Page 69 of Kilgannon #1
I STRETCHED OUT ON THE PLAID WE HAD brOUGHT, PULLING my skirts to my knees and settling down on my back with a sigh of pure pleasure, then closed my eyes and soaked in the warmth, listening to the roar of the surf breaking on the other side of the headland.
“When was the last time we spent a day like this?” I asked.
“When was the last time the sun was here for more than an hour?” Alex answered, flinging himself down next to me.
“Mary,” he said. “Mary Rose, I love ye, lass.” His lips were soft on mine and I felt his hair fall onto my cheek.
“And I you, my darlin’man.”
“Thank ye for marrying me.” He kissed my forehead.
“Thank you for asking.”
He played with my hair where it spilled onto the plaid next to him. “Do ye ever think on Robert and what yer life would have been like had ye married him?” I opened my eyes and looked at him, his eyes the same blue as the loch below us and as unfathomable.
“Yes,” I said, and watched his expression close. “And I congratulate myself on my escape.” I wrapped my hand around his neck, drew him to me, and kissed him again until he smiled.
“Yer a one.” He stretched himself next to me and leaned on one elbow, his other hand on my stomach. My flat stomach. I stroked his face, watching his hair frame his cheekbones.
“I would like to have children with you, my love,” I said.
“And I with ye, lass,” he said, his eyes finding mine.
“Get yerself well and we’ll see what time brings.
” He looked out over the loch and glen and back to me.
“I want ye well. I canna live without ye, Mary Rose. And when yer well, then we’ll just have to practice. No doubt we’re just doing it wrong.”
“No doubt,” I laughed, and he kissed me again, then sobered.
“Mary, are ye upset with me that I plan to sell the Diana? ”
I turned onto my side to face him. “Upset? Why would I be upset, Alex? It’s your ship.”
“Aye, it is for a bit again anyway,” he agreed.
“I would be upset if you sold the Mary Rose or Gannon ’ s Lady ” I said. “But I’d never seen the Diana before you brought her home. As far as I’m concerned, anything that reminds us of Malcolm is not welcome here. I think it for the best. Why do you ask?”
“Ah, well, Thomas is no’so pleased. He thinks we could use her to start trading with the colonies.”
“But you told me she was the oldest of all the brigs and that she needed repair. That’s not a good ship to send on a far voyage.”
“Aye, but we could have fixed her up. No, lass, I’m going to sell her because she reminds me of what is not mine any longer.
Do ye ken what I mean? Malcolm and I used to play on her when we were lads, and he took her without a thought of what had been.
I canna feel the same. When I look at her all I see is Malcolm. ”
“And what did Angus think?”
“It was his idea to sell her.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. What will you do with the money?”
“I havena decided.”
“Life is better now without him,” I said quietly.
He nodded. “Aye, yer right, it is. And certainly more peaceful, no? But I canna help wondering what he’s doing.
” I stroked his cheek but said nothing, thinking of the baby that Leitis had lost. Or gotten rid of.
I had not asked many questions when Berta told me.
Alex looked into the distance, lost in his own thoughts, and I watched the clouds, no threat today, pass behind his head.
Suddenly he tensed and sat up, looking down the hill, sheltering his eyes with a hand. He swallowed a curse as he stood.
“What is it?” I sat up and rearranged my skirts as I saw the boy, Thomas’s Liam, scrambling up the path below us.
“A runner coming for us,” he growled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “All I wanted was an hour in the sun.”
“What do you suppose it is?”
“Either we’ve received a message or someone’s in the loch. Or someone’s dead. It had better not be less.”
“Sir,” Liam said between gulps of air. “I am sorry to disturb ye, but my da said to tell ye a boat is in the loch and it looks like the MacKinnon and to apologize if yer angry.”
“The MacKinnon.” Alex’s expression grew serious.
He glanced at me and raised his eyebrows as if to say he knew no more than I.
But he did, I was sure. The MacKinnon’s visit worried him, not surprised him.
And I was certain it had something to do with James Stewart.
“Thank ye, lad,” he said to Liam. “Tell yer da that he was right to fetch me.
I’m on my way. Go and find Angus.”
“Aye, sir.” The boy nodded and darted back down the path.
I scrambled to my feet. “What does it mean?”
Alex looked out over the glen and then turned, his eyes slowly focusing on me.
“I’m not sure, but something’s in the wind again.
” He straightened his shoulders and pulled me to him fiercely.
“We’ll know soon enough,” he said. “We have five minutes and then I must go and find out. Kiss me, lass, and we’ll use the time well. ”
The MacKinnon stayed for two days, the only two perfect days of the summer.
The first morning he was with us, Alex hastily arranged a hunting party and went off with most of the men, their work left undone in their hurry.
The women stared after them as they left and muttered among themselves.
I said nothing, but a feeling of foreboding surrounded me as.
I stood on the top step at the outer gate, watching Alex ride to the end of the loch and into the trees at the far side, his blond hair brilliant under the green bonnet.
I felt an apprehension I had never felt before.
And I could not shake the fear all day. It hung over me like a personal cloud though I spent the day in the sun, forsaking my own work.
The boys and I rowed out onto the loch, and I watched them fish but catch nothing.
They had been annoyed at having been left behind and were irritable at first, but soon their spirits rose, and by the end of the afternoon they were their usual good-natured and silly selves.
They sang as we rowed ashore and carried their fishing poles as though they were weighted down.
The men arrived in the evening’s gloom and settled in for a night’s drinking.
Alex had spent last night talking with the MacKinnon as well and he had come to bed in the wee hours, angry and smelling of whisky.
When I had questioned him he had said only that, yes, it was James Stewart they were discussing, but, no, he’d not agreed to anything.
This morning he’d explained that MacKinnon was here to get him to agree to raise the clan and to help raise the Highlands.
He said he had no intention of doing either, but Alex had spent the day and the evening with the MacKinnon and although he was leaving in the morning, I feared that he might yet prove successful.
The summer was bringing more than bad weather.
Tonight Alex was thoughtful as he prepared for bed and kissed me absently on the forehead.
When he did not finish undressing but sat on the chair in front of the fireplace lost in thought, I climbed from the bed and went to kneel in front of him, asking him to tell me what was happening.
His gaze, which had been far away, returned to me and he smiled wryly.
“I am being besieged, lass, and I am resisting. We’ve held our ground this time, but I fear this willna be the last. MacKinnon wants me to join the Earl of Mar in the east. Bobbing John Erskine.
Ye ken why they call him Bobbing John?” I shook my head.
“Mar was verra important under Queen Anne, and when King Geordie dinna recognize his worth he was most put out.” Alex yawned.
“Mar wrote a fawning letter to George, but that dinna work; Geordie dinna give him a place in his government. So now Bobbing John is leading a rebellion against the King. MacKinnon says all the clans are rising, but I’ve heard differently, and I said I needed more time and more information before I decided.
” He stroked my hair. “Dinna look at me that way, lass, I’ve not agreed to anything.
Dinna fear that I am off to war. I’ve told ye I dinna like James Stewart.
” His smile was tired. “They’ll be off in the morning, and no doubt this will pass as all the other rumors have. Put it from yer mind.”
But I could not. And neither could Alex. The news spread quickly of the MacKinnon’s visit, and within a week Murdoch was in the hall telling Alex of the other clans that were joining the rising. The MacKinnon had gone to visit the Macleans as well .
“And ye, Murdoch? Are the Macleans joining?” Alex asked his friend.
His face was calm, but his hand gripped mine behind my skirts.
Murdoch nodded and my heart contracted. Alex sounded undisturbed.
“Are ye indeed?” he asked. “And what, besides a split head, do ye think of gaining from this exercise, Maclean?”
Murdoch shrugged. “I dinna ken if we’ll be successful, Alex, but I canna stay under King Geordie’s yoke the more. Ye ken what happened to the letter all the chiefs sent?”
“No, what?” Alex poured more whisky in Murdoch’s glass as he listened to the other man’s story of outrage.
After George’s accession to the throne a letter accepting his sovereignty had circulated the Highlands, signed by many but not all.
That letter, like the one accepting Sophia as Anne’s heir, had never reached Kilgannon.
But the Macleans had signed it, hoping for peace.
Murdoch sighed. “He wouldna even open it. Wouldna even open it, Alex. He dinna read it. Well, he canna read English, but it wasna even read to him, he was that disinterested. It’s an insult.”
“Aye, it is that,” said Alex, nodding.