She opened a cupboard. Ah, letters. She pulled out a ribbon-wrapped bundle. The top envelope was stamped and postmarked “Invermoriston, Nov 2, 1970.” Miss Norah Cameron, read the address, written in a precise male hand, 12 Balfour Place, Fort William … Oops, Amanda thought, hurriedly replacing the bundle. The last thing she needed to do was snoop through her hostess’s old love letters.
Cerberus looked up, ears pricked. The library door swung open with a slow squeal and Amanda clambered to her feet. Malcolm stood in the doorway, holding a tray brimming with crockery. This morning his hair was neatly combed above its close-trimmed nape and his jeans were a fresh dark blue. “So you’ve got stuck in,” he said.
Amanda glanced at her feet, wondering what she’d stepped in. “Excuse me?”
“You’re hard at it already.”
“Afraid not. I don’t know where anything is, I’m just poking around.”
“And workin’ up an appetite, I expect.” Malcolm set the tray down on a low table before the fireplace. “It’s only tea and toast, but either Mum or Irene will be along presently for the eggs and sausages.”
Carrie had warned her about the wretched excess of the British breakfast. But the toast looked great. “Thanks,” Amanda said, and sat down beside the tray. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Oh no. It’s sic a grand mornin’ I thought I should be makin’ a start masel’. I’ll play mother, shall I?”
“Excuse me?” she said again. Either she needed some caffeine or a translator, she wasn’t sure which.
“I’ll pour the tea,” he returned. He sloshed milk into a cup and filled it with tea, making a steaming caramel-colored brew. “Sugar?”
“Damn the calories, full speed ahead.” Amanda burned her tongue on her first sip and turned to the toast, arranged neatly in a little rack, cool but crisp. The butter spread smoothly and the marmalade was tart and fresh. She stuffed her face while Malcolm kept her cup filled.
Cerberus sat close by, his adoring eyes watching each bite disappear. Amanda couldn’t imagine a less appropriate name for such a cream puff of a dog. He looked like he’d have trouble guarding the pantry, let alone the gates of Hell.
At last she looked up into Malcolm’s keen blue gaze. “I really have eaten square meals before. Sorry to be such a pig.”
“No a bit of it,” Malcolm replied. “You’re hungry. No shame in that. I canna thole scrawny women who greet and whinge ower their plates as though appetite were mortal sin.”
“And why do they do that?” retorted Amanda. “Because men like scrawny women.”
“Ah, no, a woman should have a proper figure.” His hands sketched a figure eight, paralleling the movement of his eyes up and down her body. “But it’s a wee bit early to be flirtin’,” he conceded, with a grin that wasn’t at all repentant.
Amanda laughed. Too early in the morning? she wondered. Or too early in the acquaintance? She thought of James’s bones downstairs and her laugh became a grimace. Down, girl. “You know a lot about James. I guess your grandfather told you about him.”
“No, my grandfather died in 1939. In self-defense, I reckon. His generation thought they’d sorted the matter in the first war, but no, that was only the preliminary round.”
Amanda nodded encouragingly.
“As for James, I’ve told you the lot. I’m workin’ on a computerized genealogy, but I’m only as far as the sixteenth century and the Grant who was lady-in-waitin’ to Mary of Guise. The program’s American, like most. It’s a right scunner to have a spell checker tellin’ me ‘honour’ has no ‘u’ and ‘defence’ is spelled wi’ an ‘s’!”
“The nerve!” Amanda said with a grin.
“But you’re wantin’ the eighteenth-century ephemera. This way.” Malcolm piled his napkin on the tray, dodged around Cerberus, and opened a cupboard behind a settee in the far corner of the room. “There you are. My grandfather organized and labeled everythin’.”
“Good for him, to take pity on us ink-stained wretches.” Inside the cupboard, on two shelves, were stacked several paper-stuffed file folders. She could tell by the color and texture of the papers, not to mention the style of handwriting, that this collection was the one.
“I canna get past the first chapter o’ Archibald’s memoirs masel’,” Malcolm added. “The man never met a subordinate clause he didna like. And he uses initials instead o’ names, pridin’ himsel’ on his discretion, I’m thinkin’, but makin’ it a right bugger to decipher.”
Amanda remembered Thomas Mason, a dull man with a high opinion of himself, and mentally girded her loins. “It’s okay. I’m motivated.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then. Do you mind if I listen to music while I work?”
“Please tell me you’re not into heavy metal.”
“I dinna think so, no. Mild-mannered rock ’n reel.”
“Rock ’n what?”
He smiled indulgently. “Folk rock. Just the ticket for historians.”
“Whatever works,” she told him with a shrug, and sat down on the floor beside the cupboard.
Archibald’s memoirs were a thick stack of paper in a pleated cardboard folder, neatly labeled in the same typeface as the faxed letter. Amanda pulled a page from the middle and blessed her course in paleography.
The tight, finicky handwriting read, “… finding the tenants ever hopeful of improvements, and yet aware of their own responsibilities in the furtherance of agriculture in the glen, Mr. R—and I proceeded toward Cluanie, where we stopped for a meal amidst the glorious scenery of mountain and loch so aptly described by Boswell in his volume of travels with Dr. Johnson… .” Archibald seemed blissfully ignorant of the full stop, Amanda thought. She slipped the page back into the stack and leaned the folder against her knee.
A thinner folder was identified as “Collected letters from Isabel Grant, nee Seaton.” Letters to James? Amanda set that bundle in her lap, along with the one marked, “Letters from Donald, Lord Dundreggan, to his sons.”
Several other folders she set to the side, not recognizing the names or finding the dates out of her range. The last one was labeled, “Miscellaneous.” She almost set it aside, too, until she glimpsed a typewritten sheet inside. “Copy of the letter from Alexander Lindsay, Earl of Balcarres, dated July 8, 1781. The letter itself is now in Edinburgh.” That might be relevant after all, Amanda told herself, and put the folder on the bottom of her pile. Bless the older Malcolm, she thought. He was making her job a piece of cake, considering.
She piled everything on the settee and went after her notebook. It was right where she’d left it, by the fireplace.
Malcolm’s computer screen showed an architectural drawing of a stately Palladian facade. As his hand made subtle movements with the mouse virtual column drums unstacked themselves and rolled to the side. A nearby CD player emitted a sprightly folk-flavored tune for electric guitar and male voice, “… here is where the heart is, beatin’ like a drum… .” With a few quick dance steps, Amanda retired to her corner and settled down.
She started with Isabel’s letters. The first one was dated early 1779, apparently right after the engagement had been announced, and began, “My dear Captain Grant.” She was engaged to the man and she addressed him so formally? The odds were that Isabel barely knew him. Back then, Amanda might have found herself engaged to Wayne whether she wanted him or not. But no, she wasn’t from his class.
Amanda mouthed the words as she struggled through the light, lacey handwriting. The letter acknowledged Isabel’s new relationship with James and expressed respect. Not to mention, Amanda thought, evaluating the subtext, a lot of caution. “… I shall miss your presence whilst you are in America, and I pray for your safe return, but I cannot help but feel this separation to be the proper time for reflection …”
The next letter was not to James but to another woman—a sister?—identified only as Caroline. Amanda slogged her way through an account of a ball, including minutely detailed descriptions of who had worn what,
and at last hit pay dirt. “… I must confess, my dear Caro, that despite the extraordinary pleasure I took in seeing my friends and relations at the engagement ball, I have great doubts as to the wisdom of this match. Capt. Grant is a fine figure of a man, of noble countenance, with a ready wit and a smile that would melt the hardest heart, but I find his manner to be bold in the extreme, such as can hardly surprise me when I am acquainted with his reputation in the South. I am told he has been the ruin of more than one respectable maiden, and is the despair of his family. Whilst his approaches to me are made in good faith and with the approval of our fathers, still I am greatly discomfited… .”
Amanda dug down through the stack and found another letter to Caroline, dated just after James left for South Carolina. “… my great and guilty relief at his departure be upon my head, Caro. I know not how to express my distaste for his attentions, which he would have me return to him exclusively, denying me the most ordinary discourse with my friends and family. When he discovered me exchanging the merest pleasantry with his own cousin Lt. Grant of Drumullie, he flew immediately into a rage, accusing me of actions appropriate only to a woman of much lower station. Lt. Grant made his apologies and departed forthwith, whereupon Capt. Grant seized upon me and shook me with such force the flesh of my arms remained red and swollen for three days.”
Oh no, don’t tell me James was abusive. Isabel was twisting the truth to justify her betrayal. Or was she?
Gritting her teeth, Amanda leafed quickly through the stack and found a letter to Archibald, dated soon after the one to Caroline. “… I wish you a safe journey. Please tender my respects to my betrothed, your cousin.” Not one word that would prove a prior understanding between them.
Okay… . But all the evidence wasn’t in yet, not by a long shot. She suddenly realized that mutter in her ears was Malcolm’s voice. “Amanda, wake up! Mum’s called us doon to breakfast.”
Wordlessly Amanda rose and walked down the stairs beside Malcolm, looking neither at James’s portrait nor at the packing crate holding his bones. She had some vague sense of greeting Norah, and of consuming egg, sausage, and tomato, and of making a quick pit stop in her room before going back into the library. But most of her mind was time-traveling.
The top letter in the stack from Donald Grant senior was the one Malcolm had mentioned, bawling James out for womanizing, drinking, fighting, gambling. The implication of one convoluted sentence made Amanda slightly nauseous: James had more than once made money by betting his friends he could seduce some girl of good family.
Like me, she thought.
Like she hadn’t known from the get-go he was a charming golden-tongued rake with a line strong enough to hang laundry on? Like she hadn’t realized she was going to be just one more notch on the hilt of his sword? She’d thrown herself at him anyway. At his ghost, a different animal entirely from the man even though what he’d wanted from her all along was to reclaim his manhood.
Amanda replaced the letter and shoved the entire stack aside. Acid bubbled into the back of her throat. It was time to get Archibald’s side of the story. Maybe the pot hadn’t gone too far wrong in calling the kettle black. Whatever, the kettle hadn’t rated a shot in the dark.
She pulled the musty manuscript from the folder and glanced at the first few pages. A long-winded genealogy led up to Archibald’s birth, which was accomplished with various signs and portents throughout Strathspey. She leafed ahead—thank God the man had dated each chapter—to, “Anno Domini 1781, in the service of His Majesty in North America.”
There were some of the initials Malcolm had found so obscure. “… and with Earl B—billeted at M—not far removed from the village of W—.” Balcarres, Melrose, and Williamsburg, obviously. Amanda skimmed past a long essay on the distribution of the regiment’s arms, and an even longer one on the economics of Virginia as compared to that of North Britain—apparently the name “Scotland” wasn’t politically correct.
She squinted, the small script writhing before her eyes. “… we conversed over astonishingly tolerable port with A——, who despite his ill-advised sympathy for the rebellion is a gentleman of good education and fine mien… .” A—— had to be Page Armstrong. And there, halfway down the next page, “… the beauteous Miss S.A——, who with her blushes and courtesies charmed the gentlemen of the regiment.” James said that Sally set her cap at him. Of course she did. He was kind of like a contagious disease, wasn’t he?
This wasn’t hard at all, Amanda told herself. Like most codes, all you needed was the key. And unlike the Grants, she had it.
She read on. “… letter from I—— which I delivered to C.E… .” Oh, Charles Edward, James’s code-designation. “… as was my duty, distasteful as I found it that such a rogue as he should be promised to a lovely and gentle damsel, to whom I fear he shewed little of the respect due a lady of such good breeding. However I wished the facts of the matter to be otherwise, I could not express such sentiments either to I—— or to J—— but bided my time in silence, flattering myself that whilst I was an honorable man he was not, as was subsequently to be proved to both our great costs… .”
What about that “J——?” Archibald blew it there, referring to the man by his first initial, unless he intended to hide how many men he was talking about.
The next page, maddeningly, dived into a discussion of the Marquis de Lafayette’s strategy as he closed in on the British forces. Amanda wished she had a machete to cut her way through the undergrowth of verbiage. Somewhere in the distance a set of bagpipes was playing “Bad Moon Rising,” which was just weird enough to be refreshing.
She turned the next page, and the next, and found the tangled thread of the narrative. “… exhausted my capacity for surprise when I came upon C.E. and S—— in close embrace in the summer house, she pleading for release, he crushing her to his bosom and demanding familiarities to which no gentlewoman, even in Virginia, would willingly accede. My arrival on the scene provided S—— the opportunity to break free and, lifting her skirts, to flee toward the house and A——’s protection, whereupon I upbraided J—— for his presumption. And he, turning upon his heel, told me in tones of the greatest contempt that I had but little knowledge of the fairer sex and that S—— had in truth taken great pleasure in her predicament, which in my audacity I had interrupted to no good purpose.”
Whoa, Amanda thought, Archibald wasn’t only defending Isabel, he was defending Sally. Or so he said, at least. She turned the page and found a soliloquy on the architecture of M——, which Archibald pronounced a pleasing if uninspired imitation of the model of English elegance. If Archibald had appeared in front of her right then she’d have beaten him about the head and shoulders with her notebook and demanded he hurry up, already.
But there, several pages further on, “… distasteful as it was to air the shortcomings of a family member before a colonial, no matter of what wealth and gentility, I acquainted A. with J——’s reputation for trifling with the affections of the weaker sex, and even went so far as to familiarize him with the discourtesies C.E. had committed upon Miss S——… .” Oh, now Isabel was Miss S——, “… and informed A—— of his daughter’s peril at the hands of one so unscrupulous. Whereupon A—— and Miss A—— left M—— in great haste, vowing not to return until the armies of His Majesty were dislodged from Virginia’s soil, an eventuality I must admit I did not at the time think remotely possible but which subsequent events were to prove all too credible.” Archibald segued into another monologue, sneering at the ungentlemanly tactics of the Americans.
Amanda could see it all, Page and Sally bugging out through the darkness, the father indignant, the daughter bewildered—all she’d wanted was a mild flirtation. A little rebellion against Page, even, since James was so obviously unsuitable. James sure wasn’t the first guy who’d gone after not only the bait but the hook, the line, and the sinker.
So far the account rang true, even if it wasn’t word for word what James had told her. Archibald w
as just the type to pull on his goody two shoes and play tattletale. To play judge and jury. Amanda flipped ahead, breathing hard, anxious to see how he excused James’s death. She leaped on the initial when it appeared again.
“… J——, having spent the evening in drinking and gambling with those of the less moderate among the younger officers, discovered in the course of idle conversation the truth of A——’s sudden departure, the warning I had provided, as seemed to me the least courtesy due our host, be he rebel or no, but C.E. did take my admonition as the vilest sort of insult to his own person, and so up the gracious staircase of the house he flew at me, his sword in his hand cutting great wood splinters from the banister, an act I found barbaric in the extreme. But giving me no opportunity to upbraid him for this latest misconduct, he struck me in the face, calling me a traitor to our family name (for, alas, I must admit we shared that noble appellation) and summoned me to the field of honor, whilst I, having little or no taste for such a deadly contest, plied him with soothing words. But he was well into his cups, his breath loathsome with the scent of strong liquor, and he would not accept my mollifying words but termed me a coward. At this juncture I had no choice but to accept his challenge and name as a second my friend Mac——… .”
Good God! Amanda collapsed against back of the settee. The ceiling of the library was white plaster, patterned as intricately as the top of a wedding cake, but she didn’t really see it. The shot in the rose-scented dark. A duel. Donald Grant had already reamed his son for dueling.
She dived again into the manuscript, reading faster and faster, her eyes aching from deciphering the faded handwriting. But only a few more words brought the end of the story.
“… our battle was engaged forthwith, fairly and before witnesses, in the dead of night, for the regiment was to move toward the River at dawn. Poor misbegotten C.E. in his besotted haste to have revenge upon the insult he fancied I had dealt him, fired too soon and wildly, whilst my shot, fired as it was without my heart behind it, even so was by the hand of fate directed truly and so did end his unredeemed life. Like some Roman of old, he had drawn his sword in one last effort to have at me, and so in the end came to fall upon it and his own empty scabbard, which was thereby rendered unfit for use. God have mercy upon his soul and upon mine, for this deed haunts me still. My late wife never knew the truth of the matter, but upon my return bearing C.E.’s undamaged sword greeted me with the most appropriate sorrow graved upon her gentle features, and I pray I consequently pursued her favors with all the delicacy appropriate to such a difficult situation.
Shadows in Scarlet Page 23
