Page 61 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)

They arrived at last at Kincraig in the long blue Scottish dusk, which made the lights in the house glow yellow as butter.

The cousins must already have been installed, for a crowd spilled out from the main door.

Her eyes jumped straight to her cousin Angus, and her heart skipped a beat.

He was so very handsome, and he looked so tall and strong and very much in his rightful place, as though he had grown out of the earth and the rock.

He smiled and came straight to her, and took both her hands in his. She felt another pleasant shock – though they were cousins, it seemed a very particular action on his part, and under the gaze of so many eyes.

He had a sprig of heather tucked between his buttons, and in lieu of greeting she said, ‘What a colour it is! I’ve never seen any like that.’

‘It’s Bird Heath,’ he said. ‘I picked it for you. It flowers for the longest of all.’

‘I didn’t know there were different kinds of heather,’ she said.

‘There are more kinds of heather than you can imagine,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you out one day and show you. Up into the hills.’

‘Oh, I should like that,’ she said.

That was all there was time for. Arabella and Arthur came running to her with glad cries and outstretched arms and he yielded to them good-naturedly. She petted them absently, passed them on to their mother, and was engulfed by other cousins. The tide of welcome swept her into the house.

Angus kept his promise, and a day or two later he organised a picnic outing up into the hills.

Twelve of them went, and they took four ponies, to carry baskets and rugs, and for the less robust to ride on the steep parts.

Angus blatantly favoured her and let her ride more often than anyone else.

As he led the pony, picking out the smoothest path, she stared at him in a pleasant dream.

He had worn the kilt for the expedition.

She was charmed by the way the pleats swung with the swing of his walk, then caught herself back, blushing.

One was not supposed to think about a man’s .

. . haunches. She lowered her gaze, and found herself admiring the flex and stretch of his strong legs as they propelled him up the slope – and that was hardly better.

They picnicked on a flat grassy patch above a crag, with a long view of the rose-purple moors, and the distance of indigo hills.

There were bees in the thyme flowers, and an eagle rocked on the wind far above them.

They ate oat bannocks and cheese and cold game pie – plain fare, but good out of doors when you were hungry – and there was cousinly chat and laughter.

Angus was full of jokes and foolery and she forgot her earlier self-consciousness and was comfortable with him.

His hair, freed for once from the tyranny of oil, was blown about his face endearingly by the breeze.

She told him it was like the ruff on a collie, and he grabbed her bare feet – she had kicked off her shoes – and tickled them until she begged for mercy.

In the evening there was dancing, and Angus picked her first – but that was expected since she was the highest-ranking girl present .

. . if such things counted. He was in high spirits, and danced with energy.

He was so different from the drawing-room boys of the London Season: so vital, so strong.

For a big man he was astonishingly light on his feet – in the leaps, he seemed to hover an instant above the earth.

When he concentrated on the steps, his eyelids drooped a little, and his flushed face seemed almost unworldly, like an angel working out celestial sums. But then, when he swung her hands-across, his grin was pure exuberance, and she answered it with an unshadowed beam of her own.

At one point, she noticed his father watching them with a tight mouth and drawn brows, and wondered falteringly if she had done something wrong.

But then the dance whirled her away. When next they passed that corner, she saw him talking to her mother, and there seemed something slightly ominous about it – though anything her mother did could always be construed as ominous.

At supper she was part of a boisterous group and didn’t see Angus, then spotted him on the other side of the room attending to guests, as was proper.

And after supper, he danced with other girls, and that was proper too.

She did not lack for partners. She was back in her happy, flirtatious London ways – Lady Rachel Tallant, the most popular girl in the room, dancing every dance.

At breakfast next day, there was no sign of Angus, and in between coping with the clinging attentions of Arabella and Arthur, she asked his youngest brother Mannox where he was.

‘He’s gone out with the guns,’ Mannox said, wolfing toast and marmalade. ‘He didn’t want to, but Fa made him. There’s a big dinner tonight, lot of guests coming, so they’re shooting for the pot. Uncle Stuffy’s going to take Fritz and Ben and me out later after fish.’ Those were his other brothers.

‘Oh,’ said Rachel. ‘What guests are coming?’

‘Don’t know. I think it’s the Alvie Castle lot, and some others,’ he said indifferently.

After breakfast, when she was going upstairs to wash her hands, her mother called her aside, and escorted her into one of the small parlours, saying she wanted to talk to her. Her heart sank: being ‘talked to’ nearly always meant something unpleasant.

Her apprehension was not improved by the multitude of stuffed heads mounted on the walls: sad glassy eyes looking down on her in mute reproach from the background of an oppressive tartan wallpaper.

There was a tartan carpet, too – a decorative scheme made popular by Queen Victoria.

It was a gloomy room, invested with the stillness of premature death: it felt as though nothing could ever happen there.

Even the dust seemed to hang suspended instead of gently falling onto the dark, varnished surfaces.

The only thing alive was some blooming heather on the windowsill, and even that had been stuffed into an ugly brass vase.

The heather made her think of Angus again, and she forced herself not to smile. Her mother would not have liked it.

Finally Maud began. ‘I have been observing you, Rachel,’ she said.

‘I hope you are not developing a . . .’ She paused, searching for the right word ‘. . . a tendre for your cousin Angus.’ She didn’t say it as a question, so Rachel didn’t answer, though something cold clenched around her heart.

‘If there is anything of that sort in your mind, you will thrust it out immediately, because nothing can come of it.’

‘Come of it?’ Rachel queried falteringly.

‘There can be no question of a marriage,’ Maud said definitively.

Rachel blushed. ‘I hadn’t thought . . .’ she began.

It was true. She hadn’t got as far as thinking about marriage.

She had been living in the moment, just enjoying her handsome cousin’s attentions.

But now the thought was put into her mind, she saw that there would be something delightful about marrying Angus, being his chosen one, seeing him every day.

In a little sidelong peep of imagination she thought And every night as well , and her blush deepened.

Maud was watching her face. ‘No question at all,’ she repeated.

‘I have been talking to Sir Gordon.’ Angus’s father had been elevated to a baronetcy earlier that year.

‘He would not in any circumstances permit Angus to address you. He has quite other plans. And I have other intentions for you . You are to marry higher than a baronet’s son . ’

Maud said the words with scorn, and her eyes sparkled as she remembered the conversation with Sir Gordon.

To have a mere baronet warn her that her daughter was not to think of his son!

Tullamore wanted money to expand his interests, and Angus was to marry a Scottish heiress of large fortune.

Rachel, while a nice enough girl, had too little to tempt Sir Gordon.

It had taken all of Maud’s wits to twist the conversation round so as to be the one to reject the idea of a union first. Lady Rachel was destined for a titled marriage, and Maud was at pains to let him know that candidates, multiple candidates, were already being ranked in order of desirability, and that royalty was not out of the question.

‘So if you are feeling any slight preference, you must nip it in the bud,’ Maud concluded. ‘You have come here to rest after your Season, that is all. You will not allow yourself to be attracted to anyone without my permission. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Rachel said, staring at the carpet. Strange how tartan could look so dead and disagreeable laid across the floor, yet when clothing an athletic young man’s haunches it was a thing of life and beauty . . .

‘Don’t pout,’ Maud said. ‘And stand up straight. Everything is in hand. An excellent marriage of high rank will be yours. You need have no doubt about that. That is all I have to say to you. Oh,’ she contradicted herself the moment Rachel turned away, ‘there are guests coming this evening. The Eassies of Alvie Castle have a house party staying, and they are bringing them over for dinner and a musical evening. The Prince of Usingen is among them. You will take care to be polite to him.’

‘I’m always polite to everyone,’ Rachel said, a trifle sullenly. Not Paul Usingen! she thought. Please don’t let that be the high marriage she’s got planned for me .

The drawing-room was crowded that evening, but the Prince of Usingen made a bee-line for Rachel, and bowed over her hand.

His felt slightly disagreeably damp, and she had to force herself not to snatch hers away.

With her mother’s eyes burning into her, she smiled, but not too much, and said, ‘How nice to see you again,’ but not too warmly.