Clandara (4 page)

“I'll go alone,” James answered coldly. “And all I hope is that I return with his permission to marry Katharine. The feud is over, Father. It ended when we all stood in the Chapel at Clandara and watched our cousin Margaret marry, do you remember? And it was you who insisted that peace must be made …”

“We were poor,” his father retorted. “Poorer by ten thousand golden guineas after the '15. We couldn't stand the loss of cattle and the burning down of our crofts. But then is then and now is now … We've prospered; I dare swear we're richer than that old swine Clandara could ever hope to be. There's no reason for this,” he shouted, and there was a genuine note of pain in his voice. “No reason in the world why you couldn't have chosen a wife from any one of half a dozen Highland families if you've an itch to settle down. But this woman … No, James, I can't believe it of you!”

His son looked down at him and shrugged. His indifference stung his father like a blow. There had always been love between him and his sons; love and loyalty and a bond of common taste. No woman had set foot in Dundrenan since the old Chief's wife died giving birth to his last son, David, and her influence had vanished with her into the grave. There was no sign in the grim house that it had ever had a mistress. The walls were bare stone, hung here and there with fading tapestries which stirred in a perpetual draught; the open fires smoked, and there were hunting dogs sprawled in front of them; in some of the rooms the floors were still carpeted with straw as they had been a hundred years before. The only incongruous note was the Macdonald plate spread out upon a huge oak sideboard, the gold and silver dishes, cups and ewers gleaming in the dull light.

It was a fortress, garrisoned by fighters; the Chief employed only half a dozen women in the house and these were usually pregnant by some member of the family. It was a common means of increasing the household staff, and the prized blood of the Chief and his sons strengthened clan ties. Now their precious unity was gone, spoilt by this madman's passion for the daughter of their enemy.

“You're not intending to bring her here?” he demanded. “I told you what would happen if you did.”

“This is no place for her,” James answered shortly. “I'll not take her anywhere where she's not loved as she deserves. I have my mother's house at Kincarrig. We will live there.”

The old man stared at him in absolute disbelief.

“You'd leave your home – your heritage – your own father and family, just for the sake of bedding a
woman
? Son, I'll not quarrel with you, for it's obvious you're out of your mind. You stand there, telling me you'll go off to Kincarrig and leave me in my old age … James, have you no love left for any of us?”

“I have love for all my kin,” James answered. “I love you all,” he repeated. “But I love Katharine more. You do not know her, Father, you have no idea of her graces and virtues …”

“Her
virtues
! God in heaven, I can't believe my ears. You, who were laying the scullery maids at fourteen, prating to me of virtue! Enough, James, enough. Go to Clandara tomorrow; there's no stopping a fool from his doom. Out of my sight now, and tell that old laggard Ian to bring me some whisky. Maybe your brothers can talk to you; it's certain that I can't any longer.”

“If my brothers try to interfere with me,” James told him quietly, “I'll break their necks. I will send the whisky to you, Father. It may have put you in a better mood by the time we dine.”

The night came and the moon that rose over the sweeping hills and touched the mountain-tops with silver made the wild countryside appear as cold and unreal as if it were part of some undiscovered planet. The lights in Clandara were extinguished; so too were those at Dundrenan, where the old Chief lay drunk in his bed, and his son slept on and dreamed of the woman he loved, and turned impatiently in his empty bed as if in his dream he might find her there. And the sleep that came to Katharine far away at Clandara was as sweet and full of tender phantasies as that of James. Everywhere else, in both great houses, there was hatred and disquiet.

Katharine had awoken very early, lying in the slow, drowsy state between sleep and wakefulness. She had closed her eyes and thought of James, and with the thought of him came the memory of those moments in the hollow, and it drove her out of bed, restless and longing and exhilarated because this was the day when he was coming to claim her. In spite of everything she was not afraid. Her maid Annie, grand-daughter of old Angus, helped her ladyship into her copper bath and poured in more hot water with a great deal of jasmine essence in it, and scrubbed her ladyship's white shoulders, bursting with such curiosity that she could contain herself no longer. The gossip was all over the Castle.

“Is it true there's a suitor comin' for your ladyship today? Is it true it's a Macdonald? I didna believe my grandfather, he's an auld fool as your ladyship knows, but he was blatherin' and talkin' all night long …”

“Annie.” Katharine drew the soft towel round her and stepped on to the floor, leaving patches of scented water as she walked. “Annie, your grandfather is not such an old fool as you make him out. There is a suitor coming here today, and he is not just a Macdonald, but James Macdonald himself. How will you like serving me in Kincarrig after we're married?”

“God protect me!” Annie stared at her mistress, her mouth opening in horror. “I'd as soon serve the devil in hell!”

“Then I'll take someone else,” Katharine said firmly. “See if you can find a likely girl, Annie, and teach her my ways so that she can dress me and care for the clothes-closets as well as you. I shall miss you though,” she added gently.

Annie did not answer at once. She had a round, ugly, humorous little face; she was only ten years older than Katharine but she treated her mistress with a mixture of protectiveness and awe as if there were thirty years between them. No one had ever wanted to marry Annie. She was too plain and too sharp-tongued. The whole of her affections had been channelled into devotion for the beautiful girl she had waited on since they were both children. She held out Katharine's shift, and, seeing the perfect young body, thought of the loathsome Macdonald, and shut her eyes with a grimace of disgust. There had been a cousin of the Earl's a year ago, a kind, soft-spoken gentleman – Henry Ogilvie – she remembered the name immediately. There had been talk of him and the Lady Katharine, and everyone from the Earl down to Angus and the house servants had approved. Then her ladyship had gone to France and met this ruffian and Henry Ogilvie ceased his visits. Annie had gone with her, hating every moment of her exile. She had not learnt one word of the new language or eaten a mouthful of the food without complaining and comparing everything indignantly with the glories of Scotland. And not even she had known that the reason for her mistress's high spirits was the black and surly man she had seen dancing with her once or twice.

“Milady,” she said at last. “Stand still, if ye please, or I can't tie these laces … Milady, there's not one lassie within miles could care for ye as well as I can. If they weren't pickin' and stealin' they'd be asleep or sneaking off with some footman when your back was turned.”

“In that case,” Katharine said, understanding the game and enjoying it, “I shall have to employ a Macdonald as my maid.”

It was too much for Annie. “No Macdonald shall put her dirty hands on you!” she snapped. “If you're going to this place to live with this villain, ye'll have need of me to take care of ye. But I don't believe your father will permit it, not for one moment. Employ a Macdonald, indeed!”

She pulled in the corset laces so sharply that Katharine winced.

“If he refuses,” she said, “I'll go with James Macdonald without the benefit of clergy. Will you come with me then, Annie?”

Annie stood back and held out a petticoat of white lawn, trimmed with a profusion of Carrickmacross lace.

“I will not come with ye,” she retorted, “and what's more, milady, I'll tell your father what you've said so he can keep the key turned on you.”

“Annie! Have you never been in love?”

“With this muckle lot of ne'er-do-wells? I have not, thanks be to God. And don't think I believe that talk about running off. That's all well enough for the common folk, but well-born ladies like yourself don't throw themselves away on wicked scoundrels like James Macdonald who'd as soon cut their throats as marry them afterwards!”

“James Macdonald is not a wicked scoundrel.” Katharine's voice had lost its teasing tone. It was cold and sharp and Annie kept her head down. She knew when she had gone too far. “You will speak of him with respect in future, or not at all. Now open the clothes-press; I wish to choose my dress for today.”

“I put out the yellow velvet,” Annie ventured.

“It is not good enough,” Katharine said. She was still angry with Annie. There was not one person, she thought bitterly, not one, to whom she could turn for encouragement. Hatred and prejudice blinded them all. She missed her dead mother at that moment as she had not done since she was a little girl. The first Countess of Clandara was a gentle, calm woman, renowned for her kind heart and generosity. The portrait of her which hung in the Green Salon showed a slight, pretty girl with soft brown hair and hazel eyes. It was painted when she was still a bride. All the Frasers' wives had been painted after marriage; the pictures went back in a long line in the Green Salon and round the walls of the enormous main staircase, even including the three women unlucky enough to marry the Red Fraser. Their pale, undistinguished faces looked down the centuries, framed by the ugly sixteenth-century caps and veils. He had married them and buried them and taken their substantial dowries. Katharine used to wander up and down the salon and the gallery, listening to her nurse explaining the history of each portrait, and she had often wondered whether one of the Red Fraser's wives had been alive at the time of the Macdonald siege and whether she had tried to help his unfortunate prisoner. Only one of the long line of Frasers and their wives and daughters was not represented. The present Countess had not been painted according to tradition. The space beside the Earl's portrait was occupied by a magnificent picture of Katharine in hunting dress, painted just before she went to France.

Katharine went to the mahogany clothes-press that ran the length of one wall in her room, and pulled out the dresses one after the other.

“This,” she said suddenly. “I will wear this. And the green slippers.”

The dress had been made for her in France. It was taffeta, its colour a lovely, elusive sea-green shot with blue, the bodice cut low and straight across her breast. Tiny flowers of turquoise and crystal were sewn on the bodice and scattered cleverly in the folds of her very full skirts. It was a beautiful dress, and she chose a long velvet scarf of brilliant turquoise blue to cover her shoulders. Annie laid out the dress on her bed and put the slippers and scarf beside it, and then, still in silence, Katharine sat down to have her hair dressed.

Annie was as proud of that thick, shining hair as if it were her own. She brushed it with two of her mistress's silver brushes until it gleamed like fire.

Katharine had never needed to direct her; she had an unerring instinct for what was in good taste where her mistress was concerned. She combed the hair back off her forehead, slipping two dark tortoiseshell combs into place, and caught it up behind with a double knot of blue silk ribbons, twisting the ends so that they fell in ringlets over Katharine's shoulder.

“Thank you, Annie. That looks very well.”

“I've done it a hundred times before. There's nothing special in it. It'd take a great fool to make you look other than the beauty ye are. Stand up now, milady, and I'll lace ye into your dress.”

Katharine paused and turned slowly round in front of her long mirror, and saw Annie's expression confirming what she saw. She had never looked more beautiful.

“If your father says no,” Annie said suddenly, “yon Macdonald will murder him to get his hands on you.”

“There'll be no murder, Annie,” she said quietly. “There'll be no violence and no argument. I have James Macdonald's word and I know he will not break it. We are all tired of fighting; after all, we've had a Macdonald living in this house for the last five years.”

“We have that,” her maid agreed. “And much good it's done her or us.” She looked at the watch hanging from her waist. It was a present from her mistress and she was immensely proud of it. She was the only servant in the Castle who possessed a watch, and she had taught herself to tell the time.

“It's past ten. Ye've been so long dressing, milady, ye'll keep your family waiting for their morning chocolate.”

The chocolate was a ritual which never varied. At eleven the Earl and his son and daughter and his wife drank chocolate in the Long Library and discussed the business of the day. It was a leisurely habit which had originated with the Earl's French mother. She had been an heiress and a gay and lively woman, though not particularly pretty, and she had begun to improve and civilize her new home and seduce her fierce husband from his uncouth tastes in food and drink and a day beginning with porridge and meat at sunrise and the same diet, followed by bed, as soon as the sun had set. She had panelled the Green Salon and covered the walls in soft green silk, and filled it with beautiful furniture made by some of the best craftsmen in her native France. The tulip-wood table and the elegant walnut chairs with their fine embroidery were hers, and over the years she had transformed other of the state rooms in the bleak, forbidding Castle, filling them with colour and elegance and catching the Scottish sun by the reflection of many mirrors. The Great Hall was untouched. It was said that her husband had looked on with an indulgent, even an approving, eye while his wife brought comfort and grace into his home. But his indulgence did not permit the dispersal of his family's collection of arms and armour or the hundred heads of stag which decorated the Great Hall. It was never known what the Countess planned to do with it, because the Frasers took part in the Rebellion of 1715 in favour of the Catholic claimant to the thrones of Scotland and England. James Stuart, the Old Pretender, as his English Protestant enemies described him, was no more fortunate than the other members of his race. He fled Scotland in defeat, and the Frasers of Clandara were among those ruined on his account. The little French Countess was widowed by the executioner in the public square at Edinburgh, where her husband prepared himself for the block by sending her a gallant message and a greeting to His Majesty King George I of England that was so obscenely insulting that he was hurriedly beheaded in the middle of it. Katharine's father had bought back his lands and his title by the payment of a huge fine, and kept both by living for some years in exile on his estates.