60 The Duchess Disappeared Read online

  “I have an idea!” Ian exclaimed. “To call her Rosemary would be really too muddling, so she must be Mary-Rose.”

  His wife had clapped her hands together.

  “That is perfect, and so clever of you,” she said. “Oh, darling, you must just promise me one thing, not to love her more than you love me or I might be jealous.”

  “Do you think that is possible?” Ian asked. “I love you until you fill the world, the sky and the whole universe and, if Mary-Rose when she grows up is half as happy as we are, then I ask nothing more for her.”

  Fiona felt as if at the Christening Service there had been celestial beings listening as the Parson held the small babe in his arms and made the sign of the cross on her forehead.

  Mary-Rose had smiled at him and seemed to enjoy every minute of it.

  “There is one thing certain,” someone had said when they returned to The Manor, “the Devil has not come out of her.”

  “And a very good thing too,” Ian replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “Every woman needs a touch of the Devil in her if she is to hold her own in this world!”

  Fiona, who had been only thirteen years old at the time, had not quite understood what he meant, but her father, who also was at the Christening, had chuckled and said,

  “You are quite right. Women who are too good and complacent are a bore and a man needs to be stimulated now and then. I am quite certain my granddaughter will do that when the time comes.”

  “Nonsense,” Rosemary protested firmly. “She looks like an angel and she will be one – just like me.”

  They had all laughed at that, but later Fiona often thought that both she and her sister had a touch of the Devil in them.

  Rosemary very rarely showed it, the reason being that she was so happy with her husband, but Fiona had a temper and, as she told Mr. McKeith, where there was injustice it burst into flames inside her.

  She once had discovered a boy torturing a small dog and, although he was larger than she was, she had set about him with a stick until he had run away, frightened at her violence.

  She told herself now that there was a Devil in herself, which she tried to control, but when she met the Duke she would tell him a few home truths.

  “He is rich, with a castle in Scotland, estates in other parts of the country and a private train, while his brother had to count every penny. It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not fair!”

  “It’s not fair!”

  The wheels of the train seemed to pick up the words until they ran through her mind like a refrain.

  “It ‘s not fair!”

  Chapter Two

  “We should arrive at Rannock Station in about twenty minutes,” Mr. McKeith announced.

  Fiona gave a little start and felt, although it irritated her, that her heart was beating unaccountably quickly.

  She knew it was nervousness and she despised herself for being nervous of anything, especially of the Duke.

  The journey had been very enjoyable and Mary-Rose had found it irresistible to be able to run along the whole length of the train with its communicating carriages.

  Fiona had read that in all the new trains this was possible, but it was only the previous year, she learnt, that the Queen had abandoned the old Royal railway coach for a new small one with all the compartments communicating.

  At last there would be no more steep clambering down onto the line for the Ladies-in-Waiting to reach the Queen, which had always been considered very indelicate, for it was impossible to do so without exposing a great deal of leg.

  For Mary-Rose it had been an absorbing game to run from one end of the train to the other and now as she came towards Fiona she called out,

  “We are going to arrive very soon, Aunt Fiona.”

  “That is just what I was going to tell you,” Fiona replied with a smile.

  “I’ll be sorry to leave this lovely train,” Mary-Rose sighed, “but then I do want to see The Castle.”

  The idea of The Castle had captured her imagination and Fiona knew that Mr. McKeith had deliberately spent a great deal of time in telling her of the history of it and the many battles that had been fought there by the Rannocks in the past.

  Last night when Fiona had heard her prayers and was tucking her up in bed, Mary-Rose had asked,

  “If Dadda had lived, would he have been a Duke?”

  “Only if your uncle did not have any children,” Fiona replied.

  “Why hasn’t Uncle Aiden any children?” Mary-Rose questioned.

  This was difficult to answer and Fiona compromised with the truth by saying,

  “Your uncle has no wife at the moment.”

  “If he married and had a little girl like me, I would not be his heir?”

  She was obviously puzzling it out for herself and Fiona thought that it was rather tiresome of Mr. McKeith to have worried her with the problems that were waiting for them at The Castle.

  At the same time she knew that he was preparing her for the position to which she was entitled and she could not help feeling that it was very bitter that her brother-in-law, who would have enjoyed every moment of it, had been left in the wilderness while Mary-Rose now took her place.

  It did not improve her already antagonistic feelings towards the Duke, but she told herself that the only thing that really mattered was Mary-Rose’s happiness.

  She was certain that this meant that she must stay with her and not leave her alone in the charge of her Rannock relations.

  ‘If I am too disagreeable,’ she told herself, ‘the Duke will send me away. I must be careful. Equally I have no intention of toadying to him or letting him think that I am not horrified at his behaviour, because I am!’

  She tidied Mary-Rose’s fair curls, put her bonnet over them and tied the blue ribbons, which matched her eyes, under her little chin.

  The blue coat which covered her long white gown made her look as if she had stepped out of a painting and Fiona wondered with a twist of her lips whether the Duke would appreciate his niece’s beauty.

  She had a feeling that simple though their clothes were, she and Mary-Rose would look, to the dour Scots, like creatures from another world.

  She had seen pictures in the ladies’ magazines of the drab heavy tweeds that women wore in Scotland and she knew that, even if she had wanted to dress like that, she could not at the moment have afforded to.

  There were quite a number of expenses before she had left The Manor and she had been obliged to draw out almost all the money she had in the bank, out of which Betsy’s wages could be paid regularly.

  It had also been impossible to dismiss the old gardener, who had been with her sister and brother-in-law ever since they had married. He was getting on towards seventy and it would have been impossible for him to find other employment.

  She knew that he had been extremely relieved when she had told him to help Betsy take care of The Manor and that his wages would still be paid even while there was no one living in it.

  This left her in what she knew was a precarious position financially and she therefore thought, with a toss of her head, that the Duke could put up with the clothes she had worn in the South and if he did not like them there was nothing she could do about it.

  As Fiona and Rosemary had been about the same size, Fiona had had no compunction about adding Rosemary’s wardrobe to her own.

  In fact she loved to wear her sister’s clothes, feeling that it somehow brought her nearer and that, when she was wearing one of Rosemary’s favourite gowns, she could almost talk to her as if she was in the room.

  Lord Ian had liked his wife to be very feminine and, because Rosemary was fair and blue-eyed like their daughter, he preferred her in white or in the soft blues which he told her made her look like love-in-a-mist.

  Fiona was thinking of her sister now as she buttoned down the front of the little velvet coat she wore over her attractive gown, which swirled out in a bustle behind her and was finished with a large bow of satin ribbon.r />
  Because she was suddenly conscious of her appearance, she thought that Mr. McKeith glanced at her a little apprehensively and she was sure that he was wondering what the Duke would say when he saw her.

  As the train began to slow down, Fiona said in a low voice,

  “Have you told His Grace that I am coming with Mary-Rose?”

  He hesitated before he spoke.

  Then she saw that his eyes were twinkling.

  “I am not going to admit that I was too cowardly to do so,” he replied, “but I have always found it wisest in life not to anticipate trouble.”

  “And that is what you are expecting?”

  “You know His Grace is expecting Mary-Rose to be accompanied by a nurse or a Governess – ”

  “Then you must explain to him that I am both,” Fiona pointed out quickly.

  He glanced at the elegant little hat trimmed with roses that she wore on her head and she knew, without his saying so that he was thinking she did not look in the least like a nurse or a Governess.

  ‘Whatever he may say,’ she thought to herself, ‘I know that he is afraid of the Duke and I expect everybody else is too.’

  Her chin went up a little as she thought that the Windhams, who, whatever their faults, had never been cowardly.

  “We are here! We are here!” Mary-Rose was crying, jumping up and down with excitement and clapping her hands.

  The train drew to a halt at the small station, which Fiona learnt had been built entirely to serve The Castle.

  Their private train had left the main line an hour or so earlier and had been moving through country that was wild and beautiful, which was called, Mr. McKeith had told her, the Border Country.

  Looking out of the window, Fiona thought of the battles that had raged to and fro across the Scottish and English border and how many men had died as the two countries opposed each other with a hatred that even now she was sure still smouldered in many hearts.

  Had not the old Duke, in his letter to his son, given as his first reason for refusing to permit the marriage that Rosemary was a Sassenach, the contemptuous term used by the Scots to describe the English?

  ‘To the present Duke, I suppose that too is a crime,’ she told herself.

  She thought that, if the Scots had hated the English, the English hated them no less.

  She remembered that Alnwick Castle, which guarded the English side of the border, had been surrendered to David, King of Scotland, in 1138.

  It was one of the dates she always remembered, having learnt it from her father, who had been in his own way just as fanatical an English patriot as the old Duke had been a Scottish one.

  It was annoying to remember that the Scottish Armies had been victorious at the Battle of the Standard and she suspected that their victory had been celebrated in Rannock Castle.

  For generation after generation the Armies had fought each other and not until now was there peace between the two countries, except in the hearts of men like the Duke of Strathrannock.

  The train came to a standstill and through the windows Fiona could see men, wearing kilts, waiting for them on the small platform.

  They all wore the green and blue Rannock tartan with a red line running through it, and on their heads were bonnets trimmed with blackcocks’ feathers.

  Mary-Rose slipped her hand into Fiona’s and she knew that the child was excited to the point where she could no longer speak.

  Mr. McKeith rose to his feet and, as they walked to the door of the compartment, Fiona said,

  “Perhaps you should go first. There seems to be a large number of people to meet us.”

  “They are mostly the servants,” Mr. McKeith replied, “but I suspect some of the Clansmen are too curious to wait to see Mary-Rose at The Castle.”

  He put out his hand to the child and suggested,

  “Come with me and meet some of the people who bear the same name as yourself, many of whom knew your father as a boy and loved him.”

  Mary-Rose, who was never shy, went with him.

  He stepped down onto the platform and lifted her in his arms.

  Then there was a shout of welcome from the waiting Scotsmen who crowded round to stare at Mary-Rose.

  Holding the child by the hand, Mr. McKeith introduced her to a number of the more elderly servants.

  “This is Donald,” Fiona heard him say, “Chief Ghillie to His Grace. He will tell you how your father caught his first salmon when he was the same age as you are now.”

  There were ghillies, keepers, foresters, stalkers and dozens of others. Mary-Rose shook them by the hand and some of the older men stared at her with what was suspiciously like tears in their eyes.

  Then they stepped into open carriages, which were waiting outside the station and were driven away over land that Fiona had to admit was very beautiful.

  There were large pinewoods, silver streams winding through the moorland and, although the heather was not yet purple, it was unmistakably a Scottish landscape.

  In the distance there were mountains, which were slightly indistinct owing to the mist that hung over them.

  Fiona wanted to ask Mr. McKeith their names so that later she could look them up on a map, but Mary-Rose was talking so excitedly about everything that she did not wish to interrupt the child.

  It was not surprising that the little girl was thrilled, for they passed through several small hamlets and the inhabitants, from the elderly to the children, were all lining the roadway to wave and cheer as their carriage appeared.

  To Fiona it seemed extraordinary that Mary-Rose could cause such excitement, but, when she looked enquiringly at Mr. McKeith, he explained,

  “We are on Rannock land and there will be no one who is unaware of who is arriving today. Lord Ian was very popular – I think everybody loved him.”

  Fiona pressed her lips together to prevent herself from making the sarcastic retort that rose to her mind.

  Then a minute or so later Mary-Rose gave a cry of excitement and Fiona realised that she was pointing ahead to The Castle, which was now in sight.

  She had expected it to be magnificent, but not as large and impressive as it actually was.

  Now she understood why it had dominated Ian’s childhood and indeed his whole life.

  The first Lord Rannock had begun to build The Castle in 1030 and had been succeeded by his son and his grandson, who spent the whole of their lives in war against the English.

  Perpetual warfare, Fiona had learnt, had by the year 1300 reduced the inhabitants of the Border Lands to a condition of misery, but the Scots were in the ascendant and Edward III of England led a large Army into the North to drive them back. The English went on winning until King David of Scotland was taken prisoner and they invaded Scotland, burning several towns, including Edinburgh, and laying waste to all the country they passed through.

  The Scots, led by a Rannock who desired to avenge their miseries, in their turn devastated Northumberland and the warfare on the border continued.

  Fiona knew that The Castle had been a place of refuge to all who had lived in the surrounding countryside.

  She had heard Mr. McKeith telling Mary-Rose that there were always scouts on duty all along the border and, whenever they saw an English Army or a foraging party approaching, they lit a succession of beacons.

  These warned the Rannocks to hurry, with their families, their cattle and all other livestock into the shelter of The Castle.

  As they drew nearer to it, Fiona could see the huge stone wall that encircled it and she knew how protective and comforting it must have seemed to those to whom it gave sanctuary.

  At intervals along the wall, which was extremely high, stood towers that must have concealed hundreds of soldiers who could shoot from the narrow, arrow-slit windows where their enemies were unable to hurt them.

  Originally The Castle had been entirely surrounded by a deep moat, but now, Mr. McKeith told Fiona, all that was left of it lay below the North wall.

  “We will ent
er by the middle gateway,” Mr McKeith proposed as they drew nearer still. “It’s the nearest point of entry to the part of The Castle where the Duke lives.”

  “It is very very big!” Mary-Rose cried.

  “As I told you, it had need to be,” Mr. McKeith replied.

  They passed through the gateway and could see that a large expanse of green and well-tended ground lay inside the high walls.

  “When the people were sheltered in here,” he went on, speaking to Mary-Rose, “they knew there were soldiers to protect them and so they would camp with their cattle on the ground which is now covered with grass.”

  Mary-Rose looked round her excitedly as Mr. McKeith pointed out the Clock Tower, the Falconer’s Tower, the Postern Tower and the Constable’s Tower.

  Now they were within the walls and driving towards The Castle itself, which stood in the centre, its crenelated parapets surmounted by lead statues.

  They passed through another gateway between two high towers and drew up beside a flight of steps at the top of which was a huge oak-studded door.

  For their approach a red carpet had been laid down the steps and on each side of it there stood servants dressed in their kilts and wearing coats emblazoned with crested silver buttons.

  An impressive Major Domo stood at the top of the steps and, as Mr. McKeith led Mary-Rose up them, he said in stentorian tones,

  “Welcome back, sir, and welcome to you, Miss Mary-Rose! ’Tis glad we all be to see you!”

  “Thank you very much,” Mary-Rose said, holding out her hand.

  He was obviously touched by the gesture and took it, bending his head low, as if in reverence.

  Then, still leading Mary-Rose, Mr. McKeith started to climb up the wide stone staircase, which was hung with antlers’ horns and tattered flags that had once been captured in battle.

  Also on the walls, making a magnificent pattern over the chimneypiece, were the shields and claymores that had been used in the past.

  There was so much to look at that Fiona wanted to stop and stare, but submissively she followed Mr. McKeith and Mary-Rose, feeling that because she was English she had been quickly relegated to her proper place.