Love Joins the Clans Read online

  Now there were just her close relatives and she learnt that they were all staying in The Castle and tonight there would be a family dinner.

  As they ate they would get to know their new Chieftain, who had been taken away by her mother when she had left secretly in the middle of the night thereby causing a scandal that would never be forgotten and would doubtless be written into the history of the McBlanes just as their feuds and their victories had been.

  But for the moment they talked to Clova only of her father and how it had been a great tragedy when he had died of a heart attack after over-exerting himself far too strenuously on a deer stalk that had taken over five hours.

  “He was a fine sportsman,” one of the older men in the party said, shaking his head. “But Alister would never listen to reason where his health was concerned.”

  “He shot his stag before he died,” another member of the party informed her. “Quite frankly that is the way I would like to die myself, either when I had just finished a stalk or when I had bagged a brace of grouse!”

  “And a terrible nuisance it would be to have to carry you down from the moor,” another relative remarked jokingly. “So before you attempt to do anything so dramatic, I suggest you lose weight!”

  There was laughter at this and Clova knew that she liked her relatives, at any rate the gentlemen, with their talk about sport and the way they looked at her with an unmistakable glint of admiration in their eyes.

  This she could not fail to recognise, having for so many years seen exactly the same expression in the eyes of the men who stared at her mother when they first met her.

  The women were more difficult and she knew that they were not looking at her face but at her clothes.

  She had chosen her plainest gown to travel in, but, although it was a very soft unobtrusive shade of blue, it threw into prominence the perfection of her skin and the gold of her hair.

  It was cut with the chic and brilliance of a French couturier, who invariably accentuated the curves of a woman’s body, the smallness of her waist and the lissomness of her figure.

  “I am afraid, Marchioness, that you will find Scotland very dull after the gaieties of Paris,” one of the elderly matrons said in a tone of voice that insinuated that Clova had indulged in all the wildest dissipations of the French Capital.

  For a moment Clova thought of telling her how poor and even hungry she and her mother had been all the last year and how their only dissipation had been to look in the shop windows at objects that they could not afford to buy.

  Then she realised that it would give them intense satisfaction to know that Lottie had suffered as they had hoped she would.

  Also, undoubtedly, although they would rather die than admit it, they had envied her because they thought that she was enjoying the forbidden fruits that they themselves could never appreciate.

  “I promise you,” Clova said in her soft voice, “that I am now much enjoying being back in Scotland and finding that I remember far more than I thought possible because I was so young when I left here.”

  “I expect you will soon be longing for all the excitements you have missed,” a woman commented sourly.

  “I doubt it,” Clova replied. “I am sure that I shall be too busy discovering everything that I have to do here to find time lying heavy on my hands.”

  “And what do you intend to do?” one of the gentlemen asked, who had come up behind her as she was speaking.

  “I intend,” Clova said in a voice that seemed to ring out in. the room, “to be not only a good and just but an enlightened Chieftain.”

  There was a sudden silence before somebody asked the obvious question,

  “What do you mean by enlightened?”

  “I mean,” Clova replied, “that I want the Clan to embrace new ideas, to find new ways of gaining prosperity and most of all, which I consider very important, I want peace.”

  As she spoke, she looked across the room and, as she met her Cousin Euan’s eyes, she knew by the sarcastic cynical expression in his that they had declared war.

  Chapter Four

  Brave words, Clova thought to herself as she lay awake in the darkness, but they were useless unless they could be supported by action.

  The difficulty was that she realised how ignorant she was not only of Scotland itself but of how she could actually help the Clansmen.

  She found herself tossing and turning and wondering who would advise her and who would understand the difficulties.

  At the same time she knew the answer all too clearly, the one person she wanted to talk to was the Laird of Cowan.

  ‘I must see him, I must!’ she decided just before the first fingers of dawn showed in the sky.

  Then at last, as if she had solved the problem for herself, she fell asleep.

  She was awakened by her maid, Jeanne, who looked after her, coming into the room and pulling back the curtains.

  Because she had been so bewildered by everything last night, it was only now that Clova realised that she was sleeping in the Chieftain’s Room.

  There was no mistaking it because she remembered being brought here when her grandfather was ill and thinking how impressive and intimidating he looked in the huge, carved four-poster oak bed propped up against a large number of pillows.

  She saw that one side of the great room was pierced by tall but narrow windows that told her they were part of one of the turrets and on another wall stood a huge stone fireplace carved with the crest of the McBlanes.

  There were several portraits, as she had already seen in other parts of The Castle, of her ancestors wearing their Chieftain’s sporran and plaid clasped with a Cairngorm brooch.

  She thought as she lay in bed that they looked at her not exactly with disapproval but as if there was a question in their eyes as to whether she was capable of following in their hallowed footsteps.

  Now the fears of the night flooded over her again.

  She felt so helpless and ineffectual that it had seemed the best thing she could do was to go back to France and make a life for herself there.

  Then she remembered the bitterness in the Laird of Cowan’s voice when he had spoken of his dead ewes and told herself that, if she did nothing else, she must stop her Cousin Euan from insulting and harassing another Clan.

  By the time Clova was dressed she felt a new strength in herself that had not been there previously.

  As Jeanne buttoned up the plain but well cut gown she was wearing of deep blue, which echoed the blue stripe in the McBlane tartan, the maid said,

  “If your Ladyship looks out of the window, you’ll see the Clansmen gatherin’. They’ve come from far and near and I hear your Ladyship will be feastin’ them, which be kind of you as many of them have walked a lang way.”

  If that was what she was going to do, it was news to Clova, but she was sure that her relatives, especially the Elders, would see that she made no mistakes.

  Only when she went into the breakfast room where quite a number of the guests in The Castle were already gathered, did she sense immediately that something had happened.

  It seemed extraordinary, but their whole attitude towards her seemed to have changed and for a moment she could not understand why it was so different or why she was so conscious of it.

  Then, when her Cousin Euan came into the room, she understood.

  He walked up to where she was sitting at the top of the table and said in an oily voice,

  “Good morning, Cousin Clova. There is no need for me to tell you that you look very beautiful and will doubtless fascinate and beguile our Clansmen, just as we have all been captivated by our new Chieftain.”

  He looked round as he spoke at the other relatives sitting at the table, and, as they obviously approved of what he had said, Clova understood what had happened.

  Last night they had accepted her and been polite to her for her father’s sake and because she was by tonight to take his place, but they still had reservations because of her mother and because she h
ad lived for so many years in a foreign country.

  Now she was certain that today they accepted her wholeheartedly and with enthusiasm because they had learnt that she was rich.

  She knew that the only person who could have told them this was Torbot McBlane.

  She guessed that after she had gone to bed early because she was so tired, he must have come to The Castle and informed her older relatives of what he had learnt from Monsieur Beauvais in Paris.

  They were now taking a very different view of her and she was quite certain from the expression on Euan’s face that he was all the more determined to make her his wife, as the Laird of Cowan had told her.

  Clova felt herself tremble at the thought of it.

  Equally, because she could feel the approval of all her relatives vibrating towards her, she knew that she was now in a position of authority that had not been possible yesterday.

  It was degrading to think that she was not entirely accepted for herself.

  Yet, if her money could buy what she wanted for the Clan and that more than anything else was peace, then she was prepared to forget her own feelings and accept her good fortune in the same way that her mother had done.

  It seemed in a way ironic that her mother, who had been considered beneath contempt by the McBlanes, should be the instrument of bringing prosperity to the whole Clan.

  Clova could almost hear her spontaneous and lilting laughter at the idea and she knew that Lottie, if she was aware of it, would believe the whole thing to be huge joke.

  Because she wanted to make sure that her surmise was correct, she asked the relative sitting next to her at the breakfast table, Sir Robert McBIane, an elderly retired General, if he had met Torbot McBIane.

  “I have known Torbot for forty years,” he answered, “and I was saying to him last night that he was the right man to bring you home to your own land. I am sure that he told you more eloquently than any of us could have done of the crisis Scotland is in at the moment and how much help we need in the Highlands.”

  Clova knew from this that what she had thought was correct and it was Torbot who had given her relatives the welcome information of how rich she was.

  Euan had seated himself on her other side and now he said,

  “You must not be nervous of dealing with what lies in front of you and, of course, I will be here to help you.”

  There was a possessive note in his voice that made her say a little stiffly,

  “Thank you, Cousin Euan, it is very kind of you to offer to help me, but I think I shall turn for advice to Sir Robert, who I suspect is the oldest of my relatives.”

  The General was obviously very gratified.

  “I will look after you, my child,” he said. “I was beside your father when he greeted the Clansmen after your grandfather’s death and a very fine speech he made. They have never forgotten it.”

  “So I am expected to speak!” Clova exclaimed.

  “If it is something you are not used to,” Euan said quickly, “let me do it for you.”

  There was an eagerness in his voice that told her he was longing to assert his authority and make the Clansmen realise how important he was.

  “I am perfectly willing to speak,” Clova answered, “and I know exactly what I want to say to those who have come so far to meet me.”

  She could see that Euan was annoyed that she did not accept his offer, but the General then said,

  “Of course you must speak. It is traditional for the Chieftain to greet the Clansmen and to tell them that they can turn to him for help when they need it.”

  Clova smiled at him and he added comfortingly,

  “Now don’t worry, my dear. They will offer you their obeisance and all you have to do is to say something to each one of them which they will cherish as if it was a rare jewel.”

  Clova thought that he was quite poetical and she thanked him again,

  “I understand from my maid that we provide them with food and perhaps drink.”

  The General looked embarrassed.

  “It was not until last night when I was talking to Torbot that we understood it was something you could afford. As I could not ask your permission so late in the evening, I have ordered on your behalf two oxen to be slaughtered and barrels of ale to be provided. That is something that the Clansmen will appreciate and remember for years.”

  “I am glad you did that,” Clova said simply.

  When breakfast was over, the General’s wife and two of the other ladies draped a plaid over Clova’s left shoulder and fastened it with the huge Cairngorm brooch that her father had worn.

  It was a garment that she had not expected to wear.

  She could not help thinking that it must have been her Celtic blood that had made her choose for her gown exactly the right shade of blue that went so well with the McBlane tartan.

  She was also surprised when they produced a tartan bonnet, which they told her had been worn many years ago by her great-grandmother when, during her husband’s absence at the wars, she had taken his place at some of the gatherings of the Clan.

  It was small and neatly made and, when she looked at herself in the mirror, Clova thought that it was exceedingly becoming.

  She had been a little worried in case the fashionable headgear that she had bought in Paris to go with her gown would seem inappropriate for such an occasion.

  But now, with her plaid and her tartan bonnet, she knew that she looked exactly as a woman who was so fortunate as to take a man’s place as the Chieftain of the Clan, should look.

  When she walked slowly downstairs, she found all her relatives waiting for her in the hall. Euan at once put out his hand towards her, but she moved quickly to the General’s side and took his arm.

  “You look very nice, my dear,” he smiled.

  Knowing that he was trying to give her courage, she thanked him and she was sure that he had sensed that she was avoiding Euan.

  The servants opened the great oak door and as they did so the pipers outside started to play the Call of the McBlanes and the sound was taken up by a dozen other pipers scattered over the grounds in front of The Castle.

  Clova thought that she would never forget the picture the Clansmen made as they stood waiting for her below a mound of green grass where had been set the Chieftain’s chair made from the horns of stags.

  There were no other seats and, as the pipers marched ahead, the General escorted Clova to it and she sat down in the chair that had been occupied by her ancestors for centuries.

  Her male relatives, looking resplendent in their kilts and sporrans, stood behind her.

  Then, one by one, the Clansmen came up, dropped down on one knee in front of her and, taking her hand in theirs, swore allegiance to her as their Chieftain.

  She found it very moving as each man said his name clearly and without mumbling and swore that he would serve her faithfully until he died.

  The General knew most of the men and what their occupation was.

  If he faltered, another relative, almost as old as he was, standing on the other side of her supplied her with the information that the man kneeling at her feet was a shepherd or a farmer, a river watcher, a ghillie or a stalker.

  There were more shepherds than anything else and Clova had already learnt from Torbot McBlane that the land she owned was better for sheep than that of many of their neighbours.

  There were perhaps nearly three hundred Clansmen present at the Ceremony, but Clova could remember Torbot McBlane telling her that before the Highland Clearances there had been nearly two thousand.

  “Now the McBlanes are scattered all over the world,” he related sadly, “but those who keep in touch with their Clansmen at home will learn that they now have a new Chieftain.”

  Clova found it hard to believe that any of the McBlanes, who had been forced to leave Scotland for Canada or other distant lands or their descendants would still be interested in what happened at home.

  Then she remembered that the Scots never forget and
reckoned that Torbot was right and they would want to know exactly what was happening.

  What she found very touching was that many of the Clansmen brought with them small gifts, which she accepted gladly and then handed to the General to place on one side.

  There were gloves they had knitted from the wool of their sheep, which they had spun on a wheel and then dyed in various colours and there were scarves that their wives had woven on handlooms at home.

  There was a grouse’s claw preserved and fashioned as a brooch, a clump of blackcock feathers for a bonnet and from those who lived near the sea there were little shell-covered boxes.

  Clova thanked them all profusely in her soft voice and told the giver how grateful she was for such a charming gift and that it was something that she would always treasure.

  She knew how gratified they were.

  And then, when the last Clansmen had made his obeisance, as she rose to her feet, she found herself thinking of the Laird of Cowan.

  It was almost as if he was there beside her, prompting her so that she did not have to think of what she should say and the words came instantly to her lips.

  She heard her voice ringing out so that all the Clansmen, now sitting as they had been told to do, could hear her.

  Their worried eyes, their long ragged hair and weather-beaten skin made her feel that she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything in her life to help and protect them.

  She did not miss that many of them were wearing kilts that were torn and threadbare and boots that were so dilapidated that it must have been agony to walk in them for any distance.

  She thought too that some of them looked as if they did not have enough to eat and she knew from her own experience what that meant and how difficult they must find it to keep going when their stomachs were empty.

  First she greeted them and told them how glad she was to be back in the home of her ancestors and how, even though she had been away for so long, she was finding everything so familiar that she was beginning to feel as if she had never left.

  They cheered at this and she went on to say what an honour and a privilege it was to take the place of her grandfather whom she remembered well and of her father whom she knew they had admired and respected.