Once the door closed behind her, she felt as though she could breathe again. She felt as though she’d escaped from something bad and horrible. It was as though she’d waked up from a terrible dream as a child and found out the dream was real.
She wanted to keep her head about her. She had to figure out how to handle this. Lots of women had frightening mothers-in-law. It was a universal joke to have a bad mother-in-law. People made jokes about how mothers were attached to their sons. Her own mother sometimes made sarcastic remarks about how men always loved their mothers the best of any female on earth, that no wife can compete with a man’s mother.
Claire went back to her room. It wasn’t such an awful thing that had happened. The old woman loved her son and she wanted him to be properly fed and clothed and cared for when he was ill. There wasn’t any more to it than that.
In her room she found that Miss Rogers had laid her clothes out for dinner. Claire, with some difficulty, unbuttoned the back of her dress herself because Miss Rogers was nowhere to be found. Miss Rogers had her own schedule and she never deviated from it. She had decided to the minute when Claire should dress for dinner and therefore she did not appear until that time. If the crazy American wanted to do something different, then that was her problem, but it was not to interfere with Miss Rogers’s life.
Claire lifted the dinner dress. She would go to dinner and act as though nothing had happened. She would smile at Harry and tell him what a pleasure it was meeting his mother, and she’d suggest that from now on he stop wearing a kilt, as he might catch cold.
Claire put her face in her hands. She didn’t want to go to dinner, didn’t want to face all those people who stared at her but who made no effort to speak to her. She didn’t want to see Harry either and have to lie to him about what a lovely person his mother was.
She knew right away that whom she wanted to talk to was Trevelyan. No, she thought, he wasn’t Trevelyan anymore, he was the renowned, the infamous, the notorious Captain Baker. If she did go talk to him, would he draw a cartoon of her that showed her with the crippled duchess? Would he show her cowering before the woman?
No, she couldn’t talk to Trevelyan. She could no longer trust him. He had betrayed her. He wanted her to talk to him so he could use what she told him.
Who else could she talk to? Her parents? She almost paled at that thought. Her parents, what few glimpses she’d had of them, had fit into the life in this big house as though they’d been born into it. Brat had said their father was considering participating in the plays in the east wing.
But there was someone to whom she could talk, she thought, someone who would know and understand and could give her advice. She tossed the dinner dress back on the bed and pulled her riding habit from the wardrobe. She would miss dinner again and she was sure Her Grace would be told about it, but Claire didn’t care. She had to talk to someone.
MacTarvit’s old cottage wasn’t easy to find, hidden as it was among the trees and hills, and Claire had a difficult time maneuvering the horse through some of the underbrush. Just as he had been when she’d first gone to him with Trevelyan, he was waiting for her. He must have positioned people as lookouts, children probably, Claire thought, because he seemed to know when anyone was approaching. He was protective of his precious whisky, and she wondered how anyone ever got near enough to steal any.
He was standing on a hill, his ancient gun across his arms, the breeze stirring his worn kilt. The moment she saw him tears welled up in her eyes. This man was the only thing she’d encountered in Scotland that was exactly as she’d expected it to be. Everything else was different and bewildering.
When she was still yards from him she dismounted and started running. Angus had no hesitation in knowing what to do: he leaned his gun against a rock and opened his big strong arms to her. She ran to him, hitting him full force, but it was like running into an oak tree. As soon as she touched him, it was as though a river had been released as floods of tears poured from her eyes.
Angus held her tightly. She cried and cried and he just stood there holding her, as patient as the oak he resembled.
After a long while she started to pull away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
He shushed her. “Oh, aye, this ol’ plaid could stand a wee washin’.”
Claire gave a sound that was part tears, part choking, part laughter.
Angus put his arm around her shoulders and led her into his cottage, where he sat her on the one chair, an old wing chair, and handed her a mug the size of a small barrel. The mug was full of his whisky. Slowly, he filled his pipe, then sat on a stool in front of the ever-burning fire and said, “Now tell me what’s wrong, lass.”
Claire knew that she should at least make some attempt at coherence but she didn’t try to. “No one is as I thought they would be. Everything is different and strange and I’m beginning to think that I don’t exist. Except for my money, that is. Everyone seems to be very aware of my money.”
Angus was beyond patient. He had no other interest in the world except her. She started telling him about yesterday and seeing the estate with Harry, and while she talked she nervously began to draw. She’d picked up a few ancient pieces of stationery with Bramley House written at the top that Angus had had about the cottage for years and a stub of a pencil and begun to draw. Her movements were angry and with every word she spoke she made another line on the papers.
Angus made her explain how it was in America and how Scotland was different. He made no comment on her answers but smoked his pipe and nodded his head.
She told him how perfect Harry was. “Perfect, is he?” Angus said.
“He is, actually, but his mother…” She looked down at her mug of whisky.
“Don’t think you can shock me with stories of her.” There was anger in Angus’s voice.
Claire told of her meeting with the duchess. “She isn’t going to turn any power over to me when I marry Harry. She is going to allow nothing to change. She will control every meal, every breath that anyone in that house takes. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that she plans to choose my clothes each day.”
“And what does this perfect Harry of yours say to this?”
Claire began to fidget in her chair. “What could he say? She’s his mother and he can’t contradict her.”
“Has a braw lass like you ever contradicted your mother?”
Claire giggled—she had drunk half of the mug of whisky. “Only about two hundred thousand times.”
Angus smiled at her. “Yet he is perfect.”
Claire looked down at the mug. “Yesterday my little sister said the oddest thing about Harry.” Even as she said this, she knew she must be getting drunk or she’d never tell anyone this. Brat was always saying the most dreadful things about people. Sometimes her family met perfectly nice people, yet Brat would later say a person was evil or some such nonsense. Of course, it was eerie how often she turned out to be right.
“What did your sister say?”
“She said, ‘You’ll never have any control over Harry or influence over him. Three months after you’re married Harry won’t even know you’re alive. He’ll see that you have two children, an heir and a spare, then he’ll go his own way. He’ll be sweet and good to you, but he’ll never interest you. You’re much too smart in a stupid sort of way. You have to be smart like me and go after what you want.’”
“How old is this sister of yours?”
“Fourteen, I think. Maybe she’s forty.”
Angus nodded and poured himself some whisky. “And what of the other one?”
“What other one?” she said, but she knew exactly who he was talking about.
“The other boy. The dark one. The one that brought you here.”
“Oh,” she said slowly. “Trevelyan.”
“Aye, that one.” He watched as she seemed to be struggling to figure out what to say. “The explorer one.”
“You know?”
“I know that much. Tell me w
hat he’s done to anger you.”
“I thought he was my friend,” she began, then started to talk. Trevelyan had been the one person in the house who would talk to her. “We talked about everything. I could tell him anything. I told him things I’ve never told anyone and he always understood. He never—” She stopped because, even as mellow as the whisky was making her feel, she didn’t want to sound disloyal to Harry. She loved Harry.
“He was writing down everything that I said. He was studying me,” she said. “He wanted to put me in one of his damned—oh, sorry—books. I’m not a subject for study. I’m just a woman, and Captain Baker can—”
“I thought you called him Trevelyan.”
“I did. I mean, I do. That’s his family name. But he is Captain Baker. Do you know of all the things he’s done?”
Angus looked at her. When she’d come in, her face had been distorted with anguish, but now her eyes were gleaming. “Nay, I know nothing. Why don’t you tell me what he’s done?”
Claire took another sip of the whisky and started telling about one of her favorite subjects in the world: Captain Frank Baker. She told of his trips to Africa, to the world of Arabia. She explained about his being a Master Sufi. She told of the languages he could speak. “He can master any language in two months.”
She told how he wrote when he was ill. She told of the chances he had taken in his life and what he had learned from what he had done. “Over the centuries whole civilizations have disappeared, like the…like the Babylonians.” She was pointing her mug at Angus. “We don’t know much about the Babylonians, because there was no Captain Baker then. There was no brilliant, brave man to go into the country and observe it and write about it as he has done.”
“Doesn’t sound real to me. He sounds more like a myth.”
“Maybe he is,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’s a real man.” She looked up at Angus. “I can’t imagine Captain Baker’s mother telling his future wife that he can or cannot eat peas with squab. I doubt that Captain Baker had a mother.”
“I think he did,” Angus said softly.
“I bet she died when he was born and he raised himself.” She drained the last of the whisky then looked at the mug. “What in the world am I going to do?” She looked up at Angus and the anguish on her face was back again. “The way I see it I have two choices: I can marry Harry and live under his mother’s rule. That means that every aspect of my life will be decided by her. I will end up like her poor daughter, holed up in a room, never allowed out, with a few books chosen by Her Grace. I wonder if she will even allow me to see my own children?”
“And the second choice?”
Claire was silent for a moment. “I could break my engagement to Harry.”
“Would that hurt you? Do you love the lad so very much?”
“If I do not marry a man of whom my parents approve I will not receive my grandfather’s money.” She went on to explain, telling him about her grandfather, her parents having spent ten million dollars each, and about her sister having no money at all.
It took Angus, who had difficulty understanding how much money a hundred pounds was, a while to recover at hearing such numbers. “Ten million dollars. And how many pounds would that be?”
“Probably about two million, I guess.”
Angus was glad he was sitting down. “And your parents spent that much?”
She didn’t try to defend them as she had to Trevelyan.
Angus sat and nodded his head for a while. “So now you’re afeared that if you don’t marry who they want, they will take your—” He swallowed. “Your ten million and spend it and you won’t get any and your little sister will be left poor too.”
Claire started to protest that she wasn’t really afraid of that, but she’d had much too much whisky to lie. “Yes, I’m afraid so. Both my parents love it here. My father has been out shooting something or other every day we’ve been here, and my mother has met two duchesses, four countesses, a viscount, and three marquises. They’ve all told her that after Harry and I are married she can meet the queen or Princess Alexandra.”
“And these things mean a lot to your parents, do they?”
“Yes, they do. My father has never been trained to do anything. I doubt he’s ever done a day’s work in his life. I know that sounds awful but he’s too old to start now. He wouldn’t know how to begin to be a banker or whatever. And my mother—”
Angus sat there and looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
“My mother wants to feel important, that she is somebody. I think that in her early life she was too often told she was nobody.”
“And what do you want, lass?”
“Love,” she said quickly, then smiled. “And maybe something to do. I have difficulty being idle.”
Angus looked at her as she leaned back against the chair. He knew she was about to fall asleep. “If you could change what’s wrong here, what would you do first? Shall we plow the fields? Would you open an American factory and make carriages or some such?”
Claire smiled. “No. First I’d marry Leatrice to James Kincaid.”
Angus gave a derisive snort at that. “And here I thought you were serious. You are wantin’ love and love alone.”
Claire, with her eyes closed, smiled broader. “My grandfather said that the cornerstone of all wealth and power was manpower. I think the cornerstone of the duchess’s power is her children. She rules Leatrice and she somewhat rules Harry. If I could take one of those people from her, it would weaken her foundation. Perhaps if her own daughter could escape her, then others could also. Perhaps it could start to become a house where the inhabitants had as much freedom and control over their own lives as the servants do.”
Angus stood up and looked down at her with new respect. From what he knew of what went on in the big house, what she said made sense. He saw that she was asleep, so he went to a chest along the wall and took out the MacTarvit laird’s plaid and draped it around her. Even when he took the drawings from her lap, she snuggled into the chair and kept sleeping.
He looked at the drawings, gave a grunt of a laugh, tucked the drawings back beside her, then left the cottage and started walking. It would take him a couple of hours to reach the big house.
Chapter Thirteen
When Oman told Trevelyan that the old man was coming up the stairs, Trevelyan dismissed his servant and returned to his writing. When Angus appeared in the doorway, Trevelyan had to admire the man. He wasn’t out of breath, but he’d climbed the stairs two at a time.
Trevelyan didn’t look up from his writing. “What brings you here? I have no cattle to steal.”
Angus went silently to a side table and poured himself a whisky, then sat on the window seat and looked at Trevelyan.
At last Trevelyan put his pen down and stared at the man. His weathered old face was drawn into a frown of concentration. “Out with it,” Trevelyan said.
“The girl has met the old woman.”
“Ah,” Trevelyan said and looked back at his writing. “That shouldn’t bother her. Her love for Harry—”
Angus interrupted him with a snort. “She bears no love for the boy. She thinks he’s…perfect, as she says. Yesterday he took her out to see this place.” He waved his hand to indicate all of the estate. “Young Harry pretended he knew all of the tenants. Pretended he ran the place. As far as I know he has never seen all that you own.”
“That I own?”
Angus just stared at Trevelyan.
Trevelyan threw down his pen and went to stand before the fire. “What is it you expect me to do? Tell her Harry isn’t what she thinks he is? Tell her my little brother is as lazy as the day is long and that his mother rules him?”
“She knows some about the mother.” Angus tried to stifle a smile. “The old hag told her how to feed Harry, told her what food he could eat with carrots and beans, told her how to take care of his delicate health.”
Trevelyan laughed at that. “Harry can eat a
hogshead of anything and he’s healthier than two horses.”
Angus was quiet for a while. “You could stop this. You could tell them you’re not dead.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Trevelyan said. His mouth tightened. “And you bloody well know why. The old woman would make my life hell. She has what she wants. Her precious Harry is the duke and she’ll have the girl’s money. She’ll have everything she wants. Harry’s agreed to fund any expedition I go on, and that’s all I want.”
“And the girl?”
“She’s not my concern!” Trevelyan practically yelled.
Angus looked at him for a while. “I saw you with her. You could’na take your eyes from her. You watched her dance, you listened to her talk. You were…” He paused as he seemed to be searching for words. “You were proud of her.”
Trevelyan turned, put his hand on the mantel, and looked into the fire. “She has a brain. She’s been raised with every advantage and instead of dedicating her life to the next gown to wear, she’s chosen to read and study. She learned Latin just so she could read my books.”
“Oh, aye, the dirty parts.”
“What do you know of the dirty parts?”
“The old priest from the village used to read the Latin parts to me. I paid him in whisky to do so, but I think he would have read them without payment.”
“You vulgar little man,” Trevelyan said but there was no animosity in his voice.
“So you like this girl, yet you plan to let her marry your brother. You know about her grandfather’s will?”
“Yes, I know about it. And it serves her right if she marries a man who isn’t actually the duke. She wants to be a duchess so much that she’s willing to sell herself to a man she doesn’t—”
“Are you about to say she doesn’t love Harry? He’s a fine-looking young man. Looks better than you do, with your frowning face and your pinched look. He’s a mighty fine-lookin’ lad. Any lassie’d be proud to have him for her own. I’ll wager he’ll give her a bairn on their first night together, whenever that will be. I doubt that a fine, strapping lad like Harry will wait ’til the weddin’ night.”