Chapter Eleven #2
He could make a woman question his sanity. “I need to be going,” Portia said, and would have slipped past him out the door except he placed an arm up to block her way.
“Please,” he said. “This is important.”
“My family will wonder where I am.” She shouldn’t stay here. Not alone with him.
“Where did you tell them you were going?”
Portia made an impatient sound at his commonsense response.
“Well?” he prompted.
“I told them I was taking a basket to Lizzy.”
“Crazy Lizzy?”
“You’ve met her?”
“I have met every woman people thought could be possessed in some way or the other,” he answered, and then took her arm, leading her over to a three-legged stool by the bothy’s cold hearth. “Sit here and trust me when I say I will see you home, and well before dark.”
Portia tried to turn back to the door. “That will not work. If Lady Emma catches wind of this, there will be an uproar.”
He held fast to her arm, not letting her escape. “No one will see me return you home. And as for the duke’s spoiled daughter, I won’t let her harm you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Please, just a moment more of your time.”
“There is no such thing as a witch,” she said, the words bursting out of her. “And Fenella, who created your curse, is dead. Gone. She isn’t a cat and she doesn’t exist now.”
“I understand your doubt,” he said. “I would be the same way if I was not involved in this. But if I don’t find a way to break this curse, my brother will die and his son will bear the mark as well and it will continue on.
Please, stay a moment and hear the story.
I’ll see you home without anyone being the wiser. I promise.”
She should leave . . . but curiosity led her to sink down to the stool.
“Thank you,” he said, and he sounded as if he truly meant the words. He sat on the ground in front of her, crossing his booted legs so he could cradle the book in his lap.
“Fenella had a daughter named Rose who loved Charles Chattan of Glenfinnan. She claimed they were handfasted, which at the time, to Rose, was the same as being married.”
“I’ve heard the story. It’s common knowledge amongst the locals. They think Charles was a traitorous scoundrel.”
“I believe he probably cared for Rose but he didn’t consider them betrothed. Or perhaps he did. We Chattan men are capable of being scoundrels.”
He gave a self-deprecating smile as he said this, but Portia wasn’t so certain he wasn’t giving her a warning as well.
The colonel continued. “Charles’s parents managed to contract a marriage to an English heiress for him. He chose to do as his parents asked, which was reasonable, especially for the day and age—”
“Protesting too much?” she suggested.
“Perhaps. I wasn’t there, and I was teasing about Chattan men being scoundrels.”
“I’m not so certain,” she murmured. He frowned. “I was told she jumped from a tower.” He nodded. “She had to have been heartbroken . . .” She paused.
“What is it?”
“Let me see the book.” He handed it to her and she turned to the page with the spell and the word “Charles” written in the tearstained margin. “Could this be from her?” She handed the book back.
His reaction would have been the same if she had given him the crown jewels. “Yes, Rose could have written this.” He traced the writing as if he could divine something of that woman from centuries ago.
Portia felt her eyes fill with tears. “Hers is a terrible story.”
“It happened a long time ago,” the colonel said.
“I know, but I can imagine how she must have felt.” And Portia could, especially with him sitting so close.
She barely knew him, and yet all he had to do was touch her and she threw aside convention and priorities.
Of course, she didn’t love Colonel Chattan.
She hadn’t known him long enough to love him .
. . and she would not be so foolish as to do so.
However, she did understand how powerful Charles Chattan’s betrayal must have been, given Rose’s love for him.
“Tell me about the curse,” she said. She’d remembered the story from Mrs. Macdonald’s telling but she wished to hear what he had to say.
“Fenella was angry,” he said, “and she wanted revenge. She ordered a funeral pyre built for her daughter’s body.
As a suicide Rose couldn’t be buried on church ground, so Fenella honored the old ways.
They say she cursed Charles Chattan as her daughter’s body burned and then she leaped onto the fire itself and died with her daughter. ”
“That’s terrible.”
“And it was very effective,” he agreed somberly. “She said that when a Chattan falls in love, he will die . . . just as, I suppose, her Rose died.” He looked down at the page of the book again.
“And the curse always comes true?”
“Yes. Charles Chattan of Glenfinnan fell in love with his English heiress and dropped dead within a year of his marriage. His wife was carrying his son, a son that fell in love, and he, too, died, and so on. The pattern has been the same. A Chattan marries, his wife is with child, and then he dies. The pattern has been almost the same for nearly two centuries. My forebears have done everything they could think possible to break it.”
“You say almost two hundred years? When has it been different?”
“With my father. Before his time, the Chattans had sought the advice of priests, cardinals, bishops, the pope, self-proclaimed witches, Gypsies and fortune-tellers. They tried not to fall in love, and have always failed. Each time they have left behind a son who bears the weight of the curse. My grandfather and his father married women they could not abide. It was a hateful life and one that led to their early deaths. My father followed in their steps, but he had a better temperament for keeping his distance from his wife. He’d been bred for that.
Perhaps all of us have. You see, if death is the penalty for love, one learns not to love. One learns to guard his heart.”
“I can imagine,” she agreed.
“My father was the first of his line to have more than one son. There are three of us. My brother, Neal, myself, and my sister, Margaret. She is the first daughter to be born of our line in two hundred years. Then, after my mother died several years ago, my father did a very foolish thing.”
“He fell in love,” she surmised.
“Head tumbling over heels,” he confirmed, nodding. “With an opera dancer far younger than even myself.”
“And then did he die?”
“Within six months.” He closed the book, leaning toward her.
“He wrote a letter to us to be opened upon his death. He said loving his wife, Cass, was worth death. He said life had been empty before her, that he’d done more living in the months he was with her than all the fifty-some years before his marriage. ”
Portia sat a moment, studying him as she digested all that he’d said. His story was contrary to reason and nature. She could have dismissed it for a grand tale save his sincerity.
“My brother is in love,” he said. “He’s a good man, a noble one.
I’m a wastrel and certainly of loose morals.
I’ve cost men lives, drunk too much, had a taste for opium; I’m a sinner through and through and have deserved to die many times over.
But Neal is one of the finest men in England.
He doesn’t deserve this fate,” he said, tapping the cover of the book.
“Especially for loving his wife, Thea. He should have a chance to see his son grow to manhood. If I don’t find a way to break this curse, his death will be on my head.
I don’t know if I can live with that knowledge. ”
“What of yourself? Do you carry the curse?”
“We don’t know,” he replied, his expression bleak. “Possibly. I am male; I am a Chattan. As for my sister, Margaret fears that even if she isn’t a part of the curse, she could carry the legacy of it. She fears for any children she could have.”
“She is married?”
“No, and she won’t. She and I both agree that none of us should have married and certainly we should not fall in love.
We want the curse to end here, with us. But Neal didn’t agree.
He wanted a son.” The colonel sounded as if he was amazed by the thought.
“Thea is a widow and has two sons by her previous marriage. Neal had told me they were enough for him, but Thea got with child almost immediately.”
His brows came together. He looked up at her, and then away. “I am usually careful when I’m with a lover.”
Portia felt heat flood her face. She clasped her hands in her lap, trying to be sensible about what they’d done.
“I don’t want bastards,” he said, “and I don’t have any.”
Well, there was comfort there . . . she thought.
“I haven’t been so careful with you.” Now he was the one with a bit of color to his face. It made him appear more masculine, if that was possible. “We shall hope for the best,” he said. “However, I will meet my obligations.”
Obligations . . . a baby.
For a second, Portia knew fear.
“Well, this isn’t going to happen again,” she said quickly. “I don’t understand what comes over us, but it is out of my system.”
“Mine as well,” he assured her, then paused before adding, “but if it does happen again, I shall be more careful.”
Portia wished the floor of the room would open up and swallow her whole.
She didn’t have conversations with many men, let alone conversations like this.
She wasn’t some sophisticated Londoner who dallied with lovers.
She wasn’t even certain how he could avoid getting her with child, and her naivete embarrassed her all the more.
He shut the book and glanced toward the door. “We’d best leave if I’m to have you home before dark.” He stood and offered her his hand. “Thank you for this book and for hearing my story.”
Rising, Portia said, “I hope it may help.”
“I pray it does. My sister wrote and said that Neal is taking more and more to his bed. He grows weak quickly and so is trying to pace himself.”