Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2)

by Lexie Conyngham

  Dangerous? What made him think that? Did he think that Mr. Bootham, a married man – a married man with a captivating wife – had deliberately set out himself to captivate Beatrix?

  He sighed to himself. In a musical Edinburgh house, his father’s, for instance, the gap between tea and supper would be filled with more than a tutor’s meandering performance, and almost certainly with some country dancing. He loved dancing almost as much as he loved music. On the other hand, he remembered suddenly, tomorrow was Hallowe’en, and the servants’ dance, to which he had been invited. He hoped with sudden violence that the boys would behave themselves and he would be able to go.

  After a while the whole company joined together again to play word games, at which they were mostly very clever, even the boys. Words were Lord Scoggie’s music, and his gift to his family, and they all enjoyed it to the full. When supper finally arrived, an unexpected level of hilarity had set in, and everyone had relaxed: Tibo had left Deborah to be attentive to his hostess, Keyes had bravely taken on a conversation with Deborah, and the Boothams had fallen in with Robert and Henry, playing some ridiculous card game with them. Supper passed with great pleasure, and to his surprise Murray was quite disappointed when the time came for the guests to leave. Everyone came out on to the landing, and made their way down the stairs in the midst of various conversations: Murray found himself talking with Keyes about Indian food, and behind them on the stairs came Deborah and Tibo. Keyes completed a description of a particularly hot curry, which Murray thought sounded wonderful, and they laughed together. As their laughter died away, Murray distinctly heard Tibo’s voice a few steps behind them.

  ‘So that’s arranged. You’ll meet me tomorrow.’

  ‘As soon as I am free from the servants’ dance, yes,’ she replied, quietly businesslike. Murray, who had started to glance around, tried to look as if he had heard nothing, but as he turned back he could see quite clearly on Keyes’ face that he had heard exactly the same thing, and was far from pleased. Murray, reaching the hall, was casting about quickly for something to say to distract Keyes, when Lord Scoggie bounded down the stairs beside his daughter and caught Keyes by the arm.

  ‘Can we have a quick word when everyone has gone? In the library, I think.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Keyes, and then the Boothams descended the stairs and everything was cloaks and hats until they had been seen into their carriage, along with Tibo, to whom they had offered a lift as far as their gates. Goodbyes echoed around the hall, the family waved their guests off happily, and at last there was quiet.

  ‘Well, that went very well, I think,’ said Deborah to her mother, as Keyes and Lord Scoggie disappeared into the library.

  ‘Is everything arranged for the dance tomorrow night?’ Lady Scoggie asked, and they moved away, discussing it. The boys ran up the stairs to finish their cards tournament before they were sent to bed, Beatrix followed Deborah and her mother, and suddenly Murray was left alone in the hall.

  His throat was tired from singing, and he went to the servants’ hall to beg a spoonful of honey in some warm water. The servants were quietly excited, and Hannah and Grizell were busy with their needles over a candle in far corner, doing their best to hide their work from the others. Murray asked a few polite questions about the preparations, making it clear that he was still looking forward to the event himself. He took the water and honey, and wishing them all a good night he headed back up the passage to the hall, and up the stairs to the first floor.

  He could hear voices coming from the library along with a dim light from perhaps no more than one or two lamps down below. The gallery was faintly outlined. The voice he heard first was Lord Scoggie’s.

  ‘So Lady Scoggie and I were wondering, Major, if you would be interested in considering marriage at this time.’

  There was a pause. Murray stopped too, not to listen, but because he remembered from earlier that the carpet was loose around here and he did not want to trip, but he could not see it in the dark. Keyes was evidently thinking.

  ‘I cannot say that the attractions of Miss Scoggie have not been very clear to me this week, and she has been kind enough to pay some attention to an old soldier. Do you think she would take on someone with this?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Lord Scoggie said amiably, probably alluding to Keyes’ wooden leg. Murray found the loose carpet, and was about to step clearly over it and make his way to the next floor when he noticed a figure standing, near enough to the library gallery to overhear, but far enough away from the edge not to be seen from below. He squinted through the dim light: it was Deborah.

  She saw him, and with a glance at the library below hurried across to him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Watching my step on the carpet and going to my room,’ he said, slightly defensively. ‘And you?’ They were whispering.

  ‘I think I have a right to hear this conversation,’ she replied. ‘Do you know what they are talking about?’

  He waited a second before saying,

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  He looked at the dark outline of her determined chin as she glanced back again at the gallery.

  ‘And will you? Will you take him on?’

  She turned back to him, slowly. To her surprise, she took his hand.

  ‘Oh, Mr. Murray,’ she said, with surprising compassion. ‘This is the deal we make. Poverty and labour, and a chance to make our own choice, or wealth and comfort, and a husband chosen for us. There is nothing to regret: there is merit in both schemes.’

  He squeezed her hand sympathetically, and released it.

  ‘Then you had better go back and hear your fate. Good night, Miss Deborah.’

  ‘Good night, Mr. Murray.’

  So Lord Scoggie had made his choice, he thought, as he climbed the stairs to his room in the school wing. He thought about Keyes’ temper, and wondered why, and when, Lord Scoggie had changed his mind, and whether he had any right to comment on it himself.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘It just seems a wee bit strange,’ said Mrs. Costane, without pausing once with her rolling pin. ‘I mean, I’m looking forward to the dance and all, but I cannot say I’ve given it much thought, not with poor Mr. Leckie’s awful accident and then his funeral, and then the storm, and a boat lost, and now here we are making supper for a dance in the same week, never mind the grand dinner the day after tomorrow. It just doesn’t feel right, though I wouldn’t stop it, of course. It’s awful hard to disappoint people. What do you think, Mr. Murray?’

  Murray, hovering in the kitchen to obtain pies to bribe the boys, made a noncommittal noise. He wanted to dance, but he took her point.

  ‘I think not,’ added Hannah. ‘It’s rare enough we get a wee dance to ourselves and a nice wee bite of supper. Anyway, is there any sign of you putting young Andrew out of his misery tonight, Miss Grisell, and dancing with the poor wee lad?’

  Grisell, chopping apples for a jelly, had the grace to blush a little as she smiled.

  ‘I might just,’ she said. ‘If he behaves himself.’

  ‘I doubt you’ll have him eating out of your hand by the end of the evening,’ snapped Mrs. Costane. ‘You’ve let him chase you long enough for you to catch him. I wonder are there any more in Kirkcaldy as good looking as him?’

  ‘If there are I’m away there,’ said Hannah, with unaccustomed flightiness.

  ‘You’ll stay where you are, you daft oul hen,’ was Mrs. Costane’s kindly advice. ‘Leave the flirtings to the young ones who have the energy for it. I hope you’ve every inch of peel off those apples, Grisell Shaw.’

  ‘The pigs will like them,’ said Hannah, and laughed when Grisell winced.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been eating them in front of the looking-glass in the passage, anyway,’ said Mrs. Costane, not bothering to look up. ‘To see if you see an image of him coming up behind you.’

  ‘That would gar me grue,’ said Hannah, shive
ring.

  ‘Whether I did or I didn’t,’ said Grisell, shifting the apple peelings with her finger to hide a discarded and much chewed core, ‘I couldn’t tell you. That one has to be done in secret.’

  ‘Well, you can’t use the barn to see him,’ said Mrs. Costane, thinking through other possible means of Hallowe’en divination, ‘it’s full of gardeners.’

  ‘What about peas?’ cried Hannah. ‘At least that brings no unnatural apparitions.’

  ‘Peas it is, then!’ Mrs. Costane. She dropped the bowl of pastry filling she was working with on to the table, and dispatched Hannah to the bag of dried peas under one of the long benches.

  ‘Oh, not in front of Mr. Murray!’ Grisell was squirming, but not unpleasurably. Murray laughed.

  ‘I won’t tell!’

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Mrs. Costane. She already had the girdle heating over the fire, and was smelling it to see if it was hot enough. ‘Give me the peas.’ Hannah handed over two peas. ‘This one with the mark on it is you, girl, and the other is himself. Now, let’s see if they stay and roast together, or roll apart.’

  She set the peas on to the girdle. Hannah and Grisell bent down to watch, and Murray, irresistibly, came closer.

  The peas sat quietly together on the hot metal for a long moment. Then, with a crack, they leapt apart, rolling wildly around the girdle. Hannah gasped. The peas swerved, crashed and spun, then, with a final hiss, ended up together in the middle of the girdle again.

  The three women stared at each other.

  ‘Well, you’ll get him in the end,’ said Mrs. Costane eventually, ‘but it’ll be a wild courting, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And I thought you women just knew from birth how to ensnare men. I didn’t realise you enlisted the help of vegetables,’ said Murray, grinning.

  ‘There isn’t a thing in creation that’s on a man’s side when a woman is after him,’ said Mrs. Costane sourly. ‘Just you remember that, now, Mr. Murray. Now, enough of this nonsense: let’s make sure there’s a supper tonight.’

  Every surface in the kitchen was covered in food, mostly prepared by Hannah, though it was of course Mrs. Costane who was showing signs of dramatic nerves over the whole performance. There was a side of beef, roasted and cooled, and there were bowls of potted mushrooms, fresh from the orchard, and baked onions in big square dishes keeping warm by the fire, and hard-boiled eggs shiny white on creamware plates. Hannah’s activities at a side table echoed with the vicious crack of crab shells and promised further delights. Mrs. Costane herself had contributed two huge piles of pastries, savoury and sweet as she had promised, which were flashing in and out of the hot oven in batches, baking swiftly from cream to gold and cooling on wire trays under the high windows. A number of gardener’s boys – and indeed gardeners – had appeared at odd moments throughout the morning, drawn by the smell like bees to a flower, hoping, in vain, for a quick foretaste of the evening’s delights. Instead they reported on the state of the barn, the branches they had arranged on the rafters, the apples in heaps, the neep lanterns they had been carving for the last two days. One of the men had a knack for weaving wreaths from corn stalks, and had turned them into golden chandeliers on every ledge. It was hard to tell who was the more excited about the others’ work: the women longed to see the barn, and the gardeners longed to eat the food. The kitchen door was blown back and forth by heavy sighs of impatience.

  Murray thanked Mrs. Costane for the pies – everyday ones, not dance food – and carried them carefully back up the passage to the hall. Deborah, Beatrix and Naismyth were in the Great Hall, examining cutlery with the door open.

  ‘That should do,’ Deborah was saying as she left Beatrix and the steward with the cutlery. ‘Give it a quick clean, and take it down to the kitchen for moving to the barn. Oh, Mr. Murray!’

  ‘Miss Deborah.’ They began to climb the stairs together. ‘I hope everything is going according to plan?’

  ‘I feel Major Keyes should be doing this,’ she sighed. ‘It feels like the invasion of a small country.’

  ‘Is he not helping you?’

  She met his eye with a sideways glance.

  ‘I’m not sure that he’s that eager a suitor,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you going to the servants’ dance?’

  ‘I hope so, if the boys settle early enough.’

  ‘Do, do go. I know how much you love to dance, and it will help to keep some of the unrulier elements quiet if they see someone respectable like you there. We all have the two dances with them, of course, but then we leave, and I might not even be able to manage that long for I have something else to do. It can go a bit wild after we leave, particularly when the punch has flowed for a bit. And I remember one year we had to rebuild most of the barn afterwards. Something about a pig, I think.’

  ‘Most likely,’ Murray agreed. ‘I’ll try to keep an eye open for trouble, if it will help.’

  They were about to part on the landing, but she stopped him, folding her arms into her shawl, a little frown denting her forehead.

  ‘Tell me, did you hear Father last night ask the Boothams to supper again tonight, to see the dance?’

  ‘I think I did.’

  ‘Oh, dear: another two to supper, and Mrs. Costane already like an overwound clock.’ She leaned back suddenly against the wall, looking tired. ‘I really don’t understand what everyone sees in these Boothams, anyway. I haven’t a notion why they ever came here. They don’t like the weather, and they think we’re all peasants. She seems to know nothing about housekeeping, and he seems to think his only function is decorative, though with his funny white hair I’m not even sure he qualifies for that. Oh, Mr. Murray, you haven’t by any chance seen my mother in the course of your travels, have you?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I saw Lady Scoggie in the hall about twenty minutes ago. She was going out.’

  ‘Did she say where to?’

  ‘To the Farquhars and the other bereaved families, I think.’

  ‘Not to Mrs. Kinkell?’ Her frown deepened. ‘How very odd. But as usual she is not here, when we need her. She had better be here on Friday for the grand dinner. Oh, dear! Now, what was I up here for? Oh, yes: cushions.’

  She marched off along the gallery to the tower room, where Murray hoped she would find some cushions still in one piece after the boys had used them as weapons. Feeling the sudden calm of the landing after her passing, he took a long, deep breath and paused for a moment, eyes closed, before venturing back along the schoolroom corridor to face his charges.

  The schoolroom, as he approached, was ominously quiet. He trod carefully on the wooden floor, making no noise himself, and stopped just outside the door. From within, he could hear only the occasional scuffle, and some remarkably heavy breathing, of the kind Robert did when he was concentrating very hard. Murray counted to ten, and with a deep sense of foreboding, opened the door.

  There was an almighty crash, and Murray flung up his hands to protect his head as books fell around him like autumn leaves, only with harder corners. When he opened his eyes again, the boys were still dumbstruck, standing on the table on which they had evidently been building a book tower. In a flash, they were down and back in their seats again.

  Murray brushed flakes of pastry off himself from the battered pies, and looked at the mess.

  ‘It’s good to see you both so eager to get back to your lessons,’ he remarked, ‘but you needn’t think anyone else is going to clear up all this mess. Pick them up quickly and put them back on the shelf, and show some respect for books – and next time, don’t build a tower so near the door.’

  ‘Well you shouldn’t walk round so quietly, or we could have shouted out and warned you,’ Robert objected, but Henry kicked him with all the force of an older brother recognising a hole when he saw it. They reluctantly cleared the books up off the floor, and put them back on the shelf, some upside down or back to front, though Murray decided not to pursue it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said heavil
y when they had returned to their form. ‘Now, it’s Tacitus this morning – do you have your slates ready?’

  ‘Robert’s is broken again,’ said Henry flatly.

  ‘Another one, Robert?’

  ‘It’s only a bit off the bottom. I can still write on it,’ Robert insisted, glaring at Henry.

  ‘Then do so. Tacitus. At the top, write “Book Fifteen, Chapter Forty-two”.’

  ‘But we did that last week, Mr. Murray, sir,’ said Henry.

  ‘No, we didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, we did, sir.’ Robert was eager to support his brother.

  ‘What was it about, then?’ The question was directed at Robert, but his face went blank. ‘Henry?’

  ‘About Nero, sir.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Burning Rome!’ cried Robert, who was easily excited by such happy pastimes.

  ‘And?’

  Henry thought hard, but eventually had to shake his head.

  ‘So even if we did do it last week – which I gravely doubt –‘ said Murray, ‘we’ll do it now to make sure you remember it this time. Now, write down: “Ceterum Nero usus est patriae ruinis exstruxitque domum”. He finished slowly, allowing them time to transcribe the phrase. He was growing to hate the squeak of stylus on slate, which in his own school days he had not minded in the least. ‘Now, Henry, parse extruxitque, please.’