D. Broster - The Jacobite Trilogy

Yet Alison, for some reason, gave the new-comer the briefest glance now, though it was a sweet one enough; then her eyes wandered away again. The two Grants, evidently thinking their cause hopeless, took themselves off.

“Alison, here is your cavalier come to claim you,” said her father from his corner.

“Alison has not a look or a thought to give to me nowadays,” observed Ewen, looking at his love from behind, at the back of her white neck, where the sacque fell in imposing folds from the square of the bodice, and where two little unruly tendrils of hair, having shaken off their powder, were beginning to show their true colour. “Like the rest of the ladies, she has eyes only for the Prince. ’Tis pity I am not a Whig, for then she might pay me some attention, if only in order to convert me.”

At that Alison turned round, laughing.

“Well, sir,” she said, looking him up and down, “your costume, I vow, is almost Whiggish. In those clothes, and without a scrap of tartan upon you, you might be an Englishman!”

“Or a Frenchman,” suggested her father from his corner.

But this accusation Alison repudiated somewhat indignantly. “No; Frenchmen are all little men!” Yet, having lived so much in France, she must have known better.

“No one could call Ardroy little, I admit,” agreed Mr. Grant. “And he has not the French physiognomy. But in that dress he has quite the French air.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ewen, bowing, “since I suppose I am to take that as a compliment.”

“There are some tall fellows enough in my regiment,” declared Hector Grant, drawing up his slim and active figure. “For my part, I’ve no ambition to attain the height of a pine-tree. Alison, is it customary in Scotland, think you, for a brother to lead out his sister?”

“Not unless they are so unlike that the company cannot guess the kinship,” responded Ewen for his betrothed. “Not, therefore, in this case, Eachainn!”

“Proprietary airs already, I see,” retorted the young soldier, a smile in the dark eyes which were Alison’s too. “Eh bien, if I may not have Alison, I vow I’ll dance with the oldest dame present. I like not your young misses.” And away he went, while Ewen, offering his hand, carried off his lady for the minuet which was just about to begin.

And, intoxicated by the violins, the lights, the shimmer of satin and silk—with just enough tartan to show the gathering’s heart—thinking of Cope soundly beaten, Edinburgh in their hands, Ewen distinguished by the Prince for Lochiel’s sake, Alison felt that she was stepping on rosy clouds instead of on a mortal floor. Her feet ached to dance a reel rather than this stately measure. And Ewen—the darling, how handsome, though how different, he looked in powder!—did he too know this pulsing exhilaration? He always kept his feelings under control. Yet when his eyes met hers she could see in them, far down, an exultation profounder, perhaps, than her own.

The music ceased; her betrothed bowed low, and Alison sank smiling in a deep curtsy that spread her azure petticoat about her like a great blue blossom. Then she took his hand and they went aside.

“Now you must fan yourself, must you not, whether you be hot or no? What are these little figures on your fan—Cupids or humans?” asked Ewen.

“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Miss Grant suddenly, looking towards the end of the apartment, “the Prince is no longer here!”

“Is he not?” responded Ewen calmly. “I had not observed.”

“And you one of his aides-de-camp! Fie on you!” cried Alison, and took her fan out of his hand.

“I was looking at you, mo chridhe,” said her lover in his deep, gentle voice, and offered no other excuse.

“But where can His Royal Highness have got to?”

“My dear, His Royal Highness is under no vow that I know of to watch us dance any longer than he pleases. However, there’s another of his aides-de-camp, Dr. Cameron; perhaps he can assuage your anxiety. Archie!”

Dr. Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, turned round at his kinsman’s summons. He was a man only a dozen years or so older than Ewen himself, with much of Lochiel’s own wisdom and serenity, and Ewen had for him a respect and affection second only to that which he bore his Chief.

“Archie, come and protect me from Miss Grant! She declares that I am a Whig because I am wearing neither trews nor philabeg, and unworthy of the position I occupy towards the Prince because I had not observed his withdrawal, nor can tell her the reason for it.”

But already the fiddles had struck up for another dance, and one of the young Grants had returned and was proffering his request anew. So Ewen relinquished his lady and watched her carried off, sailing away like a fair ship.

“Taken to task so soon!” said Dr. Cameron with a twinkle. He was a married man himself, with several children. “No doubt if my Jean were here I should be in like case, for though I knew the Prince had withdrawn I have not fashed myself about it.”

Neither did Ewen now. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Donald will not be here to-night at all?”

“Yes; I left him by his own fireside in the Canongate.”

“He’s not ill, Archie?”

“No, no; he’s older and wiser than we, that’s all.” And giving his young cousin a nod and a little smile Dr. Cameron went off.

Ewen abode where he was, for it was too late to secure a partner. Suddenly, hearing his name uttered in a low tone behind him, he turned to see Mr. Francis Strickland, one of the ‘seven men of Moidart’, the gentlemen who had landed with the Prince in the west.

“Captain Cameron,” said he, coming closer and speaking still lower, though at the moment there was no one within a couple of yards or so, “Captain Cameron, the Prince desires that in a quarter of an hour you will station yourself at the door of the ante-room leading to his bedchamber, and see to it that no one approaches his room. His Royal Highness finds himself indisposed, and obliged to withdraw from the ball; but he particularly wishes that no attention shall be called to his absence. Do you understand?”

Ewen stared at him, a good deal astonished at this commission. There was something furtive, too, about Mr. Strickland’s manner which he did not relish, and, in common with many of the Highland chiefs, he was coming to dislike and mistrust the Irish followers of the Prince—though Strickland, to be accurate, was an Englishman.

“This indisposition is very sudden, Mr. Strickland,” he observed. “A short while ago the Prince was in the best of health and spirits.”

“I suppose, sir,” retorted Strickland tartly, “that you scarcely consider yourself to be a better judge of the Prince’s state of health than he is himself?”

“No,” returned Ewen, his Highland pride all at once up in arms, “but I do conceive that, as his personal aide-de-camp, I take my orders from His Royal Highness himself, and not from any . . . intermediary.”

Mr. Strickland’s eye kindled. “You are not very polite, Captain Cameron,” he observed with truth. Indeed he seemed to be repressing a warmer retort. “I am to tell the Prince, then, that you refuse the honour of his commands, and that he must find another aide-de-camp to execute them?”

“No, since I have not refused,” said Ewen with brevity, and he turned upon his heel. But Strickland clutched at his arm. “Not yet—you are not to go yet! In a quarter of an hour’s time.”

And Ewen stopped. “The Prince intends to be indisposed in a quarter of an hour’s time!” he exclaimed. “Then indeed ’tis a very strange seizure; I doubt Dr. Cameron would be better for the post.”

“For God’s sake, Captain Cameron!” said Strickland in an agitated whisper, pulling Ewen by the sleeve. “For God’s sake show some discretion—moderate your voice!” And he murmured something about a delicate task and a wrong choice which only inflamed Ewen’s suspicions the more. What intrigue was afoot that the Prince’s door should be guarded, under plea of illness, in a quarter of an hour’s time? He was expecting a visit, perhaps—from whom? Ewen liked the sound of it very little, the less so that Strickland was plainly now in a fever of nervousness.