The Emerald Affair
Page 1
ALSO BY
JANET MACLEOD TROTTER:
The India Tea Series
The Tea Planter’s Daughter – Book 1
The Tea Planter’s Bride – Book 2
The Girl from the Tea Garden – Book 3
The Secrets of the Tea Garden – Book 4
HISTORICAL
In the Far Pashmina Mountains
The Jarrow Trilogy
The Jarrow Lass
Child of Jarrow
Return to Jarrow
The Durham Trilogy
The Hungry Hills
The Darkening Skies
Never Stand Alone
The Tyneside Sagas
A Handful of Stars
Chasing the Dream
For Love & Glory
The Great War Sagas
No Greater Love (formerly The Suffragette)
A Crimson Dawn
Scottish Historical Romance
The Jacobite Lass
The Beltane Fires
Highlander in Muscovy
MYSTERY/CRIME
The Vanishing of Ruth
The Haunting of Kulah
TEENAGE
Love Games
NON-FICTION
Beatles & Chiefs
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Janet MacLeod Trotter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542041188
ISBN-10: 154204118X
Cover design by Lisa Horton
Cover photography by Richard Jenkins Photography
To all my lovely great-nieces and great-nephews: Molly, Lyra, Ylva, Luke, Ally, Jake, Harrison, Corbyn and Landon. May you continue to enjoy stories!
CONTENTS
START READING
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
GLOSSARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Civil & Military Gazette, February 1919
FOR SALE
Fully licensed premises and well-furnished hotel with electric lighting
known as
THE RAJAH HOTEL (locally as “the Raj”)
Situated in Nichol Road, Rawalpindi,
Northern Punjab, India
Presently in the occupation of Mr. James Littleton
The Premises comprise:- grand reception hallway, dining-room for 30 guests, 2 sitting-rooms, 12 bedrooms (some with wash-hand basins), 3 bathrooms, 6 W.Cs., courtyard, gardens to front and rear, manager’s bungalow, servants’ compound, kitchens, washhouse, drying green, stables (motor vehicle by negotiation – four-seater Clement Talbot)
For further particulars and price, apply in writing to Mr. J. Littleton.
Chapter 1
Ebbsmouth, Scotland, May 1919
As the train taking Esmie McBride south from Edinburgh slowed, Esmie’s heartbeat quickened – half in excitement, half in dread – as she craned for a view of her old home town. She hadn’t been back in nearly three years, owing to serving abroad as a nurse during the recent war. Nervously, she fingered tendrils of her brown hair and pressed her button nose against the window. The pinkish stone of the harbour cottages glowed in the late spring sunshine and the sea beyond sparkled as white-capped waves broke against the harbour wall. The Anchorage jutted out over the cliff like a brooding eagle, a gothic tower that had until recently been a temporary hospital where Esmie had spent a few months nursing in 1916. Her best friend, Lydia Templeton, had written to tell her that the last of the convalescent patients had been transferred and elderly Colonel Lomax and his eccentric daughter were once again in full residence.
Dear Lydia! Esmie’s spirits lifted to think she would be staying with her old school friend and her hospitable parents. Lydia’s amusing gossip was just the antidote she needed after her gruelling work with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals on the battlefronts of Serbia and Russia. She felt so much older than her twenty-five years. Bubbly Lydia would make her feel young and carefree again.
Suddenly she caught sight of her old home on the clifftop – a white-washed house with black doors and window frames – where she had lived with her father after he took the job of school doctor at St Ebba’s School for Girls. Tears prickled her eyes. The garden was overgrown with brambles and the swing he had made for her in the boughs of the apple tree had gone. But this hadn’t been her home for over ten years. She felt a familiar stab of loss for her beloved father, who had left her orphaned at fourteen years old, her mother having died when Esmie was five. The nearest she had to a home now was the psychiatric hospital at Vaullay in the Highlands where, for the past year, she had nursed and lived with her kind guardian, Dr Isobel Carruthers.
Then the train was past her former home and her old school came into view with its jumble of slate roofs and tall chimneys. Esmie’s stomach lurched. She would have to visit the Drummonds, who ran the school. Whenever she thought of them and their son, David, she was consumed with a mix of guilt and remorse. Would they look at her with accusing eyes? Or worse: would they smother her in kindness and sympathy? She couldn’t put off meeting them in person for much longer. But not yet.
With a hiss, the train came to a stop in the station.
Lydia was waving from the barrier, unmistakable in a fashionable spring coat and jaunty hat perched on her coils of blonde hair. She’d commandeered a porter to help Esmie with her case, even though it was small enough for Esmie to carry herself.
‘Dearest!’ Lydia squealed, grabbing hold of Esmie in a hug. ‘My golly, you’re as thin as a rake. Mummy will absolutely insist that Cook force-feeds you. Mind you, the new fashion is all about being thin – so lucky you! Makes your lovely grey eyes look huge too.’
Esmie laughed. ‘What nonsense you talk! I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed it. And you are looking as beautiful as ever.’
Lydia looked pleased and slipped an arm through her friend’s. They walked out of the small station with the porter in t
ow.
‘We are going to have so much fun. Us Templetons are going to spoil you rotten and you’re going to tell me about all the foreign soldiers you’ve met and hearts you’ve broken—’
Lydia stopped abruptly and peered at Esmie with round blue eyes. ‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about David. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. We’re all terribly sorry about him.’
Esmie’s insides clenched. ‘Yes, I know. You don’t have to apologise.’
‘Awful business,’ said Lydia, ‘and so near to the end of the War. Just not fair.’
Esmie felt the blood drain from her head and thought she might faint. But Lydia was quickly steering her towards an open-topped car parked at the station entrance and pushing her into the passenger seat. Her friend slipped into the driver’s side, hitching up her skirt and showing a flash of shapely legs.
‘Has Dickson the chauffeur retired?’ asked Esmie.
‘No, he still works for Daddy. But I like to drive myself these days.’ Lydia grinned. ‘All that time in the transport corps driving generals around hasn’t been wasted.’
‘Trust you to get the generals and not the army’s washing,’ Esmie teased.
‘Absolutely!’ Lydia agreed. ‘But the highlight of my war was going to America to fundraise for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.’
‘That was very brave of you to cross the Atlantic,’ said Esmie. ‘Aunt Isobel said you did a wonderful job.’
‘Did Dr Carruthers really say that?’ Lydia asked with a smile. ‘Do you think the great Dr Inglis thought that too? She encouraged me to go, you know?’
‘I’m sure she did. She couldn’t have supplied all those hospitals without your efforts.’
‘I wish I’d been able to tell her about America in person,’ Lydia said. ‘It was tragic her dying so suddenly.’
‘Not so sudden,’ Esmie said. ‘She knew she had cancer for months but didn’t tell us. She drove herself to the very end.’
‘And you were with her on the return from Russia?’
Esmie nodded. Sadness washed over her as she thought of the death of the heroic Edinburgh doctor who had taken her female staff all over the Continent to help Britain’s allies when their own government had spurned the offer of women medics. After the horrors of the Serbian Retreat in 1915 and a gruelling year of unrelenting nursing on the battlefronts in southern Russia and Romania, Dr Inglis and her women had finally been defeated by the chaos of revolution in late 1917. Avoiding the killings and anarchy, the women had only just escaped from the Arctic port of Archangel before it became ice-bound for the winter. Elsie Inglis’s death, which followed swiftly after, had brought an end to Esmie’s involvement with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.
Worn out and dispirited, Esmie had retreated to Vaullay to be cared for by her guardian. Isobel Carruthers, an old friend and colleague of her father’s, was the nearest Esmie had to a parent. With affection, Esmie called her Aunt Isobel. There, in the soft air of the Highlands, close to her childhood home and far away from the guns and bloodshed, she had recovered her zest for life. In what turned out to be the last year of the War, Esmie began to help nurse the psychiatric patients, some of them soldiers suffering from shell shock. And as the War had turned in favour of the Allies, Esmie had known the time had come to be honest with David . . .
‘Don’t look so glum,’ Lydia cried, breaking into her thoughts. ‘I didn’t mean to make you sad. We’re simply not going to think about unhappy things. We’re going to talk about the future and drink cocktails and play tennis and I’m going to teach you to dance to ragtime music. I brought some recordings back from America for the gramophone.’
As they sped along the country lanes out of Ebbsmouth and towards Templeton Hall, Lydia regaled her with tales of her time in New York and Chicago and the drama of crossing the Atlantic dodging enemy submarines. She made light of it but Esmie knew that Lydia had taken great risks to travel to and from America. She liked that about her friend; hiding her courage under a nonchalant manner.
‘And dear Harold is back from India,’ Lydia said with another sudden change of subject. ‘You remember Harold Guthrie? His father was the stationmaster. Harold read medicine at Edinburgh – went out to India as a missionary doctor but also did a stint in Mesopotamia during the War.’
‘Was he the red-haired one who was sweet on you?’ Esmie asked. ‘A few years older than us?’
Lydia laughed. ‘That’s the one. Not so much red hair now though – he’s gone a bit thin on top. Mummy says wearing a solar topee in the heat makes the hair rub off. Daddy says that’s nonsense.’
‘Whereabouts in India was Harold working?’
‘Oh, somewhere incredibly hot and dusty and dangerous,’ said Lydia with a wave of her hand. ‘Lots of Pathans sticking knives into each other.’
‘The North-West Frontier?’ Esmie asked with interest.
‘That could be it. Anyway, Harold is still a sweet man.’
‘And are you still interested in him?’ Esmie asked.
‘Heavens no! To be honest, he can be a bit of a bore about his mission work – and now he’s fussing about some war that seems to have broken out with the Afghans. But he’s bringing a friend of his over for tennis this afternoon. Guess who it is?’
Esmie could hear the excitement in Lydia’s voice. ‘Douglas Fairbanks?’ she joked.
Lydia laughed. ‘Just about – he’s as dishy as a film star. Captain Tom Lomax!’
‘The colonel’s son?’ Esmie asked in surprise. ‘I thought he was soldiering in the wilds of Afghanistan or somewhere.’
‘He was,’ said Lydia, ‘but he’s home at The Anchorage now. Another hero from Mesopotamia.’
‘But he’s married, isn’t he?’ asked Esmie. ‘I remember we sneaked out of school on their wedding day to watch them come out of the church.’
‘He’s a widower,’ said Lydia with a conspiratorial wink.
‘Poor man,’ said Esmie.
Lydia adjusted her expression. ‘Of course it’s very sad – she died before the War – some horrid disease in India. But Harold says the captain doesn’t talk about her anymore.’
‘What about that wine importer with the vineyards in France you mentioned in your last two letters? The one who’s been dining you all over the county,’ Esmie asked. ‘You sounded keen on him.’
‘Colin Fleming?’ Lydia answered. ‘Yes, he’s nice – and has plenty of money – but he’s away in France at the moment. Besides, Colin’s not nearly as handsome as the captain.’ Lydia glanced at Esmie and smirked. ‘I’ve always had a weak spot for a man in an officer’s uniform.’
Esmie gave a wry laugh. ‘To be honest, I’m just thankful to see men back in civilian clothes.’
They turned off the narrow road and passed through a gateway. Esmie’s heart lifted as they drove up the familiar drive lined with well-trimmed beech hedge and gleaming white Templeton Hall appeared before them. Despite its grand name, Lydia’s home was more of a sprawling modern villa, with French windows and balconies and a portico covered in climbing roses that was large enough for a car to pass under so that passengers could alight and enter the house without getting drenched by rain.
Baxter, their ageing butler-cum-footman, was ready to open Esmie’s door.
‘Miss Esmie, welcome back,’ he greeted her, with a smile that revealed large gaps in his rotten teeth.
‘Thank you, Baxter. It’s lovely to be here,’ Esmie said, getting out of the car and shaking his hand.
As the butler went to get Esmie’s case, Lydia suppressed a giggle and murmured to Esmie, ‘Daddy had dentures made for Baxter but ever since they dropped into Mummy’s soup he’s refused to wear them.’
As Esmie watched him struggle up the front steps with her suitcase, she had to resist the urge to take it from him, knowing how offended he would be. Arm in arm, the two friends entered the house.
Sun streamed in at large stained-glass windows and threw patterns of vivid colours across the tiled hallway. Esmi
e breathed in the smell of warm wood and beeswax polish and felt a rush of nostalgia for her girlhood and friendship with Lydia. Everything about Templeton Hall had been built for comfort; from its modern plumbing, roomy bathrooms and electric lighting to its upholstered walnut furniture and well-sprung beds. As a young woman, Lydia’s mother had travelled on the Continent and returned with a passion for Art Nouveau and its sensuous, curvaceous style. Her home reflected her tastes.
The house was full of beautiful cabinets of pale wood, gaudy jardinières of tropical ferns, curving banisters of intricate ironwork and lampstands in the shape of half-naked nymphs. Everywhere was flooded with light through the many windows which gave views onto the sheltered garden and distant glimpses of the North Sea. Yet it was a family house with a downstairs porch crammed with sporting equipment and old gum boots and a drawing room full of family photographs where dogs were allowed to curl up on the Persian rug in front of the inglenook fireplace.
‘Daddy’s away in Newcastle today,’ Lydia explained, ‘but he’ll be back at teatime. He’s dying to see you.’ She stopped and called out, ‘Mummy, we’re here!’
‘In the conservatory, darling!’ Minnie Templeton answered.
Lydia rolled her eyes. ‘She’ll be hacking the poor rubber plants to death. No patience with plants whatsoever.’
Lydia’s mother bustled out of the glass-roofed room, her round face flushed puce below immaculately pinned fair hair. She dumped her basket of dead-headed flowers and threw out plump arms.
‘Esmie, sweet girl! Come and be kissed!’
Esmie, a head taller than Minnie, responded with a hug. Minnie felt soft and smelt of roses. Esmie’s eyes smarted with emotion. ‘Thank you for inviting me to stay, Mrs Templeton.’
‘Goodness, girl!’ Minnie exclaimed. ‘You don’t need to wait for an invitation. We love having you here any time you want.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling Esmie for months,’ agreed Lydia. ‘It’s high time she got away from all those loony inmates and had some fun.’
Esmie winced at her bluntness. ‘We don’t call them lunatics anymore,’ said Esmie. ‘They’re psychiatric patients.’
‘Well, whatever you want to call them,’ Lydia said with a dismissive wave. ‘You’ve done your bit and now we’re going to help you look for a husband. You and I will be left on the shelf if we don’t do something about it jolly soon.’