunt Ball in mid-January, one hundred people signed up on the spot for Creech’s forthcoming edition of Burns’s poems. Soon after, Jane and Burns attended the Theatre Royale’s production of
The School for Scandal
and laughed themselves silly, even though the frippery was from the pen of Richard Sheridan, a rascally confidante of Charles Fox and Jane’s rival, the Duchess of Devonshire.

Every men’s club in the town wanted Burns to join their circle. The Kilwinning Masonic Lodge made him one of their own, and on April 21, the Edinburgh edition of three thousand copies of Burns’s
Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
was published by Creech. The book sold so briskly that the canny bookseller bought the copyright for a hundred guineas, promising Burns four hundred pounds on the sales and subscriptions of the book itself.

As the crocuses and dwarf iris opened their colorful petals in the little park outside the Gordon’s Edinburgh townhouse on George Square, Jane found herself looking forward more and more to Burns’s visits. The homage he extended to her was flattering, especially at a time when her husband paid her little attention. She thought it was truly remarkable the way his newly published book of poems so captured the spirit of her homeland, and she reassured herself that the younger man’s writing was the basis for her admiration.

“I’ve yet to see much o’ any sterling, I pledge you,” Burns commented with a grin one afternoon during one of his frequent—and usually unsolicited—visits to George Square.

The poet lounged comfortably in the solid wing-backed chair in Jane’s drawing room, nursing a whiskey with his customary relish. He had taken to calling regularly on his “Patroness” as he described her to his friends, and today, as usual, his stocky, five-foot nine-inch frame seemed bursting with vigor. Meanwhile, Alex had made it obvious he had little liking for the young man, although he grudgingly acknowledged the upstart had a certain talent for rhymes. But the duke rarely made an appearance at these intimate gatherings.

“Well, you may have little silver,” Jane smiled at her handsome visitor, “but you have plenty of fame, if all these notices in the papers are any measure. What plans have you for your future? More writing, I hope, Rabbie.’’

Burns flashed her a dazzling smile for using his Christian name, a request she had, until now, declined to honor. Jane, at this point, was happy to oblige. During the months of the poet’s meteoric rise in the fashionable circles of the city, she had convinced herself that serving as his patroness was a harmless means of filling the void created in her life by Alex’s deliberate avoidance of her on all but the most formal occasions.

All in all, Jane mused, refilling Burns’s glass to the brim with amber-colored spirits, she’d thoroughly enjoyed herself in the company of this talented rogue.

As for Burns himself, he’d made no attempt to hide his admiration for her—or her person. But then again, Jane realized Robert Burns was a lover of women. All women. She had heard the whispered stories about his numerous love affairs and the astounding number of bastards he had fathered. But what was most endearing about him to Jane was that he was perfectly frank about his rustic indelicacies and his checkered past.