Chapter 9
Getting ready for a wedding seemed mainly to consist of buying clothes. Lochranza was interested enough, though not so excited as Mrs Mackintosh, who seemed to see it as her number one duty to purchase as many English-made clothes as possible.
‘Americans don’t have trousseaus. I’m sure they don’t. And I’m not convinced they have the same capable seamstresses that we have here. Not over there. A wild place, so I hear, where people wear animal skins to cover their nakedness.’ She barely suppressed a shudder.
Just one week before leaving to take ship to cross the Atlantic, Lochranza had a dream about horses, their eyes red as coals, their flanks flecked with sweat.
Fire streamed from their nostrils and their riders had the look of death about them.
She smelled smoke – and something else – a sweet meaty smell that choked her.
Jerking into wakefulness, she sprang out of bed, crossed the room and ejected the contents of her stomach into a handsome china bowl.
Taking deep breaths helped calm her racing heart but did nothing for the sour taste in her throat. Seeing as the bowl was unusable, she dipped her hands into the matching ewer and wiped her hands over her face.
The sound of hooves sounded from outside her bedroom window. She looked out to see a pair of matching chestnuts harnessed to a closed carriage, their gleaming coats and arched necks bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the hellish animals of her dream.
No coat of arms on the carriage door betrayed its owner. It could be hired or the occupant preferred to keep his identity a secret.
A footman rushed up to the carriage, placed his hand on the door handle. The usual format was for him to set down the folding step on the side of the vehicle and open the door, bowing and uttering welcome.
A head bobbed close to the window, stopping short of fully emerging and showing his face.
Lochranza was good at observing small things. Whether they knew it or not, she could tell their mood – even perhaps their thoughts – by the look in an eye, the set of a jaw, the stiffness of shoulders.
In the case of the footman, she could tell he was using both hands to prevent the door from being opened, his mouth opening and closing, saying something she couldn’t hear.
‘How dare you!’ The shout came from inside the carriage, loud enough for her to hear. The footman was refusing entry.
The carriage wobbled on its springs. The horses tossed their heads and stamped the ground. The harness jangled like a dozen ringing bells.
Even from her first-floor room, Lochranza deduced outrage.
A further shout. An order to leave!
The footman stepped quickly back as the coachman cracked the whip over the horses’ backs.
As the carriage jerked forward, stones flew up from the aggrieved wheels, flicking into the footman’s face. For a brief moment, the occupant of the carriage glared outwards and upwards.
Lochranza turned cold but resisted the urge to step back from the window. It was only a glimpse, yet she’d seen hatred in that upturned countenance.
For me?
* * *
Tilly entered her room at the normal time, helping her to bathe, dress and brush her hair. Normally, she resisted Tilly’s efforts with the pure bristle brush, but today Lochranza did not. Her mind was fixed on the carriage that had been turned away.
She asked her maid about it.
Tilly shook her head. ‘It was a bit early for visiting. I expect that was the reason.’
‘What is the name of the footman who told him to go?’
‘James number three.’
James number three. Not James number two, who matched James number three in height though not in complexion.
James number three she recalled as fair of face, with dancing blue eyes.
James number one was dark-skinned and being trained at Cleveland Court as a favour to his uncle, Nathaniel Wells.
She didn’t know his real name. All the footmen were named James whilst in the presence of the Kildare family.
It saved having to remember everyone’s given name and bred an air of continuity.
Even though a James might have got married, secured another position or died, there was always a James to fulfil every need.
‘Will you ask him who it was?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I thought about visiting Mrs Wainwright before I leave.’
Tilly paused in the act of running the silver-handled hairbrush through Lochranza’s gloriously thick hair.
‘Didn’t you know? She’s not Mrs Wainwright any longer. She’s Mrs Hayward. She got married four weeks ago. I did tell you.’
‘Oh yes. Of course.’
Even though she’d sent food along for the wedding feast, Lochranza had forgotten.
It had come as something of a surprise to learn that Mrs Wainwright had married George Hayward, a herdsman and slaughterer whose wife had died some years ago.
There were rumours about the death of Mrs Hayward, that the brute of a man had not served her well and might have contributed to her early demise.
‘It meant she could keep the cottage without any worry at all,’ Tilly declared, answering the question before Lochranza could ask it.
‘You didn’t mention love.’
Tilly shrugged her youthful shoulders whilst her busy hands brushed and smoothed her mistress’s gleaming tresses. ‘A woman has to do whatever she can for her family.’
The words were both innocently and gently spoken. Lochranza wondered at how women so easily grasped at opportunities that met their family’s needs rather than their own. Practical needs. Not love and the enduring need to be with someone.
She sighed. ‘I still think I should see her. I’ll go after breakfast.’
Although the day was warm, she suddenly felt as though her skin was covered in a light layer of frost. No matter their status, from peasant to duchess, all women lived their lives for the sake of their families.
It occurred to her that she was doing the same.
But there was still time to back out of the arrangement – if she really wanted to.
* * *
Lord Kildare stood in the middle of the reception hall.
He paused for a moment and thought about his action in sending Lochranza away.
In the past, he might never have considered it.
He’d have kept her here where he could keep an eye on her, protect her.
But he was getting old. Time was running out.
Ethan was better placed to look after her.
Every woman needed a fiancé’s protection, and she was of marriageable age.
He’d been on his way to the dining room when the carriage had arrived.
‘He says his name is the honourable Arthur Kildare and that he is your nephew.’
‘This is not a good time.’
The footman hovered, waiting for the order of yay or nay.
Alexander considered. Why now? Arthur couldn’t possibly know his plan to marry off Lochranza to Ethan. As a man who analysed the actions of others, he did not think Arthur’s arrival was merely coincidence. He had no wish to parley with him, no wish to disclose his plans for Lochranza.
His mind was made up. ‘Apologise and tell him I am not available. Tell him to come back in a week’s time.’
The footman had duly carried out his orders. The carriage bearing his nephew, Arthur, had left. If the slightly dishevelled look of the footman was anything to go by, he had not been well pleased, roughing the poor man up before leaving.
Hands clasped behind his back, Alexander pointed out that the young man’s wig was slightly askew.
The footman straightened it.
‘Well?’
‘He was displeased, your lordship.’
‘His words?’
The footman’s high cheekbones took colour. ‘I’m not sure… I mean—’
‘Spit it out, man. I promise I will not reach for the smelling salts!’
The footman raised his gloved hand to his mouth and coughed. ‘He said he’d expected a warmer welcome and that perhaps you thought he might be a man of colour having spent his life in Jamaica. He said he was not a dirty black… he said—’
‘That’s enough. You may go.’
Deep in thought, he wended his way to the dining room, where a sideboard full of an early-morning feast would await him – plus Lochranza.
It was only six days until she left for her new life.
His plan had been to put her beyond the reach of his nephew whilst he still had the strength.
Such is man, he thought to himself. More alone in life now he was old as he would be alone in death.
His own was not that far away. He imagined that his nephews Arthur and Peter knew it too.
That’s why he was here. A title and a fortune, but only if Lochranza was dead.
Lord Kildare prided himself on having built up a vast web of agents, garnered to protect and preserve the interests of Great Britain.
It didn’t prevent him from using them to do the same for his own family.
Distance was no object. He kept an eye on them all.
Both nephews, and even his nieces, had a reputation for ruthlessness.
The younger nephew, Arthur, who had arrived in the carriage, frequented houses of ill repute.
The House of the Setting Sun was an upmarket establishment where a gentleman could relax in the arms of a beautiful woman – or boy.
Arthur was no exception. He had expressed his intentions to a delightful lady of Spanish Creole extraction, her grandmother a slave, her grandfather a British governor of a West Indian island.
Primed with too much rum, he’d related to her that he knew who Lochranza really was, the stumbling block to both a title and the Kildare fortune, including Cleveland Court.
Unfortunately for Arthur, the lady concerned acted as the eyes and ears of British interests on that island, which meant an encoded message was sent inside a book across the Atlantic.
His books in his library, and those he received, were of interest in more ways than one.
* * *
When Lochranza came down to breakfast, her uncle was sitting in his usual chair at one end of the table, her own position on his right hand.
Silver cutlery was set out on a white linen tablecloth, plus cut-glass fruit juice and water glasses and white porcelain coffee cups and saucers.
There was food aplenty, far more than the two of them could eat in a whole day, let alone at one meal. The smell of bacon, kidneys and all the other hot food available vied with that of freshly made bread.
Tilly hadn’t managed to get hold of James Two. There was nothing for it but to beard the lion in his den!
‘Who was in the carriage?’
Lord Kildare dabbed at his mouth with a white linen napkin, his hooded eyelids going some way to hide the truth lurking in his eyes.
Settling himself more deeply into his chair, he ordered the servants to leave.
As though the command did not apply to him, the butler leaned over the table to take away used plates.
Lord Kildare shouted at him. ‘I said leave us! Everyone!’
An air of solemnity, and apprehension pulsated in the silence of the room.
‘A messenger. Just a messenger.’
Many messengers called at Cleveland Court, some on horseback, some in carriages or two-wheeled phaetons pulled by high-stepping and very fast horses. Lochranza had sensed something different about this particular carriage.
Her uncle gave no sign of having lied, and yet she knew he was lying.
Suddenly he dipped down beneath the table and bobbed back up like a cormorant swooping on a fish.
The book he placed on the table was small, red and slightly battered.
‘A book.’ She raised her eyes from the small red book to his face. ‘Am I to take it with me?’
He nodded, his bottom lip protruding further than his upper one. ‘Are you any good at drawing?’
The question was both hurtful and exasperating. If he’d cared to read reports from the young ladies’ academy she’d attended, and also from the governess who’d taught her in her early years, he would know she could draw very well indeed.
‘Yes,’ she said, clearly and coldly.
‘This book has plain pages. When you get to the West Indies, I want you to draw all you see and enclose a drawing with a short note to me. Can you do that?’
She arched her eyebrows, a half-smile on her face. ‘Everything?’
Her insinuation was lost on him. ‘Each drawing must tell me something. A message in picture form. Do you understand?’
‘I think so, but to what purpose?’
He smiled a thin cold smile. ‘To my purpose. For the benefit of the British Crown. Women have proved very useful in finding out things that men cannot. A woman can loosen a man’s tongue in ways a man cannot – with some notable exceptions,’ he murmured, his voice dropping an octave or two.
‘It is your task to appeal to Ethan’s patriotism, to keep him loyal.
Persuade him that he is still a British subject and valued by the Crown.
Do what you can to steer him away from republicanism. ’
‘And back to British patriotism.’
‘Correct.’
‘What if he proves unpatriotic or loyal to the wrong side?’
Her uncle adopted a glassy-eyed intensity that made his face look quite solid. ‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Clasping his hands in front of him, he viewed her down the long length of his nose.
‘Have you fallen in love with him?’ His question took her off guard. No emotion shown of course.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘No matter. As long as you like him. That’s enough.’