The Corn Maiden, page 15
“They’ll know you are safe with me,” he said with an ironic smile.
As he spoke, a pale shaft of sunshine briefly burst, slanting through the cloud and, shining clear through the small window, illuminated her as she stood in the centre of the room. Moidart, who had raised himself on one elbow, the better to follow her movements, gazed spellbound. With her rain-washed hair now dried but unbrushed and standing out in a flying golden cloud about her pretty face, and her naked body slim and pale against the prevailing dark of the little cabin, it seemed to him that he had captured one of the mysterious nymph daughters of the Sea Kings of Orkney, a sweet figure from the legends of his childhood.
Muddling distractedly around the room, Nell was unaware of the fanciful thoughts she was inspiring, unaware that his expression was changing from one of playful mischief to one of gathering desire, unaware, indeed, that after the total, wracking lovemaking of the afternoon it was possible to rekindle the flame that had consumed them.
“Elinor!” At the sudden sharpness in his tone, she looked at him questioningly, her surprise turning to a slow smile of delight as she interpreted the intensity of his look, his outstretched hand, and the need in his voice as he said roughly, “Now put down that shift and come back here, my lady. Your steward is growing cold without you.”
10
The sun was going down in a fierce display of orange, pink, and violet, reflecting off the high-massed clouds of a mackerel sky as they rode together back towards the castle. Warm now in her stiff and scorched but dry habit and snuggled into Moidart’s plaid, Nell felt that the vivid bonfire colours of the world around her exulted with her. She too was alive, alight, and rejoicing. She glanced across constantly at her smiling companion, with no attempt now to hide the love in her eyes. His mood too had changed, and he had begun to talk to her easily and confidingly, all wariness, it seemed, vanished.
By common consent, they reined in their horses as they topped the rise overlooking the valley in which the castle stood and gazed at the beauty of the scene.
“What a thing it is,” murmured Moidart, “to be able to look down on that and say, ‘There lies my home.’”
“You are devoted to your land, are you not?” asked Nell quietly. “Would you never consider living anywhere else, Moidart?”
She listened intently for his answer, realising now how much her happiness depended on how he chose to reply. She was in no doubt that he would have understood what she was really asking him. He looked at her directly and answered the thought behind the question. “No, I would never consider it. I have travelled abroad and lived for short whiles in many places, but it’s here I want to be and nothing, Elinor, and no one would persuade me to leave this valley. I was born here, my bairns will be born here, and, like as not, I shall die here.”
She had suspected as much but had gone on planning a future for him with her in her imagination, and now he was telling her with unmistakable finality that her hopes were never to be fulfilled. The dark shadows lengthened in her mind as they lengthened along the valley.
“And what would you do if Lindsay were no longer able to retain his lands? Could you exist independently of him? Do you have any land of your own?”
“A field or two that come to me from my mother’s family—enough to earn me the blue bonnet of a Laird,” he said with a disparaging smile, “but not enough to live on. And Lindsay? I think you forget, Elinor, that he owns none of this anyway. It will be yours to do with as you wish.”
“I have been thinking deeply about my situation,” she said hesitantly, “and it becomes very urgent that I speak with my cousin. You say he will be back by Friday?”
“He must! Tradition insists that he open the Harvest Home in the early evening, so you may count on seeing him at some time during the day. He will expect you, as the guest of the house, to take part in the evening’s merrymaking, and it may afford him some sly satisfaction to present the new owner of the lands to her tenants and tacksmen on that occasion. You’ll be needing a white dress. Do you have one in your luggage?”
“Yes, indeed, I have,” she said, surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.
“Then wear it. I’ll get Jennie to fix up for ye a sash of the Lindsay tartan, and then ye’ll not look so much of a stranger.”
“You still despise me, Moidart, don’t you?”
“Aye,” he replied easily and at once, “but I’m fond of ye too, so it’s a fine mess I’m in, and it’s havoc you’re causing for me!”
“Don’t judge me yet, Moidart. I may yet surprise you,” she said with a wry smile and urged her horse forward.
A gleam of fading sunshine illuminated a stone building by the side of the river west of the castle, a ruined building that caught Nell’s attention and caused her to catch Moidart’s sleeve and point to it. “Is that a mill down there?” she asked.
“That, why yes, it’s an old water mill. Disused these ten years.”
“What kind of mill was it? What did it produce?”
“They were weavers who had it,” he answered, in some surprise that she should be interested. “They produced woollen cloth, the tartans and the tuile.”
“Why did they abandon it?”
“They decided to try their luck in the Americas, like so many others,” he said.
Nell was thoughtful for a moment. “Moidart. The stuff of your cloak—is it made of tuile?”
“Yes, it’s a local tuile, though some would call it tweed after the river,” he said, puzzled as to where her thoughts were leading.
“Where does the wool come from to make the cloth? No! Answer me!” she said seriously, sensing his impatience at her simple question.
“From the sheep you saw swarming all over the hills of our neighbours. You must have seen above a thousand today.”
“And the dyes for the cloth?”
“From the plants on the hillside we’re standing on.”
“And the power for the looms?”
“From the river.”
“And the workers to tend the looms?”
“All about you. Not so many as the sheep, but too many.”
“Then Lindsay could solve his problems,” she said eagerly. “With materials and power and labour aplenty here in the valley, he could build a woollen mill to rival those of Glasgow. At the Saracen’s Head, where we spent a day resting on our way here, I listened to the talk of two merchants in woollen cloth who were staying there whilst they did business with the mills. They were very pleased with themselves and declared their goods sold so readily to the English and the Dutch markets that they could not come by sufficient quantities of cloth to satisfy the demands.”
He was listening to her attentively with a slight smile curving his mouth. “If cousin Roderick were but to build himself mills,” she pressed on, “and buy wool from his neighbours, he might provide employment for his surplus population, might he not?”
He looked down into her excited face with a loving and indulgent smile. “Elinor, I don’t know another girl to whom the idea would have occurred! And yes, of course you are right, but there is one question you have left out of your list…”
“What is that?” she asked, sensing a disappointment.
“The question of money! How is Lindsay to pay for the mills—for the designers, the builders, the machinery? He does not have the wherewithall even to repair the old mill you are looking at.” His face darkened, “And if we have another bad winter, the Laird will not be able to fill the empty bellies of his clan. It’s a beautiful inheritance you will have, Elinor, but a poor one!”
They approached the castle in silence, each wrapt in thought, and clattered into the courtyard as the last of the light faded from the sky. At the sound of their hooves, the door opened and two concerned faces looked out—Lucy and Coll, each relieved that master and mistress were safely home.
Moidart did not offer a reason for their late arrival, merely ordering supper for her ladyship and himself in the parlour in an hour’s time.
Nell soaked herself thankfully in a bath fragrant with cloves and rose petals and listened in a steamy daze as Lucy chattered on about her day. The portmanteau had arrived and its contents had been unpacked and ironed, so Nell could once again be dressed in the height of fashion. Lucy herself was prinking about, Nell noticed, in her best uniform of lavender dress, frilly white apron, and lace cap with streamers flying down her back.
She had had a busy and absorbing day, it seemed, getting to know the routine of the castle. The routine had been much disturbed early in the afternoon when Coll and the men had returned in triumph with stories of their success in the battle for Achill Bridge. The frequency with which Coll’s name cropped up in Lucy’s conversation did not escape Nell’s notice, and she smiled to herself, losing no time in giving her own eyewitness account of the doings at the bridge and speaking warmly of Coll’s part in the defence.
“And that Mr. Moidart who found us on the road—did you know, Miss Nell?—he isn’t just anybody! No—he’s a Laird, Coll says! And that’s why he wears that floppy blue hat. Is that the same as a lord in English? I had taken him for the steward, like Kenton at Somersham, but Coll laughed at me and said—no, not at all, he’s aristocracy really—the Moidart of Moidart and his master.”
Nell attempted to explain, as far as she understood it, the social fabric of the Highlands and who owed allegiance to whom, but she quickly ran out of information herself.
“So I suppose, then, it’s quite proper for you to go down and have supper with his Lairdship, though you wouldn’t dine with Kenton at home, Miss Nell?” asked Lucy, still striving to understand.
“You have it, Lucy. Moidart is acting as my host until my cousin should return.” A picture of herself dining tête à tête with portly old Kenton almost made Nell laugh out loud. She had a far different scene in mind. “And now, Lucy, will you put out my dark red dress and shawl, my best silk stockings—the ones with the pink rosebuds, my satin garters, and my kid slippers? Oh, and did we bring my French eau de cologne?”
“Yes, Miss Nell,” said Lucy, giving her a long look.
“Oh, and Lucy—you may dismiss when I go down to dinner. I will put myself to bed.”
As Lucy turned to the drawers to find the stockings, she smiled secretly to herself. If Tibbie’s gossip were to be believed, Miss Nell had had assistance from an unusual quarter in putting herself to bed the very first night at the castle. Indeed, the whole household was buzzing with it, and Lucy had found herself mounting a stout defence of her mistress’s virtue, saddened by the looks of indulgent amusement being exchanged behind her back. Her instinctive smile of pleasure at the thought that at last her mistress had fallen in love faded as she called to mind Moidart’s handsome features. The man was a heartbreaker if ever she saw one, and not at all what Miss Nell was used to. He quite reminded Lucy of a wolf among a pack of sheep, compared with the London gentlemen her mistress was accustomed to flirting with. And that was another thing—this man didn’t flirt with Nell at all. Indeed, Lucy had not liked to see the concentrated calculation in his stare. She had not liked the way he had handled Nell on the coach road on the day of their arrival, and if she had not heard from Tibbie that things were decidedly otherwise, she would have thought Moidart disliked her mistress. Ah, well, he had been considerate to her, she had to admit that, and Coll was devoted to the factor. And Coll, well…Lucy’s secret smile returned. Coll…was a good man, of that at least she was certain.
There was the same welcoming scene in the small parlour, log fire well ablaze and, stretched before it, the hound lifted a disdainful nose and marked her entrance with a thump of his tail. But there was a different welcome from Moidart. He strode forward eagerly, closed the door, and enfolded her in his arms. Three knee-buckling kisses later, he released her to her supper, pouring the wine and serving the fragrant venison stew left by Mrs. Fraser.
Nell had expected to find herself embarrassed and tongue-tied in his company after the intimate scene in the bothy, but to her relief, Moidart was relaxed and completely charming and seemed determined to draw her out. He talked readily and with all the ease of one of her London friends, but with twice the perception and educated good taste of any of them. He appeared to have read widely and to have a shrewd, though—in Nell’s view—unorthodox, perception of the social and political systems of their two countries. She was amused and intrigued by the difference between the elegant figure before her, lightly setting out his objections to the Lakeland poets (deliberately to tease her, she recognised) and the rough, strutting Highlander who had kept the bridge of Achill.
He would pause frequently to ask her a question or her opinion and listen carefully to her reply. She had a clear impression that behind the warm, amused eyes there was an intellect that was scrupling not to test her out, to explore her mind as he had explored her body that afternoon. This was a situation that Nell could react to and enjoy. She was well educated for a girl of her class and had been encouraged by Thérèse, a woman of wider experience than most Englishwomen, to think for herself and not simply to parrot the views of her menfolk.
She led him from a discussion of literature by way of Wordsworth to an exchange of opinions on the outcome of the revolution in France, eager to see whether he would take the side of the monarchists and bemoan the fate of the aristocracy or regard himself as a man of the people and welcome the toppling of the most corrupt régime in Europe. Predictably, this many-faceted man could clearly see both sides of the problem and, on balance, regretted that so little of worth had come out of the struggle and that so much blood should have been spilled for so little progress.
“Progress?” she questioned, affecting surprise. “That is surely an odd word to come from the mouth of a bonneted Laird who talks about the Forty-five as though it were yesterday and who encourages and lives by the outdated customs of a past age?” She held out her glass for more claret, pleased with her challenge.
“Ah, well, you see,” he replied unabashed, “the Revolutionaries made the mistake of sweeping away the whole of the past, including much that was good, and the new political edifice, lacking foundation, collapsed in spite of its laudable aims. But me, Elinor? I value tradition and the security of our customs, yet I see that we must move forward. I will show you our—your—lands, and you will see for yourself that we are poised between two times and we must go forward. This is a time to destroy or a time to build, and many hereabouts have chosen to destroy. If I could I would change and expand and build on the firm foundations that we...”
“If you could? Don’t you mean if Lindsay could?”
“Of course,” he said, impatient with her interruption. “We speak, all of us, of Lindsay as a clan. You will come to understand that. It is well known that the Laird has not two brass farthings, however, and can do nothing. Every spare penny he earns is leached away to London, and he has no reserves to develop the land in the way he would like.”
He held her in a steady gaze, and she knew that, despite the warmth that had arisen between them this day, there was still a hatred of her position and her power lurking behind the thickly fringed watchful eyes.
“You know well, Moidart, do you not,” she said tentatively, “that, as I hold something that Lindsay wants and he holds the key to my independence, we might possibly strike a bargain?”
“I was wondering exactly what kind of a bargain you had in mind,” he said slowly. “I am sure that he will listen carefully to any proposal you put before him. You are right, Elinor, you and your kinsman have much to offer each other and must come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement. But tell me…would you still seriously contemplate marrying Lindsay…or even Collingwood? You may speak freely—after all that has passed between us,” he added, seeing her hesitation.
Elinor was silent for a moment, feeling acutely the awkwardness of discussing her marriage with the man she was convinced she was in love with. “Yes, with certain stipulations, I believe I would marry either of them,” she said finally and defiantly. “For the freedom that’s in it.”
“But not for the love that’s in it?” he questioned.
“I thought that we had established that I was not marrying for love. I want to achieve an alliance that will make no demands on me so that I may look elsewhere for love.” She glanced fleetingly up at his impassive face. Surely he was understanding her aright. “But I do see that there are dangers in marrying Lindsay. By so doing, I would place myself fully in his power and, as my husband, my entire fortune would be at his disposal, to plunder as he chose. My entire fortune!” she repeated with emphasis. “The revenues from my Suffolk lands and the considerable sums my father had amassed during his lifetime.”
He nodded silently and turned his attention to his wine glass, sensing she was following a thought through and had not yet finished.
“There may be a way, in law, of preventing this,” she concluded. “I do not know. For this reason, I would much prefer that he agreed to my marrying Collingwood.”
He snorted in disgust, and swiftly she tried to explain—“Henry was a very careful, particular choice. I can control him. I have known him for years; he adores me and will do whatever I tell him to do. When we are married, he will go immediately back to Spain, and I shall live my life as I wish to live it, in freedom by myself or…or with a…companion, if I so choose.” She looked up at him, desperately wanting him to understand her meaning, unable to put her dearest wishes into blunt words. She knew no way of making her proposition clearer.
An icy smile was her only response.
“You think me spoilt and wilful, do you not, Moidart?”
“I do! I would think that you are a girl who is accustomed to having whatever and whomever she wants as soon as she wants it. And I can’t help wondering what you are intending to do with your great wealth when you have it. Fritter it away on modistes and mantua makers in London and Brighton? You have been bred for little else, clever girl though you be.”
