60 The Duchess Disappeared Read online

  “And overcoming your Scottish caution about spending money, you actually bought yourself a ticket!”

  “It was a small price to pay to see someone who could play so exquisitely,” Ian replied.

  “But you did not expect me to be a woman,” Rosemary interposed at this point.

  “Of course I did not!” her husband answered. “I was convinced that I would see a long-haired man and doubtless a foreigner.”

  “And instead?” Rosemary asked.

  “I saw an angel!” he replied. “The most beautiful and exquisite angel I could ever have imagined!”

  Within a week of their meeting, Fiona had been told by her sister, they were so wildly, crazily in love that there was no question of their ever again living separately.

  Ian wrote to his father, announcing that he intended to marry Rosemary Windham.

  Because he was in all things honest, he explained that, because she had an extraordinary musical talent and her family was hard-up, she had been persuaded to give a number of public recitals and the music critics had proclaimed her talent as exceptional, even at times using the word ‘genius’.

  As if Ian knew what the Duke’s reaction would be, he had planned the marriage ceremony before he had received a reply.

  In fact the old Duke categorically and violently forbade him to marry a woman who was “a Sassenach, an actress and doubtless at the same time a prostitute”.

  Ian had been shaken by the letter, even though knowing his father he had half-expected it, but Rosemary had been devastated and had clung to her father, weeping bitterly.

  “How can I marry him? How can I spoil his life?” she cried. “Equally, how can I live without him?”

  That had been impossible for either of them to contemplate and they had been married, Ian knowing that his father would never forgive him.

  When the Duke died two years later, Ian was sure that his brother, whom he had always loved, would get in touch with him and the barrier that had prevented him from visiting his home would be lifted.

  But there was no communication of any sort from the new Duke.

  Gradually, Fiona knew, the hope that had risen in Ian’s heart died and he faced the fact that he was exiled for life from The Castle and from his Clan, who were still, whether he wished it or not, an intrinsic part of his life.

  “If only his brother could be a little more understanding,” Rosemary would sometimes say to Fiona. “How could anybody cut Ian out of their life when he is so wonderful in every way?”

  She gave a little sob as she added,

  “He never says anything against the Duke. He is never bitter and yet I know in my heart how much he minds.”

  Thinking of this now, Fiona told herself that the Duke of Strathrannock must be an insensitive brutal man.

  Being a Scot, he must understand just how much Scotland meant to his brother and yet he could go on punishing him for loving a woman who was in fact not an actress but rather a very gifted musician.

  Because she hoped that it would make relations better between Ian and his father, Rosemary had given up her public career as soon as they were married.

  She played now only to her husband and her sister and later, as she grew older, to her daughter.

  It was a deep sadness to both Ian and Rosemary that they had only one child, but Mary-Rose was so angelic in every way, a ‘dream-child’, her father called her, that she completely made up for the lack of brothers and sisters.

  Now, when Fiona was thinking of her, almost as if she had drawn her by her thoughts, the door of the drawing room opened and Mary-Rose came into the room.

  “Aunt Fiona!” she cried in her lilting voice. “I have found the honeysuckle you wanted. See, I have a whole basket of it!”

  She ran across the room without being aware that anyone was sitting by the fireside and Fiona turned from the window.

  As she had done so often, she thought that her niece looked like a small angel who had just dropped out of Heaven.

  Ian Rannock had thought that Rosemary looked like an angel when he had first seen her sitting at the piano on the stage of the Concert Hall, seeming too small to evoke so much sound from a grand piano – and Mary-Rose was the creation of their love.

  Delicately boned, with a small round face and large blue eyes set wide apart, she had hair rioting about her head in curls that were the colour of the first fingers of dawn.

  It was impossible for anybody who saw Mary-Rose for the first time not to stop and look at her and then look again and Fiona could see now the astonishment in Mr. McKeith’s eyes.

  “That was very clever of you, darling!” she said as she took the basket of honeysuckle from Mary-Rose. “And now I want you to say how-do-you-do to a gentleman who has come all the way from Scotland to meet you.”

  Mary-Rose gave a little start – then, seeing Mr. McKeith, she walked across the room to him.

  She dropped him a little curtsey and held out her hand.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t notice you when I came into the room,” she said, “but I was so excited at finding the honeysuckle that Aunt Fiona wanted for her magic herbs.”

  Mr. McKeith rose a little laboriously to his feet to stand holding Mary-Rose’s hand in his.

  “Magic herbs?” he questioned. “What are they?”

  “Herbs that make people well when they are ill! Some people think Aunt Fiona is a ‘White Witch’!”

  Mary-Rose laughed as she spoke and it made her look even more like a small angel than she did already.

  Fiona drew in her breath.

  “Mr. McKeith, dearest, wishes us to travel to Scotland with him so that you can meet your uncle, the Duke of Strathrannock.”

  “Would that be Dadda’s brother?” Mary-Rose asked.

  “Yes,” Mr. McKeith answered.

  “I know all about Uncle Aiden,” Mary-Rose went on. “He lives in a big castle where Dadda used to play as a little boy. It has towers where the Rannocks fought to keep away the wicked invaders who wanted to steal their cattle and sheep.”

  Fiona was astonished.

  “Did your Mama tell you that?” she asked.

  “No, it was Dadda,” Mary-Rose replied. “When we were alone, he would tell me stories of Scotland and his home and what he did when he was the same age as me.”

  Fiona understood then that Ian had felt he must talk to someone about the land he loved, the place where he had been born and bred.

  To do so to his wife would make her unhappy because Rosemary would then feel how much he had given up for her. So he had talked to Mary-Rose, although until this moment Fiona had no idea of it.

  “I am sure you will find it very interesting, Mary-Rose,” Mr. McKeith said, “to see The Castle where your father was born and to meet the people who loved him when he was a boy.”

  “Are we really going to Scotland?” Mary-Rose asked.

  “You would like that?”

  “It would be very exciting! But I couldn’t go without Aunt Fiona “

  “She will travel with you and stay with you at The Castle.”

  Fiona was feeling that, although he spoke reassuringly, there was a momentary mental reserve behind the words that he did not say aloud.

  ‘I will not let the Duke take Mary-Rose away from me,’ she thought fiercely.

  She told herself that she had always hated him and now her feeling for him was one of positive loathing.

  “Does Uncle Aiden look like Dadda?” Mary-Rose enquired.

  “I think you will see a resemblance,” Mr. McKeith answered. “But His Grace is a few years older than your father and he has not been happy in his life.”

  “Why not?” Mary-Rose asked.

  “I think the answer is that he does not possess a daughter like you,” Mr. McKeith said with a smile.

  “That means he is lonely,” Mary-Rose reflected wisely. “Mama said we must always be very kind to people who are lonely, like poor old Mr. Benson in the village, whose wife died and whose son was killed in a battl
e.”

  “Then I hope you will be kind to your uncle,” Mr. McKeith said.

  “I’ll try,” Mary-Rose promised. “It’ll be very exciting to see the big walls and the towers that Dadda told me about. They are still – there?”

  She asked the question anxiously and Mr. McKeith assured her that they were.

  *

  Afterwards, Fiona found it very difficult to remember her feelings, much less to analyse them, as she packed up the house that had been her home for the last five years and where she had expected to stay indefinitely looking after Mary-Rose.

  She was sixteen when her father had died and she had found herself alone.

  She and Rosemary had lost their mother when they were small children and their father had never been the same after her death.

  He had been comparatively elderly when he had married for the second time and started a family, having had no children by his first wife.

  He adored his two beautiful daughters, but his health was frail and it was really because they needed money for the expensive treatment he was having and the special food the doctors had ordered for him that Rosemary had exploited her talent at the pianoforte by playing in public.

  She had given only four recitals when she met Ian, but she had made enough money after the first one, which was a huge success, to keep her father in comparative comfort until his death.

  After that, it had been obvious that there was nowhere else for Fiona to live but with her sister.

  She had been a little afraid that Ian would resent her making a fourth – counting Mary-Rose – in their happy household, but, because she was very tactful and never intruded when she knew that husband and wife wished to be alone, the whole arrangement worked out well.

  The nanny who had looked after Mary-Rose when she was a baby had left and Fiona had constituted herself as nurse and Governess to her small niece.

  “You can teach her music,” she had said to her sister, “and Ian can teach her botany, for no one knows more about trees, flowers and wildlife than he does, but I will teach her everything else.”

  Because their father had been a scholarly man and they had both had a good education, Fiona was fully qualified to teach and Mary-Rose, being intelligent, was quick to learn.

  She had also found that the child’s mind was as original and entrancing as her looks.

  It was, Fiona thought, as if, because her sister and her husband were so in love with each other, they had produced a child so lovely both in body and mind that Mary-Rose might indeed have been the angel she appeared to be.

  Because she was happy she wanted to give happiness and because her mother had taught her that it was a gift to be given, small though she was, she was sympathetic and understanding to other people’s troubles.

  ‘How can the Duke, who has obviously never thought of anyone but himself, be the right type of Guardian for a childlike Mary-Rose?’ Fiona asked herself a thousand times.

  She packed up the items her sister had treasured, amongst them a number of religious books, which had always lain beside her bed and a picture of angels playing with the Child Jesus which had hung over Mary-Rose’s.

  She knew a little about religious practice in Scotland and was sure that it was bleak and harsh and she shivered at what lay ahead.

  Mary-Rose, on the other hand, was thrilled at the thought of seeing The Castle and she plied Mr. Mc-Keith with question after question, surprising him with the intelligence of them and the humanity in everything she said and thought.

  Because Betsy was quite content to stay on at The Manor as caretaker, Fiona was relieved that it was not the same as feeling that she had lost her home forever.

  The Manor now belonged to Mary-Rose, but it would have been impossible for her to live there if the small amount of money Fiona had inherited on her father’s death had not contributed to the upkeep of the house and all the other expenses.

  Lord Ian had very little money during his lifetime and what he did own had been left him by his grandmother.

  When he married Rosemary, the Duke in traditional fashion cut him off without a penny.

  In consequence it had been hard at times to make ends meet, but somehow they had managed. Fiona now found herself wondering how it would be possible for her even to be polite to the Duke when she saw the contrast between his way of life and that of her sister.

  At the same time she had no intention of giving up her Guardianship of Mary-Rose.

  She had a feeling that it would be hard to transplant anything so sweet and delicate from the soft gentleness of the South to the harsh climate of the North.

  ‘If things are too bad,’ she told herself, ‘I will take Mary-Rose away with me whatever the Duke may say. Then let him fight out the question of Guardianship in the Courts. I am sure it will take years and perhaps Scottish Law cannot be enforced in England.’

  She would have liked to consult a Solicitor before she left for Scotland, but that was impossible since Mr. McKeith, although he was very polite and did not press her, was obviously extremely anxious to return to The Castle as quickly as possible.

  ‘He will have to wait until I am ready,’ Fiona told herself firmly.

  At the same time she felt him there all the time, forcing her to make haste while every instinct in her told her to linger.

  Mr. McKeith was in fact a charming and extremely intelligent man.

  They talked together in the evenings after Mary-Rose had gone to bed and Fiona found him interesting and understanding.

  “I know it is hard for you to adjust yourself to the present situation, Miss Windham,” he said, “but you must realise that from Mary-Rose’s point of view, the position she will occupy as the Duke’s heir is almost the equivalent in England to being the Princess Royal.”

  Fiona looked at him enquiringly and he went on,

  “A Duke in Scotland – and the Duke of Strathrannock is one of the most important of them – is Head of his Clan and rules over his own estates and his own people almost as if he was a King.”

  “I have heard that,” Fiona murmured.

  “As you know,” Mr. McKeith continued, “The Castle is on the border where it was erected hundreds of years ago as a defence against the English. It is the Scottish counterpart of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, where the Percys defied the marauding Scots.”

  He smiled as he went on,

  “The Duke also owns land in other parts of Scotland and his prestige and that of his Clan is well known over the whole country.”

  “The Duke is obviously very wealthy,” Fiona remarked.

  There was no need for Mr. McKeith to reply.

  He knew she was thinking that many of the carpets and curtains in The Manor house were threadbare, that the two horses in the stables were inferior animals and that the carriage her sister and Ian had used was sadly out of date.

  After a moment Mr. McKeith remarked,

  “Second sons always suffer at any level of Society, Miss Windham. I speak with experience, for I was one myself.”

  “It is unfair!”

  “So are a lot of things in life.”

  “Injustice always makes me very angry.”

  Mr. McKeith gave a little laugh.

  “Then may I beg you, Miss Windham, not to vent your anger on me, but keep it for the Duke”

  ‘“That is exactly what I intend to do,” Fiona exclaimed.

  *

  As if to give her a taste of what lay ahead, she learnt, on the day that she and Mary-Rose were to leave The Manor, that they would drive to the nearest railway station, which was some fifteen miles away, where the Duke’s private train would be waiting to convey them to Scotland.

  “Private train?” Fiona enquired.

  “It is a comparatively new toy,” Mr. McKeith said a little cynically. “The Duke considers it important both for his comfort and his status amongst the other Dukes.”

  If Fiona was astonished, Mary-Rose was entranced.

  The train, painted white with t
he Rannock coat of arms on the engine, looked much more like a toy than a genuine train.

  There were several Stewards in attendance and they were all wearing the Rannock livery until they neared the North, when they changed, to Mary-Rose’s delight, into kilts of the Rannock tartan.

  There were comfortable armchairs in the saloon and brass bedsteads in the sleeping compartments.

  “Dadda never told me about this lovely train,” Mary-Rose remarked.

  “It is new,” Fiona explained. “When your father was a small boy he had to travel down from the North behind horses. I remember him telling me what a long drive it was and how tired he was when he finally arrived in London.”

  “I would have liked to be on the train with Dadda,” Mary-Rose said, “but I expect, now that he’s in Heaven, he can see me in it and knows how comfortable I am.”

  “I am sure he can,” Fiona answered. “Now say your prayers, dearest and then try to go to sleep. There will be lots of exciting scenes to watch from the windows tomorrow.”

  She sat down beside the bed and Mary-Rose knelt on it and put her hands together.

  She said the prayers she had always said ever since her mother had taught them to her almost as soon as she could speak.

  Then she added,

  “Thank you, God, for sending me in this lovely train to see The Castle where Dadda played when he was a little boy and please tell Dadda to look down and see everything I’m doing in case I miss something he told me about.”

  She said ‘amen’ and cuddled down in the bed as Fiona, hiding her tears, tucked her up.

  When she was with Mary-Rose, she missed her sister more than at any other time.

  Although Rosemary had been much older than Fiona, they had been very close and not a day passed when Mary-Rose did not remind her of the happiness she and her sister had found in each other’s company.

  It was Ian who had suggested that they should turn the name round from Rosemary to Mary-Rose.

  “She is a little replica of you, my darling,” he had said before the Christening, “and, whatever we call her, to me she will always be another Rosemary.”

  “If she had been a son I would have wanted to call him Ian,” Rosemary whispered, “because no man could be anything but wonderful if he has your name.”