richly wooded land sweeping down to the Beauly Firth and ultimately the open sea.
Vespasia looked at Isobel. “Are you ready?” she asked gently.
“No, nor will I ever be,” Isobel responded. “But then, I am so cold I am not even sure if I can stand on my feet, and whatever lies within that house, it cannot be less comfortable than sitting out here.”
Vespasia wished profoundly that that would prove to be true, but she did not say so aloud.
They alighted, thanked the driver, and asked him to wait, in case they should not be invited to remain and have no way of returning to the town. Vespasia hung back and allowed Isobel to step forward and pull the bell knob beside the door. She was about to reach for it a second time, impatient to get the ordeal over, when it swung open and an elderly manservant looked at her inquiringly.
“Good morning,” Isobel said, her voice catching with nervousness now that the moment was upon her. “My name is Isobel Alvie. I have come from London with a letter of importance to give to Mrs. Naylor. With me is my friend Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. I would be most grateful if you could give Mrs. Naylor that message, and apologize for my not having sent my card first, but the journey is urgent, and was unexpected.” She offered him her card now.
“If you will come in, Mrs. Alvie, Lady Vespasia, I shall consider what is best to do,” the man said in a soft northern accent.
Isobel hesitated. “What is best to do?” she repeated.
“Aye, madame. Mrs. Naylor is not at home, but I am sure she would wish you to receive the hospitality of the house. Please come in.” He held the door wide for them.
Isobel glanced at Vespasia, then with a shrug so slight it was barely visible, she followed the manservant over the step and inside. Vespasia went after her into a large low-beamed hall with a fire blazing in an open hearth, then past it and into an informal sitting room with sunlight vivid through windows. A lawn sloped downward to a magnificent view beyond, but it was distinctly cooler.
“When do you expect Mrs. Naylor?” Isobel inquired. Her voice was rough-edged, and Vespasia could hear the tension in it.
“I’m sorry, madame, but I have no idea,” the man said gravely. “I’m sorry you’ve traveled all this way an’ we cannot help you.”
“Where has she gone?” Isobel asked. “You must know!”
He looked startled at her persistence. It was discourteous, to say the least.
Vespasia stepped forward. She was not completing the task for Isobel, only ensuring that she had the opportunity to do it for herself. “I apologize if we seem intrusive,” she said gently. “But there has been a tragedy in London, and it concerns Mrs. Naylor’s daughter. We have to bring her news of it, no matter how difficult that may be. Please understand our distress and concern.”
“Miss Gwendolen?” The man’s face pinched with some emotion of pain, but it was impossible to read in it more than that. “Poor bairn,” he said sadly. “Poor bairn.”
“We must tell Mrs. Naylor,” Vespasia said again. “And deliver the letter into her hands. It is a duty we have given our word to complete.”
The man shook his head. “It’s no another death, is it?” he asked, looking from one to the other of them, and back again.
Vespasia allowed Isobel to answer.
“Yes, I am terribly sorry to tell you, it is. So you see why we must speak to Mrs. Naylor in person. We were both there, and can at least tell her something of it, if she should wish to know.”
“It’ll be Miss Gwendolen herself this time,” he said, shaking his head stiffly, his eyes bright and far distant.
Vespasia felt intrusive in his shock and sadness.
“Yes. I’m profoundly sorry,” Isobel answered. “Where can we find her, or send a message so she may return, if that is what she would prefer? We are prepared to accompany her south, if she would permit us to.”
“Aye, mebbe.” He nodded awkwardly. “Mebbe. It’s a long journey, and that’s the truth.”
“Yes, it is, but the train transfer in Edinburgh is not too inconvenient.”
“Oh, lassie, there’s no train from Ballachulish, and no likely to be in your lifetime, or your grandbairns’, neither,” he said with a sad little smile. “And mebbe that’s for the best, too. Boat to Glasgow, it’ll be. I’ve heard tell there’s railways to Glasgow now.” He spoke of it with an expression as if it were some exotic and far-distant Babylon.
“Ballachulish?” Isobel repeated uncertainly. “Where is that? How does one get there?”
“Oh, to Inverness, it’ll be,” he replied. “And then down the loch to the Caledonian Canal, and mebbe Fort William. Or else across Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe. Ballachulish lies at the end of it, so I’m told.”
“How far is it?” Isobel obviously had no idea at all.
“Lassie, it’s the other side o’ Scotland! On the west coast, it is.”
Isobel took a deep breath. “When will Mrs. Naylor be back?”
“That’s it, you see,” he said, shaking his head. “She won’t, least not so far as we know. It might be next spring, or then again it might not.”
Isobel was horrified. “But that’s … that’s the other side of winter!”
“Aye, so it is. You’re welcome to stay the night, while you think on it,” he offered. “There’s plenty of room. There’s been barely a soul in the house since poor Mr. Kilmuir met his accident. It’ll be good to have someone to cook for, and the sound of voices not our own.”
“Has Mrs. Naylor been gone so long?” Vespasia put in with surprise. “I thought that was well over a year ago.”
“Year and a half,” he replied. “Early summer, it was, of ’51. Now, if I can get you some luncheon, perhaps? You’ll not have eaten, I’ll be bound.”
“Thank you,” Vespasia accepted before Isobel could demur. They needed sustenance, and even more they needed the time it would take in order to make a decision in the face of this devastating news.
“What on earth are we going to do?” Isobel asked as soon as they were alone in the main hall again where the fire was warmer. “Will they listen if I explain to them that Mrs. Naylor wasn’t here, and wherever she is, is at the other side of Scotland, and there’s no way to get there?”
“No,” Vespasia said frankly. “For a start, if she is there, then there must be a way for us to get there, also.” But as she said it she felt panic well up inside her. She had spoken on impulse when she promised to come as far as Inverness with Isobel. Part of it was sympathy, part a profound and increasing dislike for Lady Warburton and a desire to see her thwarted, and a good deal more than she had realized before, a desire for Omegus’s respect, even admiration. Now it was beginning to look like a far greater task than she had bargained for. But pride would not let her falter now, and honesty would not allow her to let Isobel believe that what they had done so far would satisfy their oath.
Isobel stared into the fire, her face set, jaw tight. “This is ridiculous! Why on earth did this wretched woman go across to the other side of the country? How did Gwendolen suppose anyone was going to get a letter to her? Nobody thought about that when they sent us on a wild-goose chase all the way up here!”
It was an implied criticism of Omegus, and Vespasia found it stung.
“Nobody sent us here,” she replied. “It was an opportunity offered so you could redeem yourself from a stupid and cruel remark which ended in tragedy. Omegus did not cause any part of that.”
Isobel swung around in her chair. “If Gwendolen had any courage at all, she would simply have answered me back! Not gone off and thrown herself into the lake! Or if she wanted to make a grand gesture, then she could at least have done it in the daytime, when someone would have seen her and pulled her out!”
“Sodden wet, her clothes clinging to her, her hair like rats’ tails, covered in mud and weed? To do what, for heaven’s sake?” Vespasia asked. “It may be romantic to fling yourself into the lake. It is merely ridiculous to be dragged out of it!” But as she stood up and walked away from Isobel toward the window looking over the long slope toward the sea, other thoughts stirred in her mind, memories of Gwendolen happy and with ever-growing confidence. Deliberately she then pictured the moment Isobel had spoken, the freezing seconds before anything had changed, and then Gwendolen’s face stricken with horror. She did not understand it. It was out of proportion to the cruelty of the words. That Bertie did not defend her and then later did not even go after her to protest his disbelief of anything so shallow in her must have hurt her more than she could bear; it was the wound of
