by M C Beaton
“Can’t,” said Polly. “Gotta see my husband.”
“Polly, I am persuaded the gypsy life will be the death of you.”
“Never bin so ’appy,” said Polly. Then she broke into fluent Gaelic. “Besides, I am bearing his child. Please tell the man to stop. I must go.”
Fiona called the driver, and the carriage rolled to a stop among a miserable collection of huts on the other side of the Inverness bridge.
Polly jumped down and stood grinning up at Fiona, hugging a dirty tartan shawl about her shoulders. “Bye, mum,” she called. “Won’t ever forgit you.”
She turned and scampered away through the houses.
“I had to let her go, Charles,” said Fiona. “She is with child.”
“Remarkably skinny for a pregnant girl,” said the marquess cynically.
“How did you get her off?”
“To be frank with you, I nearly did not. I thought a term of imprisonment would do her good. But it transpired the sentence would almost definitely be hanging. So I talked to the witnesses and recompensed them for their lost handkerchiefs and pointed out the wicked sin of sending little more than a child to her death. So they refused to testify against her. She will not change, Fiona, and next time there will be no one to rescue her.”
“People do change,” said Fiona stoutly. “Only look at Papa.”
After another two hours’ journey, the coachman called down. “If this is your home, my lady, I cannot go any further. There are fallen trees over the drive.”
The marquess swore gently under his breath. “We shall send all the menservants to maneuver the carriage up to the house,” said Fiona. “We could also unhitch two of the horses and ride.”
“Is it far?”
“No, not very far,” said Fiona.
“Then we shall walk,” said the marquess.
He jumped down and shouted orders to the servants to leave the carriage, unhitch the horses, and use them to help carry the baggage up to the house. He then took Fiona’s arm and together they stumbled their way up the drive and over the fallen trees.
“Did your servants not know of our arrival?” asked the marquess.
“I did not think to write to them,” said Fiona guiltily. “I am sure I did write. Oh, Charles, I think I left the letter unposted on my desk.”
“That explains the trees,” said the marquess. “It also considerably relieves my mind. I thought perhaps wild Highlanders were lying in ambush.”
After some time, the marquess said, “It is very dark and we must have walked at least three miles.”
“It is funny how memory tricks one,” replied Fiona. “I always think of our house as being quite near the road. We are nearly there.”
At last the black bulk of a large building loomed up in a clearing with a small moon riding high above its twisted chimneys.
Fiona pulled a frayed length of rope beside the door and a bell clanged out into the night.
“And who answers?” asked her weary husband. “The three witches?”
The door creaked open and a small wizened little man in a nightshirt stood on the threshold, a candle in his hand.
“It is I, Hamish,” said Fiona. “Charles, this is Hamish, our butler. Or rather, our butler while Dougal stays in London.”
Hamish broke out into an angry flood of Gaelic. The marquess interrupted him, “Are we going to stand here in the cold all night? Let us in!”
Hamish backed off, muttering, and then walked around the great hall, lighting pine torches which were thrust in iron brackets in the walls. He shouted at the top of his voice and servants came rushing from all over, all in various stages of undress. They crowded around Fiona, cooing in Gaelic, hugging her, and exclaiming at the modishness of her gown. Then the various Grant poor relations descended from the attics in their nightwear and joined in the welcome.
Fiona held up her hands. “Silence!” she cried. “May I present my husband, the Marquess of Cleveden.”
They all shuffled behind Fiona and stared at the marquess. He felt like an explorer being surveyed by a tribe of aborigines.
“My love,” said the marquess, “is there any hope of supper and bed?”
Fiona cried orders in Gaelic and then drew the marquess over to the fire, which had just started to belch smoke out into the room. The various relatives crowded around and looked at the marquess in awe as if he were some rare beast. Fiona introduced them one by one—the maiden aunts, the half-pay captains.
The marquess was relieved to see that the long table was being hurriedly laid. A barrel of whisky was rolled in, and one by one the relatives shyly proposed toasts. After two hours of steady drinking, they were asked to seat themselves at the table. Roast venison, grouse, hare, and pheasant were carried in and then, to the marquess’s amazement, all the servants sat down at the table as well, still in their nightwear.
When supper was over and the marquess was told by Fiona that they might retire, Hamish, the temporary butler, took off his nightcap and fished a letter out of it which he handed to the marquess, telling him it had arrived several days before. “And we wass about tae send it tae London, not knowing yourself wass coming,” said Hamish, flashing an angry look at Fiona to show he had still not forgiven her for her unannounced arrival.
“I shall read it upstairs,” said the marquess. “Lead the way, my sweeting.”
Fiona led the way up the great stone staircase. “Hamish says the best bedroom has been prepared for us,” she said, opening a massive door on the first landing. The room was bare, uncarpeted, and furnished with a few rickety tables and a great, lumpy bed. The fire consisted of a black mass of smoking peat.
Fiona started to apologize, but the marquess said, “I am so weary, I could sleep anywhere.” He examined the seal on the letter and said, “This is from your father.”
He read the contents and then sighed and passed the letter to Fiona.
Fiona read it in growing horror. Her father had gambled again. In order to settle his debts, he had borrowed money from a moneylender and had given the name of the Marquess of Cleveden. He hoped his dear son-in-law would settle same debt and be assured that his affectionate father-in-law would never, ever gamble again. London was a wicked place. Sir Edward and Lady Grant were setting out for Scotland.
“Oh, Charles,” said Fiona, beginning to cry. “I am so ashamed. Does no one change? First Polly and now Papa.”
The marquess looked at his sobbing wife and said gently, “Come to bed, my love, and there we may be grateful that some things do not change—such as our love for each other.”
At one point during the night, the marquess awoke choking as smoke filled the room. He opened the shutters and an icy gale blew straight in on his naked body. “No glass,” he said. “No glass on the windows. I am fallen among savages.”
His wife stirred in the bed behind him. The blankets fell from her shoulders to expose her breasts. Perhaps I am the savage, thought the marquess with a smile as he climbed back into bed and roused his wife for another session of energetic lovemaking.
He awoke in the morning, convinced someone was being slowly murdered under the window. He looked for a bell, and finding none, he went to the door and shouted. Hamish appeared, still in his nightgown.
“What is that noise?” demanded the marquess.
“Oh, that’s Angus Robertson, the piper,” said Hamish. “His chieftain was journeying to Inverness through the night when a traveler on the road told him you had arrived. The chieftain said that Angus and his wife might stay with you for the length of your visit. My, but it’s a bonny sound.”
The marquess closed the door and went back to the window. Angus was strutting up and down below, playing for all he was worth. Fiona struggled awake. “What beautiful piping,” she said. “It must be Angus. No one else can play like that.”
“No one,” agreed her husband fervently, his mind busy with plans. Glass for the upper windows and encourage Angus to go and play somewhere else. A builder to see to the
chimneys.
“I have everything I want,” said Fiona dreamily. “You, my home, Angus and Christine… oh, if only Papa would not gamble.”
He slid back into bed beside her. “If you had not a gambler’s blood in your veins and you had not made that silly wager, I might not have married you, and oh, that does not bear thinking of.”
He put his arms around her and buried his face in her breast.
“Breakfast!” shouted a cheerful voice.
The marquess straightened up, holding Fiona against him.
Hamish came in with a heavy tray, which he balanced on top of their bodies. “Breakfast in bed Christine Grant—I mean her that’s now Christine Robertson—said. So here it is. Spoiling yourselfs, that’s what you’re doing.”
“Get out of here immediately, you cheeky old man,” shouted Fiona.
Hamish began to whine back in Gaelic.
The marquess started to eat his breakfast. He would leave the handling of these peculiar servants to his wife until he learned how best to deal with them himself. If Osborne had behaved in such a way, the marquess would have thrown his boots at him.
If he could suffer Sir Edward as a father-in-law, then he could put up with anything. He placidly ate his breakfast and let the battle rage over his head.
