The Highland Countess Page 5

  Morag had replied to all his conversational sallies with “yes” and “no” and “really,” her eyes all the time fixed on her plate.

  Wine loosened Toby’s tongue, and despite his better nature, he at last could not help asking, “How did you come to meet your husband?”

  “My father introduced us,” said Morag, her eyes flying upward to meet his.

  “He is somewhat older than you,” pursued Toby gently. “Forgive me if I seem overfamiliar, Lady Murr, but I cannot help thinking you lead a very dull life. Have you no visitors?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Morag. “My lord’s brother, Lord Arthur Fleming, and his wife, Lady Phyllis, come to call.”

  He refilled her glass. “Ah, that is then company for you. Is Lady Phyllis of your age?”

  Morag drained her glass nervously in one gulp.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes, she is of my age.”

  “No? Do you not like her?”

  “I would like her well enough,” said Morag, feeling suddenly lighthearted with the effects of the wine, “but she does not like me. She criticizes my face and dress whenever we meet.”

  “You are very beautiful,” said Toby, ignoring the warning bells in his head. “Many women would be jealous of you.”

  “You are kind, sir,” replied Morag. “But that is not the case with Lady Phyllis.” She gave a little laugh. “She is a soor-faced coo.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Oh, I must translate for you. That is what my husband calls her—it means a sour-faced cow. She is in fact very beautiful and her cheeks are very round—like a doll’s.”

  “That fashion is leaving us slowly,” smiled Lord Toby. “Not many women wear wax pads in their cheeks nowadays.”

  “Wax pads!” said Morag, unconsciously putting her elbows on the table and savoring her first gossip. “Are there many such artifices?”

  “Very many. False everything, I think,” said Toby, remembering a disastrous affair with a dashing widow who had removed everything before bed leaving little left but a rag, a bone and a hank of hair. Morag thought of the earl and his corsets and false calves and false hair and giggled.

  “You must tell me the joke,” he teased her.

  “I cannot,” said Morag with an adorable blush.

  “You are not thinking of yourself,” he cried in mock horror. “Do not tell me those charms I see before me are unreal!”

  “No, no,” cried Morag, a little tipsily. They were seated quite close together at the small dining table. She leaned toward him, holding out that tantalizing lock of hair. “See, it is all my own.”

  He twirled the silken lock round one long finger. Something was happening to his breathing. He had drunk too much, too quickly. He abruptly threw caution to the winds.

  “Ah, that I had the right to take inventory of the rest,” he said, holding her blue eyes trapped in his green gaze.

  Morag put out her hand to extract the lock of hair from his. He caught her hand and, turning it over, pressed a burning kiss against her wrist.

  “I should leave,” he said quietly. “You fascinate me… Morag.”

  Morag thought of the days to come, the blank, long empty, loveless days stretching out to the grave.

  “Don’t go,” she said in a whisper.

  He rose to his feet and pulled her to hers. He drew her slowly to him and folded his arms about her and she laid her head against the rough sleeve of his jacket. Her body seemed to be on fire. She was trembling. They were both trembling.

  He raised her chin and bent his mouth to hers, moving his lips against her own, pressing closer and deeper while Murr Castle whirled around and around and disappeared, leaving them stranded and alone on an empty plain of passion.

  It was fortunate for both their reputations that the servant carrying in the pudding was clumsy. He fumbled and rattled at the door before he succeeded in getting it open. By the time he entered, both were at their places at the table, breathing heavily.

  “Och, yis havnae touched a bite,” said the servant, Hamish, with true Scottish democracy. “Well, naithin’s lost what a pig’ll eat. That’ll go right fine in the servants’ hall. Was yis wantin’ puddin’?”

  Both shook their heads. “We will retire to the drawing room,” said Lord Toby, finding his voice. He rose and held out his arm. Hamish looked quickly at them both and clattered the dishes energetically. He was a large hairy Highlander who had been in the earl’s service for the past ten years.

  Lord Toby’s one thought was to slam and lock the door of the drawing room and take Morag in his arms. Morag’s one thought was to let him do just that. Hamish’s new-sprung thought was to stop the couple doing anything at all.

  To Lord Toby’s amazement, Hamish shouldered his way after them into the drawing room. “Whit a puir wee bit of a fire,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll hae that fixed in a trice.”

  But he took a painfully long time about it, raking out the ash, placing logs on one by one.

  Lord Toby drew Morag aside. “I shall come to your room later. I must see you. We cannot talk with this fellow here. Please wait for me,” he whispered, and dizzy with love and wine, Morag nodded.

  Lord Toby then loudly and clearly said he was going to make an early night of it and tried not to be irritated at the relief on the servant’s face.

  He held the door open for Morag, whispering very quietly as she passed him, “Later. Much later. When all are abed.”

  Morag paced her room for the next hour. What on earth was she doing? Was it so wrong to snatch just one little bit of happiness?

  And then she heard the earl cry out, “Morag!” in a great wail of anguish. She hurried to his room.

  He was propped up against the pillows, his face swollen and feverish.

  “Oh, Morag, Morag!” he cried. “I cannae thole the pain o’ this tooth any longer. I’ve been trying tae howk it out masell but I cannae.”

  “Perhaps one of the servants…” began Morag, moving close to the bed.

  “Not them. I’m a coward when it come tae my teeth and it disnae do tae let the servants see it. Ye’ll need tae do it for me, Morag.”

  He waved a small silver pair of pincers at her.

  “I can’t,” said Morag, backing away.

  “Come along, lassie. I’ll die o’ the pain.” Morag thought of Lord Toby. Even now he might be approaching her room. She owed the earl something—even if it was only pulling a tooth.

  She approached the bed again and leaned over him. “Very well,” she said, taking up the pincers. “Which one?”

  “Is un,” said the earl, opening his mouth wide and pointing feverishly. Morag stared into the pit of decay in dismay. Which one of all these rotting teeth did he mean?

  “Is un,” gabbled the earl again, laying his finger on a crumbling tombstone at the front.

  Morag knelt on the bed beside him and cautiously put the pincers round the aching tooth. The earl braced himself against the pillows. Morag shut her eyes and pulled and pulled and pulled. Finally she gave one tremendous wrench and somersaulted back onto the floor with the pincers, holding the decayed tooth clutched triumphantly in one hand.

  The earl gave a great groan of relief. “Och, Morag, my love, my precious,” he cried. “Naebody could ha’ done that like you.” And Morag laughed with pleasure at being able to help him.

  Lord Toby had gone to Morag’s room and had found it empty. He stood in the corridor, frowning. She couldn’t be in her husband’s room. Could she?

  And then he heard the noises from the earl’s room. Drawn by some awful fascination, he moved slowly forward and listened. He heard the creaking of the bed, the grunts of exertion and the earl’s wild groans culminating in a great shout of relief. Then he heard the earl’s shout, “Och, Morag, my love, my precious. Naebody could ha’ done that like you.” And then he heard Morag’s laugh.

  Lord Toby felt the bile rising in his throat. Strumpet! Morag was no innocent but a devilish woman who could drive him to the point o
f madness and then bed with her aged husband—that obscene bag of wind—as if nothing had happened. He remembered the earl’s bawdy praise of his wife in Edinburgh and felt sick to his soul.

  In vain did Morag wait out the rest of the night. As a livid dawn rose over the snow-clad landscape, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

  She awoke late and to new hope. Of course, he had not come to her bedchamber. He was a gentleman, after all. She loved him the more for it. But today was a new day and she would see him again.

  Despite the freezing chill of the castle and an itching in her toes which presaged chilblains, she dressed herself in her new muslin gown and ran lightly down the stairs.

  The rooms were cold, stale and deserted. Hamish was hunched over the drawing room fire as if he had been there all night.

  “Good day, my leddy,” he said, turning round. “That young lord has left. Now I told him, I told him straight, he’d be as dead as a doornail before he ever saw Perth—riding out in this weather. Och, the English are all mad.”

  “Did he leave a message?” asked Morag faintly.

  “Yes, a wee note. I have it here. It’s for my lord.”

  Morag tore open the letter, her eyes darting along the few lines.

  Nothing. Nothing for her. Only a chilly, formal note thanking the earl for his hospitality.

  Gone.

  She turned and ran from the room, ran to the top of the castle, scarcely feeling the bite of the icy wind cutting through the thin muslin of her dress as she balanced on the leads and gazed frantically over the countryside.

  There was a little black dot moving slowly in the distance.

  “Toby!” she screamed. “Toby! T… o… b… y!”

  But the black dot became a speck and then was swallowed up in the cold, staring whiteness of the landscape.

  “Toby,” she sobbed, clutching the stone battlements and feeling her heart break.

  There was a shuffling, lumbering, wheezing step on the tower stairs and then the earl was beside her. He gently prised her fingers from the battlements, mopping at her tear-streaked face with the tail of his coat, muttering half-forgotten phrases, the kind you use to a hurt child.

  “There, there. You come with me. We’ll get cozy over the teacups and we’ll forget about the whole thing. I could see what was in the wind. But we’ll say nae mair. Come, come. Come with old Roderick. Roderick’ll tak’ care of ye.”

  “Yes, Roderick,” said Morag brokenly, clinging to him. And even in the depths of her misery, she realized that she had never spoken the earl’s Christian name until that moment.

  Chapter Five

  By the end of another month, Lord Toby was nothing more than a dragging, shameful ache in Morag’s heart. She had nearly broken her marriage vows and all because of some callow, philandering, English buck who had led her on. No doubt in the clear light of dawn he had been thoroughly shocked at her wanton behavior. She could only, bitterly, hope he was shocked at his own.

  God was issuing just punishment, thought Morag, the only God she knew being a Calvinistic one, incapable of charity or mercy and delighting in visiting terrible punishments on the sinner.

  She felt debased. Her books were left unopened. Miss Simpson had been right. Treacherous literature had seduced her mind and tempted her from the proper path.

  She thought the earl had regretted his forgiving kindness to her because he seemed to be sunk in gloomy meditation most of the time, occasionally throwing her furtive, sly looks from under lowering brows.

  A brief thaw made the roads passable again bringing Lord Arthur and Lady Phyllis. Lord Arthur had no need of money that day and so was on his worst behavior, managing to get under his brother’s thick hide. Lady Phyllis simpered and tittered and derided and was particularly spiteful to the earl’s housekeeper, Mrs. Tallant. Now although the earl at times cursed and berated his servants, he was very fond of them, and Lady Phyllis’s treatment of his housekeeper riled him so badly that Morag feared he might have a seizure.

  After the unwelcome couple had left and Morag was about to retire for the night, the earl begged her to stay with him. He had something serious to talk about.

  “Come and sit by me, Morag,” he said, indicating the footstool at his feet. He waited until she was settled and then, stroking her glistening hair with his heavy hand, began to speak.

  “Fionna’s with child. And it’s mine. No, stay. Hear me out. I love the girl but, auld rip that I am, I at least know what’s due tae my name. I cannae marry her. Quietly, now. Don’t look sae shocked. I’ve fathered mair bastards than you’ve had hot meat. She’ll no’ suffer. I’ll marry her off. But that brither o’ mine. I’ve never cared much, Morag, about him inheriting but I care now. Deil tak’ him! He’s a bad landlord and a bad master and you’d not see a penny, Morag.

  “So, I’m asking ye a favor, lassie. I want ye tae claim the child as your own.”

  “It’s impossible,” cried Morag. “Everyone would know.”

  “Listen, wheesht. Only Mrs. Tallant’ll know apart from Fionna hersell and she disnae want the babe. Ye could pad yer gowns and we could tell the world you are expecting an heir. That way everbody’s future would be safe.”

  “But how…?”

  “Haud yer wheesht. Listen! When the bairn’s near due, we leave for Edinburgh, you, me, Fionna and Mrs. Tallant. Mrs. Tallant has a’ the skill o’ a midwife. Fionna stays in Edinburgh. We return wi’ the babe.”

  Morag twisted full round and looked up into his face. “It is a great deal to ask of me,” she cried.

  “Oh, aye?” said the earl dryly. “And if thon birkie, Freemantle, had had his way… aye, what then? Ye expect a lot frae me, Morag. Give a little!”

  Morag’s already sore conscience was struck another blow. She had not been a good wife. She did not know that her husband’s appetites could only be roused by the lower class and had long assumed his lack of success with her was because of her own lack of love. The least she could do was provide him with an heir—albeit by proxy.

  She rose and walked to the window, staring out at the wild black night. Somewhere out there were wives and husbands, ordinary families who lived their placid, respectable lives unplagued by bastards or passion. “Sorry for yourself?” sneered her ever active conscience. “You got off lightly.”

  “Very well,” she said, swinging round. “I will do it.”

  “Good lass,” said the earl. “We’ll see my man o’ business in Edinburgh at the same time and turn the whole thing ower tae him. I hae a lot of property and a fine house in London, too. I’ll see Arthur well enough but you’ll have the rest in keeping for the bairn until he’s twenty-one. I’ll appoint a steward tae look after the lands so ye won’t be bothered wi’ the managing o’ the estates. I ken a fine fellow…”

  “You sound as if you don’t expect to live long,” said Morag as lightly as she could.

  “I don’t think I will,” said the earl seriously. “My guts are fair rotted. Aye, we’ve made a sorry mess o’ things, Morag. Now, then, ye havnae read me anything in a while. What aboot a wee story. I like that cheil Roderick Random fine—me being Roderick as well.”

  He settled back in his chair with a smile of anticipation as Morag went to fetch the volume. Morag envied him his detachment. He had dealt with the problem and forgotten it already.

  Morag read on, her mind busy with preparations. Women no longer wore pads, a fashion of years before where a pad of horse hair was worn under the front of the dress to simulate a look of pregnancy, but the shops of Perth were old-fashioned enough and would surely still have some in stock.

  She broke off the narrative and looked up. “Do you never use the house in London, Roderick?”

  “Eh, what’s that? No, not these many years. I let it out for the Season, ye ken. It’s in Albemarle Street. I havnae seen it this twenty year.”

  Morag wrenched her sinful mind away from thoughts of traveling to London, living in the house, and inviting over that treacherous, fickle Lord Toby. It was
madness. He would never hurt her again. She would never see him again.

  Winter reluctantly gave way to a chilly spring. Morag placed increasingly larger pads under her gowns and accepted the frigid compliments of Lady Phyllis, who quite patently hoped that this usurper would be stillborn.

  At last, the savage gales and driving wind left the countryside smiling under a pale sun. When the first leaves were springing out from the skeletal branches, Morag, the earl, Fionna and Mrs. Tallant took the road to Edinburgh. Hamish had been let into the plot, the earl, whose health had been rapidly worsening, needing at least one man to help him on the journey.

  The roads were still bad and they had to move at a snail’s pace on horseback because of Fionna’s delicate condition. They were still a good way from Edinburgh when Fionna’s pains began.

  “Bear up,” said the earl. “We’re only a mile from old Cosmo’s place. Bear up, Fionna.” Morag remembered Cosmo, Laird of Glenaquer, as one of the men in the High Street when Lord Toby had introduced himself to the earl.

  “It’s nae use,” said Mrs. Tallant grimly. “Some things’ll no wait.”

  And so it was that the future tenth Earl of Murr was born in a field under a smiling spring sky, a drift of hawthorn blossom blowing across his face and causing Mrs. Tallant to cry to heaven for forgiveness. “It’s the fairy flower,” she moaned. “The wean is cursed.”

  Ever practical, the earl slapped her hysterics quiet and sent Hamish off to his friend Cosmo with a frantic message, begging for a carriage, a wet nurse, and a body of strong men. Fionna lay white and exhausted, her face the color of the drifting hawthorn blossom. Morag held the squalling, raging, hungry baby against her useless breasts and prayed blindly and savagely for help, tears pouring down her face.

  But by the time Cosmo arrived at the head of a body of men and with a traveling carriage bearing a wet nurse, Fionna was dead, all traces of her ordeal having been washed away by the efficient Mrs. Tallant. Great sobs racked the earl’s body as Cosmo closed Fionna’s eyes and gruffly ordered the servants out of earshot. The wet nurse took the baby away to the comfort of the carriage and Morag wrapped her arms round her husband, trying to find words of comfort.