The Lady Who Broke the Rules (21 page)

In Scotland, Virgil emerged from the noise of the mill house at New Lanark in much the same frame of mind. Three waterwheels and thousands of spindles worked by over five hundred people made it a noisy place, no matter how light and clean it was in comparison to other mills. Walking down the main thoroughfare of the model village, he passed the other two mill buildings and headed towards the school which formed the kernel of Owen’s Institute for the Formation of Character. There were aspects of his host’s philosophy with which Virgil disagreed, but he was awed by the man’s vision and utterly convinced by his arguments that education was fundamental to social reform. This visit had given him ideas enough to last him decades.

Through the windows of the school, he could see the little ones at their desks, their faces rapt with attention as James Buchanan, weaver turned teacher, told them a story. He had intended going in to take more notes, but a restlessness kept him going down the cobbled road towards the majestic Falls of Clyde, thinking for the thousandth time how much Kate would have enjoyed this visit. It wasn’t that he missed her so much as that he regretted the missed opportunity. He would have liked to have seen her reaction to it all, heard her opinions of it—which would be bound
not
to be anything like he imagined. Without her, the experience was somehow less than he expected.

Autumn was almost over this far north. The trees which bordered the falls were bereft of leaves. There was a decided nip to the air. The cascade which frothed and thundered over the river on its way down to propel the water wheels which powered the mills was mesmerising. The spray was icy. It made him think of the lake at Castonbury. The lake made him think of Kate, though not even she would consider swimming in water this cold. Kate, nymph-like and naked, her wet skin gleaming. Kate kissing him. Kate, hot and damp for him. Kate’s climax, the look of shocked delight on her face. The jolting pleasure of his own release.

Virgil swore, and began the by now tried and tested process of forgetting about Kate by thinking of other things. He had plans now, thanks to Robert Owen, not for just one village but for a whole string of institutes and schools.

How much would ever be enough? Kate’s question haunted him. This was what he’d worked for so tirelessly these past eleven years. This was what would start to make good some of his guilt for what he had done to Millie. So why was he feeling so down? Not just down, but tired, worn out, his energy sapped. The future he had worked so hard for, the castle he had built in the air which was now within his reach, they had lost their appeal. It wasn’t that he didn’t want it all, the schools and all the rest of it, but he did keep wondering, damn it, if he could ever do enough.

He was tired of carrying the burden of guilt around with him, but he couldn’t see it ever easing. Why was he so tired? Was he being punished for having broken faith with his celibacy? Until he met Kate, it was a pact he had never thought of breaking. Well, Kate was in the past now, and so he would have no trouble keeping to it again. He wouldn’t ever hold her again. Or kiss her. Or hear her laugh. Or…

Virgil jumped to his feet with an exclamation of disgust. What he had to do was get on with his life. He would go to Glasgow tomorrow. He would put his past to rest. And today, he would write to Kate and tell her all about New Lanark. He owed her that much.

Chapter Eleven

T
he grey December sky reflected Kate’s mood. It was not raining but the air was damp and it was cold. It looked like it might rain, it looked as if it might clear up, it couldn’t make up its mind. Ambivalent. Could weather be ambivalent? More like confused, she thought, that’s what she was. She was sitting in the dining room drinking a cup of cold coffee when Lumsden informed her that Giles wished to see her as soon as conveniently possible.

Thinking that her aunt must have lodged another complaint, Kate made her way to her brother’s private study with a heavy heart.

‘You look tired,’ Giles said.

‘Can’t sleep,’ Kate replied, in quite his own terse style.

Giles grinned. ‘Mind my own business, you mean. Well, I will, since I’ve a hundred other things to think about, provided you can assure me you’ve done nothing new to set our aunt off.’

‘She seems quite taken up with little Crispin,’ Kate said, dodging the question.

Her brother gave her one of his searching looks, but Kate returned it blandly, and he shrugged. ‘We’ve had a letter from Harry,’ he said. ‘He sent it from Madrid. It’s—well, interesting. Here, read it for yourself.’

Kate unfolded the missive. Harry’s scrawl, unusually for a man who most often considered three or four lines sufficient, covered the entire sheet of paper, leaving barely enough room for his signature. The contents were, as Giles had said, interesting. ‘So there’s hope, then, that he might get the evidence he needs to prove Jamie’s death?’

‘Looks like it. If he does, at least it means we’ll be able to access the funds.’

‘And you may be a step closer to marrying Lily.’

‘I wish it were more than a step. This waiting is the very devil,’ Giles said grimly. ‘Let us not talk about my affairs, it is frankly too painful. I haven’t told Father about the letter. His health is still so frail. If Harry can’t track down this chap in Seville, if it proves another false lead, then we’re back to where we started. I haven’t said anything to our aunt either.’

‘Quite right. Aunt Wilhelmina wouldn’t be able to resist telling Papa. It’s best to keep this to ourselves until we have more certain news.’

‘Good. I’m glad you agree with me, I was pretty sure you would.’ Giles folded the letter up and tucked it into a drawer in his desk under a pile of other papers. ‘What about the widow though? I don’t feel right keeping it from her. Apart from anything else, if Harry can talk to this chap, the one who was with Jamie at the end, it may well be that it helps her cause. He’d have been bound to mention his marriage, wouldn’t he?’

‘I don’t know. What do you think, are you still sceptical of her claim?’

‘Honestly?’ Giles locked the drawer. ‘She seems genuine. She’s not a money-grabber, though she’s protective of the boy’s rights, and that’s natural enough. I could wish she did not allow him so often in the company of our father, but I can’t deny it gives him pleasure. But honestly, Kate? I just can’t get rid of the feeling that there’s something—I don’t know, something not right about Jamie’s death. If we could just get the full story—but I won’t count on it, not until we hear from Harry again.’

‘Nor I.’ Kate touched his hand briefly in sympathy. They were not a demonstrative family; this was the nearest she could imagine to hugging Giles. She hadn’t noticed, not until she met Virgil, how little physical contact she had with anyone. ‘We’ll just have to bide our time and hope that Harry comes through, one way or another. In the meantime, do you wish me to tell Alicia the news?’

‘If you would. It will be better coming from a woman.’

‘Which means it will save you the bother of coping with her tears,’ Kate said, laughing. ‘Tell me, Giles, do you run the other way when Lily cries?’

‘No, I try to make damn sure she has no cause to,’ her brother retorted.

* * *

She almost ran into Aunt Wilhelmina on the staircase. ‘I am going to Buxton with your sister-in-law,’ Mrs Landes-Fraser, who had thawed enough since Alicia’s arrival to address Kate directly once more, informed her. ‘His Grace has commented several times now on the dowdiness of her wardrobe, and whether she proves to be an imposter or not, we cannot have it said that we dressed the woman in rags. I shall stop at Ripley and Hall in the village to select some silks, then we shall go on to Buxton to have them made up. We shall take the landau and shall be gone the better part of the day. I would ask you to accompany us, but she won’t go without the boy, and you would be quite cramped. If you are in need of occupation I suggest that you turn your hand to the pile of sheets which you removed from the Dower House. Such common work should not be beyond your rather meagre skills. Your sister-in-law sets a surprisingly beautiful stitch.’

Suppressing the urge to set a beautiful stitch to hold her aunt’s mouth shut, Kate continued up the stairs to her chamber. Was this what she was to be reduced to—darning sheets! Alicia did not even trust her to play nursemaid. Giles, who was off to inspect a horse somewhere, had asked Phaedra to accompany him. Giles had always favoured Phaedra. In a family of six siblings—eight if you counted Ross and Araminta—there were bound to be alliances and differences, but while she was undoubtedly well down the chain of popularity, Kate couldn’t count herself as the favourite of a single one. Even dearest Ned had preferred Giles.

She threw herself onto the window seat and drew a frowning moon face in the condensation caused by her breath on the window pane. Drawing was another accomplishment she had not mastered. Her attempt at a horse had reduced Phaedra to tears of laughter once. She wiped the face away with her hand. It wasn’t like her to be moody. She wondered how Virgil was getting on at New Lanark. She envied Virgil this trip. She envied Robert Owen Virgil’s company.

Heavens, but she missed Virgil. There, she could admit that. No one could see inside her head the way he did. No one seemed particularly interested in her, the way he was. No one had ever made her feel the way he did.

Goodness, but she wanted him too. His body. His touch. His kisses. Their passion. Remembering what it had been like to have Virgil inside her made her muscles clench into a shiver. Alone in bed, she touched herself as Virgil had done, but it wasn’t the same. She wanted
his
fingers.
His
mouth. His body.

Giles hadn’t asked after Virgil once since he had gone, despite the fact that he’d been more than happy to monopolise him when he was here. It could be tact, of course, but Kate wasn’t in the frame of mind conducive to giving anyone any credit. A man of ideas, Giles had called Virgil, but he had never considered him as anything other than a mild distraction from the burdens of trying to pull the estate out of the financial crisis in which their father’s unfortunate investments had left them. Aunt Wilhelmina had practically danced in the wake of Virgil’s departure. And Phaedra was so caught up in her horses that she barely noticed anything or anyone else. Whereas Kate…

Outside in the driveway, her aunt was being helped into the landau by John Coachman. She and Aunt Wilhelmina would never be close, but the stand-off they had reached, if not outright peace, was at least better than open warfare. Though her aunt remained almost as sceptical as Giles about Alicia’s claims, contradictorily, she seemed to accept without question the child’s parentage. She remarked pointedly and repeatedly that Crispin’s arrival gave Kate the perfect opportunity to practice her role as aunt.

But the fact was, Kate thought, watching Alicia lifting the boy into the carriage, now that the hiatus of Alicia’s arrival was over, and Alicia herself was patently able to take care of her own interests and equally wary of the friendship Kate offered, there was very little for Kate to do. Alicia’s lawyer was negotiating a settlement for her. He was insisting on joint guardianship. His Grace would be obliged to consult her on all matters pertinent to Crispin’s well-being. She would take care, too, she told Kate, that His Grace understood that nothing short of death would separate her from her child. She would see that Crispin had what was entitled to him.

Alicia was evidently not so fragile as her appearance gave everyone to believe. Kate was relieved. She looked forward to the day, which must surely come, when Alicia did pitched battle with the duke. She would not lay odds against her.

‘Devil take it, I will not spend the day mending sheets!’ Kate threw herself from the window seat, then stopped short. There were plenty of things she could be doing. Much more important things. If only she could think of them.

‘Lady Kate, I’m so sorry, but this letter was overlooked in the mailbag this morning.’

Daisy’s head poked round the bedchamber door. Kate’s mouth went quite dry as she took the epistle. She had never seen the neat script before. There was no cause at all to imagine that it would be from him, and even if it was, it did not necessarily mean anything. ‘Thank you.’

Kate locked the door behind Daisy and with trembling hands sat down again on the window seat to break the wafer.

It was from Virgil, and it was everything and nothing. Scanning it quickly, aware that her heart was beating fast, that she was shaking, Kate lurched from anticipation to extreme disappointment in the space of a few seconds. She read it again, forcing herself to go more slowly now, but there was nothing personal in it at all. Virgil had written her an account of New Lanark ‘
in order that you may better understand Owen’s methods as well as his theory
,’
he wrote. There was no return address. Only a postscript, informing her that he would not be returning to Stoke to see Josiah, but would conclude their business in London. She would never see him again.

She had thought she had understood that. She had thought she had accepted it. She had not. Staring at the letter, reading it for a third time, and for a third time failing to find anything remotely personal, the dreadful truth which she had hidden away, ignored, denied, buried deep down inside her, peeped out.

‘Oh, no, not that.’ Oh, heavens, let her contrariness not have led her to that. Surely she couldn’t possibly have been so stupid as to fall in love with him?

But it was too late, and it had nothing to do with contrariness, her love for Virgil. ‘Well done, Kate,’ she said bitterly. ‘Trust you to give your heart to the one man in the world determined not to have it.’

She loved him. She had thought herself incapable of love, but it seemed she was wrong. When had she stopped being afraid? She didn’t know, but sometime between the day at the Rothermere Arms and now, she seemed to have crossed the border and left the past behind. She had paid for her mistakes with Anthony in full. What’s more, she had, she realised with surprise, accepted that trying to become the person her aunt and her father wished her to be was wrong. Worse than wrong, it would make her unhappy. Virgil said she had to forgive herself. She hadn’t really understood what he’d meant, but it seemed she’d done it all the same.

If only Virgil could forgive himself too—but that, Kate knew, looking down at her letter, really was asking the impossible. She loved him, but he would never, ever love her back. No one understood her as Virgil did. No one would ever touch her, mind or body, as he did. She could not imagine that anyone ever would.

Tears clogged her throat, but she would not let them fall. She had promised him that she would try to be happy. In this letter he had written, there was no love, but there was much which could help her to follow some of her dreams. Sniffing resolutely, Kate took it over to her desk and began to read it again.

Robert Owen, Virgil told her, employed one of his former mill workers and a young village girl to teach the infants without books. Mr Owen boasted that his mill workers were the happiest, healthiest and most productive of any in the country, though Virgil was not convinced they were all equally so. In the evenings, they attended classes and dancing lessons. There followed a host of facts and figures which Virgil hoped would give Kate the real evidence, practical proof, to make her patrons pay attention.

Kate smiled as she read Virgil’s views on some of Mr Owen’s more controversial methods, then she drew a clean sheet of paper onto the blotter, dipped her pen in the inkwell and began to make notes.

* * *

Virgil reached Glasgow in the early afternoon. The crowd of ships on the river Clyde marked his progress towards the bustling city, long lines of them anchored in the channel with their heavy sails furled; the exposed rigging looked like complex trails of cobwebs slung between the masts. There was a constant to-ing and fro-ing of small boats ploughing the waters from the ships to the wharfs like worker ants.

As the Edinburgh mail approached the town itself along roads thick with mud it slowed, weaving through the clutter and throng of carts and drays, of carriages and sedan chairs, avoiding stray dogs and clucking hens and a herd of lowing cattle being brought back from the common grazing grounds in the west to their byres in the east.

The mighty cathedral rose high on the hill above the city. In amongst the cluster of smallholdings and cottages which dotted the land nearest the river, merchants made rich by tobacco, sugar and slaves had built huge mansions. The foundations of a large house stood oddly in the midst of a field planted with cabbages. Further east, just before the Trongate, inns and taverns of the lower sort contested the traditional space of houses and food markets.

Virgil stopped at the posting house only to eat the half crown ordinary of mutton and barley stew. Ramshorn Kirk, where Louisa Gordon was buried, was known locally as the Merchant’s Graveyard. Armed with directions, the gold locket tucked safe in an inside pocket of his coat, he set out on foot. Glasgow owed much of its wealth to the crop he had spent a large part of his life growing and harvesting and he was eager to see what his servitude had created. Though the trade was no longer what it had been, there was a time when almost every hogshead of tobacco grown in Virginia had come through this city.

He walked up to the cathedral past the cheese and meat markets, whose business was done for the day. Descending the hill via the university and skirting the large expanse of the green where lines of washing flapped in the breeze, he came to the tower of the tollbooth prison. In the paved square outside, he stopped to watch the merchants hold court while those wishing to do business with them vied for attention.