The Gathering Storm (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 3)(76)

Her eyes widened immediately.

"I didn't!" she gasped.

"Then who?" he asked, turning her hand over in his and stroking it gently, his eyes remaining fixed on her face.

"No one!" she cried immediately, close to tears. "I swear I haven't told anybody!"

She was telling the truth, that was clear. She would not dare lie to him, he knew that, especially when he was looking at her so intently. He let go of her hand and stood again, pulling his shirt over his head, deliberately flexing the heavy muscles of his chest and back in the process so that she would be reminded of how powerful he was, and how helpless she was by comparison.

"Who have you visited in the past days?" he asked pleasantly.

She thought for a moment.

"I haven't visited anyone since I started having my … dizzy spells," she said. "I went to see Miss Browne yesterday, that's all, and then to the dinner with you last night."

Miss Browne. Sarah. The whore who was devoted to his bloody sister.

"Why did you go to Sarah's?"

"I had to get something for this bruise on my face. I didn't know how to cover it, and I knew you wouldn't want your friends asking me how I'd got it." She was gabbling in her fear. "I told her I'd fainted and that I hit the mantelpiece as I fell. I swear I did! You must believe me, Richard, please!"

Ah, what a transformation, from devoted ecstatic bride, to terrified cringing wreck, in just three weeks! It had been almost too easy to be pleasurable. Yet she still desired him. He could feel her eyes admiring his body even as she cowered in the bed. Beth had not been so easy to tame.

Beth had not been tamed at all.

His face hardened. She was still there in the background, interfering. And that ridiculous popinjay was taking her side, that was clear. He would have to be careful, for a time at least. One of the minor reasons he had married Anne was that Beth had a soft spot for her. He knew that if he hurt Anne, he would hurt Beth, and that she would be impotent to do anything about it.

Except that she was not, and tonight through the mouthpiece of Sir Anthony and the Earl of Highbury, of all people, she had shown him, subtly, that she would act if he gave her cause. Well, he could be subtle too.

He reached across and stroked Anne's cheek with one finger, smiling as she flinched instinctively from him.

"I can see I have been a little hard at times," he said. "I am a soldier; perhaps I have been a bit too rough with you. But I am not used to being argued with."

"I never meant to argue with you," she whispered. "I only want to make you happy, you know that."

He stripped off the rest of his clothes quickly, and climbed into bed.

"Good," he said. "Then you can make me happy now. Turn over."

She obeyed him, turning onto her side, her back to him; but she stiffened as he slid his arm round her, pulling her into his chest and roughly squeezing her breasts.

"Richard," her voice was trembling. "Please … the baby … "

He entered her roughly, heard her gasp of shock, and then he thought only of his own pleasure as he thrust into her, aroused by her fear both of him and for the safety of this child she wanted so much and which he already hated. Finally he emptied himself into her with a grunt of pleasure and lay still, one hand still lazily massaging her swollen breast, his dark hair falling softly over her tear-stained cheek.                       
       
           



       

"If you want to make me happy," he said when his breathing had returned to normal, "then hurry up and drop this brat you're carrying, and make sure it's a girl. Then I can get one of my own on you. That's why I married you, after all."

He moved away from her, turned over to sleep, and smiled as he heard her trying to stifle her sobs in the pillow.

He would not hit her again, not for the time being anyway. But there were other ways. And about those Beth and her effeminate fop of a husband could do nothing.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


On the thirty-first of March 1745 Captain Richard Cunningham said goodbye to his wife and, together with sixteen thousand other British troops, made his way to the coast ready to sail to Flanders and join their mainly Dutch and Hanoverian allies, making a total of around forty-five thousand men. Although the French force which was being assembled against them numbered some eighty thousand, the British troops were, in the main, confident of victory, partly due to the fact that the majority of the soldiers had no idea of the numbers they were to face. Keeping your men in ignorance was one of the basic tenets of the army, and was generally a very effective strategy.

Richard left behind a very confused Anne, who no longer knew what to think of the man she had married, whose behaviour towards her ranged from the deeply considerate, even affectionate when in public, to indifferent or deliberately cruel when in private. By nature submissive and adaptable, she had tried desperately to play the chameleon and become whatever he wanted her to be, to anticipate his every wish, and not to antagonise him by any word or gesture.

When he left, riding out of the yard on his grey stallion without a backward glance, she cried, because she knew she had disappointed him in some way, in spite of all her efforts; she must have done, for why else would he be so cruel to her? She also cried because she felt guilty; guilty that she was secretly glad to see him leave, was looking forward to being alone, to not having to endure his vicious insults and brutal sexual assaults, and most of all guilty, because a tiny part of her, quickly stifled, hoped he would not come back.

He had not hit her since the night at the club, but she was not stupid; she knew that was due to something that had happened while he was out rather than anything she had done right. After two months of marriage she still had no idea what her husband wanted. She knew only what he did not want; he did not want this baby to be male. She had anticipated the birth with joy; now she felt only a dull dread that when the time came, it would, in spite of all her prayers, be the wrong sex.



If Richard left his wife feeling confused when he embarked for Europe, he also left his country vulnerable. On the fifteenth of April the Duke of Cumberland set off for Harwich amid much pomp and ceremony to take up his new position as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Flanders. England now boasted fewer than twelve thousand troops with which she could defend herself against attack, with a further fourteen hundred situated in Scotland under General Cope.

This fact was not lost on the MacGregors, who assembled in the library on the evening of the sixteenth to discuss the situation.

"He should be coming now, while there isna anyone to stand in his way," said Angus excitedly, sitting on the edge of his chair and downing a glass of wine as though it was water. "He'll never get another opportunity like this."

"It wouldna do him any good if he did, I've already tellt ye that," replied Alex. "The clans'll no' rise for him without the French helping him. And the French are otherwise occupied at the moment." He was sitting next to Beth on the sofa, his arm resting along the back of it behind her. One long finger lazily stroked the side of her neck, sending delicious shivers through her body.

"Aye, but that's the whole point," insisted Angus. "The French are helping him. They're helping him by tying up nearly the whole army abroad."

"That's no' the point, man," said Duncan. "The clans'll no' see it that way."

"Neither will the English," said Beth. "You said they want a definite commitment from the French before they'll agree to rise, didn't you?"

"Aye, I did," said Alex. "It isna going to happen, Angus. Charles will do better to stay in France, or go back to Rome for the present. I hope to God that he's taken heed of Broughton's letter to him. He must have had it for a while now, it's been three months since Murray gave it to Traquair. I just wish he'd write back and tell us what his intentions are. If he'll wait a wee while and stop antagonising Louis, wi' a bit of luck, when Louis has beaten the British, he'll be more willing to help us, and put an end to the Elector for good."                       
       
           



       

"Do you really think they'll beat the British?" said Beth.

"Christ, they should do. They've got twice the force, and a good general, too, in Marshall Saxe."

"Louis could easily afford to give Charles ten thousand troops and still beat Cumberland," grumbled Angus.

"True, but he willna," said Alex. "And I'm no' going tae argue with ye on your birthday. We can blether about this another day."

"Twenty-one," said Maggie proudly, as though she were his mother rather than only a few years older than the birthday boy. "Who'd hae thought it? A man at last! I never thought I'd see the day."

"Neither did I," said Alex. "I thought someone would hae done for him long since. Still, ye've made it, laddie. Congratulations. Maybe ye'll start acting like a man now, and if ye're lucky ye'll make it to twenty-two."