A Dark and Distant Shore (103 page)

Lavinia had gone home to her parents, and instituted proceedings for the annulment of her marriage to Dominic Harvey, who had behaved remarkably well, considering that his impotence was declared in open court. Very soon afterwards, Lavinia had remarried, but not soon enough. Little Andrew de Rokeby had been born just a few weeks too early for even the most charitable to be left in doubt about the date of his conception. Lavinia seemed very happy with her new husband, an artist of irreproachable Royal Academy orthodoxy, but Magnus had been so offended by the attendant publicity that he had sworn never to have anything to do with Lavinia again. He had even announced that he was going to put it in his Will, in black and white, that under no circumstances should any descendant of hers ever be considered a potential heir to Kinveil. For several months he had gone on arguing with himself, interminably, about whether it was Lavinia’s heritage from Vilia through Drew, or from Perry Randall through Shona, that had been responsible for her doing what she had done.

Another absentee from the scavengers’ feast was Peregrine James. He had – to everyone’s surprise – condescended to turn up, but after two weeks had told his grandmother that, since he had a great many things to attend to, he would take his leave. ‘If it upsets the old man, I’m sorry,’ he said, making no attempt to sound convincing. ‘But in my own opinion, he’s good for another month yet, and I can’t spare the time.’

Juliana couldn’t understand why Jermyn hadn’t gone, too. Bella was abominably pregnant and forever complaining of being cold and uncomfortable. Even Juliana, accustomed to the spartan conditions of Kinveil, was finding this winter something of an ordeal; nor could she forget that her own mother and Vilia’s – the last two women to be brought to bed here – had both died in childbirth. But she couldn’t say it outright, and Bella told her Jermyn was working on a technical problem to do with his repeating fieldgun, and quite immune to anything else. With a shrug, Juliana turned back to her own affairs.

On a day in early January, one of the most beautiful days she ever remembered, she decided at last that she must have it out with Theo. Keeping up appearances, they had set out after lunch for a walk through the brilliant, snow-shrouded landscape. The low sun, shining from a cloudless, pale blue sky, struck ice sparks from the drifts that lay like whorled cream against the dykes, but the wind that had shaped the drifts had also swept the road almost clear. One had to walk with care, for there had been a heavy frost the night before, but at least it
was
possible to walk.

The scenery was breathtaking. The sun, skimming the mountain tops, turned the slope above Kinveil into a fall of creased silver satin and touched its wind-cleared outcrops into great nuggets of rough gold. Across the loch, the woods that began at the shore and climbed steeply to the tree line lay like a delicate and complex study in
grisaille
–
majestic pines, their heads of molten ebony arched with white; spruces with snow lying along every branch and twig, so that they looked from a distance like finger-combed ermine; and the birches a fine, attenuated tracery in white and darkest mahogany. The sky was too mild to lend even a tint to the loch itself, which stretched smooth and shining, grey and insubstantial as polished smoke, to the shores of Skye. Today the Cuillins – sometimes indigo, sometimes red, more often black and menacing – lay white and pure and rounded, caressed by some invisible hand into kindly, rolling hills.

Juliana had never seen the snow lie right down to the water’s edge, and only once did she remember the mountain torrents frozen in mid-cataract. Tumbling down in spate from the high tops, leaping and bounding over hidden rocks, they had been stopped dead in their busy progress, transformed in a second of time into marble sculptures, thick and opaque. Here and there, the illusory warmth of the sun had begun to thaw the icicles that festooned the banks, tipping them with clear glass that, in another hour, would turn back to marble again.

It was crisp and marvellously invigorating, and it gave Juliana the stimulus she needed. Tucking her thickly gloved hands deeper into the pockets of her sealskin mantlet, she said, ‘Theo. You know that our marriage is not what it should be. I don’t believe it will improve, although I’ve said nothing until now because of my father. But he will be gone soon, and then I would like... I would like a divorce. I can’t see that you should have any objection.’

He said nothing for a while, continuing to walk, and when she stole a glance at his face she couldn’t read anything in it. Then he said agreeably, ‘If you insist on locking your door against me, my dear, it is scarcely surprising that our marriage isn’t “what it should be”. I believe a child would persuade you to look at the matter in an entirely different light.’

‘No.’ It came out more sharply than she had intended. There had been no physical contact between them since that night two years ago, but Theo had never spoken of it before. She had lain tensely for weeks, waiting for a tap on the door and a rattling of the handle, but it had never come. Eventually, she had realized that he must have found out from one of the servants, and wouldn’t subject his pride to such an insult. ‘No,’ she said again, and had to curb her tongue to stop herself from adding, ‘I want no child of yours.’ She couldn’t afford to offend him any more than was absolutely necessary, because without his assent there could be no divorce. She had asked Peregrine James about that.

Theo said, absently slashing at some birch seedlings with his cane, so that they burst into a shower of snow-blossoms, ‘Can it be that you are not happy with me? Why, I wonder? I am pleasant to you, and accommodating; I make no demands. I place no limit on your pin money. We have a handsome house. There are even a few people who consider themselves our friends. And you cannot be suggesting, can you...’ His eyes met hers, pensively. ‘You cannot be suggesting that I am ever unfaithful to you?’

And that was the kind of remark that would have been too much even for the apathetic Juliana who had come home from Lucknow. It still took the most extreme provocation to stir her to emotion, but she had developed a fastidious contempt for her husband’s vanity and the bland hypocrisy that marked all his dealings with the world.

She said, ‘Please, Theo. It is simply that, for whatever reason, I find I can no longer live with you. Set me free.’

‘To do what?’

‘I don’t know.’ The trees were full of small birds, chaffinches and yellow-hammers, blue tits and great tits, elegant little dunnocks, and a fat, fluffed-out robin redbreast. They were shifting and fidgeting at the human intrusion into their landscape, and their movement was enough to send a shower of frost crystals loose to drift on the sun-bright air like a powdering of diamonds. ‘I thought I might go away for a while. Stay with Gaby, perhaps...’

‘
My dear!
One thing you will not do is take up residence in
that
household!’

‘Why not?’

‘I have only met Marcabrun once, but from what Gaby has let drop it is clear to me that they are no more than vulgar appendages of the demi-monde, a couple who live on their wits on the fringes of the imperial court. It is certainly not a world to which I could permit any wife, or ex-wife, of mine to belong. Really, my dear! What would people think if it became known that you preferred that kind of society to mine!’

‘Oh, Theo!’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘As if you cared for such gossip! What possible difference can it make to you?’

He gave a dry little chuckle. ‘You think my reputation doesn’t matter to me? But it does. It’s all very fine for artistic gentlemen like my friend Dominic to make themselves the centre of cheap tattle-mongering, but in the nasty, cut-throat world of commerce only respectability will do. Lauristons’ would lose customers like water down a drain if my character were put in question.’

‘Why should it be? I am asking
you
to divorce
me
!’

‘Well, naturally.’ The patronizing eyes stared at her. ‘Short of following Lavinia’s regrettable example – and you can hardly claim that I am impotent! – you have very little choice. Indeed, I could commit adultery thrice nightly, and no court in the land would consider it adequate grounds for divorce unless I beat you thrice nightly as well, or deserted you.’

She had been completely frank with Peregrine James, her spirit cringing at it. But P.J. had merely sighed and said what a pity it was that a man as intelligent as Theo should indulge in such adolescent pastimes. ‘Adolescent?’ she had asked, and he had explained that it was a stage most boys went through, and most boys grew out of. For a dark moment, she had thought of baby Luke as he might have been at fourteen; a younger, thinner edition of Richard. Then she had said, ‘What can I do?’ Not very much, P.J. had told her. Without Theo’s cooperation she would have to have iron-clad grounds. ‘The pederastic element would probably do it, but it would be an unsavoury case. And win or lose, you would be laying Theo and his friends open to imprisonment for anything from ten years to life. The law is harsh, but it
is
the law. Would you be prepared to go as far as that?’ There had been no need for her even to think about her answer. There were some prices that were too high to pay.

The sun was going now, flushing the hilltops and sky with the faintest apricot, except towards the Cuillins, where the light was a pure lemon colour.

‘Shall we turn?’ Theo suggested. ‘We appear to have a sufficiency of problems without adding frostbite to them.’

She waited, but he didn’t go on and resentment stirred in her. ‘That is all you have to say, is it? Then I will simply leave you.’

He laughed. ‘I could win a court order that would bring you back before you’d gone a dozen miles! Especially if I could show that you were likely to fall into bad company, such as the Marcabruns’. Erring wives have very little latitude in the eyes of the law, you know.’ His footsteps crunching softly, he went on, ‘And to introduce sordid realism into this conversation, what would you live on?’

She said nothing, because there was nothing to say. When she married him, all she possessed had become his by law, as anything her father chose to leave her would become his. Peregrine James had said, ‘The 1857 Marriage and Divorce Act allows you to resume possession of your own property if you are divorced, but not otherwise. If you simply leave Theo, you leave him in possession of all your worldly goods. And don’t look so scandalized, Juley. Before 1857 things were a good deal worse.’

‘No, my dear,’ Theo continued. ‘I see no reason why I should forgo the very useful dowry your father gave you, or whatever he leaves you in this much-heralded Will of his. And you know, for me, being married is the best possible insurance, all things considered.’

That, Juliana remembered, was what Dominic Harvey had said to Lavinia. ‘Is there nothing that will make you change your mind?’

‘Nothing at all.’

They were at the landward end of the causeway, where the rowan tree stood guard, tall and shapely, its trunk furred with ice needles, and its branches like fine white lace. All colour had gone from the landscape now. Even the sky was white, and a ghostly mist hovered over the loch. The thin film of ice, close in to the shore, tinkled faintly in the cooling air, and the castle loomed black and golden-windowed against the grey-white dusk.

Theo put his hand on Juliana’s arm and drew her into the shelter of the rowan, where they could not be seen from the castle. ‘But I will make one concession. Magnus wants Kinveil to go to our son. If you care to look – quite privately, you know! – for another man to father him, I won’t object.’ His tone changed and the smile came back. ‘But do, my dear, find someone tall and fair, I beg of you! A family resemblance is
so
desirable. It would be such a waste to go to all that trouble, only to have someone question the result.’

She tore her arm free from him then, and backed away, revulsion and something very like hatred in her heart.

When the dim, spinning world came into focus again, she found she was clinging to the trunk of the rowan, the magic tree that protected those it guarded – unless they were cursed on it. Grasping it with all her strength, she said, her voice breaking, ‘Damn you, Theo Lauriston! Damn you!
Damn you for ever!
’

Theo threw back his head and laughed. It was the most spontaneous and carefree sound she had ever heard him utter.

A few days later, Vilia sent for Juliana to tell her that her father was asking for her. ‘The end has come, the doctor says. We don’t believe he will survive the night. I need hardly advise you not to upset him. He will die happier if he believes you are happy.’

Juliana looked at her curiously. ‘Do you care if he dies happy or unhappy?’

The domineering green eyes didn’t flicker. ‘A foolish question, Juliana, and an impertinent one. Your father and I have often disagreed, and I would be the last to deny that ours has scarcely been an ideal marriage. But whether death is an end or a beginning, whether it is the last mystery or no mystery at all, I happen to believe that every human being has the right to face it with a mind at peace.’

‘You mean that personal considerations don’t enter into it?’

‘I mean nothing of the sort. I have lived with your father for twenty-five years, and that creates a bond, however the bond may chafe. I am sad that he is going, but sad for it in a great many ways that you will never understand.’ Her voice softened a little. ‘Don’t let us pursue it, my dear. Believe what you want to believe about me, but go in now and set your father’s worries at rest.’

He was lying very still in the bedchamber that had once been his own father’s, the warmest and most comfortable in the castle. Somehow, he had caught a cold and it had flown straight to his lungs, and fighting it had taken all the strength that remained to him. His face on the pillow was sunken, and he hadn’t been shaved for several days, so that the handsome sidewhiskers of which he had been so proud looked as if they had begun to melt and spread over his cheeks and chin. Juliana had never known her father in his prime, greying and distinguished, when he had been tall, and not too fat, and still had all his hair. He had never been anything but an old man to her, willing to pet her when she ran to him, and making a great issue of his fondness for her. But none of it had ever seemed very real, and it was only now, when it was much too late, that she realized she scarcely knew him. Until the death of Lizzie, she had always been closer to Vilia than Magnus, and had picked up Vilia’s habit of treating him with a respect that was quite hollow at the core. Now, she regretted it. She had never tried to penetrate the façade of quirks and grumbles and complaints to find out what lay beneath. Perhaps Vilia was right; perhaps nothing did. But she should have tried.