A Dark and Distant Shore (14 page)

The silence had lasted too long. She glanced at him obliquely. He was as still as if he had been cast in bronze, his eyes resting unseeingly on the first of the departing carriages. Somehow, his very stillness made up her mind for her. Since she was seven years old, she had always felt alone, but now, uncharacteristically, she had a sudden desire to be like all those other women in the ballroom – bound by ordinary family ties to flesh-and-blood people. She wanted to be loved and protected, to have someone to lean on, and if Andrew Lauriston was the strong, reliable man she believed him to be, she would try very hard to love him in return.

She said, ‘Captain Lauriston,’ and he stirred. ‘You must speak to my trustee, because it is not for me to give you an answer. But for my part, I will be most – happy – to be your wife.’

By the time two days had passed, Luke Telfer was almost frantic with curiosity. Although the ball had been a
succ
è
s fou,
his mother looked as if she were about to dissolve into tears at any moment, his father was distinctly grumpy, and Vilia appeared to be holding her breath most of the time. No one would tell Luke anything, including Henry, but he suspected Henry didn’t know anything anyway. The only thing to do appeared to be to embark on a rigorous programme of eavesdropping.

Not until the Friday, when he was almost ready to give up, did he hear anything worth hearing. Late in the afternoon, he was lurking assiduously in the hall when the knocker went.

‘Captain Lauriston to see Mr Telfer,’ said a faintly Scots voice.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the footman. ‘You are expected.’

The two sets of footsteps marched past and faded in the direction of the library, the footman’s muffled like those of all good servants, and the captain’s clicking with military precision. When the footman had returned to his post in the hall and everything was quiet, Luke picked up a copy of the
Morning Chronicle
for an alibi, and made his stealthy way towards the library.

There was a figure already standing outside the door, with its ear glued to the crack. Luke poked it in the ribs with his newspaper and mouthed, ‘Sorley McClure! What are you doing here?’ But Sorley only grinned and reapplied his ear to the door. Luke hesitated, feeling it was beneath his dignity to join him, but curiosity won.

‘...not her guardian,’ his father was saying. ‘The late Mr Cameron’s man of business was appointed to that office. It is to him that you should address yourself.’ He sounded thoroughly starched-up.

‘I understand that, sir, but it appeared to Miss Cameron and myself that it would be the gravest breach of courtesy if I did not first apply to you. You have been kindness personified to a young lady who has no claim on you. Miss Cameron assures me that you have been as considerate to her as a – as a brother.’

Andrew Lauriston was an honest young man and found it difficult to dissemble. What Miss Cameron had actually said was that Magnus, although not yet thirty, had a knack of behaving to her like a great-great-grandfather.

‘Ha! Harrumph!’ Magnus responded, vaguely flattered, and went on a little less stiffly. ‘There is no doubt, of course, that Pilcher will attend to what I say. On the other hand, I am by no means convinced that you are a suitable match for her.’ In actual fact, the captain could have married Vilia tomorrow, with Magnus’s goodwill, but Lucy had forced him into a corner. ‘It is not,’ he resumed, ‘up to me to inquire about your prospects, or what you have to offer a young lady who has been accustomed to live in the most genteel circumstances.’

It might not be up to him to inquire but, by Jupiter, Andrew thought, he was going to be piqued if he wasn’t told. ‘I appreciate your scruples, sir,’ he said. ‘But I could not expect you to put in a word for me with Miss Cameron’s trustee without knowing more about me than you do. I have been with Wellington in the Peninsula since 1809, when I was nineteen years of age, and if the war continues I hope soon to have my promotion. The field-marshal gives me to understand that he finds me a satisfactory officer.’

‘Even so, you can scarcely set up on a captain’s, or even a major’s, pay!’

‘No, indeed, sir. My father makes me an allowance, and I expect he would increase it if I were to marry. I believe I might be able to rent a small house in the better part of town. Somewhere like Half Moon Street, we thought.’

Outside, Luke and Sorley nodded at each other approvingly. That sounded all right; small but tasteful, and quite suitable for a pair of newly-weds, especially if the captain wasn’t going to be cluttering the place up all the time. Luke had succeeded in placing him now, a curly-haired fellow of godlike proportions, in one of the Highland regiments. Henry said the 42nd, but since Henry always said things authoritatively even when he had no idea what he was talking about, Luke couldn’t be sure. But for Vilia to be thinking of marrying him – well, well!

‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No. I am the only child. My father, like yours, I believe, has devoted most of his life to business...’

Luke almost spoiled everything then by giggling at Sorley, who was tearing his hair in anguished dumb-show. The captain had made a serious mistake, and Luke hoped it wasn’t going to scupper his chances for good and all.

But Andrew had noted Magnus’s reaction to the vulgar mention of business, and was quick to change his tack. ‘...but he succeeded early enough to ensure that I had a good education. A tutor, of course, and then public school. I would have gone on to Oxford, except that nothing would do for me but to have my father buy me a pair of colours!’

Magnus, to whom such an ambition appeared the height of absurdity, smiled perfunctorily. ‘And – uh – what precisely is your father’s business?’

‘He’s an ironmaster. The foundry is near Falkirk, not far from Edinburgh.’

Magnus wasn’t impressed. Ironmastering was a dirty, manual kind of work. At least Mungo Telfer had kept his hands clean. He harrumphed again, and then said, ‘Plenty of business for him with war materials, I suppose? Any – uh – prospect of a title, or anything like that?’

Andrew was startled. ‘I shouldn’t think so. My father has no political involvement.’

‘Pity. Have you consulted him about the marriage?’

‘I have written to say I hope to have the felicity of receiving Miss Cameron’s hand, but there hasn’t yet been time to receive a reply.’ He wasn’t, in fact, looking forward to the reply. The old man wasn’t going to be pleased.

‘Yes, well,’ Magnus said. ‘You are aware that Miss Cameron’s dowry is not large. A matter of a few hundred a year – barely enough to pay for her gowns.’

‘That makes no difference to me, sir. I have no need to marry Miss Cameron for pecuniary reasons!’

Magnus was not a small man, but when the captain pokered up he felt like one. Hastily, he said, ‘Quite, quite! Well, I suppose we should have her in.’

Sorley recognized the significance of Magnus’s footsteps before Luke did. Miming the tug of a bell-pull, he took the younger boy by the shoulder and hurried him off at a fast tiptoe back towards the parlour where, with one of his blinding smiles, he left him.

A few minutes later, Luke heard the tap of Vilia’s sandals making for the library, and then his mother’s more languid step. After that, it was the butler with the refreshment tray. Too much traffic, he thought gloomily, and with the greatest reluctance turned his attention to the
Morning Chronicle.
Jesu, but it was dull!

Vilia’s mind was made up, and nothing Lucy could say would shift her. The wedding took place two weeks later at St George’s, Hanover Square, with Lucy acting as matron of honour, and a monosyllabic fellow officer of Andrew’s filling the role of groom’s man. The only other guests were Magnus, Luke, Mr Pilcher, and Andrew’s father, an even larger man than his son, and with manners anything but conciliating.

‘Goodness,’ Lucy murmured to Vilia, who was looking subdued and colourless. ‘What a disagreeable person!’

‘He is, isn’t he? Thank heavens he lives at a safe distance. I should be frightened to death otherwise.’

The wedding breakfast at St James’s Square was not prolonged. Luke thought the groom a very dull dog. Even though he was grateful to him – Lord,
how
grateful! – for taking Vilia off the family’s hands, he wondered what on earth she had seen in him. But perhaps soldiers were always beef-witted on their wedding day. Vilia wasn’t at her best, either. The white poplin gown with blonde lace flounces and the pink-trimmed yeoman’s hat seemed to emphasize her pallor and thinness. All through the meal, there was a small, cheerful voice in Luke’s head warbling, ‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’ He smiled and waved with what his mother later told him was unbecoming enthusiasm when the happy couple drove away to Grillon’s Hotel, where they were to stay until their house was ready.

They had been at Grillon’s for two weeks, and in the house in Half Moon Street for two days, when Andrew was recalled to join the Peninsular army at Santander.

Vilia wept when he had gone, but not from regret. She had thought she knew what she was doing in marrying him. She had thought she was prepared for the physical side of marriage. Her country childhood had taught her what happened, and Lucy, with real heroism, had told her more, in blushing and somewhat convoluted terms, on the night before the wedding. ‘That side’ of the relationship, she had said, appeared to afford pleasure to one’s husband, but one should not oneself expect anything from it other than the pleasure of giving one’s husband pleasure. ‘Oh, dear! Am I making myself clear? However,’ she had gone on, ‘I am perfectly sure that Captain Lauriston must be aware of this, and will be as gentlemanly about it as dear Magnus is. You have only to express your disinclination, you know, if you feel that you are not quite up to it on any occasion. The merest word is enough.’

It was a week before it occurred to Vilia that Lucy’s ‘merest word’ carried all the weight of years of delicate health and a reputedly weak heart. And perhaps Magnus was less – less
hungry
than Andrew. She had married him hoping to gain privacy for her mind, and instead was being forced to surrender the privacy of her body, totally and completely, again and again and again, insatiably. It was as if Andrew could not look at her without wanting her, and no word from her could stop him when he was in need. His only concession was to say, ‘Please! Why not? I love you so much!’ without for a moment hesitating in the urgent ritual that left him gasping with ecstasy, and her weary, aching, and filled with shame. Just so, she imagined, did a man treat his whore. As she lay under his heavy, invading body, morning after morning, time after time throughout each night, the only thought in her head was, ‘What have I done? Oh, God,
what have I done
?’

She wept with relief when he left for Santander. At least, for a while, her body was her own again. Or so she thought, until she found herself – she, who had never been ill – racked at the beginning of each day with a nausea that was its own diagnosis.

It was Vilia’s attempt to cut Kinveil out of her life that led to Luke Telfer’s real discovery of it.

It was a discovery that began in June 1814 when he had been separated from his parents for almost a year. The part Lucy had manifestly played in Vilia’s introduction to society had provoked Mungo Telfer to an ultimatum. Her first visit to Kinveil, he wrote, which had been postponed year after year because of her health, would now doubtless appear as no more than a minor fatigue after the exertions she had undergone, apparently without ill effect, in London. He would therefore expect his daughter-in-law, his son, and his grandson at Kinveil during the latter part of July. If that was convenient.

With a sigh, Lucy had bowed to the inevitable. Accompanied by three maids, four footmen, one valet, one tutor, and the most imposing collection of baggage the ostler at the Green Man at Barnet ever remembered seeing, a family cavalcade set out for the Highlands three weeks after Vilia’s wedding. When it returned in September, Luke and Henry Phillpotts were no longer with it. By sheer force of personality, and without so much as a mention of who controlled the family purse strings, Mungo had carried his point that it was time for the boy to learn something about the estate he would inherit some day and the world that encompassed it. Luke was to attend Inverness Academy during term and spend his holidays at Kinveil. Only for a year, Lucy had said pleadingly, and Mungo, who had no opinion at all of Henry Phillpotts and a high opinion of Inverness Academy, had replied mendaciously, ‘Aye, well. We’ll see.’

Looking at the weary and woebegone ten-year-old who returned to Kinveil after his first year at the Academy, he wondered whether he had been wrong. The school had been founded by voluntary subscription in 1791, and its governors made sure that the subscribers were given value for their money. Education was what they had paid for, and no one could doubt that the boys were educated to within an inch of their lives. English and trigonometry, Latin and navigation, Greek and natural philosophy – Luke’s mind had reeled at the very sight of the curriculum. There was no slacking even on Sundays, and holidays consisted of two weeks over Christmas and the New Year, and a magnanimous five weeks in the summer that Luke thought must have been granted by some kind of oversight.

He had never been so exhausted in his life, and his grandfather, with a sigh, conceded that he could stay at Kinveil until he recovered his strength, even if it took five months rather than the five weeks allowed by the school calendar. Like the majority of belligerently healthy people, Mungo was terrified of illness.

It was a summer that Luke was always to remember, one of those periods of pure, unshadowed happiness that rarely last for more than a few days. This one lasted for twelve idyllic weeks.

It began one night in the latter part of June. Mungo, taking advantage of the season, when there were only a couple of hours of darkness, had driven over to Glenbraddan to see Charlotte and the children, who now included eighteen-month-old Grace. Henry Phillpotts was away, too, because his mother had died and Mungo had given him permission to go and settle her affairs. Luke couldn’t imagine what kind of woman had borne and reared Henry, whom he had always thought of as springing fully-cassocked from between the pages of some volume entitled
Great Windbags of History.