The House of Lyall (38 page)

When they emerged into the sunlight again, Ruairidh said, ‘I won't come in the carriage, Mother. I need a walk to clear my head.'

Also feeling the need of some fresh air before tackling the lunch he had been invited to stay for, Andrew said, ‘Would you mind if I came with you?'

‘I'd enjoy it, Uncle Andrew.' When the carriage drew away, he added, ‘I hope you don't mind, but I want to talk to a girl I know.'

‘You should have said. I wouldn't have foisted myself on you.'

‘I won't be a second, if you'll just walk on a bit.'

Amused by the boy's subterfuge, Andrew walked on, and it wasn't long until his companion joined him again, his step somewhat lighter. ‘Everything all right?' Andrew queried.

‘Yes, she's going to meet me in the evening, and …' Ruairidh's eyes begged the man to understand, ‘… I'd be grateful if you didn't offer to come with me again.'

‘Will this be common knowledge, or should I keep it to myself?'

Ruairidh gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I'd be obliged if you'd keep it to yourself, Uncle Andrew … please.'

‘Yes, of course, and you need not have worried about me butting in again. I am going home in the afternoon.'

At the castle, Ruairidh said, ‘I'm going to my room. There's bound to be a lot of people here, and I can't …'

As it happened, only Marianne was in the drawing room when Andrew went in. ‘Hamish has gone up to change,' she told her old friend.

‘Ruairidh thought there would be a lot of people here.'

‘I can't face anybody yet,' she said, somewhat shamefacedly.

‘You shouldn't have invited me back either. I'd have understood.'

‘That's why I asked you; I knew you'd understand. Oh, Andrew, it feels like a part of me has died.'

Longing to show how much he felt for her, he drew a chair up next to her and took her hand. ‘I am so very, very sorry about Ranald, my dear, and I wish I could have been here to support you when you … got the telegram. You must have been devastated since neither Hamish nor Ruairidh was at home.'

She sandwiched his hand between hers. ‘It was like I was turned to stone, at first. I couldn't feel anything, and I didn't really take it in till Ruairidh arrived – his CO brought his furlough forward a week – and we were still comforting each other when his father turned up. Hamish has been a rock to me, though he was heartbroken himself … and d'you know, Andrew, sharing our sorrow brought us closer than we'd been for years.'

Conscious that she was looking at him warily, as if unsure what his reaction would be, he said, ‘I am truly glad for you, Marianne.'

As he confided to his Aunt Edith in a few hours, when he went to tell her how the memorial service had gone, ‘I
am
glad for her, though I had hoped to be the one to provide the comfort she needed.'

‘Andrew,' Edith said sadly, ‘I know you have worshipped Marianne ever since you met her, and I have the feeling that she loved you in her own way, but she knew what she wanted. She had set her mind on being rich, and Mammon is a hard taskmaster.'

‘If she had waited, I could have given her everything she wanted.'

‘You could not have given her a castle, Andrew, nor a title. I am afraid she wanted to get as much as she could out of life, and if she missed out on love, she has only herself to blame.'

Andrew had to admit the truth of this, but when his aunt hinted that Marianne's wealth and her position in the glen community had possibly gone to her head, he said, staunchly, ‘She does not put on any airs. I could see for myself that everyone in the church looked up to her, and she treats them all the same, from the lowest maid in the castle to the doctor and the schoolmaster. Hamish's workers and tenant farmers and their wives all showed respect when they told her how sorry they were about her son, yet no one appeared at all awkward with her.'

Edith nodded her snow-white head and smiled. ‘She has the knack of getting on well with people, whatever their station in life. I can see you resent me criticizing her, Andrew, but I can assure you that I still care for her, very much. She was like a daughter to us when she was here … as you have always been like a son.'

Getting to his feet, he went across and lifted her wasted hand to his lips. ‘And I was extremely fortunate in having three such dear ladies to mother me through university and see me through the ordeal of being best man at the wedding of the only girl I shall ever love.'

Tears sprang to the old woman's eyes. ‘My dear, dear Andrew.'

He straightened up resolutely. ‘No more sentimentality. I have had quite a harrowing day, and it is time I went home to bed, but I shall see you again next Sunday.' He bent to kiss her cheek and then went out, his eyes suspiciously moist.

Aunt Esther had been the first to go, from a heart attack a little over three years ago. That was when the other two sold up the shop and retired, and only a month or two later, Emily had died under the surgeon's knife during an operation to remove gallstones. It was probably fortunate that Edith had outlived her two younger sisters, however, because she had always been the strongest and had made all decisions.

*    *    *

All afternoon, Melda fluctuated between wanting to meet Ruairidh and dreading it. What was he going to say? If he wanted her to commit herself to him publicly, she couldn't. She was newly sixteen and her father would not agree to any engagement, particularly not to Lady Marianne's only surviving son. But maybe Ruairidh wasn't going to propose. This meeting could just be a ruse to get her alone, to take his pleasure with her again.

When the time came, therefore, she set off apprehensively, but when she entered the old shack and saw him sitting with his back against the rickety wall, his face serious, his eyes looking straight ahead, she knew that he would never trick her into anything.

He jumped but made no move towards her. ‘I should have told you this last time I saw you, Melda, but we were both so upset …' He halted, looking down at his feet as if ashamed to remind her of their last meeting. ‘You don't know how sorry I am for –'

‘What should you have told me?' she interrupted. It was dangerous to speak of that other evening.

‘I go back to camp tomorrow and … this was embarkation leave as well as compassionate. We're being sent overseas very soon.'

Giving a horrified gasp, and forgetting the promise she had made to herself, she was in his arms and they were murmuring the endearments all lovers make to each other. But it was not long before Ruairidh broke away. ‘No, Melda,' he muttered shakily, ‘I didn't plan this. I don't want to … take advantage of you again. It's not fair when you haven't had time to get over Rannie.'

‘I'll never forget him,' she whispered. ‘but I've been thinking … I've always loved you as two halves of one whole, and I honestly don't know what I'd have done if I'd had to choose between you.'

‘You'd have chosen him,' Ruairidh said, but there was no evidence of bitterness. ‘He was the one who could make people laugh, he was the one with personality.'

‘Oh yes, but I
had
realized that he was turning out to be a bit of a heartbreaker, that he could make any girl think she was the only girl in the world for him,' Melda pointed out. ‘You're different, Ruairidh. You wouldn't say anything like that unless you meant it.'

He clasped her hand. ‘You
are
the only girl in the world for me, Melda, but it's too soon … I don't feel happy about saying it myself yet. It's … oh, I don't know, the world's in such a state. Maybe when we're at peace again …' He heaved a long, doleful sigh. ‘I can't make plans for a future I may not have.'

Raising his hand to her cheek, she burst out, ‘Don't say that! Of course we'll have a future, so there's no need to grasp at happiness, is there? Just remember when you're over there that I love you and I'll be waiting for you.'

Determined not to let their emotions overtake them again, they reminisced once more about their childhood; about their fellow pupils at the glen school, some of whom, like Ranald, had been killed, though Melda didn't mention that; about Rannie himself, whose name was not the bogey it had been last time. Well aware of how easy it would be to slip, they kept their kisses as light as they could, reserving their passion for the time when there would be no war, when they would be free to love each other without having a sickening dread looming over them afterwards.

Chapter Twenty

After six weeks, Marianne still had not come to terms with what had happened, but Hamish was being exceedingly patient with her. She knew she was like a fragile piece of china waiting to be knocked down again and smashed beyond repair, yet the way Thomson fussed over her, ready to step between her and anything the least bit threatening, only irritated her.

Why couldn't people see that she was still mourning her son? And how could they carry on with their unimportant lives so soon after Ranald's death, as if it meant nothing to them? Even Flora Mowatt seemed more inclined to tell her how grateful she should be for having one son left alive than to commiserate with her about the one she had lost. It was all right for her – she had no sons.

For as much as Melda had been worrying about Ruairidh's safety, she had a far greater worry on her mind now. When she missed once, she had prayed that it wasn't true, but another month had gone past and she would have to face up to it. She was carrying Ruairidh's child!

She was shivering with cold, yet it was a glorious Indian summer outside, quite a common occurrence in September. The trouble was, she couldn't cope with this predicament on her own, but she couldn't tell her parents.

Her father, an old Victorian patriarch, was loud in condemnation to his wife and daughter of the glen girls who had illegitimate babies. ‘It serves them right!' he always said. ‘Surely to God they could stop their lad before it gets that far,' and she, in her innocence, had agreed with him … until lately. Even if she'd wanted to, she didn't think she could have stopped Ruairidh, and it hadn't entered her mind, in any case. If that had been all, if it had been any other boy, she might have braced herself to tell her father of her condition, but because it was Ruairidh, he'd be doubly mad. For years now it was as though he had something truly bad against the laird's sons, which had been reflected in their mother's aloof attitude to her, which had started about the same time. She hadn't been invited inside the castle any more, but it hadn't stopped the boys from letting her join them in their play.

As for her own mother, she was a Victorian-style wife, never daring to disagree with her husband, though she wouldn't do that in this case anyway, because she, too, was dead against unmarried girls landing in the family way. She wouldn't excuse her daughter's plight, no matter who the boy was, so there was no point in asking her for help.

There was no one to turn to. She had no address for Ruairidh – they had never written to each other – and she wondered if his mother would tell her how to contact him if she went and asked.

The next morning being a Sunday, she went to church knowing that no amount of prayers or singing praise to the Lord would help her now. First, she had to find out if Lord Glendarril was at home, for she could never say anything in front of the laird. She was thankful that only his wife and Jean Thomson were seated in the Bruce-Lyall stall. At the close of the service, her shame at what she would soon have to confess made her hold her head down as Lady Marianne went past on her way out, her usual ornate hats replaced by a plain black toque.

Trailing her way home, Melda decided that she had better go to the castle today. This was the first time his Lordship had been away from home since … and he might not be away again for months, and by that time the whole of the glen would know she was ‘in the family way', and what a scandal there would be.

Fortified by a bite of lunch, she went out for the walk she usually took while her father was having a nap, sometimes not more than forty winks if he was called out, and he needed all the rest he could get. As she walked up the curved drive, she tried to plan what to say; she would have to tell the truth, for she was useless at telling lies. And she'd been heartened by what her mother had said before she came out.

To her dismay, her father had been holding forth about the number of girls who had been ‘wronged' by a soldier they'd met at one of the dances being laid on for servicemen in towns and villages for miles around. ‘It's a damned disgrace!' he had declaimed. ‘But they're as bad as the boys, if you ask me. They must know what they're doing, and who do they think will look after their love children? Their mothers?'

His wife had shaken her head. ‘Marianne's always very sympathetic to the girls who shame their families. She finds second- or third-hand prams and cradles for them, and gives them enough money to buy the other essentials, and she never condemns them.'

Robert had snorted. ‘It would be different if the blame lay at her own door, though. She wouldn't be so sympathetic.'

Flora had eyed him slyly. ‘I know at least one mother who was certain it was Ranald Bruce-Lyall who fathered her daughter's child.'

‘Ach! Women's gossip!'

The rest of that story came back to Melda now. The ‘shamed' girl had told her, months later, that the laird's wife had paid for the confinement in a small nursing home miles away from the glen, and had found employment for her where she could keep her child. Besides that, long afterwards a farm labourer from somewhere near Brechin had admitted to being the father. Melda had been relieved at the time that it wasn't Rannie, but she had doubts about that now. The Bruce-Lyalls could have paid the farmhand to make his confession to save their faces.

Climbing the nearest set of steps, Melda steeled herself for the confrontation to come and gave two loud raps on the oaken door.