The Fairbairn Girls Read online

  This was William Rothbury’s world and it was all he wanted.

  Rory put his arm around Laura’s slim waist and led her into the garden, where the sun was now setting behind the distant blue hills.

  The last of the guests had drifted away and the only sound was the rustling of leaves in the breeze that swept across the Loch. Laura shivered, suddenly feeling cold. This magical summer of falling in love with Rory was nearly over and a bleak, melancholy winter beckoned. With a pang she realized the happiest summer of her life was coming to an end and, as she looked down at her diamond and sapphire engagement ring, she felt for a moment like weeping.

  ‘Peace at last!’ Rory remarked lightly ‘Shall we go for a little walk?’

  ‘Could it be that you’d like to be alone with me?’ Laura asked, her eyes over-bright and her voice trying to strike a cheerful note.

  His expression softened as he pulled her closer. ‘Laura, this is agony. Do we really have to wait another year before we can get married?’

  ‘I’m afraid we do, my love.’ She reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘Mama made it a condition of our getting engaged now.’

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get through twelve months without you.’

  ‘I’ll write to you, often,’ she promised.

  ‘Nothing’s going to change between us, is it?’ He looked wistfully into her hazel eyes.

  Laura reached for his hand and held it between her own. ‘Rory, a century apart wouldn’t change anything between us. I love you so much and I’m longing to become your wife. You do believe me, don’t you? I wish today had been our wedding day.’

  He pulled her close with sudden passion and spoke as if in pain. ‘I wish to God it was.’

  Laura rested her cheek against his. ‘Tell me about the life we’ll have when we’re married,’ she whispered. ‘I love to hear you tell me what we’ll do.’

  Rory smiled. ‘We’ll wake up in the morning and smell the roses that grow beneath our bedroom window. When it’s fine we’ll have breakfast on the terrace and then maybe we’ll go for a walk in the orchard and pick some apples and dark juicy cherries. In the winter we’ll sit by a log fire and I’ll read to you. “Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad storiesof the death of kings . . .” and then I’ll lead the way up to our four-poster bed as the moon rises above the sea.’ He broke off, unable to continue, his face buried in her dark hair.

  ‘I’m not too sure about dead kings, though.’ Irresistible laughter bubbled up in her throat. ‘I never did much care for Richard II.’

  Rory burst out laughing, the sudden sexual tension between them broken. ‘Perhaps I should have gone for Romeo and Juliet?’

  ‘Too sad.’

  ‘What about A Midsummer Night’s Dream?’

  ‘Too whimsical.’

  Rory looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘The Taming of the Shrew?’

  ‘Don’t get ideas above your station!’ she shot back with a wicked smile.

  They were laughing so much they clung to each other for support, but then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started. Laura’s eyes were filled with tears and her voice was thin and pained.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to return to Sussex tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, my darling. I’m working on several litigation cases at the moment and the senior partner has been very understanding about my coming up here to see you as often as I do. If we both keep busy the time will fly. Before you know it we’ll be married.’

  Laura flung her arms around his neck. ‘Oh, it’s going to be so wonderful! Being married and having a home of our own!’

  ‘And a family too, in time,’ he said, looking deeply into her eyes.

  A piercing dart of desire shot through her, leaving her weak and her heart hammering. I want him now, she thought as she leaned heavily against him.

  Rory wrapped her in his arms and buried his face in her neck. ‘My darling girl,’ he whispered, ‘I want us to be together as much as you do.’

  Rory left at dawn the next day and Laura and some of her sisters stood on the castle steps, waving him off in a horse-drawn brougham.

  ‘When will he get to his home?’ Diana asked, waving her white handkerchief energetically.

  ‘Late tomorrow.’ Laura quickly wiped away a tear. Their mother had instilled in them that it was bad to break down in front of the servants because it would embarrass them.

  Little Eleanor frowned anxiously. ‘Won’t the horses get tired?’

  ‘Don’t be such a goose,’ Georgie remonstrated robustly. ‘He’s going on the new train from Glasgow to London.’

  ‘But won’t the horses get tired before they reach Glasgow? It’s miles away.’

  ‘They’ll probably change the horses when they reach Fort William or Rannoch.’

  Eleanor’s mouth drooped. ‘But what will happen to the tired horses?’ she persisted. Eleanor worried about everything but most especially the welfare of animals.

  ‘They’ll sleep in nice warm stables,’ Beattie assured her, taking her hand. ‘And they’ll be fed and watered.’

  ‘And someone will tuck them up and read them a bedtime story,’ Georgie cut in with acerbity.

  Laura gave her a disapproving glance. ‘Don’t be so mean. Eleanor is sensitive and very caring. Unlike you.’

  ‘She’s a wimp!’ Georgie declared. ‘She needs toughening up.’

  Eleanor shrank inside her cotton shift, miserable at being picked on and the centre of attention.

  Beattie, always the calm peacemaker, led the way back into the castle. ‘Let’s have breakfast,’ she suggested brightly.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ Laura said, hurrying away across the great hall. Up on the first floor she flew along the wide corridor with its family portraits and heavy Jacobean furniture smelling of beeswax polish until she came to the guest wing. A moment later she entered the room where Rory had slept for the past few nights. It was just as he had left it, with the bedding pushed back and the pillow indented where his head had rested.

  Lying down where he had lain and slipping her hand under the bedding which was still faintly warm, she caught a whiff of the sweet, clean smell of his skin. Breathing deeply, she sidled further down the bed, pulling the blankets up over herself while imagining him lying beside her. Then she closed her eyes and a deep wave of longing washed over her. His warmth and his scent was making her feel dizzy and she wished with all her heart that he was lying beside her now. Desire flowed through her like a heavy ache and she felt intoxicated by the thought of their love-making one day. But how was she going to bear the long wait before it was so?

  Alone in her own bed that night, she recalled the first time she’d met Rory, when he’d been brought to Lochlee by friends of her mother, who were interested in buying a nearby property. He was their lawyer and a trustee of a fortune they’d recently inherited, and the moment Laura saw him she’d realized there was something special about him. It was as if she already knew him, and he’d felt the same. That first meeting had been overshadowed by the business in hand, but then he’d written to her – this handsome, dynamic man who was ten years older than her. She still had the letter. And this time next year they would be man and wife. She could hardly wait.

  Downstairs in the breakfast room Lord Rothbury was chucking scraps of ham from his plate on to the floor as he laughed at the way the Highland terriers and poodles were quicker and more efficient at nabbing the titbits in mid-air than the Great Danes and Labradors who blundered clumsily around. Meanwhile, the basset hounds sat watching morosely, unable to compete in the chaos.

  ‘Here, Megan. Here, girl,’ he whispered softly. He fed her a special bit of ham and then stroked her as gently as if she’d been a human baby. Dark liquid eyes filled with devotion gazed back at him. His wife had never looked at him like that in the nineteen years they’d been married, he reflected sourly. Megan didn’t rattle on about money or domestic issues either.

  Lady Rot
hbury, sitting at the other end of the table, had long since learned to ignore what she considered to be her husband’s deplorable table manners and his insistence that all the dogs should be free to roam around indoors during the day. When she’d first had a baby she’d been shocked and hurt at his cavalier manner towards her whilst he’d hovered nervously nearby over one of his bitches who was whelping at the same time. He’d summoned the vet although there was no need, yet had asked her crossly if she really needed Doctor Doughty to attend her as well as the midwife?

  Then, when Lizzie was born he said, ‘A girl is it? Huh!’ and walked out of the room, but when the puppies arrived he joyously announced the news to all and sundry and ordered that all the workers on the estate be given a pint of ale. Then he’d gone out shooting with the ghillie.

  Something died in Margaret Rothbury’s heart then and, as the years passed and their family grew in size, sometimes she wondered if it was her fault that she’d produced nine girls and only two boys? On the other hand, she figured it might be God punishing William for no longer caring for her, although at the beginning he’d sworn passionately that she was his love and his life.

  Breakfast over, the Fairbairn family scattered in different directions with great purpose and without saying a word to each other. Lord Rothbury was the first to stride from the room and go straight out where the ghillie was waiting for him with Megara, ready saddled, bridled and raring to go. For the next three hours they’d ride around the estate and talk about the coming shooting season when grouse, pheasant, widgeon, woodcock, plover and snipe would be brought down. Then there were leverets to be shot before they became fully grown hares, and then stalking would follow. Only one thing clouded William’s pleasant expectations for the coming months: a large number of guests were always invited to Lochlee Castle for a few days at the end of each week. The men were fine. They were his friends. It was the frivolous wives who drove him mad; sometimes he wished he could shoot them, too.

  Meanwhile, Margaret Rothbury had gone up to her private sitting room to give orders to the housekeeper, Mrs Spry, before sitting at her desk to see to her correspondence. She was an avid writer of letters and believed in keeping in touch with even the merest acquaintance.

  ‘You never know,’ she pointed out on one occasion, ‘when they might come in useful.’

  ‘They’re not a damned pair of boots!’ her husband had growled back.

  ‘Come along, children,’ called Susan the nursery maid, whose job it was to ‘give the girls a good run in the garden’ as Nanny ordered, as if they, too, had been a pack of dogs. Bundled up in tweed coats, woollen hats and scarves and little buttoned-up boots, Alice, Flora and Catriona trotted up and down the garden paths with sticks and hoops, seeing who could keep the hoops bowling along the longest.

  Alice, who was six, was highly practised and her hoop rolled along merrily, but four-year-old Flora was wild with her stick and her hoop kept crashing down on to the lavender borders. Only three-year-old Catriona ran up and down, gripping her hoop firmly in one of her tiny hands while waving her stick above her head and yelling, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’

  Susan watched them absently, her mind on the dashing new footman who’d arrived the previous week. She half hoped he was watching her now from one of the castle windows, and she raised her dainty chin so that he would see her pretty profile.

  In the west wing, Freddie and Henry sat at a long table with glum expressions as Hector Stuart, their tutor, lectured them about the vast extent of the British Empire on which the sun never set.

  By the window a globe of the world stood on a walnut stand. ‘Take a close look at it,’ he told them, rising to his feet. ‘I want each of you to write a list of the countries that make up our great Empire.’

  Freddie’s groan was audible and Henry’s gusty sigh made the sheet of paper in front of him quiver.

  ‘Come on, lads! Buck up!’ Mr Stuart said bracingly.

  Freddie gave him a withering look. ‘A stable boy is a “lad”; I’m Lord Fairbairn,’ he said coldly.

  Mr Stuart eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Your father has given strict orders that titles do not exist in the schoolroom. You are plain Freddie and Henry is Henry. Your sisters are not referred to as “Lady” this and that when they’re in the schoolroom or the nursery.’

  Freddie raised his chin rebelliously. ‘I’m Viscount Fairbairn everywhere I go.’ There was a defiant swagger in the way he spoke.

  Henry gave a sweet smile. ‘Well, I don’t mind being called just “Henry”.’ There was a thoughtful pause. ‘I’m only the Hon. anyway.’

  Mr Stuart gave an approving nod in his direction. It had been obvious to him from the moment he’d set eyes on the brothers that Henry was a good-natured soul, kind and even-tempered, while Freddie was an obnoxious little bully who was far too full of himself. In fact, if he’d been a betting man, Hector Stuart would have put a few sovereigns on Freddie turning out to be a complete and utter rotter.

  In the north wing a governess, Miss Napier, was endeavouring to educate Diana, Georgina, Beatrice and also Eleanor, who had recently, at the age of ten, been considered bright enough to be with her older sisters.

  ‘I believe she just needs encouraging and being with the others will help. She lacks self-confidence,’ Miss Napier told their mother.

  ‘Not too much encouraging, I hope,’ Lady Rothbury retorted briskly. ‘Men do not like clever girls. Don’t bother teaching her arithmetic or anything like that. She’ll never need it. I’d rather you concentrated on getting her to read good books and maybe do a little sketching.’

  Laura had gone straight to the library, where she settled herself at the round table in the centre. This was the warmest, most welcoming room in the castle, lined by oak bookcases holding six thousand books. Thick green velvet curtains masked the icy draughts from the windows and brown leather chairs were arranged for comfort near the big stone grate where logs fizzled and blazed.

  She opened a notebook and, after sharpening a pencil, started to write, wanting to pin down on paper all her memories of the past few days while they were still fresh in her mind. It had been six weeks since Rory’s last visit, when he’d proposed and given her a diamond and sapphire engagement ring, and she’d felt quite sick with excitement when she heard his carriage draw up in the drive four days ago. On seeing him again sudden shyness had overwhelmed her for a moment, and she was glad they weren’t alone as her mother and sisters gathered around to welcome him back, but then they’d gone for a walk in the gardens on their own and suddenly she knew without a shadow of doubt that she was deeply in love with him.

  How happy they’d been during the past few days, she thought as she scribbled in her notebook. She was missing him already, even though he’d only been gone an hour. If only she could have gone with him, she reflected, to his home in the south of England where it was warmer and the landscape was gently undulating and green instead of rugged.

  Only now, as she sat alone in the library, did she realize with a sense of shock how empty and incomplete her life was without him.

  Lizzie came barging into the room at that moment, full of purpose. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I was thinking . . .’

  ‘That can be dangerous, you know. Are you missing Rory already?’

  Laura nodded, her eyes over-bright. ‘Don’t you long to leave here?’

  Lizzie sat down opposite and leaned her elbows on the table. ‘Yes, sometimes,’ she agreed.

  ‘We’re missing so much by being cooped up here miles from anywhere,’ Laura complained. ‘I’m longing for the bright lights of a great city like London where there’s so much to see and so many things to do. If it wasn’t for the fact that when I’m married to Rory we can nip up to town whenever we like, I think I’d go mad.’

  Lizzie looked thoughtful. ‘I think we all want to escape south. Especially Freddie. It’s because we’re young. We want adventure. We want to see the world. I expect we’ll be quite happy to settle here a
gain when we’re as old as Mother and Father.’

  Her sister looked appalled. ‘I hope I won’t end up here when I’m old. I don’t think Rory would like it either.’

  ‘I don’t think James would mind. Eventually, you know.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll really marry him?’

  Lizzie smiled smugly. ‘Yes, definitely. He’s just waiting for the right moment to propose.’

  Laura spoke eagerly now. ‘When Rory and I are married we’ll be in a position to invite Georgie, Beattie and Di to stay with us, and we’ll introduce them to Rory’s friends. Young men who live in London, too,’ she added impressively.

  ‘What? Not county, you mean?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe no one who is listed in the peerage, but Rory knows masses of people through his work, including an actor. They all seem to be making a lot of money.’

  There was a shocked pause before Lizzie spoke. ‘Goodness!’

  ‘Most of the really rich young men are in trade, or at least their fathers are,’ Laura continued defensively.

  ‘Goodness,’ Lizzie repeated. ‘Don’t you think we might frighten them off with our titles?’

  ‘I’m seriously thinking of dropping mine when Rory and I are married.’

  ‘Whatever for? You’ve always been Lady Laura and I’m certainly not going to stop being Lady Elizabeth for anyone.’

  ‘I don’t want to overshadow Rory by being Lady Laura Drummond while he remains plain Mr Drummond.’

  Lizzie’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that having a titled wife might raise his standing amongst his clients?’

  Laura flushed angrily. ‘What a horrid thing to say.’