The Secret of the Glen Page 6

  She knew only too well that the Duke was aware of what she wanted to say and had no intention of letting her say it.

  Once again he had brushed her aside and she knew it was impossible for her to go on speaking of the evicted people, however much she wished to do so.

  Talking of the Vikings, explaining how they had brought their long boats up the river, the Duke would have been extremely interesting, Leona thought, if she had not all the time been conscious of the misery and unhappiness she had seen up the Glen.

  She could not help thinking what a very long time it would take the women to walk all the way down to the sea carrying their children.

  They might use perhaps a small cart for their belongings, but they would also have to drive what animals they possessed in front of them.

  But what could she say? How could she help them?

  She felt helpless as the Duke, having finished speaking of the Vikings, made her descend the stone steps in front of him so that he could close the door of the tower.

  There were other sights for her to see in The Castle and, because they had luncheoned late, it was teatime long before Leona expected it.

  The Duke took her into another sitting room that was smaller and in a way more comfortable than the one he habitually sat in.

  Here his sister and the elderly cousins were waiting to give Leona tea and they sat round a table in the centre of the room on which was spread all the fascinating Scottish delicacies her mother had described to her so often.

  There were griddlecakes, baps, scones, bannocks, currant bread, ginger cake, shortbread and many other items of which Leona did not know the names.

  “You are eating very little,” the Duke’s sister said to her. “You will have to get used to the large meals we all enjoy in Scotland. I think perhaps it’s the fresh air that gives us such large appetites.”

  “I am sure it is,” Leona answered.

  At the same time she wondered if she would not get very fat if she ate as much as everyone else seemed ready to do.

  “I expect you would like to rest before dinner,” the Duke’s sister said when tea was finished.

  “I would like to write a letter,” Leona answered.

  “You will find a writing table in your bedroom,” she was told, “and, if there is anything you want, ask Mrs. McKenzie to procure it for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Leona curtseyed politely to the others and went from the room.

  She had a little difficulty in closing the door and, as she was doing so, she heard the Duke’s sister say,

  “A very polite and charming young girl. I can understand why my brother was so pleased to have her here.”

  “Yes, she is delightful!” another lady remarked, “and how is Euan?”

  “Very much the same,” the Duke’s sister replied. “But don’t mention him to His Grace.”

  “No, of course not,” was the reply. “I have been very careful not to do so after you warned me – ”

  Leona closed the door.

  She wondered who Euan was. Then, as she walked along the corridor towards her bedroom, she knew that she had seen the name somewhere and remembered.

  It had been written at the end of the family tree hanging in the Chief’s Room, which the Duke had shown her proudly.

  It had in fact been extremely impressive, depicting the MacArdns all down the centuries branching out and marrying into the distinguished families of Scotland.

  Then first the Earldom, then the Dukedom, descending from father to son was chronicled until at the end there came the name ‘Euan’.

  Leona knew that he was the Marquis of Ardn, the title which was borne by the Duke’s first born son, and in this case, only son.

  Now she wondered what was wrong with him and if he was ill why his father should not be willing to talk about him.

  It seemed a mystery and she knew only too well how brusquely the Duke could set on one side a subject he did not wish to discuss.

  ‘I shall find out about it in time,’ she determined.

  Walking into her bedroom she found that, although she had not noticed it before, there was a writing table in front of one of the windows.

  She sat down and, taking a sheet of heavy parchment, put it down on the blotter and dipped a quill in the ink.

  “Dear Lord Strathcairn,” she began.

  Only to write his name was to bring him back vividly to her mind – his clear-cut features, his air of authority that was very unlike the overpowering manner of the Duke and yet which told her that he was a leader, a man used to command.

  She could recall the strange feeling that had been hers when they had looked into each other’s eyes. It had made her feel a little breathless and yet at the same time it had been exciting.

  He had thought her beautiful and he had said he was always at her service.

  She had an irresistible longing to see him and to talk to him again.

  ‘Somehow I will get to Cairn Castle,’ she decided and wondered if she dare ask the Duke to send her there in a carriage.

  She had the inescapable feeling that he would refuse, but there was no reason why he should. After all, she was not bound by their feuds and disagreements of the past.

  Then she asked herself if the feud really was a part of the past. Perhaps it was very much of the present and involved the Clearances?

  She wished that Lord Strathcairn had confided in her. Why had he not told her what to expect? And why, she asked herself now, had he suddenly seemed cold and withdrawn from her when she had asked him quite simple questions?

  ‘Everything in Scotland seems so mysterious,’ Leona thought and she wondered again why the Duke’s guests could not speak to him about his son.

  The sheet of writing paper was waiting in front of her and she carefully wrote,

  “Thank you so very much for your kindness to me, firstly for the manner in which you saved me after the accident and secondly for showing me my first glimpse of the Scotland my mother loved. It was everything I had imagined – only even more marvellous.

  I shall always remember the beauty of your loch and the music of the pipes. It is difficult to put into words, but as soon as I heard them, I felt that I belonged and that Scotland called to my Scottish blood.

  I would like very much to meet your Lordship again and I hope it will be possible. If I cannot come to you by carriage, perhaps one day I will be able to ride over the boundary. In the meantime, my Lord, thank you once again for so much that I cannot express in words.

  It was all very wonderful for me.

  I remain, yours respectfully, Leona Grenville.”

  She read the letter through several times and felt that somehow it expressed very inadequately all that she felt in her heart. Then she addressed it and rang the bell.

  The maid, Maggy, appeared after a few minutes.

  “Ye rang, miss?”

  “Yes, Maggy. I want this letter to go to the post, but I don’t know how I should send it.”

  “All the letters are placed on the table in the hall, miss.” “Then would you be kind enough to place it there for me, Maggy?”

  “Aye, I will, miss.”

  The maid took the letter in her hand and then asked,

  “Is there anythin’ else, miss?”

  “I think I would like to rest,” Leona answered. “When you have put the letter ready for the post, perhaps you would come back and undo my gown.”

  “I’ll do that, miss.”

  The maid disappeared and Leona saw that there was a bookcase in one corner of the room.

  She selected a book that looked interesting and, when Maggy returned to help her out of her gown, she lay on her bed covered by a warm quilt and opened the book.

  She was not really tired, but she felt in some way that the Duke’s sister and the other ladies expected her to retire, perhaps so that they would not be put to the necessity of entertaining her.

  ‘I am quite happy on my own,’ Leona thought and opened her boo
k.

  She did not however read it.

  Instead she found herself wondering what Lord Strathcairn would think when he received her letter.

  Had she been profuse enough in her thanks? Would he understand how very grateful she was for the kindness he had shown her?

  ‘I must see him again! I must!’ Leona murmured to herself.

  He had said that Cairn Castle was only three miles over the moors.

  Perhaps she was being conceited – she might be quite wrong – but she had the feeling that possibly he would ride near the Cairn, his boundary, hoping he might see her.

  ‘If only I could have stayed a little longer,’ Leona thought.

  Then she told herself that she was being very ungrateful.

  The Duke had been overwhelmingly kind. He had given her these beautiful gowns and was going out of his way to make himself pleasant.

  He had even spent so much time taking her round The Castle and up to the tower.

  ‘Mama would be very thrilled to know that I was here,’ Leona told herself.

  She had seen several portraits of the Duchess while going round The Castle. She had an expression of kindliness and compassion that somehow reminded her of her mother. Leona could not help wishing that the Duchess was still alive. ‘We could have talked of Mama,’ she thought.

  She had a sudden longing for her mother that was almost a physical ache.

  She wanted to tell her about Lord Strathcairn, she wanted to ask her advice about the evictions and she wanted her to reassure her that there was nothing frightening about The Castle.

  ‘I am just being over-imaginative,’ Leona told herself, ‘but there is something wrong here – I know there is!’

  She had often thought that her mother was fey and Mrs. Grenville had admitted that sometimes she did know with an inner conviction things that were not known to other people.

  Then she would laugh to herself.

  “Superstition is woven into the history of the MacDonalds,” she would say. “When they lived in Glencoe, they believed in moon-struck men who suddenly acquired lunatic powers and in the great black cats that gathered to play mischief on All Hallows Eve.”

  Leona had been entranced.

  “Tell me more, Mama!”

  Her mother had laughed.

  “The MacDonalds of those days believed in malevolent goblins in the hills and by the willow and oak at Achnacore there were kindly fairies.”

  “I would love to see one!” Leona exclaimed.

  “But when disaster was coming,” her mother went on, “the Big Man walked at night by Ballachulish, the cows broke from the pasture and ran up the brae bellowing mournfully and the voices of men about to die were heard crying in the darkness outside even though their bodies were still sitting by the fire!”

  Leona had shivered, but she would press her mother to go on telling her of the superstitions the MacDonalds believed in.

  “There were men and women with the ‘Evil Eye’,” Mrs. Grenville related, “and there were those who could see through earth and space and tell what was happening at that very moment beyond the mountains.”

  “And there were those who told fortunes?” Leona asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it again.

  “There was an Oracle that could boil mutton from a shoulder blade and read the future in the markings of the clean bone.”

  “That is more exciting than the way the gypsies tell it with cards!”

  “It was more truthful,” Mrs. Grenville admitted, “but all believed in the ‘Second Sight’, although it was wiser not to ask about the future and no good came of it.”

  ‘I have no ‘Second Sight’,’ Leona thought now, ‘but perhaps because I am half Scottish I am more sensitive to atmosphere than other people.’

  Then she laughed at herself.

  ‘Or maybe it’s just that I have a more vivid imagination!’

  And yet she had known when Lord Strathcairn had held her in his arms that she could trust him and he would protect her from harm.

  It had been, when she thought of it, a strange and very unlikely situation for a young girl to find herself staying alone at a castle with a young man. Yet never for one moment had she been apprehensive or ill at ease.

  But while she had felt like that at Cairn Castle, here at Ardness there was something frightening to which she could put no name, but which nevertheless was there.

  Resolutely, she forced herself to try to read her book.

  Instead she found herself listening to a silence that was broken only by the song of the birds outside the windows and, looking round the bedroom, which, while large and luxurious, was quite unexceptional.

  ‘If only Mama were here,’ she sighed again and thought that her mother would know what was troubling her.

  Her fears, however, were forgotten when Mrs. McKenzie and the maids filled a bath for her and, after she had bathed, dressed her in one of her new evening gowns.

  It was the loveliest gown Leona had ever possessed.

  The huge crinoline swung out from her small waist and she looked with delight at the frilled skirt and the bertha embroidered with diamante that caught below her naked shoulders with tiny bunches of rosebuds.

  “Ye look real fine!’ Mrs. McKenzie exclaimed. “I’m sure ye should be a-goin’ to a ball, not just to dinner with a lot of auld folk.”

  “It’s the most beautiful gown I could ever imagine,” Leona cried.

  “His Grace’ll be real glad it pleases ye.”

  Leona walked a little self-consciously along the corridor, glancing at herself in the mirrors as she passed them.

  She tried not to wish that Lord Strathcairn could see her as she was dressed now, rather than in the plain gown she had worn when she dined with him the previous evening.

  She reached the top of the stairs and was just about to enter the Duke’s Room, where Mrs. McKenzie had told her the guests were to assemble before dinner, when she heard voices in the entrance hall below.

  She looked over the stone balustrade and saw the Duke, resplendent in his evening kilt, talking with the Major Domo who had escorted her up the stairs on her arrival that morning.

  The Major Domo was showing the Duke something.

  Leona was just about to turn away in case they should think that she was prying, when she realised that what the man had in his hand was her letter that she had written to Lord Straithcairn.

  They were discussing it, but because they were speaking in Gaelic, Leona, whose knowledge of the language was limited, could not understand what they were saying.

  But then as she waited, thinking it impertinence that the Duke should be shown her private letter, she saw His Grace take it from the Major Domo, walk across the hall and throw it onto the fire burning in the big open fireplace.

  For a moment she was too astonished to move or even to be certain that what she had seen had in fact happened.

  But, as the flames leapt to destroy the letter, she saw the Duke turn towards the staircase and, as if instinctively she wished to protect herself, Leona moved.

  Silently and swiftly she hurried across the carpeted floor to enter the Duke’s sitting room before he himself reached the turn of the staircase.

  She was trembling with anger, but at the same time it was tempered with a fear that had lain deep down inside her ever since she first saw Ardness Castle.

  She knew now what that fear was – a fear of not being able to escape, of being, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner.

  Trying to compose herself, she went to the window to stand looking out towards the sea.

  “You are early!” she heard the Duke say behind her. “Yes, indeed, Your Grace.”

  With an effort she moved towards him to say,

  “I am wearing another of the beautiful gowns you have given me. I don’t know how to thank you adequately. I have never before possessed anything so elegant.”

  “I am glad it pleases you,” the Duke said, “and it is certainly very becoming, but I thin
k it needs one small addition.”

  “What is that?” Leona asked.

  He drew something from the pocket of his evening jacket and she saw that it was a small velvet box.

  She took it from him automatically, her eyes worried. “It is a present. I hope you will like it.”

  He spoke reassuringly, as if he spoke to a nervous child. Leona opened the box.

  Inside was a pearl necklace, small but exquisite, the perfect ornament for a young girl.

  “But I – cannot accept – this!” she exclaimed.

  “It belonged to my wife,” the Duke said, “and, as she was so fond of your mother, I feel that she would wish you to have it.”

  “It is – too kind, I – don’t know what to – say,” Leona stammered.

  The Duke smiled and took the pearl necklace from the case.

  “Let me put it round your neck.”

  As she turned her back on him obediently and bent her head, he fastened the clasp.

  “Look at yourself in the mirror over there,” he suggested.

  She did as she was told and saw that he had been right in thinking that it was the one addition necessary to make her appearance perfect.

  The off-the-shoulder bertha revealed the whiteness of her skin, but now her softly rounded neck was encircled with the translucence of the pearls, they gave her a touch of sophistication she had not had before.

  “Thank you – thank you again!” Leona cried. “But I don’t know why you should be so – kind to me.”

  “There are plenty of reasons I could give you,” the Duke answered, “but let me say for the moment that I want you to find happiness here at Ardness Castle.”

  “It would be difficult not to be happy in such circumstances,” Leona answered.

  But even while her lips spoke the words, her brain was asking questions to which she could find no answer.

  Why had the Duke burnt her letter? Why was no one allowed to mention his son, Euan? And why, appearing to be so kindly, should he order such cruelties as the evictions to be perpetrated?

  Once again there was no chance of her speaking of such subjects.

  There were many more people for dinner than there had been for luncheon.