Maggie (11 page)

“I should like to go to London for a little,” she said in hesitant, soft voice. His face became a social mask but she knew he was disappointed and that he had been hoping she
would refuse.

Sympathy for his predicament made her ask softly, “This lady, is she very beautiful?”

“Very,” smiled the earl. He tried to conjure up a picture of Mrs. Murray in his mind, but her image seemed to be blotted out by the presence of this girl with her disturbing, haunting beauty. So, instead, he remembered Dolly Murray’s sparkling, witty, frivolous conversations which always made him feel exhilarated, as if he had been drinking champagne. He could never imagine Maggie saying anything frivolous and the thought made him smile again.

“She has brown, glossy hair,” said the earl, “and a very trim figure. But her great charm is in her manner. She is very witty and gay and all the chaps adore her. I’ll be very lucky if she accepts me.”

“Is she very young?” asked Maggie, trying to overcome her natural shyness in an effort to please him.

“Yes. No. Well, not as young as you. Mrs. Murray is a widow?”

“Oh, and what happened to Mr. Murray?”

The earl gave a light laugh. “As a matter of fact, I forgot to ask. It’s not the sort of thing one does ask, like, say, ‘What on earth did you do with Mr. Murray?’. Oh dear,” he added guiltily as Maggie flushed. “I forgot. You’re a widow as well.”

“I think,” said Maggie, carefully changing the subject, “that Miss Rochester intends to take me about. There will surely be no need for you to escort us. I would not wish to spoil your courtship.”

“Oh, I don’t mind taking you around a bit,” said Peter, relaxing as he realized that Maggie did not mean to maintain any hold over him, or to insist they were married or anything awkward like that. “You’ll need some good clothes. Good heavens! Where did you get that gown?”

“Is there something wrong with it?” asked Maggie,
fingering the fine lace of her gown. “Miss Rochester had it made by the village dressmaker. It’s quite the nicest thing I’ve ever worn.”

“Won’t do,” said the earl severely. He looked at the satin frills and bows that embellished the bodice. “It’s too
bunchy
. You should wear simple, elegant lines. Mrs. Murray wears beautiful clothes. When she drives in the Park, people stand on chairs just to get a look at her.”

Maggie fought down an irrational feeling of dislike for this Merry Widow and said, “Oh,” in a small voice.

After a little silence, Maggie asked, “Did you bring Roshie with you?”

“No, I left him in London. Why?”

Maggie gave a little sigh. “I fear he does not approve of me.”

“Roshie is sometimes too outspoken,” said the earl. “What did he say to you? That night when we first arrived in London and he spoke in Gaelic?”

“It does not matter,” said Maggie. “I would not be wanting to get the man into trouble.”

“I insist.”

“Oh, dear. Well, he said, when you mentioned getting the food, that he hoped there wouldn’t be any poison in it.”

“That’s more than enough,” said the earl wrathfully. “He has gone too far.”

“You must not be angry with him on my account,” said Maggie. “Roshie is very loyal to you and he simply thought you were making a mistake. There’s more than Roshie will think so.”

“There’s no need for anyone to find out who you are as long as you are in the south of England,” he said, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets and stretching out his long legs. “Why does Roshie have a different accent from you? He’s Highland as well, isn’t he?”

“He’s from Argyll,” explained Maggie. “Their English is
a little broader than ours in the north and they speak Scots as well as the Gaelic; they use quite a lot of words in the dialect. Now me, I hardly used English at all when I worked in my father’s shop. We spoke the Gaelic at home. I’m used to the English speech now, but at first I was that slow for I had to translate what people were saying into Gaelic in my mind, answer them in my mind in the Gaelic, and then translate it back into English.”

“Do you miss your home? The Highlands, I mean. Not Glasgow.”

“Not really,” said Maggie, twisting a fold of her gown between her fingers. “I think my father treated me badly. He would not have been able to marry me off to Mr. Macleod, perhaps, if I had gone to Lord Lovat.”

“Who is Lord Lovat? Oh, of course, I know. He owns all the land around Beauly. But what difference could he possibly have made to your father’s arrangements?”

“Well, you should know,” said Maggie in slow surprise, “being a lord yourself. Lord Lovat sees to the welfare of all his tenants, and if you have a problem—och, about anything—his lordship will aye sort it out.”

“But surely if one’s tenants are well-housed and fed, one need not concern oneself with the problems of their family lives?”

“Oh, well,” sighed Maggie, “you’re English, so I suppose it’s different. They haven’t the heart in them. Like the Duke of Sutherland. He was English and he had the people driven out of their houses to make way for sheep. They were given seven days to get out and if they didn’t, the factors would burn the roofs over their heads. But Lord Lovat is not like that. He was away at the time Mr. Macleod arrived and I had never got to know anyone in the town very well, and the ones that I did know slightly were all afraid of my father.”

“And would Lord Lovat have interested himself in the marriage of a young girl?”

“Perhaps,” said Maggie. “Perhaps.”

“But,” the earl burst out, “surely he leaves someone in charge?”

“That’s not the same. A man working for his lordship would not be concerning himself with our little troubles. Nor should he. We are not his people and it is not his land.”

“Dear me. Are all the Scottish aristocracy so patriarchal?”

“The good ones. Yet, of course, there are bad ones.”

“Like me.”

“Now, I did not say that,” said Maggie with a rippling laugh.

The earl drew out a flat silver case and extracted a cheroot. He lit it and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

Perhaps there was more to this business of being an earl than he had realized. He felt obscurely guilty. He had not paid much attention to the people in his county after he had noted that they all seemed relatively comfortable and prosperous.

He thought of Mrs. Murray and wished she were with him now. She would surely tease him out of these burgeoning scruples. He thought of Mrs. Murray at Strathairn and wondered if the tenants would like her, and, in almost the same moment, decided he was being ridiculous. It did not matter whether they liked her or not.

He wanted to forget about Scotland. Scotland meant the gloomy tedium of Strathairn Castle and the grim, black tenements of Glasgow and his taking on that stupid bet. He did not wish to think of Scotland. Let them all go to the devil. But he could not get rid of that nagging feeling of guilt and decided, unfairly, it was all Maggie’s fault.

He cast a sour look at Maggie who was smoothing a fold in her dress. What did she think when that vague, dreamy look crossed her face?

He did not like women with an air of mystery. Leave all
that sort of rubbish to willowy aesthetes. He liked his women pretty and jolly.

Miss Rochester was surprised on descending to the garden half an hour later to find that the earl had gone. Maggie told her that he had said he would send for both of them at the end of the following week.

Maggie looked sad and had faint purple shadows under her eyes.

“Did he tell you about that woman he wants to marry?” asked Miss Rochester anxiously.

“Yes, he did that,” said Maggie wearily. “A widow, she is. A Mrs. Murray.”

“I
never
trust widows,” snapped Miss Rochester, stumping off to order dinner and quite forgetting that her young guest was a singularly notorious member of that despised species.

Three weeks had passed since their encounter in the garden, and somehow Maggie Macleod was still making the earl feel guilty. Not that she was Maggie Macleod any more. She was Miss Margaret Dunglass, a relative who had been sent to London to ‘do’ the Season.

The earl sat in Mrs. Murray’s elegant drawing-room and thought some dark thoughts about Maggie. She and Mrs. Murray had not yet met, although Mrs. Murray never seemed to tire of asking the earl questions about his mysterious ‘cousin’.

The earl would laugh and say Margaret Dunglass was a quiet little thing, very retiring, and Mrs. Murray would look pleased and drop the subject, only to return to it a few days later. For Mrs. Murray had begun to think this cousin was a very bad influence on the open-handed earl.

Perhaps she had reason to.

It had all started when Maggie had arrived at the house in Charlton Street. She had eyed the bright new William Morris wallpaper and the new sea-green carpet and the
art nouveau
hangings, and, when pressed for an opinion, had said that it had looked more ‘homey’ before, and the earl, who was reluctantly inclined to be of the same opinion but did not want any criticism, even several times removed, of his beloved Dolly Murray, had become quite angry with her and had said caustically that Maggie herself could do with
being ‘done over’ since her clothes were ‘homey’ to say the least.

He had not seen much of Maggie and Miss Rochester after they had moved in. Miss Rochester had plunged into a hectic round of innocent London life, dragging Maggie around all the sights, to all the playhouses, and for long, energetic walks in the parks.

Then, only that morning, the bill had arrived from the firm of interior decorators. He had been shocked at the price and had said as much in Maggie’s hearing. The girl had quietly taken the bill from him, studied it carefully, and then had said calmly that he was being ‘robbed blind’.

Fortified by this remark, the earl had duly so far forgotten himself as to tell Mrs. Murray that he was being robbed blind by the interior decorating company.

Now Mrs. Murray was walking up and down her drawing-room, trying to control her temper. “What do you plan to do about it?” she asked at last.

“Nothing, personally, that is,” said the earl, and then, quoting Maggie, he added, “There’s nothing in that bill that cannot be sorted out by a good firm of Scottish lawyers.”

Mrs. Murray glared at him in alarm. His Scottish lawyers would soon find her own name on the books.

Forcing a smile, she sat down on the sofa beside him and gazed into his eyes. “Dear Peter,” she murmured, “you are becoming
so
Scotch, counting every penny. It is not at all the thing to quibble over such matters. If you hire the
best
, then you must pay for the best. Please say you will let the matter drop. After all, I recommended the firm, and I would certainly not, had I guessed you were going to be so… so…
parsimonious
.”

Her little dimpled hands flew to her face and she gave a choked sob.

“Mrs. Murray. Dolly,” said the earl, gently drawing her
hands away from her face. “You are quite right. I am being such a bear.”

“You’ve never been the same since that cousin of yours arrived,” sniffed Dolly.

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about her,” said the earl. “Let’s talk about us. Are you coming with me to the opera tonight?”

“Darling Peter, I can’t. I’ve got to see this dreary aunt in Surrey.”

“Must you? You did promise to come.”

“How frightful. So I did. But Auntie is due to pop off at any moment and the old thing won’t leave me her goodies in her will if I’m not at the bedside to clutch her scrawny hand. Why don’t you take that little Scotch cousin and your aunt whatsername?”

“Aunt Sarah? Yes, that might be an idea. If you can’t come, then I don’t really care who I take along.”

“Darling flirt,” she murmured. She moved away from him a little and asked lightly. “Is there another lady in your life? Mrs. Jouffrey says she saw you in Asprey’s, picking out a divine diamond necklace.”

The earl carefully studied the toe of his elastic-sided boot. Mrs. Murray had hinted often and delicately that she adored diamonds. He had at last taken the hint and had bought her a magnificent necklace at Asprey’s. He had taken it home and had shown it to Maggie and Miss Rochester.

Maggie Macleod had stared at the necklace and had said in soft surprise, “I thought Mrs. Murray was a lady!”

“Of course she is,” the earl had snapped.

“I didn’t think you gave ladies that kind of present until you were engaged to be married,” Maggie had said seriously. “You see, Miss Rochester’s teaching me a lot about etiquette.”

“Etiquette! Aunt Sarah, you have some very antiquated notions.”

“Really!” Miss Rochester had barked, shifting her great
bulk uneasily on a spindly chair. “That sort of thing hasn’t changed, let me tell you. Propose first, necklace afterwards. I mean, she didn’t
ask
for diamonds, did she? Only a tart does that.”

And so the earl had decided that, of course, Dolly hadn’t asked or even hinted and had put the necklace away in his bureau drawer.

“Oh, that,” said the earl, smiling at Dolly Murray. “I didn’t buy it,” he lied. “I like looking at diamonds because they remind me of you. Sparkling and shining and very, very precious.”

Dolly Murray looked at him thoughtfully. Surely Maria Jouffrey had said the earl had
bought
the necklace. To hint again that he should buy her a little token of his affection was too blatant. Especially since she was sure he meant to marry her. But why didn’t he
ask
?

She did not know that the earl was pursuing an old-fashioned course of courtship. One courted during the Season and proposed at the end of it. Dolly had many admirers but she had gradually discouraged them all with the exception of the earl. Could that mysterious cousin have something to do with his reluctance to propose?

She glanced at him from under her eyelashes. “Do you think your cousin will catch a fellow this Season?”

“I don’t think she wants one,” said the earl before he could stop himself.

“No girl is
that
divorced from humanity. What does she do? I haven’t seen her in the Park or at Ascot or Henley or any of the balls.”