The Chieftain Without a Heart Read online

  If Mr. Dunblane was surprised so were they.

  “Join with the McNarns?” one of The Kilcraig’s older sons enquired.

  Although he spoke quietly, it might have been a yell of savage protest.

  “This is our only chance to control the MacAuads,” The Kilcraig replied.

  The men did not mention their sister, Clola, but the Duke knew by their uneasy glances that they were thinking of her.

  Finally The Kilcraig toasted the Duke and the Duke was forced to toast him in return.

  “May our hearts be as closely united as our hands and our tongues,” The Kilcraig proposed finally in Gaelic.

  With an effort the Duke managed to answer in the same language,

  “May your wish come true.”

  He was bemused, bewildered and only as he rode away from Kilcraig Castle followed by his procession with the bagpipes swirling out, did he remember that he had not in fact seen his future bride.

  For a moment he tightened the reins and brought his horse to a standstill.

  Surely it was an omission that was not only fantastic from his own point of view, but also an insult to the woman he was to marry?

  Then he told himself that if The Kilcraig had meant them to meet he would have suggested it.

  The old Chief had been, the Duke thought furiously, in complete command of the whole situation from the very beginning.

  He had had everything planned in his mind, he had been determined to have his own way and he had succeeded without any opposition.

  “I am weak, feeble, puerile!” the Duke flayed himself. But he still found it was impossible to think of any means by which he could have refused The Kilcraig without sacrificing not only Torquil but his own pride and honour.

  Once or twice already there had been various scurrilous reports written about him in the newspapers in London and a cartoon had depicted one of his amatory adventures in a manner that had made him grind his teeth.

  It had been nothing half as bad as what was said about the King who paid the cartoonists ‘hush money’.

  At the same time something savage and unrestrained in the Duke had made him feel as if he was prepared to run his sword through the body of the artist who lampooned him or blow his brains out with a bullet from his duelling pistol.

  He had in fact taken part in quite a number of duels and, although he had never killed a man, he had come perilously near to it in one instance.

  He thought now as he rode across the heather that it would give him great pleasure to be present at The Kilcraig’s funeral, however much the old man might enjoy himself at his wedding.

  He wanted to swear aloud to relieve his furious conviction that he had been out-manoeuvred by a very clever antagonist.

  Although he might be the Kilcraig’s superior as a Chieftain, he was certainly his inferior when it came to brain power.

  Could it be possible that this uncivilised savage, Chief of a Clan of which South of the border nobody had ever heard, should be shrewd enough to humiliate the dashing, much admired sportsman who was a friend of the King?

  He knew that he held a position amongst the other bucks and dandies of St. James’s that was almost unique. He was aware that he was sought out by Statesmen and older men because of the wit and intelligence of his conversation and certainly as far as women were concerned for his other attractions.

  Yet within twenty-four hours of landing in Scotland he had been outwitted, out-manoeuvred and treated as a pawn in the hand of a man who he was quite certain had never travelled South of Edinburgh.

  It was impossible for the Duke to speak of what he was suffering to Mr. Dunblane.

  Only when he arrived back at The Castle to find Lord Hinchley, delighted with himself for having caught three salmon, he told him briefly what had occurred.

  “You have to marry this woman?” Lord Hinchley ejaculated. “I don’t believe you!”

  “It is true!”

  “Good God! I would not have believed such a thing was possible if you had not told me so with your own lips.”

  “You must see that I have no alternative?”

  “It is inhuman! Barbaric! Just what I should have expected of these savages!”

  “What could I do?” the Duke asked.

  “I do realise that it was impossible for you to abandon the boy, but to have to marry a woman you have never seen – !”

  “It would make it no better if I had,” the Duke said gloomily.

  He sounded so depressed that Lord Hinchley rose from where he was sitting to pour out a glass of brandy and hand it to the Duke.

  “There is only one consolation,” he said slowly as he did so.

  “What is that?” the Duke asked with not a flicker of hope in his voice.

  “You will have to marry her – I see that,” Lord Hinchley replied. “Then get her with child and leave her. Come South and forget the whole incident.”

  He paused before he added in a more cheerful voice,

  “After all, the fact that you are married should certainly not restrict your activities in London. The last dozen women with whom you have amused yourself have all had husbands.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” the Duke admitted.

  “Then why worry?” Lord Hinchley asked. “Married or unmarried they will still find you the best-looking and the most amusing man in London and Scotland will be very far away.”

  “As you say, William – Scotland will be very far away,” the Duke repeated.

  He raised his glass.

  “I shall be able to drink not to absent friends, but to my absent wife – and may she never come South!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Clola Kilcraig stared at herself in the mirror and thought it was impossible that this should be her wedding day.

  Ever since her father had told her that she was to marry the Duke of Strathnarn, she had felt that she was living in a dream and that she would awake to find it was all a figment of her imagination, which her family had often threatened would get her into trouble.

  She had been a dreamer all her life, and to her the superstitions and legends not only of the Kilcraigs but also of the other Clans were part of the mountains, the glens, the burns and the moors that she loved so much.

  She had listened when she was small to the stories her nurse had told her of snow maidens, of elves and ghosts, and thought that she heard and saw them.

  When she grew older, she had sat at the feet of the bard while he recited long poems, which bored her brothers, but which she found entrancing and stimulating to her thoughts and feelings.

  There were books at Kilcraig Castle that had accumulated over the years, but no one read them or were even aware of their existence except for Clola.

  Only when she had gone to Edinburgh to stay with her grandmother did she find in literature all that she vaguely sensed within herself, but had not been able to put into words.

  Her visits to Edinburgh had, she realised, altered her whole life in a way she could never explain to her brothers without hurting their pride and their belief that the whole world began and ended on their own lands.

  They had been to school and Edinburgh University, but they had hated every moment of it and had lived only to return to their farming and to obeying their father implicitly because he had not only bred them but was also their Chieftain.

  Clola had visited Edinburgh first with her mother when she was twelve.

  It had been difficult for Lady Janet Kilcraig to see much of her family whose lands lay South of Edinburgh and were therefore at many times of the year, owing to the roughness of the roads, inaccessible.

  But the Countess of Borrabul had written saying that she was ill and even The Kilcraig could not forbid his wife to visit her mother who might be near to death.

  Lady Janet had therefore taken her youngest daughter with her and set off on the long and arduous drive to Edinburgh, the roads being at times a morass of mud and at others under water from swollen burns and flooded lochs.

&
nbsp; But they reached the City safely and Clola would never forget how impressed she had been with the thousand-year old castle standing on a great rock, the wide busy streets, the Palace with its memories of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the elegance of the people she met.

  The Countess, who seemed in surprisingly good health considering she had written so dramatically to demand her daughter’s presence, had exclaimed in horror when she saw her clothes and the rough garments worn by Clola.

  “They are suitable enough, Mama, for the life we lead,” Lady Janet Kilcraig had protested.

  But the Countess had ordered dressmakers, furriers, milliners, shoe and glove makers to call and made long lists of what they would require.

  Clola and her mother had been fitted out in beautiful and expensive gowns which they knew would be quite useless when they returned home.

  In Edinburgh for the first time Clola had heard music that was not played on the bagpipes and she listened to intelligent people who talked about subjects other than feuds, vengeance and the price of cattle.

  She had cried when she was obliged to return home and her grandmother when kissing her goodbye had said over her head,

  “This child must be properly educated. She will be a beauty when she grows up, but who is going to see her but grouse and stags, if you keep her shut up in that gloomy ghost-ridden castle of yours?”

  Her mother had laughed but when three years later she died, the Countess of Borrabul, by using the excuse that she might not live long, had persuaded The Kilcraig to send Clola to Edinburgh.

  For nearly three years Clola had lived a life that was so completely different from everything she had known previously that it had a special magic of its own.

  Not the magic of the mountains and the moors, but a magic nevertheless in that she could feel her mind expanding and broadening as she learnt the subjects which before had been incomprehensible to her.

  Most important of all, she could listen to the concerts that were given at the theatre in Edinburgh and even occasionally go to the opera.

  She was, however, not allowed to go to school – for that, the Countess told her, was not correct for the daughters of the Nobility wherever their brothers might be sent.

  But she had teachers for every subject and she thought that there was so much history around her, it was almost unnecessary to open the books on it.

  When she was eighteen and had been launched into Society the previous winter, the tragedy her grandmother had so often used as a pretext to get her own way happened and the Countess died, leaving Clola to return home.

  She had not forgotten what Kilcraig Castle meant in her life. She had not ceased to love her brothers and even her father, although she was afraid of him. But she knew, when she was honest with herself, that life at home was going to be restrictive.

  She would not feel, as she had felt in Edinburgh, that her mind, like her imagination, had wings which would carry her up into the sky.

  She found, however, that her years in the City had given her a deeper appreciation of the beauty of the mountains and wild moors that had been so much a part of her childhood.

  Sitting in the heather she could look out over the glen beneath her and hear music on the breeze and feel that it carried a special message to her heart, as even the great orchestras she had listened to in Edinburgh had been unable to do.

  Apart from her imagination and a certain perception that her old nurse had told her made her ‘fey’, Clola had a practical side.

  On arrival at Kilcraig Castle, she put away her silken gowns and allowed her sisters-in-law and the servants to weave for her homespun garments in which she could climb the hills or ford a burn without their coming to any harm.

  She had also been intelligent enough to assimilate herself quickly into the family circle, keeping her new-found knowledge to herself and listening to her brothers with an attention that both pleased and flattered them.

  She felt at times that her father sensed she was not as complaisant as he required and, although she had never defied him, she knew perceptively that he expected her, at some time, to do so.

  In fact the first time during the three months since her return home that she had been involved in an argument with him was after the Duke had left.

  Like everyone else at Kilcraig Castle, Clola had been excited by the thought of his visit. She had been told when Torquil McNarn was captured what a score it was over their enemies, the McNarns.

  Having heard noises the previous night and wondering what was occurring, she was actually surprised and horrified when she learnt the following morning at breakfast what had occurred.

  It was her older brother, Andrew, who told her why they had waited in the darkness on the border of their land to capture Torquil McNarn and three other lads in the very act of thieving.

  “Thieving?” Clola had questioned.

  “Not for the first time,” Andrew replied, “But now he’ll pay the penalty. I have always hoped to catch a man in the act, but did not expect such a prize prisoner as the Duke’s nephew!”

  “Surely the McNarns will be very angry?” Clola suggested.

  “Undoubtedly,” Andrew stressed, “and now we will wait to see what they do about it.”

  Clola clasped her hands together in horror.

  She hated the thought of fighting, violence and bloodshed. There had been far too much of it in their history. But she knew that if she objected her brothers would merely despise her for her weakness and, what was more, would ignore any protest she might make.

  To them a woman’s place was in the home, looking after her babies, superintending the kitchen and the still-room. If she had time on her hands she would weave and spin as the Scottish womenfolk had done since the beginning of time.

  But at least Torquil’s capture had given them something different to talk about and brought new visitors to Kilcraig Castle.

  First had come Mr. Dunblane and the fathers of the three boys who had been captured at the same time as Torquil McNarn.

  Clola had not been allowed to be present at their meeting with her father, but she had watched them arrive and peeped at them as they ascended the stairs to the Chief’s Room.

  She had thought Mr. Dunblane looked charming and very like some of the interesting and intelligent men she had met in Edinburgh.

  The Clansmen with him had stared at The Kilcraig, who glared back and Clola was sure it was only by the greatest exertion of self-control that they were not at each other’s throats.

  She had almost forgotten in Edinburgh how violent the feuds between the neighbouring Clans could be and how the hatred that had been engendered could easily make a man into a murderer.

  When Mr. Dunblane had ridden away, she had learnt that her father had refused to negotiate with anyone but the Chieftain of the McNarns, the Duke of Strathnarn.

  She had heard him spoken of when she was in Edinburgh.

  She knew that he had run away from home when he was sixteen, because he could not tolerate his father’s discipline and now lived in the South.

  Her father had the utmost contempt for the Duke’s maternal grandfather who, although he was a Scot, was a lowlander and had not taken part in the Jacobite rebellion. Instead he had accepted the favours of the English and was welcomed at the Court of St. James’s.

  “A renegade! A traitor! A man who has betrayed his own people!” were just some of the insults hurled by The Kilcraig at him and all Scotsmen like him.

  But in Edinburgh, Clola had begun to understand why so many Chieftains found the life of the Highlands too hard and too restrictive for them.

  In the previous centuries the Chiefs had been men of contradictions – civilised savages whose interests and experience were often wider than most Englishmen’s.

  Many of them could speak Gaelic, English, French, as well as Greek and Latin, and they had sent their sons to be educated at Universities in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paris or Rome.

  They had come back wearing lace at their throats with a l
iking for French claret, able to dance the Highland reels as well as the minuets of the South.

  To the French and indeed to the English, the Chieftains had been attractive and rather picturesque foreigners.

  When they were with their Clans they were Kings, but in very small Kingdoms with few amusements other than shooting and fishing, bardic poems and wild pipe music. For the earlier Chieftains in the sixteenth century there had been continuous Clan battles and cattle raids to occupy them.

  There had also been hunting on the high mountains where in those days stags, wolf and cat abounded. Deer hunts with crossbow and broadswords were a spectacle which the bard would recreate in the long dark winter evenings when there was nothing to do but sit around the great peat fires.

  But the Chieftains who had travelled were beginning to find it a bore to return to their own country.

  In one way Clola could sympathise with them, but she knew that a Clan without its Chieftain was helpless and, like the MacAuads, deteriorated until the words ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ were an apt description.

  When she thought of this, Clola began to be afraid that the soothsayers’ predictions of the curse that would come upon the Highlands and the suffering and misery that would ensue from it would come true.

  It would be called, she had been told, Bliadhna Nan Caorach – ‘The years of the sheep’.

  When she was in Edinburgh, she learnt that successful, sheep farming in the far North had resulted first in large scale emigration to Canada and how when other Highlanders refused to emigrate they were evicted.

  News travelled slowly.

  In Edinburgh, Society had not been alerted to what was happening in Sutherland until after Clola had come to live with her grandmother.

  Then people talked of little else and every day brought further tales of crofts being burnt over defenceless heads, of cruelties which lost nothing in the telling, and the determination of many Highland Chiefs to follow the lead set by the Marquis of Stafford in Sutherland.

  Riots followed the evictions in Ross and the more people talked the more Clola’s heart began to be wrung with the thought of those forgotten and betrayed by their Chieftains.