A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  He grinned. “Very hard, indeed. And now I board the Flying Scotsman at York and discover, to my great astonishment, that my own dear Miss Truelove waits for me, prim and lovely as ever, inside a snug first-class compartment right next to the dining car. Like Christmas in August.”

  “I wasn’t waiting for you at all, and if this meeting is a coincidence, then I’m the Queen of Morocco.”

  “I might possibly have had some inside knowledge.”

  “From the duke?”

  “The thing is, I’m supposed to be up in Perth at this bloody shooting party of Thurso’s, except I was unavoidably delayed—”

  “No doubt.”

  “All in the line of duty, Truelove. Anyway, I wired Thurso yesterday to invite myself back in, and apparently Max caught wind of it and wired me, like the good chap he is, to let me know what a charming coincidence was headed my way.” He examined his fingernails. “Perhaps I moved my plans forward a day or two.”

  “I’m sorry to have occasioned the trouble, since there’s nothing to be gained from it.”

  “Nothing, Truelove? I don’t know about you, but I call an hour or two of privacy in a first-class Pullman coach with the object of one’s affections a very satisfactory achievement indeed. Ah, now you’re smiling, aren’t you? At last. I do like your smiles, my dear. You offer them so rarely.”

  “A momentary lapse. I ought to call the conductor and have you tossed out. His Grace reserved the entire compartment for my privacy.”

  “Wise fellow. One never knows what sort of scoundrel might gain entrance into one’s compartment. Strike up a conversation and God knows what else.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And generous of him, too. Shows a proper regard for the comfort of his loyal retainers.”

  “I’m not his retainer at all. The duke has a new private secretary, who performs those duties admirably.”

  “But you’re running this infernal institution of his—”

  “The institute is independent of the duke’s estate.”

  “He’s paid for it all, however. And you can’t deny the fact that you continue to live under Max’s roof, despite having resigned your position in his household.”

  Somewhere in the course of this exchange, Silverton’s voice lost its jocular tone. His smile disappeared, replaced by a stiff, intent arrangement of his gorgeous features, and though he kept one tweed leg crossed negligently over the other, the hanging foot gave off a series of twitches.

  I wrapped one hand around the end of the leather portfolio at my side. “Are you attempting to insinuate some sort of impropriety, your lordship? I should very much like you to make yourself clear.”

  “Impropriety? Between you and Max? The two most upright, honorable souls across the length and breadth of jolly England? Perish.” He lowered his palm to the seat beside him and leaned forward an inch or two. “But there is talk, Truelove.”

  “Talk? Talk about me?”

  “My dear, even you can’t possibly imagine that our little expedition last spring went without popular remark. He is the new Duke of Olympia, after all. Bears the unfortunate honor of being the finest matrimonial catch of the decade. The entire nation is on tenterhooks for every detail about him, and particularly the feminine company he keeps. Surely you’ve noticed.”

  I frowned. “But nobody can possibly think he means to marry me.”

  “Oh, of course not. They think you’re his mistress.”

  “Good God.”

  “Absurd, isn’t it?” Silverton turned his head to the countryside passing beyond the bespattered window. “All you’ve done is return triumphantly from the Mediterranean in his company, aboard his private yacht—”

  “Confined to my cabin with seasickness.”

  “—resign your position as his personal secretary to take up directorship of his personal institution—”

  “My capacity at the Haywood Institute is entirely professional.”

  “—and take up residence in a handsome suite in his house in Belgrave Square—”

  “The suite I have occupied for the past six years, as secretary for the late duke. This is outrageous.”

  “Oh, bottle your outrage, my love. I’m only telling you what people are saying. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.” He paused. “Is it true you’re helping him find a wife?”

  “He has asked my advice on the matter, and I have given it.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. I can just about picture the scene. Lists of suitable candidates, crackling fire, a nice pot of tea between you.”

  I suppose I must have blushed, because the smile returned to Silverton’s face. “Well, then,” he said, “any inside word for an old friend? The future of the peerage is at stake, after all. To say nothing of my standing in the wagering book at my club.”

  “I am not going to abet you in any sort of wagering, your lordship.”

  “Dash it, Truelove. You’re no use at all. Well, no matter. If I had any dosh to spare, I’d place it on the head of that charming daughter of Thurso’s.”

  “Hmhm.”

  “Ha! I’ve guessed it, haven’t I? Poor Truelove. Don’t feel too confounded. The whole show was blindingly obvious. For one thing, Max might be a capable shot, but he’s hardly enthusiastic enough to trudge all the way to a drafty castle in the far north of Scotland without some sort of additional attraction. And she’s a lovely girl, that Lady Annis. Quite exceptionally pretty. Have you met her?”

  “Once, a few years ago. There was a house party at Blenheim. She came with her father.”

  “Ah, you see? Charming girl, eh? Beautiful as the dawn, give or take an hour or two.”

  “If that’s the case, I wonder you didn’t seek her hand yourself.”

  “And who’s to say I didn’t?”

  “Because I find it difficult to believe that her ladyship would have refused a coronet so lustrous as yours.”

  Lord Silverton folded his arms and gazed at me. His body was so long, he sat at an angle in his seat, and his legs stretched diagonally across the compartment, careful not to crowd mine aside. Still, our knees touched from time to time as the train swayed along the line. The light sometimes reflected in the glass of his spectacles, obscuring his eyes. I had neither seen nor touched this man since April, when we parted company along a dusty path on the island of Skyros, full of grief, and yet the sight of him—the touch of him—was so familiar, he might only have popped out for an hour or two, in order to buy a ham sandwich and a newspaper. Except that my heart was beating rapidly, underneath the pressed gray wool of my jacket.

  At last he turned to the window and lifted one finger to touch the folds of the curtain. “I don’t know why your powers of perception should still amaze me, Truelove. I don’t quite seem to have gotten used to you.”

  “She will make him an excellent wife, however,” I said briskly. “Her kind always does. She will take to the job with enthusiasm.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt at all. And Max?”

  “You know his heart is already lost. As long as there’s liking on both sides, and loyalty, and—I suppose—a necessary degree of physical attraction, he will be content.”

  “Contentment. What an appalling word.”

  “Contentment is all most people long for.”

  “Do they? Poor souls. Although I suppose it all depends on what constitutes your idea of contentment.”

  “A clear conscience,” I said. “A useful occupation.”

  “A useful occupation?” Silverton turned from the window. “How interesting. Do you consider your occupation useful, my dear? I daresay Max enjoys his little hobby immensely, but for Emmeline Truelove to make it her life’s work—”

  I said quietly, “You saw yourself what happened on Skyros. You know that was no little hobby. It is a power of extraordinary proportion, and I—we, the duke and I�
�are desperate to understand it.”

  Lord Silverton reached inside the pocket of his Norfolk jacket—the same jacket, I observed, as the one he had worn last spring—and drew out a cricket ball. “And now Max calls you urgently to his side. For what reason? I find myself asking.”

  “He can tell you that himself, I expect.”

  “He’s found something, I’ll bet. What is it?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Silverton tossed the ball in the air and caught it again. “Didn’t he? I suppose these rural telegraph operators aren’t to be trusted. I say, I’m dashed curious to find out what it is this time. What new object has appeared in Max’s universe that doesn’t quite belong there. Aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. I find these anachronisms fascinating. Generally speaking, there is almost always some logical explanation—”

  “But not quite always.” He tossed the ball again, a feat he managed without regarding either ball or hand, keeping his attention strictly—and rather unnervingly—upon my face. “Hence this institute of yours. The Haywood Institute for the Study of Time. And your dropping everything to gallop down the length of Great Britain to Max’s assistance.”

  “I am always ready to help His Grace to understand the nature of this burden he bears. I—my God, what—?”

  But Lord Silverton had already launched himself out the compartment door, leaving only the cricket ball to land on the carpet and roll rather painfully into my right foot.

  • • •

  For a moment, I sat in stupor, torn by the instinct to race after Silverton and my duty to protect the leather portfolio at my side. Then, as if electrified, I leapt from my seat, shoved the portfolio under the cushion, and threw open the compartment door.

  He had already disappeared down the corridor. I cast both ways—dining car or second-class coach?—and spotted the conductor, wearing an astonished face. I dug into the pocket of my jacket and drew out a sovereign.

  “Sir! The fellow who passed by, the tall one—”

  He pointed to the dining car. “That way, ma’am.”

  I hurried toward him and pressed the sovereign into his palm. “See that nobody enters my compartment, please.”

  Expecting shock, or disapproval, I found instead a certain relish in the conductor’s expression. “With pleasure, ma’am,” he said, and I flew up the corridor toward the dining car, thanking him with a wave of my hand.

  Even before I crossed the corridor between the carriages and opened the door, I knew something had occurred inside. I heard the cries of dismay, the urgent shouts. I yanked the handle and discovered a scene far different from the orderly, somnolent atmosphere I had departed an hour or two ago, brimming with hot tea and cold watercress soup. A melee of outrage, of smashed crockery and spilled potage, of white-clad waiters extracting themselves from silk-clad laps, lay between me and the opposite end of the carriage, the door of which was just now swinging shut. I dashed through it all, pushed aside inconvenient bodies, and jumped across fields of sharp white porcelain, reaching at last the end of the car just as the train made a lurch to the left and sent me sprawling into the chest of a corpulent gentleman who seemed to have been ducking beneath the shelter of his table.

  “Excuse me,” I said, recovering myself, and then, “Did you perhaps see a pair of men—”

  “That way,” he said, and pointed to the nearby door.

  I thanked him and pulled the door open, continuing into the next carriage, divided between first class and third. The train began a slow curve to the left, and I swayed into the walls of the corridor, checking each compartment, until I burst through the partition to the third-class carriage, composed mostly of women and children, the children hidden behind their mothers’ skirts. One woman, catching my frantic gaze, lifted her hand and pointed to the door. “Through there,” she said. “God help you.”

  On I dashed, through the next carriage and the next—I had lost count of them by now—until I must have reached the last, because I glimpsed the pile of coal in the tender through the window glass, obscured briefly by a flash of tweed.

  I ran down the rest of the corridor and wrapped my fingers around the handle of the door, just as the back of a brown tweed jacket smashed into the glass, inches from my nose, and heaved away again. Startled, I jumped back, and then tried again, this time opening the door freely and wheeling about in a cloud of coal dust.

  But instead of two men before me, locked in struggle, I saw only one: the bright golden head of Lord Silverton, bent at an angle, while his long arms braced on the railing at the side.

  “What’s happened?” I gasped.

  His lordship turned swiftly. He had lost his cap and his spectacles, and the bone about his right eye bore an ominous red swelling. “He’s jumped, the bastard. Rolled down the bank and into the woods.”

  I hurried to the railing and craned my neck to catch some glimpse of the path behind us, but the train was moving too fast, and the bank was already long obscured. I looked up at Silverton’s frowning face. “Was it the man from Naxos?” I said. “The ginger fellow?”

  “How did you know?”

  “He boarded the train at King’s Cross. I saw him there, watching me.”

  Silverton swore softly and turned his back to the blurred landscape. The coal man stood at the edge of the tender, shovel in hand, staring at us. Silverton ran a hand across his bare head and said to me, “Well, then. All’s not lost. At least we can be certain of two things.”

  I turned my head back for one last glance. The woods had thickened alongside, and I saw only a blurred tangle of green and brown, softened by the mist. “What are those, pray?”

  “One, he’s bound to turn up again, wherever we’re headed, since he’s taken so much trouble to find us.”

  “And the other?”

  A deep, horrified screeching had begun as the train applied its brakes, and already I could hear the footsteps of the conductors, running to the source of all this confusion. Silverton seemed not to hear them. He briefly touched the swelling at his eye and examined the pads of his fingers. Though the drizzle had lifted into a mist, his hair was already damp, and dulling rapidly into brown.

  “It seems the blackguard is left-handed,” he said.

  • • •

  We stopped for nearly an hour in the middle of the countryside as the conductors investigated the incident and searched for the missing man. Of course they didn’t find him. Silverton answered their questions with his usual jocular calm—The villain picked my pocket, so naturally I gave him chase—while I stood by silently, unnoticed by anybody except the conductor who had accepted my sovereign earlier. He gave me a single nod and kept his mouth shut.

  By the time we got moving again, we were irretrievably late. We arrived at Waverley station in Edinburgh at half past seven, and Silverton, checking the station clock, checking the timetable, announced with satisfaction that we had missed the evening connection to Inverness, and would have to stay the night here in Edinburgh.

  “Stay the night?” I said in horror.

  “Perhaps you have another solution to our predicament? Hire a motorcar, perhaps, and drive the night?” He looked at me with earnest blue eyes, as if I might actually produce a counter-suggestion, as if I might actually agree to drive an automobile across the Scottish wilderness through the dark pitch of midnight.

  “You know that’s impossible,” I said.

  “Well, then. I suppose I’ll just hop along and book us a pair of rooms in the hotel. Or one room, as you prefer.”

  “Two, if you please. On opposite sides of the hotel.”

  “Truelove. Think of the economy. To say nothing of the warmth; I’m a terribly thermal beast, I believe you’ll discover.”

  I bent to take the handle of my valise. “It’s August. I shall be perfectly warm.”

  “Why, don’t you know, there�
��s nothing so chilly as August in Scotland. Suit yourself, then. If you change your mind, I shall leave my door unlocked for your convenience.”

  “How kind of you.”

  Silverton reached across our two bodies and lifted my valise, before I could object. “The porters will bring mine,” he said gently, and offered his sturdy tweed arm in such a way that I couldn’t politely refuse, even if I had wanted to.

  • • •

  My father had been dead for many years—at the time of my adventures in Scotland, nearly six—but he nonetheless took the trouble to visit me from time to time. For what reason, I cannot possibly guess. When I arrived at my elegant room in the North British Hotel, in the splendid shadow of the Castle Rock, he sat in the armchair in the corner, reading from a small leather book. The air outside was still light, Edinburgh Castle outlined in charcoal against the pale sky. A steam whistle cried outside the window. I set down my valise and leaned my back against the door.

  “Good evening,” said my father, folding the book over his thumb. “How do you like Scotland so far?”

  “I have scarcely seen it. At least the drizzle has let up.”

  “Has Lord Silverton been behaving himself?”

  “Does he ever?” I levered myself from the door and walked to the desk in the corner, on which I placed the leather portfolio I carried under my arm. “We meet for dinner in an hour.”

  “Do you? I’m glad to hear it. I like the fellow.”

  “Yes, that’s the trouble.” I stared into the oval mirror above the desk. “So do I. Altogether too much.”

  “Can there be such a thing as too much liking?”

  “When the other party is as faithless and as fickle as his lordship, yes.”

  “You are unfair to him, Emmeline. Haven’t I always warned you not to judge a man by the mask he wears? But I think you know this already. I think you wouldn’t care so much for Silverton if you didn’t.”

  I turned from the mirror. My father sat quietly, one leg crossed over the other, fingers linked on his knee, exactly as I always remembered him. His whiskers shone in the lamplight, and his face was soft with kindness.