by Fiona Monroe
Then he made a groaning noise in his throat and he pulled away abruptly. She opened her eyes to see him staggering towards the door, his back to her. "No," he said. "No—it is madness."
"Mr. Carmichael?" To her consternation, her voice sounded plaintive to her own ears.
"To throw away my whole future—for the passion of a single hour." He leaned against the door frame, his face still averted. "You must go to Lochlannan. You must have the money. I must have it. And yet, you might have had pity on me. You might have been kind."
She approached him tentatively and put her hand on his sleeve. "Two years... you said yourself, it is not such a long time."
The look he gave her was not affectionate. It was not even friendly. "If you were a man, you would not say that." And without another glance he was gone, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Catriona's first impressions of Lochlannan Castle were of darkness, and of cold. The Highland air was sharp and fresh and sweet after the stuffy confines of the carriage, and indeed after the stinking fug of Auld Reekie that she had breathed all her life. The mist from the loch hovered eerily around the massive stones of the castle, giving the impression that the edifice was rising from a silver sea.
Catriona was led through a narrow entrance and up a stone staircase into a dark, fire-less hall, sparsely furnished with ancient-looking rugs and carved wooden chairs around the empty hearth. Moth-eaten deer heads glowered down at her out of the gloom.
Mr. Craig had handed her over with little ceremony at the door to the elderly butler, Cruikshank, who said, "Ah, Miss Dunbar," with a definite emphasis. Catriona felt that the old servant was running his eyes over her worn shoes and mended pelisse and finding her very much wanting.
Holding an old-fashioned, smoky oil lamp high, Cruikshank led her up a series of narrow windowless spiral staircases, so enclosed that Catriona realised they must be built into the walls of the keep. After climbing round and round and passing many closed, barred wooden doors, they reached the very top of the last staircase, which ended in another formidable-looking studded doorway. This, Cruikshank opened to reveal a firelit room beyond.
"Lady Buccleuch had this room prepared for you, madam," said Cruikshank, in a tone that suggested he thought it a surprising indulgence. "It belonged to Miss Macleod when she stayed at the castle."
She looked about her dubiously. The room was very small, almost cell-like, scarcely larger than her bedchamber in Souter's Close, although the ceiling was higher and the furnishings much richer. A narrow bed with no canopy was laid against most of one wall, covered in an embroidered counterpane. A tapestry depicting hunting scenes hung opposite, and in the narrow wall was a single window with a lattice of tiny panes. A fire burned low in a very small hearth, giving off the only light.
Someone had already deposited her trunk beside the bed.
Cruikshank used a taper to light a candle by the bed from his oil lamp, moving ponderously and wheezing. She wondered if a life spent climbing up and down so many stairs could be good for such an elderly man. "I shall leave you now, madam, to make yourself comfortable. If you need anything, there is a hand-bell."
He bowed and shuffled off, leaving Catriona feeling very alone. Why had she not been introduced to the family, at least? She had no timepiece, but the dinner hour could not be far off. Someone would surely send for her soon, but in the meantime there was nothing to do but make the most of her immediate situation.
She unpacked her few possessions, laying out her one and only decent evening gown on the bed. This too had once belonged to her mother, and Mrs. Dunbar had altered it last year to fit Catriona's taller frame and to attempt to bring it somewhat more into fashion. Although it was made of fine sprigged white muslin, there was no disguising that it had first been made up twenty-five years ago. She possessed no jewellery at all. If her new guardian's mother and sister were fashionable, elegant women, she was going to make a poor show at the dinner table.
Well, so be it. Her poverty was a direct consequence of Sir Wallace Buccleuch's treatment of her mother, as Mrs. Dunbar had said so often throughout Catriona's childhood. If only he had approved her marriage and used his influence and wealth to assist her father, he might have been master of his own school and the family would have lived prosperous and happy.
She had just decided to make her best attempt at dressing for dinner, when there was a tap on the door and a small maidservant entered with a curtsy. "If you please, ma'am, Sir Duncan has asked to see you straight away."
There was no time to make herself look even moderately respectable, but Catriona told herself she did not care. She was not the one who ought to be ashamed. She would hold her head high.
The maidservant took her through into what Catriona realised at once was the new wing of the castle. A staircase, a doorway, and suddenly they had left behind the oppressive walls and tiny windows of the ancient keep and were in the light, spacious elegance of modern times. Even the furnishings here seemed newer and brighter. It was like going from the Auld Toon to the New in a single step.
The servant knocked on a door at the end of a wide upper hallway, and a voice within barked a command to enter.
The very first sound of the tone of his voice, sight unseen, did not favourably predispose Catriona towards Sir Duncan Buccleuch. It was peremptory and rough. As the servant opened the door for her, she saw into a square, untidy study, lined with books and smelling of leather, old and new. By a table near one of the elegant picture windows sat a gentleman of around thirty years of age, carelessly dressed in hunting gear at this oddly late hour. His complexion was sallow, his eyes dark and fierce below locks of curled black hair. He was reading some papers he held in one hand, a bundle of small sheets that had the appearance of correspondence. As he looked up and saw her, he folded the papers together into a bundle and put them on the desk beside him.
She realised she was hesitating at the door, feeling more uncertain than she ever had in her life. She was conscious of great uneasiness. No-one had introduced them, and yet here they were and he was looking at her directly as if it were his God-given right to address her.
"Well, come in. Come here," he said, in the same rough tone.
To her consternation, she could actually feel a blush rising hot through her cheeks. It was a most uncomfortable circumstance, and she was angry with Mr. Craig for abandoning her to the servants instead of introducing her to one of the family at least. This was not right.
Then she got hold of herself and lifted her chin, and stepped boldly in front of him and dropped a curtsy. "Good day to you, sir."
He did not rise. He ought to have risen as soon as she entered the room. The fact that he remained seated, sprawling back in the leather desk chair and staring directly at her, made her feel like a child, or a servant. "Well, well," he said, in a drawling voice, after a long silence. "Kitty Macleod's daughter, here in the flesh at last. By God, my father spoke the truth about some things, if you resemble your mother at all."
She had no idea how to respond to such a blunt statement. Even his use of her mother's informal name—he, who had never met her—rattled her. She had not in the least expected such rudeness from a gentleman of Sir Duncan's breeding. After hesitating a moment, she said with a touch of coolness, "It is said, sir, that I am very like her."
"It is said that you are very like her?" He affected a kind of mincing tone that she supposed was meant to be an imitation of her own. "Well, we'll see, shan't we, whether you are like her in other respects. You know, don't you, that your mother gave my father a deal of trouble?"
She had nothing to say to that other than something that would have been outright insolence, so she held her tongue and let her eyes speak for her.
Unaccountably, he laughed. Then he stood at last, but instead of taking her hand and greeting her, he walked all round her as if he were examining a prize horse. "My God, you are in rags. You cannot go about the castle dressed like that. My sister will lend you some
of her clothes, she is much of your size, until we can get you fitted up decently. There's a dressmaker in Lochlannan that will do, I think. You won't be wanting Paris fashions, I take it."
She could no longer help herself. She spun to face him directly as he paced around her. "Sir, my dress is mended and clean and was appropriate to my station in my mother's home. As you no doubt know, I had no means to buy any better before coming here. If I am not dressed appropriately for the company here, then with your permission, sir, I will return to my room and remain there."
"You will do no such thing, my girl. You'll borrow a gown of Caroline's fit to put on for dinner, and you'll do so before Cruikshank sounds the gong."
"Thank you, sir," said Catriona, coldly.
"However, before I send for her, it is as well that I make some things plain. This situation is not of my choosing. I am bound by the conditions of my father's will to take you in, though you are no relation by blood. You may as well know that I have misgivings. According to my late honoured father, your mother was wild and ill-tempered, and was determined from the first to disgrace him in some way or other. He always said that if she hadn't eloped with the music-master, it would have been the head groom."
"Sir!" Catriona exclaimed. She held her tongue no longer. To her horror, she could even feel tears prickling behind her eyes. "I cannot stand here to listen to my poor mother abused. Forgive me, sir." She turned, and would have left the room had he not prevented her with a none too gentle grip on her arm.
Shocked by his touch, she stopped at once. He did not take his hand away, but steered her firmly towards another leather armchair and made her sit. She was so taken aback by his decision and command that she acquiesced without protest. Then he sprawled back into his own chair and fixed her with his dark glittering eyes.
"Now you will listen to me, Miss Dunbar," he said slowly, enunciating each word clearly. "I am your guardian. I may not be old enough to be your father in fact, but I stand in the place of your father in the eyes of the law and will do until you come of age. You have signed papers and bound yourself to this arrangement. I know damned well you've done that to get your hands on the money."
"Sir—I did not at any time want—"
"Be silent!" The lazy drawl became a snap, a sudden lash of words. "And no doubt for the sake of a comfortable home. I want no hypocrisy, Miss Dunbar. Young ladies have agreed to much more in exchange for luxury and ease."
As she understood the import of his last remark, she felt her cheeks flame and an outraged protest rose to her lips. Another flash of those dark eyes warned her to silence again.
"Whatever your motives, however, I regard my own duty in the matter as clear. I am in place of a father, just as I have been to my sister since my own father's death. Your well-being is in my care, and that includes your character and principles just as much as your health. What happened with your mother will not happen again. I will not make the same mistakes my father did."
"May I speak now, sir?" she said coldly, as he had paused.
"Well?"
"What mistakes do you consider he made, with respect to my mother?"
Sir Duncan was silent for a moment, giving her an appraising stare. "Leniency," he said. "Inconsistent attention and discipline. Indulgence, even. He was a warm-natured man and his good heart led him sometime to faulty judgement. The very deathbed bequest that brings you here is proof enough of that. But I am not warm-natured, Miss Dunbar. And unlike my father at the time of his first marriage, I have experience of managing headstrong young ladies in my charge. You will start by showing me the respect that is due to me as your guardian at all times, or I will need to teach you that respect. Your insolent words and your attempt to leave my presence in a petty temper just now—that kind of behaviour will not be tolerated. Do you understand?"
She was rendered uneasy. She knew her anger had been justified and she also knew that she had indeed behaved with disrespect towards him, and whatever he thought, that was not how her mother had brought her up to behave. But she was by no means inclined to acknowledge that aloud. She stayed silent.
"Miss Dunbar—when I ask you a question, I do not expect to ask it twice."
"I am sensible, sir, of your goodness in offering me a home, and I hope I will not do anything to displease you." She said this with icy courtesy, staring straight ahead and not meeting his black eyes.
"We shall see." He reached for an old-fashioned hand-bell on the table, which summoned a servant from the hall without. Despite its newer wing, Lochlannan Castle evidently did not boast a modern bell-pull system. Sir Duncan gave orders for Miss Buccleuch to be sent to his study, then added, "My sister is a good girl on the whole, but like many young ladies she has it in her to be wild unless kept in her place. I hope you are not to be a bad influence on her."
Catriona felt the anger mounting again, flooding her cheeks with red, tightening her throat with words that she must not say. She pressed her hands against her lap with the effort of holding herself in check.
Sir Duncan turned to the bureau beside him, cut a pen and began to write on a paper already half-covered with an extravagant, sprawling script, and paid her no further attention until a soft knock on the door announced the arrival of Miss Buccleuch.
The five minutes of silence had given Catriona the opportunity to quell her temper, and she rose to meet her. Miss Buccleuch was very like her brother, slender, with the same sallow complexion and dark colouring. But her eyes were softer, and the best feature in a face that was interesting rather than pretty.
Sir Duncan performed the introduction without even rising from his seat, barely pausing in his scribbling. "Miss Dunbar, my sister Caroline. Caroline, this is our father's first wife's sister's daughter, which I believe makes her your half-cousin-in-law or something along those lines. Take her and lend her a decent gown to wear to dinner, and tell Brodie to burn those rags."
Miss Buccleuch showed no surprise or displeasure at her brother's words, but nor did she smile. She curtseyed to acknowledge the introduction, then said quietly, "Miss Dunbar, a pleasure. Come with me."
Miss Buccleuch took her to her own suite of rooms, which was in the modern wing of the castle, and with the assistance of her maid laid out some gowns for Catriona's consideration. There was an air of quiet embarrassment between them as Catriona looked at a sprigged cotton morning dress, a walking dress and a modest but elegant evening gown of fine white muslin.
"We are near in size," said Miss Buccleuch. "These will fit, I think? Tomorrow, perhaps if you would like it, we could go together into Lochlannan and visit the seamstress."
The maid was instructed to take the day garments to Catriona's own bedroom, and Miss Buccleuch suggested that Catriona stay so that they might dress for dinner together.
As soon as they were alone, Miss Buccleuch's manner changed. She had been polite but a little chilly, although Catriona realised now that this had been reserve and perhaps wariness. The door had barely closed behind the small, smart lady's maid, before Miss Buccleuch came towards Catriona, hands outstretched, and caught her in an embrace.
Startled by this unexpected warmth, Catriona was almost toppled back off her feet.
"Oh, Miss Dunbar!" Miss Buccleuch exclaimed in a low trembling tone, releasing her but keeping hold of her hands. Her eyes brimmed with tears, though she was smiling. "You cannot know how very glad I am that you have come to stay with us. When I heard that another young lady would be coming to live at Lochlannan—and my father always spoke so warmly of your mother."
"I am... glad to hear it." Catriona was disconcerted. It might be said that her mother had always spoken warmly of Sir Wallace Buccleuch, also, though not exactly to his credit.
"Oh yes! I was only fifteen when we lost my father, but even to me he would often talk in such glowing terms of Miss Kitty Macleod, how lovely she was, how sweet and kind. Indeed it was the only time he—" She broke off and shook her head. "I was so sorry to hear that she died, but I could hardly believe it when
I learned that she had a daughter near my age—and that you would be coming back to Lochlannan!" She squeezed her hands. "I do so hope we can be friends."
It was hard to resist such warmth, despite Catriona's natural inclination to be wary. She herself was feeling very strange and alone, and she softened at once. "I am sure we may," she said gently.
"Oh!" Miss Buccleuch grabbed at her hand again and steered her to a chair by the hearth, where a cheerful fire was blazing. "I am so glad. I have no friend here. The minister has a young wife but she and I never got on, then we quarrelled over something silly, and now she scarcely speaks to me. There is nobody else round about, there are so few families within any reasonable distance. My brother will not let me go to town."
Catriona wondered why not, but thought it would be improper to ask. Miss Buccleuch was already continuing, in a breathless tumble of words.
"First of all, we are cousins, you know, of a sort. You must call me Caroline, and I must call you... I do not know your Christian name."
"Catriona," she said, after a hesitation.
"Oh! That is a lovely Gaelic name."
"My father was a Highlander."
"And do you have the Gaelic?"
"Not a word of it. My father died when I was four years old and besides, he was a schoolmaster, he was an educated man. He would not have wanted his children to learn such a language."
"Oh indeed, but the servants and all the common folk here speak it, and it is useful to understand what they say to each other." She dropped her voice almost to a whisper, though they were alone in the room. "They cannot all be trusted. I cannot trust Mackenzie, for instance." She nodded her head towards the door.
"Your... lady's maid?"
"She was appointed by my brother. He found her at some other great house and enticed her away. She is young and pretty and I cannot trust her."
Catriona was unsure what one had to do with the other, though Miss Buccleuch was leaning forward and speaking very intently.