Page 85 of Highland Jewel
“Queen Caroline knows the danger she’s putting her son in by demanding this meeting. From the start, she didn’t trust the people she was sending north as for more than two decades she’d tried to bring this union about, and every time it failed.”
“You could have told me all of this.” Her voice wassoft, but her blue eyes were clear and full of challenge. “I am no spy.”
“I know, my love. And I’m sorry for what I did, but I’d given her my word. I vowed to keep the information she handed me secret and only share it with Cinaed and those he chose. I arrived here also with details of where and when they are to meet. And she begged me not to say a word about it to anyone else.”
“I won’t ask you what you have been sworn to keep secret. But how did you convince Cinaed that you were sent by her?”
First, he told her about the dungeon, how someone injured the guard to free him. “Right away, I knew she was correct to be afraid. A person at Dalmigavie knew what I was ordered to do by Sir Rupert Burney, and they were setting me free to finish it.”
Niall thought back to the morning when he’d held the knife to Cinaed’s throat and told him hehadto speak to him. They’d ended up in the laird’s study with Searc and Lachlan and Isabella joining them.
The exchange was burned into Niall’s memory. When he told them he had a message from the queen, Searc had scoffed at his claim, questioning why they should trust him. After all, he’d served in the Royal Highlander regiment. But Niall had captured their interest when he told them he had proof.
The queen had told him a long-held secret that had been shared in trust years ago with Lachlan Mackintosh. Cinaed’s grandmother was Katarzyna Jablonowski, the daughter of a Polish general and the niece of Princess Talmond. She’d met the Bonnie Prince while he was in Ghent. It was in a convent there that Cinaed’s father was born nine months later. For the sake of the lad’s safety, Princess Talmond had made the arrangements for the birth to be kept secret.
A hush had fallen over the room until finally the laird affirmed what Niall told them. His sister, Anne Mackintosh, who brought Cinaed to the Highlands, told Lachlan that Caroline had letters between Lady Katarzyna and the princess that established the claim, and that Cinaed’s father had given them to her for safekeeping before he died.
“They only believed me…” Niall said after summarizing the exchange for Maisie. “They only decided to trust me—and the message I brought from her—because I knew of the queen’s proof regarding Cinaed’s lineage.”
“And that was enough?” she asked.
“Well, that and I told them that I was finished fighting for this king.”
“Why would they take your word?”
Niall understood what she was asking. Maisie knew him and loved him, and yet she’d accused him the day he arrived. She’d tried to explain everything afterwards, but to those people in that room, he was essentially a stranger.
“Because I told them what I’ve learned as a soldier.”
He looked into Maisie’s eyes. He needed her to know the man he was today.
“I’ve learned…” he began. “I’ve learned that no battle or campaign I ever fought in—from the frozen hills of Spain to the bloody fields of Waterloo to the green meadows of Ireland—was waged for the ideals of liberty or justice that our newspapers and our politicians spout so convincingly. We fought for the benefit of grasping English lords and money-hungry financiers. For fifty years, the British East India Company has been smuggling opium into China from India for profit and power, with no regard for the ruin we are bringing to that country. And our army and navy stand at the readyto protect these blackguards. Even now, British regiments continue to fight to control India itself, now that we’ve taken it from the French. We do it simply to line the pockets of the East India Company and the Crown.”
The words tumbled out. Maisie struggled to sit up, and he helped her. “Please… please continue.”
“For a century, the English navy has secured the sugar islands of the Caribbean for slave-owning British landowners. And then a French upstart named Napoleon made the mistake of calling the English ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ and, in his arrogance, thought thatheand not the British should control commerce on the continent. So we assembled the greatest armies in history to defeat him. And what has happened to those armies, now that thefreedomof Europe has been secured? Battle-trained regiments have been sent around the world—to India, to Australia and New Zealand, to Canada, to Africa. Anywhere there is a profit to be made. And the Royal 42nd Highlanders? My regiment was sent to Ireland, a place that has been reduced to a population of landless paupers, tilling the fields for absentee English landlords. Our mission? To crush any man, women, or child who dared to raise a voice or a hand in rebellion. And all in the name of profit and power, which I’ve learned, mean exactly the same thing.”
He looked at the open window, where the sounds of men training drifted in on the breeze.
“Here in Scotland, the duke of Cumberland, this king’s uncle, defeated us on Culloden Moor and then cut a bloody swath across our land to let us know that the English are our masters and will ever be so. But today, in the Lowlands, in every city, working people are rising up, fighting the militias in the streets. Many simply want a voice in that government in London. Others want a free Scotland.”
“And what do you want?” she asked gently. “What are your plans for the future?”
He knew she recalled the words he’d spoken so many months back in his rooms in Edinburgh.
“I’m a soldier. I know very little else. But when I resigned my commission, I swore to myself I’d never raise a weapon for this king again.” Niall took a deep breath to rein in his emotions. “An independent Scotland may never happen in my lifetime. We may all die on a battlefield or on the gallows. But I dream of a land where our children will grow up free and equal to anyone born south of the Borders. I’ll not forsake them.”
He looked into his wife’s face and saw the tear roll down her cheek like a jewel.
“I’m not the man you met in Edinburgh. I promise never to lecture you again or try to stop you from demanding change. I’m joining you… if you’ll have me.”
She leaned into him and pressed her forehead against his. Their lips were only a whisper apart.
“It will be an honor to have you fighting beside me. I love you today for who you were and who you are and who you will be.”
Niall gathered his wife into his arms. “And I love you for giving me a purpose, a passion, and a reason to believe in something better, something greater than ourselves.”
CHAPTER35
