The Highland Countess

by M C Beaton

  “Rory!” she cried. “Dear God, what happened to you?”

  Rory’s fertile brain sprang into action. Not for worlds would he tell his mother he had lied to her.

  “I went to my room like I said,” he began, standing back from her and putting his hands behind his back. “But I felt dizzy and went outside the back of the castle for some fresh air… and… and… a man sprang out of the bushes and threw a sack ower—over—my heid—head.”

  “Dear God protect us!” wailed Morag. “What then?”

  “I was slung on his back and carried off but the sack gave way and I fell oot—out. I ranandIranandIran,” gabbled Rory now that this momentous lie was nearly at an end.

  Had it not been for the earlier attempt, it is doubtful that even Morag would have believed this tarradiddle. But fear made her believe the worst. She called a council of war, and any servants who were not still out scouring the countryside for the boy were now sent out to look for the kidnapper.

  By midnight, all the searchers had returned. There was no sign of any stranger in the area for miles around.

  Panic-stricken, Morag slept in Rory’s room that night with the small knife boy asleep on a truckle bed outside the door. Rory bitterly resented the guard supplied by the knife boy since he was but little older than himself.

  Morag’s last waking thought was, “Now I should go to London. Not for myself, but for Rory.”

  But when the next day dawned bright and fair, she wondered if she had been too precipitate in her decision. But that day brought a visit from Lord Arthur and his wife, who could barely conceal their dislike of Rory. Morag talked commonplaces with them, her voice growing husky as a nervous seizure caught at her throat. Of course! Lord Arthur stood to inherit should anything happen to Rory. He wouldn’t… he couldn’t. He might, said a niggling voice in her brain.

  Then arrived a letter from Cosmo, Laird of Glenaquer. He had visited the castle several times since the earl’s death and had been profoundly shocked when Morag had put off her mourning. He obviously expected her to wear the willow for her husband until the day she died.

  “I trust you are comporting yourself well,” the letter ran, “and that Rory is behaving himself. We must always watch that doubtful family characteristics do not appear in the boy.”

  Morag bit her lip in vexation. Cosmo would never let her forget the illegitimacy of Rory’s birth. Oh, to fly to London and leave them all!

  She at last firmly made up her mind and, when Cosmo’s letter had gone up in the flames in the fire and Lord Arthur and Lady Phyllis had taken their leave, she drew Rory to her side, fondling his long golden curls.

  “Rory,” she began. “We have a fine mansion in London. I think perhaps a visit to the metropolis might be exciting. You will be able to see all the sights. What think you?”

  Rory’s mind rattled busily while his gaze merely reflected a limpid innocence.

  “Shall I be allowed to have my hair cut and stop wearing petticoats?” he asked, after a long pause.

  “You are too young yet, my son,” said Morag fondly, thinking how enchanting he looked in his pretty dress and frilly pantaloons. “There is time enough to grow up.”

  Rory bit back the angry reply of, “Well, I won’t go.” He wanted to see the capital city and if he put his mind to it, something might be arranged. “I should like very much to go, mama,” he answered in a clear, little voice.

  “Then go we shall, Now send Hamish to me. I have much to discuss with him.”

  Rory did not allow the sulky expression which reflected his feelings to mar his face until he had closed the door behind him. He did not like Hamish. His mother was too familiar with this servant and relied too much on his judgment. Besides, Hamish had given him a beating.

  Nonetheless, he crept quietly down the back stairs to the butler’s pantry. No sign of Hamish. Rory quietly opened the kitchen door and stood staring at the sight before him in glee.

  Hamish was in the act of depositing a sly kiss on the new kitchenmaid’s rosy cheek. He coughed and both swung around, Hamish turning a dull red and the kitchenmaid giving a saucy laugh.

  “What is it?” demanded Hamish, who would never call the boy “my lord.”

  “My mother wants to see you,” said Rory. “But I would like to talk to you first… alone.”

  Hamish sent the kitchenmaid about her business and turned and looked down at the child. Hamish wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to the innocence of childhood in Rory’s case. It was like looking into the hard, fiat, calculating eyes of a forty-year-old dwarf.

  “Yes?” he barked.

  “I don’t think our good Mrs. Tallant would like to hear of your flirting with the serving wench,” said Rory, twisting the hem of his dress between his chubby fingers.

  “Why you…” began Hamish.

  Rory nipped quickly behind a chair. “Of course I won’t tell her, if you will do a very little thing for me.”

  “What do you want?” asked Hamish gruffly, thereby setting the small blackmailer’s feet firmly on the first rung of his career. For, in truth, Hamish was very much in love with the stately, matronly housekeeper and hoped to marry her one day, the “Mrs.” being a courtesy title. His flirtation with the kitchenmaid meant nothing.

  Rory’s eyes gleamed. “I simply want you to tell mama that I am too old to wear petticoats. We are to go to London and I want to wear my hair short as well. If you tell her, I shall not tell Mrs. Tallant.”

  Hamish hesitated. But the imperative summons of the bell sounded from the drawing room. “All right,” he growled.

  He went upstairs, muttering under his breath, “I’ll kill that boy one day.” But he composed his angry features before he opened the door and proceeded to persuade his mistress that young Rory should be out of petticoats.

  “Oh, I do hate to see him grow up so quickly,” she cried, and Hamish could only wonder at the love on her face. The horrible child was not even her own!

  “But,” went on Morag, “I am touched by your obvious concern for the boy. I know we don’t often see eye to eye when it comes to young Rory’s behavior because you are apt to take his childish pranks over-seriously. You must not refine too much on the boy’s innocent fun. But I will grant your wish, Hamish. Now let us discuss this proposed visit to London. I can do nothing until I speak to Mr. James Murray, but nonetheless…”

  Rory slipped quietly down to the kitchens that evening, flushed with success. His mother was to take him to Perth the very next day to buy him a new suit of clothes and also to take him to the barber to have his locks shorn. The cook had been baking macaroons that afternoon. Ah, well, a little pressure on old Hamish and he could have as many as he wanted.

  He opened the kitchen door.

  Hamish and Mrs. Tallant were sitting side by side at the kitchen table with the teapot between them. Both looked up and stared steadily at young Rory.

  “Come here, laddie,” said Hamish at last.

  Rory marched confidently forward.

  Hamish reached out a long, muscular arm and put the struggling boy over his knee and proceeded to apply a leather slipper to Rory’s wriggling bottom with great energy.

  “Take that… and that… and that,” said Hamish. “I told Mrs. Tallant all about the kitchenmaid and she forgives me. So there”… smack…“let that be a lesson tae ye”… smack… “and tell your mither by all means”… smack… “and I shall surely tell my lady why you got this thrashing.”

  He let Rory go. The boy was white-faced, his eyes blazing with such venom that, good Protestant though she was, Mrs. Tallant almost crossed herself. Then Rory turned on his heel and marched from the room. He did not cry until he had climbed high to the top of the castle and out onto the leads. Then he broke down, sobbing bitterly. Shame and rage engulfed him. How could he have been so stupid? The next time, he vowed, he would have such a secret to hold over someone that they would not dare touch him.

  In the weeks to come, Morag was busy with preparati
ons for her departure. The main body of servants was to be left at the castle. Hamish, three grooms, two outriders and her lady’s maid should make the journey south. The roads were considerably better than they had been seven years before so they would be able to travel all the way in the new, well-sprung traveling carriage.

  Two days before their departure, two things happened. The newspapers announced the cessation of hostilities with France. The monster, Napoleon, was incarcerated on the island of Elba. And Miss Simpson arrived at Murr Castle. Rory was excluded from the room while she talked to his mother. He pressed his ear against the door but could only hear the soft murmur of voices. He did not know that Miss Simpson was begging for some sort of post in the household, her life having been hard after Morag’s marriage. She had returned to her brother’s farm where she had been treated little better than a servant.

  Rory paced up and down until he was at last able to join his “mother.”

  He looked with undisguised contempt at the shabby governess.

  “This is my old governess, Miss Simpson,” smiled Morag. “Don’t poker up, Rory. She is not here to instruct you. Miss Simpson is my new companion and will travel with us in London. Make your bow.”

  Rory, with his back to his mother, made Miss Simpson a low bow, and, as he looked up into her face, a slow, insolent smile played over his lips.

  Miss Simpson folded her lips into a thin line and lowered her own eyes in case Morag should read the message in them.

  For with Rory and Miss Simpson, it was a case of hate at first sight.

  Chapter Seven

  Lord Toby felt at ease with his conscience and the world—a pleasant and unusual state of affairs. He was seated in a trim drawing room in Grosvenor Square, waiting to propose marriage to one Miss Henrietta Sampson.

  After a tumultuous and dangerous seven years, he could smile on the callow youth that had been himself and congratulate himself on having finally reached a stage of maturity. He was thirty-two years old and it was, after all, high time he grew up.

  All that long time ago, he had eventually arrived in Perth after his horrible visit to Murr Castle, exhausted and feverish. His friends had prophesied correctly and there was no hope of making their way south until the spring. He had therefore ample time during a long convalescence to take inventory of his behavior.

  He had tried to start up an affair with a married woman—something strictly against his code of manners and morals—and he was reaping the full benefit in feelings of disgust. As spring approached and he gradually grew stronger, Morag’s picture changed in his mind’s eye. Her mouth became full and voluptuous and her blue eyes, hard and calculating. By the time he and his friends were able to set out, she had retreated to the back of his mind, a beckoning, leering, red-haired harpy who had nearly stolen his love and his self-respect.

  But on his return to London a strange feeling of unease stayed with him, and a dragging pain. The London Season bored him more than any previous Season he could remember. His life seemed to be that of an empty fribble. He bought himself a captaincy in a Hussar regiment and sailed for Spain to fight the devil within and the devils—in the shape of Bonaparte’s massive armies—without.

  Before the cessation of hostilities with France, he had caught a ball in the shoulder and had been invalided home. He emerged into society during the Little Season to find himself a great social success. He had always been noticed before, of course, due to his title and fortune. But he had been a good-natured young man, eager to please, and any one of the top ten thousand will tell you just how unfashionable these qualities are. He now presented a cold and arrogant manner to the world. He was, at best, coldly civil. He was accounted a splendid fellow.

  It was at one of his first social occasions since he had recovered from his wound that he met Miss Henrietta Sampson.

  She was of the Surrey Sampsons, an old family belonging to the untitled aristocracy. She had neat glossy brown ringlets and enormous brown eyes which she kept cast down.

  Her nose was a trifle long and her chin a trifle square, but these things paled before her general air of calm good sense. She did not, of course, inspire passion but that was just as well, because passion was no good grounding for a marriage. Now on this day of the opening of the London Season, 1814, he had made up his mind. He would marry the fair Henrietta, retire to the country and farm his lands. He had no doubt but that the acceptance of his proposal lay entirely with Henrietta, her parents being a colorless couple without much say in anything.

  He glanced out appreciatively at the masses of hyacinths in their trim windowboxes and at the pale, late spring sun gilding the trees of Grosvenor Square—for where else would such a correct lady as Miss Henrietta live but at the best address?

  She entered the room very quietly and closed the door softly behind her.

  He walked forward and took her mittened hands in his own, noticing in a satisfied way the demure gray of her dress and the neat bunches of ringlets—arranged, though he did not know it, to hide her rather large ears.

  “You know why I am come, Miss Sampson.” It was not a question.

  “I think so,” said Henrietta with a little half smile pinned to her mouth.

  “I wish your hand in marriage, Miss Sampson. You would make me the happiest of men. Please say ‘yes.’”

  “Oh, yes, Lord Freemantle,” said Henrietta, still looking at the floor. “Papa told me you spoke to him yesterday and I took the liberty of sending an announcement of our betrothal to the Gazette.”

  Lord Toby frowned. That seemed to be taking a lot for granted. Then his brow cleared. It was just what he should have expected from his ever-practical Henrietta. She was so sane, so English. Now why had he thought that? What else could she be but English?

  “You do me great honor,” he said, smiling down at her. “May I kiss you, Henrietta?”

  She blushed and raised her mouth to his. He pressed a chaste kiss on her pursed lips. Nothing happened to his senses, but, then, that should not surprise him since he hadn’t expected anything to happen.

  Henrietta drew back and at last raised her shining eyes to his. “I feel our marriage will be blessed,” she cried, pointing upward to heaven with one finger in the manner of the saints in so many paintings. Lord Toby was suddenly and irresistibly reminded of the rude gestures of street arabs but grimly put the thought from his mind and drew her tenderly back into the circle of his arms, cradling her head against his chest.

  He stared out of the window over her glossy ringlets, feeling immeasurably content.

  A smart open carriage bowled past in the square outside. The lady in it had been bending forward slightly to speak to a very beautiful little boy seated opposite. She raised a laughing face, seeming to look straight at Lord Toby. It was Morag, Countess of Murr, grown in years, grown in beauty, hair flaming under the saucy gold of a smart chip straw bonnet. Then she was gone.

  She had materialized seemingly out of nowhere on this day of all days to shatter his peace. The red-haired leering harpy of his memories vanished. The blow of seeing her melted his frozen feelings, thawed out his icy social poise. He must recover his detachment. It could not have been her.

  “You are hurting me!” cried Henrietta, pulling away and rubbing her arms where he had gripped them so tightly.

  “Oh, my dear, I am sorry,” he said, wrenching his mind to the present. “I shall call on you this evening to escort you and your parents to Almack’s,” he said gently. “You belong to me now, my darling.”

  “Yes,” said Henrietta flatly. “Nothing will part us now. It would be breach of promise otherwise.” She gave a merry laugh which tinkled in his ears like broken glass and added, at his look of surprise, “Stoopid! I was only funning.”

  Of course she was funning, he smiled to himself as he walked off around the square some ten minutes later. Dear innocent little Henrietta! For a moment, she had made it sound like a threat!

  He made his way to Brooks’s Club in St. James’s Street, entered th
e black-and-white marble hall and made his way to the back morning room.

  His friends, Alistair Tillary and Harvey Wrexford, had their heads buried in newspapers. The Honorable Alistair had grown fatter and chubbier than ever with the passing years and Mr. Harvey Wrexford so thin that it was said he could take cover behind a lamppost.

  Alistair looked up from his paper, grinning with pleasure at the sight of his friend. “Saved myself a bit of money, Toby,” he cried. “Been paying ‘face money’ for years and just learned this morning the club discontinued the practice five years ago. Someone might have told me, though.”

  The Dilettanti Society, which founded the club, passed a rule, “That every member of the Society do make a present of his Picture in Oil Colors done by Mr. Geo Knapton, a member, to be hung in the Room where the said Society meets.”

  Four years later there was another ruling which decreed that any member who had not provided a portrait should pay a guinea a year until it was delivered. These fines were known as “face money” and no one thought of stopping the custom till 1809.

  “The club would vastly benefit from your portrait, Alistair,” teased Lord Toby. “Mayhap there was not a canvas of large enough proportions.”

  “Shouldn’t mock,” grunted Alistair, eyeing his girth sadly. “Been on a diet, don’t you see. Potatoes and vinegar. Nothing else. But the more I eat the cursed things, the thinner Harvey gets. Ain’t no justice.”

  “Did she accept you?” asked Harvey Wrexford, lounging on the sofa. It was a great year for lounging and arranging one’s limbs to their best advantage. One lounged on the carpet at the feet of the ladies, one lounged on sofas at one’s club or one seated oneself at ease in a chair, placing the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other. This did not apply to the ladies, who were never supposed to touch the back of any chair, and the tyranny of that infernal machine, the backboard, still went on.

  Lord Toby took off his curly brimmed beaver, having worn his hat for the regulation ten minutes. “Yes,” he said, and then as if compelled, “It will be in the Gazette tomorrow.”