The Chieftain (15 page)

‘I am not playing,’ she told him. ‘I was never more serious in all my life.’ To emphasise her point, she went on: ‘I know you find it hard to understand, but it is true. I love Hector MacLean.’ She spoke proudly, with a lift of the head, and then repeated: ‘I love him, and I will never love anyone else as long as I live. And I am proud to be his wife.’

The declaration almost startled her in its forcefulness. That it was devastating to John was even more apparent. He rose to his feet and stood behind his chair, gripping the brocaded back as if he had Hector’s neck beneath his hands.

‘You are deluded! You must be! Isobel, you know what he is—I told you—You cannot be so blind. Surely you do not think he cares for you? He wants your money, that’s all. Why else would he carry you off in that fashion? A loving man would have wooed you openly, with honour. But he carried you off as he would raid a neighbour’s cattle, for his own gain and the love of villainy. How can you be such a fool?’

She smiled wryly. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But I am.’

‘Have you any reason to think he cares for you?’ John asked sharply.

Isobel thought of that last night with Hector, and how it had ended, and then slowly shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No reason at all.’

John crashed his fist down on the back of the chair.

‘Then why be such a fool? Oh, he has some kind of wild charm, I suppose, at least for a young girl innocent of the world and its ways—But he is evil, Isobel, utterly evil, believe me. You would never, ever find happiness with him, even if he came to care for you. And you know yourself that he will not. To give your heart to him is like giving your soul to the devil—You will be lost—’

‘No, John,’ she corrected him quietly. ‘I am lost without him.’

‘Then you must be saved from yourself!’ he asserted with decision. ‘It is your parents’ wish, as well as mine, that you should be freed of all connection with this man. He must have no possible hope of ever laying hands upon your fortune. It would have been better if you could have appeared in court to put your case, but it can be done without you if necessary.’
 

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, alarmed.
 

‘Here—’ He thrust his hand inside his coat and drew out an untidy sheaf of papers from an inner pocket. She came to his side and waited as he sifted through them, letting one fall unnoticed to the ground. Then with a grunt of satisfaction he extricated a folded paper in what she saw at once was her own handwriting.

‘There!’ he said, smiling triumphantly. ‘All the proof the court needs that you were forced into marriage against your will and at no time consented to what happened to you. A letter sent by you to your parents while you were Ardshee’s prisoner.’

Isobel turned white. ‘But... but I wrote no such letter! I could not have done—’

‘The court will not know that,’ John assured her. He was calm now, with a quiet smiling air of confidence that had something oddly menacing about it. ‘You must admit the handwriting is most convincing.’
 

She stared at him, slowly realising what he implied: that he, the respected lawyer, had stooped to forgery.

‘You surely cannot mean to do this, John,’ she whispered. ‘You know how I feel. Let me have that letter - or throw it on the fire. Accept that if I am lost to you as a wife, I am nevertheless still your devoted - and grateful - friend.’

He thrust the letter quickly back inside his coat.

‘No!’ he exclaimed harshly. ‘No, Isobel Carnegie, you shall not remain my friend. I do not want your mere friendship - have never wanted it. And I shall have you, somehow, whatever the cost—’

‘You would not force me to marry you?’ she asked incredulously. ‘But that’s just what you condemn Hector for!’

He turned then and grasped her arms, so fiercely that it hurt. ‘If that damned thieving savage had not come along when he did, you would have had me. You said it yourself just now. If I had Ardshee in my hands at this moment as I have you, I would break him in little pieces and scatter his carcass to the four winds - and rejoice to think that I had sent his black soul to roast in Hell where it belongs. And I should number the torments he suffered one by one and set them against the wrong he has done me, against my father’s murder and his taking of you—’

‘But you said it was his
father
killed your father!’ she protested, her sense of justice breaking through her mounting horror at this terrible outpouring.

‘It is all one,’ he went on, and the cold gleam in his eyes grew, becoming more chilling with every angry word. ‘The same tainted blood runs in them all. He shall not have you, Isobel. You are mine, and I shall fight to make that true in law as it is in nature.’

‘You cannot want me to be wed to you against my will!’ Isobel felt as if her cry rose and beat against his anger and hate as ineffectually as the waves beat on the rocks at Ardshee.

‘I don’t give a damn what you want,’ returned John. ‘I shall have you—Somehow I shall have you. And if I can’t have you through the courts, then I shall seek out Hector MacLean and make you a widow again and free you that way. Make no mistake, Isobel, there is no escape.’

What he would have said or done then, Isobel was not to know, though she could not imagine there was any more to be said. But at that moment her mother came in, quiet and courteous and smiling, and looking all at once quite out of place in that atmosphere seething with hate and anger.

‘Well, is it all sorted out?’ she asked cheerfully, and then paused, sensing from the way John and Isobel had sprung apart that she had interrupted something not meant for her ears. Looking from one grim face to the other she was not reassured.

‘What’s wrong? Have you two been quarrelling? Isobel, you do not look at all well this morning—John, bring some wine if you please.’

Isobel sank down on the nearest chair, feeling all at once limp and exhausted. It was as if her normal everyday world had turned suddenly to nightmare. She could not yet grasp all the implications of what had passed between them.

She sipped the wine when it came and felt a little better; then leaned back in the chair with eyes closed as her mother questioned John.

‘I think we can see the matter through the courts without bringing her into it,’ John was saying smoothly. ‘It would be rather too much for her, I think, after all she has been through - and in her condition, well—’

The kindly, considerate friend! Isobel heard her mother murmuring her agreement, and then they moved off towards the window so as not to disturb her with their talking. She moved restlessly in the chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. Her back ached abominably.

Her slippered foot brushed against something close to the chair, and she opened her eyes to see what it was. She remembered the paper that had fallen as John searched for the letter. It lay there still, forgotten. Idly she picked it up and looked at it, while straining to hear what they were saying. It was a moment or two before her brain registered the words that her eyes read.

Whoever had written this note - she could not decipher the signature - was demanding the return of five thousand pounds from John Campbell, against the threat of court action and the inevitable exposure that this would involve. It had been written within the past week, but clearly the money had been owing for very much longer than that.

She let her hands fall to her lap, trapping the paper beneath them. She felt cold, but detached and very clear-headed. Many things were falling relentlessly into place.

John Campbell had been her friend for three years now. He had come into her life while she was married to James Carnegie and yet daily expecting his death. He had known, of course, as James’s man of business, that she would be likely to inherit a vast fortune on her husband’s death. And it was possible, judging by the tone of this letter, that even then he had been in some kind of financial difficulty.

She had found it strange and alarming just now to hear John talk of forcing her to repudiate Hector and marry him. John, the kind friend, who should, whatever his own feelings, have understood what she felt, and respected her wish to remain Hector’s wife.

But if John Campbell had hoped to marry her for her fortune, and found himself thwarted by Hector’s more direct manner of achieving the same end… If he had then rescued Isobel, expecting to use his legal skills to free her, and then found that she did not, after all, want to be freed to marry her old friend… If all that were true, then it made some kind of dreadful sense of this morning’s scene.

She looked round at the two figures at the window, deep in earnest conversation. ‘Mother, I should like to speak to John alone. Please would you leave us for a moment?’

A little surprised, but happy enough to comply, her mother left them alone together. John crossed the room to stand beside her, all smiling calmness again.

‘Have you thought better of it then, my dear?’ he asked amiably.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I have found this. You dropped it.’ And she handed him the paper.

She watched him turn white and then red, and then fold the paper with trembling fingers.

‘Just a trifle.’ His tone was casual, though she caught the anxiety in it as he replaced the paper inside his coat.

‘I don’t think it is,’ she contradicted him. ‘I think in fact that it explains a great deal.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he returned coldly.

‘But I think you do. If I am wrong, then I suppose no apology on my part could make up for what I am thinking now. But I am afraid I am not wrong. It explains so much.’

His hand closed about her wrist, gently, yet with a pressure behind it in which she detected a threat. ‘You are not well, Isobel. You ought to go and rest. You will see when you feel better that you have entertained unjust suspicions of me. I am your friend, Isobel, and always have been.’

‘And if I had been little Isobel Reid, with only a modest portion to my name, what then?’

‘I am your friend,’ he repeated doggedly, but she read the answer in his eyes.

She stood up, fired with sudden anger. ‘How dare you, John Campbell! How dare you speak ill of anyone for seeking to do what you have plotted and deceived and connived to achieve for years and years and years! You insinuated yourself into James Carnegie’s house, and into my affections, with one aim only, one base, despicable aim, to step into James’s shoes when the poor man should die. I am glad Hector MacLean thwarted you, John, glad he took me out of your clutches! And you can be quite sure that there will be no second chance. If you take this matter to court then I shall demand to appear and I shall swear on oath that I chose to go with Hector, that I loved him from the first moment I saw him, that I am proud to be his wife and to bear his child and his name. And if that’s perjury then I don’t care because in its own way it is all completely true. And as for you, I never want to see you again as long as I live—’

She saw John gazing at her open mouthed, astonished at her outburst. As she finished, the cold threatening gleam lit his eyes again and she braced herself to face his inevitable anger. And then all at once she could not see him clearly, for a mist seemed to have descended between them. Her head throbbed clamorously.

She saw him spring towards her, felt his fingers on her throat, and knew she was falling. She clutched out wildly for support and a great pain shot through her body, driving out every other thought and feeling.

A long way off someone screamed, horribly, and she did not know it was she who had done so.

Chapter Twelve

Slowly Isobel opened her eyes.

The room was quiet and dark, lit only by the leaping flames of the fire whose gentle crackling reached her through the stillness. She felt strange: very tired, insubstantial, remote. It was some time before she remembered where she was.

She moved her head, just a little, towards the firelight. It took all her strength to complete the tiny manoeuvre. And it brought Janet into view, sitting at the bedside gazing at her with an expression on her face such as Isobel had never seen there before. Why, thought Isobel, should the maid have that look of anxious love? Why, next, did she slide onto her knees by the bed and take Isobel’s hand in hers and stroke her hair, with tears pouring unchecked down her face? Isobel tried to ask why, but she could not find the strength to frame the words.

As Janet poured out her relief and thankfulness, Isobel tried to remember how she had come to be here. But she could bring to mind only a confused recollection of nightmare and pain, grotesque faces bending over her and receding, voices whose quietest tones reverberated through an aching head; and always a dreadful tearing pain.

She felt Janet lift her head and hold a cup to her lips, and drank from it thankfully. And then she slid back into the deep untroubled sleep from which she had awakened just now.

When she woke again it was daylight, and no one sat between the bed and the fire, though some needlework lay abandoned on the bedside chair. She felt unbelievably weak still, but her mind was clearer, and that overwhelming weariness had left her. She even felt a little hungry.

She lay enjoying the peace of the room, the comfort of the clean smooth sheet beneath her. Someone must have changed the bedding, she thought, for it had not always been like that. Piece by piece the past came back to her.