by Carola Dunn
“I’ve sampled many interesting foods on my travels,” he said, “but there is nothing to beat English pastries warm from the oven. And that reminds me, Lady Catriona. I’m hoping to obtain some information from you. The manor is in excellent condition–the lawyer tells me you have been keeping an eye on it? I am most grateful. Indeed, I was dismayed to hear that you had removed so promptly to the Dower House. There was no need—”
“It seemed advisable. We knew nothing of your disposition.”
“True. I might have been the sort of villain who evicts grieving women and children from their homes.”
Catriona shook her head at him in mock reproach. “Well, you might! In any case, we are perfectly comfortable here. Jeremy had the house set in order, expecting that… expecting…” Her throat tightened, blocking the words.
He came to her rescue. “A wise precaution, and it’s a charming house. However, I trust you will continue to make use of the Marchbank park and gardens as if they were your own.”
“You are very kind, Sir Gideon. To tell the truth, I doubt we could keep the children away if we tried,” she added candidly. “But we have wandered from the point. What is it you wish to consult me about?”
“I want your advice about hiring servants. Though the present staff has kept the place well, now that we are in residence, they are too few if they are not to be grossly overworked. For a start, I need a cook, preferably one who has as light a hand with pastry as yours.”
“You cannot have Sarah, but do have another jam tart. Daphne, pray– Oh, twins!”
Unseen by their grandmother, and by their mother, who sipped her tea with bowed head, listening to Mr Talgarth, the children had taken the entire plate of pastries to their corner. The last crumb disappeared as Catriona spoke, and they looked up with jammy beams. Sir Gideon grinned.
“We’ve been ever so quiet,” said Daphne with an air of conscious rectitude.
“We don’t like almond cakes,” Donald explained.
“It’s all right, Grandmama. Sarah made loads of jam tarts.”
“We’ll get you some more.”
“How could you!” Letty sprang to her feet, far more agitated than their minor naughtiness warranted.
Surprised, Cariona said calmly, “Pray ask Lois to bring more tarts, children. Wash your faces—I expect your fingers need it, too—and go and play in the garden.”
Subdued by their mother’s unexpected outburst, Daphne said, “Yes, Grandmama.”
As Letty subsided into her chair, Donald ran to her, flung his arms round her, and kissed her. “We’re sorry, Mama. We didn’t mean to vex you.”
They dashed from the room. Mr Talgarth took a handerchief from his pocket and gravely handed it to Letty. Her face almost as red as the jam, she scrubbed the sticky smear from her cheek.
Once more the poor girl had been put to the blush before Harry Talgarth. If he had seemed amused, as Sir Gideon was, she could have laughed it off instead of being horridly embarrassed. Catriona decided it was time to end their tête-à-tête.
“Letty you know the village people as well as I do. Come and help me advise Sir Gideon as to what servants can be hired locally and which he must advertise for.”
Mr Talgarth produced a notebook and pencil and wrote down names as they talked. When at last they had discussed all available positions, Sir Gideon thanked his advisers.
“I am glad you intend to take on so many,” said Catriona. “I hated having to let them go when we left the manor. Am I right in supposing this means you are going to settle at Marchbank?”
“We are. We have seen a good part of the world, and now it’s time to settle down and tend my acres. To begin with, would you object if I had a new jetty built and obtained a boat that will actually float?”
“Object? Good heavens, why should I object?”
He turned to Letty with a smile. “I was thinking of your enterprising offspring, Mrs Rosebay. I fear a seaworthy vessel might prove an irresistible temptation to a couple of pirates.”
“Then I had best teach them to swim,” Mr Talgarth unexpectedly proposed in a practical tone.
Letty stared in astonishment. “Teach them? Both of them? But they are so full of mischief!”
“That’s why they need to learn,” he pointed out, “and the sooner the better, while the water is warm enough. They are good-natured and loving despite their mischief. I have no qualms if you have not, ma’am.”
“An excellent suggestion,” said Catriona, since Letty still looked stunned.
“You’d best start tomorrow, Harry, if the weather holds.” Sir Gideon stood up to take his leave, and a few minutes later the gentlemen were gone.
Letty started to collect cups and plates. “I cannot believe it,” she said, stopping dead with the wineglass in her hand. “I was convinced that he had taken the twins in dislike and held me to blame for their naughtiness.”
“I could ssee you were ill at ease with Mr Talgarth.” Catriona brushed some crumbs off the table into her hand and deposited them on the tray. “However, since it sounds as if he is to make his home at Marchbank with Sir Gideon, you must strive to overcome your dislike.”
“I don’t precisely dislike him, Mama. How can I, when he has so kindly offered to teach Donald and Daphne to swim? He just…makes me uneasy.”
“It is a pity that he did not turn it to a joke when Donald bedaubed your cheek with jam.”
“Oh no,” Letty exclaimed with fervour, “that would have been worse than anything!”
“Then it seems the poor fellow can do nothing right,” said Catriona, smiling. “How fortunate that Sir Gideon is so charming.”
“Indeed he is most agreeable.”
With this temperate praise Catriona contened herself. Letty must have time to get to know Sir Gideon before marriage was to be thought of—always supposing that the baronet was in the market for a wife.
* * * *
As twin red-headed sea serpents splashed towards the new skiff, Sir Gideon shipped his oars. “They have learned to swim amazingly fast,” he said.
“They are clever children,” said Catriona with a proper pride in her grandchildren, “and they have an excellent teacher.”
“It is good of Mr Talgarth to go to so much trouble.” Letty dabbled her hand in the water. “Daphne told me they always do exactly what he says because otherwise either they swallow water or he threatens to stop teaching them.”
“Daphne, Donald, that’s far enough,” came Harry Talgarth’s incisive voice. The twins turned at once and paddled back towards the bank. “Mrs Rosebay,” he called, “we’ll be getting out now. The water is not as warm as it was.”
“I shall come and fetch them,” Letty called back, averting her gaze from the wet-shirted figure.
Catriona smiled and waved at him. At the advanced age of forty-two, she was, she felt, exempt from the demands of bashful modesty. She had only come out in the boat to chaperon her daughter. Not that she thought for a moment that Sir Gideon would take advantage of being alone with Letty; he was by far too gentlemanly.
With long, lazy, powerful strokes, he rowed towards the new jetty. Beneath the blue Bath superfine of his coat, his muscles flexed, driving the boat smoothly through the water without haste or wasted motion.
The way he rowed was typical of him, Catriona decided. Always tranquil, unhurried, good-humoured, he had already restaffed the manor and taken the reins of the estate management into his capable hands. Hilton, the bailiff, had dropped in to see her at the Dower House the other day. Sir Gideon, he reported was a fair man who realised his own ignorance but knew what he wanted.
“And among other things, my lady, that’s a new roof for Ben Welter’s farmhouse,” he had said with satisfaction. “Them lawyers wouldn’t let me spend the blunt, but Sir Gideon dubbed up wi’out a murmur.”
He was generous to his dependents, amused by the children’s antics, as vigorous as a man half his age—What more could Letty want? She was comfortable with him, making a
laughing reference to the demolition of the old jetty as he handed her out of the boat onto the new.
Over the past month, he and his cousin had called at the Dower House nearly every day, or they had met in the park or gardens. Surely kindness alone was not enough to explain such assiduous attentions. Sir Gideon must be attracted to Letty. Several times in the last few days, Catriona had almost spoken to her daughter about the possibility of a second marriage.
Yet she had hesitated. The Dower House would be sadly empty without Letty and the twins, to be sure. The manor was no more than half a mile off, though. They could see each other daily. So why did her heart ache at the prospect?
“Shall we go round the lake again, Lady Catriona?” Sir Gideon smiled down at her.
“I beg your pardon, I was woolgathering! The boat is excessively comfortable, but no, thank you. I ought to be getting home, and I must not keep you.” Cautiously she stood up. He took her hand, steadying her as the boat rocked a trifle.
“Careful now. The sun is warm, but the water is colder than when Mrs Rosebay and I took our ducking.”
With one foot on the jetty, Catriona realised that Letty had already left. “Oh, where is she?” she cried. “My stupid heedlessness has prevented your walking with her.”
In her dismay, she tried to step up too hastily and lost her balance. Instantly Sir Gideon’s arm was about her waist, lifting her as though she weighed no more than a child. She fell against him, or he caught her to him—what did it matter which? She was clasped to his chest, his mouth mere tantalising inches from her own. Gold flecks danced in his brown eyes. Her pulse racing, she moistened suddenly dry lips as a flood of heat washed through her.
Her face was aflame. She pulled back out of his arms, stepped back, turned away, fleeing danger. But the danger was in herself, not in him. She dared not look at him lest he read the desire in her eyes. It was indecent for a respectable widow of her years to feel that way.
“Are you all right?” He sounded shaken. Had he read her mind? No, of course, she had narrowly escaped falling in the lake and had nearly pulled him in with her.
“Yes, quite all right,” she said in a stifled voice. “Thank you for saving me. I am sorry.”
“Whatever for?” Now he seemed deliberately to misunderstand. “I had no intention of going with Mrs Rosebay,” he went on calmly. “She has the twins for company. If you permit, I shall walk with you back to the Dower House. Will you not take my arm? You have had a shock.”
His obliging offer was impossible to refuse. Catriona laid her hand lightly on his arm, and they turned down the path along the bank. Whatever he guessed to be the cause of her agitation, he set out to distract her.
“The skiff is comfortable,” he said, “but less stable I believe than the canoes we used in Canada. I should not care to trust it on a whitewater river.”
He went on to talk of the natives’ skill with canoes, their wretched treatment at the hands of the Northwest Company, and the treatise on the subject Lord Selkirk was writing.
“When we met his lordship in Montreal, we promised him to do what we can to influence the government to pass laws protecting those unfortunate people. Harry and I have been writing letters, and next month, when Parliament sits, we shall go up to Town to speak to people face to face. Money talks. I ought perhaps to tell you,” he added awkwardly, “that I returned from India something of a nabob.”
Her discomfort thoroughly dispelled, Catriona stared at him. “A nabob! You have been sailing under false colours, sir. Did you not claim to be a rolling stone? Don’t laugh at me, you odious man! A sailing stone may be an infelicitous image, but you know very well what I mean.”
“To complete the confusion of metaphor, you must not tar all of us rolling stones with the same brush. Some of us do gather moss. What would you have thought of me had I announced on entering your sitting room that, far from being saved from poverty by my inheritance of the manor, I am well able to buy an abbey?”
“I would have thought you a vulgar, ungrateful braggart.”
“Well, I cannot quite afford an abbey, and I’m proud to be a March of Marchbank.”
“And I think you a truly gallant gentleman,” said Catriona softly as they reached the Dower House’s back gate. “I shall not invite you in, Sir Gideon, as the turmoil attending on the arrival of two wet children is no place for a visitor. But I would have you know that I am most sensible of your kindness—”
“Gammon!” he said roughly, and turned to stride away.
She stood for a moment in the shade of the great elm and watched his tall figure until he was lost to sight in the copse. With a sigh, she went through the gate and into the house to see that water was heating and towels were warmed for her grandchildren.
* * * *
The first frost of autumn came that night. Leaves began to change colour, and clouds of swallows gathered to fly south. The first russet-cheeked apples arrived from the manor orchards. Winter clothes were brought out to be aired.
Several days of constant, chilly rain kept the twins indoors. After their lessons, they were unable to work off their energy in the small house. Up at the manor, they would have raced up and down the corridors with their hobby-horses, or built and attacked fortresses of tables and chairs and old sheets. Here at the Dower House, they fussed and whined and squabbled.
It was enough to ruffle anyone’s spirits, Catriona convinced herself. Her megrims had nothing to do with the absence of visitors from the manor.
She persuaded Letty to allow Daphne and Donald to go out for a while, well wrapped up. They came back sniffling, and Sarah complained about the wet clothes hanging in her kitchen. Letty’s silently reproachful glance both irritated Catriona and made her feel guilty.
Fortunately the sniffles came to nothing. The wind veered to the northeast, frigid, blustery gusts off the North Sea that split the clouds and sent them scurrying. Leaves whirled from the trees, and the twins returned pink-cheeked from an expedition to the copse, with pocketfuls of brown shiny horse chestnuts.
“For cannonballs,” Donald explained.
“To shoot at paper ships.”
“We met Mr Hilton in the wood.”
“He showed us a badger’s sett.”
“That’s what you call its hole.”
“Where it lives.”
“They only come out at night.”
Daphne gave him a repressive look and changed the subject. “Mr Hilton says it’s shaping up to a rare blow.”
The bailiff’s prediction was borne out by the rising wind. A tile slid off the roof and crashed to the ground, and Lois’s bonnet blew away as she returned in the late afternoon from visiting her family. By nightfall a gale whipped the trees and moaned eerily around the Dower House.
Catriona and Letty ate their early dinner with the twins, put them to bed, and settled for the evening in the cosy haven of the sitting room. Letty read aloud from Waverly while Catriona sewed. The howl of the wind and the creaking of the house timbers were punctuated by an occasional bang or clatter from outside. A splintering crash made them both jump.
“There goes the cucumber frame,” said Catriona with a sigh. “Everything which is not tied down—”
A thunderous shock rocked the house. Plaster fell from the ceiling, and a porcelain shepherdess dived from mantelpiece to hearth, shattering in a hundred pieces. From the hall came a wail.
Paling, Letty set down the book and jumped to her feet. With a shaking hand, Catriona stuck the needle in her work and laid it aside. Lois rushed in .
“Oh, my lady, I was that startled I dropped the tea tray. It was an earthquake, that’s what it was.”
Betty appeared in the doorway, Sarah’s round face visible over her shoulder. “The elm’s down, my lady,” she said grimly. “Hit the roof square on, from what we could see out the kitchen window.”
“The twins!” White as a ghost, Letty pushed past the servants and ran to the stairs. Catriona at her heels.
Before she re
ached the landing, Letty stopped with a cry of despair. The upper flight of the narrow staircase was a jumbled, impenetrable tangle of splintered elm branches, their yellow leaves stirring fitfully in the gusts that blew down from above.
“Daphne!” Letty screamed. “Donald! Answer me!”
Only the roar of the wind answered.
“Oh, ma’am, they’re dead.” Lois began to cry as Letty frantically pulled at the obstruction.
“Be quiet, you silly girl,” Catriona commanded, a cold, unnatural calm enveloping her. “Go and fetch the hatchet from the shed. Hurry.” She stood behind Letty, helpless, the stair too narrow for her to lend her aid. They could not be dead, her darlings! They must be too frightened to call out. “They are too frightened to call out,” she said, trying to persuade herself.
With a reverberating cr-r-a-ack the tree shifted as a beam gave way beneath its weight. A huge limb shoved the tangled mass of smaller branches at Letty.
“It’s not safe, my lady,” cried Betsy. “The whole house’ll be down next.”
“Outside with you. Keep Lois out. Letty, my dearest, you cannot reach them this way. We must see what we can do from outside. “Come, love.”
She took Letty’s scratched, bleeding hand and forced her down the stairs and out into the garden. The moon shone bright between fleeing clouds, then disappeared again. Stumbling through a litter of fallen tiles and broken branches, they sped round the side of the house.
The teasing moon illuminated the scene with pitiless clarity. Its roots riven from the sodden soil, the elm’s massive trunk angled up to the shattered roof of the Dower House, its ravaged crown centred on the crushed wreck of the twins’ chamber.
Letty tore her hand from Catriona’s clasp and rushed to the tree. As she reached it, it moved again, another overloaded beam failing. She scrabbled at the creviced bark, straining for a fingerhold to pull herself up onto the only pathway to her children.
Catriona could not deceive herself any longer. Donald and Daphne were dead. Letty was all that was left to her. She ran to seize her daughter round the waist, to tear her from the deadly destroyer.
