The Highland Countess

by M C Beaton

  Lord Toby stared at the back of Morag’s head and felt his heart begin to beat quickly. He was not in love, of course. He was too hardheaded a young man to think that anyone fell in love at first sight—that is, if anyone actually ever fell in love at all. He gave a deprecatory cough and said, “Lord Murr?”

  “Whit issit? Whit issit?” grumbled the earl, cross at having his gossip interrupted.

  “May I introduce myself,” pursued Lord Toby. “My name’s Freemantle, fifth viscount of the name.”

  “Oh, aye,” grunted the earl. “An Englishman, I’ve nae doot. Well, whit dae ye want, laddie?”

  Lord Toby fought down a mad impulse to say, “I want her,” but instead hit on a brilliant idea. “I have heard you praised as having the finest palate in Scotland for claret,” he said. “I wonder if it could possibly match my own since I am accounted something of an expert in the south. I would be prepared to supply several pipes of your favorite vintage if you would care to meet me to sample some vintages I have lately acquired.”

  Lord Toby tried to catch Morag’s eye again but she was still looking down.

  The earl studied him cautiously. For all his family’s politics and religion, old loyalties die hard and he did not particularly want to drink with an Englishman, but his two cronies were enthusiastic. “I’d take his lordship’s kind offer masell,” said Cosmo.

  “Aye, you would,” sneered the earl. “You’d drink wi’ the deil hisself if it got you a free drink. Och, very well, laddie. Gie us your direction.”

  Lord Toby produced his card and handed it over. “Will eight o’clock this evening be suitable?” he asked, thinking all the while, “Will she never look up?”

  “Eight o’clock will be just fine,” said the earl.

  Lord Toby hesitated. “I do hope your charming daughter will not be angry with me for taking you away this evening.”

  “Daughter?” said the earl and then let out a great bellow of laughter. “This is my wife, laddie.”

  Lord Toby felt an almost physical stab of pain in the region of his heart. This beautiful girl wed to this old satyr. Morag had taken the earl’s arm and the earl pressed his wife’s hand and then released it to fiddle about his wig with the back scratcher.

  Morag’s burst of loyalty to her husband could not stop her from looking up at Lord Toby, at those fascinating green eyes, at the strong, handsome face, at the humorous, sensuous mouth.

  Lord Toby caught his breath. There was such bewilderment and pain in the girl’s eyes that he quickly averted his own. These waters were too deep for him. But he would still have to endure the earl’s company.

  He bowed and returned to his friends. Some innate kindness stopped him from telling them that Morag was the earl’s wife. He merely said curtly that the girl was affianced and, turning on his heel, thrust his way through the crowd, leaving his friends to follow.

  The day grew blacker and a fine drizzle began to fall. Lord Toby shook his head slightly to try to dispel the picture of the beautiful girl, blazing like a jewel in the squalor of the High Street. He had always prided himself on being a practical, level-headed man who enjoyed his various amours with just the right degree of cynicism. Damn this weird, smoky capital with its medieval buildings. It caused disturbing fancies in the mind.

  Evening fell on Edinburgh, on rich and poor alike. On Morag, sitting crying over her books in one room, on the earl being lashed into his corsets in the other.

  Reading would not allow Morag to escape anymore. Every hero had green eyes and jet black hair.

  The earl had once asked her if she had ever felt the passion of a woman for a man.

  “Oh, indeed I have, my lord. Indeed I have!” cried Morag to the silent walls as the earl clattered down the stairs, a romantic figure to Morag for the first and only time, because he was going to see Lord Toby.

  Chapter Four

  Winter settled its steely grip on the land, on Perthshire and on Murr Castle.

  On his return from Edinburgh, the earl had had all the chimneys swept with the result that the fires no longer smoked but all the heat went up to the roof more than ever and kept the innumerable birds nesting cozily in the turrets from freezing.

  The days stretched out long and gray and silent. Morag’s one excitement was the arrival of the carrier from Perth with another consignment of books. As the long days passed, the heroes between the pages began to take on their own given coloring and identity. The knights and lords and poets no longer had black hair and green eyes. But memory remained and Morag found it increasingly hard to accept the fact that she was tied for life to this loveless marriage and her virgin state.

  There were, however, some things to be thankful for. The earl no longer seemed to want to bed his wife. Rapidly failing health and a preoccupation with the scullery maid kept him fully occupied. Sometimes in the dark evenings, he would ask Morag to read to him, enjoying the simpler stories with an almost childlike absorption. Gradually a strange kind of affection grew between the earl and his young wife. Like a small child, he would look forward to his “bedtime story,” his gouty foot propped up on a footstool, watching the light of the flames play in Morag’s red hair and listening with pleasure to the clear, soft notes of her voice. A little of the old, soft Scottish burr of childhood had crept back into Morag’s voice, a little of the Highland lilt.

  Sometimes the earl would rouse himself to tell her again of that strange evening in Edinburgh with Lord Toby Freemantle since she never seemed to be tired of hearing it. Of how the young lord had indeed had a good palate for wines. He fortunately did not tell Morag that as the wine had sunk lower in the bottles, he had regaled his young lordship with some very warm and fictitious stories of Morag’s amorous expertise.

  He praised instead Lord Toby’s meticulous courtesy and wondered again why this English stranger had gone to such trouble to entertain a man old enough to be his father, a man he had only met that day.

  Then the earl would add, “Aye, a fine lad for an Englishman. Hell-bent on emulating Boswell and Johnson. I told him he was welcome here but, och, although it hasnae snowed I doubt if he’s coming.” And Morag would experience that terrible pang of half hope, half despair.

  The winter skies grew heavier and darker and the wind no longer blew from the North Sea but swung round to the west bringing with it that damp, almost metallic smell, the harbinger of snow.

  First it came in infinitesimal white specks, so light, they barely settled on the ground. Then they grew larger until Morag, looking out of the castle window, could see great sheets of white blowing across the countryside, first blotting out the silver wind of the river, then the fields, then the castle gardens.

  Suddenly the clouds parted and a single shaft of sunlight shone down, turning the land to blinding white, highlighting the massive purple snowclouds, lighting up a small figure in the distance, a figure on horseback, riding toward the castle.

  Morag felt a pang of anticipation, fear, elation. Could the solitary horseman be Lord Toby? Then the heavy clouds blotted out the sun and the snow fell harder than ever and the small figure was lost to view.

  It could not be he, of course. He would come with his friends. Or, failing that, he would have a manservant riding behind him and a pack pony for his baggage. An hour passed and no halloo came from the castle courtyard.

  Well, at least the foul weather would keep Lord Arthur and Lady Phyllis away. Their visits had become quite frequent. Morag did not know why, because they obviously detested the earl and Lady Phyllis’s sole amusement seemed to be in deriding Morag’s face, figure and clothes.

  A three-volume novel lay beside her with its pages as yet uncut. Morag was frightened to start reading it in case she finished it too quickly. There would be no more books from the bookseller until winter slackened its grip.

  She froze as the muffled sound of voices came up to the window and the stamping of hooves and the whickering of a horse.

  Morag sat as if turned to stone. She heard one of her husband�
��s servants mounting the stairs to the earl’s bedchamber. After some time, she heard his slow, shuffling steps on the stairs and his voice saying, “Lord Toby Freemantle, d’ye say? Well, well, well. It’ll be grand to have a bit of company.”

  Then his voice, raised in welcome, resounded from below and the sound of his great laugh. “I must keep my dreams,” thought Morag wildly and illogically. “He is only a very ordinary young man after all.” But as two sets of footsteps could be heard mounting the stair, she scampered wildly from the room and escaped to the safety of her bedchamber. She rang the bell.

  It was eventually answered by Fionna Ingles, the earl’s scullery maid, who had been elected to the grand position of housemaid, despite the housekeeper’s patent dislike of the girl and her complaints that Fionna Ingles was “nothing mair than a sleekit quean.”

  Fionna seemed to have grown considerably fatter than Morag had remembered. She had heard whispers that her husband took his pleasures in the servants’ quarters and wondered for the first time whether Fionna’s were the quarters that he took them in.

  “My leddy rang,” pointed out Fionna sulkily, smoothing her apron down over her large stomach.

  “Tell my lord I am indisposed,” said Morag. “I will join him at supper.”

  Then perhaps Lord Toby will have left, thought poor Morag, but the howl of the rising storm seemed to mock that hope.

  Fionna shuffled out, casting a jealous eye on the new gown Morag had been making which was spread over a chair.

  Morag spent the rest of the day in a fever of fear and anticipation. She wanted him to leave and at the same time dreaded his going. She stitched diligently to finish her new gown, vowing one minute that it didn’t matter in the slightest what she looked like and the next, hoping he would find her as fashionable as the young ladies of London. Morag had found time between book buying in Edinburgh to purchase several yards of sprigged India muslin. Now she was fashioning it into the latest style—high waist, little puff sleeves, low neckline and a deep flounce at the hem.

  Although the earl had his valet, Morag did not have a lady’s maid so there was no one to tell her whether her appearance in the new gown was suitable to that of a young Scottish countess.

  Lord Toby watched her entering the room. He could have told her volumes.

  He had not forgotten her. It was like a sickness, he decided. He had ridden as far as Perth with his two companions, who had refused to go any farther. Toby’s plan to ride out and visit the Earl of Murr for a few hours was considered madness. Alistair had pointed out that if they did not quickly start for the south, then they would be stranded in this accursed country until the spring.

  Lord Toby had set out alone, promising to return in time for supper. And as if in mocking answer to Alistair’s prophecy, the snow began to fall heavily.

  He felt he ought to turn back. On the other hand he was more determined to exorcise the vision of Morag from his brain.

  His welcome at the castle had been reassuring in a way. It all seemed very primitive. The earl seemed older and more bloated than he had remembered.

  And then she walked into the room, the thin muslin floating about her body, her neck, rising from the dainty neckline looking like alabaster and her hair, burning in the shadowed light.

  He bent over her hand, apologizing for his riding dress. He had not known he would be stranded, he said in his light pleasant voice. She must forgive him. And Morag clutched onto his hand and felt the solid stone floor of the castle melt beneath her feet.

  “You look braw,” said the earl gruffly. “I wish that long-nosed caillich, Phyllis, could see ye noo.”

  The warmth and admiration in the earl’s face made Toby’s heart sink. He remembered the earl’s description of Morag’s talents which he had then only half believed but which now all seemed possible. But he could not take his eyes off her.

  Left to the young couple, supper would have been an embarrassed, silent affair but the earl was in full flight, stuffing food in his mouth and laughing through it at his own jokes, spraying the table with bones and crumbs.

  Morag passed a heavy wooden trencher to Lord Toby and their hands accidentally met and she snatched hers away as if they had been burned.

  “I am behaving like the veriest moonstruck youth,” thought Toby savagely. He roused himself to entertain his host with the gossip from Edinburgh. He had a lively wit and the earl seemed at times in danger of having an apoplexy, he laughed so hard.

  The earl capped Lord Toby’s stories with some of his own. They were decidedly warm anecdotes to relate in the presence of a lady but very funny for all that, and Toby found himself reluctantly warming to his Falstaffian host.

  When they were seated by the fire in the drawing room, the earl suddenly begged Morag to read to him with a half-apologetic smile in the direction of Lord Toby. “I like a guid story,” he smiled, “and Morag reads them that well.”

  Morag flushed and began to read, stumbling over the words at first until, with a Herculean effort, she shut Lord Toby’s presence from her mind and concentrated on the narrative. The book was Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett, a writer very much after the earl’s heart, and a choice of literature which would have shocked governess Miss Simpson’s heart to the core. “He was formed for the ruin of our sex,” read Morag in her pretty, soft voice while the earl chuckled appreciatively and Toby sat with his senses reeling, free to stare at Morag as much as he liked.

  She read until the embers glowed red in the fire. She read until a gentle snore from the earl told her that her husband had fallen asleep.

  She stopped reading and sat very still. Then she slowly raised her eyes and looked at Lord Toby.

  Their eyes met and held. Morag felt a heavy, lethargic sweetness in her body.

  Almost frightened of her, he rose to his feet. “It is late, madam,” he said in a strained voice which did not sound like his own.

  Morag rose too and dropped him a curtsy and then, as if impelled by some force greater than the social laws, she put her hand on the rough sleeve of his riding jacket.

  He covered it with his own and stood looking down at her, so close that he could feel the warmth from her body, feel the faint trembling of the hand under his own.

  Then the earl stirred in his sleep and yawned. Morag snatched her hand away and with a breathless “Good night” fled from the room to the privacy of her bedchamber, to sleep with the hand he had held, cradled against her cheek.

  The earl was roused by his servant and helped off to bed. Lord Toby found his own bedchamber, painfully aware of the proximity of Morag in this small castle.

  He tossed and turned between the cold, damp sheets in the cold, damp room and struggled with his conscience. But the call of nature can take precedence even in the most anguished soul and he realized he would need to investigate the plumbing of the castle which, if he remembered rightly, consisted of a garde-robe in the east tower, the hygienic arrangements of the castle not having been changed since the Middle Ages.

  He was returning to his room when he heard the sound of a stifled female giggle coming from the earl’s room. All his dreams fled faced with this cold reality. The countess was, of course, in bed with the earl and having a high old time by the sound of it. Toby cursed himself for a romantic fool and was about to take himself off to bed when the door of the earl’s bedchamber opened. He did not want to meet her. He shrank back into the shadows.

  The door swung wider. In the dim gold light of the oil lamp by the earl’s bedside stood a female figure which Lord Toby recognized as the housemaid, Fionna. She was scantily dressed. The earl followed her to the door and clutched her to him in a passionate embrace while Toby’s heartbeats quickened with disgust and a strange hope. The goddess of his dreams was sleeping alone while her husband philandered with the maid—was in love with the maid, for there could be no doubting that expression on the earl’s bloated face.

  Toby waited until Fionna, with one last flirtatious wave of her hand to the earl, h
ad pattered past him to her own quarters.

  Then he went to his own room, impatient for the morrow, troubled by a fevered conscience—for she was married after all, and seemingly fond of her husband.

  The next day dawned cold and gray but at least the snow had ceased. But again she did not appear and again the message was that her ladyship would be present at supper. He had to content himself until then.

  The earl stayed in his rooms as well and there was little he could find to do apart from reading and eating. What kind of life was this for a young girl like Morag? he thought fretfully. The snow was lying deep and crisp and even under a leaden sky which promised more to come. I would die of boredom an I lived here, thought Lord Toby, suddenly homesick for the lights and color of London.

  He was then confined to his room for two impatient hours before dinner while his shirt was laundered and his jacket brushed. He thought of the excellent wardrobe he had left behind with his friends in Perth.

  At last it was time to dress and descend to the drawing room. His heart beating hard, he pushed open the door.

  No one.

  He paced up and down.

  At last the door swung open and Morag stood timidly on the threshold. She was wearing a green silk gown of old-fashioned cut. It emphasized the tininess of her waist and the whiteness of her shoulders. Her red hair was piled on top of her head allowing one stray curl to lie on her shoulder.

  As they stared at each other, tongue-tied, Fionna appeared behind Morag, bobbing a curtsy. The earl, she said, was sore plagued with the toothache and was keeping to his bed.

  Lord Toby took a deep breath. He must remember to behave like a gentleman. He must remember, at all times, that this beautiful girl was married to his host.

  He kept up an amiable if stilted conversation until they were seated at dinner and the servants had retired, the earl believing in the old-fashioned idea that one served oneself.