The room was stiflingly hot, for a fire burned in the grate even though it was high summer. All the windows were closed, sealed shut with cobwebs.
Aunt Madeline was sitting propped against lace-trimmed pillows, and when we knocked at the door she turned her plump, fallen face in our direction and bade us come close. She had been crooning softly to one of the china dolls, which she held in the crook of her arm. Everything about her drooped, from the lacy nightcap on her curls to her mouth, which had a discontented curve. She did not smile to see me.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you are Davie Balfour’s daughter. Come closer, child, so that I can look at you.’
Her blue eyes had no doubt once been as vivid as Ellen’s, but now they were pale. Nevertheless, they scanned me with shrewd thoroughness.
‘Well,’ she said, after a moment, ‘you are no beauty, that’s to be sure. Whatever happened? Your mother was such a pretty lass.’
‘I am told, madam,’ I said, ‘that I take after my father.’
‘That would explain it,’ Aunt Madeline said. ‘She plucked at the lace edging on her sheet. ‘I heard tell he was a clever man. Are you clever, Catriona Balfour?’
‘Tolerably so, I believe, madam,’ I said.
‘Enough to hide it, I hope?’ Aunt Madeline said. ‘It ill becomes a girl to appear too clever. Men do not care for it.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that any man who disliked me because of my wit was not a man whose good opinion I craved, but I did not wish to fall out with my aunt when I had only known her a few minutes.
‘I have heard that said,’ I agreed blandly.
Papa had once told me it was better to be ugly but clever than pretty but stupid, and I had always believed him. Now, looking at Ellen sitting there, with the firelight turning her golden hair amber and shadowing the curve of her cheek, I thought that he had perhaps lied to make me feel better. Not that Ellen was stupid, precisely, but you may perhaps imagine how I felt. When I thought of Papa, I felt more lonely and miserable still. This was his family home, and yet he had made no mention of it to me, and the only reason that I was here was because he had died and left me alone. In that moment I was so angry with him for leaving me that I could have shouted aloud.
Aunt Madeline gave me a thin smile. ‘I hope you will be happy at Glen Clair,’ she said, her expression suggesting that she thought it most unlikely. ‘There is nothing to do, and no one calls, but you may come and read to me sometimes.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I said.
She inclined her head like a queen. We were dismissed. As we left I saw Mrs Grant stoking the roaring fire, and felt the sweat slip down my spine as the heat of the room almost overpowered me.
‘What is it that ails your mother?’ I asked Ellen as we went down the stairs. I thought that the answer was probably frustration and disappointed hopes, for I could imagine such to be the fate of anyone who had married Ebeneezer Balfour. But to my surprise my cousin bit her lip and looked as though she were about to cry.
‘It was all my fault,’ she said.
I stopped and stared at her. ‘How could that possibly be so?’
‘Mama was the toast of the season—a diamond of the first water,’ Ellen said, in a rush. ‘She and Papa were the most handsome couple. All Edinburgh spoke of the match.’ She sighed. ‘For years they wanted a son, of course, but no child was born. And then, when mama was nearing forty, she became enceinte. It was a hard pregnancy and a difficult birth, and it ruined her looks and her health. And I was only a girl.’
It was a common enough story, I suppose. I had been right about disappointed hopes. The long-awaited son and heir had been an unwanted girl, and her coming had ruined the thing that her mother prized the most—her beauty. I thought of my own parents, and how they had had no son but had never made me suffer for the lack of it, and I felt such love for them and again such grief on losing them. Poor Ellen. I felt for her too, for I suspected that Aunt Madeline repeated the story of her loss over and over again, blaming Ellen to her face and making her believe it was her fault.
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘But you cannot blame yourself. You did not ask to be born, nor choose to be a girl—nor, indeed, did you wantonly ruin your mother’s health. You cannot be held responsible.’
She stared at me, her pansy-blue eyes drenched in tears in a particularly fetching way. Clearly this was a point of view she had never thought about before.
‘Well,’ she said, after a moment, ‘you have some quaint notions, Catriona Balfour.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said again, worried that I might have upset her with my implicit criticism of her mother. ‘I do tend to speak without thinking. I did not mean to offend you.’
She laughed. ‘You did not. I like your plain speaking. You make me see things differently.’
We clattered down into the hall, where the sun speckled the ancient stone flags with bright colour.
‘Are you wondering, perhaps, at the thought that my father was once a fine figure of a man?’ Ellen said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I confess it is hard to imagine.’
‘Papa was a handsome man before the whisky got him,’ Ellen said. ‘He had great prospects, but he always had a weakness for the drink, so I’m told.’
I wondered whether Aunt Madeline had told her that as well, in her disappointment and frustration. But thinking of Uncle Ebeneezer made me think of something else that I had wanted to ask her.
‘Was your father out with the smugglers last night?’ I asked.
She shot me a frightened look, as though the very walls of the old house might have ears.
‘Oh, hush! I do not know—’
‘You know that there is a whisky still on Balfour land,’ I said. ‘There must be! I smelled the smoke last night.’
‘It is up by the tea house,’ she said. She pulled on my arm. ‘Come outside. We cannot talk here.’
We went out of the back door and into the wildflower meadow. One of the peacocks scuttled away with a harsh cry. Ellen shivered.
‘They are unlucky omens,’ she said, ‘but Papa likes having them about the place.’
It was warm in the sun, but there was a breeze off the water that prompted us to draw our shawls a little closer as we walked through the long grass down to the edge of the loch. A boat was tied up to a branch.
‘Do you row?’ I asked, but Ellen shook her head.
‘It is unladylike.’
‘Then you will not swim either?’ I looked out longingly across the loch, where the sunlight danced on the water. ‘At Applecross I learned to swim so that I could help with the crab pots.’
‘Did you?’ She looked intrigued rather than disapproving. ‘That sounds fun! Mama brought me up to observe the conventions, even though she said I would never enter society nor marry.’
‘I cannot believe it,’ I said, ‘and you so pretty. You will meet someone to marry, I am sure.’
She smiled, pulling a stem of grass between her fingers. ‘Thank you. But no one comes to Glen Clair and we never travel. Papa does not permit it.’
Despite my best intentions I was beginning to hold my Uncle Ebeneezer in strong dislike. If Aunt Madeline ruled the house from her bed, then my uncle surely ruled their lives, denying them the pleasures of travel and good company as well as drinking away any money there might have been for small treats and indulgences.
‘I am sure,’ I said, ‘that if only the young men knew there was such a pretty lass at Glen Clair they would be beating a path to your door.’
She laughed. ‘And then Papa would see them off with his shotgun.’
There was a silence. Far up above the crags an eagle soared, the sunlight catching the gold of its head.
‘So what do you do all day, Ellen?’ I asked curiously.
Ellen shrugged. ‘I do my needlework and play upon the pianoforte sometimes, though Mama dislikes the sound—she says it gives her the megrims, and it is true that it is sadly out of tune these days.’
‘Do you read?’
‘There are not many books at Glen Clair,’ Ellen said. ‘I read sometimes to Mama, but Papa burned most of the library on a bonfire a few years back.’
I felt shocked. No books! I had grown up with the profusion of my father’s collection all about me. It had stimulated my interest in subjects as diverse as astronomy and French. I had looked forward to having another library to explore. Instead I would be hiding my own meagre collection of books from Uncle Ebeneezer, lest he decide to throw them on his bonfire as well.
‘I suppose,’ I said, clutching at straws, ‘that there are plenty of pretty walks hereabouts?’
‘Papa does not allow me to go beyond the gardens,’ Ellen said. ‘He says that the hills are dangerous.’
‘I imagine that they must be so,’ I said, ‘if there are whisky smugglers roaming freely. You said that there was a still at the tea house? Where is that?’
Ellen pointed towards a gully thick with pine trees that cut deep into the hillside. ‘The path is that way. The tea house is a hut up in the hills. We call it that because it provides refreshment to the drovers driving their cattle over the mountains to Kinlochewe.’
‘Refreshment of an alcoholic nature,’ I said, understanding. ‘I see.’
Ellen nodded. ‘You will not tell anyone, will you, Catriona?’
‘It seems to me,’ I said dryly, ‘that everyone hereabouts already knows.’
‘Oh, hereabouts that it true,’ she said. ‘But should the excise officers come—’ She broke off, colouring.
‘If the excise officers come,’ I said, even more dryly, ‘it will be because of you, Ellen, and nothing to do with the whisky.’
She blushed even more. ‘I’ll agree that Lieutenant Graham was a handsome gentleman,’ she agreed.
‘And quite incapable of hunting smugglers,’ I said. ‘Since it would without doubt require more effort on his part than he is prepared to give.’
She giggled. ‘He is very indolent.’
‘He is bone idle,’ I said. ‘Your father is fortunate in that at least.’
‘Oh, Papa is not the ringleader,’ Ellen said. ‘That is—’
‘Do not tell me!’ I said hastily, trying not to wonder if it was Neil Sinclair. ‘The less I know of it the better.’
She nodded. We talked a little more about Glen Clair, and her intermittent schooling at the hands of a series of governesses who had been able to stand the isolation and Uncle Ebeneezer’s drunken violence for periods varying from one day to six months.
‘Miss Sterling stayed for two years, from when I was ten to when I was twelve,’ Ellen said wistfully. ‘I liked Miss Sterling, but in the end she ran off with Lord Strathconan and there was a terrible scandal.’
‘Lord Strathconan would be Mr Sinclair’s uncle, would it?’ I asked, unable to avoid mentioning him any longer. ‘They did not have children?’
Ellen shook her head. ‘Miss Sterling was past childbearing years when she eloped with the Laird. I think that was why there was so big a scandal. Had she been young and comely no one would have been surprised, but everyone wondered why he had thrown himself away on a middle-aged woman.’
It seemed to me that Ellen, for all her sweetness and her intermittent schooling, could be as shrewd as her mother in her observations. It would not do to underestimate my cousin.
‘Perhaps he loved her,’ I said.
‘I think he must have done,’ Ellen agreed. She smiled faintly. ‘She was very lovable. She smiled a great deal, and was warm and motherly even though she had no children of her own. And she was well read, and could hold a very educated conversation. I’m told the Laird likes a woman of decided opinions, which is another thing that many hereabouts could not understand.’
Lord Strathconan was beginning to sound like the sort of man I admired, if he gave credit to a woman for being more than a henwit. It did not seem much of a mystery to me as to why he had snapped up the attractive Miss Sterling and carried her off. Women of distinction were probably as rare as hen’s teeth in these parts.
My heart ached for Ellen, though, losing such an affectionate companion and being left with no one but a sickly, complaining mother and a brute of a father.
‘So Mr Sinclair is nephew and heir to the Earl of Strathconan?’ I said. ‘That would account for the high opinion in which the Miss Bennies held him when he came to Applecross.’
‘That and his looks,’ Ellen said. She looked at me sideways from under the brim of her bonnet. ‘Did you not think him handsome, Catriona?’
‘No,’ I said untruthfully. ‘He is not a good-looking man in the sense that Lieutenant Graham is.’
‘No,’ Ellen agreed, ‘but he has something more than mere good looks.’
Something of wickedness and striking attraction. I viciously pulled the heads off a couple of innocent daisies and shredded them between my fingers.
‘Does he come to Glen Clair often?’ I asked. ‘I understood him to be a cousin of your mother’s?’
Ellen smiled. ‘My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Strathconan, and it is true that Mama delights in the connection. But Neil Sinclair seldom calls here, and Lord Strathconan never. Not after the scandal Mama talked about Miss Sterling.’
‘Oh, dear,’ I said, seeing how it had been.
‘It was very short-sighted of her,’ Ellen said with a sigh. ‘She should have realised that His Lordship would not wish his bride to be slighted, even if she had once worked for Mama. I am sorry for it, for I should have liked to see Miss Sterling—Lady Strathconan—again.’
‘Yes, of course.’ I digested this information in silence. So Lord Strathconan had cut himself off from his cousin over a family scandal, and thereby denied poor Ellen the pleasure of ever enjoying her former governess’s company again. And Neil Sinclair, for all that he thought Ellen delightful, was not drawn to Glen Clair to see her. I wished that I did not feel so pleased to realise it.
‘I like Neil,’ Ellen said suddenly. She looked up. ‘I do not mean that I like him in the sense that your Miss Bennies would, Catriona, but I enjoy his company. He is an interesting man. Did you not find him pleasant?’
Pleasant was hardly the word I would have used to describe my emotions towards Neil Sinclair. I cleared my throat. ‘I spent little time with him.’
‘Several days!’
I shrugged. ‘I do not think it long enough to form a fair opinion of a man.’
Ellen’s blue eyes were very perceptive. ‘So you do not like him?’ she said.
I frowned. It came hard to me to prevaricate. Usually I am open to the point of folly. ‘It is not that,’ I said. ‘He…I…we did not agree on certain matters.’
She looked fascinated. ‘Indeed? Well, you will not be troubled much by him here. As I said, he seldom calls.’
I ripped the top off another wild flower. ‘I imagine that his uncle wishes him to make a grand match?’
Ellen looked amused. ‘Aye—which is rich, is it not, since Lord Strathconan ran off with a penniless governess? But Neil seldom does what any man wishes other than himself, or so I have observed.’
‘Very true.’
She laughed. ‘So you have observed it too, in the short space of your acquaintance? It seems you know him better than you pretend, cousin.’
‘I have certainly observed that he dislikes opposition to his plans,’ I said coolly.
Ellen raised her brows. ‘Then clearly you know him very well indeed, if he has proposed a plan and you opposed it. What did he do? Try to elope with you?’
‘Like uncle, like nephew,’ I said lightly. ‘Only Mr Sinclair was not proposing marriage at the end of it.’
She gave a squeak and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘No! He is no gentleman, then!’
I laughed at that. ‘So I told him.’
Ellen’s eyes were as round as saucers. ‘Did he kiss you?’
I blushed. I could hardly tell her the truth of that, not without revealing that I had met Neil the previous night. Elle
n did not, however, need words.
‘I have sometimes wondered,’ she said slowly, ‘what it would be like to be kissed by a gentleman.’
‘Then do not look to Mr Sinclair for the answer,’ I said. ‘For he may be a nobleman but he does not deserve the title of gentleman.’
Her eyes were bright with amusement and curiosity. ‘You are very harsh, cousin,’ she said. ‘Was it then so bad?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was nice. I imagine he has had plenty of practice.’
‘Nice!’ she said. ‘You have a fine line in understatement, Catriona Balfour.’
I laughed, and she opened her mouth to ask another question, but Mrs Grant was running towards us across the lawn, her apron flapping. She was a round body of a woman, and hurrying had made her out of breath. Her face was flushed and her expression agitated.
‘Mistress Ellen! Soldiers at the door!’
She made it sound as though the Army was besieging the house—though I assumed that she meant that Lieutenant Graham and Lieutenant Langley had called, as they had promised they would. We stood up, and Ellen slipped her hand through my arm.
‘Speaking of gentlemen,’ she murmured, ‘are either of these two worthy of the title, do you think?’
‘Who can tell?’ I said. ‘In this instance my acquaintance with them is very short indeed, and I am happy to report that I have no insights at all. I leave that to you, cousin.’
And we went in together to meet the gentlemen.
Mrs Grant had shown our visitors in to the oak drawing room—which, as its name suggested, was a long, dark room adorned with carved panelling. She had also provided tea, cooling rapidly in a battered silver pot. There was a much cosier parlour across the stone flags of the hall, but clearly this would not do for visitors. Aunt Madeline had her standards, even though she was not there in person.
Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress Page 6