The Heiress Read Free

French nobleman and the mother of three small children. Thank God, she thought again, that we have Jeanne.
    â€˜As your mother said,’ Sir James began, ‘we told you last time we would never settle another debt for you. As far as we are concerned, de Charlot could go to the King and you could learn a very salutary lesson in the Bastille for a while. I wouldn’t lift a hand to interfere except for just one thing. The English Government have agreed to restore our estates in Scotland. Not to me, unfortunately, they’ve got long memories; but to you, my son.’
    â€˜Really?’ The light eyes gleamed, and then he half closed them as if he were a little bored; it was a trick which had once brought his father’s hand down on the side of his head with such force that he sprawled on the floor. He had been a youth then; not even James would dare to strike him now.
    â€˜You mean that I am the heir to Dundrenan and Clandara?’
    â€˜You are, or at least you will be as soon as I accept the terms and surrender my own claims and your mother’s. You are the future chief of the Macdonalds of Dundrenan and the closest blood heir of the Frasers of Clandara. You can bring the two clans together and give them the leadership they’ve lacked for twenty-seven years. That means more to me than your miserable debts; that’s why I shan’t let de Charlot go to the King and accuse you, and your mother feels the same.’
    â€˜I’m very grateful,’ Charles said. ‘I can’t see myself as a chief in the Highlands, but if the lands are good and the property … I daresay I’ll pay a visit and see what can be done with it.’
    â€˜There’s a condition.’ Katharine came back and put her arm around her husband. ‘No debt will be paid and no inheritance accepted otherwise, Charles. Refuse, and you can take your debts and your difficulties out of this room and never enter it again.’
    â€˜What is the condition?’ Charles asked softly.
    His father answered. ‘That you marry your cousin Anne de Bernard, and settle down to a reasonable life. And that a year after the marriage you undertake to live at least six months of every year in the Highlands and have your sons educated and brought up there as befits Macdonalds. Believe me, your mother and I will not allow our peoples to be cheated. Do this, and your debt will be paid by tomorrow. Refuse, and I feel certain that de Charlot and his family will persuade the King to throw you into prison until it is. It’s up to you.’
    â€˜How much time have?’ he asked them. He was adept at hiding his feelings; no flicker of emotion crossed the handsome face; he looked as bored and unconcerned as ever, and they would never know the fierce excitement which was growing in him. Inherit Clandara and Dundrenan. All his life those two names of places he had never seen had held a magic for him which came from the blood in his veins, from centuries of ancient breeding. He was Scots to his marrow, but exiled, rootless, with nothing but names and old traditions to feed upon and give him background in a foreign land. Though he had been born there, Charles had never instinctively accepted France as his home, and he had never known if the interedict on the families of those who had taken part in the last Stuart rebellion would ever be lifted by the Government of England, to let him and those like him see the country of their forefathers. And now it had come. He could go back to the Highlands, walk on the purple moors, feel in his face the cold clean mountain winds of which he’d heard his parents talk so wistfully. He was not condemned for ever to a useless exile, or to the service of France. He was being offered the chance to leave it all, to answer the restless call of his blood for freedom and meaning in the ravaged lands of his own country, among the scattered oppressed peoples of his race. He would have died