A Dark and Distant Shore (18 page)

‘It depends on the army authorities, and of course on the continuation of peace. A few months, perhaps.’

He didn’t offer to escort her home from the foundry. He didn’t even see her to the carriage, which was just as well, because Sorley had come with her and the sight of him acted on Duncan Lauriston like a red rag to a bull. The idea of her having a personal footman wasn’t the only irritant; he appeared to sense that Sorley, wooden and impersonal on the surface as any other well-trained footman, wasn’t quite an ordinary servant. And Duncan Lauriston, being the kind of man he was, also found it disgusting that a well set up young fellow should spend his life dancing attendance on a supercilious little chit of a girl. ‘Why don’t you find some
man’s
work?’ he had exclaimed the other day.

When they arrived back at Marchfield House, Vilia went straight to the nursery. The baby was awake, a solemn infant with observant eyes and fair, downy hair. She sent the nurse away and stood at the window with the child in her arms, gazing out into the dark garden with its high, prison-like walls, lit here and there by dim lanterns. After a while, the baby began to whimper, and she put him down in his cot, which had once belonged to Andrew, and went downstairs to write to Mungo Telfer.

She set out two days later, taking her maid and Sorley McClure with her, but leaving the baby and his nurse at Marchfield. Duncan Lauriston was furious, and it gave her great satisfaction to reflect that, on this occasion, she had given him valid cause for complaint. Let him bluster, she thought. She was going home, where she belonged.

Mungo’s welcome was so warm and genuine that the tears sprang to her eyes. He gripped both her hands crushingly, and smiled at her, and said, ‘Welcome, my dear. I told you before. You don’t
have
to ask! Just come, whenever you need to.’ The strange thing was that the constraint between them, which had still lingered even at the end of her visit two years ago, seemed to have evaporated completely in the interim. It wasn’t only Kinveil she was coming home to, but Mungo as well. She gripped his hands in return, and said, ‘I know. And thank you!’

Even Luke, greatly changed in the months since she had last seen him, greeted her with a quizzical grin. He wasn’t very good at it, and she was surprised into a watery giggle that made them all laugh as they went, arm in arm, across the causeway and into the dear, familiar indoors.

Now that Luke felt himself in possession of Kinveil, as he had never felt before, he was able to see her more dispassionately, although he watched her as avidly as ever. Her green eyes, lustrous and a little strained, no longer made him think of a witch but of a mermaid. He noted also that, this time, she didn’t fly to her childhood friends as she had done before. Instead, in an old grey gown and a voluminous plaid cloak, she walked from dawn until dusk, or sometimes, if the day was calm, sat on the hill behind the castle, gazing for hours at the restless autumn sea, and the hills in their livery of gold and scarlet and snow-streaked ebony. One day, he took her cloak from her when she came in, and the hand that brushed against his was cold as frost rime at dawn.

Mungo was troubled. What was wrong, he had no idea, but he knew that there was something serious. And then, slowly, the mists began to lift and the tension to relax. When, twice in the same day, she twinkled at him mischievously, he knew it was all right, and risked suggesting an idea that had occurred to him as soon as he knew she was coming.

Mid-October was the time of the Northern Meeting in Inverness, the Highlands’ answer to the London Season. There was no real comparison between the two, but for an annual week in October all the Highland gentry succeeded in persuading themselves that Inverness was the hub of the Polite World. All the lairds competed to bring the largest possible party of southern guests to the little capital of the north, and for five days the place was thronged with people of fashion and distinction. There were grand dinners or balls every evening, where everyone who was anyone within a hundred miles was able to make new acquaintances, revive old ones, and catch up with any tiny item of gossip that, by some extraordinary oversight, they might have missed during the last twelve months. No society on earth knew more about its neighbours’ affairs than that of the Highlands.

Perry Randall had taken Charlotte up for the whole week, and Mungo had bought tickets for most of the affairs without intending to use them. But it occurred to him that Vilia might like to go. When he first raised the matter, she looked so downcast that he immediately said, ‘What am I thinking of? Of course you don’t want to go. You want to be here at Kinveil. Dinna fash! I should not have mentioned it.’

At once she was repentant. ‘No. Please let’s go. I had quite forgotten about it, that was all.’

‘No, no. I don’t doubt you go to enough parties in London to last you all year.’

‘But...’

It was showing all the signs of developing into óne of those polite arguments that went on for ever. Bored, Luke said, ‘Couldn’t you just go to
one
of the balls?’

They both looked at him as if he had sprouted wings.

Mungo slapped his knee happily. ‘Why not? Why did I not think of that? What about the one on Friday? It’s the great occasion of the week.’

Vilia smiled charmingly. ‘Why not, indeed?’

As a reward, Luke was taken along too. Children were not usually welcome at such events, but he was a well-grown, if weedy, ten, and anyone who didn’t look too closely might have taken him for several years older, especially if he followed his grandfather’s stern advice to stand up straight, keep his hands out of his pockets, and speak only when spoken to, and preferably not then. His childish treble would fool no one. He wasn’t to dance, nor even to glance into the card room, in fact he was not to do anything but stand mumchance by the old man’s side. Luke didn’t mind. He was dying to go to a grown-up ball, and felt very superior about the whole affair, especially when his grandfather refused to take Henry along. An orthodox cleric he might have countenanced, but a tutor in skirts went quite beyond the line. Henry, as usual, was offended.

They set off early on the Friday. Mungo had arranged that they should put up with his man of business, Mr Norman Cooper, at his house in Church Street, spending the night there, and returning to Kinveil in the morning. It was a pleasant drive, for the weather was bright and unseasonably mild, and the foliage was in the full glory of its autumn colours and Loch Ness a clear, thirty-mile sheet of dappled grey. There was no snow on the hills here, for the loch, deep and cold though it was, had some special climatic effect that held winter at bay even when all the country around was frozen hard.

Mungo had also sent ahead to ensure that Mr Urquhart, whose emporium was the great fashion centre of Inverness, would have time to dress Vilia’s hair. Luke, better acquainted with Vilia than his grandfather, maliciously observed her bite back a protest when this considerate arrangement was mentioned, and also noticed that the signs of Mr Urquhart’s genius – only too apparent when she returned from his shop – had more or less vanished by the time she was ready for the ball.

Vilia’s gown was in a style that neither Mungo nor Luke had ever seen before, which made them think it must be the
dernier cri
in London. It was an elegant thing in blonde lace over deep cream silk, buttoned down the front with pearl clusters, and it skimmed her figure instead of clinging to it, giving her a willowy look that suited her very well. Mungo, who had never seen her fashionably gowned before, gasped at the sight, and even Luke couldn’t help but admire. It didn’t occur to either of them that the gown had been designed to disguise the fact that she was almost four months pregnant with her second child.

Vilia mounted the broad, handsome stairs of the assembly room on Mungo’s arm, with Luke trailing meekly behind. The noise, the blaze of lights, and the press of humanity were almost overwhelming, and at first glance he couldn’t imagine how or where anyone could possibly find space to dance. Nor could he imagine how they were ever going to find anyone they knew. Yet scarcely were they inside the ballroom than his grandfather was exchanging civilities with one of the smaller Ross-shire lairds, who introduced them to his wife; to his sisters, and her sisters, and their husbands; to an assortment of cousins; and to a small and ugly colonel with his equally small and scarcely less ugly wife. They had just returned from India, and she was dripping with diamonds, to prove it.

Vilia was whisked away almost at once by a good-natured rattle of a man who claimed to have known her in the cradle. Swallowing this patent untruth with the most sweetly incredulous of smiles, she allowed him to lead her into a country dance that was forming. Next time Luke saw her, she was being partnered by Lord Huntly. Then she was drawn into a cotillion with Sir Francis Mackenzie of Gairloch, and then into a reel with Mackenzie of Applecross. He, it was said, was the matrimonial catch of the northern counties, but Luke thought him a poor figure of a fellow, and he was certainly no dancer.

Mungo seemed to be acquainted with at least half the people in the room, and Luke’s ears resounded not only with the fiddles, but with knowledgeable discussions about forestry, sheep, kelp, fish, canals, roads, deer, and cattle prices. What else! he thought resignedly. Gradually, he began to find it all rather flat, and when he finally caught sight of Perry, dancing with one of the Misses Duff, he waited only until the music ended before burrowing a way through the throng towards him.

‘Luke!’ exclaimed his Aunt Charlotte in tones that were less than welcoming. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

She had a knack of seeming to criticize, even when she wasn’t. Luke said belligerently, ‘I’m here with my grandfather and Vil – Mrs Lauriston.’

‘Good heavens! I wonder what father can be thinking of!’

Perry said amiably, ‘Why shouldn’t the boy be here, Charlotte? It’s time he learned something about how the world goes round. We should have brought Edward as well, now I come to think of it.’ He winked brazenly from behind his wife’s back, and Luke almost burst with the effort of trying not to laugh.

‘Vilia Cameron,’ said his aunt thoughtfully. ‘How interesting. She was only five or six years old when I saw her last.’ She turned to Perry. ‘The wildest little girl, quite
farouche,
but Lucy tells me she has improved. Where is she, Luke? Point her out to me.’

Every other lady in the room was by now faintly dishevelled, but Vilia remained cool, and perfect. There was a smile on her lips as she addressed her partner, and her eyes were astonishingly green. The coronet of silver-blonde hair gleamed like raw silk in the candlelight.

‘Oh,’ said Charlotte raising the quizzing glass she had lately begun to affect. She herself was held to be a good-looking woman, with clean-cut features, a heart-shaped face, and a neat figure. She wore her brown hair in smooth bands, and she was dressed tonight in a gown of lilac crêpe whose modest decolletage was filled in with a handsome but heavy gold collar set with shell cameos. Luke wished she had left off the matching tiara and earrings. They made her look armour-plated.

Perry was studying Vilia, too, a little absently. ‘Is that Mrs Lauriston?’ he said after a moment. ‘Yes, I wondered who she was.’

Charlotte turned to her nephew. ‘You may bring her over and introduce her when this dance has finished, Luke.’

‘Yes, Aunt Charlotte.’

He intercepted Vilia just as she was coming off the floor. ‘Aunt Charlotte wants to see you,’ he announced, raising a sardonic eyebrow. He was getting quite good at that, and amusement leapt to her eyes. ‘Royal command!’

Perhaps Charlotte misinterpreted the half-smile that lingered on Vilia’s face, but whatever the reason, the temperature dropped several degrees. She said, ‘So delightful to meet you again after all these years, Miss... Dear me, of course! It’s Mrs Lauriston now, is it not? Pray sit down beside me and let us have an agreeable chat.’

Perry was bowing over Vilia’s hand. ‘My husband,’ Charlotte said cursorily.

Vilia inclined her head. ‘Yes, it
is
a long time since we met, Mrs Blair. Oh, no. I’m so sorry. It’s Mrs Randall now, isn’t it?’

Touché,
Luke thought. Definitely
touché.

It had been so elegantly done that Charlotte didn’t even notice. She said, ‘Yes, Mr Randall and I have been married for three years now. What a pity we have not had the pleasure of entertaining you at Glenbraddan.’

Luke hoped Vilia wasn’t going to be fool enough to agree that it
was
a pity. She might find herself landed with two or three days of unadulterated Aunt Charlotte, and Luke wouldn’t have wished that on anyone, even Vilia.

Wisely, Vilia smiled and said nothing, neither did she sit down. Charlotte waved her fan towards the empty chair at her side, and said again, ‘Pray do sit down.’

‘If you will forgive me, I think I should not. I am engaged for the next country dance, and it would be impolite to disappoint my partner.’

Charlotte took it as a personal affront. ‘You are very much in demand,’ she said with a honey-sweet smile. ‘But I wonder if I might venture to put you on your guard. Having been away from the Highlands for so long, you can’t, I imagine, be acquainted with all the gentlemen who have been besieging you. You will forgive me, I know, but I must say, as someone longer accustomed to society than yourself, that is not quite the thing for you to dance with gentlemen who are perfect strangers to you.’

Vilia was listening with an arrested expression, but her voice was no more than politely interested when she said, ‘Indeed?’

‘Well, Inverness is not precisely London, you know, and it is quite fatal to set people’s backs up. In a place where most people have known each other forever, they are inclined to be critical of outsiders. And I know you would not wish to be thought
fast
!’

Luke held his breath. It wasn’t the ‘fast’, it was the ‘outsider’. He risked a glance at Perry Randall, but his uncle’s face was impassive. He didn’t know Vilia, of course.