Strange Intimacy

Colin flushed now, and then turned with some relief when there was a sound at the door. After the most perfunctory of taps, Cummins, who had been in service at Invercaldy Castle for the past forty years, came into the room, carrying a tray set with a coffee-pot and fine china cups. ‘On the desk, my lord?’ he enquired, with barely a glance at Colin, and Rafe nodded.

‘Thank you,’ he said, as the old man lowered the tray in front of him. ‘We can serve ourselves.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Cummins inclined his head deferentially, and then, with a half-hearted acknowledgment of the younger man, he walked rather stiffly out of the room.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Colin exploded. ‘That fellow!’ he exclaimed. ‘If he weren’t nearing retirement. I’d insist that you get rid of him, Rafe. He’s barely civil at the best of times, and whenever I ask him to do anything he conveniently forgets.’

‘He’s old,’ remarked Rafe quietly, making no move to pour the coffee. ‘And he doesn’t care for Clare’s attitude either. Or had you forgotten?’

Colin expelled his breath on a noisy sigh. ‘The man’s a servant, Rafe!’

‘He’s an employee,’ amended his brother evenly. ‘And deserving of some consideration.’ He paused. ‘Particularly at half-past one in the morning.’

‘All Clare wanted was some cocoa!’

‘Which she could have made herself.’

‘I doubt if Mrs Fielding would have approved of any of the family interfering in her kitchen.’ Colin clicked his tongue. ‘It wasn’t as if she got him out of bed. If I remember correctly, he’d been spending the evening playing cards with Lucas.’

Rafe regarded him coolly. ‘It was his evening off.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Colin came towards the desk, and splashed cream into one of the cups. ‘The man’s a paragon, and Clare’s a snob!’ He filled the cup from the coffee-pot, and then spooned in several measures of brown sugar. ‘But she’s just trying to uphold the family honour. We are the local establishment, Rafe. We owe it to ourselves to maintain a certain—decorum.’

Rafe’s lips curled. ‘Exclusivity, don’t you mean?’

Colin looked up from tasting his coffee. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

Rafe shrugged. ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’

Colin sniffed. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just trying to divert attention from your own shortcomings. OK, maybe Clare is a little brackish—at times, but in this case I think she has a point.’

‘Do you?’ Rafe placed his hands on the edge of the wood and, pressing down, brought himself to his feet. His mouth twitched a trifle wryly, as Colin took a couple of steps back from the desk, as if anticipating some sort of physical retaliation, but all he did was cross the room to where a tray of drinks resided on a bureau. He lifted a bottle of single malt, and poured an inch into a glass. ‘Fine. Your objections have been noted.’

‘But they’re not going to be acted upon, are they?’ exclaimed Colin, stung into a retort. ‘And what’s wrong with coffee, at this time of the morning? Must you ruin your constitution with that stuff before it’s even lunchtime? Honestly, Rafe, are you trying to kill yourself?’

Rafe’s expression was cold. ‘Why should you care?’ he countered. ‘If I weren’t around, you and Clare would have a legitimate reason for acting like the lord and lady of the manor!’

‘That’s a foul thing to say!’

Colin’s cup clattered noisily into its saucer, and, looking at his brother’s shocked face, Rafe felt a sudden spurt of remorse. It wasn’t fair to treat Colin as a whipping-boy. He had never shown any resentment towards his elder brother, and when Sarah died he had done everything he could to ease Rafe’s burden. Just because Clare had turned into a right royal pain in the butt was no reason to act as if Colin were personally to blame.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said now. ‘That was uncalled for.’ He grimaced. ‘You caught me at a bad moment, Col. I’m not in the best of tempers. You’ll have to forgive me.’

Colin shook his head. ‘Think nothing of it, old man,’ he said gruffly, and Rafe thought how lucky he was that his brother was always willing to forgive and forget. ‘I shouldn’t go on at you as I do. Goodness knows, you’ve had enough to cope with as it is, without me sticking my big nose into your affairs.’

‘Mmm.’

Rafe acknowledged his words silently, looking down at the liquid in his glass for a moment, before lifting it to his lips. But he only took a mouthful, allowing the undiluted spirit to numb his teeth and gums, before letting it slide smoothly down his throat. The truth was, he didn’t really know how he felt. He’d thought he did. Until recently, he’d have sworn he felt the same now as he’d done when Sarah died, but he simply wasn’t sure any more. For some reason, he had doubts, and they weren’t exactly welcome.

Which was ridiculous, really. After all, when Sarah had died in childbirth, he had been convinced he’d never get over it. She had been so young, only twenty-eight, and having a baby had seemed such a simple, uncomplicated procedure. With all the advances in medical science, there should have been no danger of her dying in the delivery-room. But Rafe suspected the doctor hadn’t even realised the baby was dead until its lifeless little body had been extracted from Sarah’s womb. And Sarah had been so exhausted by the prolonged period of labour that she hadn’t had the strength to withstand the massive haemorrhage that had followed.

It had happened so quickly. One week, he and Sarah had been picking out names for the baby, and the next he was standing beside her grave. And for weeks after that he had woken in the morning still expecting to find her lying beside him. He had had dreams where she was with him, laughing with him, talking with him, her diminutive frame still swollen with her blossoming pregnancy. Those dreams had been the worst, because when he had awakened he had had to face the ugly truth all over again. At least when his dreams had been cloaked in blood he’d known there was no hope.

So why was he now resenting the fact that he could think about what had happened without feeling that devastating surge of despair? he wondered. It couldn’t be that after two years he had grown so used to the anguish, he had actually started to find pleasure in it. But no. He might never forgive himself for what had happened to Sarah, but anything else was unthinkable. He ought to be glad he was beginning to accept the inevitability of it all; glad that he was finally coming to terms with her death.

His mother would probably say that Phillips was responsible. It was she who had eventually persuaded him to let Phillips try and help him, and for the past six months he had spent a couple of hours each week listening to the old fraud tell him that trying to drown his sorrows in alcohol wasn’t going to work. Of course, he’d known that for himself. Prolonged bouts of drinking had left him with nothing but a bad hangover, and in recent weeks he had started to restrict his intake accordingly. But his mother had begged and cajoled him to seek professional help, and it had been simpler to give in to her than suffer her tearful recriminations.

That was why he didn’t believe Phillips had had anything to do with the way he felt now. Unwilling as he was to believe it, his change of mood seemed to stem from what had happened the previous afternoon. Which was the real reason he resented it, he supposed. It was infuriating to think that Isobel Jacobson—and her precocious daughter—should have had any positive effect on his mental condition. For God’s sake, he had only gone to the station in the first place because he had known how it would irritate his mother. His mother might have succeeded in foisting her pet psychologist on to him, but he could still behave completely irrationally if he chose to do so.

Like this morning, he thought broodingly. Why had he felt that overwhelming urge to help the Jacobson woman again? It wasn’t as if she was the kind of woman he had ever been attracted to. Apart from their obvious social differences, she didn’t even look like his ideal woman. He preferred small women, like Sarah, not tall Amazons, whose shape was apparent even in a man’s shirt and trousers. She had just been a means to ruffle his mother’s feathers, and it annoyed him to think that she had caused him to act in a totally inappropriate way. Even the thought that she had, however briefly, attracted his interest disturbed him. He didn’t want—he didn’t need—that kind of complication in his life.

‘Anyway,’ Colin ventured now, evidently deciding that Rafe was still brooding over his wife’s behaviour, ‘I suggest we say no more about it, eh? I’m sure—Mrs Jacobson appreciated not having to wait for the local train. And at least she’s had a decent introduction to the area. I’m sure old Webster will be pleased about that. It hasn’t been easy finding a replacement for Miss McLeay, you know. There aren’t that many people who’d want to move to a remote village in the Highlands, not when they’ve been used to—well, a much more—hectic environment.’

Rafe made no response. It would have been difficult to say anything without involving himself still further, and he had no wish to endure another argument with his mother. Her complaints were legion as it was, and he was tired of accounting for his actions to any of them.

So, instead, he took up his brother’s earlier comments about the members of the hunting party who were visiting the estate that weekend. Sir Malcolm Calder had been an old friend of his father’s, and Rafe suspected his main reason for coming to Invercaldy was to see his father’s widow. Sir Malcolm’s own wife had died some time ago, and Rafe didn’t think it was his imagination that his visits had increased in frequency in recent years.