The Chieftain (13 page)

‘But a very fortunate one,’ added Isobel, thankfully.

In spite of John’s worst fears, and his inexpert rowing, they reached the coast in safety, and he took her first to the home of a relative to rest and eat.

A long and uncomfortable journey on the rough and narrow Highland roads followed, enlivened only by John Campbell’s attentive and reassuring presence. He answered her eager questions about her parents, how they were well and how, mercifully, the rebellion had largely passed them by. Not that it was over yet, but the rebels had crossed into England some weeks ago, and with luck they would not return.

‘The English won’t let them off as lightly as our spineless generals have done,’ John asserted, though Isobel thought he did not sound entirely convinced.

Clearly the rebellion had already been a good deal more successful than had been expected. And if the English, only lukewarm in their enthusiasm for their Hanoverian King, should decide to side with the charming young man who led the invasion—But then, John added, that charming young man was a Catholic, and the English hated Papists more than they disliked a foreign King whose unedifying family quarrels were public knowledge.

Isobel was not sure if his words comforted her. She found that she could not entirely share his fervent wish for the defeat of the rebels. Yet she was a loyal subject of King George, as she had told Hector. Perhaps she was troubled by the thought of all the women and children who would be left grieving at Ardshee if the Prince was defeated. Perhaps she was just tired, drained of any emotion but the longing for home. Though she did not sleep much during the night they passed at a roadside inn.

Then at last, next morning, they left the mountains behind, and the road, wider and well-surfaced now, ran between fields that even in winter looked amazingly lush and fertile. Prosperous farmsteads, tidy towns and villages provided a poignant contrast with the untamed landscape she had grown to know so well. When they paused to rest or change horses the sound of English spoken on all sides seemed strange and unfamiliar, clipped, orderly, as brisk and prosperous as the landscape.

And then, towards evening, she began to see sights she knew, the shape of a hill, a farmhouse, a place-name on a milestone. They were familiar, loved and yet clothed in strangeness, as if remembered from a dream. By the time they reached the edge of her home town, and turned into the street where she had lived for so many years, Isobel realised that everything had changed.

Not that in any sense the houses were different from the ones she had left that summer Sunday. Not that the people in the street looked like any but the neighbours she had known all her life. But she knew as John helped her from the coach and her mother came running from the house to greet her, that she herself had changed beyond recognition. Nothing could ever be the same as it had once been.

Weeping and laughing together her mother clasped her in her arms, exclaiming at her odd clothes, at the dreadful fears they had felt for her, and their joy at having her home again. Her father hovered beside her, waiting to embrace her in his turn.

Then they were in the house, and her mother was asking what she wished to do first. Would she like to take some tea, or change out of those dreadful clothes?

She sipped the tea, feeling out of place in the pretty parlour, aware of the peat smoke scenting her hair, the primitive plaid contrasting with the civilised decencies of her parents’ way of life. It was a relief to escape upstairs, to the room that she had so often dreamed of, which seemed in some way shrunken and unfamiliar.

She washed in warm scented water and dressed in a neat grey silk gown, and tidied her hair away under a little frilled cap. She could scarcely breathe for the constricting whalebones of the bodice, laced tightly across her, and the buckled shoes were harsh to her feet after the soft deerskin she had discarded. She had felt out of place before. Now she felt stiff and awkward and uncomfortable.

The same constraint silenced her when John had taken his leave, promising to call again in the morning, and she was alone at last with her parents. She had longed for this moment, prayed for it desperately ever since Hector had snatched her away, and now it was as if it had somehow all gone wrong.

There was so much to tell them, so much they wanted to know, yet she did not know where to begin. Nor was she sure that she could ever make them understand even a little of all that had happened to her. Here, with her beloved parents, she felt suddenly more lonely, more isolated than she had during the long months at Ardshee.

Tears filled her eyes as she sat at the fireside, hands clasped tightly in her lap. She answered her parents’ questions in subdued monosyllables, aware of their puzzled concern.
What is the matter with me?
she thought desperately.

‘You must be very tired,’ said her mother at last, after a longer silence than usual. ‘When you have slept you will feel better, and then we can talk.’

She steered Isobel gently upstairs again, and helped her to undress. And then she tucked her daughter into bed, murmuring soothingly:

‘You are home now, my lamb. Home and safe, and no one shall ever take you from us again.’

Later, when Isobel lay alone in the dark, she thought of her mother’s words. And it struck her, chillingly, that she had already been taken from home, and that the enforced parting had in a way been final and irrevocable. This orderly house was no longer home to her, and never would be again. Her parents’ love was real, but it could not reach her. The dream she had cherished was an illusion.

She turned on her side and closed her eyes and the misery that should have ended with her homecoming lay cold and heavy on her heart.

Chapter Ten

When Isobel woke next morning she felt a little more cheerful. She climbed out of bed, threw a wrap about her shoulders and crossed to the window. It was a crisp sunny morning, the air bright with the distinctive clarity of the eastern sky, quite unlike the soft misty light of the west that she had known at Ardshee.

It was only to be expected, she thought, that it would take her a little time to grow used to being at home. She had been away for a long time, and such a great deal had happened to her meanwhile. The strangeness would pass after a day or two.

She dressed and went down to the sunlit parlour to breakfast. Her parents were as attentive as ever, hovering solicitously over her, urging her to eat, watching every mouthful for signs that her appetite was not all it should be, and her face for traces of sleeplessness or unhappiness.

At last she could bear it no longer. She put down her cup and raised her eyes to their anxious faces, and said:

‘Don’t watch me all the time like that! You must believe that I am well, and very soon, I expect, I shall grow used to being at home. But,’ she bent her head abruptly, as the tears filled her eyes, ‘but just now I... I...’ And then, not knowing what she would have said, overcome by an uncontrollable flood of tears, she ran from the room and threw herself on her bed.

Much later, red-eyed but composed again, Isobel joined her mother by the fire in the best parlour, bringing some long-neglected needlework to occupy her hands while she sat. Margaret Reid looked up as her daughter came in, but said nothing, waiting patiently for Isobel herself to speak when she chose. They sewed vigorously, needles flashing in the sunlight, the embroidered patterns on their work steadily growing. The soft crackle and hiss of the burning logs, the occasional sound of a passing carriage or hurrying feet outside, only emphasised the silence.

In the end Margaret could bear it no longer. ‘It is nearly eleven,’ she said, glancing at the ornate clock on the mantelpiece. ‘John Campbell said he would call this morning.’

‘Yes,’ said Isobel, without discernible emotion.

Margaret’s hands fell to her lap and lay still.

‘Isobel,’ she began gently, ‘you have suffered greatly. But the nightmare is over now. Very soon you will realise that. We shall take every step in our power to help you to put it all behind you, as if it had never been. I am only sorry that you have been forced to...’ her eyes travelled briefly to Isobel’s stomach ‘...to carry the consequences. It is so unjust! But we can try to make even that easier for you. You must bear the child, of course: that is unavoidable. But once it is born we can send it away. There are plenty of poor women glad to give their services to unwanted infants, for a fee. Then it will be as if you had never met that dreadful man.’

Dismayed, Isobel raised her head, her eyes on her mother’s face.

‘No!’ she exclaimed, with a force that took her mother - and herself - by surprise. ‘No, mother. I don’t want that. I want this baby, I want to hold him in my arms and care for him and love him as long as he needs me.’

Margaret listened in amazement.

‘But, Isobel, you will not be able to look on the child without remembering how it came to be conceived. What if it should resemble its father?’

Isobel had a sudden clear mental picture of herself lying in bed, looking down at the tiny defenceless creature cradled in her arms, seeing Hector’s dark eyes gazing up at her from beneath long lashes and the soft fuzz of dark curls covering the little head, feeling the small fingers, long for one so small, clutching at her own…
 

Her heart lurched, and then settled into a quickened beat. She came back to the present, to her hands at rest on her sewing, her empty lap, and was swept with longing for the moment when the child growing within her should be a reality at last.

She looked up. ‘I want this baby,’ she said stubbornly.

Her mother sighed, close to exasperation. ‘I don’t understand you, Isobel.’
 

Nor do I,
reflected Isobel, slowly resuming her sewing. For her mother’s plan made sense. She wanted desperately to put the past behind her, to start again as if it had never been. She had wanted that from the moment Hector seized her in the wood. But with Hector’s child in her arms she would never be able to forget. Particularly not if, as her imagination just now had suggested, the child were to resemble him. Yet some wayward part of herself, against all reason, wanted to see that likeness in the newborn child. She found it inexplicable, beyond understanding. How then could she ever expect her mother to understand?

She shrugged hopelessly, and sewed doggedly on.

It was John Campbell’s arrival that broke the lengthening silence.

‘I am glad to see you looking more rested,’ he said, bowing over Isobel’s hand. Secretly he thought she looked as harassed and exhausted as she had done last night. Yet she should have been more at peace now than when he had come on her at Ardshee.

He greeted Margaret with his accustomed courtesy, and she rang for refreshment as he took his seat between them.

Isobel watched him while his attention was on her mother. He sat at his ease, knowing he was welcome and among friends, yet even in relaxation his body was a little awkward, ungraceful. She could not imagine him dancing in the firelight to the music of the pipes. She even smiled a little at the thought, and he turned his head at that moment and caught her expression.

‘I am glad to see that smile!’ he said warmly. ‘That is more like the old Isobel - Mrs Carnegie, I mean—’ His words tailed off in confusion.

‘Mrs MacLean,’ she corrected him steadily, and was astonished to detect a note almost of pride in her voice. So Hector himself might have spoken, full of his sense of family honour.

Perhaps,
she thought,
I am rather enjoying all this concern on my behalf. Perhaps I am quite glad to have achieved such notoriety, to have gone through all these adventures, far removed from the experience of most girls of my age.
But she sensed that this was not the whole explanation, nor even possibly a part of it. There was something there that she did not want to recognise or to accept at present.
 

She turned her attention to Janet, coming in just then with a tray of madeira and almond biscuits.

But John was not so readily distracted. He waited until Janet had gone again, clearly impatient to speak, and then burst out: ‘We shall rid you of that name, my dear. You can be Mrs Carnegie again, as if all this had never happened.’

That phrase again! But Isobel said nothing, only giving John her full attention, grave and silent.

‘You see,’ he explained, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, ‘by law your marriage was no marriage, and may be set aside—’

‘But I am with child,’ protested Isobel.
 

‘Ah!’ John raised his hand in reassurance. Clearly the lawyer in him was enjoying the situation. ‘That is beside the point. If the marriage was forced upon you against your will, and consummated by an act of rape, then it is no marriage. Consent, freely given, is the essential factor in the legality of any bond entered into by a man and a woman. In your case there was clearly no consent. It was a brutal act forced upon you with violence by a man who wanted only - one assumes - to acquire your considerable fortune. To set that marriage aside, even after several months, will, in your case, be little more than a formality.’

Isobel gazed down at her hands, indefinably depressed by the cool analysis of her situation, the dry lawyer’s language. Then a new aspect of her predicament struck her.

‘But that would make my baby a bastard!’ she protested. ‘Wouldn’t it?’