There were a few handkerchiefs in one drawer, which she put into the trunk.
Then, as she opened the other one she found, pushed right at the back of it, a large envelope.
She pulled it out and saw there was some writing on it.
Then she read,
“To Isla. To be opened in the event of my death and also that of Keegan Kenway.”
Isla looked at it in surprise.
She wondered why she had never found it before and then remembered that it had hurt her so much to touch her mother’s personal things.
She had therefore left everything just as it was after her mother died and that was what her father had wanted as well.
She thought at first that it was very remiss of her not to have found the envelope before.
Then she realised that it was only now that her father too was dead that she was entitled to open it.
Carefully she slit it open and drew out the contents, which seemed so thick that at first she thought it must be a book.
But it was, she discovered, a letter written in her mother’s beautiful clear handwriting.
She read,
“My darling, precious little Isla,
I am writing this because I do not feel well and I am afraid that if I die you will never learn the truth, but I would not wish you to know it until your father too is dead.
It would hurt him so much and I want you always to love and respect him, as you do now.
I want you also to love me and not be shocked or angry when I tell you what I have kept secret for so long.”
Isla drew in her breath and for a moment she was afraid to go on to the next page.
What could her mother be going to tell her?
She was at first frightened, then, as she read on, incredulous.
Her mother had written very vividly. In fact, as she read and went on reading, it seemed to Isla that it was not a true story, but that she was immersed in the plot of a novel.
Her mother, she learned for the first time in her life, was the daughter of Major Bruce McDonald of the Cameron Highlanders and his wife.
She was their only child and they lived in Edinburgh where, after a few brief postings abroad, he became Adjutant at Edinburgh Castle.
Bruce McDonald had married the daughter of Sir Robert Arkray, who lived outside Edinburgh, and their daughter, Janet, as she grew up, had many friends in the City.
Because she was so pretty she was constantly entertained by the families of all the important personages in Edinburgh and in the surrounding countryside.
When Janet was eighteen, at one of the Regimental reunions that took place every year, the guest of honour was the Earl of Strathyre, who had served in the Regiment when he was a young man.
He came down from the North and there was first of all a reception given for him at which he met the wives and children of all the serving Officers.
In the evening there was a dinner party and a ball afterwards at which all the Highland reels were most skillfully danced.
Janet attended both engagements.
Before the Earl left Edinburgh for his Castle in the North, he had fallen in love with Major McDonald’s daughter and asked her to be his wife.
Because it was such a brilliant marriage socially, it never seemed to strike anybody that a man getting on for fifty was not a suitable bridegroom for a very lovely girl of just eighteen.
Janet was, however, married to him and went North to the Earl’s estate, which was on the borders of Sutherland and Caithness.
Nine months after the marriage she had presented her husband with the son and heir he had always longed for.
The boy was christened Iain and for a short time he interested his father as much as his fishing and shooting, which filled his days to the exclusion of all else.
It never struck the Earl that, since he entertained only men of his own age as guests and his Castle was in a particularly barren and isolated part of the Highlands, life was exceedingly dull for his young wife.
It was five years later, when his second child was born, a daughter who was christened Isla, that Janet rebelled.
Her daughter’s birth had been a difficult one and she felt that she must get away from the gloomy Castle and the eternal conversation about sport.
With some difficulty she persuaded her husband to allow her to visit her parents and, although they had come North twice to stay with her, she had never been allowed to return to Edinburgh to be with them.
Leaving Iain in the charge of a very capable nurse, who had looked after him ever since he was a baby, she took Isla with her, because her parents had never seen her.
Only when she arrived in Edinburgh did she realise how much she had missed the company of young people of her own age!
Also she had enjoyed the dances that took place every week, the concerts and theatres that were available every night.
As Isla turned the pages, she could almost feel her mother’s excitement and realised how enchanting everything had seemed.
The letter continued,
“I suppose, when I went to the theatre to see Hamlet, it was inevitable that I should fall in love with Keegan Kenway!”
As she read the words, Isla gave a little gasp.
It seemed impossible that her father was not Keegan Kenway, but was, in fact, the Earl of Strathyre!
Her mother went on to describe how handsome Keegan Kenway was, and also, although he was an actor, it was inevitable that she should meet him.
He was the son of the Provost of Edinburgh and he had started his theatrical career when as a choir boy he had such a beautiful voice that people went to the Cathedral just to hear him.
The applause he received at the Church concerts made him decide that, however much his father and mother might oppose it, he would go on the stage.
When a distinguished company of players next came to Edinburgh, he begged them to take him on tour with them and they agreed.
Within three years he was noted as one of the outstanding young British actors on the stage.
When, at thirty, he met Janet, he was already a star whom people paid to see whether he was playing Shakespeare or some successful melodrama.
She then wrote,
“The moment I saw him, I fell in love with him, and he with me. We were both old enough to know what we were doing and that is why you have to forgive me, darling, when I tell you that we ran away together and that nothing else seemed to matter.”
It was inevitable that Janet’s parents would be deeply shocked at her behaviour, and so were Keegan Kenway’s.
It had never struck Janet that she should return her daughter to her husband.
She had left him her son and that should be enough, while she felt that Isla, because she was so tiny, needed her.
It was not long before Keegan Kenway had established himself on the London stage and because he was so happy with Janet and they were afraid that somebody might find out that she was the Countess of Strathyre, they lived very quietly and secretly.
Only very rarely, after they had been together for some years, did they dare to appear together in public.
There was no reason for anybody to suspect that they were not married, since Edinburgh was a very long way from London and the Earl of Strathyre’s Castle even farther.
Only when Isla grew older was her mother perturbed that she could have no friends and that was when she decided that she must go to school.
She told the Headmistress that she had married the son of Sir Robert Arkray and there was no reason why the Headmistress should not accept what she was told.
Isla read on to the end of the letter,
“That is my story, my darling, and I want you to forgive me for depriving you for so many years of what should have been your rightful place in Society, although I doubt if you would have found it very enjoyable living in the far North.
If, when you read this letter, I am dead, and so is Keegan, whom you have always known as your father, then you must
go at once to your real father.
He is a kind man at heart and I don’t think that he will refuse to take you in and perhaps he has missed you, although he has had your brother, Iain, with him.
It may be impossible for you to go alone to the North of Scotland. I therefore want you, when you have read this letter, to call at Strathyre House in Park Lane.
It was shut up all the time I was with your real father and I suspect that he is unlikely to have opened it now, but there are caretakers installed and you must ask them to help you.
I am sure that your father’s Solicitors, whose name I have forgotten, will have a branch of their firm in London. If not, you can stay at the house.
Write to your real father, tell him who you are and I am sure that something will be done for you.
Forgive me, my precious, but when you fall in love you will know that love is greater than anything else in the whole world and, when you find it, it is impossible to resist or refuse it.
I remain,
Your ever loving mother,
Janet Strathyre.”
When Isla had finished reading the letter, she sat staring at it, finding it hard to believe that once again she had not been dreaming.
Chapter Seven
Isla sat for a long time, just staring at her mother’s letter.
This she knew was the answer to all that had been worrying her.
She had felt it was impossible to go on imposing herself on the Marquis, but at the same time she had no idea what else she could do.
Then like an answer to a prayer, her mother had solved the problem she had thought about over and over again.
She glanced at the clock and realised that there was another half an hour before the Marquis returned as he had said he would, to take her out to luncheon.
She went down the stairs, sat at her mother’s desk and wrote a note to him,
“My Lord,
You have been so kind and so wonderful to me in every way, but I have now found what I think will be somewhere where I will be safe and no trouble to anybody.
I was so afraid that you might find me an encumbrance, but could not be rid of me.
Thank you, thank you, so very very much!
I shall never forget you or your beautiful house.
Isla.”
Only as she signed her name did she remember how she had looked back at Longridge Park as they had driven away and thought that it might vanish like a dream.
Now she just knew that everything that had happened to her since she had gone on the stage in the picture had been a dream!
She was conscious as she wrote the Marquis’s name on the envelope that she felt a strange heaviness like a stone in her breast.
She walked out of the front door and hailed a cab, which would be waiting for a fare on the cab rank at the end of the road.
As she did so, she knew she was intending to drive away to a new life and leave the Marquis behind.
‘It’s the – only thing – I can do,’ she whispered to herself.
The cab drew up outside the house and the driver obligingly said that he would bring her trunk down the stairs.
She watched, saying goodbye as she did so, to all the years that she had lived in the small house with her mother and Keegan Kenway.
It was also goodbye to the Marquis!
She had known him such a little time and yet he had filled her whole life.
“Be that everythin’ you wants, miss?” the cabman asked, having heaved her trunk up onto the box.
“Yes, thank you,” Isla replied.
She walked into the hall and picked up her bonnet from where she had left it on a chair.
Outside again she closed the front door, locked it and put the note for the Marquis on the top step.
She knew in such a quiet street that no one would remove it and he would find it there when he returned for her in fifteen minutes’ time.
As the cabman drove on after she had told him to go to Strathyre House in Park Lane, she gripped her fingers together and stared ahead of her with unseeing eyes.
She was leaving the Marquis!
When she reached the North of Scotland, he would never find her again and would soon forget her.
It was then, as the weight in her breast became a sharp pain, that she realised she loved him.
It swept over her like the warmth of the sun and then faded into a darkness in which there was no light as she realised that he was already consigned to her past.
She had lost her mother, Keegan Kenway, the life she had lived with them for so many years and now the Marquis.
She wondered why she had been so foolish as not to realise that she loved him when she was at Longridge Park.
She had thought riding beside him was the most exciting thing she had ever done.
Talking to him as they had last night was a thrilling experience that she could not describe even to herself.
She had been in love with him then!
She had, in fact, loved him when he had saved her from Lord Polegate, taken her to his house and been so unbelievably kind and understanding.
“I love him!” Isla breathed out loud and remembered how her mother had written,
“Love is greater than anything else in the whole world and, when you find it, it is impossible to resist or refuse it.”
‘But I have to resist it because the Marquis does not love me,’ Isla told herself wistfully.
She had an impulse to turn the cab round, drive back and be waiting for him when he arrived to collect her.
Why should she tear herself away from something that mattered to her more than life itself?
She knew, however, that it was her pride that told her she must not be an encumbrance on him.
He had picked her up off the road.
She was nothing to him and could play no part in the Social world in which he shone so brilliantly.
It was laughable how ignorant she was of everything that surrounded him and which he took for granted.
She thought of the many allusions that Mrs. Lancaster and the other servants had made to the beautiful women who had stayed at Longridge Park.
They had suggested, without actually putting it into words, how much they had all loved the Marquis.
Isla could understand their feelings, but they at least had a chance of attracting him.
How could he possibly be interested in anybody as insignificant as herself?
No one indeed could have been more sympathetic over Keegan Kenway or taken more trouble to save her from coming into contact with Lord Polegate again.
She had realised, however, that the Marquis had been willing to do this largely because he disliked Lord Polegate as a man and as his neighbour.
He was therefore in a way scoring off Lord Polegate by having rescued her from his odious advances.
‘But how can I go on living on his charity?’ she asked and knew that it was impossible now that she had an alternative.
It was, however, frightening when the cab turned into Park Lane.
Suppose the caretakers would not listen to her story of who she was?
Suppose after all these years the house had been shut up completely with no one living in it? Or, worse still, sold?
‘I can always go back to the Marquis,’ she told herself reassuringly as the horses came to a stop.
The house certainly did not look deserted. The windows were clean and the brass knocker on the door was highly polished.
But, as the cabman jumped down and raised it, she held her breath in case she was mistaken and there was no reply.
Then the door opened and seeing a footman in a smart livery, she stepped slowly out of the cab.
Because she could see another footman in the hall, she thought that her father must have come South and was in residence.
The footman was looking at her expectantly and with difficulty she managed to ask,
“Please – c-could I – see the – Earl of Strathyre?”
The f
ootman opened the door wider and asked,
“Will you come in, ma’am?”
Isla turned to the cabman and said,
“Wait for me, please.”
Then she entered the house.
The footman led her across the hall and she looked at the polished but rather gloomy furniture.
Then he opened the door into what she supposed was the library or study.
There was a large flat-topped desk in the middle of the room, the walls were covered with books and above the mantelpiece there was a fine picture of grouse flighting over the moors.
“What name shall I say, ma’am?” the footman asked.
Isla hesitated.
“Will you tell his Lordship that somebody wishes to see him on a very important matter?”
The footman looked surprised, but apparently he was too well-trained to say anything and merely went from the room, closing the door behind him.
Isla stood, too nervous to sit down.
She was not really capable of thinking about anything except that in a minute or two she would see her father.
Her mother’s letter seemed almost too incredible to be true and she now wondered if because her mother was ill when she wrote it if she had imagined it.
She heard voices outside in the hall and her heart gave a frightened leap as the door opened.
She was expecting an elderly man, but instead a tall young man, very smartly dressed, entered and walked towards her.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked.
“I asked – to see – the Earl of – Strathyre!”
“I am the Earl!”
Isla stared at him and now she realised that he was staring at her.
“Who are you?” he asked sharply.
It was impossible to speak.
Her voice seemed to have died in her throat.
Then he said in an incredulous tone,
“Surely, because you are so exactly like the portrait of my mother, you must be – Isla!”
“And – you are – Iain?”
He smiled.
“I have often wondered what you were like and now that I see you, I think I should have recognised you even if we had met in a crowd.”
Only a Dream Page 12
