A Dark and Distant Shore (37 page)

Vilia, glancing at her, said, ‘Bless you!’

Lucy didn’t think Magnus would miss her much. Tonight he was attending the dinner given by the provost and corporation, and tomorrow he thought he might look in at St Giles, where His Majesty was to attend divine service. The children wouldn’t miss her, either, as Vilia had left the boys to become better acquainted with their honorary cousins. Lucy sighed. The only one who had found fault with this admirable arrangement had been Grace, who knew how her mother felt about Mrs Lauriston and made it clear to Aunt Lucy that she thought it morally wrong of her to permit the two families to be thrown together, which would greatly upset Mama when she heard of it. Regretfully, Lucy had to admit that she did not care very much for Grace. Pretty cool, for a ten-year-old girl to criticize her aunt! For a moment, Lucy felt all of her thirty-seven years, but then, catching Vilia’s mood, gave a mental shrug of the shoulders and an airy, ‘Pooh!’ which merged almost at once into another and more definitive ‘Atchoo!’

‘Have you caught cold?’ Vilia asked concernedly.

‘Oh, no. No! It’s just this dreary weather. Atchoo!’

The rain had gone off by the time they reached Marchfield House, and Lucy’s sneezes had temporarily abated. Descending from the smart green barouche, she looked round with interest. ‘But you led me to believe the house was quite dowdy! My dear, it’s nothing of the sort. So simple and stylish.’

‘It looks better than it did. I’ve had a few things done these last eighteen months since the foundry began to show a profit. The stables and coach house used to be separate from the main block, but those new walls linking them to the main house make everything look more of a piece. The doors and windows in the walls are
trompe l’oeil,
of course. Come along and see the inside. It’s quite civilized.’

She stopped as they heard a faint scuffling noise, and then smiled as a neatly built, sleek little black cat came streaking across the grass, uttering sounds that made Lucy think of a rusty hinge, and evincing the clearest intention of scrambling up its mistress’s corded olive-green skirts. Vilia said ‘No!’ very firmly, and the cat sat down with a thump at her feet and fixed her with a look of injured innocence.

‘Heavens!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘Whoever heard of a cat doing what it’s told?’

Vilia smiled again. ‘It’s a confidence trick, though who is playing the confidence trick on whom I have never been able to decide.’ She picked the little animal up, dusted off its paws, and then tucked it, purring vigorously, in the crook of her elbow.

The butler had the front door open, waiting. His bright blue eyes scanned his mistress’s face, and then passed on to her friend, sweet-faced, brown-haired, and fashionably attired in tints of azure and gold, with a fetching hat perched over her forehead that made her look like a plump little blue tit.

‘There iss a chentleman waiting to see you, mistress,’ he said.

‘Gracious me! On a Saturday? Who is it?’

‘He would not giff me his name, but he says you will be knowing him.’

Her eyebrows rose. ‘How very mysterious! Quite Gothic, in fact. Where is he, Angus? Has he been waiting long?’

‘Ferry near an hour. I put him in the parlour.’

Vilia turned. ‘You don’t mind, Lucy? I had better see who it is.’

Lucy shook her head and blinked, trying to suppress a resurrected sneeze.

Vilia moved towards the parlour, her gloved hand still teasing the nape of the Duchess’s neck, but she had scarcely taken three steps when the door was opened from within and the figure of a man, tall and athletically built, appeared on the threshold.

Vilia stopped as suddenly as if she had walked into a sheet of glass.

For a moment, Lucy’s watering eyes could see the man only as a silhouette, and then her vision cleared and she said, ‘Oh!’ She herself had no idea whether it was amazement or horror that was dominant.

The silence held for what seemed an eternity, and then Vilia and Perry Randall both spoke at once.

‘I hope you...’ he began.

‘Why, Mr Randall!’ Vilia said on a descending note. ‘What a surprise.’

She wasn’t smiling, and neither was Perry Randall. He had always been handsome, and he still was, but there, as far as Lucy could see, the resemblance ended. She remembered him as graceful and humorous, in a careless way, and very
approachable.
But now... If she hadn’t been so concerned about her cold, Lucy thought she might well have succumbed to a spasm. This new Perry Randall was sinewy-looking, taut, and deeply tanned, and the sardonic lines that bracketed his mouth looked as if they had been cut out with a chisel. His tailoring was certainly not English. In fact, he looked quite
foreign,
and there was a hard resilience about him that Lucy found little short of alarming.

He bowed slightly. ‘Mrs Lauriston. And Mrs Telfer. I hope you will forgive me for not standing on ceremony, but I am in Scotland only for a few days and thought you might not mind my plaguing you for news of old friends.’

The cat wriggled suddenly in Vilia’s arms, as if in protest, and made to clamber up on her shoulder, but she disentangled its claws and set it gently down on the floor. It scampered off towards the stairs, sat down, glared, and then settled to an urgent wash and brush up. Perry Randall watched it thoughtfully, but said nothing.

A trifle absently, Vilia smoothed down the threads of the
gros de Naples
where the cat’s claws had caught them, and then said, ‘I will be happy to tell you anything I can. You are fortunate that Mrs Telfer is staying with me until Monday. Her news from – from Glenbraddan and Kinveil is more recent than mine. But perhaps, having waited an hour, you would wait a little longer while we rid ourselves of the dust of travel? Angus, I assume you have already offered Mr Randall some refreshment, but Mrs Telfer and I would like tea in half an hour. Mr Randall?’

‘Please. After seven years of coffee and rum, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be offered tea again.’

Vilia’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

Somewhat more than half an hour later, having taken as long as she decently could, Lucy entered the parlour to find Mr Randall still in solitary possession. She could scarcely retreat, so, sitting down and making a great play of arranging her soft blue skirts, she said politely, ‘We had quite given you up, Mr Randall.’ Her voice sounded dreadfully gummy, and her mind and stomach were both churning; colds in the head always had the most unfortunate effect on her digestion. Almost at random, she went on, ‘Is Nova Scotia quite uncivilized, as one hears?’ and then blushed hotly. That was always the trouble when one spoke without thinking. She hoped it hadn’t sounded too much like a criticism of his appearance.

He was as tall as Magnus, and she wished that he would sit down, too. But he was looking puzzled rather than offended, as if she had posed him some vastly intricate problem. After a moment he said, ‘As a matter of fact, I left Nova Scotia several years ago and went on to Montreal, and then to New York. I have been out on the fringes of the new territories since then.’ Suddenly he smiled at her, with all the old, blinding charm. ‘The postal system there isn’t very good.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘There are twenty-four states, and they all have different systems. And none of them likes cooperating with the others.’

‘Dear me! Almost as if they were different countries?’ He nodded. She could feel another sneeze coming on, but managed to say, ‘How inconvenient!’ before it overtook her.

Perry had forgotten what a very nice person she was. He smiled again, and began to say something, but the door opened just then to admit a maid with a tray, followed by the butler. Vilia entered on their heels.

‘I apologize for taking so long,’ she said coolly. ‘A slight crisis in the kitchen.’

Lucy noticed, reproachfully, that she had taken time to change into a figured morning dress that was much more modish than anything Lucy possessed. And one that hadn’t been precisely cheap, either.

‘So,’ Vilia said, dispensing tea. ‘You’ve been in Canada, have you, Mr Randall?’

Again, the puzzlement shadowed his brow. ‘Not for some time. I removed to America a few years ago, and have just been explaining to Mrs Telfer how unreliable the postal system is there.’

‘Indeed!’

Lucy cast her a startled glance.

Perry Randall’s jaw tightened. ‘And, of course, I am travelling all the time – I sell guns, you see – and I have no settled address where mail can be sure of reaching me.’

‘Sell
guns?’ Vilia said. ‘Do you find it a profitable occupation?’ Her eyes flickered over Mr Randall’s tailoring in a way that was nothing short of insulting.

Lucy snatched for her handkerchief. She would never have believed that Vilia could be so rude.

In the hall, Lucy had been stunned to realize that, whatever there had been between Vilia and Perry Randall in the past, it hadn’t been simple acquaintance. There had flashed into her clogged mind, like a pencil of sunlight bursting through a bank of cloud, the thought that Charlotte had been right after all. But now she was not so sure. From the way they were talking to each other, it sounded more like acute dislike than love. And yet even acute dislike couldn’t have developed – could it? – over a mere two or three casual encounters. What
would
Charlotte say if she knew he was here! And Magnus! Lucy closed her eyes and wished the world would end. She sneezed violently.

‘Are you cold, Lucy?’

She opened her eyes again. ‘Dho! I beanh dho!’

‘Oh, Lucy!’ Vilia exclaimed with a forced laugh. ‘What you mean is, you mean no! I don’t believe you. I’ll have the fire lit at once, and as soon as you have swallowed your tea I think you should retire to bed.’

Lucy shook her head, and said, ‘Dho! I’m berfectly all right, dank you.’

She couldn’t concentrate on Perry Randall talking about his experiences in the backwoods of America – he couldn’t be a
commercial traveller,
surely! – while in another corner of her mind Magnus’s voice was saying, with a good deal of asperity, ‘But you should have walked out of the house! If Vilia Cameron is prepared to entertain him, that’s her concern. I won’t have you exposed to such a fellow!’

If only Magnus hadn’t disliked Mr Randall so much, right from the start. There had been every justification, of course, even before he had crowned his follies by running away from Charlotte. But Lucy had never felt it altogether right of Magnus to have encouraged that rather unpleasant friend of his to demand his dues from the poor young man quite so brutally, so that he had been ruined and had to flee, giving Charlotte another child – of all the mortifying things to happen! – on the way. Though it was, Lucy supposed dismally, perfectly reasonable that Magnus should side with his sister. Lucy had even found it difficult to persuade Magnus that Vilia hadn’t been involved in the affair at all, and had succeeded only because her father-in-law had said the same thing, rather more bluntly and a good deal more forcibly. Had they both been wrong?

Tactlessly, she remembered something. ‘Is it safe for you to be in this country?’ She could have bitten her tongue out.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘My debts, you mean? As it happens, I came back to pay them. My business hasn’t been entirely unprofitable.’ The ironic grey eyes rested on Vilia for a moment. ‘But I discovered they had already been settled by Mungo Telfer. He must have done it soon after I sailed, if not before. I’ve tried to repay him, but he won’t have it. He says starving in a garret is all very well, but it’s never struck him as the way to build up a good, sound business. To quote, ‘A wee bit capital’s what you need. You can pay me back in your own good time, when you see your way clearer.” He’s a kind man, and he’s been a good friend to me.’

‘You’ve
seen
Mungo?’ Vilia’s voice was sharp.

‘I’m sorry to say, no. I couldn’t go to Kinveil without going to Glenbraddan, and the old man thought that would be a mistake. He’s probably right. He says his daughter’s peace of mind must be his first concern and, besides, he’s getting too old to put up with any more family tantrums. From his letter, he seems sorry we won’t be able to meet, and so am I. I’m fond of him, and I fear he’ll be gone by the time I’m able to make another trip over here.’

She said flatly, ‘So you are only on a visit?’

‘Yes. I must leave for New York again within the week.’ Lucy began to feel brighter. ‘Apart from the matter of my debts, I came only to see what London’s gunsmiths are doing about the new revolving pistol – whether the future lies with hand-operated or spring-operated cylinders. I have to decide whether to go on as I am, or whether to think of expansion. My plans are fluid.’

Lucy said, with what in another woman might have been a touch of spite, ‘My goodness! You are as bad as Vilia. You both make me feel very useless. Did you know, Mr Randall, that Vilia actually runs her late father-in-law’s ironworks? We all thought she was out of her senses at first, but she has made
such
a success of it! The king himself talked to her for quite thirty minutes at the Peers’ ball yesterday evening, all about the – er – the architectural ironmongery she is producing for those sweet little houses everyone is building nowadays, the kind with balconies and railings, you know? In places like Brighton and London and – St Leonard’s, was it, Vilia? And Cheltenham, and so on.’ On an afterthought, she added, ‘Or don’t you have that kind of house in America?’ And then her voice trailed off into a suppressed sniffle.

Vilia’s smile was weary, but she said nothing.

Perry Randall cleared his throat. ‘I only discovered a few months ago that Major Lauriston had lost his life at Waterloo. By the purest chance, I encountered an emigrant who had served with his regiment. Pray accept my condolences, Mrs Lauriston.’

‘Thank you.’ Her voice, throughout the conversation, had been oddly clipped, as if she were holding herself on a tight, but impatient rein. ‘It is very difficult for us to understand how cut off you have been from news of all your friends and acquaintances. America must be an extraordinary place.’