Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress

by Nicola Cornick

  I knocked on the study door and went in, Mrs Campbell following me. The minister was seated at his desk, with Mr Sinclair in a chair beside the fire with a glass of the finest malt whisky on the table beside him. He looked up when I came in. He had a thin, watchful face, tanned a dark brown from sea and sun—a face with character and resolution in the line of his jaw. I gave him a cool nod, which seemed to amuse him, and addressed myself to Mr Campbell.

  ‘You wished to see me, sir?’

  I spoke very politely but I saw the flash in Mr Sinclair’s eyes that suggested he thought this obedience out of character. A faint smile curled the corner of his firm mouth. I turned a shoulder to him.

  ‘Catriona…Yes…’ Mr Campbell seemed flustered, which was unusual to see. He gestured me to the long sofa. This piece of furniture was the most uncomfortable in the house, and necessitated me to sit upright as though I were a bird perched on a twig. This did nothing to improve my temper, especially as Mr Sinclair seemed deliberately to lounge back indolently in his chair with a sigh of contentment as he sipped his whisky and watched me over the brim of the glass.

  Mrs Campbell had followed me in, and now hastened to see to her visitor’s comfort. ‘You have had sufficient to eat and drink, Mr Sinclair? May I fetch you anything else?’

  I watched the gentleman smile his thanks and put Mrs Campbell at her ease. He had a very easy charm. I could not deny it. When Mrs Campbell went out again her face was flushed peony-pink, like a young girl’s.

  ‘Well, now,’ Mr Campbell said, shuffling the papers on his desk, ‘there are matters to be settled, Catriona. Matters to do with your future. You know that Mrs Campbell and I love you as though you were our own daughter, but I have been thinking that now your parents have passed on the natural place for you is with your remaining relatives.’

  I assumed that he meant my mother’s family, who lived far, far away on the south coast of England. My mother had made a scandalous match twenty years before when, as a young debutante, she had visited Edinburgh, fallen in love with my father, a poor schoolmaster, and eloped with him. Her family had cast her out after that, and I had absolutely no intention of going to them cap in hand now, when they had ignored my existence for eighteen years.

  ‘Can I not stay here, sir?’ I asked. ‘Here in Applecross, I mean,’ I added, in case poor Mr Campbell had thought I was suggesting I should live on his charity indefinitely. I knew it must be a wrench for him to speak of my going, for it was true that not only was he my godfather but he and Mrs Campbell had cherished me like their own.

  ‘I could work for a living,’ I added. ‘Perhaps I could help the new schoolmaster, or act as companion to old Miss Blois…’

  Mr Sinclair smothered what sounded suspiciously like a snort. I looked at him.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I said frigidly.

  There was laughter in his eyes. ‘Forgive me, Miss Balfour,’ he said, ‘but I cannot see you as companion to an elderly lady. Nor as a schoolmistress, for that matter.’

  I set my lips in a thin line. I did not see what business it was of his. ‘You do not know me very well, Mr Sinclair,’ I said. ‘My father taught me himself, having no prejudice against the education of females. I can teach reading, and I write a very fair hand, and I am learned in mathematics and astronomy and philosophy and…’ I ran out of breath in my indignation.

  ‘I do not quarrel with your father’s abilities as a tutor,’ Mr Sinclair said lazily, ‘nor indeed with yours as a scholar, Miss Balfour. I am sure you are most accomplished. It is simply that I have seen no evidence that you have the temperament required to do the job of schoolteacher yourself. Would it not require patience and tolerance and composure, amongst other things?’

  I was so angry at his presumption that I almost burst there and then. ‘Well, I do not see it is any concern of yours—’ I began crossly, but Mr Campbell made a slight movement and I subsided, holding fast to the fraying shreds of my temper.

  ‘It would not serve, Catriona,’ he said. ‘Applecross is a small place and it is time for you to go out into the world—the sooner the better. I have already had three requests from gentlemen for your hand in marriage, and have no desire to be turning more away from my door.’

  I was astonished. Not one single gentleman had approached me with a view to marriage, and I could not imagine who could have asked Mr Campbell for permission to pay their addresses to me. I stared at him in puzzlement.

  ‘Who on earth…?’

  Mr Campbell ticked them off on his fingers. ‘McGough, who farms up beyond Loch Ailen, young Angus the shepherd and Mr Lefroy of Callanish.’

  This time there was no doubt that Neil Sinclair was laughing. His shoulders were positively shaking. I tried to ignore him whilst inside me the anger seethed at his discourtesy.

  ‘McGough has buried three wives already,’ I said, ‘young Angus is kind, but a mere lad, and Mr Lefroy wants a housekeeper he does not have to pay for.’

  ‘A wife is more expensive than a housekeeper in the long run,’ Mr Sinclair observed casually.

  I swung around and glared at him. ‘Do you know that for a fact, sir?’

  His dark eyebrows went up. ‘Not from personal experience, madam,’ he drawled, ‘but I do know on the strength of a few hours’ acquaintance that you would no more make a biddable wife than you would a suitable lady’s companion.’

  We looked at one another for what seemed like a very long time, whilst the air fizzed between us and all the discourteous, unladylike and plain rude things that I wanted to say to Mr Sinclair jostled for space in my head. I could see a distinct spark of challenge in his eyes as though he was saying, Do you wish to quarrel further, Miss Balfour? You need only say the word…

  Then Mr Campbell cleared his throat.

  ‘Which is nothing to the purpose, Catriona, since your papa, when he knew he was dying, wrote to his relatives at Glen Clair to ask that they offer you a home.’

  Mr Sinclair shifted in his chair. ‘It is all arranged. I am here to escort you to Sheildaig on the morrow, Miss Balfour. Your uncle will send a carriage to collect you from the inn there.’

  For the second time in the space of as many minutes I was silent with shock. How could Papa have arranged such a thing without telling me? Who was this uncle and his family of whom I had heard nothing until this moment, and why should they, who were strangers to me, wish to give me a home? Most importantly, how could it all be arranged when this was the first that I had heard of it?

  I took a deep breath and, ignoring Mr Sinclair completely, addressed myself to the minister.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I said carefully, ‘but you find me completely amazed. I did not know my father had any relatives in the world, let alone that they would be prepared to give me a home.’

  Mr Campbell was now looking even more uncomfortable, and Mr Sinclair positively bored. He sighed, toying with the whisky in his glass, swirling it around and around. One lock of dark hair had fallen across his brow, giving him an even more rakish air. No doubt my amazement at the discovery of my long-lost family was of little consequence to him, and any attempt at explanation would be terribly tedious for him to endure. He had graciously offered to escort me—for what reason I was still unsure—and his attitude implied that it was my duty to be grateful for his condescension. I reflected that I was fast coming to find Mr Sinclair one of the most objectionable men of my limited acquaintance.

  Mr Campbell rubbed his head, setting the sparse strands of hair awry. ‘Truth to tell, Catriona,’ he confided, ‘I scarcely know more myself. When your father was sick he gave me a certain letter and asked me to send it to Glen Clair. He said that it was to do with your inheritance. He asked that as soon as he was gone, the furniture disposed of and the house taken back by the charity trustees, I should send you to the Old House at Glen Clair and to your uncle, Ebeneezer Balfour.’ Here Mr Campbell looked hopefully at Mr Sinclair. ‘Perhaps you have something to add here, sir?’

  Mr Sinclair shrugg
ed his broad shoulders—carelessly, I thought. ‘I fear I cannot help you, sir,’ he said. ‘I am come to escort Miss Balfour as a favour to her uncle. That is all I know.’

  I looked from one to the other. ‘My father never mentioned that he had a brother,’ I said. ‘All these years I never knew he had any family other than my mother and myself. I do not like to find such matters settled when I have had no say in them.’

  Mr Sinclair looked at me. ‘You are familiar with the expression that beggars cannot be choosers, Miss Balfour?’

  I glared at him. ‘Mr Sinclair, I do not believe you are contributing anything useful to this situation at all.’

  ‘Only a means of transport,’ Neil Sinclair agreed affably.

  Mr Campbell settled his spectacles more firmly on his nose. ‘Family is always to be cherished,’ he murmured. ‘I know of the Balfours of Glen Clair, of course, but had no notion that your father was related. The Balfours were a great family once. Before the forty-five rebellion.’

  ‘You mean they were Jacobites?’ I asked, and for a moment it seemed that the very word caused the lamplight to grow dim and the shadows to flicker with secrets.

  ‘Aye.’ Mr Campbell looked grave. ‘They suffered reprisals for their loyalty.’

  Mr Sinclair shifted, and I remembered that he was a Navy man in the service of King George III. The enemy was Napoleon and the French now, not the English, and the old days were long gone. Nevertheless, something in my Highland blood stirred at the old loyalties.

  ‘These days,’ Mr Sinclair said, ‘the Balfours are as poor as church mice, mistress. There will be no inheritance waiting for you at Glen Clair.’

  I smarted that he might think me so shallow that all I cared for was a fortune—although if I were being completely honest a few hundred pounds would not have gone amiss. But I sat up a little straighter and said, ‘If I have found a family I did not know existed then that will be more than enough for me, Mr Sinclair.’

  I thought the sentiment rather fine, and was annoyed that he smothered a grin in his whisky glass, as though to say that I was a foolish chit who knew nothing of what I was talking about.

  ‘We shall see,’ he said cryptically.

  I stood up. I had had about enough of Mr Sinclair’s company for one evening. ‘If you will excuse me, sir?’ I said to Mr Campbell.

  ‘Of course,’ he murmured. His tired blue eyes sought mine and I realised then what an unlooked for responsibility I was to him. He had taken me in out of Christian kindness, love for me and friendship to my late father, but he and Mrs Campbell were getting old, and though they would never say it, they could not want the burden of a eighteen-year-old hoyden.

  ‘I will go and pack my bags,’ I said. ‘And I do thank you, sir, for I know that you always have my well-being at heart.’

  It would take me little enough time to pack, in all conscience. I had barely a change of clothes and the few books that my father had left me.

  Mr Campbell looked relieved. ‘Of course, child. I’ll bid you goodnight. I think,’ he added, and I wished there had not been such uncertainty in his tone, ‘that you are doing the right thing, Catriona. Mrs Campbell will accompany you as far as the inn at Sheildaig, under Mr Sinclair’s escort.’

  Mr Sinclair said nothing at all, but there was a sardonic gleam in his dark eyes that I disliked intensely. He stood up politely as I left the room, and I felt his gaze on me, but I refused to look at him.

  I went up the curving stair of the manse to the little room Mrs Campbell had given me on the first floor. My belongings, scattered untidily about the place, looked suddenly meagre and a little pathetic. This was all I had in the world, and soon I was to turn away from all things familiar and go to a family I did not know I had at a tumbledown house in Glen Clair. For a moment I felt a mixture of terror and loneliness, and then my common sense reasserted itself. Glen Clair was only two days away—which was fortunate, since I had no wish to be in company with Neil Sinclair any longer than I must—and I could always return to Applecross if matters did not work out for me. It was not the end of the world.

  Nevertheless it felt close to the end of everything as I packed away my spare petticoat and my embroidered shawl, a few books and some sheet music, and the blue and white striped tooth mug that had been my father’s. I sat down rather abruptly on the narrow bed and had to take several deep breaths to calm myself when once again grief grabbed my throat and squeezed like a vice.

  I slept badly that night, which was no great surprise, and in the morning awoke to find the house abuzz. A quick breakfast of milk and wheat cakes awaited me in the kitchen, and Mr Sinclair’s carriage was already at the door. I had barely time to snatch a mouthful of food and to hug Mr Campbell in thanks and farewell before it was time to go out to where Mr Sinclair awaited to escort me to my new life.

  Chapter Three

  In which I set out upon my journey to the house of Glen Clair, and Mr Sinclair behaves as no gentleman should.

  It was uncomfortable being in an enclosed carriage with Mr Sinclair. The carriage itself was not uncomfortable, of course, being from the stables of the Earl of Strathconan himself. It had dark blue velvet seats with fat cushions, and was well sprung to protect us from the jolts and ruts of the road. No, it was only Mr Sinclair’s company that felt so unwelcome on that bright summer day.

  I was acutely aware of his physical presence within the enclosed space. It felt as though he was too close to me in some mysterious way I had not experienced with anyone before. Strange, because he was sitting at a perfectly respectable distance from me, and Mrs Campbell was there as well, as the most irreproachable chaperon. Occasionally, when the coach would lurch over a particularly bad hole in the road, his leg would brush against mine and I would move the skirts of my second best gown away, much to his apparent amusement. On one occasion the carriage pitched so hard that I was almost unseated, and Mr Sinclair reached out to grab me before I tumbled onto the floor. His hands were hard on my upper arms as he caught me, and for a dizzy moment he was so close to me that I could smell the scent of his skin and the lime cologne he wore. My head spun in a very peculiar way. I know I turned very pink and I know that he observed it. He placed me back on the seat with absolute propriety, and then ruined it by giving me a look that was not remotely proper and made my blood burn. I knew that he was only doing it to disconcert me, and not because he had the least admiration for me, and this annoyed me all the more.

  Mrs Campbell certainly did not seem to share my dislike of Mr Sinclair. Indeed, as the journey progressed it seemed to me that Mr Sinclair’s company was the only thing that made the whole thing tolerable from her point of view, for she hated to travel and had never been further than Inverness in her life. The two of them chatted away easily, about the weather and the state of the roads and the journey time between Applecross and Glen Clair, whilst I sat in my corner and wondered how a man like Mr Sinclair could get away with charming the chaperons into thinking he was not remotely dangerous.

  It was another beautiful day. As the carriage climbed the track out of the village I watched the turquoise sea tumbling on the rocks far below and the black silhouette of the Cuillins of Skye against the sun. The air was full of the scent of gorse and hot summer grass. Presently I realised that Neil Sinclair was addressing me and withdrew my attention from the scenery with reluctance.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘I was asking, Miss Balfour, whether you had travelled much in the past?’

  ‘I have been to Edinburgh with my father on several occasions, sir,’ I said, ‘and I have sailed to Skye and the other islands more times than I can recall.’

  ‘And are you a good sailor?’

  I saw Mrs Campbell nod a chaperon’s encouragement at this blameless conversation.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I was sick in a bucket on all but one occasion, when the sea was as flat as a mirror.’

  Mrs Campbell frowned.

  ‘Are you a good sailor, Mr Sinclair?’ I enqui
red. ‘One would hope so, since you are in the Royal Navy.’

  Neil Sinclair smiled without mockery for the first time—a real smile that reached his eyes and made my heart jump, and almost made me forget that I disliked him.

  ‘No, Miss Balfour, I am not,’ he said. ‘I, too, was sick as a dog on my first few voyages, but unfortunately there was no bucket to hand.’

  I smiled, too. ‘You said that you know my uncle, sir,’ I said, on impulse. ‘What manner of man is he?’

  Mr Sinclair was silent for so long that I started to feel nervous. ‘Your uncle is a dour man,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have little conversation out of him, mistress.’

  That was not encouraging. ‘And my aunt?’ I asked, wondering if I wanted to know the answer.

  ‘Mrs Balfour suffers from her nerves,’ Mr Sinclair said.

  I did not really understand such a complaint, having not a sensitive nerve in my body, or so I had been told. Lady Bennie, who suffered from nerves herself, mostly when Sir Compton spent time with his mistress in Inverness, had commented sourly on my lack of sensibility on more than one occasion.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘And my cousin Ellen?’

  Mr Sinclair smiled. ‘Miss Balfour is delightful,’ he said.

  I felt an unexpected rush of jealousy and wished I had not asked.

  The conversation waned. Mr Sinclair seemed disinclined to speak any further of my relatives, and I was sufficiently discouraged to think of my dour uncle and delicate aunt that I did not persist in my questioning. It did not sound as though a very warm welcome awaited me at Glen Clair, and I wondered once again why they had offered to take me in.