The Corn Maiden, page 25
She shook her head and, sighing, snuggled her head against his chest. “No, Moidart. I am not ill. I have been so fatigued with cares, but the cure is here in your strong arms…and in the course of time…” She fell silent, unsure how to go on.
He was abruptly struck by a thought, which appeared to paralyse him. He looked around the small, bright room, at the rocking horse, the cradle, the fresh paint, and the general air of refurbishment. Tilting her face gently towards him and looking into the clear depths of her eyes, he asked, “You were not deceiving me when you? My darling girl! Do you now say that you are indeed carrying our child?” He searched her face with the anxious hope of one who had been cruelly disappointed and was determined not to be deceived again.
She returned his gaze with such glowing reassurance that he could no longer be in doubt. “Then it is true! But…but how can this be? You are grown so thin…” His gentle hand caressed her shoulders wonderingly.
“It is but two months,” she whispered. “My condition will not be evident for some weeks yet. And it is as you suspect—I have been heartsick and eating nothing unless urged. Thérèse knows, Lucy knows, but no one else.”
“Lucy! I do not wonder that she greeted me as though I were the Devil himself! But, my darling, you would have said nothing of this to me? How would you have managed your life? It does not bear thinking of!” He strained her to him in his distress. “How could you consider for a moment such a painful concealment? And suppose I had married Miss Sinclair only to find that you had borne our child!” A shudder racked his body, and his voice was thick with emotion. “I cannot bear to contemplate this! Oh, Elinor! Thank God I came in time! We will be married this day! I still have the license I acquired in Glasgow.” He searched in his pocket and produced a crumpled paper. “We can ask Poulson or your companion to sign it in witness.”
“Oh, Poulson!” exclaimed Nell, looking up distractedly, “Thérèse and Lucy! They must be anxious!” And with something of her old zest, she jumped to her feet and went to the door. “Lucy!” she called to the girl who was hovering within reach. “All is well! Do not be concerned. You may go downstairs. Please tell Poulson and Thérèse that my guardian and I have urgent business to discuss and we wish to be undisturbed. Mr. Lindsay will be dining, and a room is to be prepared for him.”
She closed the door and, in the same decisive mood, turned to him again, holding out her hands. “Come with me, Moidart!” and she opened the door to her own bedroom and led him through.
“Nell, what are you doing?” he asked hesitantly. He glanced around the simple room and then back at her laughing face. For a moment, she luxuriated in a long, caressing look at the elegant dark man, a stranger and yet not strange, whom she was holding by the hand, daring now to meet his eyes and linger on his mouth, which was smiling a question.
Her eyes sparkled with mischievous invitation as she put her arms around his neck and announced with mock solemnity, “Welcome to my bothy! The accommodation is not so romantic for the Laird of Moidart, perhaps, but the welcome is no less warm for that! I have given all possible proof of my love to Moidart, but I have never made love to Lindsay. If I am determined to secure the hero of Talavera, perhaps I should make sure of the man! Four hours I understand is what it takes, if McPherson’s shepherd is to be believed!”
Joy flooded his features and he held her close, rubbing his cheek on her hair, stroking her back gently, and whispering, “Elinor, four lifetimes would be too short! You guess rightly that I am quite desperate to hold you in my arms and love you again, but…but, you are not well…you should not…”
“Can you not understand? I am unwell from lack of you. Please do not draw away from me now, or I shall surely fade away!”
He smiled down at her with loving indulgence and murmured, “Lady Elinor always gets her own way, I believe, but if all her demands are as delightful as this, I shall be a shockingly compliant husband!”
She opened her eyes later that afternoon to find that the room was in darkness but for the glow of embers in the fireplace, and her mind flew back to a similar but wilder scene in a remote Scottish croft. She smiled again with satisfaction to see his clothes interlaced with hers in a hasty pile by her bed and stirred sleepily in his arms. Warm lips dropped a kiss on her shoulder and gentle hands tucked the quilt more securely around her. She turned to him with a contented sigh and snuggled under his arm. “Moidart?”
“My love?”
“Now that you have acquired your rich wife, there is nothing further to detain you in London, I take it?”
He playfully bit her shoulder and growled, “Silly girl! It was not for a wife I came to London! I came to find a man—a very particular man, an architect and engineer, the very best designer of mills in the country, I hear, and to conclude with him my business regarding the opening of the Lindsay Tweed Mill!” He laughed to hear her gasp of astonishment and went on, “I found I could not ignore your advice, Nell. It seemed as though it were a trust you had left for me to honour for the sake of our people—the people you had made your own. And as soon as you gave me back my land, I was inspired to move in the matter at once. I sold my mother’s necklace and raised enough money to pay for the first stages at least. The plans are almost drawn up, and the work will start in the spring.”
“So those are the wheels you will—literally—be putting in motion!” With delight, she stroked his firm chin and traced his eyebrow with her finger. How she had misjudged him! This was not a man to dangle himself before rich women, and yet…“But why did you attend so many receptions in London? You say you were not seeking attention from the likes of Amelia Sinclair, but I can tell you, Moidart, that you were receiving a good deal of attention and surrounded by interested, eager faces…”
“There was only one face I wanted to see, and she would not come. Evening after evening, Nell, I suffered the exquisite boredom of the London social round, expecting to hear you announced, but you did not appear.”
“Why did you not call on me in Park Lane?”
“Would you have been at home to Roderick Lindsay?” he asked simply.
“No,” she said and smiled, “No, it took a Royal Command from the Prince Regent to force me out of my self-imposed seclusion!”
They laughed together at the memory of the Prince’s unwitting role in their reunion. “Poor Prinny, what would he say if he realised he had been playing Cupid? He certainly has the figure for the role,” snorted Lindsay disrespectfully. He was silent for a moment and then continued, “Unlike our other unlikely benevolent deity!”
“Who can you mean?” asked Nell in puzzlement.
“You have never guessed the identity of our guardian angel?” he asked. “Why, none less than the Earl of Hartismere, your father.”
He chuckled at her expression of blank astonishment. “You were unaware that, six months before his death, he travelled to Moidart? He came for the first time and the last to inspect his Scottish properties. I liked the man and had thought he liked me—we shot many a grouse together and drank many a dram. We met warily, as enemies, but we parted good friends—or so I thought. I had high hopes—no, I was certain—that he intended to right a wrong and return my lands to me in his will. He knew he had little time to live. But it was not to be. What he did leave me was the irksome guardianship of his wretched, spoilt little daughter!”
Through her amazement, Nell was beginning to laugh and to cry. For the last time, and with complete understanding, she whispered, “Oh, Papa! What on earth were you about?”
Moidart held her close, whispering gently, until her sniffing and gulping stopped. “Dearest, your father—are you thinking? I have wondered…”
“I am certain! My father was a hard-headed man when it came to business and soft-hearted when he dealt with me—indeed, he was much criticised for spoiling me and letting me have my own way in everything. I think his gesture in making you my guardian, Moidart, was his last piece of spoiling. He knew I was too contrary ever to accept as a husband anyone put before me as that, even by himself. He knew me well! It’s my belief that he calculated that in order to circumvent the conditions of his will, I would be driven to meet my guardian, to have dealings—even negotiations—with him, and in the course of this, fall in love with him! He must have liked you very much, Moidart.”
“Thereby satisfying his conscience on the fate of the Scottish estates but, above all, caring and planning for his daughter. I think you are right. Hmm…Elinor…” he said with a radiant smile of dawning comprehension, “do you realise what this means? No? I fear it is I who have been manoeuvred and entrapped into marriage by a scheming Englishman and his seductive daughter! Do you think I should bolt at once?”
She laughed up at him through a dazzle of tears and damp lashes. “Well, if you do decide on bolting, you are holding an expert in your arms, and I will advise you on how it is done on condition that I may bolt with you. Moidart, if you have finished your business here in England—the weather is fair and the roads are open—I wonder if you would take me back to Scotland? To our home?”
“Will you be strong enough to undertake the journey, Nell?” he asked in surprise but with an eagerness she could not mistake.
“Will you be strong enough, rather, Moidart, for I intend to spend the journey lolling in your arms! You had spoken to me—do you remember?—of a Christmas wedding at the castle. I shall be happy indeed to sign our special license this evening, but I shall be happier yet to celebrate our marriage at home with our own people.
“Our own people,” she said again, savouring the phrase, liking its sound. “When I was exiled in London, I thought all the time of Somersham. I thought of the people, the animals, and this little room, and I longed to be here.”
“It’s your place, Elinor,” he said gently.
“But when I came back here a week ago, I saw only one thing—the House of Lindsay—Lindsay of the Loch and the Hills and the running water. The thought that I would never return was anguish to me. And if I closed my eyes, I saw only you.”
“But this is your place,” he said again.
“Lady Elinor Somersham I was born, but Elinor Lindsay I shall be. Of course Somersham will never go away, and of course I shall keep faith with the people here. But…” she hesitated and, taking his face in her hands, said seriously, “more than anything I’ve ever wanted, I want our child to be born in the House of Lindsay. Besides,” she added, “there are others to think of…”
“Others?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t want Lucy to peak and pine and fade away.”
“Lucy?”
“Oh, Moidart! Have you no eyes or ears? What about Coll? It is hard to picture that rough Highlander fading into a decline, but is he perhaps of the kind to die of a broken heart?”
“Well, upon my soul!” said Moidart, gathering her to him with a shout of laughter, “I am glad I gave instructions for your Corn Maiden to remain in place over the hearth! One day you must tell me exactly what spells you wove into it! And Nell—make certain your nimble fingers do not lose the art! I have a feeling we shall be needing a fresh one each year for many a year!”
End
Barbara Cleverly, The Corn Maiden
