She held out her hand and smiled, but it was evident that her lips were unaccustomed to the exercise.
Jamie took the hand. It was cool and limp. Jamie seized that brief moment of contact to quickly scan the face of this stranger who claimed to be an old friend. It was the face of a woman past middle age, lean and drawn—almost haggard—in appearance. The years had plainly taken their toll. Her eyes were pale gray, like the slate of George Ellice’s roof, with a cavernous look encircled by dark flesh. She looked worn. But there was another something in her eyes, the same something that had caused Jamie to hold back at first. Jamie could only describe them as eyes that, if they had once known, seemed now to have forgotten the meaning of love or happiness.
“Can I walk wi’ ye part way up t’ the hoose?” asked Iona Lundie, “’cept I mustn’t gae so far as t’ be seen.”
“Yes, of course,” answered Jamie, “but why can’t you be seen?”
“I came here t’ catch sicht o’ yersel’, t’ see if it was true. But the rest o’ the eyes here be none too frien’ly toward Iona Lundie!”
Jamie did not reply, and they resumed their walk toward the house, but at a slower pace. Jamie continued to hold Andrew, who no longer seemed to want to get down.
“So ye’re workin’ fer the laird, noo, are ye?”
Jamie nodded.
“Weel, I guess we all maun do what we can t’ eat.” There was definite derision in her tone, but Jamie couldn’t tell whether it was aimed at her or the laird.
“I—I had so few other opportunities that I—” said Jamie, not quite knowing how to reply to the gruff woman, but she was cut off.
“An’ ye think ye’ll be happy here?” she said.
“I . . . I don’t know. It is rather lonely, I suppose, but I only just arrived.”
“Happiness!” said Mrs. Lundie, almost to herself. “It’s been sae lang syne I e’en heard the word, I dinna e’en ken the meanin’ o’ it!”
“You’re not happy here?” queried Jamie tentatively.
“Ha, ha!” barked out Lundie’s widow with a laugh completely devoid of any merriment. Then her eyes narrowed, stopping Jamie in her tracks. The woman put a hand on Jamie’s arm and spoke in a low tone with the same intensity in her gaze. “After what they did? I’ll ne’er be happy until I see every mother’s son o’ them cold in their graves!” Her eyes dropped to the child in Jamie’s arms and she pierced Andrew with such an awful stare that Jamie clutched him almost painfully to her as if to keep away a silent incantation being leveled by her evil eyes against the heir of Graystone.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” faltered Jamie. “Your life must have—I’m sorry it’s been so painful. But how can you speak so—”
“Do ye ken onythin’ aboot the Graystones?” she asked piercingly.
“Very little, I suppose.”
“Yer father told ye nothin’?”
“About the Graystones? No—I—I don’t understand. What would my father have had to do with them?”
“They was yer father’s neighbors! Ain’t that eneuch!”
“Neighbors!” But even as she spoke the word, a dozen images flooded Jamie’s mind. Bits and pieces from an early childhood that had no more coherence in her blurred memory than a shadowy dream—the hazy face of her father filled with frustration and disappointment, an impressive stone house, the swinging sign of a rearing stallion, terrible rain pelting a little girl, and over it all the spectre of a man in a black cloak whose face was obscured from her vision.
They had been landowners then! It had always been her daddy’s dream! Why was there such a look of sorrow on his face—sorrow mingled with anger? But neighbors to Aviemere? It wasn’t possible. Hadn’t they lived on the other side of the village? But now it was all growing so confused!
“We—we did have land then . . .” was all Jamie could get past her suddenly very dry throat.
“On the veery borders o’ Aviemere,” said Iona. “Land which them cursed Graystones staelt frae yer father, mark my words! They forced an’ feared him intil bankrupcie, an’ then teuk his land whan it were dirt chepe! Staelt it frae him, they did! Yer father wudna lift sae much as a finger t’ fecht ’em. But nae my Freddie! He was a bonnie fechter, he was, an’ was aboot t’ gie ’em what they deser’ed! But they got til him first. Killed him! Do ye unnerstan’—they killed my Freddie! Then yer ain father went recht after him. They ne’er got what they deser’ed—nae yet!”
They had drawn within sight of the house. As much as she wanted to know about her father, all Jamie could think of was getting away from this woman. She did not want to hear any more from such a chilling voice! And the woman’s eyes looked at Andrew as if—
She just wanted to get away! What were those horrible things she had said? How could it—but it was all so blurry and confusing!
“I’ve got to go now,” she said, keeping on toward the house. “It’s—it’s time for—”
As she spoke she turned, then said nothing more.
Iona Lundie was already yards away, disappearing through the trees that bordered the drive. She had no intention of going any nearer to the home of the lairds of Aviemere.
24
Edward Graystone
The croft was by all appearances one of the poorest, if not the poorest, on the entire Aviemere estate. The front yard, if such it could even be called, was overgrown and even more untidy than the dilapidated cottage itself. The thatch on the roof was uneven and broken, badly in need of repair; gaps could be seen in the walls where the stone had crumbled away with the passage of years and never been replaced.
The three children scampering about the yard in the rags they called clothes would have inspired pity in any man. But the two riders approaching on horseback were there on business, and by necessity of their position had to steel themselves against such reactions as compassion.
George Ellice had allowed such emotions to make him give these tenants more latitude than was prudent. So now the laird himself had found it necessary to step into the situation. Ellice was an honest factor, more scrupulous than most, and certainly more fair and considerate in his dealings with the tenants. Unfortunately, honesty and fairness were not the only attributes required in a factor, especially when they extended themselves toward the tenants to the expense of the laird. Thus Ellice had, against his basic nature perhaps, tried to balance these with an appropriate amount of firmness. All told, over the years, he had been able to extract rents from the most stubborn while still maintaining the respect and goodwill of most of the locals.
Yet his weakness was always evident in such hard-luck cases as the one they now found it necessary to confront. The MacRaes were two quarters in arrears with their rents. And the situation continued to worsen. With winter looming ahead, something had to be done quickly; there were no signs of improvement. At first Jimmy MacRae, who had come into the croft some two years earlier with the death of his father, had tried to make a go of it. If his children were fed scantily, he yet paid his rent on time. If the cottage was drafty, he was yet able to cut enough peats in the surrounding hills to make it through the winter. But his croft was situated on hard, rocky, unmanageable land on the edge of the moor. Not only did it take patience and hard work to coax any kind of profit from such ground, it took a good deal of luck besides. And luck had not gone with Jimmy MacRae. He was willing to work, but when times became hard last winter after a scant autumn’s harvest, he found the laird an unbending man. As things worsened, he had lost his initial enthusiasm. His will to work followed his prudence with finances, and things went from bad to worse. He was a defeated man, knowing he had failed his family. But that knowledge only dug him deeper into the hole of his despair. Most of his time these days was spent in the village at The Ebony Stallion, and his presence on the croft was especially scarce when collection day came around.
Today the laird hoped to catch him unawares. Reliable information told him that he was sure to be home because his wife was ill with a fever. It being a week be
fore the normal date for collections, no one would be looking for them yet. The laird had summoned the factor to the mansion, told him of his plan, and they were on the road within the hour. The fact that the wife was sick only heightened the difficulty in the factor’s mind of the upcoming interview. Perhaps the more imposing stance of the laird could extract some sort of settlement of the situation, short of eviction.
The laird’s sorrel stallion pranced powerfully beside the factor’s plain chestnut. It seemed to give added emphasis to the strength and might represented by the Graystone name itself.
The children scattered as the horses trotted into the unkempt yard. The sound alone should have brought someone to the door of the hovel or from the byre attached to the back wall. But except for the noise of disappearing children and the snorting and pawing of the animals, all remained still and quiet.
The laird and factor exchanged glances. Then Ellice, knowing his duty as spokesman for the laird, called out.
“MacRae, are you about!”
There was no answer.
Ellice wished fervently that the man would show his face so they could have it out and get it over with. This was painful enough, without having to search for the man!
“MacRae!” Edward Graystone’s deep voice cut into the silence.
Another moment passed. All the children had by now found hiding places in the byre or in the tall scraggly brush behind the cottage. All was dead still. Slowly the door of the house creaked open. At first no face could be seen, then slowly Jimmy MacRae stepped out into the morning light.
He looked sheepishly up at his two callers, but his eyes could not meet Graystone’s intense gaze.
“We have business with you, MacRae,” said Graystone.
“Aye, it appears t’ be so,” replied MacRae, a brawny young man who at that moment looked very small before the mighty sorrel and its master.
“What will be done about it?” asked Graystone, his tone even and unflinching.
“I dinna ken.”
“Are you willing to do something about it?”
“I’ve tried, yer Lairdship.” There was a tremor in his voice as he glanced hastily up at Graystone. “I honestly hae. ’Tis terrible puir lan’, this, yer Lairdship.”
“Either you are willing to work it, or you are not,” replied Graystone dispassionately. “If you are not, I’ll find new tenants.”
“But we hae nae place t’ gang . . .”
“I’m not in the business of handing out charity. As it is, you have been extended well beyond even the most benevolent standards. Most men would have thrown you out months ago. If you demonstrate a willingness to work the land and put your financial affairs in order, then an arrangement can be made. Otherwise, I’ll want you out by the end of the month. Either way, no more extensions on mere good faith will be made. Do you understand?”
“Aye. But I dinna ken if I can do it.”
“It’s your decision.”
MacRae stuck his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. Finally, still looking at the ground, he said: “Weel, I’ll gi’ her anither go.”
“Mr. Ellice will discuss our terms with you,” Graystone said. Then without another word, and only a brief nod at Ellice, he wheeled his mount around and galloped off.
———
Graystone headed out to the moor.
His horse was in sore need of exercise. He had spent far too much time indoors in the past months, and the solitary stretch of heath would be the perfect place to take the stallion through his paces. And he and Olivia had never ridden here together, so at least it would carry no bittersweet memories.
He circumvented MacRae’s meager fields of barley, then carefully picked his way through a rocky gorge, up the other side onto a small rise, emerging finally on the flat, gray, dreary moor. Even the heather did not seem to want to bloom this year, as if it, too, were still in mourning for the late Lady of Aviemere. He dug his heels into the stallion and rode hard for some time, relishing the chill wind of the overcast day as it whipped in his face. He sucked in great gulps of the air as he rode, the entire setting of the day suiting the caustic attitude in his heart toward life. After a steady gallop he pulled up into a slow canter and bent over and rubbed his mount’s sleek reddish-brown neck.
This was what he chose to do over anything else. He should have been doing it more these days! It might have helped ease the pain. It always calmed him to ride over the moors and grassy hills and meadows of his land.
He winced suddenly at the careless thought.
His land!
Though he told them he preferred they not use the title, most of them called him the laird of Aviemere—Lord Graystone!
And he no longer made any protest. None but for an inward wince whenever the term was used.
It was not that he did not relish the title. Of all things, it was the thing he wanted most desperately. He cherished the very word. But he knew he was lord of not even the smallest speck of the dirt of Aviemere.
How the longing after it ached within him, for he loved this place as no true lord of it ever had. But he had known almost from the moment of his birth that it would never be his. As the younger son it was simply a fact of his existence that the Graystone heritage—the earldom, the wealth, the mansion, the land, and control of the estate and all its holdings—would one day be his brother’s. He himself cared nothing about the power or the prestige, or even the wealth—only the land. And the bitter irony was that his brother cared only for the external trappings of the earldom and cared nothing for the land itself.
But Edward had realized that his life was apparently meant to be filled with ironies.
From an early age he had tried to school himself in the facts of his birth. You will never have Aviemere! You will never have Aviemere! Over and over he repeated the words to himself. But it did not make his love for the land grow less.
During his childhood and adolescent years he had often been left alone on the estate. His father had always had numerous business deals in hand, had traveled a great deal, and had frequently taken the older brother with him. Edward had at first been left behind simply because he was too young to go. But now he was never quite certain, as he reflected back upon it, whether he had not been invited to accompany them or had simply chosen to stay. Whatever the case, he had remained behind, and eventually had had no desire to leave the lovely lands called, some two hundred years earlier by the first earl, Aviemere.
He came to relish the freedom of being there alone with only the rather mild supervision of his tutor. Perhaps it was during those times when his surroundings became the sole consolation for a somewhat melancholy nature, that his attachment to the land began to extend its roots into the depths of his subconscious. By the time he was twelve he knew every rock and twig of heather on the place, had bathed or waded in every burn, had thrown rocks from the top of every cliff, and had ridden among all the lower slopes of the great mountain of Donachie which overlooked it all.
His life had been a solitary one, with his tutor and a few animals his only companions. But he had grown fond of such a life, and almost dreaded the return of father and brother. He knew the land, its delicacies, its dangers, and its needs better than either of them, and gradually those left in charge in their absence came to him for counsel and decisions. Yet his father and brother never knew how totally and how competently he managed their affairs during their frequent journeys to the south or abroad. And perhaps that was one of the reasons it galled him that they left him completely out of their discussions about the estate.
“No need to worry yourself about these things,” his father would say as he attempted to be a part of decisions, which he felt he should have a voice in. “Go and amuse yourself.” What had been left unsaid was the implication that, as the land would be his brother’s, what weight could a younger brother’s opinion have, anyway?
Thus his bitterness first began to grow. What amusement could there be aside from the
land? This was not only his home, this was his life, his dream, his heart, his desire. Yet they shut him out like a mere servant! If he occasionally felt an inward compunction at his treatment of a poor tenant such as MacRae, the hardness that had almost grown over his once tender heart would say that he was doing nothing but what his father would have done, or what his brother would do if he were here. What did it matter anyway? If his father was going to cast him adrift, why should his heart bleed for the sake of some lazy bounder who refused to work the land? In the end MacRae would be better off than he! At least he had no dreams that had been cruelly dashed on gray granite slopes of Donachie!
In the bitterness of his heart he could not see that all men have dreams—men high on the social scale like the lairds of Aviemere, and men at the bottom, like Jimmy MacRae and Gilbert MacLeod. Neither could he see that when, in their reckless pursuit of mammon, men in high places dash the fortunes and hopes of those under them, the accountability in which they are held is much greater. As his father would one day have to answer for his treatment of Gilbert MacLeod, so too would Edward Graystone have to one day answer for the future of Jimmy MacRae. Whether he was laird or caretaker mattered not a bit.
But fortunately for both laird and crofter, that future still hung in the balance. The shell had closed about Edward’s heart, but the membrane was still pliable in places and had not yet solidified into irredeemable hardness. Even as he rode, tiny arrows of compunction were stinging him, and occasionally one was able to penetrate. He could not quite manage to get the face of MacRae out of his mind’s eye. And that, of course, was the most healthy sign of all.
When Edward’s father, Mackensie Graystone, died, the transfer of the property and title was no less painful for the second son than had been inevitable. But what cut the deepest was the fact that the heir, Derek Graystone, now the earl of Aviemere, was not even present to accept his prize! An officer in the 11th Cavalry Battalion, stationed in the Transvaal in South Africa, he saw no reason to leave his duties. The solicitors could handle all the legalities.
Jamie MacLeod Page 19
