The Highland Countess
Read The Highland Countess Online
Authors: M.C. Beaton
M. C. Beaton
is the author of the hugely successful Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as a quartet of Edwardian murder mysteries featuring heroine Lady Rose Summer, several Regency romance series and a stand-alone murder mystery,
The Skeleton in the Closet
– all published by Constable & Robinson. She left a full-time career in journalism to turn to writing, and now divides her time between the Cotswolds and Paris. Visit
www.mcbeatonbooks.co.uk
for more, or follow M. C. Beaton on Twitter:
@mc_beaton
.
Titles by M. C. Beaton
The Poor Relation
Lady Fortescue Steps Out • Miss Tonks Turns to Crime • Mrs Budley Falls from Grace
Sir Philip’s Folly • Colonel Sandhurst to the Rescue • Back in Society
A House for the Season
The Miser of Mayfair
•
Plain Jane
•
The Wicked Godmother
Rake’s Progress
•
The Adventuress
•
Rainbird’s Revenge
The Six Sisters
Minerva
•
The Taming of Annabelle
•
Deirdre and Desire
Daphne
•
Diana the Huntress
•
Frederica in Fashion
Edwardian Murder Mysteries
Snobbery with Violence
•
Hasty Death
•
Sick of Shadows
Our Lady of Pain
The Travelling Matchmaker
Emily Goes to Exeter
•
Belinda Goes to Bath
•
Penelope Goes to Portsmouth
Beatrice Goes to Brighton
•
Deborah Goes to Dover
•
Yvonne Goes to York
Edwardian Candlelight
Polly • Molly • Ginny • Tilly • Susie • Kitty • Daisy • Sally • Maggie • Poppy • Pretty Polly • Lucy • My Lords, Ladies and Marjorie
Regency Candlelight
Annabelle • Henrietta • Penelope
Regency Royal
The Westerby Inheritance • The Marquis Takes a Bride • Lady Anne’s Deception • Lady Margery’s Intrigue • The Savage Marquess • My Dear Duchess • The Highland Countess • Lady Lucy’s Lover • The Ghost and Lady Alice • Love and Lady Lovelace • Duke’s Diamonds • The Viscount’s Revenge • The Paper Princess • The Desirable Duchess • The Sins of Lady Dacey • The Dreadful Debutante • The Chocolate Debutante • The Loves of Lord Granton • Milady in Love • The Scandalous Marriage
Regency Scandal
His Lordship’s Pleasure • Her Grace’s Passion • The Scandalous Lady Wright
Regency Flame
Those Endearing Young Charms •
The Flirt • Lessons in Love • Regency Gold • Miss Fiona’s Fancy • The French Affair • To Dream of Love • A Marriage of Inconvenience • A Governess of Distinction • The Glitter of Gold
Regency Season
The Original Miss Honeyford • The Education of Miss Paterson • At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple • Sweet Masquerade ?The Constant Companion • Quadrille • The Perfect Gentleman • Dancing on the Wind • Ms. Davenport’s Christmas
The Waverly Women
The First Rebellion • Silken Bonds • The Love Match
Agatha Raisin
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
•
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener
•
Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage
•
Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death
•
Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam
•
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate
•
Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Deadly Dance
•
Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor
Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye
Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison
•
Agatha Raisin: There Goes the Bride
Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body
•
Agatha Raisin: As the Pig Turns
Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers • Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Gossip
•
Death of a Cad
•
Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife
•
Death of a Hussy
•
Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster
•
Death of a Glutton
•
Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man
•
Death of a Nag
•
Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist
•
Death of a Scriptwriter
•
Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas
•
Death of a Dustman
•
Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village
•
Death of a Poison Pen
•
Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer
•
Death of a Maid
•
Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch
•
Death of a Valentine
•
Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher • Death of Yesterday
The Skeleton in the Closet
Also available
The Agatha Raisin Companion
M. C. Beaton
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
First electronic edition published 2011
by RosettaBooks LLC, New York
This edition published in the UK by Canvas,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013
Copyright © M. C. Beaton, 1981
The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-47210-137-2 (ebook)
Cover copyright © Constable & Robinson
For
Howard Lewis
Chapter One
The newly wed Countess of Murr had not, as yet, read any novels or poetry and she had not—as yet—fallen in love… which was perhaps just as well.
Morag had celebrated her seventeenth birthday shortly before her wedding to the earl. The earl was fifty-four. She was a true Highland beauty with thick, curly, dark-red hair and a creamy complexion. There are two types of redheads in Scotland. One is the more sandy-haired variety which goes with a pale, freckled complexion and light eyelashes. The second category, to which Morag belonged, has hair of a red which is almost purple in tone and has all the beauty of a flawless complexion and vivid eyes.
Her eyes were of a particularly intense blue and were fringed with heavy black lashes. Such notables as His Grace, the Duke of Wellington, might consider red hair “unfortunate” and go so far as to shave his son’s eyebrows in an attempt to mitigate some of the unsightly color, but Morag was still far from the hot drawing rooms of London, and, in Perthshire, Scotland, where she was in the process of settling into her new married life, her hair was considered a thing of beauty.
Two weeks after her marriage, she was pacing the castle gardens and wondering uneasily if all marriages were like hers.
Her father, the Laird of Clacharder, had kept her well away from any young men, and his few servants were old. Her sole companion had been her English governess, a gaunt female called Miss Simpson who taught Morag her prunes and prisms and use of the globes and imposed on Morag’s natural, soft, Scottish burr the arctic and glacial tones of the upper-class English. Morag’s mother had died when she was a baby and she had no other female to advise her.
She had assumed, however, that one day she would make her come-out at the balls and assemblies of Edinburgh like other young females of her class. But her father had other plans. One day he had abruptly told her that she was betrothed to the Earl of Murr. Morag did not consider for a moment disobeying her father, though it all seemed very strange. No dream knight cantered to her rescue across the virginal fields of her mind. After all, a steady diet of sermons and judicious extracts from the Bible was hardly conducive to romance.
Great clouds tugged across the sky above the battlements of the castle driven by a high wind, but not a breeze whispered over the high walls of the castle gardens where the air was warm and still.
Morag sat down on a marble bench—feet together, back straight as a ramrod—and stared unseeingly at the riot of color around her: roses, dahlias, lupins, gladioli and fuchsia. Her marriage was not an ordinary one, of that she was becoming increasingly sure. She went over the events of the wedding and after in an effort to clarify her thoughts.
The bewilderment had started when her father, Angus Grant, had sent Miss Simpson to her on her wedding morn with instructions to “put a few of the facts of life into the lassie’s head.”
Like marriage, the facts of life had escaped Miss Simpson. She had been born to one of the laird’s father’s tenant farmers. Her father had been proud of his clever daughter and had had her educated at the local school. She had obtained a post as governess to the English Marquess of Devizes and had traveled south to make her fortune. But after having worked for forty years in various titled households, she had found herself too old to find another post in the fickle south, and so she had returned to her native land. The laird had offered her room and board, provided she acted as companion and governess to his daughter, Morag, and she had gratefully accepted, her father being now dead and her brother who had inherited the farm having a shrew of a wife.
Nonetheless, spinster though she was, she had often overheard strange and disturbing conversations in her sojourn in England. So she tried her best.
“There are some things, Miss Grant,” said the governess, turning an interesting shade of mottled purple, “that a young girl should know about her wedding night.”
“Oh,” said Morag, trying to give the governess her full attention while coping with novel feelings of excitement and anticipation. She had never been away from home before. Now she would have a house of her own—and a castle at that.
“Yes,” went on Miss Simpson, faint but pursuing. “You will share a bed with your lord and he will do things to you that are necessary to beget a child.”
Now Miss Simpson had Morag’s full blue-eyed attention. “What things?”
“Things that a young lady does not discuss or even think about,” said Miss Simpson, breathing hard. “You must simply endure whatever happens, close your eyes tightly and think of the king.”
Miss Simpson avoided Morag’s eyes, staring at some point over the girl’s shoulder. Morag did not know that Miss Simpson had heard several unsavory stories about the earl—that although he had been married before, he had no legitimate heir, only a string of bastards, and that he could only take his pleasures with the lowest of the serving wenches but that a high-bred lady “froze his balls”—an expression which Miss Simpson did not understand, thinking it referred to some heraldic term or something like the ball and sceptre. But deep in her heart, Miss Simpson envied Morag. Who was ever happily married anyway? A husband meant a secure future for a woman. Morag would never know what it meant to be passed from household to household.