White Rose Rebel (31 page)

During the day, she checked on the troops billeted around, dispensed payments or visited Donald and Lachlan at the forge with work she wanted done. Often, she passed Ewan’s eldest daughter coming to collect broth for old Tom. Eventually, when she couldn’t put it off any longer, she walked back to the cotts with her. She had avoided facing Cath, robbed of a father for her baby.

‘He was a brave man, who died courageously,’ she told the young mother. Cath had moved herself and her baby son into Ewan’s cott, taking responsibility for his sick father and his two young daughters. It was warm but gloomy as ever inside, with light only from the peat fire. The baby tried to find its feet, pulling itself up on anything to hand, falling over and chuckling. The girls kept him away from the hearth.

‘I know what they did to him,’ Cath said. ‘Aeneas told me.’

‘Aeneas?’

‘He brought the word himself, with Ewan’s plaid and dirk, choked up when he told me how they’d tortured him. Cut to the bone, he was, with the whip. But he told them nothing.’

Anne stared down at the dirt floor. It was because of her that Ewan died tormented. It was her he’d protected.

‘I’m so sorry, Cath,’ she said.

‘If he died serving you, he died proud.’ Cath picked up the baby, which was climbing over her to get at the breast, and pulled down her dress to suckle him. ‘You tried to save Calum. They tell me Ewan paid the
Sasannaich
well for him and Seonag.’

‘He did, and Meg has made it her personal quest to get the English lieutenant.’

‘I know.’ Cath smiled in the firelight. ‘Even when you beat them and call the peace, she’ll not stop till she finds him. She has her new man warned of that. Look –’ she stretched out her feet ‘– he’s been making shoes for all of us.’

Anne walked back from the cotts, pensive. A future, that’s what the people needed, shoes on their feet, stone houses with windows to let in the light, the means to sustain themselves, enough food to go round. They didn’t need taxes that bled them dry or laws that destroyed their way of life, their customs and habits, the mutual support, their occupation and use of the land, the equal say in their own affairs, removed by a nation that believed in ownership of people, land, resources, wealth.

Around her were trees, hills, rivers, lochs. No one could own these, nor the fish, beasts or birds that lived in them, no more than own the rain, the sea, the sky or another person. Each thing owned itself. Aeneas knew that. He couldn’t be Highland and not know that. As chief, everything was given him by his people, not for who he was, he was a man as any other, but for what he represented, the clan, the one in whom they invested the preservation of who and what they were, a free people, choosing to live freely together for the good of all. He had cried for Ewan, for Ewan’s pain and loss, not for his own. Maybe her sister was right, she should be magnanimous.

When he and Elizabeth returned from their walk that afternoon, Anne was busy with correspondence, but she watched him come in, take her sister’s cloak, hang it. He didn’t have the look of a man who was afraid to lose. He looked at ease in his own skin, vital and dangerous still, fearful of nothing. As he turned towards her,
heading for the stairs, she dropped her eyes back to her papers. When he was close enough, about to step on to the bottom step, she spoke.

‘Would you like to eat with us tonight?’

She had not looked up. When there was no answer, she did. He was half-turned towards her, looking at her, dark hair flopping over his forehead, his peat-brown eyes a deeper darkness than the pool under the waterfall at Invercauld, looking right at her. Her stomach twisted. She dropped her eyes quickly.

‘No matter, if you don’t care to.’

The letters in front of her blurred, didn’t make sense.

‘No, I’d like to,’ he said. ‘
Tapadh leat.
Thank you.’ He went on up the stairs. She stared at the incomprehensible writing, hearing every footfall. Then Elizabeth rushed over and planked herself down opposite, delighted.

‘Well, where did that come from? How clever of you!’

‘Clever?’ A sense of shock had overcome her. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of. I’ll never be able to sit through supper.’

‘You will, you will. I’ll be there. You know me, I can talk for Scotland. I’ll let Jessie know, then we’ll go up and I’ll help you get ready.’ Elizabeth hurried to the kitchens, grinning. It was four weeks since Aeneas had been foisted on them.

Upstairs in the main bedroom, Anne sat at the dressing table while Elizabeth painted her face and décolletage for her with creamy-soft white, then rubbed carmine into her cheekbones and lips. She had moved back into the room when MacGillivray left, staking her claim over Aeneas as master of the house. Behind them, her marriage bed seemed to take up more space than before, its covers slightly crumpled.

‘I don’t see why we’re making all this fuss,’ Anne complained. Her innards were churning. Elizabeth dressed her hair, making little curls fall by her ears on to her cheeks.

‘Pistols and broadswords don’t capture hearts and minds,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You want to win him over.’

‘I don’t want his heart, and if he had a mind, he would be at my side.’

‘He wants you still, to lie with you.’

‘Does he?’ That was pleasing. It meant she had some power over him.

‘Watches you all the time, coming in, going up the stairs. He’s a fish with his mouth open, waiting to be hooked. You’re too busy ignoring him to notice.’

‘He doesn’t imagine I want him?’ The knot in her gut tightened. Why did she feel so threatened?

Elizabeth grinned and laid down the curling tongs.

‘No man ever knows what a woman wants. Not till he finds himself in her bed or out on her doorstep. Even then, he’ll believe what suits him. Now, what dress?’ She began rifling through the wardrobe. ‘Not white, we don’t want to be confrontational. Blue, what do you think?’ She held up the gown.

‘I’ll wear white,’ Anne said. The Jacobite colour would strengthen her nerve. The rose water on the dressing table was perfumed with the white rose of June. She rubbed some on her hands, patting it round her throat.

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Elizabeth pursed her lips. ‘Make him remember your wedding day,’ she grinned, ‘and night.’

‘That’s not why!’ Anne protested.

‘It’ll do one thing for you, another for him.’ Elizabeth made her selection and held the dress for Anne to step into.

As her sister fastened her into it, Anne looked down at her bosom. Her breasts were exposed, almost naked.

‘I can’t wear this,’ she said. ‘I might as well be undressed!’

‘Stop thinking like a soldier,’ Elizabeth said, stepping round to look. ‘You want him to see the error of his ways.’

‘You’ve laced me too tight. My nipples are barely covered.’

‘A little titillation, that’s all,’ Elizabeth grinned, then she slapped Anne’s hand away. ‘
Sguir dheth!
Don’t pull it up. If you must think like a warrior, imagine this is a campaign to cause him regret.’

‘You mean he has no remorse?’ Anne frowned.

‘Of course he does,’ Elizabeth hastened to reassure her. ‘But he’s a man, so he doesn’t know it yet.’

‘Then he’d better soon discover it!’ Anne flounced out of the
bedroom, her sweeping white skirts trailing as she swept down the stairs. Elizabeth hurried behind.

Aeneas was already in the dining room, studying an opened bottle of wine as if he considered it of great interest. He looked up when they came in.

‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘you’re incredible.’ His eyes raked Anne from head to foot. Then that familiar, half-mocking smile twitched his lip. ‘Incredible,’ he repeated. ‘I’m honoured.’

‘And I’m hungry,’ Anne said, going straight to her seat and sitting down. He needn’t think she could be flattered and, whatever he might say, he had made an effort to be presentable himself. His long black hair still shone damp against his shirt. He wore a lace jabot at his throat and, though no weapons were allowed him, his belt buckle and the brooch which pinned his plaid were both silver.

Elizabeth, minding everybody of their manners, waited till Aeneas drew her chair before she sat. Anne saw the nagging glance her sister cast at her but ignored it. Other things were not so easily put out of mind. When Aeneas walked round behind her to pour wine into her glass, his plaid brushed her shoulder and she could feel the warmth of his body next her as he leant forward. There was a brief hesitation before he tilted the bottle. Was it her perfume he’d noticed, or her closeness?

She kept her head down, knowing he, too, would remember there was a time when she would have looked up and he would have bent down to kiss her, his mouth on hers, his tongue teasing her own, a time when they might have made love there and then instead of eating. He was her prisoner, she reminded herself, but when he sat down opposite, smiled across the table and raised his glass for a toast, she wondered who imprisoned whom.

‘The rebels,’ he said. If he was mocking, he would find no satisfaction in her response.

‘Victory,’ she replied, returning the smile.
‘Slàinte.’

Jessie had outshone herself with the food. The main meal, dinner, was taken at midday, when visitors and workers often joined them. Supper was a light meal, but not this night. Oysters – whatever was Jessie thinking? Will must have been sent specially, Anne
supposed. A haunch of venison, greylag goose, cottar cheese and half a dozen sweet preserves with oatcake and sugared shortbread. The conversation was strange, too many subjects to avoid: the war, the clan, Anne’s running of the estate. Their whole lives were bound up in enmity. They took refuge in the weather but avoided what would happen when it improved. They talked about the health of the stock but ignored its reduction to feed troops. They discussed Jessie and Will’s expected baby but not why the young couple were at odds. Elizabeth filled the gaps, prattling on about food, fashion and her mother’s recently discovered liking for snuff.

Though Aeneas could have little interest in her topics, he appeared fascinated, asking questions, making good-natured jokes and ensuring their wine glasses were kept brimming. Any time Anne looked in his direction, he seemed to be watching her and she looked away, affecting disinterest, but with her face flushed. Towards the end of the meal, when he stood next her yet again, filling her glass, she had an overwhelming urge to turn her head towards him and bury her face in his midriff, just to feel the taut-ness of his abdomen against her cheek, to push aside his plaid and shirt and press her mouth against his skin, to know again the warmth and scent of him.

‘No, thank you.’ Elizabeth put her hand over her glass as he came round to replenish it. ‘I’ve had quite enough.’ She stood. ‘If you’ll both excuse me, I’m off to bed.’ With a swish of her skirts, she was gone. A click and the door shut tight behind her.

Now there was just Aeneas. Anne felt a rush of terror. She could barely look him in the eye, though she could feel his close attention on her. The best thing, the only thing, to do was to get out of here before something irrevocable happened and weakened her position.

‘The oysters were a welcome surprise,’ he said.

‘The naval blockade of the coast doesn’t affect the warmth of our hospitality,’ she replied, grasping politeness as a lifeline, staring at the ruby wine in her glass and the reflected candlelight trapped within it. She sensed him lean forward over the table and looked up into his dark, shining eyes.

‘I thought you might feed them to me with your fingers,’ he said slowly, his gaze hypnotic, ‘then from your mouth, with your tongue guiding them into mine, the salt of them crazing our lips for each other’s sex.’

‘Aeneas!’ Had he really said what she heard?

He threw his chair back and stood, coming round beside her.

‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice your sister’s blatant manipulation?’ He pushed his fingers into the top of her dress, between her breasts, caught the cloth and pulled her to her feet so her own chair fell backwards as she rose. ‘Wife, if this is all the husband you want, you can have him. Here, now. I don’t need the wine of our wedding, the scent of roses, or the food of our first love-making to want you.’ His arms were round her, his body pushed her back against the table edge. ‘My hunger for you, after all these months, is beyond appetite.’

His mouth came down on hers, hard, as desperate as he said. She fought against the kiss, the brutality of it, but as his impulse yielded to urgent desire, hers did likewise. This was the husband she knew and remembered, the mouth she wanted on hers, the body she ached for pressed against hers, the man she’d missed. They kissed each other’s faces, throats, mouths again, moved their hands over each other, touching, caressing, renewing the geography of their marriage, desperate to confirm it, murmuring each other’s names and those half-spoken meaningless words of desire. When he gripped her buttocks and raised her on to the table, she pulled the front of her skirts up, blindly eager for the consummation of this force between them, that he would give himself to her, lose himself into her in that sensate heat of passion and become hers again.

It did not come. He didn’t push his kilt aside. Instead he held her tight, close so she could barely breathe, his cheek pressed hot against her own, his body hard and tense, so tense he trembled with his own need.

‘Aeneas?’

There was only the sound of great deep breaths in her ear, his chest moving against hers with each of them.

‘Aeneas, what’s wrong?’ She kissed his ear lobe. ‘I want you so.’

‘I know,’ he said, his voice rough, his breath moving her hair. He leant back, still holding her, his hips still pressed between her thighs. ‘But I don’t care to satisfy my need –’ his eyes were black as moonless night ‘– with another man’s leftovers.’

It took a short second for what he said to fully register. With both hands on his shoulders, she thrust him back, away from her and swung her arm to smack a stinging slap across his face. The force of it jerked his head to the side. Her palm tingled, fiery.

‘Jessie!’ she screamed, jumping down off the table to her feet. ‘Will, Donald!’