The House of Lyall (11 page)

‘I'm going to marry Hamish!'

There were three separate gasps, holding different degrees of horrified astonishment, and then Miss Edith – why was it always Miss Edith? – her nose twitching, said, ‘It is obvious that you have been drinking, Marianne. I can smell the brandy on your breath, but you should have thought before coming out with a remark like that. It was enough to give any of us a heart attack. If it was meant as a joke, it was in very poor taste.'

‘It's not a joke,' she burst out, thinking fleetingly that Miss Edith's heart would not be so easily attacked. ‘He asked me last week and I said yes tonight. That's why we had the brandy.' Hamish had ordered the brandy before she gave him her answer, but it made no difference. It was a good excuse.

Miss Esther's hand had jumped to her chest. ‘Oh dear! My heart's still thumping with the shock,' she wailed. ‘You can't marry anyone else, Marianne! You love Andrew … don't you?'

‘Yes, I do love him … like a brother.'

‘Unfortunately, he does not look on you as a sister.' It was Miss Edith again, her eyes and voice holding a sharp censure now. ‘I have never seen any boy love a girl as much as he loves you. Does he know about this … charade?'

‘It's not a charade. I told him on Sunday, and … well, I suppose he took it the way you'd expect him to take it.'

‘Poor boy!' murmured Miss Emily, dabbing her eyes with a square of lace-edged lawn.

‘It's so cruel!' moaned Miss Esther.

‘You don't need to tell me I'm being cruel! I know that perfectly well, and I wish it could have been different!'

‘When is this wedding to be?' Miss Edith asked. ‘Will there be time for you to see sense and change your mind?'

‘I won't change my mind! You'll likely be worse shocked when I tell you I'm marrying him because it won't be long till he has a title. I suppose I'd be happy if I married Andrew but … having wealth and a standing in society, I'll be ecstatic!'

Miss Edith shook her head. ‘Wordly possessions are not everything, and I have not heard you say that you love young Bruce-Lyall. The prestige of being even the highest lady in the land is worth nothing if there is no love there. Perhaps it would satisfy you for a year or so, then the rot would set in.'

Marianne was almost weeping with the futility of trying to explain. ‘I haven't known him long, but I do like him an awful lot.'

‘I grant you that he is nice, but does he like you “an awful lot”?' Miss Edith's lips were almost in a sneer.

‘Yes, he does!' Marianne burst out. ‘So you see!'

The argument had ended there, Marianne recalled. It was evident that the sisters had not understood what they were meant to see, and, to be quite honest, neither did she now. Hamish had only said that he admired her spirit. He had never mentioned liking, let alone loving. But she didn't want love. She'd be more than content to spend his money in exclusive gown salons, or having her clothes made specially for her by a world-renowned … whatever dressmakers were called in high circles. Nobody would ever laugh at her again for what she was wearing. People would bow and scrape to her. Men would worship at her feet …

The train drawing to a screeching halt, she was laughing as she looked out to see where she was. Stonehaven. Halfway there.

The short stop, the stir of the small station, the different accent she could hear, though this was only fifteen miles or so south of Aberdeen, all served to wrench her mind away from the pleasant plane it had reached. Her thoughts went now to Andrew. Poor, dear Andrew. She would miss him, truly miss him. An ache for him was already beginning deep down inside her. Would it lessen as time went past, or would it be a case of absence making the heart grow fonder? Would she come to regret being so impetuous? Should she back out before it was too late?

She banged her fist on the window frame. No, she wasn't going to back out! She had made her choice, she had survived the ordeal of wounding the four people she cared for most so that she could have a wonderful new life – the life she'd had her heart set on since she'd seen a heap of sovereigns lying in a dish. And whatever she had to suffer in future years – supposing the Bruce-Lyall family lost every ha'penny and she was forced to go out to work again – she'd have been part of Society with a capital S for a while, and she would never go crawling to anybody. She would never admit she'd been wrong.

The next stop was Laurencekirk, another fifteen miles farther on. As soon as Marianne stepped down on to the platform, a porter – or possibly he held down all the jobs like Dod Cooper at Tipperton – came forward, touching his hat respectfully. ‘Miss Cheyne? His Lordship's carriage is waiting. I'll take your luggage out for you.'

He did his best to hide his surprise at learning she had only the valise she was carrying, but it was obvious that he thought she fell far short of the usual standard of visitors to Castle Lyall.

‘Thank you,' she said, as graciously as she could. She was tempted to add ‘my man', but decided that such an embellishment would best be kept until she was actually married to Hamish.

She followed him out to the waiting carriage, where the coachman, a man about forty with an almost completely bald head, also stared doubtfully at her, but the coat of arms on the door gave her fast-sinking morale a great boost. The coachman, looking down on her from his lofty perch as the railway employee helped her aboard, was just a servant,
her
servant … or would be very soon.

Nothing was said while the high-stepping horse trotted out of the village at a gentle pace, turning, without any directions from the man, into a much rougher side road marked ‘Glendarril'. Proceeding into the glen, they came, in what she judged to be about three miles at least, to a wide, low building with a high, smoking chimney stack. She didn't like to ask what it was, but when they passed it, she saw a huge sign above the gates – ‘Glendarril Woollen Mill'. So that was how the Bruce-Lyalls made their money? She hadn't given a single thought to that before now.

They penetrated deeper and deeper into the narrow glen, lined for the next few miles by silver birch and horse chestnut trees, with a wealth of wild flowers growing around them – ragged robins, lords-and-ladies, small blue orchids, bluebells swaying in the gentle breeze. The road was climbing, she realized, and with the thinning out of the trees she could see dozens of sheep grazing on the hills rising on either side, and beyond them, in the distance, the snow-capped peaks of mountains pierced the sky. With so little sign of habitation as yet, Marianne had a strange feeling that they had left civilization behind, and she wondered how much further they had to go. Eventually they came to some small cottages, each with a neat strip of garden in front, and, she could see as they approached at an angle, a stretch of cultivated ground at the rear. She brightened now, and felt considerably better when she saw another cluster of houses and farther on, a small church with a large bell in its tiny steeple. Alongside, within the area of yew trees which surrounded the kirkyard, poked the chimneys of what she took to be the manse.

‘That's the school,' the coachman announced shortly, pointing to what looked like another cottage on their left. He gave a cackle at her astonishment. ‘It's the dominie's house, and all.'

Tipperton having had a large population of children, sometimes nearly a hundred and fifty at a time, its two-storeyed granite school had a good-sized, separate building at the side for the headmaster. The County Council
employed one assistant for him, usually a product of Aberdeen University who had failed to graduate, and another helper known as a pupil-teacher, unpaid because he or she was learning a profession. So this tiny place seemed to be most inadequate.

‘Just a dominie for the whole school?' she asked. ‘No other teachers?'

‘No teachers, just Mr Wink.' He turned round and grinned at her. ‘Is that no' a funny name for a dominie? William Wink. He's been here all his life, and he's awfae good wi' the bairns. There's only five the noo – Jeannie and Maggie McDonald, wee Kirsty Bain, Chae Rattray and … oh, aye! The dominie's ain laddie, Peter. He's mair like his mother than his father, though! Mistress Wink wouldna be pleased if she kent folk ca' the dominie Wee Willie Winkie behind his back, for she thinks she's better than … oh!' His large brown hand thumped the side of the carriage. ‘I shouldna say that to you, for I hear tell you're Master Hamish's intended?'

So caught up in his gossip, Marianne had practically forgotten how she would appear to the men and women on the estate. It wouldn't do for the future Mrs Bruce-Lyall to be seen hobnobbing with any of them, least of all the coachman. ‘Yes,' she said, primly. ‘We are engaged to be married, Mr … um …'

‘I'm Carnie, miss. Just Carnie.'

‘Carnie. I'll remember that.'

The next small collection of buildings boasted a shop, actually the front room of one of the houses, and judging by the vast selection of items packed into the window, it sold everything. One much larger house stood out from the others.

‘That's the doctor's,' Carnie told her. ‘Auld Dr Tyler retired just six month ago, and some folk havena got used to Robert Mowatt treating their ills, for he was born and brought up here in the glen and they still think of him as a laddie.'

In another hundred yards, the horse turned, once more of its own accord, into a wide drive with huge metal gryphons perched atop the gateposts, one on each side of the entrance. She knew they were gryphons because she had come across them in one of the books Andrew had given her to read to broaden her knowledge. But Andrew had no place in her mind here. Her eyes were drinking in as much as they could as she was borne between two lines of larch trees, their feathery boughs caressing the edge of the long curved drive. They were lovely to look at, though she couldn't help thinking that more daylight would filter through if there were fewer of them.

She hadn't realized that they were still going uphill until they emerged into an area of landscaped gardens that took her breath away with their splendour, neat low hedges breaking the huge expanses of lawns on the down slope into symmetrical designs, with flowerbeds in regular patterns. And then she saw it – the castle itself.

Her initial impression was one of disappointment. This wasn't the fairy-tale castle she had imagined, with quaint turrets and tall thin windows where an imprisoned Rapunzel might have let her hair down for her lover to climb. It seemed to have been built quite haphazardly, with no definite plan, and it was much smaller than she had expected. On closer inspection when they drew nearer, however, she found that it had been built in a series of wings, and stanchions, and – glory be! – there
were
some turrets after all, almost out of sight among the welter of stonework. It must be an awful old place, she decided, for it was just built of big boulders, probably carried down from the mountains and added to at various times. It wasn't nearly as grand as Balmoral – where Andrew had once taken her on the train – which was granite-built and sparkled in the sun as if it were studded with diamonds. But that had been rebuilt for Queen Victoria by her loving Prince Albert, God rest his soul, and Marianne Cheyne shouldn't be critical of Castle Lyall. At least it
was
a castle!

The horse came to a standstill at the steps up to a massive oaken door, and Carnie jumped to the ground to come hurrying round to help his passenger down, but Marianne was too rapt in discovering all she could about the higgledy-piggledy building to notice him. When she did, she got to her feet but was sidetracked by turning her head and seeing the panorama on that side of her. From this high vantage point, looking over the larches they had passed on the way up, she saw the mountains much better, range after range, some so tall that, judging by the amount of snow huddling in the passes between them even in May, it must come at least halfway down them in winter. What she could see of the most distant seemed to be truncated masses of dark blue rising mistily to blend into the hovering cumuli, but the lower slopes of the nearer ranges tended to be brown, probably with dead heather, for it wouldn't burst into glorious purple until August or September.

She shifted her attention to the foothills – nearer but still miles off – green for most of their height from the grass and undergrowth where there were no pines and firs, and from the trees themselves up as far as the tree-line.

She was surprised at how much she remembered of the natural history books Andrew had given her. Brought up in the heart of an area of low-lying farmland, windswept and bare, she had never seen mountains like these, and what she used to think were hills had been little more than mounds, touched with white only in the severest winters.

‘Are you ready, miss?'

Carnie's voice brought her out of her reverie, and grasping his rough hand, she let him half lift her down on to the gravel driveway. Only then did the front door open, but it wasn't Hamish who stood waiting to welcome her, and she
climbed the dozen or so steps with a heavy heart. If he couldn't come to the station to meet her, he should at least have been here to welcome her.

‘Her Ladyship is waiting to receive you,' announced the stiffly erect maid, black-clad apart from a strip of white lace round her head.

‘Thank you.'

‘You're a bit late.'

Marianne wasn't going to start by apologizing for anything … to anyone. She followed the woman along a corridor until she halted outside one of the oak-panelled doors. After giving a small tap, the servant opened it just wide enough for Marianne to walk through, and closed it silently behind her, leaving her to stand uncertainly.

The elegant woman sitting in a chair by the window stared at her, giving her no indication of what she was expected to do. If this was meant to cow the girl, however, it had the opposite effect. Marianne reacted to the cavalier treatment by deciding not to knuckle under. At some date in the future,
she
would be Lady Glendarril and this ill-mannered woman in her silk dress and rope of pearls (for she
was
ill-mannered, even though she was an aristocrat) would be a dowager.