The Highland Countess (7 page)

God was issuing just punishment, thought Morag, the only God she knew being a Calvinistic one, incapable of charity or mercy and delighting in visiting terrible punishments on the sinner.

She felt debased. Her books were left unopened. Miss Simpson had been right. Treacherous literature had seduced her mind and tempted her from the proper path.

She thought the earl had regretted his forgiving kindness to her because he seemed to be sunk in gloomy meditation most of the time, occasionally throwing her furtive, sly looks from under lowering brows.

A brief thaw made the roads passable again bringing Lord Arthur and Lady Phyllis. Lord Arthur had no need of money that day and so was on his worst behavior, managing to get under his brother’s thick hide. Lady Phyllis simpered and tittered and derided and was particularly spiteful to the earl’s housekeeper, Mrs. Tallant. Now although the earl at times cursed and berated his servants, he was very fond of them, and Lady Phyllis’s treatment of his housekeeper riled him so badly that Morag feared he might have a seizure.

After the unwelcome couple had left and Morag was about to retire for the night, the earl begged her to stay with him. He had something serious to talk about.

“Come and sit by me, Morag,” he said, indicating the footstool at his feet. He waited until she was settled and then, stroking her glistening hair with his heavy hand, began to speak.

“Fionna’s with child. And it’s mine. No, stay. Hear me out. I love the girl but, auld rip that I am, I at least know what’s due tae my name. I cannae marry her. Quietly, now. Don’t look sae shocked. I’ve fathered mair bastards than you’ve had hot meat. She’ll no’ suffer. I’ll marry her off. But that brither o’ mine. I’ve never cared much, Morag, about him inheriting but I care now. Deil tak’ him! He’s a bad landlord and a bad master and you’d not see a penny, Morag.

“So, I’m asking ye a favor, lassie. I want ye tae claim the child as your own.”

“It’s impossible,” cried Morag. “Everyone would know.”

“Listen, wheesht. Only Mrs. Tallant’ll know apart from Fionna hersell and she disnae want the babe. Ye could pad yer gowns and we could tell the world you are expecting an heir. That way everbody’s future would be safe.”

“But how…?”

“Haud yer wheesht. Listen! When the bairn’s near due, we leave for Edinburgh, you, me, Fionna and Mrs. Tallant. Mrs. Tallant has a’ the skill o’ a midwife. Fionna stays in Edinburgh. We return wi’ the babe.”

Morag twisted full round and looked up into his face. “It is a great deal to ask of me,” she cried.

“Oh, aye?” said the earl dryly. “And if thon birkie, Freemantle, had had his way… aye, what then? Ye expect a lot frae me, Morag. Give a little!”

Morag’s already sore conscience was struck another blow. She had not been a good wife. She did not know that her husband’s appetites could only be roused by the lower class and had long assumed his lack of success with her was because of her own lack of love. The least she could do was provide him with an heir—albeit by proxy.

She rose and walked to the window, staring out at the wild black night. Somewhere out there were wives and husbands, ordinary families who lived their placid, respectable lives unplagued by bastards or passion. “Sorry for yourself?” sneered her ever active conscience. “You got off lightly.”

“Very well,” she said, swinging round. “I will do it.”

“Good lass,” said the earl. “We’ll see my man o’ business in Edinburgh at the same time and turn the whole thing ower tae him. I hae a lot of property and a fine house in London, too. I’ll see Arthur well enough but you’ll have the rest in keeping for the bairn until he’s twenty-one. I’ll appoint a steward tae look after the lands so ye won’t be bothered wi’ the managing o’ the estates. I ken a fine fellow…”

“You sound as if you don’t expect to live long,” said Morag as lightly as she could.

“I don’t think I will,” said the earl seriously. “My guts are fair rotted. Aye, we’ve made a sorry mess o’ things, Morag. Now, then, ye havnae read me anything in a while. What aboot a wee story. I like that cheil Roderick Random fine—me being Roderick as well.”

He settled back in his chair with a smile of anticipation as Morag went to fetch the volume. Morag envied him his detachment. He had dealt with the problem and forgotten it already.

Morag read on, her mind busy with preparations. Women no longer wore pads, a fashion of years before where a pad of horse hair was worn under the front of the dress to simulate a look of pregnancy, but the shops of Perth were old-fashioned enough and would surely still have some in stock.

She broke off the narrative and looked up. “Do you never use the house in London, Roderick?”

“Eh, what’s that? No, not these many years. I let it out for the Season, ye ken. It’s in Albemarle Street. I havnae seen it this twenty year.”

Morag wrenched her sinful mind away from thoughts of traveling to London, living in the house, and inviting over that treacherous, fickle Lord Toby. It was madness. He would never hurt her again. She would never see him again.

Winter reluctantly gave way to a chilly spring. Morag placed increasingly larger pads under her gowns and accepted the frigid compliments of Lady Phyllis, who quite patently hoped that this usurper would be stillborn.

At last, the savage gales and driving wind left the countryside smiling under a pale sun. When the first leaves were springing out from the skeletal branches, Morag, the earl, Fionna and Mrs. Tallant took the road to Edinburgh. Hamish had been let into the plot, the earl, whose health had been rapidly worsening, needing at least one man to help him on the journey.

The roads were still bad and they had to move at a snail’s pace on horseback because of Fionna’s delicate condition. They were still a good way from Edinburgh when Fionna’s pains began.

“Bear up,” said the earl. “We’re only a mile from old Cosmo’s place. Bear up, Fionna.” Morag remembered Cosmo, Laird of Glenaquer, as one of the men in the High Street when Lord Toby had introduced himself to the earl.

“It’s nae use,” said Mrs. Tallant grimly. “Some things’ll no wait.”

And so it was that the future tenth Earl of Murr was born in a field under a smiling spring sky, a drift of hawthorn blossom blowing across his face and causing Mrs. Tallant to cry to heaven for forgiveness. “It’s the fairy flower,” she moaned. “The wean is cursed.”

Ever practical, the earl slapped her hysterics quiet and sent Hamish off to his friend Cosmo with a frantic message, begging for a carriage, a wet nurse, and a body of strong men. Fionna lay white and exhausted, her face the color of the drifting hawthorn blossom. Morag held the squalling, raging, hungry baby against her useless breasts and prayed blindly and savagely for help, tears pouring down her face.

But by the time Cosmo arrived at the head of a body of men and with a traveling carriage bearing a wet nurse, Fionna was dead, all traces of her ordeal having been washed away by the efficient Mrs. Tallant. Great sobs racked the earl’s body as Cosmo closed Fionna’s eyes and gruffly ordered the servants out of earshot. The wet nurse took the baby away to the comfort of the carriage and Morag wrapped her arms round her husband, trying to find words of comfort.

Finally a sad procession made their way toward Cosmo, Laird of Glenaquer’s home. Morag now felt drained of all emotion and unutterably weary. She dimly realized with some surprise that Cosmo’s home was modern and comfortable but she soon tumbled headlong into sleep.

When she awoke, it was to find the wet nurse standing beside her bed, the baby in her arms. “Here he is, my leddy,” said the nurse proudly. “A fine wee man. Lucky it is I had the milk, my ain having just died. Ah, well, I’ve five healthy ones and that’s enough.”

She placed the sleeping baby in Morag’s arms and Morag looked down wonderingly at the small face, feeling a strong sense of maternal love.

“What is your name?” she asked the nurse at last.

“Helen MacDonald, my leddy. My husband’s in service as footman to the laird.”

“Leave him with me, Helen,” said Morag, “but tell my lord I will join him shortly.”

“Och, my leddy. It’s havers you’re talking. You’ll no be gettin’ up for a while.”

Morag blinked and then remembered she was supposed to have given birth to this child.

“It was a shame about that lassie,” went on Helen. “To fall deid just when you were having your baby and needed all the help you could get.”

“Indeed, yes.” Poor Fionna. “But I feel very strong,” said Morag.

Helen did not answer but went out shaking her head. That was the Quality for you. Tough as old boots. “Just had a bairn and there she was, standing on the grass as neat as a new pin,” Helen told the other servants. “The lass that died looked mair as if she had given birth than my leddy.”

Morag lay back against the pillows, cradling the baby. Now Cosmo was in the secret as well. So many people to be bound to secrecy!

But this baby would be as much hers as if she had given it birth. That way she could make amends for her sinful love for Lord Toby; for the earl’s adulterous affair with Fionna. The child would not suffer.

“I shall call you Roderick,” she said softly to the sleeping child. Perhaps this child would compensate the earl for his lost love. He must be suffering terribly.

The large figure of the earl wandered aimlessly around his friend Cosmo’s estate during the following week. He did not drink, he ate little, he showed no interest in the child apart from saying dryly that “it was a good thing it wasn’t a girl or he would have gone through the whole pother for nothing,” a comment which caused the servants to shake their heads and say the earl was a hard man.

He felt too weary to continue the journey to Edinburgh and sent for his man of business, lawyer James Murray, to come to him instead. The new will was duly drawn up and signed and witnessed.

This being achieved, the earl resumed his aimless wandering. Even during the night, the servants could hear him pacing backward and forward in his bedchamber.

One day when it was raining heavily, thin freezing iron rods of rain, the earl went out riding, despite protests from Morag and Cosmo. He rode a long way across the countryside, feeling weak and old, wishing for death for the first time and fearing its arrival.

The sound of a jaunty tune on the fiddle roused him from his gloomy reverie. He was approaching a small clachan, or village, little more than a huddle of houses and one muddy street.

The noise of the merry music struck up an answering stir in his heart. It was coming from a long low building. He dismounted and looked in the window. The villagers were celebrating a wedding and the celebrations were in their third day. Couples reeled and staggered to the wild music and the earl tapped his fingers appreciatively on the sill.

Then
she
danced past and looked over one saucy, shoulder at him. She must have been all of thirty but she still had all her teeth. She had a tangled mane of black hair and her short skirts revealed dirty legs and bare feet. She was slightly cross-eyed and her mouth was full and red. “Dinnae staun there,” she called out to the earl. “Come dance!”

And the earl did, leaping and hooching like an elderly Scottish satyr, and the company cheered and yelled and stamped their feet. He felt his youth return. Death fled to the horizon of his mind and he sat down, pulling his latest temptress onto his knee and drinking great gulps of whisky as if it were water.

“Come and dance,” she cried again.

“Och, away wi’ ye,” groaned the earl. “I need a bit o’ rest. I’m too auld.”

“Too auld for everything?” she teased.

“I’m never too auld for that,” grinned the earl.

“Prove it,” she mocked. “Come ootside.”

“I’m your man,” cried the earl, springing to his feet and pulling her laughing out into the rain, out into the cold, wet fields and behind a hedgerow.

As they lay down in the wet grass, she caught his earlobe between her strong teeth.

“Och,” sighed the earl, “ye’ll be the death o’ me.”

And she was.

“Where’s the little divil?” queried Mrs. Tallant, beating eggs with vigor.

Hamish looked up from the silver he was polishing and grunted, “Gone tae Perth wi’ the mistress.”

“Well, that’s a mercy,” snapped Mrs. Tallant. “Nae peace for us when he’s around.”

“He’s a bonny lad,” commented Hamish, brushing a speck of jeweler’s rouge from his new livery, “but he gies me a fair scunner, him and his jokes.” Both servants shook their heads dolefully over the misdeeds of the tenth Earl of Murr.

“He says tae me yesterday, he says,” went on Hamish, “‘How exactly did my father die?’ As if he didn’t know. As if the whole county o’ Perth didn’t know. Whitna scandal that was!”

Seven years had passed since the death of the earl. The fact that he had died of a seizure during the throes of his last passion had been too good a story to keep quiet. It was a miracle that the secret of Roderick, Earl of Murr’s birth had not been equally broadcast. But those that knew the truth of the young earl’s parentage kept their mouths loyally shut—although they detested him one and all.

For young Roderick, known familiarly as Rory, was a pest, albeit a beautiful one. At the age of seven, he had long flowing golden curls and wide gray-blue eyes with a fascinating Celtic tilt that was almost oriental. He was sturdy and well-made and had infinite charm. He also had a great deal of intelligence which, since his overprotective “mother,” Morag, Countess of Murr, considered him too young for boarding school or a tutor, taking charge of his education herself, found its outlet in a long series of ingenious practical jokes.

Only the day before had he put a mouse under the housekeeper’s skirts as she was taking a pie out of the oven. Hamish had beaten him soundly and Rory had retaliated by writing, “Hamish loves Maggie Tallant” all over the castle walls.

Hamish had been elected to the official position as butler to her ladyship, with a fine livery to match. The menservants had received new footmen’s livery in silver and scarlet and had been requested to powder their hair. The child must be surrounded with everything elegant, Morag had said.