An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Read online

  An Abandoned Woman

  by

  Lexie Conyngham

  The Fourth in the Murray of Letho Series

  An Abandoned Woman

  Lexie Conyngham

  Copyright Alexandra Conyngham 2012

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work as been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-9563731-7-5

  Dramatis Personae

  At Letho (gentry):

  Charles Murray of Letho

  James Kennedy, his guest

  Alester Blair, gentleman of Edinburgh

  Isabel Blair, his daughter

  Mrs. Freeman, his sister

  At Letho (staff):

  Henry Robbins, butler and valet, and young for his responsibility

  Mrs. Chambers, distinguished housekeeper

  Mrs. Mutch, determined cook

  Jennet and Mary, worthy maids

  Daniel and William, who may yet be worthy manservants

  Iffy and Effy Duff, the kitchenmaids, distinguishable only by their hair ribbons

  Carlisle, the gardener

  Thalland, the factor

  At Dures:

  Mr. George of Dures, a busy gentleman

  Miss George, his sister, an unclaimed treasure

  At Cullessie:

  Mrs. Kirk, a lady of advancing years and retreating mental faculties

  Virginia and Parnell Kirk, her nieces, visiting from Bath

  In the village:

  Mr. Helliwell, a discontented minister

  Mrs. Helliwell, his wife, happy in her garden

  Gilbert and Anna Helliwell, and sundry other children

  Mr. Fairlie, a man well contented with his lot

  Mrs. Fairlie, a devoted mother

  Nan Watson, their amenable kitchenmaid

  Mary and Louisa Fairlie, determined to be fashionable

  Hugh and John Fairlie, their brothers and men of the world

  Miss Helen Lyall

  The Kirk Session:

  Ninian Jack, a skilled craftsman

  Baird, a cautious merchant

  Kenny, a thin schoolmaster

  Melville, a nervous farmer

  Watson, an anxious uncle

  Elsewhere:

  Mrs. Butler, an energetic housekeeper

  Mr. Macduff, a talented sheriff’s officer

  Sundry savoury bathing attendants

  Chapter One

  I

  Robbins had paid for a ticket to Cupar, but had asked the coachman if he could be dropped off at the little side road that led to Letho village, some miles short of Cupar town itself. He had little luggage besides the small packet of household accounts which he was bringing to his master. No one would feel obliged to meet him at Cupar and bring him back to Letho House, and if he walked back along the main road, if he avoided – no, not avoided – if he skirted round the village itself, he could enter the Letho estate by the main drive and not have to use the footpath that left the west end of the village by the church and cut across the fine Letho farmland to the park. It was sensible: he would not be avoiding anything.

  He sat facing backwards in the small, dark compartment. There was room, at a considerable pinch, for eight people, but at present there were only the five of them: an elderly lady’s maid opposite him had sucked peppermint boilings with an urgency that was alarming as they left Edinburgh, and now she had fallen asleep with her mouth unbecomingly loose. Beside her were two ladies, sisters by their looks, young and moderately pretty. Opposite them, beside Robbins but keeping a proper distance, was the young gentleman who had escorted them at Edinburgh. He wore naval uniform, which even three years after Trafalgar was enough on its own to see you well received in most of society. There had been another man, a merchant, perhaps, who had left the coach at the last stop. He had acted as a buffer between the officer and the servant, Robbins: now Robbins felt like explaining that he really was an upper servant, his master’s senior servant, in fact, despite his age. The officer, however, did not look receptive. Robbins closed his eyes, and pretended, with gentle diplomacy, to sleep. The younger lady immediately took it as a licence to pretend that the three gentlefolk were now alone.

  ‘I do not see why we could not have stayed in Bath.’ Her English accent was clipped with bad temper. The naval officer raised his eyebrows and looked out through his window, saying nothing. ‘It cannot have been so expensive,’ she went on. ‘Only consider how little we saw of society, how few visitors we had.’

  ‘It was truly tedious,’ her sister agreed slowly, though probably not as the younger lady had wished.

  ‘And how much more tedious this will be!’ cried the younger one. ‘Brother, you have no right to take us from our home, our friends, our –’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the naval officer abruptly, ‘I have every right to take you from where you were settled only two years ago, and where, from all your talk, Parnell, you despised even your closest acquaintances. What I have no right to do, unfortunately, as your brother, is to leave you destitute, when you can be established at little expense with our aunt, and use her servants and money for a while, instead of mine.’

  ‘I hope her maid is good with my hair,’ drawled the older sister. ‘Parnell, I can do nothing with my hair. See how dreadful it is.’ Since her bonnet covered all but the foremost curls, Parnell did not even bother to look at her, and the older sister made no further effort to attract her attention.

  ‘But Fife!’ said Parnell. ‘Not even England! And if not England, not even Edinburgh!’

  ‘Edinburgh is too fashionable, and therefore too expensive,’ said her brother, with the air of one who had explained this several times already. ‘Besides, someone may know us there. No, our aunt’s house is the best place for you – even she will admit that.’

  Robbins, the well-trained servant, opened his eyes but kept them firmly on the passing countryside. The young naval officer, without consulting Robbins or the maid, had closed the glass firmly at the start of their journey, and Robbins chose to avoid lowering it again even to breathe in some of the fresh, rain-soaked air outside. Last night had been very chilly, and there might even have been a frost. The inn where the post had stopped had believed in thick blankets and bed warmers, even at the end of May, and he had slept quite well, considering. Outside, now, the sun was shining on a fresh green countryside of smooth hills, neatly wooded valleys, tiny villages at crossroads, all under the wide blue arc of Fife sky.

  He began to recognise some of the landscape outside the window, and glanced back to the opposite window just in time to see the main gate of Letho House set back from the verge on the other side of the road. A few minutes later, moving quickly on the gentle downhill gradient, they saw the trees part again and a little road branched off to the left. The coach slowed, and Robbins prepared to jump out. But the horses turned the corner and picked up speed again, the lane hardly wide enough to accommodate them. Thin branches slapped the coach windows and they all instinctively leaned together, away from the scratching and scraping. The smithy was already past, and they were on the bridge over the river. Robbins slammed down the window, and called up to the driver,

  ‘Hi! I said I was happy to be put off at the main road!’

  ‘Aye, sir, but the gentlefolk with you want to go on to the inn. I thought it’d save you the walk.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ro
bbins, disappointed. ‘Thank you,’ he replied to the impassive driver, and sank back into his seat. The naval officer leaned over him and pushed the window back up, without a word.

  They were already up the hill and into the village. The inn was one of the first buildings at the east end of the main street, white-plastered, with a wide, low gateway in its wall through which could be seen the stable block. The coach did not go in, but stopped in the street. Robbins opened his door, took his only bag, and jumped down, while the young ladies and their brother left by the opposite door and began to make a fuss about luggage. The maid woke briefly and looked about her. She pulled the window down.

  ‘Where are we, sir?’ she asked Robbins. He looked up, and removed his hat.

  ‘At Letho, ma’am. A few miles short of Cupar.’

  ‘Oh.’ She slumped back to sleep. He was not positive that she had really woken at all.

  He looked about him cautiously, his hat now firmly back on his head. Beneath the wide brim his eyes were luminous, its shadow a hard line over his pale face. There were plenty of people about, some come to see what the post had brought – he had already obtained from the driver anything that was going to Letho House – the staff of the inn busying themselves bringing ale to the driver and seeing if any custom was to come their way, women coming and going from the few shops amongst the serried stone houses. From where he stood, just at the corner of the inn, he could see the whole triangular village, almost: he was at one of the bottom corners, and the doctor’s house a hundred yards away to his right was at the other. North Street led up from it and the main street led up from the inn, and they met and melded to continue in the last short steep climb to the church, known as Kirk Hill. Between North Street and Main Street was a green with a well: if Letho had been grand enough, there might have been a market here, but there were fewer than fifty families all told, so it was common grazing instead. There were several goats tethered there, standing to face the slope so that they did not have to bend too far for their grass.

  Robbins sighed, and shouldered his pack. He could walk back down to the main road and back to the main gates of Letho House, but it hardly seemed worth it. He would have to face this walk some time, and it might as well be now.

  He picked his way through the drying mud, jaw determined, hat down, and began to climb the hill to the church, where the footpath struck out west for Letho House.

  II

  Just down the hill from the church, as was only fit and proper, stood the manse. The house itself, as anyone in the village could tell you, left a great deal to be desired, but the garden was a fine one and the minister’s wife took every opportunity to be in it. Even this morning it had been less damp in the garden than in the manse kitchen.

  She was working in a ladylike manner in the herb garden this morning, although she saw nothing wrong with picking up her skirts and lifting potatoes when it was appropriate. Her husband the minister was not a gardener, but she found great peace in the smell of the earth and the cool brushing of leaves, crisp lettuce, soft donkey’s lugs or hard bright holly. The garden was walled, bound on one side by Kirk Hill, on another by the path to Letho House and the kirkyard beyond it, on the third by a patch of rough woodland and on the fourth by the manse orchard, now blush-pink with blossom. If she stood at the back of the house and looked south-east, she could believe that there were no buildings for miles, just her garden and the border of trees topping the cream-grey walls. Sometimes it was well worth believing.

  She grew raspberries here, rows of canes tended from year to year, with some new brought on to be ready when the old ones reached the end of their useful lives. You had to plan carefully to garden well, and you had to be ruthless, even to plants you had tended with love. Her garden was productive and its produce was wholesome: many of the poor in the parish had cause to give thanks for a good harvest from the manse garden.

  She hoped this fine weather would hold now, with only a little rain to come at the right moments. There had been a frost that morning, which had browned some of the blossoms, but the sky was bright now, and the smell of the late spring flowers was heavy in the air, filled with life. She brushed through sage bushes and caught the disturbed scent, sharp and sweet.

  She left the herbs and went to look at the rose bushes, drying already against their west wall in the morning sunlight. She shook some of them gently to flick out the larger drops of rain and dew from the folds of leaves and buds, and taking her scissors out of her pocket she snipped off some frosted leaves, wary of mildew, catching them up to put on her rubbish heap. The sun was hot now on her neck, and she pulled up the muslin collar of her chemisette a little to protect her skin. She stood back and surveyed the tidy rosebed.

  When she heard the moan first, she thought it was the creak of a tree, but there was little wind. When the sound came again, she recognised it for what it was, but could not place where it was coming from.

  ‘Hallo?’ she called out, and listened. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall. There was a ladder nearby, propped on the wall by the minister’s wife earlier to prune some creepers, and she climbed it quickly for a woman of her years and peered over the tiled top.

  At first she was no wiser than before, but then as her eyes adjusted to the shade, she saw a dark bundle almost directly below her on the path, and the moaning emanated from it. At that moment, a movement caught her eye, and one of the guests from Letho House came into view, shambling along the path like a tramp. She recalled his name.

  ‘Mr. Blair!’ she called. ‘Mr. Blair!’

  The man – who was wearing, she noticed, a waistcoat the colour of spring oak leaves – looked about him for the source of the voice. Thinking at last to look up rather than about, he saw the minister’s wife waving at him from the top of the high wall of the manse garden, some way ahead. Blair waved back, and in a confusion of hands lifted his hat from his powdered wig and made a little bow. He liked Mrs. Helliwell, considering her sensible and possibly underrated locally. As he neared her, even squinting against the sunshine that cut across the top of the passage here formed by the manse garden wall and the retaining wall of the kirkyard, he could see that there were wet petals lodged in her lace cap, and the hand which she waved at him was grubby with earth.

  ‘Watch where you walk, Mr. Blair!’ she said unexpectedly, as he greeted her. ‘See what’s the matter,’ she waved at the path in front of him, ‘and I’ll be round as quickly as I can.’ She vanished behind the wall, and Blair was left to look about him to find, if he could, what on earth she had been talking about.

  Gazing up at the sun-silhouetted Mrs. Helliwell had left a greenish imprint behind his eyes, and it took him a moment or two to see what she had seen, the dark bundle by the wall. He approached it crabwise, regarding it with caution, but the moment it moved he was on his knees beside it with surprising fluidity.

  That the bundle was human it was easy to ascertain: it could, from its size, have been a large dog, but when Blair with tender fingers disentangled limbs from cloak and pulled back the hood, the face revealed was undoubtedly that of a woman. Made very small in any case, she had the white, pinched look of the chronically underfed. Her lips and eyes were bluish, and dark smears underlined her shut eyes, yet her skin was still young, her hair, where it fell from her hood, full gold still with no white strands. It was hard to see her breathe.

  Blair looked up at the approaching footsteps, and Mrs. Helliwell came to kneel beside him, careless of her skirts. The petals were still in her cap.

  ‘It’s a girl!’ she said in surprise. She touched the white cheek with the back of her fingers, and then felt in a business-like way for the woman’s hand. She pulled off the black glove and felt under the cuff for her wrist.

  ‘Her pulse is faint. She is scarcely alive, but we may just be in time.’ She pulled a blanket from behind her which she must have rushed to fetch from the manse, and began to wrap and tuck it around the woman’s slight body, even around the muddy skirt ends and
the worn boots.

  ‘She’s frozen, poor love,’ said the minister’s wife. ‘She must have been out last night in the frost.’

  ‘Do you know her?’ Blair asked curiously.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs. Helliwell, pausing to look at the thin face. ‘She’s not one of ours. She may have walked in from a neighbouring parish, and not managed very far. Can you help me bring her into the manse?’

  Blair contemplated the woman, lips pursed in his wrinkled face, as if he were blowing a horn.

  ‘She seems very light. I can try.’

  Mrs. Helliwell stood up to give Blair more space for his efforts, and looked about her, thoughtfully. Blair was finding his way under the folds of the blanket and cloak on the damp ground when he heard her exclaim,

  ‘Oh, no!’

  He turned and saw her run towards the country end of the path, where it passed through some rough woodland. He had just come that way himself and wondered what she could have seen. He watched her as she went to the foot of some bushes by the path and bent down with an urgency with which he was unfamiliar in her, but after a moment she half-turned back towards him and called out,

  ‘No, it is quite all right, all is well.’ She picked something heavy from beneath the bush and held it cradled in her arms as she returned to him along the path. It was dark against the muddy blue of her dress.

  ‘What on earth is it?’ he asked, peering at her load.

  ‘I think it is her pack, her belongings. For a dreadful moment – oh! I know we should never think the worst of people, but sometimes, you know, it saves time to be prepared for it. I thought for a moment that it was a baby. Her baby.’

  They both looked down at the pale figure on the ground for a long moment.

  ‘Well, come along then,’ said Mrs. Helliwell at last. ‘We had better get the poor girl off the damp ground and into the warmth – although dear knows how warm the bedroom will be.’