A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  “I don’t wish to talk about Silverton. I wish to talk about Lord Thurso and his daughter.”

  “You have already met them.”

  “Only briefly. You will recall that a secretary receives little notice from her employer’s guests, except when they particularly desire something.”

  My father pressed his thumbs together atop the book and considered the ceiling. “He was a much younger man, when I knew him. Nor has he aged well.”

  “Drink?”

  “Among other things. Although, when you visit the tower in which he lives, you will hardly blame him for his diversions. Even you, my upright Emmeline.”

  “Lady Thurso, I understand, is long dead.”

  “Yes, alas. In childbed. Lady Annis is the only surviving issue.”

  “With a nice fortune at her disposal. By special provision in the patents, the earldom may pass along the female line to the next legitimate male heir, though Lady Annis does not inherit the title in her own right.”

  “A considerable dowry, though it comes with little money.”

  “The duke does not need money. He needs an agreeable wife who will take on the duties of the Duchess of Olympia with energy and enthusiasm.”

  “Including the getting of heirs.”

  “Let us hope she proves a better breeder than her mother,” I said sharply.

  My father made a noise of assent. “Unfortunate, indeed, that such an old and venerable title should merely fall into the collection of the dukes of Olympia, who will hardly notice it. You know, of course, that old Thurso has a natural son, gotten of a local girl. A bright young fellow.”

  I sank on the corner of the bed. “Does he? Nobody mentioned it to me.”

  “Out of delicacy, no doubt. I am sorry to say that he was born during the period of Thurso’s marriage. The mother was the daughter of an attorney in town, a not inconsiderable family. The poor girl refused to give up the child, and Thurso—by all accounts—was very much in love with her.”

  “How peculiar. His lordship didn’t strike me as the least bit romantic. The opposite, in fact.”

  My father ran his finger along the spine of his book. “My dear Emmeline,” he said softly, “you may one day discover that the man who feels most, shows least.”

  A strange, hot sensation passed across my shoulders at his words. I knit my hands together in my lap and said, “And what about the girl? Did she love him in return?”

  “That, I cannot say for certain. Once the affair became known, she was ruined. Her own family renounced her. Thurso settled her in a house at some discreet distance from the castle, where the babe was born, and where she continued as his mistress. He had several other children by her, all girls, and after Lady Thurso’s death everybody assumed he would marry her, once his mourning had passed.”

  “But he did not?”

  “I understand she refused him.” My father shrugged. “She lives still, raising her girls. The boy went to Oxford and has recently returned. He keeps a room in Thurso Castle and is accepted by everybody. A queer thing, but eminently civilized. I daresay Thurso’s desire to see Lady Annis well settled may owe itself to his devotion to this other family.”

  I nodded. “So that more money can be set aside for them. I wonder how Lady Annis feels. I have always found her a proud girl.”

  “I have never seen any animus between sister and brother. I expect she’s forgiven her parent for his frailties. As all children eventually must.”

  A strange note altered the timbre of his voice. I had been regarding the pattern of the carpet, too embarrassed to meet his gaze outright, but I now turned my face upward. My father was not looking at me, but at the mirror above the desk, as if he could see something in it that I could not.

  “You, Father?” I said. “Have you some frailty to confess?”

  “We are all frail,” he said, and then, turning to me, “You must dress for dinner now, Emmeline.”

  “But—”

  “And be kind to him, my dear. He has, after all, taken the trouble to discover what lies behind your mask. If I’m not mistaken, he has fallen violently in love with what he found there.”

  • • •

  When I arrived downstairs a half hour later, still electrified by my father’s words, I found Lord Silverton resplendent in full Scottish dinner dress and a jovial mood. He kissed my hand and informed me that he had engaged a private room, so as not to start any gossip among the other guests.

  “I suspect a private dinner between us will have quite the opposite effect,” I said.

  “Do you think so?” He looked astounded. “In that case, I expect you’ll have to marry me after all, Truelove. We can’t have your reputation left in tatters.”

  “Unlikely, if society already believes me to be the duke’s mistress.”

  “Well, that’s another thing entirely. You can be the Duke of Olympia’s mistress and still find yourself received almost everywhere. Alas, no maiden’s reputation can survive the scandal of my bed. You’re looking remarkably well, by the by. That frock becomes you extremely.”

  During the course of this shocking speech, he had taken my arm over his sleek black elbow and begun to lead me across the marvelous North British lobby to the hotel restaurant, and I would have been blind not to notice how many people simply stopped to follow our progress. I glanced down at my plain frock of dark blue silk—the only dinner dress I had troubled to pack—and said, “You must be joking.”

  “Not at all. See how everybody stares?”

  “They’re staring at you, O Apollo.”

  “Me?” He flicked his finger at the froth of Highland lace anchoring his neck. “Mere feathers. In your case, however, it’s you who become the dress. There’s a fascinating liveliness to your skin this evening, Truelove, which I can only hope arises from anticipation.”

  “Anticipation of what?”

  We entered the restaurant, a grand and brilliantly lit room, where a gentleman in a starched white shirt and black jacket appeared at Silverton’s elbow as if conjured.

  “Your lordship,” he said reverently, not daring to notice my presence, “if you will follow me.”

  Without missing an instant, Silverton swept me along in the man’s wake, in the direction of a small door at the back of the room. I felt myself blushing, I felt every nerve coming to life beneath my clothing, and still I didn’t stop him. I cannot explain why. I certainly ought to have stopped him.

  “Anticipation of my company, of course,” he said genially. “Here we are. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a simple supper. I presumed you wouldn’t want some kind of rich, heavy ordeal after a day of travel. God knows I don’t.”

  The waiter was moving for the intimate table next to the fireplace, but Silverton brushed him aside and held out the chair for me himself. I sat and stared rather blankly at the delicate arrangement of silver and porcelain and crystal before me. “Simple?” I said.

  “One should never sacrifice elegance for simplicity, Truelove. Indeed, the two are best encountered hand in hand.”

  The waiter had disappeared, leaving us alone with the table, the fire, the small and beautifully dressed room. Silverton extracted a bottle of champagne from a gleaming bucket of ice and worked at the cork while I laid my gloves on my lap and frowned at the expert movements of his fingers. In truth, I was relieved not to have to dine in the public restaurant just now; I was beginning to feel the gaze of the ginger-haired man everywhere, from every corner; I was expecting him to leap from every closet. At least here, in this room, my adversary sat in full view before me, displaying openly all his weaponry. For the onslaught of Silverton’s charm, I was perfectly prepared.

  The champagne, on the other hand, I eyed warily. I do not indulge frequently in wine; it has an early and alarming effect on me, which has, in the past, worked irrevocable consequences on the course of my life. I
watched the bubbles rise in the coupe of delicate cut glass, poured by Silverton’s generous hand, and I opened my mouth to refuse them.

  “Now,” said his lordship, filling his own glass, “to what shall we toast? My good friend Max, perhaps, for bringing us together this evening? Or for that ginger blackguard, who had much the same effect, if entirely unwitting?”

  I frowned deeply. He urged the glass to my fingers.

  “Come along, Truelove. It will settle your nerves amazingly.”

  “My nerves are perfectly settled.”

  “They are not. You’re afraid I mean to seduce you, and what’s more, you’re afraid you’re going to allow me to.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “To which suggestion? My seducing you? Or your allowing it?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, you’re certainly wrong on the first count, and I jolly well hope you’re wrong on the second. Either way, however, you’ve earned a glass of France’s finest this evening, and it’s a damned shame to waste a splendid bottle like this one.”

  I took my lower lip between my teeth.

  “Go on,” he said. “I won’t tell Max.”

  “Max has nothing to do with it,” I said, and lifted the glass.

  • • •

  In the end, he behaved himself beautifully. Not until the coffee was set and the waiter slipped away for the last time did the conversation die away into the kind of silence that laid upon our skins, and Silverton reached one arm across the table to touch the knuckles of my left hand.

  We sat without moving for a minute or two. Staring at the blurred junction of our fingers, I became aware that we had finished not just the bottle of champagne between us, but the better part of a noble Burgundy as well. Silverton had taken a gentleman’s share, of course, but I had done my duty. I felt the familiar, dangerous recklessness stir in my chest, and I thought, I must fight this, it’s my enemy, it will destroy me a second time.

  And then the counter-thought: But I don’t want to fight this.

  “My dear love,” Silverton said quietly, “are you quite all right?”

  I looked up. He had left his spectacles upstairs, and there was nothing between my eyes and his except air, except a few feet of golden, empty space. His face was soft and earnest, his eyes exceptionally blue above the new bruise.

  “I am quite all right,” I said.

  “Because there is a question I wish to ask you, Truelove, and I hope you’ll have the goodness to give me an honest answer, for both our sakes.”

  The pressure of his fingers was light, a mere dance of warmth, and yet I felt it to my bones. Though the coffee was finished, a glass of water remained next to the edge of the saucer. I lifted it with my unoccupied hand and swallowed deep before answering him.

  “What question is that?”

  “Only this.” He took my other hand and leaned forward across the table, so that I could smell the sweetness of the wine on his breath. “What the devil are you carrying in that portfolio of yours?”

  I drew my hands sharply away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Ah, Truelove. You disappoint me.”

  “I wear your disappointment as a badge of honor.”

  “Where’s the trust? Am I not your loyal servant?”

  “You may be a loyal servant, but not mine.”

  “I protest. Not a hair on your head shall come to harm, if I can help it. And I do mean to help it, my dear. You can’t shake me. Nor can you deny that our ginger friend had a particular object in mind when he approached your compartment this afternoon.”

  This brought me up short. “Did he?”

  “Of course he did. And I suspect that object is the same one you cleverly hid beneath your seat cushion, where no reasonable thief would possibly think to look for it.”

  I sat back in my chair and wished for more wine. “You needn’t mock me.”

  “I beg your pardon. But it’s a damned good thing I happened along. I shudder to think what might have happened, had the fellow discovered you alone.”

  “The conductor—”

  “Was not about to prove much use in a proper struggle, I expect.”

  The room was lit dimly: only the two candles aflame on the table, a pair of quiet sconces on the wall, the ebbing coals in the fireplace. Hardly enough light to understand the bland expression now laid before me, to determine how serious Silverton really was underneath the weightless tone of his words. He held my gaze carefully, neither looking away nor allowing me to do the same, and after several long seconds, he added, “If it makes any difference, it was Max who asked me to look after you, and particularly the contents of that little portfolio.”

  “When? How?”

  “In his telegram.”

  There was no hesitation in his voice, not the slightest trace of guile. And I had traveled beside this man for weeks, had set my own life in the palm of his hand as we traced along the Mediterranean together, and for all his faults, he had never once betrayed that particular trust.

  I rose from my chair, and he rose, too, because he was a gentleman above all things, even in this moment. I wavered tipsily, putting my hand on the table for balance, while Silverton stared at me from his great height, and I saw that his expression was not bland at all, only tender.

  “If you wished to see the inside of my room, my lord,” I said, “you had only to ask.”

  • • •

  We went upstairs not by the lift but by some back staircase, with which Silverton was suspiciously familiar. He gave me his arm, and I accepted it. Neither of us spoke until I unlocked the door and stepped inside the room, at which point Silverton slid past me and switched on the electricity. The room burst into light. He looked about, turned to me, and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind us.

  “What the devil?” I said crossly.

  “It is my policy, my dear, never to take the security of one’s room for granted,” he replied, placid as ever, “even in so respectable a hotel as the North British.”

  I brushed past him to the window. “If you mean the ginger fellow, he departed the train some hundred miles to the south.”

  “Plenty of time to reach us by now. In any case, he’s not the only chap to look out for.”

  I turned. “Who, then?”

  Silverton had already moved to the opposite side of the room, inspecting the furniture, the door to the en suite bathroom, the curtains hung at the other window. He came to me, lifted the drapery to my left, and allowed it to fall. His chest was very near mine. “About that portfolio,” he said.

  I pointed to the desk. “In the drawer.”

  “Locked?” he said.

  “There is no lock.”

  “No, of course not.” He opened the drawer and took out the portfolio. “Not that a lock would be of any particular use on a desk drawer. Any more than the flimsy mechanism on this piece of leather.”

  “What are you—?”

  But he had already unpinned the brooch at his throat and stuck it inside the small clasp on the portfolio. It sprang open immediately. “As I thought,” he said, shaking his head.

  “The fellow at the shop assured me—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Truelove.” He closed the clasp and stuck the portfolio back in its drawer. “You didn’t go to a shop, did you?”

  My cheeks were warm. I nodded at the desk drawer. “Aren’t you going to look inside? Satisfy yourself of the contents?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the contents. I do give a damn about you.”

  He was facing the mirror, pinning the brooch back into the lace. Altogether he was magnificent in his Scottish attire. The black jacket fit him exquisitely, emphasizing the neat triangle formed by his shoulders and hips; the reddish plaid reached just below the knee, allowing me to glimpse an inch of thick calf before it disappeared into
his stocking. The electric lights drenched his golden hair in a radiance it hardly needed. My mouth was wet, my throat dry. I asked, a little scratchy, whose plaid he wore.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your plaid. To which clan does it belong?”

  “The Elliotts,” he said. “My mother’s side. Lowlanders, I’m afraid, and a worse set of troublemakers you couldn’t meet.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “No, I suppose not. It’s hellish difficult to amaze you, Truelove, though I shall never cease to try.”

  At what moment I realized he was not—as I supposed—pinning the brooch back into the lace jabot at his throat, but rather unfastening the lace altogether, I can’t quite say. Sometime in the middle of this exchange, I believe, although a vital moment passed before I found the courage to address the matter. By then he had tossed the jabot on the desk and was unbuttoning his jacket.

  “What on earth are you doing?” I demanded.

  “What a question. As you can plainly see, my dear, I am readying myself for bed.”

  “But this isn’t your room!”

  “A tremendous inconvenience, to be sure,” he said, sliding his jacket from his shoulders en route to the wardrobe, where he hung the garment carefully on a clothes hanger, “but I shall return to my little bolt-hole before the sun rises, so as not to excite comment. At least, any more comment than strictly necessary. Can I help you with your dress?”

  “Certainly not!”

  He closed the wardrobe door and turned to me. “Don’t be silly, Truelove. I’m a dab hand with a set of hooks.”

  “I daresay you are, but—look here—”

  Silverton had grasped my shoulders and rotated me gently to face the wall, while his long, agile fingers unfastened the hooks at my back. “You’re in no condition to perform this operation yourself, my dear. Have you always been so susceptible to drink?”

  “I am not,” I said slowly, enunciating each syllable, “susceptible to drink.”

  “No, of course not. A most indelicate observation. I beg your pardon.”

  Several feet away, our images lay reflected in the mirror above the desk: my dark head, bowed slightly, eyes peeking up from beneath my brows; his face above mine, turned earnestly to his work; his shoulders framing my chest, his white shirt billowing from his arms. The dress loosened as he went, falling from my chest. I thought, I must stop him, I must step away, but I could not. The sight in the mirror transfixed me. At length, he felt my interest. He looked up without warning, and our eyes met in the flat plane of the mirror, like two animals encountering each other in a woods. I could hardly speak, but neither could I turn away. His blue eyes had grown hot—how else to describe them?—hot, yes, as if the brain behind them had gone up in flame. His cheeks were pink, his lips thin and red, his eyebrows high. He was anything but bland.