Jennie About to Be (13 page)

In the pasture beyond the barn, two ponies watched them the way the shire horses had done. One of them threw up its head with a shrill whinny.

“What is that farm wife's name?” Jennie asked.

“Elliot, I think. Christy Elliot.”

“I like her,” said Jennie. “Now tell me where the moors are. You did promise me a moor, didn't you?”

“Up there.” He waved toward the rising land to the west. “You'll see.” They drove between more cultivated fields and crossed another stone bridge over a placid stream that flowed silently between marshy banks, a mirror for the sky and the cattle that drank from it. Then the road entered a long avenue of beeches. The leaves were still so young they made a translucent ceiling over the roadway.

“These were set out by my great-great-grandmother,” Nigel said. He was sitting forward now with boyish anxiety, watching for something. Jennie preferred watching
him
. She wondered if she'd ever get tired of that, but she couldn't imagine it.

The horses slowed, and Nigel opened the door and was out on the road almost before the wheels had stopped turning. He handed her out, saying urgently, “Look back the way we came. Look
back
.” She obeyed, amused and curious.

“I'll just drive along a wee bit,” Iain Innes said from the box. “Not to spoil the view.”

Jennie heard the horses walking away along the sharp bend. She looked among the beech trunks for bluebells. In the new silence, birdsong rang among the treetops, and she thought she saw a greenfinch.

“
Now
, ” said Nigel. He turned her around and walked her forward.

“Linn Mor,” he said.

It was not the black tarn seen earlier in her nighmarish drowsing. Small winged insects danced above the sparkle and shimmer; three swallows came down on them and flew off again, swooping low over the twinkling yellow heads of the daffodils growing thickly on the far side. Beyond the flowers a long lawn rose to a red granite mansion of many windows, chimneys, gables, cornices, and bays. What softened it in Jennie's eyes, and even gave it a kind of ponderous grace, was the forested hill rising behind it in a cloudlike mass of fresh greenery, accented with dark firs.

Nothing moved about Linnmore House. No smoke trickled from any chimney that Jennie could see; no shadows shifted behind a tall window; no cat or dog sunned on the broad steps leading to the imposing front door. From here there was not the faintest hint that stables and other outbuildings existed.

“Look,” said Nigel. “The water's smooth again. Quick!” All at once the house was reflected, but in its upside-down incarnation it was decked with daffodils. An improvement.

“I used to think there was a monster in the pool,” Nigel was saying. “Someone must have told me that to keep me from going near it and drowning myself. It's very deep.”

“And it's very silent. The house, I mean. Stately, but—” It seemed too forward to tell him she could not imagine herself ever at ease in that place. It was like some enormous mausoleum. “Are you sure they're at home?”

“Positive,” said Nigel, “unless the butler has gone mad and done away with them. First the cook, then the maids, and then the master and mistress, and—”

“
Don't
, Nigel!” She pinched his arm. “Have you ever climbed that hill?”

“The last time was when I was twelvish. That's Meall na Gobhar Mor, the Hill of the Great Goat. Shonnie, the gardener's son, and I slept up there one summer night.” He laughed. “We didn't sleep much. We thought every ghost and evil spirit we'd ever heard of was coming to get us, not to mention the Great Goat with eyes of fire.”

“Tell me about
him
.”

“He's lost in the mists of antiquity. He's probably meant to be some form of the Devil.”

“I'm going up there. If there's no track left, I'll make one. But I want to see the moor first, and I shall see it this afternoon.”

He squeezed her hand in the crook of his elbow. “My dearest love, you needn't do everything all in one day. You have a lifetime.” He turned her in the direction of the chaise, which waited a little distance off in the shadow of the trees. Dougal stood at the horses' heads.

“But do you realize how long it's been since I've really
walked
, in pure air? I don't count London at all!”

At the western side of the pond a drive branched off to the right to circle back to Linnmore House. The chaise went by it along the narrow road through the woods, and at the end of fifteen minutes' ride they came to the factor's residence, Tigh nam Fuaran, the House of the Springs. It was the tall, plain stone house Lady Geoffrey had described, and it stood unobtrusively in deep afternoon shadow at the foot of a high ridge. The ridge took the eye before the house could; it bore a broken line of old Caledonian pines black against the sky. They were like aged soldiers, worn and twisted by the years; some had lost limbs, but they were still valiant.

The instant Jennie set foot on the ground she knew that this place, in contrast with Linnmore House, pulsed with life. The house was very plain, its windows small and few compared to the display of glass at the mansion, and its severely plain front door was reached by a steep staircase. But small birds fluttered and chirped in the ungroomed shrubbery, and there were wild flowers on the unmown lawn. The scent of peat smoke was tossed about on the wind. A blackbird sang on a gable as if he'd flown from London to welcome her here. If she'd been hungering for an omen, the blackbird was it.

Two maids erupted from the front door, leaving it wide open behind them, and ran down the steps. One girl was still pinning her cap.

“Slowly, slowly!” Nigel called to them. “Don't break your necks!”

They laughed as unaffectedly as the bird sang. The little red-haired one, fussing with her cap, was inarticulately beaming, bobbing up and down in curtsies like a wound-up toy, her freckles disappearing in her blushes. The taller girl was dark-haired and gray-eyed, with pink and rounded cheeks.

“Welcome, Mistress Gilchrist!” she was saying. “Welcome, Captain Gilchrist!” Her voice was light and sweet, speaking English charmingly accented with the Gaelic lilt and sibilance. “I am Morag. This is Aili.”

“How do you do, Morag and Aili?” Jennie shook hands with each.

“Well, you look to be a pair of deuced fine girls,” Nigel said. Morag accepted this with composure, and Aili ducked again, making a sound too tiny for a giggle.

“Where is that Fergus now?” Iain Innes asked. “We have work here.”

“He's just coming!” Morag fluted, looking anxiously around. “Och, there he is!” Fergus came around the northern corner of the house with an awkward rolling walk. He was an almost dwarfish man or youth with a big, shaggy black head and heavy black brows making a bar across a lumpy, swarthy, expressionless face. He and Dougal began unstrapping the luggage, Dougal talking all the time in a rapid stream of Gaelic, Fergus not answering.

The girls took anything they could carry and ran up the steps ahead of the men. Nigel and Jennie waited arm in arm until the trunks were taken in. Then they followed, and at the head of the granite steps he swung her into his arms and carried her across the threshold. He didn't put her down at once but revolved slowly in the center of the hall. Fergus and Dougal were on the oak staircase with a trunk, lain behind them either encouraging or teasing, Fergus silently bearing most of the weight. From upstairs the girls' voices fluttered like the birds in the shrubbery.

“Look around you at your new home, Mistress Gilchrist,” Nigel commanded.

Most of the light came from the open front door. She had an impression of paneling that glinted like dark water, stone floors, a few pieces of massive Jacobean furniture. A bowl of daffodils had been set on a carved chest. A tall clock ticked like a metronome, its brass pendulum gleaming through thin shadow.

“What do you think, my love?” Nigel asked her. “Fairly rugged, what?”

“I adore it already!”

He kissed her temple and set her on her feet. Then they saw the woman standing in the shadow of the staircase. Nigel laughed in surprise. “Who's this?”

She came forward. “I am Mrs. MacIver, the cook,” she said. She was a big but lean woman, with large hands folded over her apron at her waist. Her sandy hair was pinned so tightly back under her cap that the harsh lines of her long, pale face were unsparingly emphasized. Her eyes seemed as colorless as her lips. “Would you be liking some tea now, or a glass of wine, Madam? There is also whisky in the house.”

“Mrs. or Mistress will do very well, Mrs. MacIver,” Jennie said. “Not Madam. How do you do?” She went forward with her hand out, expecting a glacial grasp, but it was warm and firm. “I would like some tea, please. Could it be brought up to our room?”

“Certainly.”

Nigel then shook hands with her. “You might put a decanter of whisky on the tray. Now that I've come home to Scotland I must be a thorough Scot, mustn't I? Did Mrs. Archie engage you?”

“No, Captain Gilchrist. Mr. Grant asked me to stay on and help the young lady.”

“I appreciate that!” Jennie exclaimed.

Mrs. MacIver inclined her head and dismissed herself, leaving through a door at the back of the hall. A tang of burning peat escaped past her.

“I didn't think Christabel would have put Highland servants here,” Nigel murmured. “Decent of old Grant, wasn't it?”

“I wish I could thank him.”

“I wonder who distilled the whisky kept in the house. It's likely that our stately Mrs. MacIver's kin have a still hidden somewhere in the heather.”

The Inneses came down the stairs, Dougal grinning and Fergus following like a silent rough-coated black dog.

“It's fine you're home, Captain,” Iain said. “Sending for you was one of the best deeds Linnmore ever did. You'll remember how it was here when you were a wee lad and when you were growing the long legs on you. You called it Paradise. I heard you with these ears the day you caught your first trout.” He touched his ears. “Hamish was rowing you; he'd been teaching you and telling you all the time it was quiet and patient you had to be.
Quiet
!” He laughed. “You could no more be quiet than a young cock in the morning, till that day. You came up in the rain from the loch, carrying your trout and the water running off your nose, and saying, ‘It's Paradise!'”

He tapped Nigel on the chest. “And I'm telling them now in the stables, that lad won't be wanting to ruin Paradise.” He gave Nigel a nod as one equal to another. “Good day, Mistress Gilchrist,” he said to her.

“Thank you, Iain, for a pleasant journey. You, too, Dougal.”

“It's twice welcome you are, Mistress,” Iain said gallantly. Fergus followed them out.

“Thank
you
for helping, Fergus,” Jennie called to him. There was the slightest nod of his big tousled head; then he left.

With their arms around each other Nigel and Jennie went up the stairs. They met Aili at the top; she gasped and backed off, Nigel smiled down on her, and she went scarlet, tucked her chin in her fichu, and descended the stairs so precipitately that Jennie held her breath, waiting to see if she arrived at the bottom on her feet or her head.

Morag was waiting to take them to their room, a big corner chamber, facing east and south. Jennie's open trunk stood in the middle of the floor; otherwise the room was dominated by an immense four-poster bed in the heavy Jacobean style. The hangings of the bed and at the windows had a dark, thick pattern, but they smelled clean, and the sun-bleached linens were scented with some herbal fragrance other than lavender.

Morag drew their attention to the crewelwork coverlet. “Mistress Grant did all that with her own hands. Och, it was lucky she finished it before she died, the poor lady. It has been waiting just there in the chest all these years.”

“Very lucky,” Jennie agreed. Something else was called for. “And it's very beautiful.” Morag stroked it, tenderly.

More daffodils in a pottery jug glowed on one of the deep windowsills, and a small fire of birch logs burned in the grate. There were the usual nightstand and toilet table with basin and ewer, and a towel horse hung with fresh towels; a deep chest stood under a south window. Two tall wing-backed upholstered chairs faced each other across the hearth rug. The furniture was all on the massive side except for a little mahogany card table on slender legs, set between the armchairs, and a cherry dressing table, old and delicately shaped, with a matching chair.

“Those came from the attics of Linnmore House,” Morag said proudly. “One of the maids there is a very nice woman, for all she is English, and she found them for me, and Dougal wheeled them all the way in a barrow.”

Nigel, amused, began, “But my wife is—” Jennie laid her fingers across his mouth.

“Northumberland isn't quite the same, my love,” she said. “Why don't you look around your dressing room and see if it suits? I think your trunk is in there.”

He kissed her fingers, pleasing Morag as well as Jennie, and went into the small neighboring room.

“We thought you might be liking to sit here of an evening till your other things come. Downstairs seems very bleak and bare. There are plenty of candles, you see.” She pointed to the row of candlesticks on the mantel. “It will be snug here. The wee table you could eat from, if you chose.”

“It feels very nice and homelike, Morag,” said Jennie.

“Thank you, Mistress.” She had a dimple in one cheek. “Would you like to bathe after your tea?”

“No, first I'm going to take a long, long walk,” Jennie said with vigor. “I'd like my walking shoes. I think they're in the carpetbag.”

“Oh!” The girl's gray eyes widened. “Madam Gilchrist is expecting you to dine with them at Linnmore House, at six. She is sending the dogcart.”