A Dark and Distant Shore (54 page)

‘Are you?’ Not a muscle of the handsome, authoritative face showed anything more than a mild surprise. ‘My congratulations, Luke. A remarkably beautiful and talented woman.’ His eyes dropped, and he flicked the ash from one of Luke’s cigarellos into the fire. ‘When is the happy day?’

‘We haven’t settled it yet. She will be here next week, and we expect to be married soon after.’

Next week. And it was Friday now.

Perry said, ‘You’ll live here at Kinveil, I suppose.’ The question was superfluous.

‘Oh, yes. We’re both very fond of the place.’

As clearly as if she had told him, Perry knew that there could be no other reason for Vilia to marry the boy. ‘She and your mother are still sufficiently good friends?’ he asked drily.

It took Luke a moment to absorb that. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

‘And what about the foundry?’ Impossible to imagine Vilia, with her incisive mind, her habit of command, tied to someone so much younger than she in every way. If it had only been a matter of age, but it wasn’t.

‘I don’t know yet. We haven’t really discussed it. We’ll probably put a manager in. It’s of no great importance.’

How little you know! Perry thought grimly. If Vilia had to give up her private empire and devote her energies to Kinveil, the fur would soon start flying. She was far too vital to dwindle into placid domesticity. His ironic smile was quite genuine when he said, ‘What about the two boys? Do either of them look likely to take over some day?’ He raised his eyebrows at Luke’s expression. The boy seemed to be taken aback, as if the question was a difficult one.

Luke floundered. Two boys? Was it possible Perry didn’t know about Drew? Odd that Vilia hadn’t mentioned him when she was talking about Shona, because the two were very much of an age. He said, ‘Three boys. The youngest was born a few months after Andrew Lauriston died. Didn’t you know?’

Perry said, ‘How – how distressing for her.’ It had been a struggle for him to gather enough breath even for those brief words.
A few months. How many constituted ‘a few’
?
How could he ask? ‘I’m surprised,’ he remarked, ‘that the shock of her husband’s death wasn’t enough to bring on a miscarriage.’

Luke’s knowledge of feminine biology was sketchy, but nothing would have induced him to admit it. ‘Indeed, yes,’ he replied. ‘It might well have done. As it was, I believe she had a very difficult time right up until the child was born. My grandfather brought her here afterwards to recover, and she was here for the last of the winter and the whole of spring.’

Perry had been away too long. He had forgotten that spring here didn’t begin until the middle of May, and that it was rare indeed for the season to be as advanced as it was today. So the child must have been born in January or February, and couldn’t be his. There was a lead weight somewhere in his chest as he thought of what Vilia must have suffered, carrying Andrew’s child under such circumstances, although it would have been worse for her, he supposed, if the child
had
been his. He remembered her saying, at Marchfield House, that she had been unwell in the latter part of 1815, and wondered why she hadn’t told him the reason. Had she thought it might appear to him as some kind of betrayal; that it would give him pain to know that she had been carrying Andrew’s child, when it should have been his? Foolish Vilia, when the child must have been conceived before either of them had even admitted to being in love. But she had been right, of course. It was a long time since he had felt such heartache.

As if he had been thinking about Mungo, he said, ‘He was a good man. Are you acquainted with the boys? It must have been difficult for Mrs Lauriston, bringing them up with no father.’
What was he to do
?
What the hell was he to do
?
Back in the disastrous present, his mind twisting and turning like some animal in a trap, he wondered savagely what in God’s name Vilia was thinking of. She must be mad. Did she need Kinveil so much? Two hours had been enough to tell him that Luke was the same self-centred, spoilt, touchy brat he’d always been, despite his carefully cultivated urbanity. Vilia must know it. She wasn’t a fool.
What the hell was he to do
?

‘I haven’t seen much of them lately, but they’re shaping up well.’

‘If they’ve inherited their mother’s love for Kinveil, I imagine you’ll see a good deal more of them in the future.’

It was a point that hadn’t occurred to Luke. ‘Oh, no. Theo’s far too keen on the foundry, and the others follow his lead. Anyway, I certainly wouldn’t encourage them in any ambition to become country gentlemen. They’re Lauristons, after all, not Telfers.’

Perry studied him meditatively. The Lauriston boys’ ancestors, through Vilia, had ruled over Kinveil for almost five hundred years, and it was less than thirty years since the Telfers had come to it. Yet already Luke thought his blood finer than theirs. Perry shrugged, and murmured a meaningless, ‘Indeed.’ He wondered whether Kinveil, now, was really all that mattered to Vilia. He could understand how tempting it must be for her, the prospect of having it back in her own hands. But she must see – surely she must see! – that love of place was barren when compared with human love such as the love they had had for each other, the love that on his side had grown deeper and stronger through their long separation. He could convince her, he believed, for he had developed a new depth and strength in these last seven years.

But before he could convince her and divert her from her chosen path, he had to see her. He had always known this meeting was not going to be easy. He had written to her more than once – short, unsentimental letters that, by their very existence, were a statement of commitment. He had hoped that the act of receiving them would mean as much to her as the act of sending them did to him. They hadn’t been love letters, because love set down on the page by anyone but a poet always sounded, to Perry, cheap and immature. So he had confined himself to beginning, ‘Vilia, my dearest’, and ending briefly, ‘Yours, Perry’. Not until these last weeks had it occurred to him that Vilia might not have understood. He had received no replies to guide him, although either letters or replies could easily have gone astray. Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps without the reassurance of words, however commonplace, she thought that the love of which he had failed to convince her seven years ago had proved in the end to be as insubstantial as she had claimed. This time, he thought again, he would convince her, because there was nothing in the world that would stop him. But he had to see her before her feet were irrevocably set on the path she seemed to have chosen.
Next week, Luke had said, and it was Friday now.

He stretched himself lazily, and stifled a non-existent yawn. ‘Perhaps, in time to come, Lauriston’s will be able to supply me with materials for my guns. Until now, I’ve been content to act as agent for a number of American gunsmiths, but my next step will be to set up a manufactory of my own.’ It seemed a sufficiently neutral note on which to end a conversation that was now beyond him. ‘In the meantime, Luke, I think I must retire. It’s been a long day, and I have to leave at dawn tomorrow. The exigencies of business, I fear. I have appointments to keep, and I have stayed away too long. I’ll send Briggs down to warn them at the stables.’

They left at first light and reached Marchfield late on the evening of the Monday after the kind of journey Briggs prayed he would never have to live through again. They had scanned every carriage on the road, inquired at every inn, descended at every isolated dwelling along the way, and in between Mr R. had kept up a killing pace, regardless of whether their hired mounts were ambling old nags or half-wild youngsters scarcely broken to bridle. By the time they arrived at Marchfield, Briggs wasn’t even capable of dismounting, and it was Mr R. himself, dust thick on his clothes and sketching in, like chalk on grey paper, the creases that bracketed his long mouth, who ran up the steps and set the knocker resounding through the quiet air.

And despite everything he had missed her. Despite the meticulous checking at every point on the route to make sure she wasn’t there, resting for an hour, and that she hadn’t been there. Despite the waits at ferries, and the mad, scrambling gallops between, and the shouldering through crowds that had clogged their way in towns and villages, his eyes raking the streets and wynds for any sight of her. He hadn’t thought of her taking the canal route, which hadn’t even been open when he was in Scotland last.

Mistress Lauriston had left on Friday, the butler said, and would be almost at Kinveil by now. It wass a great pity, indeed it wass, that the chentleman had not sent ahead to tell Mistress Lauriston that he wass coming.

She descended, smiling, from the carriage Luke had sent to meet her at Fort Augustus, and Luke strolled out to welcome her with a cigarillo between his fingers and a casual, proprietary gleam in his sleepy brown eyes. ‘My dear,’ he said languidly, dropping a kiss on her forehead. ‘How delightful to see you.’

She thought at first that he might be putting on a performance for his parents’ benefit, and glanced round, but they were nowhere in sight. Indoors, perhaps. Turning, she said, ‘Wait, Sorley, and I’m sure Mr Luke will send someone to help you with the traps.’ It was unusual for there to be so few underlings about, for Magnus liked it to be obvious how well served he was.

‘Aye, mistress,’ Sorley’s eyes were on Luke, waiting for a greeting, but Luke ignored him. Instead, he took Vilia’s arm and turned to cross the causeway. ‘A pleasant journey?’

‘Blowy. Especially on the sea crossing from Greenock. But oh, such delight to feel the air fresh and clean again after the foundry!’ She glanced out over the water, strands of long, silken hair teased out from under the close-fitting scarlet hat. ‘Spring is early this year, isn’t it? What joy to be back. Tell me, how many lambs? And have the fish been running well? And does your mother feel better for her stay in London? Such a dreadful time as they must have had at Glenbraddan!’

‘Tea first,’ he said.

She went to her room and freshened herself, and allowed her maid, rigid perfectionist that she was, to brush out her hair and pin it up again in the heavy, classical coil that was never either in fashion or out of it. With her hair, as with her gowns, Vilia made her own rules. She was wearing today a simple, slender travelling dress of blue-grey-green kerseymere that made no concessions to the vast uncomfortable skirts of 1829, which she donned only on social occasions and only under protest. It had long, graceful oversleeves that could be detached when the dress was worn under a pelisse. She put them on now, and went down and through the courtyard and then up to the Long Gallery.

Luke was waiting. ‘A dream,’ he said smoothly when he saw her. ‘Straight out of some mediaeval book of hours. A lady of courtly love.’

Disregarding the drawl, she went to him and, putting her hands on his arms, raised her face to be kissed. ‘My dear, I am back.’ There was a hint of a question in her voice.

‘Ye-e-es.’ Once more, lightly, he dropped his lips to her forehead.

She could feel him shaking a little and said, puzzled, ‘You don’t seem precisely overjoyed to see me?’ He seemed to have put on height since the autumn, and weight, too. She touched a finger to the incipient pouch of flesh at the corner of his mouth and whispered, ‘Kiss me properly.’

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘We mustn’t shock Betty Fraser. Let us possess our souls in patience, or at least until she has brought the tea-tray in.’

She knew by now that something had gone awry, and very recently; it was only a few days since she had received the last of the many letters he had written her during the months of separation, letters burdened with endearments, promises, yearning, letters that had helped her persuade herself that all would be for the best, so that she had come trailing clouds of compliance and good intentions. What could have gone wrong? Nothing very important, presumably; perhaps it was just that his vanity had become inflated by the knowledge that he had won and that she would marry him after all. Irritation stirring in her, she said, ‘By all means,’ and turning, sat down and settled her skirt and sleeves with care so that they fell in becoming folds from the chair to the floor.

Betty came in, bobbing and smiling, and they drank their tea and made polite conversation until Vilia asked again, ‘And your mother, is she well? Did I arrive before I was expected, that she isn’t here?’

Luke stared into his cup for a moment, and then replaced it on the table. His tongue flickered out to moisten his upper lip, and then he said, ‘My parents are still in London, I imagine. I don’t expect them here for another ten days.’ He met her eyes challengingly.

‘What do you mean? How long have you known this?’

‘For some time.’

‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ she asked sharply. ‘How
dared
you bring me here under such circumstances!’ She paused, thinking it through. ‘Were you so unsure of me that you felt it necessary to compromise me? Is that what it is?’

‘Compromise you?’ he repeated. ‘My dear Vilia, is that possible?’

It was such an extraordinary thing to say that, for a moment, the sense didn’t penetrate. ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice, suddenly, was uncertain.

He crossed to her and, taking her hands, pulled her to her feet and then, slowly and provocatively, into his arms. She lay there, and allowed him to kiss her, and knew, as one compelling hand slid down her back pressing her body hard against his, that some things hadn’t changed. But all her instincts warned her to take care, and she didn’t respond even to his lips.

After a moment, he raised his head and murmured, ‘Don’t be stubborn, my dear. Kiss me!’

But before he could silence her again, she turned her head away and said, ‘What did you mean?’

He took a step backwards, then, and holding her hands wide in his, looked her up and down almost impersonally, as if he were assessing the points of a mare he was thinking of buying. ‘How old are you, Vilia? Thirty-three, thirty-four? And fourteen years widowed. Chaste for so long? Uncompromised? You, with your beauty, and your body, and your independence?’