paths, and above all of hope.
When they retired after dinner Isobel followed Vespasia up the stairs, almost on her heels. “What am I going to do?” she said when they reached the bedroom they were to share. There was a note of desperation in her voice.
“What you have told Omegus that you will do,” Vespasia answered. “Mrs. Naylor won’t tell people anything other than whatever you tell them yourself.”
“I don’t mean about Gwendolen’s death!” Isobel said impatiently. “I mean about anything! I don’t want to marry Bertie Rosythe, even if he offered! Or anyone like him. I should die of loneliness, even if it took me all my life to do it, an inch a day.” Her voice was suddenly harsher, as if the anger ran out of control. “For heaven’s sake, are you really so damnably complacent that you don’t even know what I mean? Can’t you see anything further than money and fashion, the season, knowing everyone who matters and having them know you, going to all the right parties?” She flung her hand out stiffly. “When the door is closed, and you take off your tiara and the maid hangs up your gown? Who are you then?” Now she was almost weeping. “What have you? Have you anything at all that matters? Is that what comfort has given you—that you are dead at heart—of self-satisfaction?”
Vespasia saw the contempt in Isobel’s eyes and knew that it had been there dormant for all the time they had known each other. Did she care enough to strip away the armor of her own protection to answer truthfully? If not, then she was denying herself, almost as if she were making it true.
“I have too much pain and too much hope to be dead,” she replied gravely. “My best days were not wearing a tiara, or a ball gown. I carried bandages, and water, and sometimes even a gun. I wore a plain gray dress that was borrowed, and I stood on the barricades in Rome, and fought for a revolution that failed.” She lowered her voice because the tears choked in her throat. “And loved a man I shall never see again. You have no right to despise anyone, Isobel, until at least you know who they are. And we will probably none of us ever know anyone sufficiently well for that. Be happy for it. It is not a sweet thing to look down on others, or to feel their inferiority. It’s lonely, ugly, and wrong. Sleep well. We must make Crianlarich, at least, by tomorrow evening. I know it’s only about five miles, but five miles of storm in these hills may seem more than thirty miles at home. Good night.”
“Good night,” Isobel said gently.
The following day they traveled through glancing blizzards, one of them heavy enough to halt them for over two hours, but they reached Crianlarich before sundown, and the day after as far as the head of Loch Lomond, with Ben Lomond towering white in the distance to the south.
After that, they kept close to the water until they were past the Ben itself, and on the morning of the fifth day since leaving Glen Orchy, they bade MacIan good-bye and thanked him heartily. They took the boat to the farthest shore of the loch little more than twenty miles from Glasgow itself. From there it was a matter of hiring a vehicle of any sort and driving their own way to the railway station. With a trap and good roads, even if the weather was inclement, it was a journey that could be done in one day.
After breakfast Isobel was assisted in, then Vespasia, leaving Mrs. Naylor last. Vespasia had intended it so, knowing that Mrs. Naylor was an excellent horsewoman, used to driving. After all, it was she who had gained control of the runaway horse that had killed Kilmuir. Whether it was an accident or not she did not know, nor did she wish to. She herself was a fine rider, but very indifferent at managing a carriage horse, which was a different skill entirely.
Mrs. Naylor hesitated.
Vespasia wondered if memories of Kilmuir’s death were returning to her; doubt, guilt, horror, regret—even fear that Gwendolen, having witnessed it from her horse, even a hundred yards away or more, had made her courage for life so fragile. Did she know that her mother had killed to save her? Was that the burden Gwendolen finally could not bear?
Mrs. Naylor sat in the driving seat and picked up the reins awkwardly. She held them in her hands together, not apart in order to give her control of the animal.
The hostler showed her how, patiently, and still she looked clumsy. The horse sensed it and shifted, shaking its head.
The truth struck Vespasia like a hammerblow. Mrs. Naylor did not know how to drive. It was not she who had held the reins when Kilmuir had fallen, accidentally or otherwise; it was Gwendolen herself! Vespasia had seen her in London; she was brilliant at it! And it was Mrs. Naylor who had been out riding and had seen. It made infinitely more sense! She had had to protect her daughter, and Gwendolen, in the shock of it, had allowed herself to forget—to move the blame to a more bearable place.
It fell in front of her eyes in a perfect pattern: The guilt was for having arranged and permitted a marriage to someone like Kilmuir, not to have judged him more accurately. It was a mother’s primary duty toward her daughter, and Mrs. Naylor had signally failed. That was why she was prepared to take the burden of guilt now. And Gwendolen had allowed it.
Then in one trivial, cruel remark Gwendolen’s fragile new image had been shattered, hope, the shield of forgetting, all gone, and the specter of a lifetime’s blackmail from others who knew, or guessed at least part of it.
“I’ll drive!” Vespasia said aloud, her voice surprisingly steady. The slight tremor in it could be attributed to the cold. “Let me. I am not as good as Gwendolen was, but I am perfectly adequate.” She scrambled forward to take Mrs. Naylor’s place. Their eyes met for a moment, and Mrs. Naylor knew that she understood.
Vespasia smiled. It would never be referred to again. Isobel could not afford to—she had her own secrets to keep—and Vespasia had no wish to.
Mrs. Naylor handed her the reins, and they began the last part of their journey to Glasgow, before the long train ride to London.
The journey was tedious, as it had been on the way up, but they reached London at last. It was three days before Christmas. The final meeting was to be at Applecross, and Vespasia knew that Omegus Jones would already be there. There seemed little point in remaining in the city, so she invited Mrs. Naylor and Isobel to go with her to her own country house, which was within ten miles of Applecross. She was uncertain if Mrs. Naylor would wish to accept, and was surprised how it pleased her when she did.
PART THREE
After greeting her husband and children, the first thing Vespasia did was to write a letter to Omegus Jones and tell him that they had completed their mission, and it remained only to report that fact to make the oath binding. Then she sealed it and called one of the footmen to ride over and deliver it.
“Shall I wait for an answer, my lady?” he asked.
“Oh, yes! Yes, indeed,” she answered him. “It is of the utmost importance!”
“Yes, my lady.”
When he returned several hours later and gave her the envelope, she thanked him and tore it open without waiting for him to leave.
My dear Vespasia,
You cannot know how relieved I am to hear that you are safely returned, and that you have accomplished in full all you set out to do. The letter of the law would have sufficed to bind our fellows to silence, but it is the spirit which heals the transgressor, and that is in essence what matters.
I admit I have worried about you, veering from one moment having the utmost faith that you would come to no harm, and the next being plunged into an abyss of fear that some natural disaster might overtake you. Had I known the true extent of your journey to the north, I should not have allowed you to go, and none of this would have succeeded. Perhaps it is good that at times we do not know what lies ahead, or we would not attempt it, and failure would be inevitable.
Naturally, you will wish to be with your own family for Christmas Day, but will you bring Isobel and Mrs.
