Gosford's Daughter Read online

  Sorcha refused to meet his eyes. She could swear she still felt his fingers burning against the flesh of her wrist. Yet it was Johnny who had grabbed her there, not Gavin Napier. “Priests ought not to be so harsh with young maidens,” she muttered, wondering why, with all the ease and glibness she usually displayed toward male companions, this strange clergyman should make her feel awkward and dull witted.

  “Young maidens should neither attack visitors, nor lecture priests on behavior.” Napier spoke not without humor, yet Sorcha sensed a hint of reproach.

  At last, Magnus intervened. “My sister has many opinions, Father. Like our Lady Mother, she is inclined to give them voice.” To lighten his remark, Magnus winked at Sorcha but received only a stony stare in response.

  Napier’s peat-brown eyes regarded Sorcha keenly. “I commend you on your wit. As for your fortitude,” he went on, easing himself back from the table, “I would test it by inquiring as to how you enjoyed your fine supper.”

  “Mightily,” replied Sorcha, folding her arms across her breast. “I find eating most satisfactory.”

  “Ah.” Napier nodded solemnly while Magnus fingered his chin and looked on with amusement. “And,” the priest continued, inclining his head toward Sorcha’s plate, “did you find the Master of Ness satisfactory eating as well?”

  Sorcha’s green eyes widened with horror. She glanced from Napier to her empty plate and back again. Abruptly, she slapped a hand over her mouth, struggled with the voluminous skirts that were caught under the table, and awkwardly hurtled out of her chair to flee the dining hall.

  Sorcha was sick three times after she reached the herb garden by the kitchen entrance. Steadying herself against the walls of Gosford’s End, she wiped away tears of distress and anger with her fingertips. She hated Father Gavin Napier, hated his lack of priestly manners, hated his relentless taunting, hated his bold, unholy gaze, and most of all, she hated his cruel amusement over serving the Master of Ness for supper. He was not just a hunter, but a destroyer.

  Sorcha turned her face to the brisk autumn wind, as she wrenched the prickly ruff from her gown and crumpled it in her hands. She would not, could not, go back into the dining hall. Naturally, her parents would be angry with her for leaving so hastily. But they would understand when she told them about the Master of Ness. At least her father would. She hoped.

  It was chilly in the garden, but Sorcha needed the fresh, damp air to revive herself. Without conscious thought, she found her footsteps leading toward the stables.

  Niall was just coming out, a pair of riding gloves in one hand. He froze in place when he saw Sorcha.

  “Don’t go,” she called to him in a hoarse voice. “Please. I’ve been ill.”

  He moved forward slightly but again stopped. In the moonlight she could see his face working, as if he were trying to find the right words, but knew there was nothing he could say because he had been compelled to speak not at all.

  “They made me eat the Master of Ness,” Sorcha cried out to him, shaking the crumpled ruff in one hand. “It made me sick! Please, Niall, give me a drink of water!”

  Niall shifted from one foot to the other, obviously torn by the commands of his master and the need of his beloved. He fervently wished he had succumbed to his impulse and run away from Gosford’s End when Iain Fraser had ordered him to avoid his daughter’s company henceforth.

  Before Niall could respond in any manner, Sorcha heard her father’s voice cut into the night: “Sorcha! Come here!”

  She stood motionless for several moments, staring at Niall’s outline against the stable door. He seemed as transfixed as she, the two of them fixed in time and place, with the shadow of Iain Fraser somewhere deep in the garden. At last, she raised the hand that held the ruff, dashed it to the ground, and turned toward her father.

  Chapter 4

  The summons to join her mother at daybreak boded ill; Dallas rarely attempted to cope with the world until at least nine o’clock. Upon those rare occasions when she rose early, her mood was invariably stormy and irascible. Apprehensively, Sorcha made her way to her mother’s chamber. There were circles under her green eyes, and the olive skin was pale. Although her father had not upbraided her the previous evening after her brief explanation about the Master of Ness, she knew he had merely put his wrath in check while his guests awaited him in the dining hall.

  Indeed, Sorcha was faintly surprised that it was her mother and not her father who commanded her presence so early on this gloomy autumn morning. During the night the wind had blown storm clouds in from the sea, though the rains had not yet started to pelt the Highland countryside.

  Dallas was lying on her divan, fretting at the folds of a deep blue peignoir trimmed in miniver. She appeared somewhat sallow, and her own hair was almost unruly as her daughter’s. Indicating that Sorcha should sit on a footstool next to her, Dallas put aside a tray of food that apparently had proved unappetizing.

  “Your father has gone to Inverness,” she said in a displeased tone. “Some fool of a Dutchman stole one of his ships.”

  For one fleeting moment, Sorcha was grateful for the Dutchman’s greed. At least her father wasn’t able to vent his anger, and experience told Sorcha that the longer the wait, the lesser the punishment.

  Dallas, however, was biting her lip and frowning. “Your father and I stayed up late last night discussing certain matters. You were one of them.”

  “Me?” The green eyes flickered.

  “Aye. We wish you to go to Edinburgh for a time, to live with your aunts and Uncle Donald.”

  Sorcha’s hand flew to her breast. “So soon! Must I?”

  Dallas slowly but firmly nodded her head. “I have just learned that your Aunt Glennie has sold her house and moved in with Aunt Tarrill and Uncle Donald, yet they still have ample room in their fine Canongate residence.”

  “I shall hate it,” Sorcha blurted, putting her hands out to her mother in a pleading gesture. “I shall suffocate.”

  Dallas sighed wearily. “You shall not. Oh, daughter,” she exclaimed, “I will never understand how you prize these Highlands so greatly! They’re desolate, wild, lonely places where the wind soughs through the hills and tears out your heart! There is no comfort here, only an empty echo from the Ness to Norway!”

  Startled by her mother’s intensity and passion, Sorcha shook her head in jerky, rapid movements. “No, no, ’tis not like that—’tis balm in the wind, succor in the hills. The very ground soothes my soul. I know not city ways, nor do I care to learn. Please, my Lady Mother, let me bide here at Gosford’s End.”

  Dallas seemed to have depleted herself with the tirade against the Highlands. She lay back against the brocaded cushions, her hair atangle, her eyes overbright. “Nay, dear Sorcha, that cannot be. Your father says you must go.” She cleared her throat before looking straight into Sorcha’s eyes. “Your sire is hard, but just. You know why you must keep away from Niall. But Niall does not know, nor will he be told. Since you persist in seeing him—or trying to, as you did last night—one of you must leave for a time. Your father believes it would not be fair to ask Niall, in his innocence, to go. Therefore, it must be you.”

  “Fair!” Sorcha spat out the word. “It’s not fair at all!” Her infatuation with Niall suddenly seemed remote, unreal. “Or am I in disgrace over faithless Johnny Grant?”

  A faint smile played at Dallas’s wide mouth. “You forget, Niall is your father’s son.” She lowered her eyes, the slim fingers tracing a sketchy path on the arm of the divan. Dallas chose her next words with care. “As for young Grant, to discuss him further is a waste of breath. He has ceased to exist in the world your father and I inhabit.”

  Sorcha kneaded her muslin skirt as Dallas looked directly at her daughter. “I’ve a mind to send Rosmairi, too, but dislike straining my kin’s hospitality. I’m afraid Ros has come down with a fatal fascination for George Gordon of Huntly.” Dallas made a face, looking very much as if she’d swallowed sour milk. “George, in turn, must
covet your father’s commercial trade. Or, perish the thought, his properties.”

  Sorcha’s green eyes flickered. “Oh?” Was the explanation so simple? For once, Sorcha doubted her mother’s perspicacity.

  Dallas mistook Sorcha’s reticence for not wanting to criticize her sister’s lamentable taste in men. “Fie, how Ros rattled on last night! ‘So braw, so gallant, so kind, so courtly!’ And Ros always such a shy one with the laddies! George is twenty-three to her fifteen and has the wit of wool! I pray to Saint Anne he’s not leading her a merry chase.”

  “So do I,” murmured Sorcha, wishing her mother would show as much concern over Johnny Grant’s rude treatment. But her own immediate future was Edinburgh, and Sorcha forced herself to face it. “It has been some time since I’ve seen my aunts and Uncle Donald.”

  “They’re good, kindly people,” Dallas said, her face softening at the thought of her kinfolk. “Uncle Donald has done right well in the banking business, all things considered.”

  Indeed, Donald McVurrich’s humble beginnings had shown no sign of his future prosperity and financial acumen. He had been raised on a farm at Dunbar but had found himself unsuited to the agrarian life. For a time, under Dallas’s tutelage, Donald McVurrich had served in the Queen’s guards. But eventually his natural talent for figures had surfaced, leading to a place in the royal almoner’s household. A few years after his marriage to Tarrill, Donald had gone into the banking business, where he had prospered almost without notice. Reticent, stolid, cautious Donald McVurrich somehow had managed to outwit—and outlast—his more flamboyant brethren in the major financial centers of Europe. He and Tarrill had five children, four boys and a girl. As for Glennie, the older of Dallas’s sisters, she was now a widow twice over, her two sons grown to manhood, with families of their own.

  “Uncle Donald is oversomber,” Sorcha protested. “He is Presbyterian to the toes.”

  “A common failing,” Dallas murmured, “but Tarrill keeps the faith in which she was raised. At least as much of it as she can, given the odious restrictions enforced by the Protestants. You’ll not find it a gloomy household. No place where Tarrill dwells could be that.”

  Yet Sorcha’s memories of their visits to the house in the Canongate were of children lacking in frivolity, of hymns sung before supper, and of an absence of laughter whenever Uncle Donald was present. Except for Aunt Tarrill’s more relaxed, good-humored approach to life, Sorcha could think of little that appealed to her within the McVurrich residence. For the first time, she reflected upon her mother’s confinement to the Highlands. Though Dallas was scarcely reluctant to complain, her words of criticism were so commonplace that no one—at least not Sorcha—took them very seriously. But, Sorcha realized, her mother must have gone through difficult times, wrenched away from her beloved city and her only relatives. It was a measure of her devotion to Iain Fraser that she had ventured north at all; it was proof of her love that she had stayed for almost twenty years.

  Dallas now avoided her daughter’s gaze. “The roads should be passable for at least another month. It’s best that you leave for Edinburgh soon. Rob will be traveling with you.”

  “He will?” Sorcha tried to evince interest. “That’s … reassuring,” she said tonelessly, and for a long time, neither mother nor daughter spoke at all.

  Only upon rare occasion did Sorcha have difficulty sleeping. That night, however, she found herself tossing and turning, no longer so sure of herself in the quiet hours of darkness as by the light of day. Sometime before midnight, she got out of bed to stand by her window and gaze at the moonlit landscape.

  Across the valley, the shutters of Inverness were closed for the night. Nearby, the stables lay in shadow, as the persistent autumn wind stirred the leaves in the plane trees. Yet there was a strange movement close by the Italian fountain—a form that she began to discern as horse and rider, edging toward the manor house. Within a few more yards the rider dismounted and tethered the horse to a sapling by the fish pond.

  It was a man, seemingly young, tall and broad of shoulder. Sorcha recognized something familiar about him as he moved toward one of the rear entrances. Sure enough, a door opened and the man slipped inside. Sorcha pulled away from the casement, absently untangling her hair with her fingers. Someone from the Fraser farmhouses, perhaps, enjoying a nocturnal liaison with a serving wench. While such activity wasn’t condoned, it was doubtful that either Lord or Lady Fraser would interrupt a sound sleep to exert disciplinary action.

  Slowly, Sorcha made her way back to bed. To her immense relief, she fell asleep almost immediately. The following day, she didn’t even remember the stranger’s visit, nor was it alluded to by anyone in the household.

  But that night, as she lay abed reading a volume of newly published French sonnets, there was a tentative rap on her door. Irritated, she flung back the covers and crossed the room on bare feet. Rosmairi stood on the threshold, her pink cheeks aglow.

  “You must come,” she whispered urgently. “George and I are to be married this very night!”

  Sorcha gaped at her sister. It was impossible. Had she fallen asleep and was dreaming? Shaking herself, Sorcha grabbed Rosmairi by the arm and hauled her inside the room. “Are you daft, Ros? How can you be married tonight? Have the banns been announced? Do our parents know?”

  Still basking in romantic euphoria, Rosmairi shook her head. “ ’Tis a secret. George fears interference from high places should anyone find out our intentions.”

  Noting that her sister was dressed in a mauve riding habit with her red-gold hair plaited under a high-crowned hat, Sorcha gazed down at her own night shift and bare feet. “I must dress,” she muttered and started for her wardrobe before abruptly turning to face Rosmairi once more. “Nay, Ros, ’tis madness! Our parents will skewer George and pack you off to a convent! Think on it. Gordon chieftain or not, George owes you an honorable wedding day with clan and kin in attendance.”

  Rosmairi lifted her chin and, with the crowned hat adding height, looked considerably older than her fifteen years. “I hadn’t thought you’d fail me in anything so important to my happiness. Are you rankled because I’m to wed first?”

  However unwittingly, Rosmairi had struck dangerously close to a truth Sorcha was loath to admit. Feeling her face grow as warm as her feet were cold, Sorcha flipped her tangled tresses over her shoulders. “Nonsense. I’m not mad to marry. I just think you’re behaving recklessly.”

  Unwontedly cool and self-possessed, Rosmairi shrugged. “Then give me your blessing, if not your company. I’m off to Beauly Priory to take my vows.”

  Sorcha advanced on her sister to proffer the requisite sisterly benediction. But as she leaned forward to kiss Rosmairi’s smooth pink cheek, memories came flooding back. Baby Ros with her fluff of golden hair, little Ros taking her first steps to Sorcha in the rose garden, Ros with a skinned knee, Ros being teased unmercifully by Magnus, Ros crying in Sorcha’s arms after Rob had broken her favorite doll ….

  “Fie,” whispered Sorcha, sounding very like their mother, “of course I’ll come.”

  Not more than five minutes later, both girls were tiptoeing out the side entrance of the manor house. Only a few wisps of cloud marred the sky as they slipped through the darkness toward the stable. In silence, they led their horses outside, and as a dog howled at the crescent moon, they were on the road to Beauly.

  Passing the low hedgerows and the drooping cornstalks, they crossed the Ness single file over a narrow stone bridge. Just ahead, near a gnarled, leafless tree, they could make out the silhouettes of a dozen men and their mounts.

  “George!” breathed Rosmairi, and beamed with eager delight.

  Sorcha suppressed a disapproving sigh and urged Thisbe around a deep pothole in the rough dirt road. She could see George, taller and broader than the rest, waving a welcome. Maybe, Sorcha thought with a sense of shock, the braw laddie really loves her. Why, she wondered vexedly, had that idea never occurred to her until now?

  The sud
den spurt of movement directly in front of them startled both Thisbe and Rosmairi’s horse. The animals shied, while the two young women clung to their necks for dear life. It took some time for Sorcha to soothe Thisbe and then to realize what had happened: As she calmed the frightened animal with her hands and leaned across the saddle, she saw that a man and a horse blocked the road between the narrow bridge and the gnarled tree. The interloper wore a flowing black cloak and held a pistol in each hand. Peering more closely into the darkness, Sorcha recognized Gavin Napier.

  “Back! Back, you Gordons, or your lives are forfeit!” Brandishing the pistols, he purposefully spurred his horse to rear up and let out an ear-splitting whinny.

  “That priest!” gasped Rosmairi, still trying to calm her little mare. “George!” she cried, her voice atremble. “What’s amiss?”

  Her answer was two loud pistol shots. Rosmairi screamed, and Sorcha swore. George and his men pulled back closer to the tree, though Sorcha realized that Napier had shot harmlessly into the air.

  Keeping his weapons trained on the Gordons, Napier turned quickly to look over his shoulder. “Go back! Head for home! Now!”

  Either his urgency or her instinct told Sorcha not to disobey. Wheeling Thisbe about, she spoke sharply to Rosmairi: “Do as he says! Go, Ros. Ride!”

  Whatever reluctance Rosmairi possessed was overcome by her horse, which took its head, stumbled slightly, and cantered back over the narrow bridge just behind Sorcha and Thisbe. Two more shots broke the silence of the night; then Napier was also riding with them, racing across the rolling fields, kicking up clods of mud.

  To Sorcha’s surprise, the Gordons didn’t attempt to follow. Within a quarter of an hour, they were back at Gosford’s End, silently leading their weary mounts into the paddock. It was only after they had watered and bedded down the horses that anyone spoke. As might be expected, it was Rosmairi, her high-crowned hat askew, her face pale with disappointment, but her gray eyes sparking with indignant wrath.