Jennie About to Be (14 page)

Jennie just managed not to groan
Oh no!
“In that case, I had better bathe. The Captain, too. Nigel, we're dining at Linnmore House!” she called in to him; it effectively stopped his whistling.

“What gown will you be wearing?” Morag asked.

“Oh, anything. Whatever isn't too crushed.” She knelt on the chest under the window and tried to see up onto the ridge, but she was looking out into treetops. She knew her disappointment about dinner was childish, but that didn't make it less.

“Is this all right, Mistress?” Morag held up a lilac muslin. “I'll take it down to Aili to freshen. And I will bring your tea.”

She left with the gown over her arm. Nigel came in from the dressing room; he had shed his coat and cravat, and his shirt was comfortably open at the throat. Immediately he tumbled Jennie on the bed and began to undress her. “We'll send word that we're sick.”

“No, we won't. Mocking is catching.”

“We have an hour. Let's pretend we're playing favvers and muvvers under a hedgerow.” He ran a hand up her leg.

“What if Mrs. MacIver takes it into her head to bring up the tea?” She tickled him in the ribs until he fought her off and fell back, panting, on the pillows.

“Did you ever hear that great piece of epic verse beginning ‘Come tickle me, love, in these lonesome ribs'?”

“Did you just compose it?” she asked.

There was a gentle cough outside. Jennie bounced off the bed, straightening her clothes. “
Get up!
” she whispered. Nigel groaned and obeyed. She opened the door for Morag, who was solemn but rather pink. She was carrying a heavy tray, and Nigel took it from her and set it on the table. Morag quickly left, eyes downcast. Jennie sensed that she was trying to keep a straight face.

Besides the tea and the whisky, there was a plate of warm sultana scones and one of shortbread. The pat of butter had a thistle pattern pressed into it.

“Our first meal in our own home,” Jennie said. They toasted their future, she with tea and Nigel with whisky.

“Very smooth stuff,” he said. “It would be crime against mankind to do away with the still that produced this.”

“Is that what Iain meant when he spoke about ruining Paradise?”

“Iain is half poet, half scoundrel. Paradise has already been ruined. The lads I played with are all gone. Some have emigrated, some are dead on the Continent, and others soon will be. Two have become coal miners out on the coast, and that's living death. The gardener's son, who was my special friend, was hanged for the murder of an exciseman.”

“Oh, Nigel!” she exclaimed in pity and horror. He shrugged and kept turning his glass around and around in his fingers.

“It
was
Paradise once, at least for children. I remember that first trout, how it rained that day and I didn't care. I never felt the chill. It was glorious. I remember everything about that night when Shonnie and I slept on Meall na Gobhar Mor and thought the Great Goat was coming for us. We were too frightened to move, and it turned out to be his old pony looking for him.” He looked into the fire. “Well, other good chaps besides Shonnie have died, and honorably, though I've no doubt Shonnie felt his was an honorable death and he went bravely.” He set the glass on the tray. There was moisture on his eyelashes, and he was blinking. “But we have to look ahead, not back. We're too young to live on memories, like Iain Innes.”

“Yes, we are,” she said. “And we have everything to look forward to.” She had never seen him like this before, and he was enhanced even more for her, if that were possible, by the discovery that he was not always a child of the sun but could taste anguish for lost friends.

N
IGEL WAS FORBIDDEN
to assist Jennie with her bath because they needed to keep their wits about them and not forget the command from the manor. He splashed noisily and tunefully in his dressing room and presently came into where she was lathering up with her Pears' soap before the fire. He was wearing the forest green coat and white breeches of the wedding.

“Oh, I
say
!” He leaned over the bath, and she threatened to decorate his coat with lather. He backed off. “Oh, Lord, what a beastly bore this dinner will be. Well, I'm off to the stables to see if everything's right for our horses when they come. Iain tells me Fergus all but speaks their language. He jolly well doesn't speak ours.”

“Is he mute or merely independent?”

“I don't know anything about him. He's one of Grant's pets, from some remote glen on the estate where I've never been. There are a few such spots. We used to think they were haunted; we were told enough stories by the old men to keep us out of there. Now I know why. Small boys are like dogs for nosing out what's best kept secret, like whisky stills.”

“You've stopped believing in ghoulies and gheisties, I take it.”

“Not to mention the phantom piper, the water horse, the Black Dog or the Black Wolf, whichever the loch is named for, and the Great Goat, and the woman who weeps for the baby she smothered at birth, and—”

“Enough, enough!” She menaced him with more suds. He went out, laughing, and ran downstairs.

Slowly she sponged herself, gazing up at the windows, wishing she could see the ridge from here. She looked into the tops of the beeches and sycamores, and saw the unfurling new leaves like infant fists, but it seemed that she could feel the presence of the ridge and, beyond it, the moor. Irritation at Christabel's summons intruded like a toothache trying to start. Why couldn't they have been left alone on their first day here? Even if the cook had no big meal prepared for them, bread and cheese under their own roof would have been all they needed.

Then she suppressed the resentment; the older Gilchrists were simply being courteous, welcoming them to Linnmore. She began to whistle a country dance tune from home. It was a saying that whistling girls and crowing hens always came to no good end, but Papa always retorted that whistling girls and a flock of sheep were the very best crop a farmer could keep.

She dried and powdered herself and sat down at the dressing table in her drawers and chemise to do up her hair. There was a tap at the door, and Morag came in. Aili was behind her, carrying the lilac muslin. Jennie watched her in the mirror as she laid the gown tenderly on the bed, then stood off and doted on it like a loving parent.

“Thank you, Aili, it looks lovely,” Jennie said. Aili scampered out, round-eyed as a rabbit.

“She's shy,” Morag said.

“Yes.” Jennie stood up so Morag could help her with the long back-laced stays. “How I hate these things! I never wore them until I was sixteen; my father didn't approve of them, thank goodness. So don't try to lace too tightly, Morag.”

“I will not,” the girl promised. “Everyone is hungry to see you and the Captain, Mistress.”

“Do you remember my husband at all? It's been a long time since he was last here.”

“Och, yes! I remember him! We wee ones looked up at him as a prince, always such a laughing one, bringing us sweets in his pockets. The yellow hair on him, and the long legs, and the way he used to make everybody smile! So when Mr. Grant told us the Captain was coming, it was like a
miracle
.” She went from rapture to awe. “We had thought he was away to the wars, you see, and with Mr. Grant going, we have all been so worried. It could have been some coldhearted stranger from Inverness or even from the
south
.” That word came in a horrified whisper.

She held Jennie's petticoat for her. “Why
did
Mr. Grant leave?” Jennie asked through the silken folds.

“How could I know?” Morag was gently apologetic. She lifted the lilac muslin from the bed. “You have so many bonny things. It will be such a pleasure to take care of them. And the Captain's, too, if he has no man. Aili is very good with gentlemen's things.” It came out “chentlemen”; the
b
's were
p
's, the
s
's very sibilant.

Jennie knew when a subject had been changed. Very well, she would find out at dinner. Morag deftly did up the hooks and eyes, while Jennie put on her mother's topaz eardrops and pendant, and Morag's murmurs of admiration purled along like a brook. When Jennie wrapped herself in a deep shawl of lilac and purple silk, Morag was enchanted.

“Och, you look just beautiful!” she exclaimed. It looked as if the Captain weren't to receive all the adulations of the household, Jennie thought. She remembered her reticule and gloves, as a sop to Aunt Higham, and walked down the oak staircase for the first time as mistress of her own household when the tall clock struck the quarter before six.

Nigel stood outside the open front door, talking over the parapet to someone below. Behind her Morag said, “You will have a fine dinner at Linnmore House. The chef comes from London.”

“
London!
” Jennie tossed back. “Oh, Lord, I thought I'd left it a world behind me!”

Then the memory of Tamsin struck her like a mailed fist driven into her middle. She imagined the child alive with her here: growing round-cheeked and shiny-haired from the good food and pure air, wearing the pretty prints and muslins they would sew for her. She saw what she had never seen: Tamsin laughing.

They were driven to Linnmore House in an immaculate dogcart, drawn by a large white pony driven by Dougal, who merrily doffed his bonnet but spoke only to the garron. The road led out of the woods surrounding the factor's house and went by pastures on the left that reached northward to the forested slopes of the hills that surged along the sky. Several horses and cows were grazing in the early-evening sunshine, and she recognized Bruce, Wallace, David, and William. Beyond the pastures, woods began again, but soon the red granite of the mansion showed through the trees; the solitary hill behind it grew higher and higher as they approached.

They drove across a short stone bridge over a brook that seemed to come from the hill and run down to Linn Mor at the foot of the lawn. The fine gravel of the driveway now rattled under wheels and hooves. Rhododendrons were massed around the house, so it wasn't quite as barren as it had looked from across the pond, but she still could not warm to the place, and she dreaded the evening.

A tall man in evening dress stood out on the drive to greet them, waving very long arms.

“Nigel, my lad!” He embraced Nigel; his broad smile showed a great many very large and long teeth, stained, but undeniably his own. He wouldn't let Nigel help Jennie but lifted her down himself.

“Jennie, my dear! Aye, you're featherlight, and a wee thing about the middle! May I claim a brother's privilege?” He leaned down and kissed her cheek; he smelled of tobacco and wine. His pale blue eyes, slightly bloodshot, had a watery glisten in their hollows between prominent cheekbones and bristly, brindled eyebrows. He had a big hump-bridged nose, reddish, and a narrow, thrusting jaw accentuated by his high stock. His thick dark hair was going gray.

He walked them into the hall, holding Jennie by one arm and Nigel by the other, laughing and talking at the same time. The laughter was startling at first, a kind of explosive whinny, but he seemed so genuinely fond of Nigel and was so welcoming to her, without any pretense at urbanity, that she liked him at once.

The hall was dominated by a huge but cold fireplace, with a display of ancient weapons arranged above it. When Jennie looked away from this, she encountered the eyes of the dead stags whose antlered heads decorated the opposite wall. Dismayed by this, she turned once more and met the gelid gaze of an impassive butler and an equally blank parlormaid, who outdid Mavis at it. The maid led Jennie up the baronial staircase into a bedchamber that looked unused, decorated for display only. It was very depressing, and the place felt cold and unaired. She shivered when she left off her shawl.

She followed the maid downstairs again to the warmth of coal fires. If this was the woman Morag liked so much, she gave no sign of being likable now. The men stood at the foot of the stairs; Archie whinnied happily at her; Nigel's smile was as warm as an eiderdown or his embrace. She wanted to take his arm, but Archie seized possession of her and escorted her into the drawing room, crying, “Here they are, my dear!”

The drawing room was so crowded with furniture, statuary, vases large and small, cabinets, tables strewn with bibelots, paintings, mirrors, two cut-glass chandeliers above and an extremely busy carpet underfoot, that Christabel was hard to discover. But Archie guided them to the fireplace like a proud spaniel carrying a woodcock to its master. Christabel sat enthroned in a fauteuil below the elaborately carved mantel.

“Here's Nigel back among us, and dear little Jeannie!”

His wife gave him a look of asperity. “Her name is
Eugenia
. How do you do, Eugenia? Good evening, Nigel.” She didn't rise. Her short plump hand was given languidly to each in turn, but there was nothing languid about the way she looked at Jennie. Dark eyes under thick lids and darktinted Grecian curls missed no detail of the girl's face and dress, while her small mouth asked conventionally amiable questions about the journey. The survey was so deliberate it was almost entertaining, and Jennie felt her spirits lifting. She was relieved, too, that she didn't have to exchange kisses with Christabel. At last Mrs. Archie's eyes came back to rest on the topaz pendant with a sort of remote contempt, while she fingered the blaze of stones on her high bosom. There were gems in her hair, in her ears, around her short neck, on her fingers and wrists.

I do believe she's put on everything just to impress me
, Jennie thought. It was strange that a woman of Christabel's age and wealth should work so hard to impress a girl she considered a nobody; no doubt that was the reason, and Christabel wanted to rub her nose in it.

“Are you delicate?” Christabel asked suddenly. “You look it. And this is a brutal place for delicate women.”