The House of Lyall (24 page)

She took her time over her ablutions and did feel much better for the long soak. Stepping out of the tub, she wrapped herself in the huge white towel laid out for her and opened the bathroom door to find Daisy hovering in the passage. ‘Would you like me to help you to dry yourself and dress, m'Leddy?'

‘No, thank you, I'll manage.'

She had just gone into her room when she heard heavy feet pounding upstairs, then Hamish flung open the door and took her in his arms.

‘Oh, Marianne, where were you?' he cried. ‘We searched the gardens high and low, although Thomson was determined you'd been abducted. I thought I had lost you.'

‘I wanted some air so I went out for a walk. Then it got so hot, I went into the loch for a wee while to cool down and I'd to wait till I was dry, and my …' Appalled at having almost admitted how little she had been wearing, she finished, hastily, ‘… till my clothes were dry, too.'

Hamish stepped back and looked at her accusingly. ‘Thomson tells me you had no clothes on, only a night-dress? I hope no one saw you.'

‘Nobody saw me,' she assured him, her colour rising as she recalled Jamie MacPhee's searching eyes when she stood naked before him, and then, wondering if her husband would react in the same way as the tinker, she let the huge towel slip to the floor.

Hamish said nothing for several moments, but there was no doubt that he was drinking in the sight of her svelte body. She took a step towards him, and because he was her husband, she had no need to break away when his arms went round her again, fiercer than before.

‘Dear God, Marianne,' he said hoarsely, ‘do you know what holding you like this is doing to me?'

His lips came down hard on her mouth, his knuckles dug into the small of her back, but suddenly, he thrust her from him. ‘No, no! I can't! I can't!'

‘Why can't you?' she asked, frustration making her unnaturally bold to him.

‘If you only knew how much I want to, my sweetheart. I've … oh, this is difficult, but I cannot keep it from you any longer. I've loved you ever since I first saw you – standing up to Sybil and her crew during that Hogmanay Ball, but I couldn't tell you before because I was sure that you loved Andrew.'

‘Hamish, I told you over and over that I didn't love him in that way, just as a friend.'

His eyes held a trace of sadness now. ‘Yet, when I proposed, you said you didn't love me, so what else was I to think?'

‘I didn't think I did at first,' she admitted, pausing to kiss his ear before ending, ‘but … you grew on me.'

He eyed her quizzically. ‘Am I to take that as a compliment, or do you mean you got used to me, which isn't the same as loving me?'

‘I do love you,' she said, ‘but I thought you looked on our marriage as a duty to your father, a duty you didn't really care for.' His gentle but firm push towards the bed made her say, ‘What are you doing, Hamish? We can't … it can't be long after breakfast time. Somebody might come in.'

He nuzzled her neck. ‘Let them all come in. Let them feast their eyes on their master showing his beautiful wife how much he loves her.'

‘It's all right for you,' she protested. ‘It's me that's naked. You're dressed.'

‘I shall soon remedy that,' he smiled, hardly taking time to open buttons as he pulled off jacket, necktie, shirt, trousers, and cast them from him on to the floor.

And now, at long last, came the love-making she had longed for, the caressing, the tender yet meaningful kissing, the exploring hands, the build-up to a height they had never reached before, and she was left in no doubt that he loved her as much as she loved him.

When it was over, she expressed her surprise that no one had come to the door, not even Thomson, and Hamish murmured, smiling at her fondly, ‘They are human, my darling. They know what a husband will do to the wife he feared was lost to him.'

‘And they likely know you hardly ever slept with me,' she said, embarrassed at reminding him.

He took hold of one of her tresses of coppery hair and twirled it round his finger. ‘I wasted a lot of time fretting about you and Andrew.' He put his finger on her mouth as she started to speak. ‘Yes, I know that you denied it several times, but a man in love is not always rational.'

‘A man in love,' she sighed rapturously. ‘Oh, I never thought I'd hear you describing yourself like that.'

‘You will hear it over and over again for as long as we live,' he assured her.

This little exchange, of course, only served to keep them in bed, and when they did eventually go downstairs, the two maids in the dining room kept their eyes down. Even Hector didn't look at them, eating his lunch as though he hadn't a minute to spare, but when the servants had withdrawn, he could hold back no longer.

‘You might have waited until night-time,' he muttered. ‘You know what these lassies are like. It'll be all round the glen in no time that you two spent the whole morning in bed together.'

Stretching out to clasp Marianne's hand, Hamish said, ‘We don't care. You maybe will not believe this, Father, but we only discovered today the true extent of our love.'

The suggestion of a twinkle now appeared in Sir Hector's eyes. ‘And you couldn't wait?' He gave Marianne a quick glance and then smiled. ‘I don't blame you, though. She's a damn fine-looking girl.'

When he, too, went out, Hamish said, ‘I'd better go with him, my dear. I don't want to get his back up by staying off work all day, but my heart won't be in it.'

She returned to her room and lay down on the bed to think. So much had happened since she'd woken up and had felt stifled with the heat. She had enjoyed walking barefoot one the carpet of pine needles in the early morning, had enjoyed her cooling dip in the loch, had even, if she was scrupulously honest, enjoyed – revelled in – Jamie MacPhee's flattering remarks.

She wouldn't have been able to look anybody in the face again if she had done what he wanted, especially Hamish. If Duncan Peat ever got to know about it – which he wouldn't for she wouldn't even tell Grace – he would say that God had intervened to stop her from committing adultery. And maybe he'd be right! He was a dedicated minister, she had discovered, having met him in several of the little cottages when someone died or was seriously ill. He had the knack of saying the right thing, of sympathizing as if he truly meant it, of consoling someone who had just lost a husband, a parent, a child, as though that person was the most important thing in the world to him. And they would be, at that moment. It was a great gift to have.

Suddenly recalling what Flora Mowatt had said about him, Marianne shook her head in disgust at the very thought of him hurting his wife. Flora must be mistaken. He wouldn't harm a single living creature!

Anyway, Marianne mused, at least she had done two good turns today. With Duncan having broken his leg – she'd go tomorrow to see how he was – he'd be grateful for help in the garden, and Jamie MacPhee would be glad of the job.

And now, having figured everything out to her own satisfaction, she was free to think about Hamish. It was strange how a misunderstanding on both their parts had caused them to lose two years of real happiness, but they would make up for it. Oh yes, they would make up for it!

Some time later, when she was telling herself that she had better not be too long in dressing for dinner – she wanted to look her best when Hamish came home from the mill – it occurred to Marianne that she owed it to Miss Edith to let her know that their marriage was perfect at last. She had intended inviting them for wee Ranald's christening, but she would write a proper letter instead. Then another, more sobering thought entered her mind. What about Andrew? He was the only other person who knew how things had been between her and Hamish, but would he be more hurt if she told him how things were now? Perhaps it would be better just to say they had improved a little, and tell him the whole truth at some other time.

Chapter Twelve

The summer of 1902 saw preparations for celebrating the coronation in full swing in Glendarril. The dominie and his wife, helped by some of the older children, had freshened up the assembly hall – which also served as a gymnasium, as a sewing room where Mrs Wink showed the older girls how to knit and to stitch, and at other times, where her husband taught the boys woodwork – with two coats of paint, cream from the ceiling to the dado placed well above the reach of even the tallest child, and dark brown from that demarcation line to the floor so that sticky or inky fingermarks would not ‘stand out like sore thumbs', as William Wink put it with his usual inability to recognize a pun, although he had made it himself. The same treatment was accorded to the classroom, only one since there were hardly ever more than a dozen pupils on the roll in any one year.

The walls of the hall were then festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and taking pride of place opposite the door were pictures of Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. Trestle tables were to be set up in the playground on 26 June if it was dry, and the whole population of the glen would be sitting down to a repast fit for the Royal couple themselves, which the ladies of the WRI had volunteered to prepare and serve. For weeks, the scholars had rehearsed ‘Hearts of Oak' and ‘The British Grenadiers' with which to regale the adults between courses, and Mrs Wink was praying that the joyful solemnity of the occasion would rub off on Johnsy Gibb and Davy Marr and make them think twice before tugging any pigtails or, even worse, using them to tie two heads together, which usually resulted in all-out warfare between the sexes.

Still, all in all, it was an exciting time for the country folk, especially for those men who still remembered acting as ghillies at the August shoots Edward had joined as the young and handsome Prince of Wales. One old lady could recall a much more initimate relationship with him but knew that boasting about it, even after forty-odd years, would make some people doubt her son's legitimacy.

Lord Glendarril and family, of course, would be attending the real ceremony in London, and Lady Marianne (as she was still known although not yet entitled to the title) had looked out the robes and coronets – last worn at Victoria's coronation by Hector's parents – and had put them on display in one of the public rooms for a whole day so that anyone who wished could come to see them.

‘Marrying into the gentry hasna gone to her head,' the wives told each other, when they were walking back down the long drive, having viewed the robes, ‘for there's nae a pick o' side to her.'

Naturally, there were those who disagreed on principle with the decisions made by their employers, as there are in any workforce. Ettie Webster was one such. ‘I couldna get ower it when I heard her saying she was putting her laddies
to the school here when they're the age,' she sneered the following evening, at a meeting of the Women's Rural Institute in the kirk vestry. ‘It just shows she's no' real gentry, for their father and their grandfather, and his father afore him, like enough, was sent to a private school in England some place to be teached, so I thought the laird would've wanted his sons to –'

‘The laird did want them to go to his old school,' interrupted Flora Mowatt, ‘but their mother wouldn't hear of it. She said she didn't want Ranald and Ruairidh to be brought up thinking they were better than other children in the glen. Mind you, Ranald's just three and Ruairidh's hardly two so she might change her mind when the time comes.'

Grace Peat – president of the WRI – shook her head. ‘I don't think she will. In any case, she has been a good friend to me and I do not want to hear anything against her.'

Loud murmurs of agreement to this showed that most of the wives regarded ‘Lady Marianne' as a friend. After all, they whispered to each other, didn't she stand and speak to them if she met them on the road any time, even if she'd to come off the bike she'd taken to using for getting around? More to the point, she had started a sort of clothes-exchange for babies and toddlers, even for girls and boys at the school, which was a great help to the mothers with a puckle bairns.

Judging that she had allowed enough time to be wasted, Mrs Peat said, ‘Now, we must get down to business …'

The meeting proceeded until two committee members rose to make the tea. This was the signal for a hubbub of chattering to break out, discussing the possible consequences of Lady Marianne's boys attending the glen school (a far more important subject to them than the crowning to take place hundreds of miles away), and when they went home, most of the women with daughters under school age were already weaving dreams of being mother-in-law to a Lord one day. Those who had only sons but were still capable of bearing children resolved to produce a girl next time, no matter that they had sworn to their husbands after their last confinement that he need not expect them to have any more.

Grace Peat was no different from her fellow WRI members and was so excited that she didn't stop to think when she went home. ‘Oh, I hope it'll be a daughter I have!' The words were scarcely out when her hand flew to her mouth.

Too late! The minister's head jerked up from the sermon he was preparing. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you are … pregnant?'

His wife flushed, all her dreams for the future disintegrating. ‘Yes, Duncan. I … I didn't know how to tell you.'

‘I am not surprised. Have you forgotten how ill you were when you had pleurisy two years ago? Robert Mowatt as much as said you were not fit enough to have a child. Does he know about this?'

‘Y-yes … and he has warned me that I may have a difficult time.'

‘So! Well, you are taking your life in your own hands and it will not be my fault if anything happens to you.'

Knowing her husband as she did, Grace let him have the last word. It was an awful thing for a man of God to think, never mind say out loud, but at least he hadn't punched her as he so often did when he was angry with her. It was fear of his violence that had kept her from telling him of her condition, made her pull the strings of her corsets so tight she could hardly breathe, and when he found out that she was due in three months … Thank goodness the baby seemed small – or at least the bulge around her middle not so very big. If anything bad should happen to her it was more likely to be as a result of what he would do to her than the actual birth.