The Heart Of The Clan

Chapter 1 1822-1

Chapter 1 1822The horses reached the top of a steep incline and came to a halt.

The footman jumped down from the box and, opening the carriage door, said,

“The coachman says we must wait here for a while to give the horses a rest and, if you be interested, there be a very fine view, sir.”

“Oh, I must see it!” a young voice exclaimed. “Do let’s get out, Papa.”

The gentleman she was speaking to had his foot up on the smaller seat in the carriage and answered,

“Leave the door open so that I can see it from here. I am too tired to move!”

“It has been a long journey,” his daughter said with a sigh, “but we are nearly there.”

“That be right. Miss Sona,” the footman said. “The coachman says it be only another four miles afore we reach The Castle.”

Sona smiled at him as she stepped from the carriage. Higman was their own servant, who had come with them from the South to valet her father and also to act as footman when needed.

The carriage, a very grand one with the Ducal Coat of Arms on its doors, had been waiting for them as soon as they had crossed the border.

The journey from Derbyshire had taken three weeks, but they had travelled in very easy stages because Colonel Alister McCarron’s foot was paining him owing to a touch of gout that was always worse in bad weather when he could not take as much exercise as he liked.

But now the blustery windy spring was over and Sona was sure that he would soon be walking easily and without pain.

In the meantime as far as she was concerned nothing could be more exciting than an unexpected journey to Scotland with the chance of meeting her relatives and the members of the Clan she had heard so much ever since she was a child.

Fiercely proud and staunchly loyal to his Scottish forebears, Colonel McCarron had always resented having to live in England.

But his wife, whom he had adored, had been English and when she died he had been left with an attractive Manor House and a small estate in Derbyshire, which she had been given by her father.

It was not only sentiment that made him continue to live there with his only child but also financial necessity.

But he had never forgotten where he really belonged.

When the invitation had come from the Duke of Invercarron for them to attend the Wedding of his eldest son, the Marquis of Inver, Sona thought that she had never known her father so happy.

“It will be a gathering of the whole Clan!” he had said triumphantly. “Then, my dearest, you will understand what I have tried to explain to you in words, but which can only really be understood when one sees with one’s eyes or listens with one’s heart.”

“You are being quite poetical, Papa!” Sona had teased him.

At the same time she knew how much being united with his own kith and kin would mean to her father.

They had made hectic preparations to go North and for the Colonel this meant getting out his full Regimental dress of the Highland Brigade in which he had served.

For Sona it was frantically trying both to buy and to make enough new gowns so that she would not feel ashamed of her appearance when she met her relatives for the first time.

Although she had never seen them, she knew a great deal about them.

The Duke of Invercarron was now in his late sixties and still the autocratic and greatly admired Chieftain of the McCarrons.

They had served him, her father had told her, with the loyalty and almost childlike obedience that good Scottish Chieftains evoked in their followers.

But they also feared him and the Colonel had said,

“It’s difficult to explain to you, having been brought up in England, what the Chieftain of a Clan means in Scotland.”

“You have always made him sound, Papa, as if he was more than a King and a little less than God.”

Her father had laughed, but he had answered warningly,

“That is not the sort of thing, my dearest, you should say when we reach Invercarron Castle.”

Sona’s eyes twinkled and there was a dimple on each side of her mouth as she had replied,

“I promise you. Papa, I will not shame you. I will be demure and modest, just the type of maiden you pretend I ought to be.”

“What do you mean by that?” her father had inquired.

Sona laughed.

“Because, although you say one thing, you think another.”

Her father did not reply and she went on,

“Mama, as you well know, was high-spirited, impetuous and always an exciting person to be with. I hope that I am like her.”

It was the Colonel’s turn to laugh as he pulled his daughter to him.

“You are very like your mother, my dearest, but in The Castle you must behave as they will expect of you, that is that all women shall naturally be subservient to their menfolk.”

Sona had teased him for being an overbearing tyrant all the way to Scotland.

But now, as she stepped out of the carriage and saw beneath them a view so beautiful that it took her breath away, she felt that the greatness and the majesty of it must be something like the Chieftain who was waiting for them.

They had been travelling along the East coast and now the sea was blindingly blue as it ran inland into a narrow but deep estuary.

The heather was not yet in bloom, but there were patches of golden gorse and the green of the fir trees was a vivid contrast to the barren bareness of the hilltops.

It was quite different from any country that Sona had seen before and she felt as if something within her responded to its beauty and made her a part of it.

She walked away from the carriage hardly aware that she was doing so, but entranced by the loveliness of her surroundings.

Finally she sat down on the edge of a peat-hag with the land falling steeply in front of her some hundreds of feet down to a very narrow strip of pasture land that bordered the sea.

She was so intent on her feelings and thoughts that she started when a man’s voice behind her said,

“I just knew that you would stop here to appreciate the beauty of our land!”

She turned her head sharply and found a man standing beside her who was, she thought, almost as good-looking as the scenery that had held her entranced.

He was wearing the kilt of the McCarron tartan with a bonnet on the side of his head that carried the McCarron crest and she thought that if this was one of her relatives he was certainly very attractive.

As if he read her thoughts the stranger smiled,

“Let me introduce myself. I am Torquil McCarron. When I heard that you were coming, I was determined to have the first glimpse of you!”

“That may have been mere curiosity, at the same time it was kind of you,” Sona replied. “I am feeling rather frightened of all those waiting for my father and me at The Castle.”

“I see no reason for you to feel that.”

As Torquil McCarron spoke, he sat down beside her.

“Do you know who I am?” Sona asked.

“Yes, of course,” he replied. “Everybody knows what guests are arriving and where they come from and needless to say there has been talk of nothing else since the Wedding was announced.”

“That is understandable,” Sona smiled. “My father and I also were very excited when we received our invitations.”

“His Grace is determined to make it a memorable occasion,” Torquil McCarron said. “It’s certainly a triumph as far as he is concerned.”

“A triumph for the Duke?” Sona asked.

She was puzzled not only by what Torquil McCarron had said, but also by a note in his voice that was, she thought, one of bitterness.

“Yes, for the Duke! The Marquis has no wish to be wed.”

“Then why did he agree if he feels like that?”

Torquil McCarron laughed and it was not the sound of humour.

“I can see that you don’t understand the authority of a Chieftain when he chooses to use it.”

“Oh, but I do!” Sona contradicted. “My father has explained to me over and over again that a Chieftain is the father of his people and just as they follow him in battle to their death, so in life they obey him implicitly.”

Torquil McCarron nodded his handsome head.

“That is true, but it’s difficult for people who don’t live in Scotland to understand that any recalcitrant sons are finally brought to heel.”

Again there was that bitter note in his voice and after a moment’s silence Sona said a little shyly,

“If what you say is true, I am – sorry for the Marquis. I have always thought it must be horrible to – marry anybody unless it was for love.”

“Love!” Torquil McCarron ejaculated. “It’s not a question of love where the Marquis is concerned. I don’t suppose that he has ever loved anybody except himself.”

“Then why – ?” Sona began.

“What he minds,” he interrupted, “is leaving London and having to come back to live among us ‘barbarians’.”

The word seemed almost to vibrate as he spoke and involuntarily Sona murmured,

“Oh – no!”

“It’s true,” Torquil McCarron said positively. “He despises us because he has had all the advantages. Can you not understand? The future Duke had to be educated at Eton and Oxford! The future Duke is presented at St James’s Palace! The future Duke must be constantly in attendance upon the King!”

It was quite obvious to Sona from the way he spoke that the man sitting beside her was very jealous.

Once again, as if he knew what she was thinking, he said,

“I am speaking not only for myself but for those like me who have not had such advantages, but have had to make the best of what is provided for us here in our own small Kingdom.”

“And has that not been enough?” Sona asked softly.

“The answer is ‘no!’ Yet it would be tolerable if the Marquis was a man like his father, if he loved his people, if the land our forebears fought for and died for meant anything more to him than a source of income to dissipate in the South.”

There was so much feeling in Torquil’s voice that Sona could not help being moved by what he said.

There was silence.

Then she asked,

“May I enquire if we are related and what is your – position in The Castle?”

“My position?”

Torquil McCarron repeated the words almost derisively.

“I am of very little importance. My father was first cousin to the Duke, so I suppose I am second cousin to the Marquis, but of little, if any, consequence in his eyes.”

“But you are still a McCarron, as I am,” Sona said.

He smiled at her and the darkness went from his face.

“And could I ask for more?” he asked. “We are related by blood and are part of our history of generations, which nobody can take from us.”

“No, of course not,” Sona agreed.

She hesitated and then she added a little tentatively,

“Perhaps, when the Marquis is – married, he will settle down and – love this land as obviously you love it.”

She thought that Torquil McCarron would contradict her, but instead he said,

“I can see, Sona, for I am sure I can call you that, that you want this to be a Fairytale where everything ends happily.”

“Of course I do,” Sona agreed, “and I want my visit here to be as beautiful as the view I am now looking at.”

“Then that is what we must try to make it,” Torquil said. “I hope to see you later.”

He rose to his feet and, as he did so, she saw that Higman was beckoning to her from the side of the carriage further up the hill and so she rose too.

“Will you come and meet my father?” she asked.

“Perhaps I may have that privilege another time,” Torquil McCarron said. “I think that now you should be on your way without delay.”

“Yes – of course,” Sona agreed.

It would be a mistake, she thought, to arrive later at The Castle than they expected.

Quickly she started to walk over the heather back to the carriage and only when she had a short distance to go did she find to her surprise that Torquil McCarron had left her and was moving away in the opposite direction so quickly that he was already out of earshot.