Free Gosford's Daughter by Mary Daheim Page A

Donald.”
    “ They’re good, kindly people,”
Dallas said, her face softening at the thought of her kinfolk.
“Uncle Donald has done right well in the banking business, all
things considered.”
    Indeed, Donald McVurrich’s humble beginnings had
shown no sign of his future prosperity and financial acumen. He had
been raised on a farm at Dunbar but had found himself unsuited to
the agrarian life. For a time, under Dallas’s tutelage, Donald
McVurrich had served in the Queen’s guards. But eventually his
natural talent for figures had surfaced, leading to a place in the
royal almoner’s household. A few years after his marriage to
Tarrill, Donald had gone into the banking business, where he had
prospered almost without notice. Reticent, stolid, cautious Donald
McVurrich somehow had managed to outwit—and outlast—his more
flamboyant brethren in the major financial centers of Europe. He
and Tarrill had five children, four boys and a girl. As for
Glennie, the older of Dallas’s sisters, she was now a widow twice
over, her two sons grown to manhood, with families of their
own.
    “ Uncle Donald is oversomber,” Sorcha
protested. “He is Presbyterian to the toes.”
    “ A common failing,” Dallas murmured,
“but Tarrill keeps the faith in which she was raised. At least as
much of it as she can, given the odious restrictions enforced by
the Protestants. You’ll not find it a gloomy household. No place
where Tarrill dwells could be that.”
    Yet Sorcha’s memories of their visits to the house in
the Canongate were of children lacking in frivolity, of hymns sung
before supper, and of an absence of laughter whenever Uncle Donald
was present. Except for Aunt Tarrill’s more relaxed, good-humored
approach to life, Sorcha could think of little that appealed to her
within the McVurrich residence. For the first time, she reflected
upon her mother’s confinement to the Highlands. Though Dallas was
scarcely reluctant to complain, her words of criticism were so
commonplace that no one—at least not Sorcha—took them very
seriously. But, Sorcha realized, her mother must have gone through
difficult times, wrenched away from her beloved city and her only
relatives. It was a measure of her devotion to Iain Fraser that she
had ventured north at all; it was proof of her love that she had
stayed for almost twenty years.
    Dallas now avoided her daughter’s gaze. “The roads
should be passable for at least another month. It’s best that you
leave for Edinburgh soon. Rob will be traveling with you.”
    “ He will?” Sorcha tried to evince
interest. “That’s … reassuring,” she said tonelessly, and for
a long time, neither mother nor daughter spoke at all.
     
    Only upon rare occasion did Sorcha have difficulty
sleeping. That night, however, she found herself tossing and
turning, no longer so sure of herself in the quiet hours of
darkness as by the light of day. Sometime before midnight, she got
out of bed to stand by her window and gaze at the moonlit
landscape.
    Across the valley, the shutters of Inverness were
closed for the night. Nearby, the stables lay in shadow, as the
persistent autumn wind stirred the leaves in the plane trees. Yet
there was a strange movement close by the Italian fountain—a form
that she began to discern as horse and rider, edging toward the
manor house. Within a few more yards the rider dismounted and
tethered the horse to a sapling by the fish pond.
    It was a man, seemingly young, tall and broad of
shoulder. Sorcha recognized something familiar about him as he
moved toward one of the rear entrances. Sure enough, a door opened
and the man slipped inside. Sorcha pulled away from the casement,
absently untangling her hair with her fingers. Someone from the
Fraser farmhouses, perhaps, enjoying a nocturnal liaison with a
serving wench. While such activity wasn’t condoned, it was doubtful
that either Lord or Lady Fraser would interrupt a sound sleep to
exert disciplinary action.
    Slowly, Sorcha