by Julia London
“Oh aye,” she said, as if she’d forgotten her task. She suddenly pushed her bairn into Miss Darby’s arms, who gave a tiny mewl of surprise and stared down at the bundle. The bairn began to wail as Finella hurried across the room with two tots of whisky.
“Thank you,” Ivan said, taking the tots from his wife.
The bairn wailed louder. Nichol wondered how his father endured the wailing of Ivan’s children. He’d certainly not been able to abide the slightest sound of despair when he and Ivan had been children. Another tear and I’ll beat you till you bleed, aye?
“Where is that butler?” Ivan asked, and tossed back the whisky before marching to the bellpull.
“What happened to Ross?” Nichol asked.
“A long time dead,” Ivan said curtly.
The door opened, and a very thin young man slipped into the room.
“There you are, Erskine. Tell cook we’ll have two more for supper, aye?”
The young man glanced impassively at the new guests.
“Go on, then,” Ivan snapped.
Erskine, or whoever he was, bowed his head and went out.
“We canna find proper help here,” Ivan said bitterly. “Everyone fears the consumption. Erskine is no’ a butler, but he is the best we can manage at present.”
There was suddenly some commotion at the door, a lot of banging and things being moved about. Through the open door, they could see a man with a worn, dirty coat depositing the small bag Miss Darby had carried from Garbett House, as well as the two bags Gavin had carried to Cheverock.
“Donna leave them there, man,” Ivan said irritably. “Put them at the top of the stairs, aye?”
The man muttered beneath his breath, then gathered the bags and began to shuffle across the foyer under their weight. The bairn’s cries turned torturous. It was always like this at Cheverock—such anxiety amid such trappings of wealth. Nichol had been absent from it for so long that he found it jarring.
“Finella!” Ivan shouted.
“Oh, but she’s a wee bit colicky, that’s all,” she said, and took the bairn back into her arms.
“Take her out!” Ivan said. “Nella, leannan,” he said pleadingly now. “Take her out, I beg of you. I would speak with my brother now, but I canna think with all the wailing. Show Miss Darby to a guest room, aye?”
“Oh aye, she’ll want to refreshen before we dine, will you no’, Miss Darby? ’Tis time to feed this one, too. She’s quite an eater, she is. I donna have a wet nurse, of course, no’ here. They dare no’ risk the consumption.”
“Oh,” Maura said. She looked stricken.
“But you need no’ fear it, lass,” Finella said. “Lord MacBain rarely comes down now. He’s bedridden, he is. Come with me.”
Miss Darby glanced at Nichol, and he gave her a slight nod. He needed to speak to Ivan. He needed to see his father.
When they’d gone, Ivan helped himself to more whisky. An awkward silence enveloped the room. “’Tis good to see you, Ivan,” Nichol said.
“Is it?” Ivan said, glancing at him from the corner of his eye.
“Aye, of course. I’ve missed—”
“I donna know if Father will see you,” Ivan said suddenly.
Nichol shrugged. The man in him was long past the point of caring, really, but a small part of him, yet a lad, wondered why a father would not want to see his estranged son on his deathbed. What could that son, who had never said an ill word, had never done anything but try and be the son his father wanted, what could he have done to be shunned even now?
Ivan suddenly rubbed his face with his hands. “It has been a trial, Nichol, a right trial, aye?”
“Tell me,” Nichol suggested. “Start from the beginning.” He wanted to know all there was to know if this would be the last time he faced his father.
Ivan sighed to the ceiling and said, “You’ll want to wash before supper, will you no’?” He walked to the door and shouted, “Erskine!”
Nichol didn’t know what had happened, but it was clear that his brother had come to hate him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FINELLA CONTINUED TO chatter as if they were old friends as she and Maura climbed the stairs to a musty guest room. The furniture was covered in drop cloths, the hearth was cold. Finella opened the window to air the room, but it had begun to snow, and a cold wind slipped in on small gusts.
Maura didn’t know what to think of this place. It was quite grand, as Mr. Bain—Mr. MacBain?—had said, but it felt empty. Bereft of any warmth. Even though people were living here, obviously, it felt as if no one really lived here.
Finella—or Nella, as she insisted Maura call her: “And what shall I call you, then, Miss Darby?”—sat on the bed, then hoisted a heavy breast from her décolletage and began to nurse her baby. “You donna mind, aye?”
Maura didn’t mind. But she didn’t know where to look, either, and decided a dedicated study of the bare mantle was her best option.
“My husband will be full of good cheer now that his brother has come, he will. I’m certain he’s missed him terribly, although he scarcely mentions him, but he is his brother after all,” she said. “When the lad came to our door with the ring, my husband wanted to know everything, and was verra distrustful of him, he was, but the lad, he’d only say that Nichol MacBain would arrive as soon as he was able.”
“The ring?” Maura asked.
“Aye, a ring, a signet ring, that belonged to their grandfather. I canna know the significance of it, of course, for there is much that exists between two brothers that is no’ to be understood by others, would you no’ agree?”
“I donna—”
“We’ve no’ had guests in an age,” she said, lifting her bairn to lay across her shoulder. “Mrs. Garbunkle is to blame for it, if you ask me. She’s said to all the village, even the old man who keeps a chicken in his cottage that he thinks is a cat, that the baron’s consumption is contagious from even a distance of across the room. It is clearly no’, aye? For we are all quite well. I’d no’ have my children here if I feared it.”
“Pardon?” Maura asked the mantle. She was having trouble keeping up with the exuberant Finella.
“Aye, my husband’s father. He’s a baron, did you no’ know it? Baron MacBain, he is.”
MacBain! Why had Mr. Bain changed his name? “How awful that he suffers from consumption,” Maura said as she went to the window and closed it before they all turned to ice. She gingerly removed a drop cloth from a chair and sat, wondering if Mr. Bain had been aware that his father was ill before today. “Where is he, then, the baron?”
“Upstairs, in the master suite,” Finella said, and fit the bairn on her breast once more. “Aye, he’s quite ill. ’Tis but God’s grace he’s been with us as long as he has.”
He was that ill, then.
“I’ve no’ seen him in weeks! My husband willna allow it, for fear of contagion.” She glanced at the open door, then at Maura. “But I’m no’ sorry for it,” she whispered. “He’s a sour man, he is.”
Maura was surprised the woman would be so unguarded in her remarks with someone she’d only just met. Finella didn’t seem to notice her surprise at all—she was cooing to her bairn.
“I donna know what will happen once he’s gone,” she said. “His heir is Mr. Nichol MacBain, of course, as he is the oldest male child. But my husband says we are no’ to think of it, that God will guide his father’s hand. I said, ‘Our Lord has guided his hand all along, has he no’, and the man is as tight as a drum!’ My husband didna like that I said it, but I donna care. It’s quite true.”
Maura squirmed. She had no desire to hear Finella speak of Mr. Bain’s father in this way.
“He doesna care, you know,” Finella said.
“Pardon?”
“Finella! Finella, where are you, then?” her husband bellowed from som
ewhere below them.
“Oh!” Finella hopped up, lay her baby on the bed and fit her breast into her bodice. “I’ll have Erskine bring a brazier, aye?”
A brazier! She’d freeze—the chill would not be chased from this room without a fire in the hearth.
“We sup at eight,” Finella added, picked up her infant, and hurried out as the bairn began to cry again.
He doesn’t care about what?
What was the matter here? Why were their names different, why did this house feel so cold in every possible way?
Unfortunately, Maura was not enlightened in the course of supper. She arrived at the appointed time wrapped in Mr. Bain’s plaid. She was terribly cold, could not understand why the house was not properly heated. Were they poor, then? Did the baron not care for heat, either?
Mr. and Mrs. Ivan MacBain had dressed in their finest for the occasion, whereas Maura and Mr. Bain were still wearing the clothes they’d traveled in.
Mrs. MacBain was quite garrulous, and her husband brooding, which, Maura suspected, had to do with the amount of wine they consumed. Both of them seemed anxious, as if expecting something to happen. What could possibly happen? Finella continued to talk over everyone in her haste to tell Mr. Bain all they knew about Cheverock and the people around it.
Mr. Ross, whom Maura understood to be the former butler, had suffered from a failed heart in the middle of the night, and he’d gone peacefully. Unlike the milk lass, who went missing one December morning and was found some weeks later, frozen and still clutching her pail at the bottom of a ravine.
Mrs. Schill had taken great exception to Mr. Schill’s adulterous affair, and had followed him to Falkirk to catch him in flagrante delicto. Mr. Schill’s response to that had been to banish Mrs. Schill to some remote estate in the Highlands, where he claimed she would live the rest of her days, for he would not be questioned by a woman.
For some reason, Mr. MacBain found this tale to be quite amusing, and laughed as if it were some sort of staged comedy. Maura was infuriated by it. What could anyone find amusing about a woman who could not demand justice of a philandering husband, and was somehow made to be the villain? She was rather offended by the news of another woman who bore the blame of a man’s doing, just as she had.
She wondered what Mr. Bain thought of it. That was impossible to know—he remained subdued throughout the course of the meal, listening intently, speaking only when addressed. Last evening at the Garbett house, she could feel his ennui. His silence had felt like impatience, which had been made evident to her by the way he drummed his fingers on the table, then had looked about as if seeking anything to divert him from the inane chatter of the Garbetts’ supper table.
But tonight he seemed doleful. He listened to Finella’s chatter and his brother’s occasional concurrence. More than once he caught Maura’s eye across the table, his gaze lingering on her a little longer than was necessary.
What was he thinking? Was she wrong that she could sense something like anguish? But it was in the set of his mouth, the look in his eyes. He despaired. She knew it because she’d felt the darkness of it so recently herself. Last night, at the Garbetts’, she’d felt entirely disillusioned by the people who had promised her father to care for her, and strangely heartbroken.
Mr. Bain had not been betrayed, not like her—at least she didn’t think he had—but something dark had happened here, something from which none of them could return. She didn’t know how she knew it, but Mr. MacBain was far too quiet, and Mrs. MacBain was falling deeper into her cups, as if trying to drown out the tension. And Mr. Bain only grew more sullen as the meal went on.
Maura felt a great deal of sympathy for him. Every time he caught her eye, she smiled as reassuringly as she could. She wished she could convey that she stood with him, that she understood his disappointment, even if she didn’t understand the reason.
But she was also fairly certain that Mr. Bain didn’t see her there. He didn’t see her at all, really. Each time he looked at her, she felt his gaze go clean through her, to some point that only he could see.
She would be very glad when he came back from wherever that was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AFTER SUPPER, WHEN the ladies had retired to the sitting room so that Ivan could smoke a cheroot, Ivan told Nichol that his father knew he had come. “He predicted it, aye? Said you’d come back before his demise.”
“I didna know he was ill, Ivan. How could I?” Nichol said.
Ivan gave him a look very close to a sneer.
“Did he say any more than that?” Nichol asked curiously. He thought perhaps old age and illness had mellowed his father.
Ivan snubbed out his cheroot. “I’ll no’ repeat it,” he said. “But he’ll see you.”
For a single moment, Nichol thought to tell Ivan that he had no desire to see the old man. But that wasn’t true—he did want to see him. It was the last time he would see him, and some morbid curiosity had arisen in him. Could a man so near death still harbor such intensely unpleasant feelings?
“Verra well,” Nichol said, and stood from the table.
So did Ivan. He walked to the door and opened it, cocking his head toward the main hall. “You’ll be shocked how he looks, aye?” he said as they trudged up the stairs.
“I donna care how he looks,” Nichol said, and he didn’t. It wasn’t as if he had any lingering hope for the old man. That had died years ago, along with his ability to believe that anyone would want him. He wasn’t certain what he wanted to accomplish with this final meeting. He could have come to Cheverock and left without every laying eyes on the baron, and perhaps he would regret this after all. But something compelled him. Words were on the tip of his tongue, just beyond his reach, but wanting to be said.
They reached the door of the master suite, and Ivan glanced at Nichol. “I warned you, aye?” He opened the door and stepped back, letting Nichol go in alone.
There was nothing Ivan might have said that could have prepared Nichol for the sight of the ancient old man lying in that massive bed. He was perhaps fifty-five years, perhaps as much as sixty. But he looked much older from a distance.
As he stepped into the room, Nichol first noticed the scent of decay, of unwashed flesh. His father looked like he was part of the pile of bed linens, a shadow of a man, a mere skeleton of the man he’d once been. The baron had always loomed so large in Nichol’s thoughts that it made him founder for a moment, unable to reconcile how this body could be the same robust, virile father he remembered. His skin was sallow, his lips gray and cracked. What remained of his thinning gray hair had bristled and spikes of it stood up from the top of his head.
But it was the same spiteful man—his eyes gave him away, as sharp and filled with disgust as they’d ever been.
He watched Nichol walk across the room to his bedside without any hint of emotion or thought. Nichol paused a foot or so away from the bed, unwilling to come any closer. He didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want to breathe the same foul air. So he stood back, observing the shell of the man who had once oppressed him so miserably.
“Ah, so you came to pick over my bloody remains like a vulture, then, did you?” his father asked hoarsely.
“I hadna planned to come at all.”
“Then why did you?” his father snapped, the force of which prompted a spasm of wet coughing so hard and deep that Nichol cringed.
“To see Ivan,” Nichol said evenly. “I hold no ill will for my brother.”
“Only for me, is it?” his father asked, and with fingers turned crooked with rheumatism, he groped for the coverlet to pull over his chest.
“I hold no ill will for you, either, sir, and I never have. It’s always been your ill will for me, has it no’?”
“Mi Diah, I hope you’ve no’ come to cry at my deathbed about your ill treatment at my hand. If you expect an apology, you’ll get no
ne.”
Nichol snorted. “What good would an apology do now? I didna come for that, sir—you taught me well and early that I could expect nothing from you.”
“You’ve found a wee bit of your backbone, then,” his father said, and followed that with a spasm of coughing into a handkerchief that had turned rust brown from the blood he’d coughed up. “Aye, well, now you’ve seen me, and you’ve said what you would. Go and leave me be. Donna waste my time, for I have precious little of it. Donna think you’ll have anything of this house or this estate, aye? I’ve left it all to Ivan.”
This time Nichol chuckled. He had not once thought about what he might stand to inherit. He couldn’t care less. What he thought about, what he still burned to know was why? Why, after so many years of being reviled by him, of having learned to accept it without understanding, should the remarks from a miserable old man’s deathbed wound him so? And the window to understanding was closing.
Nichol stepped forward to his father’s bed. “I donna give a damn about your house or your holdings, old man. I’ve made my own way, aye? In spite of you, I’ve done quite well for myself, and I donna need anything of yours.”
“Good,” the baron said weakly.
“But what I will have from you is why,” Nichol said flatly, and leaned over, looming over his father’s bed. “What could a lad, scarcely in trousers, have done to earn such vitriol and hatred from you, then? What could a lad have done that would cause his own father to turn his back on his flesh and blood?”
“I’m no father of yours!” his father said before coughing up more blood. “I should think that would be understood by now, you bloody dolt.”
Nichol didn’t understand him. “You are no father of mine, aye, but you gave me life—”
“I gave you nothing!” his father said with surprising force, and began to cough again. “I had naught to do with you!”
Nichol blinked as a thought that made little sense to him flitted through his head. How many times had his father referred to Ivan as his son, but never him? “What are you saying, exactly?”