A Heart In The Highlands

8-2

“Our guest will be waiting for us in the salon,” he said sternly. “Niall can answer your question after dinner.”

There was an authority in his voice which forced the Duchess to obey him. As if with an effort she turned her eyes from Lord Niall’s face and took the Duke’s arm. In a silence pregnant with repressed emotion they moved slowly up the stairs.

Iona followed with Lord Niall at her side and after a moment she realised that his eyes were searching her face as if he would ferret out her innermost secrets.

“You should have trusted me,” he said in a low voice. “I warned you that I was a dangerous enemy.”

“I am still not afraid of you, my Lord,” Iona replied defiantly, but even as she spoke the words she knew that they were untrue.

She was afraid of him, not for herself but for Hector – Hector who was now a prisoner and in this evil man’s power.

As she sat through the long meal that followed, as course succeeded course, she had no idea what she ate or drank. She could remember only the tales she had heard of English cruelties, of the tortures they inflicted on prisoners, of the horrors and privations of English prisons. How could she save Hector? The question presented itself to her over and over again as she sat at the table white-faced and silent.

On the Duke’s right hand Beatrice Wrexham, glittering with jewels, talked brilliantly, her laugh ringing out and proving so infectious that the men laughed with her. But the Duchess was almost as silent as Iona, her nervous fingers crumbling the bread placed beside her plate, while her eyes seldom strayed from Lord Niall’s face as he listened absorbedly to Lady Wrexham.

Beatrice was exerting herself to the full. Her beauty in the light of the great gold candelabra was almost breathtaking. Tonight her golden hair was powdered and arranged high in the very latest fashion. A chain of turquoises and diamonds was looped around her curls and the vivid blue of the stones seemed to echo the brilliance of her eyes. Similar stones set in a magnificent necklace encircled her neck while her shoulders and bosom were milky white against a low cut gown of rich brocade.

Yet nothing that Beatrice wore was of particular importance. The sinuous grace of her soft body was apparent beneath the most rigid hoops, bones and lacings. However elaborately gowned, ornamented, and bejewelled, she still made men think of her naked. Even when she was most formal, she managed to convey an impression of abandonment. There was a natural voluptuousness about her movements and a lasciviousness in the very perfection of her beauty.

It was obvious to anyone tonight that she was intent on capturing the attentions of the Duke. She leant against the arm of his chair so that the sweet intoxicating fragrance of her perfume rose from her hair and the rustling laces of her bodice. More than once she laid her long fingers, weighted down with many rings, on his arm as she accentuated some point in the conversation or laughed with him at some joke.

As she sipped her wine, she raised her eyes to his and no man could have mistaken the invitation in them or in the sensual fullness of her red lips. The Duke laughed and talked with her, but there was nothing more than a polished courtesy in the pressure of his fingers as he returned the tiny handkerchief she dropped deliberately as she rose from the table.

“Shall I see Your Grace again?” she asked in a low voice, as the ladies moved towards the door.

“My brother and I will not linger over our port,” the Duke replied. His tone was one of conventional politeness and Beatrice’s eyes were hard as she swept from the room.

Too miserable to think of anything but Hector hungry and thirsty in the Keep, Iona followed the Duchess and Lady Wrexham from the dining room, but when they entered the salon, she slipped away.

There was a fire in the anteroom, so she went there wanting only to be alone. It was a room which adjoined the Grand Salon and was used by the members of the household in the morning for writing letters.

Through the double doors leading into the salon Iona could hear Lady Wrexham’s voice and rippling laughter. She could not hear what was being said, but there was something intolerable in the mere sound of laughter whilst Hector was in danger.

Iona sat down on the hearthrug, her white dress billowing out around her. Hector was here in this castle and yet she could think of nothing that she could do to help him.

Should she go for Dughall? But even as the idea came to her she knew it was impossible. In all probability it was to save Dughall that Hector had taken to the woods. Perhaps he had seen Lord Niall’s men approaching, heard them searching among the trees.

Iona knew now that Lord Null suspected both her and Hector of being Jacobites, and bitterly she accused herself of ruining everything by one act of carelessness, one moment of forgetfulness. Fool that she had been to go to Hector’s bedchamber, more foolish still to have forgotten the letter and the packet in the first place!

Round and round in Iona’s head went her thoughts. She must find a way of escape for Hector, but how? And who could assist her?

She heard the gentlemen cross the landing from the dining room and enter the salon. She heard more laughter, then the sound of music and of a voice singing a love song. She pressed her fingers against her temples striving to shut out any distraction from the problem which confronted her.

At length, weary and despondent, she told herself that the only possible chance was to see if Cathy could help her. Maybe she could bribe one of Lord Niall’s men, but then Iona remembered how little money she had left after her journey.

She was well aware that Hector would be angry with her for trying to help him, and she knew that she should not jeopardise her own usefulness in an attempt to save him. But at this moment it seemed to her that nothing was of greater consequence than that Hector should not be handed over to English justice.

She wondered what tortures they would use on him. She thought of the thumbscrew, of the rack, and the dreaded instrument which, clamped down on a man’s forehead, could be screwed tighter and tighter until he screamed in agony!

She started to her feet in terror, she could not bear it – she could not. She must do something but what she had no idea.

She was suddenly fearful that the Duchess or Lord Niall might send someone in search of her. Her hands would be tied if she was forced to join the company in the salon and then later retire to bed when they did. She went from the anteroom out on to the landing. She crossed it, and passing the Chinese Room, went down the passage which lay beyond.

She had only been this way once before, when she had been interviewed by the Duke’s attorney in the library. But Cathy had told her that the Duke’s private sitting room also lay in this direction. Candles in huge silver sconces lighted the passage. Iona walked slowly, half expecting to encounter a servant who might stare at her curiously, but there was no one in sight.

She came to the library door, hesitated for a moment and then saw further down the passage that the door of another room was open. There was a fire burning brightly in the fireplace and the candles were lit.

On tiptoe she crept towards the door. She peeped in, but there was no one there. She guessed, that this was the Duke’s own private room. There were many books, a massive writing table piled with papers, and many little intimate objects, which showed that it was a room in frequent use and the familiar background of one particular person.

Her heart beating fast, Iona stood looking round her. She did not know exactly what she had expected to find, but somehow she felt there might be something here to help her save Hector.

She glanced at the writing table and saw there the miniature she had brought with her from France. It lay in the centre of a big leather blotter. Beside it was the bracelet that had belonged to Lady Elspeth. Leaning over the Duke’s high writing chair, Iona stared down at the two objects.

She was so intent that she did not for the moment hear someone enter the room and only at the sound of the door being closed did she turn, startled and frightened, her hand going to her breast.

The Duke looked across the room at her.

“You wish to speak with me?” he inquired gravely.

“Yes, I – ” Iona began then wondered wildly what she could say. If she pleaded for Hector, would she betray herself? Resolutely she summoned up her courage.

“I – hoped Your Grace – would hear me.”

“But of course,” the Duke replied graciously. “Won’t you sit down?”

He indicated a big armchair beside the fireplace. It was so large that Iona was almost swallowed in it. Her heart-shaped face seemed very small against the background of dark velvet and there was something childlike in her attitude, her hands resting primly in her lap. She was silent for some minutes, then realised that the Duke was waiting for her to speak.

“It is about – the gentleman in the Keep,” she said. “I am worried about him. He was kind to me on the voyage, Your Grace, and I would not have him tortured by the English.”

“I can understand that,” the Duke said, “but as you heard, Lord Niall claims him.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Iona answered, “but I cannot understand why Lord Niall should wish to injure an innocent man, someone who has never done him any personal harm.”

“My brother seldom does anything without a reason,” the Duke replied.

“I think his Lordship believes Mr. – Mr. Thomson to be a Jacobite,” Iona faltered, “but even if he is, surely that is no reason why one of his own countrymen should give him up to the authorities? The Prince with a price of thirty thousand pounds on his head hid in these parts and no one betrayed him.”

“Many suffered for it, though,” the Duke said quietly. “There is a woman who lives but a short distance from the castle who was reported to the Governor of Fort Augustus as having given the Prince a cup of milk when he passed her croft. The English cut off both her hands and her crippled son was dragged out of bed and shot against the wall of the house. You can see the marks of the bullets if you are interested.”

Iona gave a little cry.

“Spare me!” she cried. “It is too cruel, too wicked even to contemplate.”

“I agree,” the Duke said quietly, “but I would have you know that the Scots have suffered for their allegiance to the Stuarts.”

“And yet – I hear that many of them are still loyal,” Iona whispered.

The Duke glanced at her quickly, and then looked away again.

“That may be true,” he said, “but there are also others who think that it is best for our tortured land to acknowledge the English King and accept the justice of our conquerors.”

Iona sighed.

“Two opinions, and to enforce either one or the other more men must be tortured and imprisoned. Does cruelty ever solve a problem?”

“I have often asked myself the same question,” the Duke replied, “and I confess I have not yet discovered an answer. Like you I hate to see people suffer unnecessarily.”

He looked down at her bent head.

“You are young,” he said. “It would be best for you to concern yourself with the joys and light-hearted gaieties of youth. Maybe you were unwise to leave Paris.”

“I assure Your Grace I experienced few joys or gaieties in Paris,” Iona replied.

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“Gaieties require money,” Iona explained. “Joys come, I imagine, from being with those you love and who love you.”

“There must have been many people in the latter category,” the Duke remarked drily.

“Not in the last two years,” Iona said wistfully, thinking of her guardian and forgetting to be on her guard in speaking of the past.