A Strange Scottish Shore Page 4

  “Let me fetch you a glass of water,” he said.

  In the next instant, his image disappeared from the mirror, and I had to catch my dress with my hand to stop it from falling to the ground. I really am quite drunk, I thought, and a faint note of alarm sounded somewhere in my brain, but that was as nothing compared to the whirling in my chest, the mad note of my heartbeat, my fatal recklessness. I let the dress fall around my shoes. (Stop, I thought.) I stepped out of the circle of navy silk and bent to retrieve the garment. I had brought only the one evening dress; over the course of six years as the Duke of Olympia’s private secretary, traveling frequently with him and his wife as they enjoyed their position at Britain’s highest rank, I had learned never to expect an invitation to dinner. From behind me came the sound of running water. I straightened and walked, in so steady a line as I could, toward the wardrobe, where I hung my frock next to Silverton’s black velvet jacket: so close that the sleeves touched, and the bodice of mine had communion with the shoulders of his.

  “This is most unsuitable,” hissed a voice at my right shoulder. “You must clothe yourself at once.”

  “Go away.”

  “I shall not go away. I shall remain exactly where I stand until you—gracious me, you are not unfastening your corset!”

  “I can’t wear it to bed, can I?”

  “Intemperate girl. To be ruined once is foolishness. To be ruined twice—”

  “Calm yourself, madam.” I folded the corset and laid it on the shelf, before reaching for my dressing gown, already unpacked and hanging from a hook. “I don’t believe it’s possible to be ruined twice. Ruination is irrevocable.”

  She made an angry noise. “You are so like—”

  “My mother?” I said tiredly, slipping the robe over my shoulders.

  “Your father.”

  I turned instantly, but no small, regal figure occupied the space by my side. Instead, Silverton stepped into view, tall and somewhat rumpled, red waistcoat unbuttoned, and offered me a glass of water.

  “What the devil were you muttering?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Have you any aspirin, my dear?”

  “Aspirin? Why should I want aspirin?”

  “Why, indeed? Drink your water, like a good girl.”

  I drank the water and excused myself, making for the bathroom, and when I returned a moment later, Silverton stood at the window in stocking feet, holding the curtain slightly aside with one hand to glimpse the outline of the castle against the purpling sky. There was a glass of something in his hand; I imagined it was not water.

  “You ought to leave,” I said.

  He laughed. “That wasn’t terribly convincing, my dear.”

  “It’s improper for you to stay.”

  “Oh, be honest, Truelove. You don’t give a damn about propriety, not really, or you wouldn’t have dined with me to begin with. You put on a fine show of correctness, but it’s all a disguise. The question is what lies beneath.” He turned his head over his shoulder to regard me. “What you’re hiding.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “It’s imprudent. If you have any regard for my—for my—” I couldn’t quite find the word.

  “No.” He turned back to the window. “I shall stay right here with you. You haven’t the wits of a schoolboy at the moment. Imagine if that fellow from the train returns to finish the job.”

  “I can defend myself perfectly well. Besides, the door’s locked, and this is the sixth floor.”

  “I refuse to take that sort of chance. I promised Max I’d look after you, didn’t I? A most solemn vow.”

  “Then perhaps it’s you who wants those papers,” I said. “After all, I have only your word about the telegram from Max. What if it’s you I should beware of? You who plied me with wine, and used your charm to intrude on my privacy.”

  He dropped the curtain and turned to face me. He had switched off several of the lamps, and in the darkened room, he looked decidedly rakish. His golden hair was disordered, his shirt half-tucked, his red waistcoat unbuttoned at his sides. “My God, Truelove,” he said, finishing his drink, “I like the way you think.”

  “I have a pistol in the drawer.”

  “You’d miss, in your condition.”

  “Or I might not.”

  He set down the drink on the windowsill and walked toward me. I held my ground, waiting until he towered a foot or so away, looking quizzically upon my face. “Would you really, Truelove? Shoot me?”

  “If I had to.”

  Silverton lifted his hand and laid it along the side of my face, from temple to jaw, and his face took on the heavy expression of a man whose thoughts tend to an ancient purpose. I caught his wrist. “What a shame,” he whispered.

  “A shame?”

  “That you’re so thoroughly shelved. I had plans, Truelove. Marvelous plans. Still, rules are rules.” Without warning, he bent down and hoisted me into his arms. “To bed with you, now. I shall take the chaise and a blanket.”

  I craned my neck for a glimpse of the chaise in question, which might scarcely have fit the old Queen herself on its compact length. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why will you never take me at my word, my love? I begin to take offense at this void of trust between us.” He dumped me carefully into the center of the bed and drew back the covers from one corner. “Come along, now. Sleep will cure you. Perhaps in the morning . . .”

  “Certainly not.”

  “No,” he said regretfully, tucking me under the comforter, “I expect you’re right. I shall put in an early order for coffee instead. Black and strong.”

  “Presumptuous.”

  His face loomed over mine, inexpressibly kind and rinsed in gold by the lamp on the bedside table. “Ah, but it’s inevitable, you know.”

  “What’s inev—inevitable?”

  “You and me, Truelove. Our souls are cut from the same strange cloth. We don’t belong among the rest of them. We belong in some wilderness, with only each other for company.”

  I pulled my hand from beneath the covers and placed my index finger upon his lower lip.

  “If you touch those papers, I’ll shoot you,” I whispered.

  He bent and kissed my forehead.

  “I’ll die a happy man.”

  • • •

  Of course I had always known that my father—the man who raised me, that is—was not the man who sired me. My parents married when I was about four years old, and my true paternity was never spoken of. Not once did I discover any hint of the gentleman’s identity, and how he came to know my mother. Not once did it occur to me to ask. I needed no other father than the one I knew, who continued to love and care for me after my mother died, and whose kindness saturates all the memories of my childhood.

  But I knew he existed, this other man, this genealogical father. The one who had supplied my mother with the necessary seed of my existence; the one she had known and perhaps loved in the years before she married Mr. Truelove. My mother had lain with this fellow, had known this fellow intimately; he walked the earth with one-half of Emmeline Truelove written in his blood, and yet I knew not his name, nor his face, nor his nationality, nor even whether he still lived. Whenever I entered a room, he might be in it; whenever I navigated a street or a shop or a train compartment, he might be the man who brushed my arm or found the seat across from mine, and I would not recognize him as mine, and neither would he.

  Or perhaps this is not entirely true. I have one memory, or at least a thought, an image that might be a memory. I am quite young, and my parents are not yet married, or possibly even acquainted. I sit on a rug before a sizzling coal fire, playing with a toy, and a door opens, a rush of cold air. A pair of black legs appears in view, and I reach toward them, and am lifted into the air. There is a moustache and a thick brown beard, and a pair of large, warm
blue eyes, which I recognize as belonging to me, as existing for my sake, as if I have some kind of dominion over those eyes.

  That is all.

  And I had not considered this memory in many years, had not even remembered that I own it, until the night I went to sleep in the North British Hotel in Edinburgh, while the Marquess of Silverton settled on the chaise nearby with a blanket and a pillow borrowed from my own bed. I remembered thinking about the apparition that had recently revisited me, that of the late Queen, and as I drifted into slumber I heard her say again, You are just like your father, and I saw again the image of those blue eyes, that moment on the rug when I was small.

  • • •

  I don’t recall the dreams that followed, except that they were strange and intense, and I woke gasping some time later, as if drenched in water.

  I flung myself upright and called out Silverton’s name. The room was warm and perfectly dark, but I knew at once that I was alone, and that the leather portfolio, if I cared to look, was no longer in the desk drawer where I had left it.

  One morning, when the Lady returned to shore from her morning swim, she saw that she had mistaken her distance, for the beach was not the beach from which she had embarked, and instead of the villa where she stayed with her servants and her son, she saw only a hovel made of wood and clay, and a Fisherman who sat on a wooden bench mending a net of hemp. He was tall and comely, and when he saw the Lady emerge from the sea, he fell to his knees in great wonder, for the Lady was as beautiful as she was strong, clothed in her strange suit, and her bearing was that of a goddess . . .

  THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)

  Two

  The Duke of Olympia himself stood waiting on the platform when the train throbbed carefully into the Thurso terminus, late the following afternoon. He was dressed in tweeds and a long duster coat, and his austere face lit with welcome as I stepped from the carriage and turned down the platform to meet him.

  “Why, you didn’t drive the motorcar yourself!” I exclaimed.

  He reached instantly for my valise. “Miss Truelove,” he said kindly. “I have missed your company beyond words. I trust your journey was not too uncomfortable? The N. B. not inconvenient? I have stayed there myself.”

  “Extremely comfortable, certainly,” I said, “but not without adventure, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you quite all right? You look strained. Can I offer you a cup of tea? There’s a shop just inside.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve already caused you a great deal of trouble. You ought to have sent Mr. Miller for me.”

  “Mr. Miller has many admirable qualities, Miss Truelove, but I’m afraid I daren’t trust him with the well-being of my automobile, to say nothing of you. But where’s Silverton? I understood from his telegram last night . . . ?” He left the end of the question to dangle tactfully in the air, without the slightest change of expression upon his face.

  “That, I’m afraid, is all part of the adventure.”

  “But where is he? Is he injured?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Ah.” The duke regarded me for perhaps a second or two with a solemn frown, which I returned even more grimly. He sighed and drew his watch from his pocket. “Look here, perhaps we can carry this discussion into the motorcar? We still have a chance of making dinner, I believe.”

  The duke’s motorcar stood by the curb, a magnificent long-hooded beast from the previous duke’s extensive collection. A Burke touring model, His Grace informed me, specially equipped for long journeys along rough country roads. He pointed out the excellent width of the tires, the reinforcement of the axles by vanadium steel.

  “I didn’t realize you were a motoring enthusiast,” I said.

  “I’m not. Just as a useful means of conveyance. I say, haven’t you got any more luggage than this, Miss Truelove?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  His Grace set the valise on the rear seat and came around to open the passenger door for me. The village was sparser than I expected, the houses small and whitewashed, and when I breathed deep, I could smell the tanginess of the nearby sea. Though it was nearly five o’clock, the sun remained high and brilliant above us. I thought the weather should be damp and cloudy—this was my idea of the far north of Scotland—but instead the air was almost painfully clear, the sky a pungent blue. I glanced about, half imagining I might see the flash of a ginger head as it ducked around the corner of a building, but the streets were quiet. There had not been many passengers on the train, and I had taken note of them all.

  The duke paused at the hood of the car and asked me politely to turn the ignition switch. I reached across the dashboard and pressed the lever with one gloved finger; the duke made a quick, efficient half turn of the crank, and the motor came lustily to life.

  The duke was not an especially tall man—he stood just under six feet, I believe—but he was burly, made of thick, strong bones, and his size conferred a certain sense of peace as he sank silently into the seat beside me and set us off through the cobbled streets of Thurso and into the damp, clear countryside. The absence of conversation was itself a relief. I hadn’t slept since waking to my empty room at three o’clock in the morning, and though I knew I must begin to explain our predicament to Olympia, my head was too tired to know where to begin.

  As we gathered speed, the wind tore violently at my hat. I put one hand to the crown and closed my eyes, and the duke said, “Miss Truelove? Are you quite all right?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, and then loudly, “Yes! Only tired.”

  “But what’s the matter? What’s happened? Is it Silverton? He wired me last evening to say you had met up on the train—”

  “Yes, we did.” I opened my eyes to see that we had left the town entirely, and now hurtled along a narrow road rimmed in tough, pale grass. To the right, the North Sea threw itself upon a ragged cliff. “Do you remember the fellow we left behind in the cave on Naxos? The one with the ginger hair?”

  “Yes,” Olympia said softly.

  “He caught up with us on the train. Before that, in fact. He followed me from London.”

  “By God! Did he hurt you?”

  “No. He may have been after the papers. Silverton saw him lingering outside my compartment—”

  “This was north of York, then?”

  “Yes, after Silverton joined me. On your suggestion, I believe,” I added serenely.

  “It seemed convenient. I don’t like your traveling alone, Miss Truelove, particularly with such a valuable cargo.”

  “In the end, however, I may have been better off alone. Silverton caught the fellow—actually, he threw himself from the train during the fight, and managed somehow to survive the fall—but then Silverton himself disappeared, and the papers with him.”

  Olympia’s foot went down on the brake pedal, bringing the motorcar to a shuddering stop in the middle of the road. “What did you say?”

  “Silverton took the papers,” I said. “Last night.”

  “Took the papers? From where?”

  “From my room.”

  I said the words defiantly. I had practiced them most of the day, inside the privacy of my compartments on the express to Inverness and then the Highland Railway branch line to Thurso, so that I wouldn’t hesitate when called upon to use them. As a result, they all but exploded from my throat: From my room!

  Underneath the Burke’s long, elegant hood, the engine lost a beat, coughed, resumed. Olympia made a slight noise—Hmm—and coughed in sympathy with the automobile. “I see,” he said.

  In my rehearsals of this scene, I hadn’t meant to defend myself. I had meant to state the facts of the case, without explanation, but now that Olympia sat beside me, his left arm a mere few inches from my right, his quiet breath mingling with mine, I heard myself begin, “I assure you, sir, he was only there to—”

  “
Please, Miss Truelove. You owe me no explanation whatever.”

  “We had agreed that, in light of the incident on the train, and the possible motives of the man in pursuit of me, that his lordship should join me in guarding the papers from danger.”

  “Miss Truelove,” the duke said gravely, “before we proceed further in your account, and indeed in our relations with one another, let me first say this. I have the utmost regard for your character and judgment, and what is more, I consider you have every right to conduct your private affairs as you—and no other human being—judge proper. I hope you will do me the honor of being entirely frank with me on any subject, and I will endeavor to return the favor.”

  I gazed down at my hands, which were clenched in my lap, the dark leather wrinkled by the strength of my grip. “My dear sir,” I said.

  “Are we agreed, then?”

  “Of course. As I said, Lord Silverton stayed in my room on the sixth floor of the North British Hotel last night, having stated his intention to protect me from intrusion by the ginger-haired gentleman who had pursued me from London. At about three o’clock in the morning, I woke in some confusion, having sensed something amiss. I called out for his lordship, but he was no longer in possession of the chaise to which he had retired, and indeed had departed the room entirely, together with the portfolio containing those papers you had requested me to convey.”