Mrs. McVinnie's London Season

  Mrs. McVinnie’s London Season

  Carla Kelly

  Camel Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  www.carlakellyauthor.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Author Photo by Bryner Photography

  Mrs. McVinnie’s London Season

  Copyright © 1990, 2014 by Carla Kelly

  First published in 1990 by Signet, an imprint of Penguin Books USA, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-955-8 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-956-5 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014938125

  Produced in the United States of America

  * * *

  Had we never lov’d sae kindly,

  Had we never lov’d sae blindly,

  Never met—nor never parted,

  We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

  —Robert Burns

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  She heard the postman’s whistle at her own front door almost before she turned the corner and set her feet toward Abbey Head. Jeannie McVinnie stood still a moment in the roadway. She nodded to the other women, baskets over their arms, who were headed in a purposeful cluster toward the greengrocer’s. After another nod and a bow to the minister’s new bride, Jeannie twitched her plaid up a little higher about her shoulders and continued on down the street.

  She was not the kind of woman who backtracked. Jeannie no longer believed her mother’s admonition that to turn back, once having set out, would bring down all manner of misery and bad fortune. She was not superstitious, but still, she would not have retraced her steps.

  Besides, Galen was there, and in a grumpy mood. It would do him good to stir from his armchair, where everything was laid out within easy reach, and hobble to the front door. Now that his color was much improved and his melancholy in large part gone, Jeannie felt compelled to force a little exertion upon her father-in-law. He had no cause to chafe about the fit of his wooden leg. The surgeon had declared the amputation a thing of beauty, going so far as to summon his colleagues from the University of Edinburgh to exclaim and proclaim until Galen McVinnie was heartily tempted to unstrap the leg and beat the physics about the head with it.

  A walk to the door would do him good, she told herself as she turned her head against the little mist that seemed to rise from the ground. She paused again and considered tramping over the road past the church and toward Gatehouse of Fleet. She discarded the notion; the rhododendrons were not yet in bloom. She would wait for that event.

  Jeannie turned again toward Abbey Head. It was a walk of some five miles, affording ample time for reflection, but not too much. She did not trouble herself about the letter. Undoubtedly it was for Galen McVinnie, late a major of His Majesty’s Fifteenth Dumfries Rifles. For the past year as the shocking news had spread farther and farther away, like a pebble tossed into Wigtown Bay, letters had dribbled in.

  When Galen could not raise his head off the pillow, Jeannie had answered the first spate of letters, stopping often because she could not see through her tears to write. Calmly she accepted the condolences of Tom’s death and the prayers for Galen’s speedy recovery.

  During those dark days of the Scottish winter, Jeannie McVinnie had come to dread the postman’s whistle. It only meant more letters, more explanations. When Galen could sit upright again and his handwriting was steady enough, she gladly surrendered the correspondence to him.

  Her father-in-law kept up a series of letters to particular friends, and as the year of mourning wore on, the missives of concern turned into invitations to visit. Only yesterday there had been a note scrawled on quite good rag paper and franked by a lord, requesting his attendance at a regimental gathering in Dumfries.

  “It is not very far, Jeannie,” Major McVinnie had said, and there was something wistful in his voice that made her turn her head so he could not see her smile.

  “Indeed not, Father McVinnie,” she had replied, knowing better than to attempt to make up his mind for him. Thomas had been woven of the same plaid; and she had learned early in her brief tenure at marriage not to press the issue.

  In the end, last night Galen decided against the gathering. “Jeannie, too many questions,” he said as he refolded the paper and laid it aside. “Perhaps some other time.”

  But she had found him looking at the note again before she escorted him upstairs to bed that night. “Still, I could not leave you here alone, my dear, now could I?”

  His words were kind; they were always kind. But more and more, it was that condescending kindness of the strong for the weak. He was measuring her each day, and finding her lacking, even as he smiled. He watched her when he thought she wasn’t aware, but she was always aware. And what he saw, he did not like.

  The mist lifted and allowed the sunshine to stream through the clouds. Jeannie turned her face toward it. She knew it would be brief. March sunlight served only to keep heart in the body until spring’s tardy arrival to the lowlands. She took a deep breath, mindful that already there was something of spring in the air.

  “The spring of 1810,” she said out loud, as if to allow it official recognition. The spring of 1809 had passed without fanfare, other than to be marked with an X on each calendar square, the symbol of one more day got through without Thomas McVinnie.

  An hour’s brisk walk brought her to the head, crowned by the ruins of an abbey. It was too early in the year for the young ladies of St. Andrews’ Select Female Academy to be grouped here and there about the picturesque stones, their heads bent diligently over sketching pads, so she had the place to herself. Even the sea gulls normally in residence were wheeling far overhead on the air currents.

  In a moment she had perched herself into the shell that had once formed a window overlooking the bay. She sat still, reflecting, not for the first time, on the quality of Scottish woolens, effective even against cold abbey stones.

  Jeannie smiled to herself, remembering again that over oatmeal that morning Galen had looked at the invitation from Dumfries. “I wonder, my dear, if that part of the regiment from Canada—Bartley’s company—will be there.”

  A sea gull, irritated at the intrusion upon the abbey, swooped lower to investigate. Jeannie took one of last night’s scones from her pocket, crumbled it, and tossed it toward the bay. The sea gull ignored her for several more moments and then condescended to alight and peck among the stones.

  Jeannie sighed and sunk her hands deep in her pockets. Galen McVinnie was restless to go to Dumfries, but he would make no move as long as she remained with him in Kirkcudbright. It was time for her to move along. Galen still had a life to live, even if hers was over.

  “And where might I move to, may I ask?” she questioned the gull, which hopped a few steps farther away and regarded her with a red eye.

  Mother and father were dead long since. Agnes had dutifully invited her to join them in Edinburgh, but Jeannie knew the size of her sister’s house and just as politely declined. Her two brothers served in India. They had invited her to the subcontinent, but she did not relish a long sea voyage. She was not very fond of water.

  But it was more than that; she knew it and her brothers knew it. At the end of the long journey,
there would be row upon row of officers ready to propose, eager to marry a white woman from Britain, all the more so if she were not hard to look at and moderately endowed. Jeannie McVinnie was not ready to cast herself upon the marriage mart so soon after Thomas’ death.

  “Surely you will agree, friend bird,” she said to the gull, which hopped closer, “that the consideration of one’s second husband is possibly a matter for some serious thought. And I choose not to think about it yet. India can wait.”

  If it was not to be India, what, then? She knew she must remarry. It was a cold-blooded reflection that had cost her many a night’s sleep. The knowledge that she was destined to marry again, duty-bound, had chased about in her head until she was weary of it. And always by the time morning came, she was fully awake to the fact that she had no desire to sleep in anyone’s arms but Tom’s, and now it was too late for that.

  Jeannie hopped down from the ledge and shooed the gull away with her skirts. It rose in an indignant fluff of white, hissing at her, as she walked closer to the cliff overhanging the bay.

  A small boat of indeterminate type tacked across the bay, searching about for a bit of wind to bring it safely in. Jeannie shaded her eyes with her hand and watched it.

  I would be a sailor, she thought suddenly, and let the wind blow me where it chose. She sighed. If only I could feel some harmony with the sea.

  But she would never be a sailor, or a soldier, or a doctor like her father, or a greengrocer, or a vicar. The only path open to her was marriage. As she stood watching the boat in the bay, Jeannie decided to entertain the notion. Somewhere in the wide world, there must be another man for her. She might not love, but she could like.

  “And he needn’t be handsome,” she told the gull, which had plummeted to earth again, chattering and scolding behind her back. “One cannot have such good fortune twice in a row. He must be amiable, however, and good-natured and polite. A wealthy man would be an excellent thing, too.”

  The thought made her smile. “Where you expect to find a wealthy man, where none existed before, I cannot imagine, Jeannie,” she told herself.

  She walked back to the abbey ruins and leaned against the ledge. “And while I am about it, he should be wondrous fond of children and devoted entirely to the finer things in life.”

  The idea was so improbable that she laughed out loud, noting with surprise that it was the first time in a year she had done so. “Such a paragon I have created,” she told the gull. “The wonder of it would be if such a man old enough for me was still safe from Parson’s Mousetrap!” It felt good to laugh, and she was still smiling to herself as she set her face toward Kirkcudbright again and the little stone house on McDermott Street.

  Mrs. MacDonald was out to market when Jeannie returned. The housekeeper had vowed after breakfast to come home with a joint of mutton, “or die in the attempt, Mrs. McV,” she had declared as she put on her hat and battened it down in anticipation of Kirkcudbright’s wind.

  The subject was a sore one, and Mrs. McDonald was not one to let a topic wither without a good shake. “Although why it should be so hard to get a good joint of mutton in Scotland, I canna fathom. Do our soldiers in Spain eat so much that there’s not even a dab left for pepper pot? Explain it to me again, Mrs. McV.”

  And Jeannie had patiently explained again that wartime causes shortages of the most inexplicable commodities, even mutton in Scotland.

  The house was quiet. Mrs. MacDonald was most likely still doing battle with the butcher.

  “Is that you, Jeannie?” Galen asked from the next room.

  “It is, Father.” Jeannie removed her cloak and shook it before the fireplace before draping it over the chair. The smell of damp wool made her wrinkle her nose. “I am coming.”

  Galen was standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, a letter in them. She admired his balance, noting with pride that he looked good again, not thin and worn. The military set was back in his shoulders. He turned around and held out the letter to her.

  “It is another note from Laird Ross. And he has sweetened the pot, Jeannie.” He scratched his head. “Indeed, he is making it impossible for me to refuse attendance at the reunion in Dumfries.”

  She took the letter from him, reading it swiftly. She looked up at him, and he smiled into her face.

  “Ah, Jeannie, when I see that dimple in your cheek, I know you’re not precisely oblivious to the hatching of this plot,” he declared. “Thomas used to declare that you had a military turn for strategy.”

  They could talk about Thomas now, if they spoke carefully and avoided each other’s eyes.

  She handed back the letter. “It would seem, sir, that you are about to be kidnapped.” She could not resist. “And led in chains to a trout stream in the north when the reunion has run its course.”

  “Yes, a scurvy plot, Jeannie, and one that I am powerless to combat,” he replied with a grin. “And Major Ross outranks me. Our majorities were purchased two days apart, so he is my senior. Now, what can I do?”

  “Nothing except submit to the rule of authority and go to Dumfries, Father.”

  Only do not smile at me like that, she thought. You remind me so of Thomas.

  Her return to sobriety brought Galen McVinnie to earth again. “But, Jeannie, I cannot leave you here alone for the summer. I cannot. I promised Thomas that I would look after you.”

  No one could argue with the kindness of Galen McVinnie’s words, but there was something in the saying of them that stung like a pin under the fingernail. Was she imagining, or could she almost hear a sigh as he spoke, as if he wished Tom had not extracted such a promise?

  “So you did promise,” she said quietly. “And you have done such a lovely job of it. I can manage here.”

  “Still, it is not right.”

  Jeannie saw the signs coming of what Thomas had dubbed the “great McVinnie dig-in,” that look of stubbornness and duty that was nearly impossible to argue with. She glanced about her for something to distract her father-in-law, and found it on the mantelpiece.

  “Father, is there a letter for me?” she asked suddenly.

  “Yes. I forgot. Clumsy of me.”

  She went to the mantelpiece and picked up the letter. The handwriting was unfamiliar. She ran her finger over the paper and immediately knew it was of the best quality. The letter had been franked by a lord. The word “Taneystone” was scrawled across the top. She frowned and looked at her father-in-law, who shrugged and stumped closer.

  “It is no one I know.” Galen managed a mild joke. “Jeannie, my dear, are you in trouble with the lairds of England? A lowering reflection for a Scottish lassie, I vow.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t a clue. I suppose nothing will suffice but I must open the thing.” She faltered. “I only wish it did not look so official.”

  Her last official letter had led to her widowhood. She shook off the feeling that threatened her somewhere behind her eyelids and accepted the penknife Galen handed her. She opened the letter and spread out the closely written page. Jeannie motioned her father-in-law closer and held it out to him so they could read it together.

  “Captain Sir William Summers, commanding HMS Venture, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath.”

  The title seemed to speak in the quiet room, so boldly was it written.

  Jeannie looked at Galen.

  “I am no wiser,” she said. “Would this be a navy man?”

  Galen nodded and pointed to the salutation. “He labors under the delusion that he knows you.”

  She looked down. “My dear Miss Jeannie McVinnie,” she said out loud. “Whoever can this be? Let us sit down, Father.” They sat. Jeannie spread the letter out on her lap and began to read.

  My dear Miss McVinnie, I regret I have not written you since the occasion of my reply to your letter five years ago, in which you so kindly inquired about my part in Trafalgar. Has it been five years? I have spent most of that time since engaged in blockade duty, which I need scarcely trouble you
with. It is an occupation of astounding tedium and occasional terror. The contrast is regrettable, as it sets our teeth on edge, but what are we do to if Boney will rove about the continent, kicking up his heels?

  You were never one to beat about the bush. Let me explain the reason for this letter. I believe you to be aware of George’s death two years ago (and of course, you are already well aware of Marceline’s untimely passing years ago). George’s death surprised all of us, particularly in light of the fact that I have always been considered the family favorite to be tamped down first by the undertaker’s shovel or slid off a board into the sea.

  Jeannie raised her eyes to Galen’s face. “Father, he is so ghoulish!”

  Galen rubbed his chin. “Permit me an observation. Navy men tend to be more fatalistic than the rest of us. It must come from tossing about in little wooden tubs and eating weevily biscuit.”

  “It must be so,” Jeannie replied. She addressed herself to the letter again.

  You will recall George’s two children—Larinda, who has just turned seventeen, and Edward, who is fourteen and now Lord Summers. Larinda has begun her come-out, and I have been ordered to London (I shall explain this later!) to act as head of the household. This is the reason for my letter. I am in desperate need of a companion for her, someone to chaperone her to parties and routs and such.

  You will recall that my sister, Agatha Smeath, has for years been a quasi-guardian, filling in where I could not, because of the press of war. You remember Agatha and her flibertigibbet ways. She cannot be relied upon to usher Larinda out and about. I need someone of dignified years, considerable countenance, and copious good sense. Naturally, I thought of you.