Gosford's Daughter Read online

  From his place in the saddle, Gavin Napier seemed to tower over Sorcha and dwarf even the stiffened corpse of the great stag. She caught herself staring again and started to turn away. But Napier had a parting word: “If ever you find a man you care for as much as you did this handsome stag, he will be a fortunate lad.”

  His voice was light, but Sorcha detected an undercurrent of irony. Had the monks not been with them, she would have given Napier a sharp retort. Instead, she found herself uncharacteristically silent.

  The brief, awkward moment was broken by Brother Joseph. “It is well to love animals, my child. But it is more pleasing to God to love people. I trust you will take Father Napier’s words to heart.”

  Sorcha’s jaw dropped. Now she could not possibly keep from staring at Gavin Napier. Sure enough, sitting astride his horse with the long black cloak blowing in the wind, she could see that he wore the garb of a priest. He was looking just beyond her, toward the drooping bracken near the water’s edge. Despite his lack of expression, was he inwardly laughing at her? Sorcha wasn’t sure, nor did she remember if she bade them farewell. The only image that lingered was Gavin Napier, guiding his gray stallion back into the pine forest with the Master of Ness dragging behind over the rich, rain-soaked ground.

  Chapter 3

  When Sorcha arrived outside her parents’ chamber, Iain and Dallas Fraser were arguing. From beyond the carved door with its detail of wild roses and wood violets, she could hear her father expounding at length, but his precise words weren’t audible though the heavy oak. Then suddenly Dallas’s voice pierced the door.

  “Even after nigh on twenty years, you’ve never gotten that bubble-brained half sister of yours off your conscience. Queen or not, she never wanted your counsel!”

  “That's unfair. For many years, she did.” Her father’s voice reverberated clearly now, in rejoinder to his irate wife. “It was only when she fell under Bothwell’s spell that she lost all sense of proportion. And her heart.”

  “Not to mention her crown,” Dallas snapped.

  Sorcha leaned against the door, relieved to discover that it was of Queen Mary, and not herself and Niall, that they spoke. Poor Mary Stuart, that pathetic creature who had been stripped of her royal powers by her bastard half brother, James of Moray, and kept captive in England for seventeen years. Moray was dead now, but Mary’s son, Jamie, had reached his majority and ruled alone. Separated from his mother before he really knew her, King Jamie was devoid of filial emotion and had never lifted a finger to set his mother free. If Iain Fraser felt that his half sister’s obsession with the Earl of Bothwell had eroded her ability to govern, he also felt that Jamie had proved himself a callous, ungrateful son, who had condemned his mother to a life of suffering.

  Dallas had no quarrel with her husband’s assessment of Jamie, but she’d never been able to forgive Mary Stuart for proclaiming Iain Fraser an outlaw. To Dallas, ingratitude ran in the royal family.

  “Mary talks of ruling by association,” Dallas countered, her own voice now less strident, forcing Sorcha to press her ear against the door. “Jamie will never permit it. Nor will that heathen, Elizabeth. And Jamie only does what his cousin Elizabeth tells him, because he’s hell-bent to be king of England when the barren crone dies.”

  “It’s only natural that Jamie dances to Elizabeth’s tune,” Sorcha heard her father say in a reasonable tone. “Would you prefer that the Queen of England name an heir who would have no regard for our own poor country? At least we can trust that Jamie won’t invade his native land.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” Dallas snapped back. “We can draw enough blood on our own.”

  Unfortunately, Sorcha thought, her mother was right. In Jamie’s youthful innocence, he had inherited the seething conflicts of an unruly nation. The vicious feuds spawned by the concept of clan and kin had been altered somewhat by the Reformation, but not necessarily for the better. While in many cases, traditional clan loyalties persisted, in others, members of the same house found themselves in opposition over religion. Those who remained Catholic generally favored Queen Mary’s return to the throne; most of new Kirk’s presbyters not only opposed Mary Stuart but had conspired for her downfall. An infant king had been more malleable than a grown woman. Little Jamie could be governed by his mentors, reared in the Protestant faith, and taught who to hate and who to favor.

  But as Jamie grew older, those men who had been solidly united against Mary fell out with each other in their quest for influence over the young monarch. A Scot might rarely relinquish the tartan of his clan, but he’d change his badge of loyalty almost by whim. There was no simple way to define opponents. A Protestant house such as the proud Hamiltons might secretly support Queen Mary out of a personal sense of loyalty; a Catholic clan such as the Gordons might offer allegiance to the young king for the sake of ambition. To exacerbate the turmoil, the country itself was divided into three distinct regions, each with its own cachet of convictions: the Highlands, with a rigid code of honor and a fierce sense of independence; the tumultuous Border lands, where the English enemy was never more than a moonlight ride away; and the Lowlands, where sovereign and subjects convened to direct the country’s government and commerce. Over the centuries, the Scots had fought each other more relentlessly from within than they had engaged any enemy from without. To Sorcha, it seemed a tragic waste for a land that was neither rich nor powerful.

  It also seemed that in this instance both her mother and her father were right. But if Lord Fraser had an immediate reply, Sorcha didn’t hear it. Rob had suddenly materialized in the corridor, causing Sorcha to jump. He looked at his sister in surprise and grinned. Sorcha put a finger to her lips and jerked her head in the direction of the door.

  “Is it about us that they bellow?” Rob whispered, edging close to Sorcha.

  “Nay, ’tis Queen Mary.” Sister and brother stood facing each other, each with an ear to the door.

  Apparently, they’d missed something. Dallas’s voice was raised again, shouting that nothing could be proved by letting Rob join the Queen. Sorcha stared at her brother, who looked faintly sheepish. Obviously, he had been keeping a secret from her.

  “It serves two purposes,” Fraser declared in a louder voice. “He will be exposed to priestly ways and will show the Queen that we have not completely forsaken her.”

  “That you have not,” Dallas retorted. “Have you no regard for your son’s safety?”

  “He’s in no danger as long as he avoids those damnable intrigues.”

  Sorcha and Rob started as Cummings materialized in the corridor. For almost thirty years, Cummings had served as the Fraser steward. In that time, he had grown portly, and what little hair remained ringed his head like lambswool, yet his unmistakable authority stayed intact. Sorcha and Rob both flushed under his reproachful gaze.

  “We were trying to see if our parents were … taking a nap,” Sorcha said lamely before grabbing Rob to slink away without a backward glance.

  They sought sanctuary in the library with Magnus, who was working on charts for his father’s next voyage. Upon prodding, Rob admitted that for some weeks now he had been pressuring his parents to let him join Abbot John Fraser at Compiègne in France. A Recollect friar and writer, the abbot was descended from another branch of the Frasers at Philorth.

  “Our Lady Mother thought it feasible,” Rob told his sister and brother as they lounged by the cozy fireside.

  “Didn’t Father agree?” Sorcha asked, tucking her feet under her teal skirts.

  Rob nodded, a lock of red hair dipping down onto his smooth forehead. “He’s always had some prejudice about living in France. I think it’s because he almost had to exile himself there before the Queen lost her throne.”

  “That’s no reason to prevent you from going there,” Sorcha said, lifting the lid of a crystal comfit dish and making a face when she discovered it was empty.

  “Have you ever noticed that parents don’t need reasons when they want their own way?” Mag
nus asked in a dry tone very like his father’s. He had inherited Fraser’s coloring and height, but was heavier of build and possessed his mother’s brown eyes.

  “Then what does Father want?” Sorcha asked. “I gathered it had something to do with serving Queen Mary in her English captivity.”

  “So it does.” Rob pushed at the stray lock of hair that always seemed to have a life of its own. “Where I go isn’t as important as what I do. The point is, I want to live in the company of the clergy in order to learn if I have a vocation. But I don’t want to go somewhere close by, such as Beauly Priory. I feel I must put distance between myself and the life I’ve always known with my family. That way, I can better hear God’s voice.”

  Sorcha averted her eyes, staring into the struggling orange flames on the library hearth. Somehow, it always embarrassed her to hear Rob speak in such pious tones. While she had grown up in a world where the Catholic clergy was sometimes prohibited from practicing the sacraments, and in the best of times, was watched closely by the authorities, the priests and monks she had known seemed to possess a spiritual aura that removed them from the realm of ordinary people. To imagine any of them having once been rollicking, mischievous, disobedient boys such as Rob, was unthinkable. He had even seduced a maid or two, though he insisted that temptations of the flesh could be avoided if he became a priest. Once he took religious instruction and made his holy vows, he’d be transformed into one of those exalted, holy beings and cease to be Rob. Perhaps it wasn’t embarrassment that distressed Sorcha, but a sense of loss: He would no longer be her brother; he would stop being a man.

  The flames suddenly spurted into life and crackled sharply. Sorcha jumped in her chair, not so much from the sound as from the image she’d suddenly seen in the fire: Father Gavin Napier, tall, broad shouldered, arrestingly masculine—and assuredly worldly. Obviously, all priests were not the same.

  “And how does our sire think you’ll hear God’s voice in the company of a captive Queen and her mawkish minions?” Magnus inquired with a slight sneer. “It seems that petty plotting surrounds our former Queen like weeds overrunning a flower bed. Or do you fancy yourself her youthful savior?”

  Sorcha wrenched her attention back to her brothers. Rob explained that their father knew one of Her Grace’s chaplains and that the Queen had grown obsessively devout during her long years of captivity. Not only would Rob be able to observe the clergy at close hand in an isolated setting not unlike a religious community, but at the same time he would fulfill Iain Fraser’s own wish to demonstrate family support for the half sister he’d once abandoned. As for serving Mary Stuart, Rob rather unconvincingly averred that his interest was strictly impersonal.

  Magnus plunged his quill into the inkwell, heard the tip break off, and frowned. “Oh, by the Mass, Rob, half the lads in Scotland and England dream of rescuing the poor Queen. As for our sire, he has been guilt laden for years because he didn’t bear arms to support her at Carberry Hill. The older he grows, the more he regrets it. As if he or his small band of Frasers could have saved the Queen and Bothwell from defeat.”

  “Mother says he’d have ended up as dead as Bothwell did eventually,” Sorcha put in, rejoining the discussion to stifle the persistent image of Gavin Napier that seemed to bedevil her in the shadowy library.

  Rob nodded. “Father felt Queen Mary was no longer capable of ruling Scotland. That was really what mattered most to him.”

  “What matters most to me is supper,” Sorcha declared, getting up and stretching. “How long does it take our parents to decide your future, Rob?”

  Rob looked up at his sister out of twinkling hazel eyes. “Making the decision was probably done with some time ago. It’s the making up between them that takes much longer.”

  No decision about Rob’s future was announced immediately. Yet Sorcha knew he would somehow prevail. Frowning as she made her way down the central stairway, she paused in midstep, her hand on the balustrade as she saw Iain Fraser and Magnus come through the doorway with several other men. One was George Gordon, the ambitious young Earl of Huntly; another was Father Gavin Napier.

  Sorcha started to turn around, but her father called out, “We have visitors, lassie. Go tell your lady mother that George Gordon is here with his followers and a clutch of holy men.”

  Sorcha glanced over her shoulder when she reached the landing. She could have sworn that Gavin Napier, attired in his long black robes, was watching her with his hunter’s eyes. Quickening her step, she caught sight of Rosmairi peering around a corner at the top of the stairs. “Is it George?” she asked eagerly, her cheeks pink as peonies.

  Sorcha grasped the gilded knob at the head of the balustrade. “Aye. And others.”

  Rosmairi’s fine, fair brows drew together at the vexed note in her sister’s voice. “Is aught wrong?”

  “Is aught right?” snapped Sorcha, and was immediately repentant when she saw the hurt on Rosmairi’s face. “I’m out of sorts, that’s all. Go bedeck yourself for George and his party. I must tell Mother they’re here.”

  Dallas was not pleased that Gordon and his men were in the house. “Rosmairi’s swooning admiration to the contrary, George isn’t half the man his sire was,” she asserted, urging her maid, Flora, to work more swiftly at pressing a gown of lavender silk. “Not that his father was much of a man, either, which makes young George about one-quarter baked around the edges and all dough in the middle.”

  “Yet my father welcomes him,” Sorcha put in as her mother stood still long enough to let Flora slip the gown over her head.

  “Your father always was weak in the head where the Gordons were concerned. Mark my words, not one of them has ever been trustworthy though they vow they’re as Catholic as the Pope. Ambition, not religion, rules their house.” Dallas made a face in the tall mirror that stood on dragon’s feet in a corner of the bedchamber. “This dress looks worn. Oh, fie, it’s good enough for a Gordon.” She whirled on Sorcha, a strand of gleaming pearls in one hand. “Muslin! Go change, child, you look like a ragamuffin!”

  “But you yourself aren’t wearing your finest ….” Sorcha began to protest but caught the warning light in her mother’s eyes.

  “One needn’t dress up like that overblown hussy, Queen Elizabeth! She doesn’t put on her clothes; she gets encrusted! Vile creature, all jewels and wigs and paint so thick if she itches, she can’t dig deep enough to scratch!” Dallas wound the pearls around her head, clipping a matching earring on each ear, and stuck a pearl-edged comb into her dark hair. Flora stood stoically by, her twenty years of service having inured her to Lady Fraser’s flamboyant tongue. “Mind you,” Dallas went on, wagging a finger at Sorcha, “it’s because of that wretched old harridan that your sire allies himself with the likes of young Gordon, who is no friend to Elizabeth and her minion, Jamie the Jejune. Now hurry, Sorcha, put on a presentable dress and comb your hair.”

  Sorcha quickened her step until she was out of her mother’s sight. In truth, Sorcha found George Gordon a jovial, handsome sort, a bit too taken with his wealth and title, but at least capable of speaking about hunting and fishing and sports. If he was ambitious, as her mother insisted, he came from a powerful family, the most influential—and feared—clan in the Highlands. They were, she reflected with a touch of spite, often pitted against the Grants. For that reason alone, Sorcha would change into a more comely gown.

  In the main dining hall, Cummings had the servants rushing about in a flurry of activity. A huge fire crackled on the wide hearth at one end of the room. The wall sconces had been lighted, for it was a gloomy October day. The long table was already set for at least two dozen people. Sorcha scanned the room: Her father, Gordon, Magnus, and Rob were clustered near the fireplace, drinking malmsey. Closer to the table stood several monks and men wearing the Gordon plaid. Directly under the great arched window with its perpendicular panes, Dallas and Rosmairi conversed with Father Napier. Dallas and the priest were laughing as Rosmairi demurely eyed her folded hands. Sorcha loo
ked the other way and went to join the monks and Gordon clansmen.

  Inevitably, the conversation was of politics. It always seemed as if the Gordons—and Frasers and Stewarts and Sinclairs and Grays—talked nothing but politics. At least George could speak of catching trout and playing golf. Sorcha put a hand to her mouth to stifle an indiscreet yawn as one of the Gordons eyed her with a mixture of admiration and amusement.

  “Are ye not caught up with how King Jamie mistreats his royal mother, or whether he’ll remain Protestant?” he asked with a twinkle in his slate-gray eyes.

  “The King will do as he’s told,” Sorcha replied in a bored tone. Her gaze wandered to Father Napier, who had managed to convulse Dallas. “He’ll agree with any proposal that will make him sovereign of both Scotland and England after Elizabeth is dead.”

  “Ah,” remarked one of the other Gordons, a slight, elfin man of uncertain years, “you consider our monarch a puppet of ambition, Mistress Fraser?”

  Sorcha shrugged. “I seldom consider the King at all, sir.” She had intended the reply to sound polite. But the stiff ruff of her gown pricked her chin, making her nose wrinkle in apparent disdain. The elfin man mistook her expression and suddenly grew somber.

  “Even a Highlander should profess courtesy for his—or her—sovereign,” the man asserted as the others leaned closer in to the little circle. “We may not always agree, but we must show respect.”

  Sorcha drew back, put off by so many keen stares. “Such peculiar words from a Gordon! By the Cross, is this the same clan that rose against Queen Mary twenty years ago and had to be hacked down like so many saplings in a stiff breeze?”

  The elfinlike man whistled in shock; the Gordon with the slate-gray eyes froze in place; the monks exchanged glances of shock and annoyance. The ancient rite of hospitality was as ingrained in the Highlander as the love of the land itself; rude behavior toward a guest could be grounds for violence. Sorcha shifted from one foot to the other, feeling hemmed in by the circle of Gordons. She had overstepped her bounds, yet these men had baited her, and even the two monks in their midst appeared malevolent.