74. Love Lifts The Curse Read online

  There was no furniture except for her bed and the kitchen table.

  She kept thinking of how pretty it had looked when her mother had been alive and to please her father, she had always picked copious flowers from the garden.

  She had arranged them in his study, in the hall and in the drawing room.

  Sometimes he did not seem to notice, but she knew that it was what her mother would have wanted her to do.

  She picked and arranged the flowers even when he was away in case he came back unexpectedly.

  Now the rooms were empty.

  Dust was accumulating everywhere and there were marks on the walls where the pictures had hung and every time she looked at the mantelpiece she remembered with a little pang the Dresden figures that had stood there.

  They had been a very special part of her childhood fantasies.

  ‘I shall feel better once I get away,’ she told herself firmly.

  She thought that when she read to the elderly Peer he would want her to speak in a soft clear voice.

  So she practised reading aloud and because the rooms were empty, her voice sounded eerie and echoed round the bare walls.

  Every day she watched anxiously for the postman to bring her a letter.

  She had almost given up hope and in fact she was thinking that she would have to ask Mr. Brownlow to look in the newspapers again when there was a knock on the door.

  She was cooking the one egg that she allowed herself for breakfast as she felt it would be extravagant to buy more.

  There was half a loaf of bread and some butter left over from the previous day and yet she could not help wishing that she had sausages and some home-cured bacon.

  She was just taking the egg out of the boiling water when she heard the knock.

  Hastily she put it down on the plate and ran from the kitchen and into the hall.

  The postman, who had known her for years, opened the door and, as she appeared, he said,

  “’Mornin’, Miss Jacoba! There be the letter ’ere which I knows you’ve bin a-waitin’ for.”

  “Is it from London?” Jacoba asked eagerly.

  “It be,” the postman replied.

  He gave her the letter as he spoke. For a moment Jacoba just stared at it, praying that it was what she hoped and not another tradesman’s bill.

  Then she realised that it was addressed to ‘Miss Jacoba Ford’ and must be the answer to her letter.

  The postman waited.

  Like everybody else in the village, he knew that Jacoba had applied for a position as companion to an elderly Peer in Scotland.

  Because they had known and loved her since she was a child, they had waited as anxiously as she had for the answer.

  Leaning against the door, which sadly needed a coat of paint, the postman’s eyes were on Jacoba’s face.

  She took the letter out of the envelope and read it.

  Then she gave a cry of delight.

  “I am to go to London at once and – look – here is a railway-ticket for the journey!”

  “Well, now!” the postman ejaculated. “That be good news, Miss Jacoba! And, of course, we’ll all be a-’opin’ you’ll get the position and travels to Scotland, though it be a long way from ’ome!”

  “I am to go to London first thing tomorrow,” Jacoba said. “Please will you ask if anyone is going to Worcester and will give me a lift?”

  She paused and added anxiously,

  “There will be someone?”

  “Now you knows tomorrow’s Wednesday, when Farmer Willy Hockey takes’s ’is chicken and eggs to market.”

  “Yes, of course!” Jacoba said. “Will you be very kind and ask him if he will take me with him? And I expect Mr. Goodman at the Post Office will know what trains will be going to London in the morning.”

  “I can tell you that,” the postman answered. “You can take the one as leaves at nine o’clock. You don’t want to get there late!”

  “No, of course not,” Jacoba agreed.

  “I’ll tell Willy as you’ll be a-goin’ with ’im,” the postman added.

  He walked down the steps.

  As he set off towards the gate, he turned and waved to Jacoba and she knew that he would carry the news that she had received the expected letter from London to the whole village.

  Sure enough, later in the day several of the women came up to The Gables to wish her luck.

  They wanted to see the letter with their own eyes, but what touched Jacoba was that each of them brought her some small gift.

  From one woman it was a handkerchief that she had been given for Christmas and she had, however, thought it too small and dainty to be of any use.

  From another it was a knitted scarf just in case it was cold in those ‘wild Scottish parts’.

  From a third it was a lucky charm that the owner had had herself since she was a child and she was sure that it had brought her a good husband and three healthy children.

  They were all so kind that Jacoba felt like crying.

  When they left, she had gone upstairs to decide what she should wear to travel in.

  She knew her father would have said that first impressions were important.

  She hesitated between a gown that had belonged to her mother and was, she thought, slightly out of date, and one of her own.

  Her mother’s was a better material and it had been made by an expensive dressmaker in Worcester.

  It was a deep blue with a short jacket over a pretty blouse and the skirt, which flared out at the bottom, was trimmed with a braid.

  ‘I will wear that one,’ Jacoba decided.

  She was not aware that the colour made her skin seem translucently clear and it also accentuated the touches of red in her hair.

  There was a neat sparsely trimmed little hat for her to wear on the back of her head and with difficulty she found herself a respectable pair of gloves.

  ‘If I look too smart they might think I am too ‘flighty’ for the position,’ she told herself the following morning when she was dressed.

  At the same time it was with difficulty that she did not change her mind at the last moment and put on something else.

  The farmer carried her two trunks downstairs.

  Then she realised that she was saying goodbye to her home.

  She was saying goodbye to everything that had been a familiar part of herself for the last nineteen years.

  On an impulse she ran to her mother’s bedroom and opened the door.

  It had been a very pretty room with a large white double bed and chintz curtains were draped over the windows, while white muslin fell behind and on either side of the bed.

  Now everything had been sold including the large white dressing table and the washstand with its marble top.

  Yet just for a moment Jacoba felt as if her mother was sitting up in bed smiling at her as she came through the door.

  “Goodbye, Mama!” she said in a whisper.

  Then she knew, just as if somebody had told her, that it was not goodbye.

  Her mother was still with her, still near her, still helping her and keeping her safe.

  For a long moment she stood in the doorway.

  She felt that she could smell the scent of violets that her mother had always used as well as the fragrance from a bowl of potpourri that had always stood on the windowsill.

  As tears came into her eyes, she turned and ran down the stairs.

  Willy Hockey was just lifting her trunks onto the back of his cart and they only just fitted in amongst the chickens and the eggs.

  She climbed up beside him and he drove his young horse through the open gate and out onto the road.

  There were people in the village to wave goodbye as Jacoba passed through it.

  “Good luck!” “God go with you!” “Come back soon!” they shouted after her.

  By the time they reached the end of the village she had to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  “Now, don’t you be upsettin’ yourself, Miss Jacoba,” t
he farmer said. “If things goes wrong and that there Scotland ain’t all you expects it to be, you come ’ome to us.”

  “If I did – where could I go?” Jacoba asked.

  “We’ll find summat,” the farmer replied. “If it be only a tent in a back garden, it’s better to be with people you wishes.”

  Because he spoke so kindly, Jacoba found it even harder to control her tears.

  By the time they reached Worcester, she was composed and, when he set her down at the station and carried her trunks in, she thanked him profusely.

  Just before they reached the station gate, he said,

  “Now you take good care of yourself, and don’t you be gettin’ into no trouble.”

  “I will certainly try not to do that!” Jacoba replied.

  “And be careful who you trusts,” the farmer went on. “There be men – and men! Some of ’em ain’t no good, whatever they tells you about themselves!”

  “I will be very careful,” Jacoba promised him.

  He drove away and, as she walked onto the platform, she began to feel frightened.

  She had never travelled alone and only two or three times had she ever been on a train and then it was with her father for just a short distance to somewhere else in the County.

  Now she could not help being vividly aware that it was a train that had killed him and shattered her own life.

  ‘Perhaps I shall never reach London,’ she mused in a moment of depression.

  Then she told herself that she was being very stupid.

  The newspaper reports of her uncle’s and her father’s death had said how very few bad accidents there had been since the railways had been developed.

  But when the train came puffing into the station, it seemed to Jacoba like a huge animal.

  It was with some difficulty that she prevented herself from running away and saying that she would find something else to do.

  Then, as she was looking frightened and lost, a kindly porter asked,

  “You be all on your own, miss?”

  “Y-yes – I am.”

  “I’ll find you a seat,” he said, “and I’d best put you in the ‘ladies only’ compartment.”

  “Oh, yes, please,” Jacoba answered him.

  He opened the door of a carriage and, as she climbed in, he said,

  “I’ll put your trunks in the luggage van.”

  She realised that she should tip him and, looking into her purse, she gave him sixpence.

  He thanked her so profusely that she wondered if she had been over-generous and given him too much.

  ‘I must be careful with my money as Mr. Brownlow advised,’ she admonished herself.

  She sat down in a corner seat, aware that there were two other women in the carriage.

  One of them had a large basket beside her covered with a check cloth.

  It was then for the first time that Jacoba realised that she should have brought her luncheon with her.

  It had never entered her head and, because she had left the house early, she had only had one cup of tea.

  She knew that before they reached London she would undoubtedly be feeling very hungry.

  ‘I was very stupid not to realise I would need food!’ she scolded herself.

  She suspected from what her father had told her that the train would stop at several stations on the way and she would therefore be able to buy herself something to eat.

  Then she told herself severely that this was an extravagance that she could not afford.

  As the guard blew his whistle and the train began to move, she waved to the friendly porter who had looked after her.

  Then she tried to enjoy the first long journey she had ever taken on her own.

  She was going, she thought, from the world that she knew well and which she had loved for nineteen years into another completely different world.

  It was one she knew nothing about and which was undoubtedly very frightening.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The door opened and the butler announced,

  “Mr. Hamish McMurdock, my Lord!”

  The Viscount Warren, who was reading the newspaper, put it down and rose to his feet.

  “Hello, Hamish!” he said. “Is she really coming?”

  “I sent her a letter enclosing her railway ticket,” Hamish McMurdock replied, “and I had a reply yesterday to say that she would be arriving at Paddington at three o’clock.”

  The Viscount laughed.

  He was a good-looking young man who had already stirred a number of hearts in Mayfair.

  He and Hamish McMurdock had been at Eton together.

  They enjoyed the gaieties and delights of London in a way that made them the envy of many of their friends.

  It had been nearly a fortnight previously when Hamish had gone into White’s Club to find the Viscount.

  He had thrown himself down petulantly in a leather chair beside him.

  “I am glad you are back,” the Viscount remarked. “Did you enjoy yourself in Scotland?”

  “Enjoy myself?” Hamish exclaimed. “Of all the idiotic, overbearing, irritating men, my uncle is the worst!”

  The Viscount poured him out a glass of champagne and said sympathetically,

  “You mean he rejected your idea?”

  “Of course he rejected it,” Hamish said, “I suppose really that I was a fool to waste money by going all that way to suggest such a scheme.”

  The Viscount, who had been pessimistic from the first, was kind enough not to say, ‘I told you so!’

  He had in fact thought that it was a very good idea of Hamish’s.

  It was that the lobsters and crabs that bred in profusion in the estuary of the Earl of Kilmurdock’s river should be brought to London and sold.

  There was a great demand for them.

  Hamish’s idea was that they should form a Company and sell Scottish produce that at the moment was enjoyed by no one except his uncle.

  “I have never eaten better lobsters or larger crabs!” he told the Viscount, “and, of course, the salmon in the river are abundant. But, because my uncle has become almost a recluse, there are few fishermen there except him.”

  He had been so enthusiastic that the Viscount had begun to think that it really was a possibility.

  They had discussed the matter with one or two of the older members of the Club who gave it their approval.

  Hamish had therefore gone to Scotland full of hope.

  The Earl of Kilmurdock was Head of the Clan and the scheme would be to the advantage of everybody in that part of the Highlands.

  Hamish drank some more champagne before he said,

  “You will hardly believe what I am going to tell you on top of that.”

  “What is it?” the Viscount asked curiously.

  “My uncle has become a ‘woman-hater’ and refuses to allow any inside The Castle!”

  The Viscount stared at him.

  “Is that the truth? It sounds utterly absurd to me!”

  “It is true,” Hamish affirmed. “He always was a rather strange character and, soon after he left school, my grandfather, who was a real tyrant, insisted on his becoming betrothed to a woman from a neighbouring Clan.”

  “I suppose in order to stop them stabbing each other with their dirks,” the Viscount remarked, “and shooting each other instead of the grouse!”

  Hamish did not laugh.

  Instead he went on,

  “It was something like that. Anyway, because Uncle Tarbot was frightened of his father, he agreed to do as he wished.”

  “A great mistake!” the Viscount exclaimed. “I would not allow my father to dictate to me whom I should or should not marry!”

  Hamish did not both to answer this.

  He knew that the Earl of Warrenton was a rather weak character and the Viscount, his eldest son, did as he wished.

  “Well, go on,” the Viscount urged. “What happened?”

  “According to what my father told me, the marriage was a catast
rophe from the moment the wedding had taken place.”

  He laughed as he added,

  “My father always said that they fought more ferociously and vindictively than ever their Clans had.”

  “So what happened?” the Viscount enquired.

  “The bride was providentially drowned in a storm that blew up when she was fishing out to sea.”

  He made a gesture with his hand as he continued,

  “Why the devil she should want to catch cod when she could catch salmon Heaven only knows!”

  “But she was drowned,” the Viscount said.

  “She was drowned and, of course, people alleged that her husband had drowned her in one of their many quarrels. But he had a foolproof alibi, although he certainly did not mourn his bride!”

  “I can understand his feelings, but what has happened now?”

  “Apparently a year ago, although I was not aware of it at the time,” Hamish answered, “Uncle Tarbot fell in love!”

  “Who was she this time?” the Viscount enquired.

  “A Scottish girl he met in Edinburgh and I understand that they became secretly engaged.”

  “Why secretly?”

  “Because her father, who is Chieftain of his Clan, had never been on speaking terms with the Kilmurdocks.”

  “When I hear of what goes on in your native country,” the Viscount said, “I thank God I was born in England!”

  “I suppose we are a rather fiery race!” Hamish admitted. “Anyway, this woman told Uncle Tarbot that she loved him and was sure that her father would relent and give them his blessing.”

  “But I suppose he did nothing of the sort!” the Viscount remarked.

  “On the contrary,” Hamish said, “the Chieftain did relent and I understand that Uncle Tarbot went to stay with him to discuss the date he should marry his daughter.”

  The Viscount re-filled his friend’s glass with champagne.

  At the same time he was listening intently.

  “At the last minute,” Hamish said dramatically, “when everything was arranged, the bride ran away with another man!”

  “I can hardly believe it!” the Viscount exclaimed.

  “Well, she did, and you can imagine what Uncle Tarbot felt after his first marriage had been a failure.”

  “If you ask me, he was well out of it with a woman who could change her mind in that callous manner,” the Viscount suggested.