An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (56 page)

“A
good
reason!” The Duchess repeated the words sarcastically, and then laughed a horrible, cackling sound that died in her throat as if she strangled it.

“She is young! She is beautiful! I suppose that is what you call a good reason?”

“She also happens to be the Marquis of Severn’s mistress.”

“And yours?” the Duchess asked. “Yes, yours too. I am not such a dolt that you can blind me to that. You met her at Inverness, you stayed with her there and you lied to me, yes, lied because you were afraid.”

“I was not afraid,” Lord Niall contradicted. “I was, if you must know the truth, bored with making explanations to you, bored with your incessant whining, bored with being pestered by your eternal jealousy.”

“Pester! You say I pester you!” the Duchess screamed. “Once you loved me, once you craved my favours, but now you dare to speak to me of being pestered. After all I have done for you, after the years I have toiled and schemed and plotted to get you what you want!”

“Without success!” Lord Niall sneered. He looked down at the papers. “A lot of good they have done me, haven’t they? It has been money wasted, every penny of it. Your spies are incompetent or else you have not the brains to choose them properly. What have they found, I ask you, what have they discovered after five years of this ineffective tomfoolery?”

The Duchess’s hands plucked at her dress and she seemed to shake all over.

“You cad!” she said. “You ungrateful beast! When I have given up everything for you.”

“What have you given up?” Lord Niall asked derisively. “Your return to England? You know as well as I do that you have no desire to go back. Who cares for or is interested in the widow of a Scottish Duke – especially one without wealth? My father was none too generous to you, I admit that, but while you live here, you can save every penny of your allowance. In England you would have to put your hand in your pocket, and you would hate that, for you are mean as well as jealous, as I have discovered all too often.”

“Mean?” the Duchess said, shaking now as if with an ague. “Mean? When I have poured out my money on spies for you, spies paid to follow Ewan to England, to Edinburgh, to France! Do you think those trips have cost nothing? Look at the bills, read them for yourself and then dare to tell me that I am mean.”

The Duchess picked up a big handful of papers from the stool and thrust them into Lord Niall’s hands. He took them from her, glanced down at them and made a gesture as if he would throw them into the fire, but he changed his mind and chucked them into a chair.

“All right, all right. You have spent a certain amount of money on me, I will admit that, but it has got us nowhere. I am not the Duke of Arkrae, and if I have to rely on your efforts, I never shall be.”

“You think that she will gain you the Dukedom, that woman, that English doxy whose bedroom you have just left?”

“It is indisputably a distinct possibility,” Lord Niall replied. “But it will not be very helpful either to her or to me if you create scenes like this, if you are going to turn against her and make things more difficult than they are already.”

“So you expect me to help her,” the Duchess cried furiously, “help her to take you from me?”

“May the devil hear me,” Lord Niall growled. “It is not a question of her taking me away from you or from anyone else for that matter.”

“Do you speak the truth?”

The Duchess stepped forward and put her hand on Lord Niall’s arm. The pressure was insistent and half reluctantly he turned his face to look down into hers.

“Swear to me, here and now, as on the Bible, that you do not love her, that she means nothing to you but a weapon to gain you the Dukedom, swear to me – ”

She broke off suddenly and added in a whisper which seemed to come hissing from between her lips.

“You dare not swear for you love her. I can
see
you love her.”

With a rough gesture Lord Niall shook himself free of her hand, crossed the room to the wine table.

“In God’s name, spare me the dramatics.”

The Duchess seemed not to hear him. She stood on the hearthrug and whispered,

“You love her and she will destroy you. Yes, I know it, I know it in my very bones. She will destroy you, she will bring you nothing but death and destruction – death and destruction – ”

There was something so weird in her words and in the sibilant tones that Lord Niall turned round furiously, the decanter in one hand, a goblet in the other,

“Will you be quiet, you old witch?” he shouted. “You don’t scare me with your eerie forebodings any more than you frighten me with your threats.”

The Duchess put her hands up to her face. She was shaking all over. Lord Niall took a great gulp of brandy and walked towards her.

“We have got to make this clear here and now,” he said roughly. “Whatever has happened in the past, you have no further hold over me. I am a young man. I am my own master. Life is only beginning for me, whilst you, to put it bluntly, are no longer young. I will brook interference from no one.

“Whatever I may mean to Beatrice Wrexham or she to me, it has nothing to do with you. I am grateful for what you have tried to do for me, ‘I say ‘
tried
’ because you have achieved nothing, absolutely nothing. You have had Ewan watched for all these years, but for all the good it has done, you might just as well have given the money to the nearest Jacobite.

“But all that is finished, finished for ever as far as I am concerned. I am not ungrateful, but I now have someone else to help me, and I would wager my entire fortune that whatever she attempts will be successful. You have got to be sensible,
Belle mere.
You have got to face facts. We have had some good times together, you and I, but they are over. Scenes of jealousy and recrimination will help neither of us, you must accept things as they are and make the best of them.”

Lord Niall finished his glass and put it down.

“In the morning,” he said to the silent, shaking figure beside him, “I suggest that we both forget this ugly scene.”

He walked towards the door, took up his candle from the table and lit it from a three-branch candelabrum.

“May I bid Your Grace good night?”

His bow was a mocking travesty of the conventional curtsey, but when he had made it, the cruel smile of buffoonery left his lips and, as he looked across the room at the Duchess he hesitated, some half-forgotten decency within him stirred by her quivering anguish. Then, as she did not move or speak, he shrugged his shoulders, went from the room and closed the door behind him.

For some minutes the Duchess stood where she was. Then, as if her knees gave under her, she sank down first on to the stool and then on to the floor. At last, slowly, bitterly, to her twitching, tortured eyes came the relief of tears, the slow ugly tears of old age, the tears of utter despair, for she knew now that her life at Skaig was over and there was nothing for her to do but to return to England.

12

Iona was worried. She sensed that something was wrong, but she was not yet certain what it was or whether it concerned herself.

She had wakened early in the morning, feeling unusually happy. For a moment her happiness had been vague, like the lingering memory of some exquisite dream when the sleeper has been transported into a sunlit world and while the details are forgotten, the effect remains clear. But as full consciousness returned and her senses became more alert, Iona knew one reason for happiness.

Hector was safe! She need no longer be distraught neither with anxiety nor with the terror that had pursued her all the day before – a terror that Lord Niall’s men might recapture their prisoner. But night had come and with it the news that the chase had been abandoned. Hector appeared to have vanished into thin air and Iona could understand Lord Niall’s anger and sense of frustration.

Cathy had wakened her yesterday morning with the news that Hector’s escape had been discovered and that Lord Niall’s men were in a turmoil of agitation and astonishment. Cursed by his Lordship and sent post haste in search of the escaped prisoner, they were in their heart of hearts, Cathy said, convinced that his escape was due to supernatural aid.

Iona and Cathy had both been distressed at the thought of Eachann being flogged in an attempt to make him confess what part he had played in the disappearance of the fugitive. But there was nothing they could do about it, and when later they learned that he had been released from the dungeon, Cathy vowed she would reward him because he had not mentioned her visit during the night.

“The mon hae a guid heart,” she said, “for a’ that he is a great fule in followin’ his Lordship.”

“Was he in the Duke’s service before he became one of Lord Niall’s men?” Iona asked.

Cathy shook her head.

“Nay, for they who sairve His Grace wouldna gang frae him. Eachann an’ the others who belong tae Lord Niall came frae a wee island on the west coast. ’Tis his Lordship’s ain property gi’en tae him by the auld Duke wheen he came o’ age. He has a castle there, they say, but ’tis naethin’ mair than a ruin an’ his Lordship much prefers tae dwell here.”

Iona could understand that, but at the same time she thought it a poor return for his half-brother’s hospitality to live in his house and yet to intrigue against him and challenge his authority.

It was easy to understand under the circumstances how many difficulties must arise and how Lord Niall’s servants were disliked by the Duke’s, and vice versa. The differences between the two staffs had been very obvious the day before when none of the Duke’s clansmen had taken any part in the search for Hector, and the fact that the prisoner had escaped the vigilance of Lord Niall’s men was an occasion for much jesting by the members of the ducal household.

“’Tis in mae heart tae be sorry for Sime,” Cathy told Iona. “He’s a dour mon an’ nae tae be trusted, but he’s hard put tae it below stairs tae keep oop his ain heid the noo.”

“I thought he looked horrible,” Iona said with a little shudder, remembering Sime’s shifty expression and the unsightly cast in his left eye.

“Aye, he’s that richt enough,” Cathy agreed, “but his Lordship leads an’ the men follow. Ye canna blame them wheen they hae pledged allegiance tae him.”

It was very obvious that Cathy thought that the real villain of the piece was Lord Niall, and Iona was not disposed to argue with her. She had managed to keep out of his Lordship’s way the whole of the previous day. This had meant that when she was not in her bedchamber she must be constantly in the company of the Duchess.

She guessed, though she had no logical reason for the supposition, that Lord Niall was avoiding his stepmother, and so the easiest way to avoid him was to sit in the Crimson Salon with the Duchess, watching the nervous fluttering of her fingers and listening to her constant and unceasing complaints about the cold and discomfort of Scotland.

But if Iona had wished to avoid Lord Niall, she had also wanted, above all things, to see the Duke again. It was he who had been instrumental in saving Hector, and while Iona was fully aware that his part in the prisoner’s escape must be kept completely secret and never revealed to anyone, not even to Cathy, she was determined to express to the Duke a little of her own overwhelming gratitude.

Besides, she was certain now that the way was open for her to approach him on behalf of the Prince. She had only to gain from him but a brief expression of his loyalty and a promise of support should the occasion arise, and then that part of her mission was completed.

Even if she were not fortunate enough to track down the Tears of Torrish, she would not return to France empty-handed, for with news of the Duke’s allegiance to the Stuart Cause and the little black notebook on which Hector set so much store she could be assured of a warm welcome.

When she thought of France and of the Prince awaiting the outcome of her journey, she felt again the warm glow of satisfaction that she had experienced in Paris when she had realised that His Royal Highness trusted and believed in her. But insidiously against her own inclination came the question of what would happen to her once she had returned and given the Prince the assurances he desired.

Was she to go back to her work in the milliner’s shop and to the soul-destroying loneliness of the boarding house where by the most frugal economies she could afford the meanest and worst furnished room in the building?

Was that all the future held, a future in which she would ever be haunted by the beauties of Skaig?

Although Iona’s mind had been incessantly busy with the task set her, and with the difficulties and troubles that had arisen over Hector and his capture, she had never ceased to marvel at the comfort and loveliness of her surroundings.

Not only was she appreciative by nature, but she had also a real love of everything that was beautiful. From the moment she first opened her eyes in the morning to the moment when she closed them again at night she noticed everything from the softness of the linen sheets on her bed to the ever-changing colours of the loch.

Once Iona had thought that the little house near the north wall of Paris where she had lived with her guardian was all that could be wished for where comfort and charm were concerned.

Now, at Skaig, she began to realise what a home could be like when it was the storehouse of centuries and the treasures it contained had been augmented generation after generation by those who understood not only the value of the objects themselves, but also their place in providing a background for an ancient and honourable family.

Iona would wander through the great rooms of the castle, touching the polished furniture, looking at the paintings with their carved gilt frames, wondering at the tapestries wrought in exquisite detail with a skill that was almost unbelievable, and conscious even as she walked of the softness of the patterned carpets and the fragrance of the pine wood burning in the marble-surrounded fireplaces.

There was so much to see, so much to learn from what she saw. And besides the treasures inside the castle the surrounding landscape left her day after day inarticulate with wonder. Whether the sun shone or the rain beat fiercely against the walls of the castle and its many paned windows, the moors and mountains were always beautiful and the loch as mysterious as an opal.