Dahlia's Music

by Caitlyn Quirk

  In her absence, Grace had berated Mary during which time Maggie escaped the confrontational kitchen and went to Anna Kent to tell her what had transpired. Anna went to her son, and James went to Matty. Matty conveyed the news to Trevor before going to help James to look for Dahlia. When she could not be found in the castle, it was Matty that said she had always escaped to the tor behind Talbot Hall when she needed to be alone to think. James went straight away to the stable and found Cerdwyn’s stall empty. He went up to the castle’s ramparts and scanned the surrounding countryside. He spotted the horse and rider easily against the white backdrop of the land. Dahlia was a ways from the castle, but heading towards it.

  James descended the tower’s circular staircase and conveyed to Matty and his mother that Dahlia was on her way home.

  Dahlia did indeed want to go home – to Cirencester. Life there had been relatively easy compared to what she had experienced since arriving at MacFarlain Castle. The physical pain she had endured, the doubt, and the uncertainty of her place in her husband’s family all overshadowed the many lovely moments she had spent here. How could she possibly focus on all of James’ considerations, attention, and kisses when he obviously was sharing these – and more – with another? Every time she felt she was making a step forward, she seemed to be pushed back two. She was in unfamiliar territory, both figuratively and literally, and she was tired of navigating her new route to an undefined destination without even the benefit of a compass.

  Dahlia wasn’t sure what Mary had meant by ‘frigid,’ but ‘cold-hearted’ she understood as well as the maid’s claim that it was Dahlia herself who had driven James to her. She remembered how she had reacted to him on Christmas night – how could she not? But the terror she had felt was palpable and she didn’t know why. Her long trek had made her think about the accident. She couldn’t remember anything of it, to be sure, but if she had had such a horrific fall, wouldn’t she have felt some trepidation getting on a horse again for the first time? Yet all she had felt when James’ had lifted her into the saddle was pure joy, like she was meant to be in the saddle. It had been natural the way she settled into their ride as easily as breathing. Today was further proof of that as she hadn’t even needed to think about riding on her journey to the lone pine. The mechanics of making the horse move forward, change gates, and head in the direction she wished had been performed without any conscious thought, hesitation, or fear. Why then, would her husband’s embrace provoke such horrific panic? His weight was nothing compared to that of the stallion.

  Nothing made sense. Nothing here made sense. She had been married and in Scotland for three months. According to what she had been told, less than a month was missing from her memory. How could everything become so topsy-turvy in that time? She didn’t know and was at the point of not caring. She just wanted her life to return to the way it was.

  James was waiting for her in the stable. She looked at the handsome face with the magnificent blue eyes as he greeted her – and hated it for the first time. She ignored him, and slipped down to the ground before he could help her dismount. She handed the reins to the groom and headed for the main building without speaking to him.

  She could tell from the sound of his footsteps that he was following her. As she went to open the door, he caught her arm. “Dahlia.”

  She turned and glared at him “I don’t wish to talk to you,” she said firmly, and wrenched her arm free.

  Her cold demeanor was like a slap in his face, and James let her go. The look he had seen in her eyes pierced his heart as he never thought she could ever look that way and certainly not at him. The look was not one of anger or even hurt. It was indifference. From the moment he had met Dahlia, he had been convinced of her passion in everything she did. He would have preferred that she scream at him, or cry. Ambiguity was a foreign attribute to assign to his wife, but it had fallen over her like a shroud and he knew he had been the cause. He considered for a moment that he was no better than Stanford, for they both had inextricably hurt Dahlia. Standford had hurt her body; he had hurt her soul. Perhaps he was worse than Stanford, for Dahlia would remember her husband’s wound.

  -----

  Dahlia did not come down for dinner that evening. James had gone up to their room, but both the door to the hallway and from her sitting room to his office were locked. There was no answer when he knocked, so he retreated and endured the tense environment in the dining hall alone. Dahlia’s empty seat at the table only served to heighten the tension as every adult there knew the cause of the vacancy as well as the reason Mary was missing from the serving staff.

  When James went back upstairs, the door to the hall was still locked, so he continued down the hall to his office. There, he found his clothes and other personal items from their room stacked on his desk and around it. He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and sat on the couch. It was then he saw the folded paper on the floor. It was Dahlia’s stationary. He went over and picked it up. It had but a single line on it:

  I want to go home.

  She hadn’t put his name on the front, or even signed it. There it was in writing. His marriage was over. The only problem was Dahlia couldn’t go back to Cirencester. The manner in which she left and the unresolved situation with the Standfords were very good reasons for Dahlia to stay away. Not to mention what going back to the ravine would do to jog her memory if her body still remembered the events there so vividly as to cause her to reject his embrace.

  No, Dahlia was better off staying here for the time being. It was he who would have to leave. James moved piles of clothes from his desk so he could write the inquiries he needed to make at once.

  Chapter 79

  James left for Glasgow two weeks later without speaking with Dahlia. He tried – multiple times, but she refused to speak with him. In the end, he left her a long letter and hoped that at some point soon she would read it.

  Matty gave Dahlia an earful. She knew Dahlia heard her, but she did not respond. Dahlia would converse with her easily about everything and anything – except James. When Matty had found out that James was leaving, she made sure that Dahlia knew how hard a trip it would be for him at this time of year. The Highlands were cut off by snow on the regular roads and tracks. He would have to cross overland to Long Lake, then take a vessel down the coast to the Glasgow ports.

  Given her small view of the world within a few miles of the MacFarlain estate, Dahlia couldn’t imagine it being all that difficult. It had not snowed much recently and she continued to ride out on Cerdwyn. Surely he could make the trek to the lake to catch his ship. She only wished it was she going away.

  Dahlia never saw Mary Gordon on the estate again. Obviously she had been dismissed, and Dahlia was glad of it. The incident seemed to change Elspeth’s opinion of her from the successful young woman who had attained a marriage at a young age to a tragic figure like the heartbroken heroine of her latest novel. Elspeth and the other girls her age were quite supportive of Dahlia and made a point to spend more time with her. They didn’t seem to notice that Dahlia didn’t join in their constant banter, and Dahlia used the cover of their chatter to organize her own thoughts and feelings.

  Anna Kent was as kind to her as ever, which surprised Dahlia. As confident as she was that she was in the right and James had definitely been in the wrong, she would have thought his mother would be angry with her for forcing her son away from her – especially mid-winter.

  Only Matty seemed to have a problem with James going away. She told her that she was acting childish, that she had no idea how good James had been to her. Dahlia had challenged her on that point.

  “Good? How good do think he was when he was sleeping with that maid downstairs?”

  “It happens sometimes.”

  “How would you feel if Trevor just happened to sleep with someone else – in your own house!”

  Matty didn’t have an answer for that because she would, of course, be furious. She wouldn’t let Trevor have the chance to sleep anywhere
other than with her, but she couldn’t use that argument with Dahlia. Dahlia had not neglected her husband or refused him out of hand. Dahlia had been violated – beaten within an inch of her life. Her body was most likely just protecting itself when she shied away from James.

  “Well?” Dahlia demanded an answer.

  “He’s a good man just the same,” was all Matty could say in James’ defense. She could not tell Dahlia there weren’t many men who would marry a girl that had been defiled. There weren’t many who would go to the lengths James did to protect her afterwards, especially when her body remembered what the mind could not. “He loves you more than you know.”

  With that, Matty had let the issue drop. So did Dahlia since her friend’s arguments didn’t seem to address the reason James had left and her loyalties on the matter seemed to lie solely with him.

  -----

  A week after James left, Tarbet was blanketed with snow for three days straight. Standing at the window in the library, Dahlia finally felt guilty. Anna came to her side and Dahlia said, “Do you think he got caught in it?”

  Ann flashed a glance at her daughter-in-law, taking this question as proof that she did care about her son, however angry she might be.

  “It is likely he has arrived at the ship by now, and is en route down the Long Lake,” Anna assured her.

  Dahlia nodded briefly, then turned away from the window.

  The following week Dahlia received a letter from Miss McElroy. Dahlia had been correct in the number of explicatives that her friend would express upon hearing all the news, but she could not take as much pleasure in imagining her friend writing them now that everything had changed. She also did not know what she would write in return.

  More letters started to arrive from her family, and one from Sir Sweet. The language in his letter was as stilted as she imagined hers sounded in her replies. It was very hard to write an interesting letter when one was unhappy; it compelled one to stick to comments on the weather and descriptions of other events in the most perfunctory of terms.

  James arrived in Glasgow two weeks later, and letters from him arrived regularly for her thereafter. He told her about the city, describing in great detail the parts he visited, and about the architects with whom he was consulting. His former acquaintance, Norman Shaw, to whom Lord Telford had sent James as a punishment, had arranged introductions to some of his colleagues in the Scottish city. Each of James’s letters was signed ‘Yours always, with much love.’ Dahlia had nothing to say to him, but his letters continued to arrive every week despite her lack of response.

  As time passed, the breach between Dahlia and Matty closed, due in part to the fact that they both stayed away from the topic of James and the reason he left. Matty would see the letters from James on her desk, and noted that she did not have any return letters for him in the pile she would bring downstairs to post.

  February passed into March and the temperatures started to rise again. Dahlia spent more time outside the castle, taking Cerdwyn out for hours and hours on long treks around the country side. Sometimes one of James’ young cousins or Trevor would accompany her. With the cousins, young as they were, she would ride astride in breeches with her long riding skirt draping down on either side to cover her legs. With Trevor, she rode sidesaddle. On their first outing together, Dahlia noticed that one of his legs stuck out on account of his bad knee that would not bend completely. It occurred to Dahlia that he must use the same aids for riding as a woman riding sidesaddle, including a long whip for the side without the leg contact.

  Trevor took her to his estate on the other side of the northern tip of Loch Lomond. It was a beautiful bit of country with magnificent views of the lake. The manor house was not as big as Talbot Hall, but quite respectable and Dahlia was happy for Matty’s situation. Until she saw the house, however, it never occurred to her that Matty would not have accompanied her back to Cirencester. She was married and this was her home now. Dahlia thought about how both her marriage and Matty’s seemed to be merely role playing in the castle. Except for them going to different rooms at night with their husbands, nothing else had changed in their relationship or their daily activities. In Dahlia’s case, even when James had been there, there was no real change in her nightly routine either. Yet everything did change when you got married. You lived where your husband lived, and became part of another family. Until seeing Matty and Trevor’s home – their real home away from the castle, she had not appreciated this.

  Trevor noticed that Dahlia had gotten very quiet. “Are ye well, Mrs. Kent?”

  She looked up at him. “I am, thank you. I was just thinking how lucky Matty is to have such a beautiful home. I take it now that the weather is getting warmer you’ll be spending more time here than at the castle.”

  “I imagine we will at that.” Trevor heard many things in her question – that she would like to have a home of her own and not one shared with several families, and that she would miss Matty always by her side. He knew that her father was a widower, so she must have felt and acted as the lady of the house there. He had in fact written about his fictitious character Lily that way, too. “You’re welcome to visit any time. We’ve guest rooms to spare.”

  “I thank you, Mr. MacTavish. I may take you up on that offer.”

  Chapter 80

  April arrived with letters from her father and Doña Isabel conveying their preparations for the Roma’s visit to Cirencester. Dahlia could not help but think on years past when she, too, had looked forward to their arrival. For the first time since she could remember, she would not be there to participate in the formal greeting, walk the fairground stalls, or play and sing with them at the banquet. Thoughts of the banquet made her think of James. He had sent her Bizet’s dramatic music from Paris, and she had practiced it so thoroughly to present it on stage for him. Thinking back, Dahlia acknowledged that it was the only time she could recall that she had sung to impress someone – and that someone had been James. It had worked; that evening was the night he kissed her in the barn. What a kiss that had been! She remembered hearing his music that night in her mind, how it had been in the same rhythm as her heartbeat. She yearned to hear it again, but her mind was as quiet as her quarters without him. She missed him. She missed so many things about him: his smile, dancing with him, the way he placed his hand at the small of her back, and his magnificent blue eyes when he looked at her.

  Thinking of him looking at Mary Gordon that way pushed away all her longing for him.

  -----

  Miss McElroy was enjoying what surely would be touted as her latest success. Her parlor was full of many of the most influential women in London, either due to their own accomplishments or those of their husbands. She remembered when, many years ago at the start of her career, such esteemed women of society would never have deigned to take tea with a singer. Yet here she was now, surrounded by a bevy of London’s divas. She had made a small fortune as a result of her performances and hard work over the years, to be sure, but her real wealth was the accumulation of connections. Carefully placed and linked together, Josephine had been very good about doing favors for the right people, and asking for them in return when she needed. Information and favors were as real a currency as paper notes and coins, and she had amassed a fortune in both.

  The ladies were discussing the latest allegations of an affair by the Crown Prince Edward with a singer, and Josephine was able to quite definitively testify that there was no truth to that rumor. “She couldn’t possibly have entertained him at her home – alone or with all of his entourage,” she said to a room fixated on her next words. “For she was in Bath with me – and Admiral Benjamin!”

  This took the conversation in another direction entirely as this liaison had not been known. Round-robin the information went through the room, with Josephine giving snippets and taking note of new data in her turn.

  “Well,” said Lady Carlton. “That is nothing to Lily’s predicament!”

  “Lillie Langtree?” Joseph
ine inquired.

  “Oh, no! The Highlander’s Lily!”

  “Did he reveal what really caused the amnesia?”

  Josephine was perplexed, but before she could reply, someone cried, “Don’t tell me! I haven’t had time to read the latest!”

  “We still don’t know that,” said another. “But we know that she isn’t with child.”

  Everyone seemed to be on the edge of their seats to discuss Lily. Feeling quite out of her element for not comprehending what all the fuss was about, she interjected, “Who on earth are you talking about?”

  “The Cornhill serial by The Highlander. It’s called the Mystery of Lily of the Valley.”

  “It’s about an English girl who wakes up in a castle in the Highlands – married, and she doesn’t remember getting married.”

  “Supposedly she fell from a horse shortly after her wedding, but there’s the mystery. She doesn’t even remember getting engaged. Then – poof! Just like that she’s married and carted away to her husband’s family in Scotland.”

  “And everyone thinks she must be pregnant and that’s why she had to get married so quickly.”

  “Yes, but last month we learned she wasn’t pregnant,” someone contradicted.

  “But that was a surprise even to her husband,” Lady Carlton said matter-of-factly. “I think she had an affair with someone else, but her love wasn’t requited, so when her father found out he married her to the Scotsman.”