by M C Beaton
Feeling somewhat emboldened after a second glass, he broached the subject of Jean Lindsay. He had expected the lawyer to be gratified that his client should have the chance of making such an advantageous marriage. To his surprise the lawyer not only disliked the idea, he disapproved heartily.
“I do not think that people of such different background should be wed,” said the lawyer.
“I had thought I was in the Athens of the North,” drawled the marquess. “And the Athenians invented the word democracy.”
“They also kept slaves,” replied Mr. Colqhoun dryly. “You must remember, my lord, that Miss Lindsay has been brought up to be a kind of servant despite her ladylike education.
“Married to you, she would be in command of a very great establishment and she would be living in a foreign country.”
The marquess blinked until he realized that Mr. Colqhoun’s foreign country was England. He turned the full blast of his very considerable charm on the lawyer.
“Now, Mr. Colqhoun, I have been torturing myself with these very ideas since I met her and all I have done is to make myself miserable. Have you never heard of love in this ‘foreign country’ of yours?”
“Ah… I did not know we were talking of love, my lord. I thought…”
“I am an extremely rich man, Mr. Colqhoun,” said the marquess briskly, divining his thought. “I have no need of Miss Lindsay’s fortune to repair my estates.”
Mr. Colqhoun smiled happily and settled down to a philosophical discussion on the subject of love. It was, he hoped His Lordship realized, not to be confused with lust or passion? “Well, well, just so… we will take the matter from there….”
After three hours, the marquess reeled from the tavern having been subjected to one of the longest lectures in his life. He had obviously passed some test, because Mr. Colqhoun clapped him on the shoulder and furnished the information that Miss Lindsay was to be found at Dunwearie.
“Perhaps Your Lordship would care to reside the night at Miss Lindsay’s residence in Charlotte Square? I know she would wish it.”
The marquess gratefully accepted and Mr. Colqhoun joined him in his coach and took him down to Charlotte Square. It was only after Mr. Colqhoun had turned him over to the ministrations of Mrs. Abernethy and taken his leave that the marquess realized that he had not had a thing to eat at lunchtime but a considerable amount to drink. What a peculiar place! With a sinking feeling, he noticed his letter lying on the study table. What was Jean Lindsay doing now?
At that moment Miss Lindsay’s travel-stained traveling coach was rolling into the village of Dunwearie, stopping here and there as Jean exchanged greetings with the villagers. “My, how fine you look,” they exclaimed, immediately demanding to know the cost of everything she had on and causing her maid, Sarah, to have a fit of the giggles.
How small and dark the manse looked! But Agnes was waiting at the door, looking the same as ever, the children of the village having run ahead to tell her of Jean’s coming.
Jean sent Hoskins and the coachman on to Glenrandall Castle with a note begging the duke to allow her room in his stables for her carriage.
Agnes, with the help of the women from the village, had quickly prepared the rooms with blazing fires in each, an extravagance that would have given Uncle Hamish an apoplexy.
The minister’s ghost still seemed to haunt the house despite all the bustle and gaiety of arrival. There were reminders of his small reign of terror everywhere. The rod, from which she had received so many beatings as a child, still hung in the hallway. Steel engravings of Covenanters being disemboweled, hanged or generally tortured haunted the gloomy walls and a portrait of John Knox sneered at Jean in her frivolous London finery from his pride of place over the dining-room fireplace.
For several days, Jean worked as she had never worked before, throwing out every reminder of Hamish from the gloomy manse. Agnes protested, “If you’re not going to be staying here, Mistress Jean, it seems an awfy lot of useless work. New curtains indeed.”
Jean maintained that she wanted to make her old home the way she had always dreamt it should be and she wielded her scrubbing brush as if she would brush away any trace of the minister’s very soul.
But it seemed impossible to get rid of the taint of Uncle Hamish. At night, Jean dreamed she heard the stairs creaking under his weight and his ranting, raving voice seemed to echo in the old gray stones of the empty church.
The generous meals supplied by Agnes were eaten in an almost guilty silence—reminding her of the way she used to furtively eat little treats in the kitchen as a child, hiding in the shelter of the housekeeper’s voluminous starched aprons.
One morning, she decided to crate up the grim pictures and put them in the attics. Her head tied up in a cloth, a smut of dirt on her cheek and one of her old dresses on, she worked away in the study, whistling at the top of her voice like a small boy and drowning out the sound of a guest’s arrival. A cough at the doorway brought her head around. There stood Lady Bess with a friend, gleefully surveying her déshabille with an “I told you so” look on her face.
“This is my friend, Miss Stokes, of whom I wrote you. This is Miss Jean Lindsay, Mary.”
Miss Mary Stokes was a thin, angular female with sandy hair and an irritating simper. “La, Miss Lindsay. We have come upon you at an awkward time,” she said, giving Bess a coy nudge with her elbow.
Bess nudged her back, and settled down to enjoy her childhood game of tormenting Jean Lindsay. “Faith!” she exclaimed. “Do not worry about Miss Lindsay’s appearance. I have seen her like this many a time. She was always being put to do the cleaning. You have obviously fitted back comfortably into where you belong. You must admit Jean, you were always a little strangely behaved in London Society.”
Miss Stokes gave a delighted giggle. Bess had promised her some good sport.
“I did not know you were in residence at the castle,” said Jean, wringing out her wash cloth in a wooden bucket and returning to work, washing the pictures and lifting them down from the walls.
“I had a most pleasant winter,” said Bess. “But Miss Stokes and I are prepared to return to London. You poor thing, Jean. No more balls or parties.”
“I had balls and parties enough in Edinburgh,” remarked Jean, refusing to let Bess goad her.
“Oh, Edinburgh. Pooh!” said Bess rudely.
Agnes entered, bearing a heavily laden tea tray.
“No thank you, Agnes,” said Jean. “No tea. Our guests are just leaving.”
Bess was furious. The day was hot and she was thirsty. She returned to the attack in earnest.
“Still you must have your memories, Jean. At least the Marquess of Fleetwater found you pretty enough to dally with, although ’tis said he is a terrible flirt.”
Jean swung around and demanded icily, “Would you say that my reputation is so ruined that there is little more that I can do to spoil it?”
“Oh, dear me, yes. I am afraid that is true,” said Bess, all mock sympathy.
Miss Stokes gave an infuriating titter.
Jean picked up the wooden bucket full of dirty water and emptied it full over the top of Bess’s pretty bonnet and sneering face. Miss Stokes screamed and ran from the manse and loped off toward the castle, her skirts hitched up, displaying to the village boys a long expanse of scrawny leg. Bess followed her, weeping and crying, her pretty muslin dress soaked in dirty water.
With a great sigh of satisfaction, Jean bent down and calmly started to mop the floor.
The weather grew increasingly warmer. Bell heather sprouted its pink flowers on the moorland and even the rhododendrons in the weed-choked manse garden managed to make a brave show. A fresh wind from the sea swept through the open windows of the manse with its irresistible age-old call of escape and freedom.
Jean took an old brown dress out of her wardrobe, pulled on a pair of thick, patched but still serviceable boots, tied her bright curls up in a kerchief and started to walk along the sea loch in the dir
ection of the beach. After much argument, she managed to persuade Hoskins to stay behind.
The beach at the head of the loch had been her favorite refuge as a child. When she reached it, the tide was out, leaving the machar or hard white sand covered with an inch of water so that, as she walked out toward the waves of the Atlantic, she felt as if she were walking on a giant mirror as the huge fleecy clouds tore through the sky overhead and their twins rushed by under her feet.
Jean stood at the edge of the water and knew from experience that the tide was about to turn. There was always a certain stillness at this point when the very wind dropped, the sea birds were quiet on the ledges of the cliffs and no wild animal moved.
Then the first wave of the incoming tide would crash on the sand as if released from a magic spell and everything would start up again in motion.
She stood with her skirts pinned up around her knees and her heavy walking boots in her hand, waiting for the silence to break, as she had done many times as a child.
A great wave tumbled forward and swirled around her ankles, a cormorant screamed savagely above her head and a seal slipped off his rock into the sea.
She gave a little sigh of satisfaction and decided to turn back. Wouldn’t it be perfect, she dreamed, if I should turn at this minute and see him coming toward me. Then she laughed at herself. The idea of the marquess in all his London drawing-room elegance on this wild and savage beach was fantasy indeed.
Jean turned around. And there, far away, on the long mirror of the beach and coming slowly toward her, was the Marquess of Fleetwater.
He was as faultlessly attired as ever, the sunlight winking on his gleaming Hessians with their little gold tassels, and on the perfection of his cravat. He carried a curly brimmed beaver in one hand and his walking cane in the other.
She stared at him, hypnotized, standing at the edge of the sea, staring toward him, wondering if she had at last lost her reason, and her fantasies had finally taken over.
But as he came up next to her, the voice was real and familiar. “Good morning, Miss Lindsay, I trust you are well?” he asked in that infuriating, lazy drawl.
Jean stood immobile, frozen to the spot. After a pause, he continued, “Lady Frank and Freddie send their regards.”
No reply.
They were now standing very close together. For a moment, the marquess looked irresolutely at his hat and cane, and then threw them both in the sea.
Very slowly, as if afraid of hurting her, the marquess folded his arms about Jean and held her close. With a little cry, half sob, half moan, she put her arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers.
The incoming tide swirled about the two figures, doing irreparable damage to the marquess’s glossy Hessians, but, with his lips and hands well-occupied, he was too carried away on his own wave of passion to bother about anything the Atlantic had to offer.
Finally, as a particularly majestic wave threatened to overcome them, they at last broke apart and made their way slowly up the beach.
“Let us go home,” said the marquess.
Jean Lindsay came out of a happy dream where she was having the first child christened John and the second, Charles, and the third Henry, to ask,
“Where is home?”
The marquess gave a happy laugh and gathered her close in his arm again. “It’s where we are, Jean Lindsay. Home is with us.”
