A Dark and Distant Shore (40 page)

She listened as, stumblingly, Perry tried to explain what had happened at Kinveil when Shona was conceived. She should have stopped him, she knew, because all it did was bring everything back to her, so that her fear grew and grew. If only he hadn’t lied to her. Just a few minutes ago he had tried to pretend that he and Charlotte had been estranged throughout the weeks when he had been at Kinveil. She could understand why, but that wasn’t enough. Real love, she believed, would have kept him from Charlotte. Real love would have forced him to confess, honestly, to her. Real love would have found a way – some way – to break the seven years’ disastrous silence.

Never in her life before had she felt so confused. With part of her mind she sensed that she could anchor him to her side forever, simply by telling him about Drew, but she didn’t want him to come to her in that way, from duty as much as desire. She wanted too much, perhaps, for she wanted the whole, all-pervading love of mind and body and being that she had once thought – mistakenly, it seemed – was theirs, the love he had betrayed by going to Charlotte, and by his silence, and now by lying to her. But the tears rose to her eyes, and lingered, and then brimmed over, because she knew that, despite everything, the current of attraction that flowed between them was as strong – stronger, perhaps – as it had ever been. She loved him too much, and that way madness lay.

It was her tears that wrecked his decent restraint, his careful, civilized attempt to put right everything that had gone wrong. Things had gone far past the stage when words could mend them. Defying the sense of doom that hung in the air about them, thick and cloying as a London fog, he forgot everything but his need for her and, pulling her to him, sank his lips roughly on hers. There was none of the graceful circumspection of that first kiss, so many years ago. This time it was the desperate culmination of a lifetime of loneliness, an end to starvation, a slaking of thirst in the desert. She quivered convulsively at his first touch, and then, moaning under his lips, gave herself up to him with an abandon that sent a wild paean of thankfulness thrilling through his veins. It was a kiss that lasted forever, the melting of two separate beings into one, muscles without fibre, bones without marrow, flesh without substance.

It was all she wanted, to have him hold her like this, mind suspended, body oblivious to everything but his presence, heart slowly coming to life again like a stunned bird opening its eyes and waiting, patiently, before it dared to fly again.

But then, his lips still clinging to hers as if, by this one contact, he could wipe out all the lost years, he freed his fingers from her fair, silken hair and, directed not by mind or will or anything but awareness of their devouring, inexorable need for each other, brought his hand blindly round to pull at the fastenings of her gown.

It was too soon.

The spell was shattered. With a raw intake of breath, she tore away from him and found refuge behind a table. For a moment they confronted each other, breathing heavily as if they had run a long, tiring race. In Perry’s eyes was the bitter knowledge of defeat; in hers only fear and anger and, if he had been able to see it, the ghost of love betrayed.

Then she gasped, ‘Oh, no, my friend! You walked away from me before, and stayed away for seven years, without a word. And now you come back and – and expect me to fall in your arms for an hour or two before you disappear again. For another seven years? No. If that is your idea of love, it isn’t mine.’

Weary and drained, he wondered how it was possible for every imaginable thing to go wrong between two people who belonged together, as they did. During their separation, he had never lost hope because he had never forgotten the wisdom and understanding he had felt in her. Had he expected too much? His only fear, after he heard of Andrew’s death, was that she might have remarried, but the London agents had told him her name was still Lauriston. So he had journeyed north, buoyed up with dreams, thinking of her as a young widow living in genteel poverty on her father-in-law’s charity. ‘Come away with me,’ he would say to her. ‘Come back with me to America. Here, I am not free to marry, but there we can live as man and wife and be happy. I don’t have much to offer now, only love, but there are great opportunities. Come away with me – today.’

The dream had been wrecked, the moment he saw her, on the shoals of her own success. She was more beautiful, more desirable than ever, and richer than he by far. She had been hostile on Saturday, distant today, and perhaps her response to his kiss had been no more than a matter of chemistry. He knew now what had happened to damage her feeling for him in the years they had been apart, but the knowledge had come too suddenly and too shockingly for him to be able to assess it. And perhaps there was more, still, that he didn’t know. But there wasn’t time to find out; there wasn’t time to plead, or persuade, or bring her back to him by any means he could think of. Unless he left tonight, he would miss his sailing, and he couldn’t afford to wait several weeks for the next. Especially as he couldn’t conceive that what he had to offer her – so patently mistress of her own destiny – would be enough.

So doubt and pride held him silent, and prevented him from saying the one thing that would have convinced her of his full and final commitment, the one thing that would have persuaded her to forgive everything he had done, and everything he had failed to do.

All he said was, ‘Won’t you believe that I
do
love you, more than life itself?’

‘How can I?’ she replied.
‘How can I
?
’

It wasn’t a question he could answer. He had played what he thought was his only card, and had lost.

After he had gone, she wept as she had not wept for many long, forlorn years. If he had loved her, truly loved her, he would have said, ‘Come away with me!’ And she would have gone with him gladly.

Lucy’s drawing-room at Kinveil had once been some kind of guardroom, watching over the loch to south and west through tall slit windows set in floor-to-ceiling arches, and it had taken all Lucy’s ingenuity to transform it from real Gothic into the make-believe Gothick that her instinct for fashion told her would soon become all the rage. It hadn’t been precisely easy to tack ‘ancient’ timbers on to the rough whinstone ceiling, or crocketed wooden frames round window arches and doors, but the orraman had managed it somehow and Lucy was pleased with the result. She thought it ‘amusing’, and it was. Fortunately for comfort, her mock mediaevalism had stopped short after the crossed swords above the fireplace and the portrait so dulled with age and peat smoke that it was impossible to decide, not only whether the sitter had been male or female, but whether his/her complexion had been black, white, yellow, or tartan. The rest of the room was very civilized, with a thick Turkish carpet on the floor, a pair of handsome landscapes by young Mr Constable on the walls, and a few light and elegant little tables situated at strategic points, all bearing dishes of bonbons. The chairs and sofas were brightly upholstered and deeply cushioned.

On the evening of October 22, 1822, Lucy was in London with Magnus, and it was Vilia and Luke who sat in her drawing-room. It was late, and Mungo had gone to bed. Luke, indolent by nature and more tired than he would readily have admitted after his ten days’ journey from Oxford, was only half awake, lounging in a chair with a glass of whisky bitters in his hand and his heavy-lidded eyes resting on Vilia. The radiance that had captivated him in Edinburgh had gone, but he thought that perhaps she, too, was tired. It was scarcely invigorating weather. The rain had been falling without cease for days, and he had heard that Loch Oich, in Glengarry’s territory, had risen seven feet in the last seventy hours, and was now almost five feet above danger level. Sleepily, he thought that, unless the weather changed, tomorrow’s Caledonian Canal opening was likely to prove something of a fiasco.

He could hear the thud of the tide on the rocks below, and the erratic rustle of the wind, and the spurts of rain that rattled on the windows like petrified rosebuds strewn by some Bacchante of the passing dark, or pebbles tossed by some spectral wayfarer seeking asylum for the night. He blinked. That was the trouble with Oxford. Too many poetry classes by half.

Yet it was at times like these that he understood why Highlanders remained prey to so many ancestral ghosts. An hour before, he and Vilia had gone outside for a breath of air. It had been black as the pit of hell, but seething with activity as if all the elements were diligently engaged on some secret, malevolent business of their own. Within minutes, he had been overtaken by a sensation of sheer, primeval panic, and it had taken all the will-power he possessed to walk negligently back to the courtyard door again. If Vilia hadn’t been there, he would have slammed it hurriedly behind him and probably taken a long time to recover his nerve. But Vilia
had
been there and, pagan that she was, had revelled in it, though the sparkle in her eyes had died almost at once.

Tomorrow, Mr Charles Grant, representing the Canal Commissioners, was to set sail – if that was the word – in one of the new steam yachts, accompanied by half the landowners of three counties, to make the first full voyage from the eastern to the western sea, from the Muirtown locks at Inverness all the way to Fort William. It was assumed that every inlet and promontory along the sixty-mile route would be thick with people, pouring out of the hills and glens to cheer the vessel as it puffed along with its military band dispensing cacophonous echoes across the valley, and its oversized pop-gun firing off salutes to the chiefs. Since it was going to have to stop every few miles to pick up some distinguished resident or other – Mr Grant of Redcastle, the Reverend Mr Smith of Urquhart, the other Mr Grant from Corriemony, Mr Telfer (junior) of Kinveil, Macdonell of Glengarry – it had been decided that the voyage should take two days, and that the first night would be spent at Fort Augustus.

Mungo had said, ‘Start from Inverness with them if ye want, but I wouldn’t choose to, myself. Just think of having to listen to that dratted band for all of two days! If you’ve any sense, what ye’ll do is come with Vilia and me to stay at Glengarry’s place on Wednesday night, and then go with him to join the boat on Thursday morning. He means to ride up to Fort Augustus and go aboard there, so that he’ll be with them before the point where the Canal runs across his land. He’s got some legal ploy afoot, but I don’t rightly know the details.’

It had sounded like a sensible idea. Luke had no desire to ride all the way up to Inverness just for the doubtful pleasure of sailing all the way back again. Thank God, it meant he could have a restful day tomorrow, with nothing to face but the four-hour drive from Kinveil to Invergarry.

His eyes on the slender figure opposite, he said absently, ‘What time does grandfather want us to set out tomorrow?’

She had looked as if she were miles away, but just as he spoke she sat up sharply, almost violently, startling him into wakefulness. He wondered what on earth there had been in his question to provoke such a response, and then saw that she hadn’t even heard him. Her face had gone quite white, and her eyes looked huge and dark. The cat, lying on the carpet with its head resting comfortably on the toe of her slipper, bounded to its feet at the same moment and pressed itself against her leg, back arched, tail stiff and quivering, golden gaze wide. There was utter silence. Even the rain had gone off, and the wind had dropped.

An icy breath played round the back of Luke’s neck. Very carefully indeed, he set down his glass and rose to his feet. ‘What is it?’ he asked, and wondered why he was whispering. She raised a tense fist for silence, and he saw that her knuckles were bone-white, the Kinveil ring in stark relief against them. Her lips curled inwards, caught between her teeth.

Obediently he remained still, though every nerve was tingling.

After a few seconds, she murmured in a voice that was scarcely audible, ‘Do you hear it?’

‘Hear what?’ He had been listening, as she had, but there was nothing. He couldn’t remember whether it was high notes or low notes that cats could hear better than humans, so he had tried both, but still, nothing.

She whispered again, imperatively, ‘Do you hear it?’

He shook his head and then, because she wasn’t looking at him, said, ‘No.’

A shudder ran through her. ‘Oh, God!’ And then, as if she were terrified, she breathed, ‘Come here,’ and held out her hand to him. ‘Touch me.’

It wasn’t an invitation, he knew, and she wasn’t asking to be comforted.

He laid his fingers over hers, and she said, ‘Now, listen. Do you hear anything?’

It was the most extraordinary thing. The moment his hand touched hers, he did hear something. It was like opening the door of a concert hall in the middle of a concerto. Nothing – and then something. Something that was already going on.

His face slack with puzzlement, he said, ‘Yes, I hear it.’ It wasn’t much. It wasn’t anything, really. Just water dripping slowly somewhere outside. Though it didn’t sound quite as if it were outside, or inside, either. It scarcely seemed to warrant all this high drama, he thought, and said quite audibly, ‘It’s only water dripping.’

She shook her head angrily.
‘Listen!’

It did sound a bit odd, regular, and hollow, and – and what? Leaden.

He took his hand away from hers and it stopped. His voice grating, he remarked, ‘With all the rain we’ve been having, the water ought to be cascading down, not just dripping!’

She fluttered her fingers peremptorily, and he clasped them again. And he could hear the drips again. For almost ten minutes they stayed there, hands touching, and listened.

Then the sounds stopped. The cat subsided to the carpet as if it were exhausted, and Vilia freed her hand from Luke’s and sank back in her chair again.

In some ways, Luke was like his father. Perplexity made him irritable. ‘What the devil was that all about?’ he asked and, turning, picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp.