A Dark and Distant Shore (4 page)

Vilia was on her feet. ‘Oh, no!
No, no, no
!’

She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. To have to be
grateful
to the very people who had taken Kinveil away from her?

‘I’d rather die!’

Mr Pilcher and her governess tried, in their different ways, to soothe her, but she whirled away from them and almost ran through the big folding doors into the rear part of the room, where she could be private.

It was so impossible, so completely and utterly impossible! How could she make this staid, unimaginative trustee of hers see how impossible it was? ‘You must understand, Mr Pilcher, that when I was seven years old I made up my mind that I would marry Mr Magnus Telfer one day, as a means of winning Kinveil back. And, of course, I tried to push Mr
Mungo
Telfer over the sea wall and into the loch. But apart from that, I am very little acquainted with either of them!’

Whose idea had it been? The old man’s, presumably, for his son scarcely knew that she existed. She had watched him, of course, during that fateful twenty-four hours at Kinveil, but he had not seen her at all as she slipped unobtrusively from spyhole to spyhole, studying the intruders. Mungo Telfer, on the other hand...

He had confused her. Even through her fear and hatred, she had felt an odd sense of identity with him, as if they were two of a kind. She had been too young, then, to separate the man himself from the threat he represented, but now, the threat long since fulfilled, she tried to recall him.

On the sea wall, when she had attempted to put an end to the whole thing in the only way she could think of, he had not been angry but nauseatingly understanding. He hadn’t even mentioned the episode to her father. Afterwards, she had prowled aimlessly around until, frustrated beyond bearing, she had slipped up the curving staircase to the corridor outside the Long Gallery. There, with her five-year-old henchman Sorley McClure standing guard, she had climbed on a chair to eavesdrop at the Laird’s Lug. This was a concealed listening tube sunk in an angle of the wall above the door, and tradition had it that former lairds of Kinveil had used it for listening in on the conversation of guests they did not trust. Vilia didn’t trust either her father or the man Telfer an inch.

But she had only heard snatches of the two men’s talk, because Sorley had done nothing but fidget.

‘...my daughter, Mrs George Blair, lives not too far away...’

Vilia remembered Charlotte Blair, without pleasure, as a disapproving young woman who had ridden over from Glenbraddan to pay a call, with the only too obvious intention of patronizing the little girl.

‘...convenient to be near her. My son Magnus has had two years at Oxford, but he’s not one of Nature’s scholars. He’ll be living in London for a while, seeing as he’s...’

Distracted, Vilia had turned and hissed at Sorley, who was sitting on the floor at the top of the stairs, blowing vigorously at a fat black spider to make it tuck in its legs and play dead. ‘
Be quiet,
Sorley!’

When she turned back to the listening tube, the two men were talking about roads.

‘New roads?’ Her father’s voice had been politely dismissive. ‘Certainly it would revolutionize life in the Highlands and Islands to be properly linked to the centres of population and industry in the south, but I am told that something like a million pounds would be needed and I cannot believe the Treasury will ever be persuaded to disburse such a sum.’

‘Aye, well,’ the man Telfer had said. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. The government’s worried about all the folk sailing away to America, instead of staying here and starving. Every Highlander who emigrates is one less potential recruit for the Highland regiments – and if things go on at this rate it’ll fairly put a crimp in His Majesty’s army! They think building roads and canals would provide employment and persuade the folk to stay. I’m not so sure about that, but I doubt if it matters. What does matter is that the roads and canals would make it possible for you to market your livestock and fish and timber.’

Vilia’s father said nothing, although the man Telfer sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. After a moment, he went on, ‘And, you know, I’ve met the fellow who’s in charge of the project, and I believe he’s got the rumgumption to push the whole thing through. In fact, I’d wager you a sovereign to a semmit-button that, ten years from now, there’ll be a network of Parliamentary roads and canals that’ll bring the two hundred miles from here to Glasgow down to a mere three days. Well – four, maybe.’

Vilia’s mind was racing. If what the man Telfer said was true, it would be madness to sell Kinveil. Now that her father knew salvation was so near, he
must
change his mind. Vilia thought it excessively silly of Mr Telfer to sound so positive about the roads. He was as good as inviting her father to reconsider the whole thing.

But all her father said was, ‘You are more optimistic than I. I remember all too clearly that when I last made the journey it took me twelve days, and I broke my coach axle three times between Fort Augustus and Glasgow. In any case, I fear that...’

Vilia had never discovered what her father feared, because at that inopportune moment, Betty Fraser, the second housemaid, had rounded the bend of the stairs and let out a soft-voiced squeak of, ‘Sorley McClure! Whateffer are you doing here? And Miss Vilia. Och, you wass neffer listening at the Laird’s Lug, wass you? Think shame!’ And that, despite Sorley’s spirited attempt to defend his goddess’s right to eavesdrop in her own castle any time she wanted to, had effectively put an end to Vilia’s information-gathering for the day. She had finished up very little the wiser about how the man Telfer’s mind worked.

The memory of that day still hurt dreadfully, even after eight years. For Mungo Telfer had been right –
damn
him! she thought, dredging up the only blasphemy she knew – and the government had put up the money for the roads. It would be a long time, still, before the Caledonian Canal was completed, and only a few of the roads were finished, but they and Mungo Telfer’s money had begun to transform life on Kinveil. Every January, Vilia received a letter from Meg – a short one, because Meg’s writing was large and she kept her news to a single page to save Vilia having to pay to receive a second sheet – and she knew how things were changing. If only,
if only
her father had been willing to try and survive for another few years!

It was a struggle to hold back the tears of self-pity and regret, but she managed it. She hadn’t time for weeping. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, go to live with the Telfers. There must be something else she could do! If the worst came to the worst, she would run away. Why not? For a moment her spirits soared, but only for a moment. Only until she realized that the one place in the world she would ever run to was the one place in the world forbidden to her. Kinveil. And then the thought slipped into her mind that, if she went to live with Magnus Telfer and his wife, she might be invited to go there – legitimately.

Ten minutes later, she rejoined Mr Pilcher. ‘I apologize,’ she said. ‘Your suggestion came as something of a shock. Are you quite sure there is no alternative?’

He was relieved to see that she had resigned herself. ‘Quite sure,’ he replied, prudently ignoring the reference to shock. ‘There are too many advantages. You will be a guest in their house and will not be expected to make any financial contribution. Your income will be entirely at your own disposal, to use for clothes, and pin money, and to pay your personal servants, of course. The Telfers are quite prepared to take in your governess and abigail, you know, so you will not be cast into a strange house entirely on your own.’

‘And Sorley McClure,’ Vilia said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Sorley McClure, my page.’

Mr Pilcher said, ‘I hardly think... Do you really need a page-boy? I would have thought one of the Telfers’ footmen could run errands for you.’

‘Sorley McClure,’ she repeated stubbornly. ‘I made my father bring him with us from Kinveil. He is thirteen years old and it would break his heart if I abandoned him.’

She couldn’t say to a man like this that it would break her heart, too. Sorley was the son of a good-for-nothing father who suffered from the strange lethargy that afflicted many Highlanders almost like a disease, although it seemed to have no physical origin. Too much whisky and too little food did nothing to cure it, but it was essentially a malaise of the spirit, as if man’s fate from the moment of birth was simply to wait for the moment of death. Yet Sorley, who had never even had kail to go with his brose except when he had slipped into the castle kitchen, was brim full of all the energy his father lacked. He was skinny, ginger-haired, and amazingly freckled, with the sunniest smile it was possible to imagine. He adored Vilia unreservedly, and as long as he was with her Vilia continued, deep down inside her, to hope. Kinveil was a part of both of them, and each was a link in the chain that bound the other to it.

‘Well, I suppose if he were to make himself generally useful... I will ask, although I can make no promises. But, on consideration, don’t you think it a splendid arrangement? You will be quite one of the family, and Mrs Telfer will launch you into the
ton
and chaperone you in your first Season.’

In a colourless voice, she said, ‘Would it be impertinent to ask why they are being so kind to me? I know of no reason why they should.’

Mr Pilcher took a moment or two to answer. ‘You have the senior Mr Telfer to thank for it. It appears that he heard of your late father’s demise, and was – er – concerned for your welfare. Most thoughtful of him. Indeed, a most generous gesture.’ And one that the old Tobacco Lord could well afford, the lawyer reflected enviously, especially as it was not he, but his son and daughter-in-law who would be landed with the girl.

All Vilia said was, ‘Oh.’

Luke Telfer was seven years old and alarmingly well brought up. So, when he was summoned to his mama’s drawing-room in St James’s Square one afternoon in November, he showed no surprise at finding both his parents there, looking preternaturally solemn, but bowed as he had been taught and said, ‘Good afternoon, mama. Good afternoon, papa.’

‘Come and sit here beside me, darling,’ his mother said, patting the sofa invitingly. ‘Papa and I have something very important to tell you.’

He perched himself on the edge so that he could rest his feet on the floor, which made him feel taller and more grown up, and raised innocent eyes to her face. He loved his mama dearly. She was very gentle and sweet and, he thought, very pretty with her oval face, high forehead, and silky chestnut hair, which she wore swept smoothly back over her ears instead of in the fussy ringlets that were the fashion. Her eyes always intrigued him, smiling and sad at the same time, and faintly smudged with blue in the hollows beneath. He knew that her constitution was delicate, and that she had almost died when he was born, which was why she was forbidden to exert herself and spent part of every day resting, with the curtains drawn. It had been impressed on Luke, from the moment he was old enough to understand, that he must never make a noise for fear of upsetting her. It was bad for her heart.

Until three or four months ago, it had not occurred to Luke that there was any other kind of life than the sedate, circumscribed existence of St James’s Square. His mother’s health was far too precarious to allow her to face the rigours of any journey longer than a dozen miles, and certainly not the six hundred to where his grandfather lived at Kinveil. Luke’s papa, therefore, had always gone alone on his duty visit. Until this year, when it had been decided that Luke was old enough to go with him.

It had been a revelation, like being translated into another world. Luke had developed a vast, childish exuberance. He had run and scrambled, and paddled and climbed; yelled himself hoarse; got dirty as a tinker and wet as a tadpole. He had become semi-amphibious, and loved it. Under the aegis of the steward’s eighteen-year-old son, Ewen Campbell, he had learned to ride a sheltie, a Shetland pony. He had gone bird’s-nesting. And, joy of delirious joys, he had caught his first salmon in Loch an Iasgair, ‘the osprey’s loch’. By the sheerest good fortune, he had saved his second notable exploit for the last week of his stay. Desirous of going to sea, and having been told that all the men and boats were already out, he had purloined a large washtub from the laundry room and rolled it down, with some trouble, to the water’s edge. Then, with a small plank for an oar, and a cherry-twig mast, flying his pocket handkerchief in lieu of the Jolly Roger, he had paddled off with a will in the general direction of the North Atlantic. When he was retrieved by a panic-stricken Ewen Campbell forty minutes later, he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Although his grandfather, a formidably shrewd and decisive old gentleman, had laughed, Luke’s papa had not admired this second of his only begotten son’s exploits nearly as much as the first, and for his last few days Luke had been virtually confined to barracks.

Inevitably, when they returned to London, his mother had been regaled with the episode of the washtub. She had laid a shocked hand over her heart, and Luke had been trying to make it up to her ever since.

‘Now, my love,’ she said. ‘We know it will come as a surprise to you, but we are sure you will be pleased. You are going to have a sister.’

She might have phrased it better. Luke’s eyes goggled. He knew that mothers and fathers had to do what the cattleman at Kinveil had shown him a bull and a cow doing, otherwise they couldn’t become mothers and fathers at all. But to think of his own stately parents engaged on anything so undignified was beyond the range of his imagining.

Stupidly, he said, ‘When?’ And then, rather less stupidly, ‘A
sister
?’

‘On Friday,’ Lucy Telfer replied patting his hand.

He looked up at his father, standing before the fire with his hands tucked under his olive green coat tails and a benign smile on his face. Magnus Telfer was an impressive figure, just an inch under six feet tall, handsomely built, with strong brows over well-opened hazel eyes, the large family nose, full but well-shaped lips, and a nicely cultivated air of distinction. No one would ever have guessed that Magnus’s own father had been born in a weaver’s cottage, but neither would they ever have doubted that he had become a very warm man indeed. Two years at Oxford had put a fine, smooth polish on Magnus’s manners – even if they had made little impression on his mind – and his acquaintances were accustomed to consider him a sound fellow. It was by no means unusual for ladies, especially elderly ones, to murmur to their friends, ‘Such a
gentlemanly
man!’ His style being lazy and a touch consequential, most people thought him several years older than he was. At this time, in fact, he was just twenty-seven.