Page 65 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

‘Is it just Fritz here with you?’ he asked, getting to his feet.

‘No, Gussie and Ben are somewhere about. The little ones are at Beata’s. We thought it best. Fritz will take you up.’ He kissed her hands, and she said softly, ‘He’s no age, no age at all. It was just his temper.’

And he knew from the way she spoke that she loved his father still, in spite of everything. How women loved! There was no fathoming them.

His father was in his own bed, in his own bedroom, a heavy, masculine room of stately furniture, polished wood, dark red fabrics. He was propped up against a mass of white pillows, like a man fallen back into a snow-drift. He looked gaunt, his hair seemed whiter than Angus remembered, his skin was waxy-pale; but he had been shaved smooth, and his hair was neatly arranged. Someone was doing these things for him. He had caught a glimpse of a nurse in the dressing-room as Fritz conducted him in. He was vaguely glad – Father had always been meticulous in his appearance. It would have been unkind to let him look dishevelled now he was helpless.

One of his father’s eyes was partly open, but all that showed under the lid was white. His mouth was hanging loosely to the left, and he had drooled a little. Angus took one of the hands that was lying on the counterpane; it felt cold and lifeless. Had he died already? But, no, there was a little movement of breathing under the sheet.

‘Father,’ he said. ‘Father. It’s me, it’s Angus.’

‘He doesn’t hear you,’ Fritz said from behind him. ‘He doesn’t know anything, Tweedie says.’

Angus lowered his voice, but leaned close to the waxy face, to the strangely unnatural curves of the ear, like a sculpture. ‘Father, why did you do it?’ he heard himself ask. He hadn’t known, that was what he’d say. ‘She’s lovely, Rachel’s lovely, and she’s an earl’s daughter. It would have been a good marriage. There was no need for all this.’

There was no reaction. The breath sighed slowly in and out; the hand did not warm in his. And I shall marry her anyway, he thought, and all this will have been for nothing. I would have run your business better than poor Fritz ever will. You’d have had a daughter-in-law, a lady, connected to the highest in the land.

‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he said. But he was saying, I’m sorry it came to this for you, not I’m sorry I didn’t bend to your will.

He was making his own way in the world and he would do well, though it would be a harder path. If his father had not been so unreasonable, he could have had everything – and so could Father.

He put down the hand, and straightened, turned to Fritz, who was standing as though he had been stunned and wasn’t sure where he was. ‘You’ll take care of Mother and the little ones, won’t you? It’s your job now.’

‘Aye,’ Fritz said at last, slowly. ‘I know it is. I’ll – I’ll be right.’

His father died just after midnight. Angus, his mother, Fritz, Augusta and Benedict were clustered around the bed, his mother holding one cold hand and Dr Tweedie the other, fingers on the pulse. His father’s breathing had grown noisy, and then it had stopped. Nothing else marked his transition from the world. Tweedie waited a long moment, frowning, and then said, ‘He’s gone.’

Gussie burst into noisy tears and Ben put his arm round her, but the others had passed beyond tears now. Fritz looked even more stunned. Their mother put down her husband’s hand, bent and kissed his brow, and came to put her arm round Fritz and lead him away. ‘Come, baby,’ she said. ‘Come away, and we’ll have some cocoa.’

Angus followed her out. The household hadn’t gone to bed, and a housemaid was hovering, perhaps to take the news to below-stairs as soon as it happened. He ordered her to light a fire in the small sitting-room. He saw her prepare to question the order, then realise a new regime was beginning.

Thus do the mighty pass from the sphere of their worldly power to a greater judgment, he thought.

The solicitor, Allardice, attended the next day. Angus knew him well, had known him since a boy, had played with his sons, who were the same age, at Allardice’s home while his father conducted business. He asked to speak to Angus separately, and Angus was afraid he would be told to leave, because he was no longer involved in any of the family’s concerns.

But once they were secluded in Father’s business-room (cold, very cold on the north side of the house, and so horribly quiet, with just the clock on the overmantel indifferently picking seconds out of its teeth and spitting them into the empty grate), Allardice gave him a sympathetic look and said kindly, ‘You understand there’s nothing I can do about the will? I advised against the recent changes your father made – they seemed excessive, and I mistrust excess – but it was his instruction, and it was my duty to implement it. So after payment of your mother’s jointure and various individual legacies, your father’s fortune and the business go to Fritz.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Angus said. He hesitated. ‘I was wondering if there’s a need for me to stay on for a while, though. Fritz, you know…Very much cut up, perhaps not up to dealing with things.’

Allardice said, ‘I’ll steer him through, you needn’t worry, Sir Angus.’

Angus’s scalp shot backwards as his eyebrows shot up. He stared at the solicitor, who smiled a little. ‘Aye, I thought mebbe you’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘The baronetage is hereditary. It can’t be given away in a will. You have the title. There was nothing Sir Gordon could do about that, though he asked me pretty sharply.’

‘I’m a baronet?’

‘With all the honours that go with it,’ said Allardice, watching his face with amusement. ‘Including the coat of arms. You can display it over your mantelpiece, have it embossed on your tobacco pouch – even paint it on your carriage door.’

‘I can’t afford a carriage,’ Angus said, bemused.

‘Aye, well, that’s another wee item of news I’ve to discuss with you. Your father could leave his fortune and his business where he wished, and he did. But there is a secondary legacy. Your grandmother on your father’s side, Elizabeth Mechie, came from a wealthy family and had a fortune of her own.’

‘I don’t remember her,’ Angus said.

‘She died when you were only two. Through some careful legal work on the part of your great-grandfather Mechie, it was hers to dispose of as she chose, and she chose to leave it to you. She felt you ought to have your own money secured to you, regardless of your father’s business, which might prosper or fail, and regardless of how many other children he had to provide for.’

‘But – I never heard a word about this.’

Allardice almost chuckled. ‘No, that was one of her stipulations. You weren’t to be told about it. She didn’t want you idling your life away, knowing that you were to come into money of your own. She’d seen her own brother go that way, ending in his untimely death. She was a strong-minded woman, though not always a clear-thinking one. She disposed that your fortune was to be in the trusteeship of your father, who could pay you an allowance out of it, of an amount and frequency he thought suitable.’