A Dark and Distant Shore (12 page)

One effect of the visit had been to change the focus of her resentment. She could accept Mungo at Kinveil now, but the thought of Magnus and Lucy inheriting it was quite unacceptable. Pleasant, indolent Magnus, who in the last analysis cared for nothing but his own comfort and convenience – and perhaps, a very little, for Lucy – would never stir himself to cherish Kinveil as his father had done. He didn’t like the country much, and the Highlands even less. Left to himself, he would be a disaster as laird. Left to himself...

When Lucy had fallen on the stairs, the thought had flashed into Vilia’s mind that it would have solved everything if she had broken her neck. Vilia’s long-ago, forgotten dream of returning to Kinveil as Mrs Magnus Telfer had sprung up again, fully armed, from the darkest recesses of her soul. For what Magnus could not, or would not do for Kinveil,
she
could. She was appalled at herself.

A despairing, cataclysmic shudder racked her just as she became aware of a subdued bustle outside her door. ‘
Non, reste ici!
’
her maid’s voice hissed, sharp with annoyance, and a stubborn whisper, unmistakably Sorley’s, replied, ‘That I will not!’ There was a faint scuffle, and then the door opened to allow the pair of them to shoulder their way in.

Berthe was carrying a tray with a cup on it and a vast, steaming silver pot, and Sorley bore a warming-pan and several flannel-wrapped hot bricks. His narrow hazel eyes flew to her worriedly and she contrived, somehow, to summon up a smile for him. While Berthe turned down the bed and Sorley ran the warming-pan between the sheets, she sat with her hands gratefully clasped round the hot cup, and sipped, and sipped again. Sorley, duty done, paused on his way to the door.

‘Are you aal right?’

She nodded, and tried to smile again, but ruined the effect with another uncontrollable spasm of shuddering.

He stared at her for no more than a moment, and then turned and went. Even through her misery, the expression on his face puzzled her; anxiety, frustration – and something that looked remarkably like annoyance. She almost welcomed the problem, because it took her mind off the thing she didn’t want to think about. Why should he be annoyed? He was the most contented human being she had ever known. Nothing ever worried him except when he knew that she was unhappy. She had sometimes thought that her well-being was the sole criterion by which he judged what was right and what was wrong, and that frightened her a little. She wondered whether he might be annoyed with Luke for causing the trouble that, indirectly, had upset her. Or was it possible that he himself had left the marbles where they shouldn’t be? There was no one else in the house Luke could have been playing with. But no. Luke would never have taken the blame for Sorley’s misdemeanour. And what did it matter, anyway?

By the time she was settled in bed, surrounded by the hot bricks, the shivering had begun to grow less, and she was no longer able to postpone the confrontation with her own horror and self-disgust. She felt physically sick as she remembered the moment when, leaning against the hall archway after she had sent for the doctor, she had suddenly realized what it might have meant to her if Lucy, instead of sitting ludicrously on the stairs glaring at Luke and his marbles, had been lying dead on the floor. Kind, generous, considerate Lucy, who might be a fraud in some ways, but didn’t deserve
that.
Vilia would not have believed herself capable of feeling as she had felt in that moment of revelation. It was wicked, evil! And all because of Kinveil. She had always known that her obsession with Kinveil was dangerous, that it was distorting her life, although she had tried – God knew she had tried! – to break the bond. But she couldn’t. As long as she was with people who couldn’t help but remind her of it, she
could
not.

Her mind, arrested, remained in suspension for several moments, and then, laboriously, she went over it again. As long as she was with people who couldn’t help but remind her of it...

The shivering almost stopped. She put the cup down and gazed straight ahead through the pretty, sprigged curtains framing the foot of the bed. There was an old-fashioned mezzotint on the wall – ‘The Farewell’, or something of the sort. She had scarcely even looked at it before.

When Berthe entered quietly half an hour later, carrying a bowl of broth and a glass of negus, Vilia was exhaustedly asleep.

Lucy Telfer kept to her bed for a week after the accident, and looked on her son with reproach for a week more. Magnus, in the comfortable knowledge that no real damage had been done, spent most of his time shuttling between his clubs, although he spared half an hour to deliver an unpleasantly fluent lecture to Luke and his tutor. Luke meditated the possibility of giving Sorley a good hiding, but since Sorley was almost a foot taller and six years older than he was, decided against it. Vilia turned over a new leaf.

Lucy accepted the transformation with devout gratitude and no questions, even if a sentimental tear came to her eye when Vilia first called her ‘Lucy’ instead of ‘Mrs Telfer’. She couldn’t think what had brought the change about until, several weeks later, a letter came from Magnus’s sister Charlotte, who had a flatteringly persuasive explanation. It wasn’t Charlotte’s custom to flatter, which made Lucy think that her remarriage must have something to commend it after all. ‘...and I know,’ Charlotte wrote,

‘that you will do your best to persuade my brother that I am happier than I could have believed possible with my
dearest
Perry! I cannot tell you with what feelings of joy we look forward to the arrival of the new baby. We
both
hope it will be a
girl,
and a girl with a nature as sweet and loving as yours, my dear Lucy! For I am convinced that Miss Cameron must have been
shocked
by your accident – which might so easily have proved fatal! – into realizing that you had found a place in
her
heart, as in the heart of everyone who knows you. Your goodness could not fail to touch even such a reserved girl as you tell me she has become – although only
you
could persuade me that she has changed so much from the hoyden I remember! But depend upon it, this is what has happened. And now that she has truly come to love you, she will certainly bow to your wishes and follow your advice on the course she should pursue.’

It was a pity that Charlotte, even in such a mood of Christian benevolence, still couldn’t refrain from carping.

‘Yet, my dearest Lucy, do you
truly
think she should make her come-out so soon? I collect she will be only just past her seventeenth birthday when the Season begins, which seems to me to be very much too young!’

But Vilia wouldn’t hear of postponing her come-out until the spring of 1814, when she would be eighteen and, as she said, ‘quite on the shelf’. Lucy wasn’t sufficiently convinced that her present mood of amiable cooperation would last to run the risk of arguing, so it was settled.

In fact, Lucy was rather looking forward to the whole thing. Awe-struck, Luke listened to his mother – who should have been worn to a thread at the very thought of launching Vilia into society – blithely talking of all the pleasures in store as if she had never suffered a day’s illness in her life. Balls, routs, assemblies, masques, balloon ascensions, military reviews, Venetian breakfasts, Turkish suppers... No one was tactless enough to ask whether her heart would stand the strain.

The weeks between what Luke thought of as The Great Decision and the beginning of the Season were a period of trial and tribulation for the males in the household. Before very long, Magnus began to lead an unusually active social life; there was scarcely an evening when he dined at home, so that Lucy and Vilia were able to discuss fashion to their hearts’ content, while Luke and Henry sat in dejected silence.

Very occasionally, Henry would make an effort. ‘Pomona green lutestring, did you say? What an interesting conjunction of words! Pomona was the goddess of fruits, of course. Under-ripe in this case, one must suppose!’ Lucy failed to see his little joke, and Vilia, who had seen it coming from the moment he opened his mouth, accorded it no more than the faintest smile. ‘And lutestring is what?’

‘A fine corded silk.’

Luke gave his tutor a hearty kick on the ankle; anything to stop him embarking on a lecture on the relationship between dress fabrics and stringed instruments!

Morning dresses and walking dresses and riding dresses. Dresses for quiet parties and dinner parties and fashionable balls. Spencers, pelisses, cloaks, shawls, tippets, and Wellington mantles. Shoes, and half boots, and sandals, and satin slippers. Victoria hats, and caps
à la russe,
and bonnet caps, and gipsy hats, and cottage bonnets. Stockings, gloves, reticules...

The list was endless. Luke dropped his eyes to his plate. His mother and Vilia had been boring on for days about a pelisse with couched borders that was almost, but not quite the shade of Vilia’s pale, silky hair. Cream-coloured. Moodily, Luke pushed his plate of cream pudding away.

When the Season began, it seemed as if the knocker at St James’s Square was never still. The card rack was always full, and the number of hopeful young gentlemen who favoured Mrs Telfer with morning calls was prodigious. It was scarcely possible to enter or leave the house without running into somebody. Vilia was out most of the time, walking, riding, driving in the Park, going on picnics to Richmond or visits to the Botanical Gardens, and there was hardly an evening when she and Lucy were at home. Luke and Henry couldn’t decide whether to feel left out or relieved that they didn’t have to listen to any more talk of fashion.

Magnus was the only one who complained, and only at first. Lucy had told him soothingly that he must not put himself out for them, but he couldn’t – he said – be expected to let his wife and ward venture unescorted to such perilous places as Almack’s or Lady Sefton’s. However, when he had been complimented a few times on his wife’s protégée – a beauty, and quite out of the common run! – his grumbles became less convincing.

Over the matter of Vilia’s wardrobe, Lucy had been forced to resort to a little mild deception. Twice, Vilia had rejected, regretfully but firmly, gowns that while not precisely cheap were so flattering that Lucy maintained they could not be considered an extravagance. But Vilia was adamant. She knew what she could afford. Lucy contemplated talking it over with Magnus, but he wasn’t a natural conspirator and, besides, he had the fixed conviction that Telfer money should be kept in the Telfer family. So she sent off an urgent private letter to her father-in-law. As soon as she received his reply – which took the form of a messenger from his London attorney’s, bearing a fat packageful of banknotes – she exchanged some confidential words with the various modistes who enjoyed her custom. After that, anything which particularly suited Miss Cameron turned out to be providentially reasonable in price.

Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, neither Lucy nor her father-in-law could think of any private way of increasing Vilia’s distressingly meagre dowry, and no parent, however well-to-do, could be expected to approve a son’s allying himself with a penniless bride, whatever her breeding and charm. But in the event, Lucy’s fears proved groundless. Vilia was the success of the Season, and Lucy derived the greatest satisfaction from the envious glances thrown at her by other chaperones who had expected
their
charges to lead the field.

The only thing that worried Lucy now was the quality of Vilia’s suitors. Among the most assiduous was young Merricks, heir to a substantial patrimony and worth, it was generally believed, not a penny less than £20,000 a year; it was a pity he was so volatile. Lord Shawe was another, though his estates were said to be somewhat encumbered by debt. And there was Sir Gethin John, a personable boy but rather too malleable; he was only nineteen, though, and might improve. Vilia seemed to have no particular preference. It was singularly unfortunate, Lucy considered, that this Season’s young men should all be so immature – lightweight was the word that sprang to her mind. The only really adult ones were army or navy officers on leave, and they were not at all what Lucy had in mind for Vilia. Apart from anything else, most of them were younger sons. Heirs to substantial properties were seldom allowed to go to war and put their lives at risk. But there was no denying that even quite young officers had an air of authority and experience that could not help but be attractive to a girl like Vilia, who had an assurance far beyond her years. There was one in particular, a pleasant but reticent captain from the Peninsula, who was doing his best to monopolize her, and though Vilia was far too well-bred to permit him to do so, Lucy was apprehensive.

‘But what is he
doing
in London?’ she asked a little fretfully one evening on the way home from the Opera. He had been there, as he had been at every party they had attended of late. ‘I understood that Lord Wellington was quite strongly opposed to his officers going on leave!’

Vilia laughed. ‘Oh, yes. He hates them coming home, because it sets such a bad example to the men. But Captain Lauriston just happened to choose the right moment to ask. When Wellington took up winter quarters in Portugal last November, it seems that all his young gentlemen took one look at Frenada and promptly put in applications for urgent home leave. Captain Lauriston says it’s a horrid place – a filthy village, with mouldering houses and rutted streets and a church bell that never stops tolling. Anyway, Old Hookey was so...’

‘
Vilia!
’

‘I assure you! That’s what they call him. Oh, very well. His lordship was so annoyed that he turned them all down flat. When Captain Lauriston applied two or three weeks later, Wellington was still in such a good humour at having put so many of his “idle young gentlemen” in their places at one blow, so to speak, that he granted his request with scarcely a murmur!’

Magnus looked down his high-bridged nose, so like Wellington’s own. ‘Doing it rather too brown, Vilia! I don’t believe the field-marshal can be quite as childish as that.’