The Final Pattern (The Corvill Family Saga Book 3) Read online

  The Final Pattern

  The Corvill Family Saga Book 3

  Tessa Barclay

  Copyright © The Estate of Tessa Barclay 2018

  This edition published 2018 by Wyndham Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  First published 1990

  www.wyndhambooks.com/tessa-barclay

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

  With the exception of where actual historical events and people are described, this book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

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

  Cover artwork images: © Period Images / Nella (Shutterstock)

  Cover design: © Wyndham Media Ltd

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  Also by Tessa Barclay

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  The Wine Widow

  The Champagne Girls

  The Last Heiress

  The Corvill Family Saga

  A Web of Dreams

  Broken Threads

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

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  Chapter One

  The Earl of Thornieburn was being entertained to tea by Mrs Ronald Armstrong, of Gatesmuir and the Waterside Mills. The whole of Galashiels was aware of this unusual event, and was greatly intrigued.

  It was known that the Countess had written a few days ago to the Mistress, as Mrs Armstrong was generally known in the town. The communication system which runs between one servant hall and another, and to the tradesmen who supply them, had spread the word: Her Ladyship had suggested that the Earl might drop in on such and such a day if it was convenient to Mrs Armstrong. Mrs Armstrong had sent back an immediate reply with the messenger to say his Lordship would be offered afternoon tea.

  The cook at Gatesmuir had baked her lightest sponge cake, her crispest shortbread. Sandwiches of ethereal thinness had been cut. The kitchen maid had washed and re-washed the Worcester tea set till it shone with a brightness that hurt the eye. The housekeeper herself had cleaned the silver. The best lace cloth had felt the sprinkler and the gas-iron over its fragile surface oftener than was good for it.

  Jenny Armstrong had met his Lordship socially at one or two of the occasions by means of which Borders society amused itself in the summer months. That’s to say, she had bowed politely and murmured ‘How do you do?’ if they happened to be watching the same archery contest, and they had sat a few rows apart at an open air country dancing display.

  The Countess was slightly better known to Jenny. This year of 1872 had been one of the worst for wet weather ever known in the Borders. So far it had rained on two hundred and thirty-two days, and since it was only September there might be more to come. The roads were a quagmire.

  Ten days ago, Jenny’s carriage had become hopelessly bogged down on the road between Clovenford and Caddenfoot while she was on a visit to a retired employee. There she might have remained for hours except that the Countess of Thornieburn happened by while out riding, sent a handy estate worker for plough horses, and had her dragged out of the mud.

  During the dragging process, Her Ladyship had strolled by the roadside with Jenny on the only dry piece of ground, an outcrop of stone. They had chatted about the rainfall ‒ over forty-six inches so far ‒ the plough horses and their strength, the outbreak of croup in Selkirk, and whether this new fashion, the bustle, was really going to ‘take’.

  It was an entirely amiable encounter. Safely home again, Jenny had debated whether to send a length of fine tweed with her thank-you letter. ‘Do you think it would be “pushy”, Ronald?’ she mused aloud as she sat with pen in hand at the secretaire.

  Her husband had even less savoir faire about such nice points than Jenny. He had come up from the ranks of the work force, and somewhat disapproved of the aristocracy on principle.

  ‘Well, it’d be a good advertisement for the mill if she were to have it made up into a gown,’ he said in his dry way. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘Husband! I only thought … if I were a farmer, I might send a few fresh eggs or ‒’

  ‘No you wouldn’t. There’s nothing anyone else can give to the Thornieburns, since they’re the biggest landowners in the district ‒’

  ‘Aye, that’s so ‒ but their land isn’t all that productive.’

  ‘Dinna be sae daft! They’ve nearly as many sheep as an Australian! Not to speak of the property they own in the towns ‒’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll simply write a sweet letter expressing gratitude.’

  She had certainly never expected the Countess to take the acquaintance further.

  Speculation was high in Galashiels about the Earl’s visit. ‘He wants to buy into the weaving business,’ suggested Mr Dugald of the Braidstow Mills with some envy.

  ‘Na, na, he’s a man for the agriculture,’ Thomas Mitchell objected, ‘he disna ken a warp frae a woof.’

  The town’s chief lawyer, successor to Mr Kennet, shook his head in disapproval. ‘We shouldn’t speculate ‒’

  ‘That’s a true word, but a man canna help it.’

  Nor could a woman. Every female inhabitant wanted to know why His Lordship should want to call on the mistress of Waterside Mills. ‘It canna be an affair o’ the heart,’ sighed the milliner, ‘because Her Ladyship herself writ the letter asking if her man could visit ‒’

  ‘Happen he’s a wily one and he’s playing her for a fool ‒’

  ‘Lizzie, mind your tongue and your manners!’ Miss Gordon said with great sharpness to her chief trimmer, the more sharp because she’d thought that very thing herself.

  What could be the reason for the visit? What could they be talking about?

  What they were talking about was that most engrossing subject to parents ‒ their children.

  ‘I have to confess my wife is over-protective of Allen,’ sighed His Lordship. ‘But it’s not to be wondered at. You’ve heard, I suppose, that he’s the last left to us
out of four …?’

  Jenny hadn’t in fact heard that piece of information, but she wasn’t surprised. So many families lost children in infancy. It was the most vulnerable time for a child, those first few years, when mysterious fevers could strike, whooping cough might cause convulsions, or the onset of some strange wasting disease would manifest itself.

  Inwardly she thanked heaven for the health of her own two sturdy children, for her daughter, now aged ten and physically strong though still shy and reticent, and for the baby son born since she and Ronald returned from Australia. Maxwell, known as Max, was the apple of his father’s eye ‒ lusty, noisy, growing almost visibly from day to day.

  Quite different, it seemed, was young Viscount Cairness. ‘Damned doctors ‒ oh, excuse me, ma’am! I have to keep reminding myself to watch my language when I’m with ladies. My wife doesn’t mind what I say, and besides, she agrees with me about doctors ‒ God knows we’ve had enough of ’em to examine the boy, but there’s not a thing they can do. I don’t think they understand a word about what’s wrong with him.’

  ‘I imagine you’ve had the best advice?’

  ‘I should say so! And they’ve been poking and prodding the poor lad ever since he was a tiny mite. Yet he keeps wheezing and sneezing ‒’

  ‘He’s of a bronchitic disposition?’

  ‘Hanged if I know, or anybody, for that matter,’ His Lordship said with a sigh, and crunched his shortbread in a disheartened manner.

  ‘Heather is somewhat subject to a cough in very cold weather ‒’

  ‘But that’s just the point! Weather seems to have almost nothing to do with Allen’s complaint! I could understand it if he got a cold after being out on a long ride in wet weather. But no ‒ he can be as right as rain that day, and then perhaps two days later, when it’s perfectly dry, he can have streaming eyes and a running nose ‒ it’s a perplexity, ma’am, truly it is. And these attacks come on as much in the summer as in the winter; more, perhaps. The doctors say he’ll grow out of it, but I don’t know, I don’t know …’

  ‘He’s twelve years old, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, and you see, he should have gone to public school by now. I had him down for Fettes, of course, but the headmaster says ‒ quite understandably ‒ that they can’t take the responsibility in view of his state of health. And that’s why I’m here, Mrs Armstrong!’ The Earl, pausing, looked at his hostess with a serious, pleading expression.

  Jenny was at a loss. He seemed to expect a response from her, but what could she say? She had only the ordinary layman’s understanding of health matters, if that was what he had come about. Nor did she know much more about education than any ordinary mother.

  It was true that she had had problems over Heather’s schooling. Her daughter suffered from a disability which made it very difficult for her to fit into a classroom full of children.

  Heather could express herself perfectly well when she chose. But an episode in her early childhood had made her timid, even fearful, so that she hardly ever opened her mouth with strangers. If she was sent to school, she was overwhelmed with dumbness. And children being as they are, half-tamed savages, she suffered from the unkindness of her classmates.

  Jenny had withdrawn her from an excellent small school for the education of the children of local gentlefolk. She had tried to hire a good governess. The first, who came with excellent references and undoubted qualifications, had been a martinet who reduced the little girl to tears six times a day. The second, a sweet and loving girl who had brought Heather on amazingly in four months, had naturally been courted in marriage and had left only six weeks ago.

  At the moment Heather had no teacher except Jenny herself. It was an unsatisfactory situation, for Jenny was the child of working class parents and had none of the ‘accomplishments’ necessary for a young lady of fortune, therefore she could pass on nothing to Heather except a good grasp of reading and writing and some slight artistic training.

  ‘If you are asking me to recommend a governess ‒’

  ‘Eh?’ The Earl looked startled. ‘No, no, dear lady. No, no, the tutors and all that are laid on. I thought I’d explained that.’

  ‘No,’ said Jenny, floundering. ‘You haven’t mentioned tutors at all, so far.’

  ‘I haven’t? What have I been talking about, then?’

  He really seemed to want to know. Looking at the plump, muddled, bewhiskered face, Jenny murmured, ‘Well, the Viscount’s state of health, and your anxieties on that score …’

  ‘Dash it, I’m getting more and more absent-minded every day! What must you think of me, Mrs Armstrong? I really thought I’d explained why I’d come.’

  Whatever he had come for, it was certainly not to conduct any kind of flirtation with the Mistress of the Waterside Mills. Jenny was very glad she hadn’t given in to the hints of her maid, Baird, that this was a good opportunity to wear her new bustle gown of violet taffeta. His Lordship had scarcely noticed her appearance, although she was looking (she thought) rather well in a gown of what was known as nun’s veiling, the skirts full but not crinolined, and with some very fine lace about the neck and shoulders. Her dark hair, over which Baird had taken a great deal of trouble, was held up by cut-steel combs, a present from Ronald on the birth of their son.

  ‘Perhaps we had better go back to the beginning again,’ she suggested. ‘You were saying you were anxious about your boy.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s only background. I’d better tackle it from a different angle. You’ll recall that you and my wife ran across each other a couple of weeks ago?’

  ‘Of course. Lady Thornieburn was so kind as to ‒’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ His Lordship interrupted with unintentional bad manners. ‘Your carriage and all that. Well, Jemima took to you considerably … I hope you don’t mind my saying that, ma’am?’

  Jenny blushed. ‘No, of course not. I’m very pleased …’

  ‘She doesn’t take to everyone, Jemima. It’s because she doesn’t socialise as much as she ought to. She stays at home fussing over Allen. We think of his well-being all the time ‒ our one ewe lamb, you know. Well, of course, he’s not a ewe lamb but it’s the same idea … Where was I?’

  ‘The Countess and I had chanced to meet …?’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, afterwards, she chatted to one or two friends about you ‒ not mere inquisitiveness, I assure you, ma’am.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Jenny, as if inquisitiveness was a fault that could never be attributed to a countess.

  ‘And of course I’d heard a bit about you, in the course of business and so forth. Am I right, ma’am, in supposing your daughter Heather has some sort of handicap? A stammer?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ What could all this be about? ‘For reasons that go back into her childhood, she is extremely shy, extremely wary of strangers. She speaks very little. A specialist who examined her called it “voluntary mutism” ‒ in other words, she can speak if she wants to but chooses not to.’

  ‘Hmm …’ said the Earl. ‘It’s a case of nerves, then, is it?’

  ‘In some ways, although the child is quite brave physically. She suffered an experience in her early childhood that made her retreat into silence. She’s been emerging slowly in the last few years. I must add,’ Jenny said, ‘that my husband doesn’t share my views: he doesn’t see how any experience so long ago could continue to affect the child. But there it is ‒ before that happened Heather was a blithe, bonny baby, just like my baby son. Afterwards she was a silent little shadow. And though she is better ‒ much, much better! ‒ it is difficult to find just the right teacher for her.’

  His Lordship rose from his chair and wandered to the rug in front of the fire. He stood in thought a moment, pulling at his greying side-whiskers. Then he took up the traditional stance of the male human animal: back to the fire, hands under his frock coat tails to raise them a little so that the warmth could reach the grey-trousered expanse below. Jenny knew the pose. It meant that an important announcement was c
oming.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, my wife and I have a proposal to make to you. You’ve heard that our child too has a difficulty about his schooling. We’ve solved that so far by simply having a governess, because we kept hoping he’d be going on to college, but the boy’s twelve now and unless we send him to an “invalid school” he’s got no hopes of proper companionship and so on. So we’ve decided to, as you might say, extend the schoolroom at Thornieburn. We’re parting with the governess he’s had up to now ‒ an old fashioned soul, she’s got a post elsewhere. We’ve engaged a younger woman, excellent qualifications, all that.’ He paused.

  ‘Yes?’ Jenny prompted, still bewildered.

  ‘There’ll be special tutors for music and art, and we’ve been lucky enough to find a young clergyman who is interested in the natural sciences to give lessons two or three times a week. I don’t know about some of the other things ‒ dancing lessons, for instance, we haven’t sorted that out yet but I daresay we could arrange it. So what do you say?’

  ‘What do I say to what, Your Lordship?’

  ‘To having your little girl share lessons with my son. Don’t you think it’s a good idea.’

  She stared at her visitor in amazement.

  ‘No? You don’t like it?’

  ‘But, Lord Thornieburn ‒’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t make it sound attractive enough. Allen’s a pleasant lad: quite intelligent, mad about horses and country life and all that kind of thing. We think of inviting another boy to share the classroom, David Buchanan ‒ I don’t know if you’ve met his father, a widower with a little place outside Kelso but I don’t think it brings in much by way of an income.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve met Mr Buchanan, but that’s not ‒’

  ‘The point is, your child needs schooling and companionship, and so does mine. It can’t be good for them to have no one to work with, to compete against, to talk to about what interests them. I remember my own school days; they were hard, by heaven, the masters used to lay into us if we were lazy or inattentive. But I made friends there who gave me a way to measure myself. And sometimes they saw things in a different way, and that taught me something. Latin, for instance, I was never any good at it but I pegged away because I didn’t want Edgar Anstruther to outstrip me. And I’ve never regretted it, you know, it’s stood me in good stead ‒’