The Highland Countess (6 page)

The earl was roused by his servant and helped off to bed. Lord Toby found his own bedchamber, painfully aware of the proximity of Morag in this small castle.

He tossed and turned between the cold, damp sheets in the cold, damp room and struggled with his conscience. But the call of nature can take precedence even in the most anguished soul and he realized he would need to investigate the plumbing of the castle which, if he remembered rightly, consisted of a garde-robe in the east tower, the hygienic arrangements of the castle not having been changed since the Middle Ages.

He was returning to his room when he heard the sound of a stifled female giggle coming from the earl’s room. All his dreams fled faced with this cold reality. The countess was, of course, in bed with the earl and having a high old time by the sound of it. Toby cursed himself for a romantic fool and was about to take himself off to bed when the door of the earl’s bedchamber opened. He did not want to meet her. He shrank back into the shadows.

The door swung wider. In the dim gold light of the oil lamp by the earl’s bedside stood a female figure which Lord Toby recognized as the housemaid, Fionna. She was scantily dressed. The earl followed her to the door and clutched her to him in a passionate embrace while Toby’s heartbeats quickened with disgust and a strange hope. The goddess of his dreams was sleeping alone while her husband philandered with the maid—was in love with the maid, for there could be no doubting that expression on the earl’s bloated face.

Toby waited until Fionna, with one last flirtatious wave of her hand to the earl, had pattered past him to her own quarters.

Then he went to his own room, impatient for the morrow, troubled by a fevered conscience—for she was married after all, and seemingly fond of her husband.

The next day dawned cold and gray but at least the snow had ceased. But again she did not appear and again the message was that her ladyship would be present at supper. He had to content himself until then.

The earl stayed in his rooms as well and there was little he could find to do apart from reading and eating. What kind of life was this for a young girl like Morag? he thought fretfully. The snow was lying deep and crisp and even under a leaden sky which promised more to come. I would die of boredom an I lived here, thought Lord Toby, suddenly homesick for the lights and color of London.

He was then confined to
his
room for two impatient hours before dinner while his shirt was laundered and his jacket brushed. He thought of the excellent wardrobe he had left behind with his friends in Perth.

At last it was time to dress and descend to the drawing room. His heart beating hard, he pushed open the door.

No one.

He paced up and down.

At last the door swung open and Morag stood timidly on the threshold. She was wearing a green silk gown of old-fashioned cut. It emphasized the tininess of her waist and the whiteness of her shoulders. Her red hair was piled on top of her head allowing one stray curl to lie on her shoulder.

As they stared at each other, tongue-tied, Fionna appeared behind Morag, bobbing a curtsy. The earl, she said, was sore plagued with the toothache and was keeping to his bed.

Lord Toby took a deep breath. He must remember to behave like a gentleman. He must remember, at all times, that this beautiful girl was married to his host.

He kept up an amiable if stilted conversation until they were seated at dinner and the servants had retired, the earl believing in the old-fashioned idea that one served oneself.

Morag had replied to all his conversational sallies with “yes” and “no” and “really,” her eyes all the time fixed on her plate.

Wine loosened Toby’s tongue, and despite his better nature, he at last could not help asking, “How did you come to meet your husband?”

“My father introduced us,” said Morag, her eyes flying upward to meet his.

“He is somewhat older than you,” pursued Toby gently. “Forgive me if I seem overfamiliar, Lady Murr, but I cannot help thinking you lead a very dull life. Have you no visitors?”

“Oh, yes,” said Morag. “My lord’s brother, Lord Arthur Fleming, and his wife, Lady Phyllis, come to call.”

He refilled her glass. “Ah, that is then company for you. Is Lady Phyllis of your age?”

Morag drained her glass nervously in one gulp.

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, she is of my age.”

“No? Do you not like her?”

“I would like her well enough,” said Morag, feeling suddenly lighthearted with the effects of the wine, “but she does not like me. She criticizes my face and dress whenever we meet.”

“You are very beautiful,” said Toby, ignoring the warning bells in his head. “Many women would be jealous of you.”

“You are kind, sir,” replied Morag. “But that is not the case with Lady Phyllis.” She gave a little laugh. “She is a soor-faced coo.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, I must translate for you. That is what my husband calls her—it means a sour-faced cow. She is in fact very beautiful and her cheeks are very round—like a doll’s.”

“That fashion is leaving us slowly,” smiled Lord Toby. “Not many women wear wax pads in their cheeks nowadays.”

“Wax pads!” said Morag, unconsciously putting her elbows on the table and savoring her first gossip. “Are there many such artifices?”

“Very many. False everything, I think,” said Toby, remembering a disastrous affair with a dashing widow who had removed everything before bed leaving little left but a rag, a bone and a hank of hair. Morag thought of the earl and his corsets and false calves and false hair and giggled.

“You must tell me the joke,” he teased her.

“I cannot,” said Morag with an adorable blush.

“You are not thinking of yourself,” he cried in mock horror. “Do not tell me those charms I see before me are unreal!”

“No, no,” cried Morag, a little tipsily. They were seated quite close together at the small dining table. She leaned toward him, holding out that tantalizing lock of hair. “See, it is all my own.”

He twirled the silken lock round one long finger. Something was happening to his breathing. He had drunk too much, too quickly. He abruptly threw caution to the winds.

“Ah, that I had the right to take inventory of the rest,” he said, holding her blue eyes trapped in his green gaze.

Morag put out her hand to extract the lock of hair from his. He caught her hand and, turning it over, pressed a burning kiss against her wrist.

“I should leave,” he said quietly. “You fascinate me… Morag.”

Morag thought of the days to come, the blank, long empty, loveless days stretching out to the grave.

“Don’t go,” she said in a whisper.

He rose to his feet and pulled her to hers. He drew her slowly to him and folded his arms about her and she laid her head against the rough sleeve of his jacket. Her body seemed to be on fire. She was trembling. They were both trembling.

He raised her chin and bent his mouth to hers, moving his lips against her own, pressing closer and deeper while Murr Castle whirled around and around and disappeared, leaving them stranded and alone on an empty plain of passion.

It was fortunate for both their reputations that the servant carrying in the pudding was clumsy. He fumbled and rattled at the door before he succeeded in getting it open. By the time he entered, both were at their places at the table, breathing heavily.

“Och, yis havnae touched a bite,” said the servant, Hamish, with true Scottish democracy. “Well, naithin’s lost what a pig’ll eat. That’ll go right fine in the servants’ hall. Was yis wantin’ puddin’?”

Both shook their heads. “We will retire to the drawing room,” said Lord Toby, finding his voice. He rose and held out his arm. Hamish looked quickly at them both and clattered the dishes energetically. He was a large hairy Highlander who had been in the earl’s service for the past ten years.

Lord Toby’s one thought was to slam and lock the door of the drawing room and take Morag in his arms. Morag’s one thought was to let him do just that. Hamish’s new-sprung thought was to stop the couple doing anything at all.

To Lord Toby’s amazement, Hamish shouldered his way after them into the drawing room. “Whit a puir wee bit of a fire,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll hae that fixed in a trice.”

But he took a painfully long time about it, raking out the ash, placing logs on one by one.

Lord Toby drew Morag aside. “I shall come to your room later. I must see you. We cannot talk with this fellow here. Please wait for me,” he whispered, and dizzy with love and wine, Morag nodded.

Lord Toby then loudly and clearly said he was going to make an early night of it and tried not to be irritated at the relief on the servant’s face.

He held the door open for Morag, whispering very quietly as she passed him, “Later. Much later. When all are abed.”

Morag paced her room for the next hour. What on earth was she doing? Was it so wrong to snatch just one little bit of happiness?

And then she heard the earl cry out, “Morag!” in a great wail of anguish. She hurried to his room.

He was propped up against the pillows, his face swollen and feverish.

“Oh, Morag, Morag!” he cried. “I cannae thole the pain o’ this tooth any longer. I’ve been trying tae howk it out masell but I cannae.”

“Perhaps one of the servants…” began Morag, moving close to the bed.

“Not them. I’m a coward when it come tae my teeth and it disnae do tae let the servants see it. Ye’ll need tae do it for me, Morag.”

He waved a small silver pair of pincers at her.

“I can’t,” said Morag, backing away.

“Come along, lassie. I’ll die o’ the pain.” Morag thought of Lord Toby. Even now he might be approaching her room. She owed the earl something—even if it was only pulling a tooth.

She approached the bed again and leaned over him. “Very well,” she said, taking up the pincers. “Which one?”

“Is un,” said the earl, opening his mouth wide and pointing feverishly. Morag stared into the pit of decay in dismay. Which one of all these rotting teeth did he mean?

“Is un,” gabbled the earl again, laying his finger on a crumbling tombstone at the front.

Morag knelt on the bed beside him and cautiously put the pincers round the aching tooth. The earl braced himself against the pillows. Morag shut her eyes and pulled and pulled and pulled. Finally she gave one tremendous wrench and somersaulted back onto the floor with the pincers, holding the decayed tooth clutched triumphantly in one hand.

The earl gave a great groan of relief. “Och, Morag, my love, my precious,” he cried. “Naebody could ha’ done that like you.” And Morag laughed with pleasure at being able to help him.

Lord Toby had gone to Morag’s room and had found it empty. He stood in the corridor, frowning. She couldn’t be in her husband’s room. Could she?

And then he heard the noises from the earl’s room. Drawn by some awful fascination, he moved slowly forward and listened. He heard the creaking of the bed, the grunts of exertion and the earl’s wild groans culminating in a great shout of relief. Then he heard the earl’s shout, “Och, Morag, my love, my precious. Naebody could ha’ done that like you.” And then he heard Morag’s laugh.

Lord Toby felt the bile rising in his throat. Strumpet! Morag was no innocent but a devilish woman who could drive him to the point of madness and then bed with her aged husband—that obscene bag of wind—as if nothing had happened. He remembered the earl’s bawdy praise of his wife in Edinburgh and felt sick to his soul.

In vain did Morag wait out the rest of the night. As a livid dawn rose over the snow-clad landscape, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

She awoke late and to new hope. Of course, he had not come to her bedchamber. He was a gentleman, after all. She loved him the more for it. But today was a new day and she would see him again.

Despite the freezing chill of the castle and an itching in her toes which presaged chilblains, she dressed herself in her new muslin gown and ran lightly down the stairs.

The rooms were cold, stale and deserted. Hamish was hunched over the drawing room fire as if he had been there all night.

“Good day, my leddy,” he said, turning round. “That young lord has left. Now I told him, I told him straight, he’d be as dead as a doornail before he ever saw Perth—riding out in this weather. Och, the English are all mad.”

“Did he leave a message?” asked Morag faintly.

“Yes, a wee note. I have it here. It’s for my lord.”

Morag tore open the letter, her eyes darting along the few lines.

Nothing. Nothing for her. Only a chilly, formal note thanking the earl for his hospitality.

Gone.

She turned and ran from the room, ran to the top of the castle, scarcely feeling the bite of the icy wind cutting through the thin muslin of her dress as she balanced on the leads and gazed frantically over the countryside.

There was a little black dot moving slowly in the distance.

“Toby!” she screamed. “Toby! T… o… b… y!”

But the black dot became a speck and then was swallowed up in the cold, staring whiteness of the landscape.

“Toby,” she sobbed, clutching the stone battlements and feeling her heart break.

There was a shuffling, lumbering, wheezing step on the tower stairs and then the earl was beside her. He gently prised her fingers from the battlements, mopping at her tear-streaked face with the tail of his coat, muttering half-forgotten phrases, the kind you use to a hurt child.

“There, there. You come with me. We’ll get cozy over the teacups and we’ll forget about the whole thing. I could see what was in the wind. But we’ll say nae mair. Come, come. Come with old Roderick. Roderick’ll tak’ care of ye.”

“Yes, Roderick,” said Morag brokenly, clinging to him. And even in the depths of her misery, she realized that she had never spoken the earl’s Christian name until that moment.

By the end of another month, Lord Toby was nothing more than a dragging, shameful ache in Morag’s heart. She had nearly broken her marriage vows and all because of some callow, philandering, English buck who had led her on. No doubt in the clear light of dawn he had been thoroughly shocked at her wanton behavior. She could only, bitterly, hope he was shocked at his own.