Several of the Duke s guests laughed and one of them said,
“I am sure that you could not refuse such a request, Kelvin, even though most of the ‘charmers’ you have pursued in the past would have demanded orchids.”
Then, as if he felt that he had been indiscreet because the Duchess was present, he added,
“I must hurry or I shall keep you waiting and I have no wish to commit the unforgivable sin of delaying the guns.”
Jeanie was still waiting for an answer and the Duke looked down at her from his great height and said,
“I will try to find you a piece of white heather. If not I will bring you a feather for you to tuck into your bonnet.”
“I would like both, Grandpapa,” Jeanie said.
Again the Duke’s guests were teasing him as they left the dining room and went down the stairs.
The Duchess did not move from her place at the end of the table, but there was an expression on her plain face that would have scared Pepita had she seen it.
Jeanie had some lessons in the morning and then Pepita took her out for a walk before luncheon, going through the garden gate and across the rough land at the edge of the cliffs.
There were some twisting steps cut into the rock so that people from The Castle could descend quite easily onto the beach below.
But, because the tide was in and the waves would have splashed them, Pepita would not allow Jeanie to climb down.
“We will do it when the tide is out,” she said, “then we will look for shells. I remember your father saying that when he was a small boy he used to find some very pretty shells on the beach.”
“I want to find them,” Jeanie said.
“We will find lots,” Pepita replied, “and then I will make you a necklace of them.”
“That would be lovely!” Jeanie enthused.
She danced with excitement along the edge of the cliff, but Pepita caught hold of her.
“You must not go too near the edge, darling. Cliffs are always dangerous.”
Then, knowing that it was growing close to luncheontime, she took Jeanie back to The Castle.
Nothing much happened in the afternoon, but teatime, with so many people staying in the Castle and other guests invited, could have been interesting if Pepita had not constantly been aware of the Duchess’s animosity.
She had the feeling, although she knew it might have been her imagination, that this was growing in intensity and she thought that when the Duchess looked at her, which was not often, she was wishing her dead.
‘I am being over-imaginative,’ she told herself.
At the same time, her instinct told her that the Duchess’s hatred was so violent and so intense that it was almost as if she was encountering a wild beast.
‘It is very bad for the Duchess to feel like this when she is carrying a child,’ she thought to herself.
She remembered her sister saying that when Rory and Jeanie were on the way, she tried always to think beautiful thoughts and never to be disagreeable because it might affect her unborn child.
“That is what the Greeks believed,” Denise had said, “and I am sure that they were right. We form our children’s characters long before they are born and I am determined that my children will be everything that is fine, gallant and loving, just like their father.”
She had smiled at Alistair as she spoke and he had replied,
“Just like you, my darling, and who could be more adorable in every way?”
As they looked at each other, they had forgotten that Pepita was there and, as her sister turned to whisper something to her husband, Pepita slipped from the room, thinking that it was just impossible for two people to be any happier.
Their joy at being with each other seemed to light the whole house with a sunshine that came from within themselves rather than from the sky above them.
‘That is what I want to feel,’ Pepita told herself.
She knew now that there was only one man who could make her feel like that, the man she had been conscious of ever since she had arrived in Scotland.
Only to look at Torquil sitting at the other end of the table made her heart seem to turn strange somersaults in her breast.
She had looked away from him because she knew that love was something that was unmistakably revealed in the eyes and, if anybody intercepted a look between them, they would be well aware what they both were feeling.
After dinner that evening Pepita had a strong impulse to go to the Watch Tower again.
Then she sensed that it would be the wrong thing to do.
‘I must think of Torquil,’ she told herself. ‘If I am sent away by the Duke, I would somehow survive, but for him it would destroy his whole way of life as he knows it.’
She had learnt from Mrs. Sutherland, who was an inveterate gossip, that Torquil’s Castle was very beautiful and very much older than the Duke’s.
It had been built as a stronghold by the McNairns and had more than once resisted an onslaught by the Vikings, besides sieges from another warring Clan.
“Does Mr. Torquil live there by himself?” Pepita had asked curiously.
“Since his mother died Mr. Torquil’s been here more than he’s been at home,” Mrs. Sutherland answered. “His Grace has come to rely on him, having no son to help him in his old age.”
Pepita bit back the words that it was his own fault, but because she was curious she enquired,
“And Mr. Torquil has no brothers or sisters?”
Mrs. Sutherland shook her head.
“His younger brother was killed when he was in the Army and it were awful sad for his father had no other sons. I’ve often said to Mr. Torquil, ‘get yourself a wife, mon, and have a dozen bairns to fill The Castle and make it a real home.’”
“What was Mr. Torquil’s reply to that?”
Mrs. Sutherland laughed.
“Like all men he’s waitin’ for the right woman to come alang, and one day he’ll find her.”
To Pepita her words were like a sharp pain in her breast.
Torquil might think that she was the right woman, but how could she fill The Castle with children when they would be ostracised and hated as Alistair had been when he was driven away from his home and from everything that was familiar?
‘I love Torquil too much to do that to him,’ Pepita whispered to herself.
So after dinner she did not leave the drawing room but sat talking to Lady Rogart, one of the elderly guests who did not play bridge and who said that she found her eyes were too weak to read at night by the oil lamps that the drawing room was lit with.
She, like Mrs. Sutherland, was also a gossip, but Pepita was very careful not to speak of Torquil.
Instead she answered quite simply her questions about Alistair and told her how happy he had been despite the fact that he sorely missed Scotland and his own people.
“We McNairns have all been very curious about him, as you can imagine,” Lady Rogart said.
As the Duchess had not introduced her to anybody, it had taken Pepita some time to find out who all the guests were.
Then she realised that Lady Rogart had been a McNairn before she married.
A little tentatively Pepita pointed out,
“I have often wondered why none of the McNairn relations ever got in touch with Alistair. I think he would have been delighted to hear from them.”
“For one thing,” Lady Rogart replied, “we had no idea where he was and secondly I think the male McNairns, at any rate, were afraid of offending the Duke.”
She gave a little laugh and added,
“The Scots are a very practical people, Miss Linford, and, as the Duke has the best shooting anywhere in Scotland, none of them was anxious to be on his ‘black list’!”
Pepita laughed because it was such a simple answer to a complex question.
At the same time she still thought it cruel that Alistair had been cut off all those years without a kind word from even one of his relatives and she recognised that
she could not allow that to happen to the man she loved.
‘I must go away,’ she thought despairingly.
When she went to bed the night, she knew that there was no other solution.
Once she could trust the Duke to look after the children and not to allow the Duchess to say or do anything to harm them, she would have to find herself another place to live.
This meant, of course, that she must also find some employment, since she had no money and no chance of ever having any except what she could earn by the few talents she possessed.
‘What can I do?’ she thought frantically and knew that the real answer was that jobs for somebody like herself were almost non-existent.
She could, however, be a Governess, as she was at the moment to her nephew and niece, but then she was practical enough to realise that few women would want to accept in their homes a Governess who looked like her.
It was not conceit to realise that she and Denise had both taken after their mother, who had been outstandingly beautiful.
Also she had not missed since she had arrived at The Castle the looks of startled surprise that came into the eyes of the lady guests when they saw her or the looks of admiration she received from the men.
Apart from teaching children, she supposed that she could be a companion to some elderly and doubtless cantankerous old woman.
It was not a very happy prospect and she knew all the time that she was thinking out the alternatives that her heart was crying out in agony at the thought of having to say ‘goodbye’ to Torquil.
There was something about him that drew her rresistibly and she knew that he had been right when he had said that they belonged to each other.
She was really incredibly lucky, she thought, to have found, out of the whole world, the one man whom God had meant to be the other part of herself.
She could think of nothing more perfect than to be his wife, to love him, to look after him and to bear his children.
Then she knew that this was just a dream and whatever Torquil might say it could never come true.
How could she ask him to suffer the poverty that Alistair had suffered or to endure the isolation that, now that she looked back on it, had been something that most men would have found intolerable.
‘Torquil has no idea what it means to be ostracised and suddenly alone in the world,’ she told herself.
She knew that Alistair would never have done anything other than to marry her sister.
But she felt that she could never live with Torquil without always being afraid that one day he would regret having cut himself off from everything that had filled his life until now.
In the first place he was older than Alistair had been when he had believed that the world was well lost for love.
Even more important, since he owned his own Castle and his own estate, it would probably be even more difficult for him to take such a far-reaching step than it had been for Alistair, who had always lived under the shadow of the Duke and had never really known independence.
‘I cannot do it to him,’ Pepita whispered into her pillow. ‘I love him too much.’
At the same time she had no idea what she should do or what would happen to her in the future either if she stayed on or if she went away.
‘How can I remain here, loving and wanting him,’ she argued with herself, ‘and knowing that we are in danger of discovery every time we meet?’
Alternatively she knew that to leave was to risk starvation and perhaps to be forced to take employment that would have shocked and upset her father.
‘If only Papa could have made friends in England, as well as all over the world,’ she thought, ‘it would be so much easier.’
She could remember his speaking of some charming people he had known in Spain, which was where she had been born and which was why she had a Spanish name.
He also had a number of friends in France and Italy.
But even if she got in touch with them she could hardly ask them to send her enough money to travel out to meet them.
Then it occurred to her that it was possible that they might be able to offer her employment as a teacher of English.
The only qualification she had for this was that she could speak French fluently and if she studied hard she could improve both her Spanish and her Italian.
At the same time even to think of going off alone to strange countries was so frightening that it was difficult to contemplate taking such a step.
Her father had retired from the Foreign Office when she was nine and Denise was sixteen and after that they had lived in England.
Looking back it was difficult to remember much about the countries they had lived in and the people whom her father and mother had known there.
‘I must concentrate on England,’ she told herself. ‘There must be some Linford relations somewhere.’
She knew that her father’s elder sister, who had been much older and had lived in Bath, was now dead.
His other sister, who had married a rich man, had, after she had been widowed, moved to the South of France and because she was perpetually ill and her eyesight had deteriorated she had not communicated with either Denise or herself after their father’s death.
‘She may still be alive or she may not,’ Pepita reasoned. ‘Anyway I am sure by this time that she would be too old or too ill to want me.’
This brought her back to the question that she had asked herself when she climbed into bed.
‘What am I to do?’
Now it seemed almost to be whispered down the high-ceilinged room where she was sleeping.
‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’
She could hear the same words on the wind outside and thought that they were echoed by the murmur of the waves in the far distance.
‘What can I do?’
It was a cry of despair.
Then, because he was always on the edge of her thoughts and in every beat of her heart, she felt as if Torquil put his arms round her and held her close against him.
‘I have to forget him!’ she thought despairingly.
But she knew that she would never cease to think of him and to love him and would know that while she was yearning for him, he at the same time was yearning for her.
Chapter Five
As luncheon finished, the two elderly lady guests told the Duchess that they were going into the garden.
“Yes, do that,” the Duchess replied, “and I will join you a little later.”
She then turned to Pepita and Jeanie, who were following them and said in a harsh voice,
“I want to speak to you, Miss Linford.”
“I will take Jeanie to Mrs. Sutherland, Your Grace,” Pepita replied, “and then I will come to the drawing room.”
The Duchess did not reply. She merely walked ahead with the usual disdainful air that she always assumed when she was speaking to the children or Pepita.
Wondering what the Duchess could have to say to her, Pepita hurried Jeanie down the passage to the housekeeper’s room.
“I want to go out in the garden, Aunt Pepita!” Jeanie cried.
“We will in a few minutes,” Pepita answered her.
“I want to go now!” the child protested.
Pepita promised that she would not be long and, when she reached the housekeeper’s room, she was relieved to find that Mrs. Sutherland was there.
“Will you look after her Ladyship for a few minutes, Mrs. Sutherland?” she asked. “Her Grace wants me.”
She thought that there was an apprehensive look on the housekeeper s face, but she did not say anything and held out her hand towards Jeanie.
“I’ve somethin’ really very excitin’ to show to your Ladyship,” she said ingratiatingly.
“What is it?” Jeanie enquired.
“Two wee kittens born just last night.”
Pepita did not need to listen to any more. She was sure that Jeanie would be enthralled and quite happy until she returned.
She real
ised that she must not keep the Duchess waiting and she hurried back down the long passage to the drawing room.
The sun coming through the windows made her think that like Jeanie she would far sooner be in the garden than having what she was certain would be an uncomfortable interview with the Duchess.
She closed the door behind her and walked towards the fireplace.
As she expected, the Duchess was sitting in her usual chair on the right hand side of the mantelpiece.
She was looking even more disagreeable than usual and, Pepita thought, although she knew that it was uncharitable, exceedingly plain.
When she reached the Duchess, she curtseyed and decided that it would be correct not to sit down until she was asked to do so.
There was a perceptible pause before the Duchess said,
“I want to talk to you, Miss Linford,”
Pepita did not reply and again there was a pause before the Duchess said almost grudgingly,
“You can sit.”
“Thank you,” Pepita replied quietly.
She chose the chair nearest to where the Duchess was sitting. It had a straight back and she sat upright in it with her hands clasped together in her lap.
She could feel very clearly the vibrations of hatred coming towards her from the Duchess and she wondered if anybody else would have been able to feel them in the same way.
But perhaps in fact she had what her father called an ‘intuition’ about people that was exceptional.
At last, after what seemed a long pause, the Duchess
began,
“I am sure you have realised by this time, Miss Linford, that your presence here, as well as that of the two children you brought to The Castle uninvited, is causing me a great deal of distress.”
It was not what Pepita had expected her to say and she answered quickly,
“I am deeply sorry, Your Grace, that we should upset you, especially at this particular time. But, as I have already explained, there was nowhere else I could go and I felt that it must be right for them to be in the home of their ancestors.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” the Duchess argued sharply. “So I have a suggestion to make, which I think would solve both your problem and mine.”
The Scots Never Forget Page 8
