A Christmas Journey

by Anne Perry

  “Year and a half,” he replied. “Early summer, it was, of ’51. Now, if I can get you some luncheon, perhaps? You’ll not have eaten, I’ll be bound.”

  “Thank you,” Vespasia accepted before Isobel could demur. They needed sustenance, and even more they needed the time it would take in order to make a decision in the face of this devastating news.

  “What on earth are we going to do?” Isobel asked as soon as they were alone in the main hall again where the fire was warmer. “Will they listen if I explain to them that Mrs. Naylor wasn’t here, and wherever she is, is at the other side of Scotland, and there’s no way to get there?”

  “No,” Vespasia said frankly. “For a start, if she is there, then there must be a way for us to get there, also.” But as she said it she felt panic well up inside her. She had spoken on impulse when she promised to come as far as Inverness with Isobel. Part of it was sympathy, part a profound and increasing dislike for Lady Warburton and a desire to see her thwarted, and a good deal more than she had realized before, a desire for Omegus’s respect, even admiration. Now it was beginning to look like a far greater task than she had bargained for. But pride would not let her falter now, and honesty would not allow her to let Isobel believe that what they had done so far would satisfy their oath.

  Isobel stared into the fire, her face set, jaw tight. “This is ridiculous! Why on earth did this wretched woman go across to the other side of the country? How did Gwendolen suppose anyone was going to get a letter to her? Nobody thought about that when they sent us on a wild-goose chase all the way up here!”

  It was an implied criticism of Omegus, and Vespasia found it stung.

  “Nobody sent us here,” she replied. “It was an opportunity offered so you could redeem yourself from a stupid and cruel remark which ended in tragedy. Omegus did not cause any part of that.”

  Isobel swung around in her chair. “If Gwendolen had any courage at all, she would simply have answered me back! Not gone off and thrown herself into the lake! Or if she wanted to make a grand gesture, then she could at least have done it in the daytime, when someone would have seen her and pulled her out!”

  “Sodden wet, her clothes clinging to her, her hair like rats’ tails, covered in mud and weed? To do what, for heaven’s sake?” Vespasia asked. “It may be romantic to fling yourself into the lake. It is merely ridiculous to be dragged out of it!” But as she stood up and walked away from Isobel toward the window looking over the long slope toward the sea, other thoughts stirred in her mind, memories of Gwendolen happy and with ever-growing confidence. Deliberately she then pictured the moment Isobel had spoken, the freezing seconds before anything had changed, and then Gwendolen’s face stricken with horror. She did not understand it. It was out of proportion to the cruelty of the words. That Bertie did not defend her and then later did not even go after her to protest his disbelief of anything so shallow in her must have hurt her more than she could bear; it was the wound of disillusion. Perhaps she really had loved him and not seen his reality before.

  She tried to recall Gwendolen all through the season. Had she really seemed so fragile? Image after image came to her mind. They were all ordinary, a young woman emerging from mourning, beginning to enjoy herself again, laughing, flirting a little, being careful with expenses, but not seemingly in any difficulty. But had Vespasia looked at her more than superficially?

  For that matter, had she looked at Isobel more than as an intelligent companion, a little different from the ordinary, with whom it was agreeable to spend time, because she had opinions and did not merely say what was expected of her? Vespasia had not honestly sought anything more from her than a relief from tedium. She had told Isobel nothing of herself, certainly nothing of Rome. But she had told nobody of that.

  How odd that Mrs. Naylor had left here so soon after Kilmuir’s death, and apparently with no intention of returning. Something must have prompted such an extraordinary decision.

  She turned and walked out of the hall into the corridor and along to the doorway at the end, which opened onto a gravel path. It was a bright day with a chill wind blowing off the water. The garden was beautifully kept, with grass smooth as a bowling green, perennial flowers clipped back, fruit trees carefully espaliered against the south-facing walls. She walked until she found a man coming from the kitchen garden, and complimented him on it. He thanked her solemnly.

  “Mrs. Naylor must miss this very much,” she said conversationally. “Is Ballachulish equally pleasant?”

  “Och, it’s very grand, and all that, with the mountains and the glen, and so on,” he answered. “But the west is too wet for my liking. It’s a land full of moods. Very dramatic. No much use for growing a garden like this.”

  “Why would one choose to live there?” How bold dare she be?

  “There you have me, my lady,” he confessed. “I couldn’ a do it, and that’s the truth. But if you’re a west-coaster, it’s different. They love it like it was woven into their skins.”

  “Oh? Mrs. Naylor is a west-coaster?” How simple after all.

  “Not she! She’s an Englishwoman like yourself,” he said as if it surprised him, too. “She just took up and went there after poor Mr. Kilmuir was killed. Took it terrible hard. Mind, it was a bad thing, and so sudden, poor man.”

  “Yes, indeed,” she said sympathetically, shivering a little as the wind knifed in over the water, ruffled and white-crested now. “Although I never heard exactly what happened. Poor Gwendolen was too shocked to speak of it.”

  “Horse bolted,” he said, lowering his voice. “Kilmuir and Mrs. Naylor were out in the trap. He was thrown over by a branch, and got himself caught in the rein by his wrist.”

  “He was dragged?” she said in horror. “How appalling! No wonder Gwendolen could not speak of it! Poor Mrs. Naylor. She must have been frightened half out of her wits!”

  “Och, no, madame, not she!” he said briskly, dismissing the very idea. “You do not know Mrs. Naylor if you could think that! More courage than any man I know! Any two men!” He lifted his head with fierce pride as he said it. He looked at her through furrowed brows. “You can smile, but it’s true! Stopped the horse herself, but too late to help him, of course. Must have gone in the first moments. Cut the animal free and rode it home to tell us. Clear as day it was, when we found the wreckage, and poor Kilmuir.”

  “And Mrs. Kilmuir?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “That’s the worst of it, madame. She was out riding, and she saw the whole thing, but too far away to do anything but watch, like seeing your life coming to an end in front of your eyes.” He shook his head minutely. “Didn’t think she’d ever be the same again, poor child. Inconsolable, she was. Wandered around like a ghost, didn’t eat a morsel, nor say a word to anyone. Glad we were when she finally went back to London, and word came that she’d started her life again, the poor lass.”

  “And Mrs. Naylor didn’t go with her?”

  His face stiffened and something within him closed. “No. She’s no fondness for London, and too much to do up here. And if you’ll be excusing me, my lady, I have to take these in for Cook to prepare dinner, since you and your friend will be staying. We’d like to treat you to our best, seeing as you’re friends of Mrs. Kilmuir’s. Walk in the garden all you will, and welcome.”

  She thanked him and continued on, but her mind was lost in picturing the death of Kilmuir, Mrs. Naylor’s reaction, and her attempts to comfort a shattered daughter who had accidentally witnessed it all. She felt a consuming guilt that now they had to find Mrs. Naylor and tell her even worse news. The question of returning to London and simply leaving Gwendolen’s letter to be found when she returned, whenever that was, had been irrevocably answered. It was unthinkable.

  She told Isobel so when they were alone after dinner.

  Isobel turned from the window where she had been standing before the open curtains, staring at the darkness and the water beyond. “Go down the Caledonian Canal, and then overland to Balla… wh
atever it is,” she said in anguish. “How would we do that? Would anyone in their right mind at this time of year? Apart from sheepherders and brigands, that is!”

  “Well, I shall try it,” Vespasia responded. “If you wish to go back to London, then I am sure they will take you to Inverness. I shall go on at least as far as I can, and attempt to deliver the letter to Mrs. Naylor and tell her as much as I know of what happened.”

  Isobel’s face was white, her eyes wide and angry. “That is moral blackmail!” she accused bitterly. “You know what they would say if I went back when you went on! It would be even worse for me than if I’d never come!”

  “Yes, it probably would,” Vespasia agreed. “So you will blackmail me into going back and leaving that poor woman to discover that her daughter is dead — whenever she returns here, this year, or next!”

  Isobel blinked.

  “We appear to have reached an impasse,” Vespasia observed coolly. “Perhaps we should both do as we think right? I am going to Ballachulish, or as far toward it as I can. As you may have noticed, there is very little snow so far.”

  Isobel bit her lip and turned away. “You always get what you want, don’t you?” she said quietly. Her voice was trembling, but it was impossible to tell if it was from anger or fear. “You have money, beauty, and a title, and by heaven, do you know how to use them!” And without looking back she swept out of the room, and Vespasia heard her steps across the hall.

  Vespasia stood alone. Surely what Isobel said was not true? Was she so spoiled, so protected from the reality of other people’s lives? Certainly she had great beauty; she could hardly fail to be aware of that. If the looking glass had not told her, then the envy of women and the adoration of men would have. It was fun; of course it was. But what was it worth? In a few years it would fade, and those who valued her for that alone would leave her for the new beauty of the day — younger, fresher.

  And, yes, she had money. She admitted she was unfamiliar with want for any material thing. And a title? That, too. It opened all manner of doors that would always be closed to others. Was she spoiled? Was she without any true imagination or compassion? Did she lack strength, because she had never been tested?

  No, that was not true! Rome had tested her to the last ounce of her strength. Isobel would never know what she would have given to stay there with Mario, whatever their ideological differences, his republicanism and her monarchist loyalty, his revolutionary passion and fire and her belief in treasuring old and beautiful ways that had proved good down the centuries. Over it all towered his laughter, his warmth, his courage to live or die for his beliefs. How unlike the ordinary, pedestrian kindness of her husband, who gave her freedom but left her soul empty.

  However, that was nothing to do with Isobel, and she would never know of it. This was her journey of expiation, not Vespasia’s.

  They set out immediately after breakfast, Mrs. Naylor’s household providing them with transport by pony and trap as far as Inverness and then beyond to the eastern end of Loch Ness, where they could hire a boat. It would take them the length of the long, winding inland lake with its steep mountainsides as if it were actually a great cleft in the earth filled with fathomless satin gray water, bright as steel. All the way there they had spoken barely a word to each other, sitting side by side in the trap, the wind in their faces, rugs wrapped tightly around their knees.

  “It’s a good thirty mile to Fort Augustus, so it is,” the boatman said as they embarked. He shook his head at the thought. “Then there’s the canal, and another good thirty mile o’ that, before you reach Fort William on the coast.” He squinted up at the sky. “And they always say in the west that if you can see the hills, it’ll rain as sure as can be.”

  “And if you can’t?” Isobel asked.

  “Then it’s raining already.” He smiled.

  “Then we’d best get started,” she answered briskly. “Since it is a fine day now, obviously it is going to rain!”

  “Aye,” he acknowledged. “If that’s what you want?”

  Without looking at Vespasia, Isobel repeated that it was, and accepted the boatman’s assistance into the stern of the small vessel, most of it open to the elements. It was the only way in which they could begin their journey.

  They pulled out into the open water, but stayed closer to the northern shore, as if the center might hold promise of sudden storm, and indeed several times squalls appeared out of nowhere. One moment everything was dazzling with silver light on the water, the slopes of the mountains vivid greens. Then out of the air came a darkness, the peaks were shrouded, and the distance veiled over with impenetrable sheets of driving rain.

  They sheltered in the tiny cabin as the boat rocked and swung, flinging them from side to side. They said nothing, so cold their limbs shook, teeth clenched together. Vespasia cursed her own pride for coming, Isobel for her cruel tongue, Omegus for his redeeming ideas, and Gwendolen for wanting a shallow man like Bertie Rosythe and falling to pieces when she realized what he was.

  “Do you suppose Gwendolen was still in love with Kilmuir?” Vespasia asked when they finally emerged into a glittering world, the water a flat mirror, burning with light in the center, mountains dark as basalt above, and drifts of rain obscuring in the distance.

  Isobel looked at her in surprise. “You mean she realized it that evening, and the grief of losing him returned to her?” There was a lift of hope in her voice.

  “Did you know her, other than just socially during the season?” Vespasia questioned.

  Isobel thought for a few moments. They passed a castle on the foreshore, its outline dramatic against the mountains behind. “A little,” she answered. “I know there was a sadness in her under the gaiety on the surface. But then she was a widow. I know what that is like. Whether you loved your husband wildly or not, there is a terrible loneliness at times.”

  Vespasia felt a stab of guilt. “Of course there must be,” she said gently. It was not Isobel’s right to know that it afflicted her, also — a different kind of loneliness, a hunger that had never been fed, except in brief, dangerous moments, a shared cause, a time that could never have lasted.

  “Actually I thought Kilmuir was a bit of a cad,” Isobel went on thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that he was any better than Bertie Rosythe, really. But it’s natural to remember only what was good about someone after they are dead.”

  Vespasia studied Isobel’s face and saw doubt in it and something that looked like guilt as she stared across the bright water with its shifting patterns, and not once after that did she look back at Vespasia, nor raise the subject again.

  They stayed the night ashore, and continued the next day, reaching Fort Augustus by evening. They parted from that boat and set out on the canal at sunrise in another. The biting cold, the sense of claustrophobia on the long, narrow boat, and the knowledge that they were moving ever farther from land familiar to them, even by repute, eased some of the tension between them.

  But above all was the dread of meeting Mrs. Naylor and having to tell her the truth. They spoke, to break the silence of the vast land and the strangeness of the situation. They sat closer to each other to keep a little warmth, and they shared food when it was offered them, and laughed self-consciously at the inconvenience of the requirements of nature. They filled the long tedium of waiting for locks to fill or empty, stretching their legs by walking back and forth in the bitter wind, staring at the white-crowned hills.

  Some time after dark on the fourth day from Inverness they arrived in Fort William, and again found lodgings. They were shivering with cold and exhaustion, and wretched beyond even thinking of how to move on from there to Ballachulish. They huddled by the fire, trying to get warm enough to think of sleep.

  “Why, in the name of heaven, would Mrs. Naylor come here at all?” Isobel said wretchedly, rubbing her hands together and holding them out before the flames. “Let alone stay for a year and a half? No wonder Gwendolen never mentioned her. She was probably terrified in ca
se anyone discovered she was insane!”

  “Did she never mention her?” Vespasia asked, although Isobel’s remark was sensible enough. She had wondered herself why Mrs. Naylor was not living in her very attractive house at Muir-of-Ord. If one wished seclusion, that was surely far enough from most society.

  “Never,” Isobel said frankly. “Which you must admit is unusual.”

  A new realization came to Vespasia. She had not appreciated before that Isobel had known Gwendolen so well that such an omission would be noticeable to her. In fact, there was rather a lot that Isobel had not said, but perhaps her own desire for Bertie Rosythe’s affection was deeper than it had seemed at Applecross.

  “Yes,” Vespasia said aloud. “Yes, it is.” Actually she wondered why Mrs. Naylor had not come to London with Gwendolen to chaperone her and give all the help she could in gaining a second husband as soon as it was decent to do so.

  “Exactly.” Isobel tried to move her chair even closer to the fire, then realized that it would place her feet practically in the hearth, and her skirts where a spark might catch them, and changed her mind. “I’m dreading meeting this woman.” She looked up at Vespasia candidly. “Do you suppose she might actually be dangerous?”

  Vespasia weighed in her mind the need to continue their journey to the end, wherever that might be, and her growing hunger to know the truth of Gwendolen’s reason for taking her own life. She was becoming concerned that what they had seen at Applecross was only a small part of it. The more she considered it, the less did it seem a sufficient reason.

  “I suppose it is possible,” she answered. “What did Gwendolen say about her family, if she did not speak of her mother at all?”

  “Very little. It was all Kilmuir, and I suppose even that was only how much she missed him.” Isobel frowned. “Naturally, she did not speak of the event of his death, but one would not expect her to. It would have been in very poor taste, distressing for her and embarrassing for everyone else.” She shivered again and wrapped her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. “I have to confess, she behaved as I think I would have myself in that. I cannot fault her. It is simply odd that with a mother still living she never referred to her at all. However, if she’s quite deranged, it would explain it completely.” She puckered her brow. “Do we really have to continue until we find her?”