Twixt Two Equal Armies (38 page)

His eyes were cold, his face was set; his decision had been made and Holly would not further demean herself by asking anything more of him when he so obviously enjoyed her distress and equally obviously had no intention of relenting. Mercifully the coach drew to a halt a short time later and Holly, numb with disbelief, mechanically collected her bag and began the walk from the coaching inn to the University Buildings. Once there she would deliver the colour plates to Sir John Leslie, and pray that there was some work out there for her, somewhere.

Chapter 17

How Miss Tournier’s Remaining Friends and Family Passed their Time in her Absence and what her Return Entailed

Edinburgh,
Ledwich House

Dearest Maman,

You may rest easy upon receiving this letter, hearing that I am arrived in Edinburgh and am now safely in Sir John and Lady Ledwich’s care. I will also give you the satisfaction of admitting that you were perfectly right and my journey was every bit as unpleasant as you predicted. However, it is done with and I have emerged relatively unscathed.

I trust that you will not be cross with me when you read that I will remain here in Edinburgh for a few days longer than I had intended, to inquire into some employment opportunities that Sir John and his friend have so kindly suggested. It appears that no commissions will be forthcoming any time soon, and — it also appears that my need to find work is more pressing than we had anticipated.

I will explain when I arrive home, hopefully with gainful employment. Look for me either on Friday or Saturday, I’ll be coming by the stage as usual.

Your loving,
Holly

T
HROUGHOUT THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED,
Lord Baugham made good on his expressed intentions to Miss Tournier and was a regular visitor to Rosefarm Cottage in her absence. He found Mrs Tournier’s company as stimulating as ever, even if she was understandably even more prone to debate than usual.

The day after her departure, his lordship came upon her as she was reading the letter from her daughter. She did not look displeased to see him, even if her eyes lingered on the note while he entered.

“Well, my lord,” she said and waved the letter in front of him before crisply folding it away. “I am pleased to report that she has survived her journey and is now with Sir John.”

“Does Miss Tournier write of her plans to return then? Do you expect her soon?”

Tossing the letter sharply onto her now reclaimed desk, Mrs Tournier’s face grew grim.

“She stays a few more days at the least.”

Baugham was surprised to see a sudden change in her demeanour at those words. Even more surprising was what followed.

“She is always leaving!” The statement sounded matter-of-fact, yet almost wistful. “She comes home, I grow accustomed to her presence . . . then she leaves and I miss her.” Mrs Tournier then took a breath, straightened her shoulders and shook off her regret.

The familiar gesture tugged at Baugham’s heart. He had seen it from Miss Tournier several times and he wondered how often this small, proud family had to shake off disappointments and sadness and, from somewhere within, find the strength to carry on.

“So,” she interrupted his reverie, “what have you brought today? Partridges, or opinions?”

“Both, madam,” he smiled.

“
W
ELL, MY DEAR, OF COURSE
I will ask on your behalf, but I think you must be prepared to consider other options, too.”

Holly held on to Sir John’s arm as he steered her out of the dark winding closes by his rooms and the laboratories. The University being scattered in all manner of buildings all around the center of Edinburgh, Sir John had his workplace and lecture rooms in a cramped building near Grass Market, but its location was nonetheless convenient, for it offered him access to the Faculty’s laboratories to the west of the Castle. Holly looked up at the magnificent building on the hill, ancient and imposing even though dusk was already falling and obscuring its features. Looming, she thought. Why was every feature of the city suddenly an omen of impending doom?

“Thank you, Sir John. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. I . . . well, there is no disgrace in admitting we do need the extra income.”

“Of course you do. I wish Dr McKenna could have been more specific with his prospects, but as usual, science must await the currents of economy before it can aspire to its universal goals.”

Holly recognised Sir John was not in a particularly optimistic mood. He always muttered obscure philosophical sentiments when he was dissatisfied with his work or troubled by real life concerns. But then his features lightened and he squeezed her arm.

“Now, I will renounce these gloomy thoughts and so must you! I have you for myself for just a little while before you go back and I will take you to see the latest developments around New Town. I am much impressed! Such a difference from these dirty, confusing and ancient streets around here. My wife says we could perhaps take rooms in Princes’ Street and I must say I favour the idea. The ordered plan and the well-laid out structures are so much easier on the working mind of a natural scientist like me. You must come with me and give your opinion on what she has in mind!”

Holly smiled and agreed to accompany him. A little beauty and faith in the future of city planning would do her good. And New Town was what she always imagined London to be like — at least her mother had said it rivalled anything she had seen in the way of harmonious and handsome architecture when she had been living there.

They had a very pleasant afternoon of it, with Sir John conducting her on a short walking tour of the parts of town she was less familiar with. They returned to the University to take tea, where they were joined by Dr McKenna and Holly was introduced to more of their colleagues, but the answers to their discreet inquiries on her behalf were all very much the same. Coupled with the genuine praise and admiration of the quality of her work, were equally genuine regrets that wartime economics, internal wranglings for power and influence within the University, and sporadic labour unrest in the printing shops, not to mention
the alarming rise in the cost of paper, were all combining to make publication especially difficult for the time being.

Dr McKenna returned with them to Sir John’s for supper and they spent the evening reviewing possibilities and making lists. Holly was grateful, not only for the kind solicitude of the gentlemen, but for their treatment of her as a rational, capable being and not as a mere fragile thing to be protected. It grew late as they talked and planned, and suddenly Dr McKenna looked at her as if he was taken with an idea. She waited to hear him, but he merely apologised for keeping them up till such an hour by his visit and quickly took his leave.

“Geologists,” Sir John smiled. “One can never know what to expect of a man who spends his life looking down at the ground. Now, my dear,” he bent down to kiss the top of her head, “it is time to retire. I daresay we will have better success tomorrow.”

Sir John climbed the stairs, quietly vowing to rattle as many academic cages on Miss Tournier’s behalf as he could on the morrow. A few moments later Holly went up, vowing to start out first thing in the morning to make full use of the lists of schools and families of whom she might enquire about a position. Dr McKenna, once he entered his room in South Bridge Street, wasted no time in pulling out pen and paper and making good on his own private vow of writing a letter to his father.

“
N
OW DONNAE YE START WITH
me Heather McLaughlin! I have quite enough of that from the Mistress these days as it is. I will make my cottage pies just as I always do — except with a bit more paitrick meat than usual — and that will have to be good enough for both of ye!”

“Well, donnae gnap my head off! I can see ye’re in a mood all right. Pass me the rolling pin, I had better handle the dough.”

“This household, Heather, is in a right state, I can tell ye that, and I am getting grey hairs — even more grey hairs, I should say — because of it.”

“Is this about Miss Holly’s trip again? Have ye heard nothing from her? I expected she would be back by now.”

“There was a letter a few days ago saying she was raking around for work up there. No other explanation, but it has the Mistress in a regular tift.”

“Well, why doesnae she simply come home and find work here?”

“Why, indeed? I reckon she’s going back to what she knows, and there’s nae much need for fine teachers such as her hereabouts.”

“That’s so, but why the sudden need? I thought she was all fixed for wages with her picture work, you said she was making enough to get along a good while, being cannie as always.”

“Aye, but it goes out faster than it comes in, don’t it? I just wish she’d come back soon. It done the Mistress no good for
him
to leave, since Miss Holly left with him. In fact, she might be even worse off now than when he was here.”

“Oh, Rosie, speak about Masters and moods and I’ll give ye an earful myself. There’s something queer about him this time around. Goes out visitin’ more than I ever seen him do, but coming back full glum and dark. I thought once that guest o’ his left . . . but . . . ”

“But what?”

“But the mood is unlike. For ordinar he’s happy and keeps to hisself, but now he’s nae happy and still keeps to hisself, restless like, and murmlin under his breath and all. Grumpy, that’s what he is. Usually when he’s like this he leaves and goes to London or wherever it is he goes when he’s nae here. This time he’s just stayin’.”

“Ye know, he was right here the morning Miss Holly left. I wonder . . . ”

“Oh, I know what ye think and however highly I think of Miss Holly, I will not have her home-comin be the answer to every problem and cross mood in the shire!”

“P’rhaps nae
every
cross mood . . . ”

“Well, Mrs Tournier is far certain used to being on her own.”

“Ay, but she has more company than you might expect, what with visiting lairds and all. But the way she hardly stirs from that writing desk, composing letters and writing on her reviews all through the night, hardly pausing for food and tea, is nae right. So I’m that grateful his lairdship comes by to take her mind from it some. She will make herself ill and then where will we be?”

“She’ll be home soon, though, Rosie?”

“Should be.”

O
N THE FIFTH DAY FROM
Miss Tournier’s departure, Lord Baugham was cursing his sofa. He had stretched out on it in an attempt to take an undisturbed nap in his quiet house while the grey day outside slowly gave way to evening dusk, but the damned thing was not cooperating. It was too short for him and his feet stuck out over the armrest that chafed on his calves. Pulling up his legs was no better and the pillows he had so carefully thrown behind his head kept sliding around in the wrong place. What a nuisance of a thing! What on earth had possessed him to acquire it?

He sighed when he remembered he had not actually chosen it himself. It had come with the house and either the previous owner had been a shorter man than he or was not fond of naps in his library. Either way, Baugham had no understanding for his taste in furniture.

Abandoning his nap, he looked around him instead. The gaping shelves were entirely his own responsibility. Lately he had received rather too much comment about the state of his library to be completely complaisant about that either. Previously, its sorry state had never bothered him particularly; he travelled with the books he cared to read and whatever collection he could claim was reserved for his London house. Of course, that was nothing compared to Darcy’s collections divided between Pemberley and his London addresses — each exemplary and impressive in its own right. But then, Darcy employed a librarian who kept up the purchase and inventory and sent around to all of Europe for catalogues by the finest publishing houses, diligently searching for any missing pieces. Baugham was rather more eclectic, acting only on his own preferences and fancies since, whatever the Cumbermere collection once had been, it was now both neglected and scattered, thanks to his father’s negligence and sorry financial affairs.

So the library at Clyne, with its shelves filled with everything but books, never really gave him a bad conscience. Until now. He looked at the rolled up prints, the old fishing hat and skewed deer head that were lying where proud rows of leather bound backs of books should have stood and narrowed his eyes. Piles of paper, old quills and small boxes with no content supported old volumes.
Stupid,
Lord Baugham thought
, I never needed a library here, why should I hanker after one now?

Squirming on his back to reach a better view that would not annoy him quite as much, his hand brushed over the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out the little booklet he had developed the habit of glancing through on occasion:
Sur la nécessité d’une Republique et la Suppression des Privilèges de la Noblesse” par Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Tournier.

He fingered it before he randomly picked a page and read a few lines on the now-so-unfashionable republican cause of gone-by days. Monsieur Tournier’s arguments were well formulated and elegant, but of course they were impossible to read without reflecting on what had passed in the world since he announced his convictions and principles.