by Rhys Bowen
All the way home my spirits had been rising as we left the city of Edinburgh and climbed through wooded countryside before emerging onto the bleak, windswept expanse of the Highlands, with peaks rising around us and burns dancing in cascades beside the road. Whatever might happen next, I was home. As to what might happen next, I decided to put it from my mind tonight. It was all too worrying, and what’s more I was starting to smell a rat. I had a distinct impression that I was being used. The convenient way I was summoned to Sir William, shamed into agreeing to retreat to Scotland immediately, only to find Sir Jeremy on the train—it was all too pat. Did the police really scan the advertisement page in the Times every day? Did they really check on every suspicious telephone number? And was it really such a sin to run an escort service? Then something occurred to me that made me go hot all over: Darcy. I knew he did something secret, which he wouldn’t discuss. In fact I suspected he was some kind of spy. Had he tipped off the Home Office about my little gaffe, thus giving them a brilliant excuse to pack me off to Scotland without alarming me unduly?
They could have just summoned me to the Home Office and told me what they wanted me to do, but then I suppose I could have refused. Under this little scheme I was a sitting duck for their plans, with no way of wriggling out of the journey. And it seemed more and more likely, as I played everything over in my head, that Darcy was the one who had instigated the whole thing. Some friend, I thought. Betraying me and then setting me up for a difficult and maybe dangerous assignment. I am well rid of him.
The tires of the Bentley scrunched on the gravel as the car came to a halt outside the front door. The chauffeur jumped out to open my door but before it was fully open the castle door opened, light streamed out and our butler, Hamilton, appeared.
“Welcome home, my lady,” he said. “It is so good to have you back.”
So far, so good. At least someone was pleased to see me.
“It’s good to be back, Hamilton,” I replied and went up the worn steps and in through the big front door. After a small anteroom lined with stags’ heads, one steps into the great hall, the center of life at Castle Rannoch. It rises two stories high with a gallery running around it. On one side is a giant stone fireplace big enough to roast an ox. On the wood-paneled walls hang swords, shields, tattered banners carried into long-ago battles, more stags’ heads. A wide staircase sweeps up one side, lined with portraits of Rannoch ancestors, each generation hairier as one went back in time. The floor is stone, making the hall feel doubly cold and drafty, and there are various sofas and armchairs grouped around the fire, which is never lit in summer, however cold the weather.
To outsiders the first impression is horribly cold, gloomy and warlike, but to me at this moment it represented home. I was just looking around with satisfaction when Fig appeared in the gallery above.
“Georgiana, you’re back. Thank God,” she said, her voice echoing from the high ceiling. She actually ran down the stairs to meet me.
This was not the reception I had expected and I stared at her blankly as she ran toward me, arms open, and actually embraced me. She’d called me by my name so she couldn’t have mistaken me for anyone else. Besides, Fig doesn’t make anyone welcome, ever.
“How are you, Fig?” I asked.
“Awful. I can’t tell you how frightful it’s been. That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Georgiana.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Everything. Let’s go into Binky’s den, shall we?” she said, slipping her arm through mine. “We are not likely to be disturbed there. You’d like something to eat, I suspect. Hamilton, could you have the drinks tray and a plate of those smoked salmon sandwiches brought through for Lady Georgiana?”
All right. This was Scotland, after all. My sister-in-law had been bewitched, or taken by the fairies and a changeling left in her place. But since she was offering me smoked salmon and the drinks tray, who was I to refuse? She steered me across the great hall, down the narrow passage to the right and in through an oak-paneled door. The room had the familiar smell of pipe smoke and polished wood and old books: a very masculine sort of smell. Fig indicated a leather armchair for me and pulled up another one beside me.
“Thank God,” she said again. “I don’t think I could have endured it for another day alone.”
“Alone? What’s happened to Binky?”
“You didn’t hear about his dreadful accident then?”
“No. What happened?”
“He stepped on a trap.”
“An animal trap?”
“Of course an animal trap.”
“When did MacTavish start using animal traps on the estate? I thought he was always so softhearted.”
“He doesn’t. He swears he never laid the trap, but he must have done, of course. Who else would put a bally great trap on one of our paths, and especially a path that Binky always walks in the morning?”
“Crikey. Is Binky all right?”
“Of course he’s not all right,” she snapped, reverting to type for the first time. “He’s laid up with a dashed great dressing over his ankle. In fact he was extremely lucky he was wearing those old boots that belonged to his grandfather. I kept telling him to throw them away but now I’m glad he didn’t listen to me. Anything less stout and the trap would have had his foot off. As it was the trap wouldn’t close completely and he got away with nasty gashes down to the bone and a cut tendon.”
“Poor old Binky. How terrible for him.”
“Terrible for him? What about terrible for me with all these awful people in the house?”
“What awful people?”
“My dear, we have a house full of disgusting Americans.”
“Paying guests?”
“Of course not paying guests. What on earth gave you that idea? Since when did a duke take in paying guests? No, these are friends of the Prince of Wales, or rather a certain woman among them is a friend of the Prince of Wales.”
“Oh, I see. Her.”
“As you say, ‘Her.’ The prince is at Balmoral, of course, and his woman friend would certainly not be welcome there, so the prince asked Binky if he could offer her hospitality so she’d be close enough to visit. And you know Binky—always too softhearted. Can’t say no to anybody. And he looks up to the prince, always has done. So of course he said yes.”
I nodded with sympathy.
“And the prince suggested that maybe we build a little house party around her and her husband—oh, did I mention that she still has a husband in tow? Mooches around like a lost sheep, poor fellow. Spends his time playing billiards. Can’t even shoot. So Binky goes ahead and invites some people to make up a house party—the cousins, of all people, to start with.”
“Which cousins?”
“On the Scottish side. You know that dreadful hairy pair, Lachan and Murdoch.”
“Oh yes. I remember well.” Lachan and Murdoch had always rather terrified me with their wild Highland appearance and behavior. I remember Murdoch demonstrating how to toss the caber with a fallen pine tree and hurling it through a window.
“Well, my dear, they haven’t improved with age, and you have no idea how much they eat and drink.”
I had a pretty good idea, if Murdoch’s caber tossing was any indication. We broke off as there was a discreet tap at the door and Hamilton entered, bearing a tray with a neat pile of sandwiches decorated with watercress, a decanter containing Scotch, and two glasses.
“Thank you, Hamilton,” I said.
“My lady.” He nodded, smiling at me with obvious pleasure. “May I pour you a little sustenance?” and without waiting for the go-ahead, he poured a liberal amount into one of the tumblers. “And for you, Your Grace?”
“Why not?” Fig said. This was also unusual. She normally drank nothing stronger than the occasional Pimm’s on summer outings. But she took hers instantly and had a jolly good swig. I tucked into a sandwich. Local smoked salmon. Mrs. McPherson’s freshly baked bread. I couldn’t remember tasting any
thing more divine. Hamilton retreated.
“But that’s not the worst part of it,” Fig said, putting her empty glass back on the tray with a loud bang.
“It’s not?” I wondered what was coming next.
“The dreadful American woman arrived and guess what? She’s brought her own house party with her. The place is positively crawling with Americans. They are eating us out of house and home, Georgiana, and you have no idea how demanding they are. They want showers instead of baths, for one thing. They told me that baths are quite unhygienic. What can be unhygienic about a bath, for heaven’s sake? It’s full of water, isn’t it? Anyway, they had the servants rig up a shower contraption in the second-floor bathroom, and then it fell on some woman’s head and she was screaming that she’d been scalded and got a concussion.”
I gave a sympathetic grin.
“And what’s more, they are always taking showers and baths. They want them every day, can you imagine? And at all times of the day and night. I told them that nobody can possibly get that dirty in so short a time, but they bathe every time they come in from a walk, before dinner, after dinner. It’s a wonder they’re not completely washed away. And as for drinking . . . my dear, they want cocktails, and they’re always experimenting with new cocktails. They used Binky’s twenty-year-old single-malt Scotch to make some drink with orange juice and maraschino cherries. I’m only glad that Binky was lying in agony upstairs and didn’t see them. I tell you it would have finished him off on the spot.”
For the first time in my life I looked at my sister-in-law with some sympathy. She was definitely looking frazzled. Her short, almost mannishly bobbed hair was usually perfectly in place and it currently looked as if she’d come in from a gale. What’s more she had spilled something down the front of her gray silk dinner gown. Tomato soup, I’d gather.
“It must have been terribly trying for you,” I said. “And as for poor Binky . . .”
“Binky?” she shrieked. “Binky is lying up there being fussed over by Nanny and Mrs. MacTavish. All he has is a mangled ankle. I have Americans.”
“Chin up. It can’t be for too much longer,” I said. “Nobody stays in Scotland for more than a week or so.”
“By the end of a week or so we shall be destitute,” she said, her voice dangerously near to tears. “Eaten out of house and home, literally. I’ll have to take in paying guests to make ends meet. Binky will have to sell of the rest of the family silver.”
I put out a tentative hand and rested it over hers. I believe it was the first time I had willingly touched her. “Don’t worry, Fig. We’ll think of something,” I said.
She looked up at me and beamed. “I knew I could rely on you, Georgiana. I am so glad you’re here.”
Chapter 10
Castle Rannoch
August 17
Late.
As we emerged from Binky’s den and came down the corridor to the great hall, a noisy party was coming out of the drawing room, at the far end of the opposite hallway.
“And so I said to him, ‘You simply don’t have the equipment, honey,’ and he said, ‘I’ve got a bloody great big one, and what’s more, when it’s revved up, it goes like a ramrod.’ He thought we were still talking about the boat.”
There was a roar of laughter. Even though they were still a good distance away and bathed in shadow, I recognized the speaker before I could get a good look at her. It was, of course, the dreaded American woman, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. As she came closer I noticed that she was looking rather thin, angular and masculine in a metallic pewter-gray evening dress and matching metallic helmet. And old. She was definitely beginning to look her age, I thought with satisfaction.
“Wallis, honey, you are shameless.” The speaker was an older woman, dressed in sober black. She was statuesque in build and towered over Mrs. Simpson, but she carried herself well with a regal air, rather like a larger version of Queen Mary. “How you can tell tales like that in public I don’t know. Thank heavens Rudi is not still alive to hear.”
“Oh, don’t come the countess with me, Merion,” Wallis Simpson said. “I remember you when you were plain old Miss Webster, remember? You took me for root beer floats at Mr. Hinkle’s soda fountain in Baltimore when I was just a toddler, and you flirted with that young guy behind the counter!”
“Who is that?” I murmured to Fig, indicating the older woman.
“Oh, she’s the Countess Von Sauer.”
“I thought you said they were all Americans.”
“They are. She’s part of the Simpson woman’s party. She was originally called something perfectly ordinary like Webster but she did her tour of Europe and snagged herself an Austrian count. I don’t think the Simpson woman has forgiven her for one-upping her on the social scale.”
“She’s trying hard enough to remedy that now,” I muttered to Fig.
“She certainly is. The Prince of Wales has been over here to visit almost every evening. I told him I didn’t approve and he said I was a prude. When have I ever been a prude, Georgiana? I consider myself as broad-minded as anybody. After all, I did grow up on a farm.”
“Fritzi, honey, I left my wrap. Be an angel and fetch it for me or I shall freeze.” The countess turned to a large, pink young man who was trailing at the back of the party. “It’s positively frigid in here. It makes our Austrian castle feel like the Côte d’Azur.”
“Mama, you’re always forgetting things. I shall be worn to a rail if you keep me running around like this. Do you know how far it is to your room from here? And all those horrible stairs?”
I turned to Fig again.
“She’s also brought her reprobate son with her,” she muttered. “He piles his plate with all the good sandwiches at tea and he pinches the maids’ bottoms.”
“Hasn’t the keep-fit movement reached Austria yet?” one of the men in the party asked. “Babe can’t start the day without her gymnastics and dumbbells, can you, Babe, honey?”
“I sure can’t,” a petite, bony woman replied.
At that moment they emerged into the great hall and Wallis Simpson noticed me. “Why, it’s the actress’s daughter,” she said. “What a surprise. When did you get here?”
I was still feeling angry on behalf of Fig and Binky and wasn’t about to take any of her cutting remarks. “Actually it’s the duke’s daughter,” I said, “and the current duke’s sister, and the king’s cousin and great-granddaughter to Queen Victoria, and you are currently a guest in my ancestral home.”
“Ouch,” said a man who had been lingering at the back of the party. I recognized him as Mr. Simpson, the invisible and until now silent husband. “I reckon you’ve met your match there, Wallis.”
“Nonsense,” she said with a guttural chuckle. “It’s lack of sex. It makes people touchy. We should do the kind thing and get her hitched up with a gamekeeper while she’s up here. Think of Lady Chatterley.”
And they went into peals of laughter again.
“Who is Lady Chatterley?” Fig whispered to me.
“A character in a book, by D. H. Lawrence. It’s banned over here. He had it printed in Italy, and there are smuggled copies all over the place.”
“And what’s so terrible about it?”
“The lady and the gamekeeper have a continuous roll in the hay together and describe it with four-letter farm words.”
“How disgusting,” Fig said. “I bet the writer has never seen a real gamekeeper, or he’d never have thought they had sex appeal. They smell of dead rabbits, for one thing.”
“One of these days you’ll go too far, Wallis,” Mr. Simpson said sharply.
She glanced up at him, then put a hand up to his cheek and chuckled again. “I don’t think so. I believe I know exactly how far I can go.”
The big man in the party now came over to me, his hand extended. “So you’re the young lady of the family, are you? Glad to meet you. I’m Earl Sanders. This is my wife, Babe.”
I shook hands all around. I noticed Mrs. Simpson didn�
�t offer hers.
“So who is up for whist or bridge?” Wallis Simpson asked. “Or shall we be devils and play roulette?”
“I’m afraid we don’t possess a roulette wheel,” Fig said frostily. “If we choose to gamble, we go to Monte Carlo.”
“Don’t worry, Earl’s brought his own,” Mrs. Simpson said. “He can’t go more than a day without gambling, can you, Earl honey?”
“The question is where are we going to play without freezing to death and without having the cards blown away by a howling gale?” the Countess Von Sauer asked. “Surely not in here.”
“I was sensible enough to bring my mink,” Babe said. Her morning keep-fit regimen was certainly paying off. She hadn’t an ounce of spare flesh on her and made the angular Mrs. Simpson look positively feminine. No wonder she was cold. She turned to her husband and retrieved the fur from him, wrapping it snugly around her shoulders. “I even wore it in bed last night. My dears, the draft from that window. It wouldn’t close properly and there was a hurricane blowing.”
“Will the drawing room not do?” Fig asked. “I can have the servants move back the sofas and set up tables.”
“There are some rather loud young men in there, smoking up a storm and working their way through the whiskey decanter,” Mrs. Simpson said.
“See, what did I tell you?” Fig muttered.
“Then it will have to be in here,” Fig said out loud. “I’ll call the servants.”
“How about that nice little room that looks out on the lake?” Babe suggested. “The one where we had coffee this morning.”
“But that’s the morning room.” Fig sounded horrified.
“So is it a crime to go in there after noon?” Wallis Simpson asked with amusement. “Really, I find all these British rules too, too fascinating.”