Jennie About to Be (31 page)

She remained unmoving, forcing herself to take long, even breaths, until she heard hoofbeats going away along the drive. Then she dressed, brushed the snarls out of her hair and tied it back with a ribbon instead of doing it up, and went downstairs to find something to eat. She was so hungry it was a pain in her stomach, and to wonder how the dispossessed were eating their suppers tonight only increased her own desire. There was, of course, no fire in the kitchen, but she heated water over the spirit lamp for a pot of tea, and while this was steeping, she found bread, cheese, cold beef from yesterday's dinner, and a pot of the breakfast marmalade. She put everything on a small tray and carried it out the north door that looked toward the paddock. She could not bear the emptiness of the rooms with Morag and Aili gone; she missed Mrs. MacIver's reticent presence.

Though the evening was gray, it was mild here on the step. An advantage was that she could not see the ridge from here, she would have had to go out on the lawn for that. Dora grazed in the paddock, and the birds sang as they sang around battlefields and plague-killed towns.

When she had finished her supper, she took a lump of sugar to Dora. “At least I have you, you will never betray me,” she murmured. Then she remembered both horses really belonged to Archie or perhaps even to Christabel. “I shall buy you, my darling,” she promised.

So Archie wanted the company of a pretty woman tonight. And well he might, with his ancestral ghosts on the prowl; with enough wine in him he'd be seeing the eyes move in his father's portrait, and hear the lips saying words he'd never be able to shut out. What had he done with himself all day while the roofs went up in burnt offerings to the god of the landlords?

Had he paced the rooms, cracking his knuckles and yawning nervously, stopped frequently at the nearest decanter? Had he gabbled to Armitage over a distracted game of billiards? Of course he wouldn't dare poke his nose outdoors all day, for fear that a treacherous breeze should waft a stink of fire down to him as he inspected the rhododendrons.

Then Alick Gilchrist appeared, like a murdered man arising from his secret grave.

In all these imaginings, there was a large, staring blank for Nigel.
What will I tell my children about these days?
she mused, fondling the mare's ears. There would be children; that was her part in this, to earn her food, clothing, and shelter. They wouldn't be born of lovemaking; Nigel would beget them upon her.

But once a child was started, she wouldn't sleep with him again until it was time to begin another. She put her face against the mare's neck, grimacing and swallowing to keep from crying. What perfection it had been, what absolute joy; she'd been continually dazzled by her good fortune. In retrospect it had even been heaven aboard
Minerva
, the way they had held each other's heads and tenderly washed each other's faces. . . .
Perhaps he didn't know then, and he was just what he seemed
, she thought.
But he knew soon after we arrived, and then the lies began
. The mare pulled her head away to look at something, and Jennie lifted her own head, rubbing her blurry eyes, and looked apprehensively around her. No, Nigel wasn't back. Fergus was crossing the stableyard to the pump.

She took bedding from the chest and made up the bed for Nigel in the room across the hall from theirs. Then she locked herself in and locked the entrance from his dressing room into the bedroom. She read through the long Highland twilight until she could see no more, hardly knowing what the words said because she kept listening for his return. He hadn't come when she put aside her book, and she lulled herself by trying to remember psalms and long stanzas of poetry. Her father had made them memorize “by the mile,” they'd called it, telling them they'd be glad of it in the times to come. She thought wryly that this was not the sort of occasion he had in mind. But she was glad of it, as he'd promised; the concentration helped, and she went to sleep trying to recover some lost lines from Milton.

Nigel was not home when she went cautiously into the hall in the morning, wrapped in her old wool robe and wearing the sheepskin slippers; they offered her more than mere warmth. She went down to the cold kitchen and built a fire on the hearth and was starting one in the stove when Nigel came in the back door.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed harshly. “That's slavey work! There's a girl coming up from the outer farm to do the cooking until we get a staff. Go upstairs, wash your hands, and change out of that disgraceful getup!”

A new tactic this morning; the masterful husband. The unshaven husband in rumpled clothes, cravat gone, shirt wine-spattered, who'd been drinking until all hours, slept badly in a strange bed at Linnmore House, and had probably been ill on arising; had jogged home fighting nausea, and was now abeut to show her he had no patience with her notions.

“I know how to build a fire,” she said calmly. “If you want any breakfast, you had better clean yourself up first.”

“Breakfast!” he said in disgust. He swayed, and she realized he was still slightly drunk. The stale fumes of wine made her own stomach queasy. She turned her back on him, not as calm as she looked after last night's shaking that had left bruises on her arm.

But he didn't touch her; he went out again the way he had come. A few minutes later she looked out a window and saw him stripped by the pump, pouring one bucket of cold water over his head, then another one, while Fergus stood mutely by. Nigel shouted at him, and Fergus came at a trot for the house. She ran up the back stairs to get towels and Nigel's dressing gown and slippers, and when she came down, Fergus was standing just inside the kitchen door. She handed him the things and said, “Just put his clothes in the washhouse. Someone will attend to them.” Or not, she thought indifferently. “Fergus, have you food? There's no porridge, I'm afraid, but you could have a bowl of hot tea. Or some coffee?”

His mouth actually quirked up on one side at the word
coffee
. “Take the towels and the robe to the Captain, and then come back,” she said.

He went and returned as rapidly as she had ever seen him move. He smelled of the stable, a comfortable pungence that reminded her of mornings with Nelson. She told him to sit down at the table, and she gave him buttered bread and some of the cheese and beef to go on while she made the coffee. He ate more decently than she had expected; evidently Mrs. MacIver and the girls had trained him. She made the coffee and heated water for Nigel's shaving. He came in wrapped in his robe and with his hair in curling yellow ringlets, his high color back in his cheeks. The blue dressing gown intensified the color of his eyes.

“Would you like your coffee before or after you shave?” she asked.

“Afterwards,” he said bleakly. “Perhaps
that
will have been removed by then.” Fergus, cautiously but rapturously sipping his steaming coffee, was oblivious of the slur.

“Here is your hot water.” She handed Nigel the can, swathed in a cloth.

He gave her a despairing look, as if to be forced to carry his own shaving water were the nadir of his existence so far. He said in a low, unsteady voice, “My God! How can you look at me like that? This is a nightmare.”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed.

“Can't we wake up from it?” His mouth moved in a tentative, diffident smile, his eyes wooed her. “Come upstairs with me,” he whispered. “We'll banish the nightmare together.”

“I don't know how that can be,” she said composedly. “You see, it still goes on whether we sleep or not, and not only for us.”

“
Them
again! Will you ever forget them?” It was a cry of outrage, not a question.

“Never,” she said. “Or what was done to me.”

He stalked out of the kitchen. She poured coffee for herself and sat down across from Fergus. Obviously he expected no conversation from her but was not made uncomfortable by her. He cleaned up every crumb of his food, drank every drop of the sweet, creamy coffee, then said, “Thank you,” in Gaelic and left.

Nigel returned, shaved and dressed for the day in fawn breeches, blue coat, glossy top boots. He looked clean, fresh, glowing; for a moment she experienced, like the flash of a knife and then the stab, the purely physical desire she had known at first sight of him. He seemed maliciously pleased, as if he had seen or sensed the quick wound and hoped to make her suffer more. His motions were brisk, and his face was hardened with purpose, giving a false impression of maturity. He was twenty-six, and this is how he might possibly look at thirty-six. His smile was incandescent but automatic, as if she were a woman seen on the side of a street as he rode by.

“I shall be away all day,” he announced. “No coffee for me, thank you. I'll breakfast at Linnmore House with my brother; we have a good deal of business. The girl should be here this morning. She's a niece come to visit from the Borders.”

She nodded, watching him over her coffee cup, and his color increased. He said haughtily, “There's a pair of boots out near the pump. You might see if your coffee-drinking friend could do a fairly decent job of cleaning and polishing them. That is, if he hasn't been spoiled out of all usefulness.”

“Speak to him yourself,” she suggested, “when he brings Adam.”

He strode out, his heels striking hard.
Next time you'll do the begging
, his attitude said.
I have other things to do besides crawl to you
. . . . He left doors open behind him all the way, and she heard him shout for Fergus as he stepped out of doors.

S
HE TURNED BACK
the sleeves of her gown and washed the dishes from last night and this morning; then she went upstairs to dress. Her small trunk was in the passage where Nigel had brought it last night, and as she knelt to unstrap it, she could look directly into the room where she'd made up the bed for him, the huge affair she'd joked about to Morag. The door stood wide open, and she'd left it only partly so. Then he'd seen it when he came upstairs this morning, pushed it back, stood on the threshold thinking God only knew what thoughts. He had done well to speak to her at all after that.

They lie and lie
, she thought drearily,
and they never expect the lies to turn back on them and drive deep
. She took no joy in knifing him, but she couldn't forgive him. Her pride made her fold up the bedding and return it to the chest before the new servant saw, though she'd know by nightfall that something was wrong. Perhaps she'd go back to the farm to sleep. Jennie hoped so.

She returned to the armoire the dresses Aili and Morag had packed with such pleasure. She could hear their voices now and resented the stranger who would come. She sat before the toilet table of which Morag had been so proud—was Lily the maid who had found it for her?—and brushed her hair up into a chignon. It was silky from the rainwater and felt alive as it slipped through her fingers and half curled about her wrist. In the oval mirror her face looked narrow and pointed, her healthy tan had lost its bloom, and her eyes looked as round and forlorn as a forsaken child's, with mauve circles under them. The hollows above her collarbones and at the base of her long throat seemed deeper.

Suddenly she was infuriated by all this heaviness; it was like being pressed to death. She jumped up from her chair and began to dress. There was nothing pleasant to anticipate, but she could be outside all day. She would climb Meall na Gobhar Mor if there was an approach invisible from Linnmore House. Morag would know—Morag was gone.

A murmur of voices came from below the side windows, and she ran to them eagerly, but she knew before she looked that she wouldn't see Morag and Aili. The Elliots' lad, Tom, was leading the pony past the dining room windows, his favorite shortcut to the kitchen. The panniers would be carrying the day's fresh cream, milk, butter, and anything else Mrs. MacIver had ordered. A girl or woman walked with the boy; Jennie could gaze down on her white cap and dark green shawl and the skirt of her print gown.

Jennie tied her walking shoes and picked up a knitted spencer, and went downstairs to the sound of laughter in the kitchen. The boy was leaning his crossed arms familiarly on a chair back, and the new servant was tying on a large white apron crackling with starch. She was unabashed by Jennie's entrance; the boy ducked his head at Jennie's greeting and left.

“Good morning, Mistress Gilchrist!” This was a freckle-faced young woman with reddish hair fluffing out under the frill of her cap. She had small, humorous eyes, and her large, firm arms were as freckled as her face. “I'm Leezie Lindsay, the same as in the song.” She sang in a strong voice, harsh compared to Morag's sweet soprano, but true. “ ‘Will ye gang to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay? Will ye gang to the Hielands wi' me? Will ye gang to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay, My bride and my darling to be.'”

She ended in a whoop of laughter that shook her firm, high bust. “And here I am in the Hielands and I've had nae offer yet to be anyone's bride and darling!”

“It's early days yet,” said Jennie. “First you must have coats of green satin, to kilt them up to your knee.”

“Ye ken it then.”

“It's one of the songs I grew up on.”

“Och, it's a wee world,” said Lizzie profoundly. It appeared that most Scottish servants, either Highland or Lowland, were unabashed by class distinction.

During the next hour Jennie showed Lizzie where everything was, beginning with the cellar. She told her how the shopping was done, and to keep a list of what was used so she wouldn't go short on anything. She thought ironically that she was making a good start on her metamorphosis into a simple housewife. In gentle, domestic tones she discussed her husband's favorite meals and her own, and the preferred hours for dinner and supper.

“I'm nae fancy cook like yon Englishman at Linnmore Hoose,” Lizzie announced belligerently.