The Blackhouse Bride (Bonnie Bride Series Book 4)

by Fiona Monroe

  "Oh aye? And what does the author make of that start? Or the authoress."

  "It is not clear whether the author be man or woman, as the work is published anonymously. Although I would guess it to be a man, from the darkness and violence of the subject matter. A young scientist, in a passion of over-reaching pride, actually creates a man by stitching together the various parts of assorted cadavers, and animates it using the science of electricity."

  "Charming."

  "I am only on volume one, but I doubt Dr Frankenstein's experiment will have a happy outcome." Dr Menzies closed the book. "And how are you, Angus, my boy? How is life in the ancestral wildlands? Ready to return to civilisation yet?"

  "You have never visited Gleann A'Chaisteall, sir. It is not wild. It is a land of great beauty and a place of abundance. My offer stands, as ever. Spend a summer month as my guest, in Baille nam Breac, and you will think yourself returned to Paradise itself."

  "I notice, dear boy, that you qualify your description of this Elysium with a seasonal caveat. Would I think myself back in man's first home if I visited you in January, hey?"

  "Aye, it can be cold, and we can get snows that cut us off for weeks at a time, even from Lochlannan. But a peat fire is always warm, and our larders are always full, and as Milton says, since Milton seems to be under consideration - The mind is its own place, and in itself, Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."

  Dr Menzies gestured with his fork. "Those words are given to Satan - as well you know."

  "I do know it, sir. But perhaps I agree with Mr Blake, that Milton was of the Devil's party, without knowing it."

  His old tutor shook his head, with a wistful smile. "You were always my most promising pupil, Angus. I thought, when you graduated the University, that you would go on to great things. I still cannot understand why you gave it all up."

  "I gave nothing up."

  "And I have hopes, still, that you will come to your senses."

  They had this conversation every time they met, and every time, Dr Menzies seemed sadder. Every time, in being made to repeat his arguments, Angus felt that he was, like the Player Queen in Hamlet, protesting too much. "I have told you before, sir. My father's name might have been MacAllister, but on my mother's side, I'm a Buccleuch. The Laird's old tacksman, my great uncle, died and had no son. I was next in line. Sir Duncan asked me to step in, and I thought it my duty to do so."

  "Pish. And tush. Sir Duncan, I'll warrant, has two dozen cousins and half-cousins who could have filled the position."

  "You know that I grew up in Aberlogie, which is now part of the Duke of Drummond's estate? My father and my father's father were tacksmen to the old laird, and who knows how many generations back the connection went. First they took Chief MacAllister's land from him, after 1745, and he died abroad. Then the new laird started on his improvements. Our family was ordered off the land with all the rest. It was why my father sent me to your school in the first place, so that I would not have to witness the worst of what was happening to our tenants and neighbours."

  "I know this, my boy," said Dr Menzies gently. "Which is why I always thought you would wish to rise above - "

  "Those who didn't want to go had their possessions thrown out onto the heather and their cottages burned. One old cailleach I had known all my life, refused to leave her home and burned with it."

  "Scotland is being brought into the nineteenth century, Angus, however painfully for some. These were terrible events for those involved - victims and perpetrators, too, since each man must make an account of himself to his Creator - but you do not have to remain in the past merely to prove some kind of point."

  "Sir Duncan Buccleuch respects the old ways. He has let his clansmen alone, and he has not done away with us tacksmen. I was proud to follow in my great uncle's footsteps, and I'm proud to support Sir Duncan now."

  "Sir Duncan Buccleuch has not the best reputation. His moral character is widely suspect."

  "Sir Duncan is a fine man, sir, and I will not hear a word said against him."

  "Well, well. As I said, we will each make an account of ourselves one day."

  "If by moral character you mean his liking for women, well - he is married now."

  "Is he, indeed. I did not know that. Is she a lady likely to promote his happiness and respectability?"

  "She is some kind of cousin, and young and fair, and seems amiable and sensible. She is no fashionable society lady, not the kind of girl I would have expected him to marry. I think he has made a good choice."

  "Then I wish him the very best," said Dr Menzies, briefly raising his tankard.

  Dr Menzies was not the kind of minister who spurned liquor, or even ale, as a matter of course. Nor did it much seem to bother him what kind of company he kept, or where he found himself. Angus reflected that his own minister, Mr Farquhar, would never get the dust on his feet in a rather shabby inn like this, eating and drinking serenely amidst whisky-toting shop clerks and down-at-heel travellers. There was even a woman in the furthest corner of the lounge, keeping a man company, and the innkeeper did not seem to be about to remove her.

  "And how about you, my boy?"

  Angus took his eyes from the lady of questionable virtue in the corner, and sighed. He wondered if Dr Menzies had suspected him of making plans to seek her company himself; which of course, he had not been, but perhaps his old tutor was more observant than he had thought. He did not bother to affect to misunderstand him. This, too, was a conversation they had had before. "I do not expect to have my master's luck."

  "You are too particular. There must be many fine lasses even in your beloved glen, who would make you a good wife."

  "In this matter, how can a man be too particular? Man and wife cleave together in holy union, forever. The girl I marry will be with me every day for the rest of her life or mine. She'll be, God willing, the mother of my children. I do not want that girl to be the daughter of some farmer, who barely speaks English, and has never learned to read, no matter how fair, nor how good a cook she may be."

  "Ah then, that you see is the consequence of clinging to your Paradise. If you had taken up Professor Fairbairn's offer to study further at the University in Edinburgh, you would have been introduced to a variety of educated ladies."

  "Aye, and I'm sure I would have been a fine prospect, a penniless student."

  "You would not have remained a penniless student, Angus."

  Angus shrugged. It was useless to revisit a decision he had made eight years ago now, for reasons that he had not wholly disclosed to his old mentor. He had a more pressing concern. "Dr Menzies," he began, with as much determination as he could muster. "When I wrote asking if we could meet, I had a particular reason. I wanted your advice. As it happens, on the subject we were just discussing."

  "Ah!" Dr Menzies's eyes brightened. "Is there a young lady in question, after all?"

  "In question! Aye, that is the question." He looked into his ale, considering. "I must do now what I consider to be ungentlemanly, though I don't call myself a gentleman. I must speak of one of the fair sex."

  "I am, or have been, your minister, Angus. You may say anything you like to me."

  "Then I'll be blunt. There is a girl in Baille nam Breac who has, as I think the expression in English is, set her cap at me. Her name - ach well, her name doesn't matter. She is the daughter of one of the villagers, a simple farmer, a very good and pious man, but hardly one to educate his daughters. She and another of the village girls help cook and clean for me. I was beginning to think that Oigh - that this girl was lingering about her duties if she could, and looking at me - but I dismissed my own thoughts. Then the Laird held a ceilidh to celebrate his wedding, and I could dismiss them no longer."

  "What happened at the ceilidh, my boy?"

  "There was a lot of whisky, and dancing. There always is. She wasn't even my partner in the dance, but after one dance ended she took my hand and led me into the woods, and I kissed her."

  "You kissed her
?" Dr Menzies raised an eyebrow.

  "As God is my witness, that is all. I should not have done as much, had I not been full of the Laird's fine whisky, and had she not dragged me away from the company. But I am a man, sir. I have a man's weakness to the temptations of female flesh. I have succumbed in the past, I admit it. But these days, I try to live as good and honest a life as I can, and honour the Seventh Commandment. When she started to unlace her dress - "

  He shook his head slowly at the memory. Of course he had been aflame with animal lust while Oighrig had pressed her plump little body eagerly against him, and clung round his neck with arms that barely reached as far. He had not said as much to Dr Menzies, but the truth was, Oighrig had kissed him, not the other way around. He had responded, for half a minute or so; but when she had drawn back with a bold, triumphant smile, and actually begun to work down the neckline of her dress, he had felt the flame die down.

  She expected him to take her, right there, on the dry leaf-strewn ground, concealed by the darkness and the trees. And then, he knew, she would expect him to marry her within days. This illiterate, calculating and shameless girl wanted to be the tacksman's wife, the only step up possible for her in the tiny social circle of the township.

  "I told her to think more of herself, and to make herself respectable and re-join the company, and I walked away from her."

  "That was well done of you."

  "Aye. Maybe. It did no good though. I thought she would be ashamed, but she ran after me and shouted that I had kissed her and laid hands on her, and that I was behaving dishonourably by spurning her. She said she would tell her father so."

  "And did she?"

  "Not as far as I know." Angus sighed again. "At least, he has said nothing to me, and I see him every day."

  "Well then, perhaps the girl was ashamed of herself later, after all, and wished it all to be forgotten."

  "I wish I could believe that, but she has tried the like since. Oh, never again as blatant as making to undress herself, but she hangs about me all the time, and she sat on my lap at the New Year ceilidh in front of everyone. I couldn't push her off without insulting her in public. I made a joke of it, but her father saw that, at any rate."

  "Perhaps you should speak to her father, before he speaks to you."

  "Aye, probably I should, but what could I say? That his daughter is a forward hussy and would have given herself to me at the Laird's wedding feast? I have not the heart to say those things to honest Fearghas, nor do I wish to shame Oighrig, for all she deserves it. But if she will not stop this behaviour, I'll be compromised before long and so will she."

  "In that case, perhaps you should simply marry the girl and be done with it."

  "No!" Angus thumped his hand on the table. "I will not be forced into lifelong union with a girl with no more brains in her head than there's porridge in this pitcher. Nor would I wed a girl with so little virtue and self-respect, that she would offer herself so readily. What she needs is a damn good hiding, but it's not my place to give it. I swear to you though, if she were my daughter, and I learned she was behaving like a common striopach, I'd wear my belt out on her backside."

  He clenched his fist around the tankard, suddenly realising just how angry he was. Day to day, he tried to ignore the situation, but it was becoming intolerable. His greatest hope was that Oighrig would simply tire of her pursuit, and accept the attentions of some other young man. He knew that the blacksmith's eldest son in Scourie, for instance, admired her and was always trying to speak to her after church services. But Oighrig had shown no sign of desisting, and this had been going on for months now.

  "So that is your advice, sir?" he growled. "Bind myself in eternal union to a girl whose mind I despise and whose morals I deplore?"

  "As far as I see it, you have four alternatives," said Dr Menzies, calmly. "Marry the girl, and try whether regular indulgence in the pleasures of the marriage bed, and the domestic comforts arising from the constant attendance of a wife, do not somewhat mitigate your present disgust. Or, speak to her father, explain everything, and require him to exercise his authority over her to make her behave herself. Or, you might leave."

  "Leave?"

  "Quit your current abode of obscurity, the dark unfathom'd caves of ocean, and seek again a life of scholarship. You are still but young. You could do so much more."

  "Back to that? No, sir. I will not be turned out of Paradise by a second Eve."

  "It was not Eve who turned our first parents out of the Garden of Eden, my boy. Your analogies are slipping."

  "I don't give - " Angus was about to slap the table a second time, but he contained himself and forced himself to be civil. He had no wish to speak disrespectfully to his old tutor. "You said I had four alternatives, sir. What is the fourth?"

  "Ah yes. Marry someone else. She cannot argue with that."

  "Whom?" Angus demanded shortly.

  "Ah well. We are back to our original point, which is, the circle in which you have chosen to confine yourself is so small and unvarying, that you are unlikely to chance across a girl who fulfils your demanding criteria."

  "And I maintain, sir, that those criteria are not unreasonable."

  "Do you wish to marry? In principal?"

  "Of course I do. I have, as I said before, a man's appetites, and a desire to live according to God's word. It would be pleasant, too, to have companionship - a helpmeet. And a son to carry on after me, God willing."

  "Indeed, indeed." The minister pushed about the stripped bones on his plate with his fork, a line creasing between his brows. "Do your criteria also include any kind of rank, or fortune? Do you dislike this girl in part because she is the poor daughter of a poor farmer?"

  Angus laughed shortly. "You should know me better than that, Dr Menzies. I will be bringing my bride, if ever I do marry, to live in a blackhouse. She had better not be any kind of fine lady. As to fortune, I have enough of my own. All I require is a good understanding and at least a basic education. I do not even much care as to beauty."

  "Would you be prepared to consider someone from far away, whom you do not know, on my recommendation?"

  "You sound like you have someone particular in mind," said Angus, surprised.

  "I may well have. I - do not know. The idea is very new to me, it is not something that had occurred to me as a possibility before this very conversation. I don't want to say too much, as I have no firm idea how the young person I have in mind is situated, with regards to - she may for all I know have given her promise elsewhere."

  It was not reasonable, it was absurd - he knew nothing whatever about this young woman beyond the fact of her existence, of which he had learned mere seconds ago - but when Dr Menzies hinted at a rival, Angus felt a swoop of jealousy-tinged dismay.

  This disappointment moreover must have shown on his face, because Dr Menzies held up his hand and said, "I do not know this, or anything about the matter! I know only that she is, at present, unmarried. I don't know what her inclinations might be at any rate, irrespective of any prior attachment. I will have to make enquiries. Until then, I don't want to say too much. But I see that you are interested in principal."

  "Aye. In principal. Tell me this much, sir - is she fair?"

  Dr Menzies looked at him over his spectacles. "I thought that consideration formed no part of your requirements."

  "Satisfy my curiosity, nevertheless."

  "She is not fair. Like Lord Byron's beauty of the raven tresses, all that's best of dark and bright, meet in the aspect of her eyes."

  "I am surprised you read such stuff, sir."

  "And I will tell you this much, my boy. I called you my most promising pupil, and you were. Of the boys who attended my school, that is. But the quickest and ablest young person I have ever taught, is without a doubt this girl."

  "Interesting. I should like to meet her."

  "Are you sure, my dear boy? Even though I tell you that her gifts of the mind might even exceed your own?"

  "Pff, she
is a woman, for all that. She is a woman, I take it - not some mere child? I've no wish for too young a bride."

  "She is fully twenty years of age."

  This was beginning to sound more and more intriguing and congenial, and Angus was surprised to feel a rising excitement at the prospect. If nothing else, the possibility of escape from Oighrig was enough to cheer his soul. "Make your enquiries, Dr Menzies," he said firmly, raising his tankard. "For my part, if she's willing and everything you say, I'll pledge my hand here and now."

  Chapter SEVEN

  So began the most delightful period of Bridie's life. Her father had been unable to refuse the Marchioness's request, although Bridie could plainly see that he was unhappy about it. She struggled a little with her conscience, for her scruples told her that a truly dutiful daughter would not go against what she knew to be her father's wishes merely because he was intimidated into compliance by the rank and grandeur of her new mistress. But she could not do it, she could not make herself choose misery.

  If Callum Dobbie had not been a part of the situation, she might have struggled a little harder with her sense of obligation. Her father's domestic comfort would be, she knew, materially diminished by her absence. Peggy would have to cope with the work of the house alone, or - more likely - her father would have to hire another servant, or no meal would ever make it to the table on time. A proper housekeeper would be expensive enough, and difficult to find. Bridie was acutely conscious that she was leaving a place where she did hard and useful work for a father to whom she owed every duty, to go and read novels and poetry to a fine lady in command of forty other servants, who ought to be nothing to her.

  Put like that, it was a wicked thing to do. But in her heart, Bridie was sure that it was not wrong to flee from the danger of ravishment, which was what she felt even marriage to Callum would be in God's eyes. She was sure, in fact, that the Marchioness's chance visit to her home had been the miracle of deliverance for which she had prayed that morning. She had asked God for a sign, and what could this be, but it?