by Fiona Monroe
And then she recalled how she had lost her own dignity entirely the night before, and sobbed and cried out and begged to be spared, and she blushed anew. She found herself looking towards Sir Duncan once more, and saw that he was staring directly at her from his dark, clever eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mr. Ross arrived as promised two weeks later, travelling on horseback with only a single man in attendance. Catriona knew this, because she happened to be sitting in the window of the castle's library looking through some atlases when she heard the clip-clopping of hooves on the cobbles below. Peering down, she saw a gentleman on a sturdy horse coming through the arched entrance to the courtyard, followed by a servant. She watched the servant dismount and hand his master down, while men and boys from the stables rushed round to take care of the horses.
From her first floor vantage point, she was able to see that Mr. Ross was a well-built man in a tall riding hat and a heavy great-coat, but she could discern little else about him. When she was introduced to him before dinner, he proved to be a pleasant-faced, hearty young man of around five and twenty, with a ruddy, freckled complexion and red hair. He was a little heavy, but his height offset that and he had a frank, ready smile and a sensible expression. He was not of a type to appeal to her, but he was handsome enough and he certainly seemed most affable.
He seemed to know exactly who she was, and shook her hand enthusiastically when Lady Buccleuch frostily introduced her as 'my step-niece'. "Very pleased to meet you, Miss Dunbar. You are from Edinburgh, I understand? You must find the Highlands to be a great change."
At dinner, he was seated next to her, with Caroline on his other side. Catriona began to feel sorry for him, as he spent most of the meal in tentative but persistent attempts to engage Caroline in any kind of conversation. Caroline rebuffed his polite enquiries and observations with monosyllabic answers or outright silence, while gazing unhappily into her plate.
Mr. Ross persevered throughout the meal, however, and as soon as he joined the ladies in the drawing room, he sat beside her on the sofa. Caroline looked sulky, but did not dare, Catriona thought, to leave her seat and actively avoid him with her brother's eye on her.
Sir Duncan and Lady Buccleuch were conversing earnestly together in a low voice, and Catriona, feeling left out, offered to play. Only Mr. Ross made any response, but his was enthusiastic and warm in urging her to entertain the company.
Glad to escape the atmosphere, Catriona retreated to the instrument, which was at the other end of the long room. It was a fine new pianoforte, lately ordered from John Broadwood & Sons in Edinburgh, and about as far away from her mother's broken-down old spinet—with its silent F above middle C and its off-key upper D sharp—as the rag and bone man's old nag was from a thoroughbred racehorse. It would be a long time, she thought, until she lost the thrill of delight she felt every time she ran her fingers over the perfectly smooth ivory keys.
She played a succession of sonatas, and was soon lost in the music. Isolated in her own pool of candlelight, she all but forgot that she was not alone in the room.
"How your supple little fingers do fly."
Catriona paused in her playing for only a moment. She did not want Sir Duncan to think that he had startled her by suddenly looming at her elbow, though he had. She stretched her fingers out briefly over the keys. They were not in fact little, but rather longer than usual for a woman, although her hands were thin.
"I have practised two hours a day since I was five years old," she said. "It was to be my livelihood."
"Teaching ghastly little girls to bash the keys to death and murder Mozart—what a fate. Tell me, Miss Dunbar, why weren't you buried as a governess somewhere?"
"Before I was quite old enough to go out, my mother fell ill, and I had to stay with her and nurse her."
"And now, of course, you have no need to sell yourself into bondage."
Had she not done just that? It was on the tip of Catriona's tongue to say this, now that her face was averted from his and her hands were busy over the keyboard, but she stopped herself. Living at Lochlannan was little hardship, even though it meant submitting to Sir Duncan's authority, compared to what her life would likely have been as an indentured dependent. And compared to what her life had been in Souter's Close, she was fortunate indeed.
Sir Duncan's hand was on her shoulder, two of his fingers pressing gently into the bare flesh over her collarbone. She did not falter in her playing or look round at him, but she was acutely aware of the heavy warmth of his touch.
"Look," he said in a murmur. "It seems that Ross is storming the walls of Jericho."
She followed his glance. In the time during which she had been absorbed in playing, Mr. Ross had succeeded in moving closer to Caroline on the sofa, and the two were now engaged in what looked like a reciprocal conversation. Caroline was looking into her lap and twisting her hands together, but there a reluctant smile broke out more than once and she seemed to be answering Mr. Ross at more length than she had during dinner.
"You ought not—" Catriona began, then bit back her words.
"I ought not, what? Pray tell, Miss Dunbar."
His hand was still on her shoulder, spreading its warmth. Catriona continued to play, a soft simple air, as much to cover their conversation as to give herself an occupation. "You ought not, sir, to oblige your sister to marry a man she does not care for." She thought she would say nothing about the fact that his sister loved another, as she was not sure whether that would betray a confidence. "It is not right."
"You, my girl, know nothing about it."
"I know but little about the peculiar circumstances of Miss Buccleuch's situation, perhaps, but as a matter of general principle, I must say—it is not kind, it is not right, to force a match upon any young woman." Her heart was beating faster as she said these words, as she knew that to express them bordered dangerously on disrespect.
"What do you think I'm planning to do, drag Caroline to the altar in chains?"
"There are, sir, ways of exerting force through fear and the exercise of authority, which stop short of actual physical violence, but do not fall far short of it in moral weight."
"By God, listen to you preach. One might think your father had been a minister of the kirk, not a ragged schoolmaster." His fingers pressed deeper into her shoulder, and he spoke almost in her ear. "Miss Dunbar, you have been with us scarce a week. You do not know my dear sister. John Ross is as good a man as ever breathed, with a head as thick as the rock his castle stands on. He is just the fellow to make Caroline happy, and it is my duty as her brother and head of the family to ensure her lasting happiness, not to allow her to ruin herself in the heedless folly of youth."
Catriona bridled. She immediately thought, as she was sure he must intend her to, of her own mother's reckless marriage. "Sir, I—"
"You know nothing about it," he repeated, in what she fancied was a darker tone. "I expect by now that Caroline has told you all about her foolish passion for Viscount Daventry, but be assured—if Daventry sets foot in the grounds of Lochlannan again, I'll shoot him on sight like a common poacher. And I am ordering you not to interfere in these affairs of my family, which can have nothing to do with you. Do you understand me, Miss Dunbar?"
"Yes, sir," she said, stiffly.
With a final squeeze, he took his hand from her and strode back towards the company. Catriona was left with a lingering impression of his touch which troubled her, almost as much as his words.
As she started another sonata, Caroline laughed aloud.
The next morning was fine, and at breakfast, Sir Duncan announced—without consulting the wishes of anyone present—that they were all to go for a drive in the new barouche.
"What you were saying last night after dinner, Ross, about my lamentable lack of improvements," he said. "I want to show you some of the country, prove that the estate goes on very well as it is."
"I am sure that Lochlannan is a fine estate," said Mr. Ross amiably. "I only mean
t, that my father would want to get to work here with his usual energy, and see not splendid mountains, but wasted slopes where sheep might be."
"I have no great liking for sheep," said Sir Duncan, and shook out his newspaper.
Caroline came to Catriona's room just as she was finishing getting herself dressed for the outing. Catriona was now wearing the second of the two dresses suitable for outdoors that Caroline had loaned her, for her new gowns from the good Mrs. Beattie had not yet arrived. It was of a heavy woollen plaid, suitable for keeping out the sharp Highland winds. The garment was comfortable and warm, and she was about to thank her cousin again for her kindness in lending her clothes when Caroline shut the door and cried, "You see? This is exactly what I told you Duncan would do."
"What is, dear cousin?"
"Springing a drive on us, with no possibility of our refusing. In the barouche, indeed. I thought it was nonsense, to buy that barouche in the first place. As if it is ever fair enough for more than three days in the year to ride about in an open carriage in comfort, in Inverness-shire."
Catriona glanced out her window, and saw the sun already risen high and glittering on the loch. "But today it is. Do you not want to go for a drive? You often complain of being confined indoors."
"I do not want to go for a drive with Mr. Ross! It is my brother's contrivance, to force his company upon me."
"Never mind, Caroline. I shall be with you."
"And so will Duncan!" she said with feeling. "Watching me! His eye on me always, warning me to be civil to Mr. Ross."
"I think it would be a good idea to be civil to Mr. Ross, for the sake of common courtesy if nothing else. You may be civil without being encouraging."
Caroline twisted her mouth. "Already last night Mother spoke to me sharply and told me she thought I was discourteous to him at dinner. If I do not amend my manner, she says she will amend it for me." Her hand went, perhaps unconsciously, to her backside.
"I... do think that perhaps you were somewhat discourteous in your manner towards him at dinner. Later, you seemed more at ease with him."
"Oh, that was because my mother had already given me the hint, and I did not want to go to bed with a sore bottom. So I nodded and smiled at him a little, so that Mother would see, and not visit my room later with her horrid hairbrush. But you see! This is how they will force me to marry him at last. I will have to be at least a little pleasant to him this morning on the drive, and if I am not then Duncan will tell my mother, and she will wallop me tonight for sure. But then Mr. Ross will think I am encouraging him!"
"Caroline, remember—you have the ultimate power of outright refusal, if it comes to it. Until then, I think you lose nothing by being polite." Nothing, she reflected, but an uncomfortable seat.
She had not told Caroline about her own chastisement at her brother's hand, and she was glad that her cousin did not know. She was ashamed now of the conduct that had occasioned it, but she was also embarrassed by the circumstance itself. If she did not have so vivid an impression still of the stinging bite of the ruler and the searing lash of the razor strop, she would be tempted to think the whole episode had been a dream; the darkness and stillness of the rest of the castle, and the closeness as Sir Duncan held her across his lap, both strange and adding to the feeling that it had hardly happened at all.
The barouche was an expensive, smartly-hung carriage, built in Edinburgh in the very latest style, and Catriona thought it looked out of place against the backdrop of the ancient keep and the rough, jagged mountain peaks. It was the kind which accommodated four people, two couples facing each other. Inevitably, Caroline was handed in and seated next to Mr. Ross. She smiled tightly. He was beaming with delight, and seemed to relish the prospect of a whole morning sitting next to a reluctant, sulky-looking Caroline.
This meant that Catriona, of course, was beside Sir Duncan. He paid but little attention to her for most of their drive, however, keeping up a spirited discourse on the estate for Mr. Ross's benefit as they passed through its woods, along the side of the loch, and through the small neat village of Scourie, which surrounded the kirk and was, Sir Duncan explained, of very recent construction.
"My father built most of it, had a man up from Edinburgh to design and superintend it. There was only the old kirk and a few tumble-down cottages before, all cleared away now. We did not even have a manse. Now we do." He nodded in the direction of a fine modern square building.
A lady emerged from the front door, carrying a basket over one arm, and as she approached the gate, Catriona could see that she was young and very pretty. Sir Duncan had the coachman halt the carriage, and called out, "Mrs. Farquhar! A very good day to you. Off on your never-ending good works amidst the sinners of Lochlannan?"
Catriona thought that Mrs. Farquhar approached the carriage rather hesitantly, and curtseyed with a doubtful air. "Good day to you, Sir Duncan. Miss Buccleuch. I have several families to visit this morning, yes."
"Whereas we are off up the glen in pursuit of pleasure only. I'd offer you a seat in the carriage, but there isn't one. You remember Mr. Ross, of Blackrock? And allow me to introduce my—by God, I wish I knew that there was a proper term for the relationship. This gets to be embarrassing. This is Miss Dunbar, who is the niece of my father's first wife. We think that makes her our cousin, of a sort. She has come to live with us, at any rate. No doubt you've heard all about it."
"Yes, indeed, sir."
"And this, Miss Dunbar, is the lovely Mrs. Farquhar, wife of the local minister. How is Mr. Farquhar?"
"He is very well, thank you, sir. He would be... " She faltered.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Farquhar?"
The young minister's wife squared her shoulders and looked up, with an evident resolution of will. "We would both be very pleased to see you in the kirk, on Sunday."
Sir Duncan threw back his head and laughed. "Save your proselytising for the benighted folk of Gleann a'Chaistaill. I am a lost cause, I assure you, and you may tell your husband that from me. Well, we won't keep you. You must come up to the castle and visit with Caroline, or she and Miss Dunbar can go and visit with you, very soon. Don't you have a child about the place now?"
"Yes, sir. A little boy, four months old."
"There you are then, young ladies like to dandle babies. They will visit you anon. Good day!"
With scarcely another word exchanged, the carriage whisked onwards. Catriona looked back round once to see Mrs. Farquhar standing in the road watching them go, her basket dangling from one hand.
They were only just beyond possible earshot when Caroline said, petulantly, "I wish you would not have said that, Duncan! I have no wish to visit with Mrs. Farquhar and even less to be made to admire her horrid baby."
"It will do you good! Mrs. Farquhar is the very model of womanly virtue and wifely devotion. You can learn from her example."
"That is not something I have any need to learn at present!" said Caroline warmly, then glanced at Mr. Ross, coloured, and chewed her lower lip.
Mr. Ross, however, smiled and said, "I cannot imagine that Miss Buccleuch could learn a single virtue from Mrs. Farquhar, good and charming as that lady no doubt is."
There was a somewhat tense silence following this. Catriona was on edge in case Caroline said anything else unguarded or disrespectful either to her brother or to her patient admirer; and she was uncomfortable herself, for Sir Duncan's manner of addressing the minister's wife had disconcerted her. She had to conclude from Mrs. Farquhar's nervous implied reproach that Sir Duncan was not a regular attender at the kirk, and she did not like the way that he had declared himself to be a lost cause. It had been said with his usual careless tone, that seemed to make a mockery of most things he said; but it was not good to joke about such things.
They passed the kirk, which had also been much remodelled by Sir Wallace, and then the road climbed steeply through some woods into an open valley cut through by a wide, shallow river and bounded by bare, rock-strewn mountain peaks. Catriona had seen s
omething of this scenery on her journey into Inverness-shire, but the full extent of its bleak loveliness was now before her. She fell silent and admired, while Caroline gazed at her lap and fiddled with the bow of her bonnet, and the two gentleman began to talk business.
"Now you see these farmlands on the banks of the Lannan, Ross, growing neeps and oats and potatoes, and grazing Highland cattle. This all belongs to Baille nam Breac, where I think we will stop for refreshment. The tacksman handles it all for me, and hands over the rents once a quarter, and I am very little troubled."
"You would get far greater use from the land if you enclosed it, and turned it over to sheep and deer."
"I have deer enough to hunt on the other side of the loch."
"Mr. Ross," said Catriona, "is it not true that on some estates the crofters have been forcibly turned from their homes to make way for these enclosures, indeed have had their homes burned and their possessions destroyed to prevent them returning? I read about it in the Edinburgh papers."
Mr. Ross looked serious. "It is hard to make improvements, without change," he said. "We must strive to make Scotland a modern country, you know. The people here... well, Miss Dunbar, you are used to the urbanities of Edinburgh, but when you have lived here longer, you will find out that they are very primitive, some almost savage. Most do not even speak English. I do not think it benefits them to continue to live upon the land like animals, not when that land could be put to better use and the people could be educated and set to other work."
"Ah yes, your kelp fields," said Sir Duncan. "So you have put your crofts to the torch, replaced them with sheep and turned the crofters into seaweed farmers."
"Not I. It is my father's doing. But kelp is a very profitable industry, there is no denying that. And it is all one to the workers, I dare say."
Catriona watched two men and two boys from afar working along dreels of growing crops—she thought it must be neeps, or perhaps potatoes—doing something that required repeated stooping and straightening. Perhaps they were clearing weeds. She had never before witnessed people farming, and on this fine early summer morning she thought that it did not look like a bad life. As the workers heard the carriage they paused in their labours, and stood to watch them pass.