Chapter 4

 

Robert Catto stayed in the library only long enough to inform Patrick Rankeillor that, like his daughter, he was now under arrest on suspicion of giving aid and succour to a known rebel and enemy of the king. He added a sentence or two on the restrictions that arrest imposed.

‘Professor Rankeillor,’ he said, turning to her father. ‘You understand the position?’

‘You’ve made it very clear, laddie. My daughter and I are to remain in this hoose until you deem otherwise. Every member o’ our household too.’

‘Then I shall take my leave of Miss Rankeillor and yourself and call again tomorrow afternoon. When I shall require you to provide me with a written statement dictated by me to you on the basis of what you told me earlier. I presume I don’t need to bring paper, ink and quills with me.’

A written statement. The words were innocuous enough. What they implied sent shivers up and down Christian’s spine. Once everything was committed to paper there would be no denying her father’s involvement with Jacobite politics and plots. She could not let him stand alone. Words tumbled out of her mouth. ‘Won’t you require a written statement from me too?’

Robert Catto answered her without looking at her. ‘Absolutely not. Which is something else we shall discuss tomorrow.’

‘Ah canna say we shall look forward to your visit wi’ unalloyed joy,’ Patrick said wryly, although he returned their gaoler’s rather stiff bow of the head all the same. ‘Show young Captain Catto out, lass.’

‘By the kitchen door if you please, madam,’ he said, swinging round to her.

‘Of course, sir,’ she replied, leading the way out into the lobby. After closing the double doors of the library behind them, she took a quick little breath and turned to face him. Would they kiss? Steal an intimate and joyful little moment from the gravity of the situation?

The lobby and the corridor linking it to the kitchen and the back of house were growing shadowy, the sconces not yet lit. She could see his face well enough by the light still being afforded by the tall narrow windows which flanked the front door. No smile curved his mouth, no sparkle lit up his grey eyes.

She glanced at the staircase rising above their heads into the gloom of the upstairs landing. ‘Do you want to see Geordie before you go?’

Following her gaze, he looked up the stairs. ‘How is he?’

‘Very stiff and sore.’ She grimaced. ‘As expected after what was done to him yesterday at Eastfield. But I’m sure he’d like to see you. Although I’d be loath to ask him to tackle the stairs again. And,’ she said, as much to herself as to him, ‘Betty might well have apoplexy if I take you up there.’

‘Tell him I’ll see him when he’s fit to move more easily,’ came the gruff response. His voice sharpened. ‘Surely to God he could have stayed downstairs today. Every step must have hurt him more.’

‘Every step was agony for him.’

‘Then why make him do it?’ he demanded.

‘I didn’t. He insisted. Once Joshua and I had helped him halfway there didn’t seem much point in not going on up. When we reached the landing and he’d got his breath back, do you know what he said to me?’

‘How could I know?’ he snapped.

She took a moment, allowing her own temper to flare and fade. ‘He told me he didn’t want me to have to sleep in a chair for another night, watching over him. Now he was upstairs, his sister could help keep an eye on him. “You’ve done so much for me already, miss.” That’s what he said, Robert. “I know you must have lots of other things to do. You’d done so much for all three of us. You and the Captain. Sergeant Livingstone too. Mrs Betty as well.”

When Robert Catto said nothing in response, she laid a tentative hand on the sleeve of his white linen shirt and the strong arm beneath it. He was not wearing his red Town Guard uniform today, more soberly clad in black breeches and a plain blue waistcoat. Those were the clothes he’d been wearing yesterday and had slept in last night. Although his full-sleeved linen shirt and uncreased neckcloth looked as though they’d been put on fresh this morning.

He raised a hand to his head, as though to run his fingers through his hair. As she had observed over these last weeks, it was a characteristic gesture. Even when his gleaming chestnut waves were neatly tied back and confined by a black satin ribbon, as they were now. The ribbon too looked fresh and uncrumpled.

Early this morning, sitting at the table in the library with her, his hair had tumbled loose over his shoulders. Only a few hours ago. When he had allowed the mask to slip, the one he customarily wore to hide his feelings behind the austere military persona and his ferociously neat outward appearance.

‘What’s wrong, Robert?’

‘Kirsty. For God’s sake... What the Devil do you think is wrong?’

‘I ken that well enough,’ she said gravely. ‘What I mean is what is wrong between you and me?’

‘Everything,’ he said, his voice bleak. ‘This bloody mess.’ Finally lowering his eyes from the staircase, he looked over her head to where there was nothing to see but the empty corridor. She had to call him back from whichever dark place he was heading for. From his terrible soldier’s memories.

He had shared one truly awful one with her on Christmas Eve, trying to frighten her as to what the bloody consequences of armed rebellion might be. Told her the story of a farmhouse in Saxony he and his comrades had come across. The dreadful consequences to the family who had lived there as fighting spilled over into their previously peaceful lives.

Sparing her none of the details, the story had poured out of him after he had caught her trying to send a warning letter to her father while Patrick Rankeillor was still through in Glasgow. Trying to turn her from the path she and her father were on. Or had been on.

Relief. Startling and unsettling, the word and the emotion slid into her head. Seeking reassurance, however illogical it might be to look for that from Robert Catto, implacable enemy of the Stuart Cause, she tugged on his arm.

‘This morning,’ she began, pointing towards the library doors. ‘In there.’

‘What of it?’

‘You and I stood up from the big table, stepped into each other’s arms and made a promise, one to the other.’

That brought his gaze back to her face, his voice softening. ‘Aye. That we did.’

‘You also said you wanted us to stop seeing each other as enemies. That if there is a storm rushing towards us, we should do our best to weather it together. Side by side. Do you no longer want that?’

His eyes flashed. ‘Of course I want that! How can you doubt it?’

She flexed her fingers, taking a firmer grip on his arm. ‘Help me not to doubt it, Robert.’

‘Not here,’ he muttered, taking her by the hand. ‘Come on.’

A few hurried steps brought them through the corridor to the closed door into the kitchen. He gripped her arm above the elbow, bringing her round to face him. ‘At the West Port,’ he said, the words blurted out. ‘Your father did not deny anything I put to him. Not one single thing! Bloody hell, Kirsty, why are the two of you so unable to dissemble, so blind to the consequences of your actions? You’re as bad as each other! And how you expect me to sort out this bloody mess – so much of it of your own making – I do not know!’

She bit her lip, then chose to answer him with gentleness. ‘It’s surely not so strange that my father and I are very alike in some ways. The apple does not fall far from the tree.’

He shook his head. With enough force to make the ends of his hair ribbon flutter. ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow. I’m nothing at all like … him.’

Him. John Roy Stuart, high-ranking Jacobite plotter and Robert Catto’s estranged father. The father he claimed to hate with all his heart.

‘You cannot even say his name,’ she said sadly. ‘Och, Robert. Does it hurt so very much, then?’

‘We’re talking about you, Kirsty,’ he said tersely. ‘Not me. A kiss,’ he added. ‘If you please.’

‘Och, that was somewhat perfunctory, sir! What if I don’t please?’ Trying desperately to lighten the mood, she smiled up at him. Despite the frown between his russet brows, dare she hope she saw in his face that he had returned from one of those dark places he had been seeing in his mind’s eye?

‘Don’t play games,’ he said in his deep voice. ‘Not today.’

She raised one hand to his face, dancing her fingertips over his cheek and down the line of his strong jaw. She could feel stubble beginning to form. ‘No games,’ she agreed, her voice a whisper in the increasing gloom. ‘The time is long past for those.’

‘You finally appreciate how serious all this is?’ The words were rattled out. Here, in the depths of the corridor, ’twas difficult to read the expression on his face but his voice betrayed him. He sounded like a man in pain. His palpable distress was an arrow to her heart.

‘Och Robert, I realized that long since! And you arresting my father today has brought it home to me a thousand times over! Made it all so much more real!’

He whirled her round so her back was to the kitchen door, seized one hand and sought the other. Interlacing his fingers with hers, he raised both their hands to rest against the door to either side of her head and dipped his head to kiss her. Hard. She responded with equal fervour, her lips parting under his urgent mouth. One sharp tug on her hands drew her closer to his tall body. As close as it was possible to be.

Growing darkness around them. Fire flaring up between them. His firm chest against her soft breasts. His hands releasing hers so he could slide his arms around her waist. Her arms reaching up to coil around his neck, under his tied-back hair. His long, strong legs pressed against her own. His growing arousal calling forth a response from the most intimate part of her own body. Sensation building upon sensation. Desire mounting.

Yet there was something despairing about this passionate embrace. She thought – no, she knew – that he felt the same. That had to be why they both drew back from the kiss at the same time.

‘We cannot do this,’ she said, her breath coming fast and shallow.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘We cannot. Not here. Not now.’

‘Maybe not ever. Fate is against us.’

‘I do not want either of us to think like that.’ He leant forward, resting his forehead against hers. ‘I do not want that!’

For a moment neither of them spoke. It was Christian who broke the silence. ‘Step back, will you? I’m a wee bit hot.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘I’m a wee bit hot myself.’ The hint of amusement in his voice came and went. ‘I have to do my duty, Kirsty. However much I might sometimes regret the necessity.’

‘I know that. I understand that. Let us go into the kitchen.’

‘Give me a moment,’ he said, taking a few more steps back, putting some distance between them.

Her eyes flickered downwards before hastening back up to his face. ‘Oh,’ she said, hot all over again as she realized why he needed that moment. Her embarrassment did not stop her from asking a question. A very indiscreet one at that. Or maybe ’twas her very embarrassment which made her blurt it out, waving a hand in the vague direction of the crotch of his breeches. ‘How do you persuade it to subside?’

‘Persuade it to subside?’ he repeated. He looked at her for a moment before amusement returned, stronger than before. He let out a bark of laughter, clapping one hand over his mouth to silence himself.

And in that moment, ’twas as though the floor beneath their feet shifted and moved and the clouds of despair surrounding them began to lift.