So, this is the last part of Chance encounters... It's set two years after Atlantic nights, and a few important decisions had been made. As usual, the second chapter will be posted tomorrow.
A big thank you to MrsTater, great writer, great beta, great motivator...
And thank you for reading and reviewing!
Highland nights
1
Never travel together with your lover.
Never appear in social gatherings together.
Never leave a letter or a telegram behind.
Never have a public fight with your husband.
Actually, if you respected these basic rules, being a mistress was not difficult at all, especially when your lover was one of the most powerful men in Great Britain, the newly made Baron Glendyne, able to nip any burgeoning rumor in the bud.
Two years.
Mary contemplated the glorious scenery of the coastal Highlands as it unfolded in front of her. It was one of these days when the sun deigned to shed its light on the mountains to reveal the bright green of the pastures and the dark blue of the lakes. The train journey to Kyle of Lochalsh had seemed like an endless odyssey at first. But it was worth it. Every single minute of the journey through deserted areas, covered by heavy, rainy clouds most of time and the many changes in remote train stations was worth it.
Soon, Mary would be in his arms once again, free to be simply a woman in love in the lonely kingdom he had created for himself, and had shared with her since the beginning of the affair.
Two years.
Two years of crumbles of happiness and deceit.
Two years of moral hesitations and irresistible certainties.
Since that night on the Syracuse two years ago, Richard Carlisle had been her lover, and she still did not want this to end, in spite of everything.
Still, she hated so many things about this affair, the endless journeys on her own, the constant lies, the gnawing feeling she was betraying everything she had been taught since her early childhood, the horror at being unable, worse, unwilling to do anything to save what was left of her dreamed-of marriage to Matthew. Like so many times before, she had almost cancelled her plans and decided to stay at Duneagle Castle with her family and the MacClares who had recently returned from India.
Mary wanted nothing more than leave the stuffy atmosphere of Duneagle, its ever present almost caricatured tradition, for the villages of the West coast, the smell of salty water and the taste of a fresh plate of sea shells under the shadows of the castle that Richard had been renovating for the past ten years. But, at the same time, the idea of leaving her parents alone with Lady Flintshire's expected bitter curiosity was unbearable. The failure of the marriage was Mary's and Matthew's problem, the affair was her choice, and the rest of the family, and their reputation, should not, could not suffer for these decisions.
Mary's carriage jerked as the train slowed down to pass yet another bend, and suddenly, the sea appeared from nowhere, stuck between the abrupt green hills whose slopes ended in the dark blue water. She let a rueful smile form on her lips: in half an hour at the most, she would step down at Kyle of Lochalsh railway station, at last. To keep the well-known hesitations at bay and to fight the impatience and longing that had been building within her since the moment she had settled in the wagon in Inverness, Mary focused her attention on the scenery once more, expecting the walls of Eilean Donan to surge from the sea at any moment.
The first time Richard had ever invited her to his little kingdom on the coast, Mary had spent the whole journey from Yorkshire – she had announced there was a surrealist exposition in Glasgow that she absolutely needed to visit, one preferably not organized by her lover – somewhat dreading the sight that expected her.
It's just a castle I've bought when I obtained my knighthood. I've been renovating it ever since, and the money I've made with Haxby helped a great deal.
After all, Richard had not proven his good taste when he had acquired Haxby and projected its renovation. During the long hours of her lonely journey across Northern England and Scotland, Mary had fought against the many doomed scenarios that assaulted her mind. The Haxby debacle had revealed so many things about their differences! How would she react to another disrespectful treatment of an abandoned estate? Their affair was precarious enough as it was. Why should they poison the few moments they could spend together with the same fatal ingredient that had heavily contributed to sour their engagement?
Mary caught a glimpse of the reflection of the castle and its bridge on the water before discerning the main tower and the scaffoldings, amused at the reminiscence of these irrational fears. Firstly, Richard could have not done more damage to the castle than the former owners had, since it had been blown up during the Jacobite War, and left in ruin. Moreover, if Richard did not give a damn about English legacy – she was sure if another good bargain like Haxby presented itself to him, he would seize it with no qualm and proceed with the building in the same, tasteless manner – she had learned how attached he was to his own culture.
How in love he was with this particular region of Scotland.
He had not been born here. He had not spent his childhood here. This was not where his family lived and thrived, and God knew how he loved his clan!
But it was where Richard wanted to grow old, where the restless man felt at home, in a kingdom of mountain and water.
The renovation of Haxby had been a matter of rapidity and demonstration of the power given by money, a soulless project that had appalled Mary, and pushed her away. On the contrary, the renovation of Eilean Donan was a stubborn process of finding back a long forgotten past, of research in the archives and long discussions with the architect about the best way to combine modern comfort and the original structure.
The only common point was that Richard spent his money on this project without counting, and Mary had to admit that the apartment-sized part of the castle where he lived during his stays in the region was a most convincing first result, from the simple but comfortable bedroom – with its furniture from the Stuart era – to the decadent bathroom and its view on the sea.
Eilean Donan had been her lover's refuge for the last ten years, and he had shared it with her.
More, by sharing this secret hiding place, Richard had revealed to Mary that it was possible to feel at home far away from one's birthplace.
Away from Downton.
As usual, as the train wound along the coast, Mary felt the familiar constriction in her chest, not entirely due to the imminent reunion with her lover.
Of course, soon she would feel his hand in hers, taste the tobacco on his lips, smell his aftershave as he would engulf her in his welcoming embrace – there they did not have to hide, she was only Lady Mary, no surname, no reputation, the first woman Sir Richard had ever brought with him. Later, they would lay naked, intertwined in his bed, sweaty from their lovemaking, smiling mischievously as they would plot their next game.
However, in between, they would have a long walk, hand in hand, in the village. Most probably, they would stop at one of the two restaurants and share a plate of smoked salmon. If the hour was right – she still had to improve her knowledge of this tides thing – they would scavenge the vast extent of mud and sand revealed by the ebb tide in search of crabs that Mrs. Hasting could prepare this evening. If the weather stayed this way, they would spend the rest of the afternoon lounging on the terrace of the pub with a cup of tea.
The smile on her face widened as the train slowed down to enter the station.
Amidst the smoke of the arriving train, she glimpsed Richard's silhouette as he was leaning against the wall, engrossed by whatever book he was reading. For once, the new glasses that unnerved him so much – he had already broken one pair playing with it, and lost another one – were firmly where they belonged, on his nose, and not in his breast pocket or clenched between his teeth.
A pair of lovers and an old couple already.
As soon as the train stopped, Mary retrieved her luggage – she had learnt to travel on her own for the last two years – and stepped out of her wagon, eager to gaze at Richard's smiling face.
Anything to dissipate the sudden dread.
Two years of crumbles of happiness.
It was so fragile that any change, even an apparent good one, could destroy the precarious equilibrium.
At the same time, if she wanted it to last longer, something had to change. They had been dancing on this narrow line for far too long, and decisions had to be made.
With a bit of luck, they would keep their footing and they would grow old in Eilean Donan together, if only Richard let them.
If their quarrel three months ago had not ruined everything.
-/-
The afternoon was drawing to a close. It was the moment when the shadows grew longer and longer, casting deformed patterns on the ground. A golden light reflected on the water, colored the mountains and the small, white houses scattered along the coast. Soon, the sun would totally disappear behind the summits of Skye and the sea-wind would make it impossible for Mary to remain seated on the terrace without asking for his coat.
"To be honest, until the moment you stepped off the carriage, I half-expected not to see you…" Richard trailed on after a long, pensive silence.
In spite of all his reservations, the longing produced by the three-month long separation had overwhelmed him as soon as he had glimpsed Mary on the platform, waving at him, her luggage at her feet.
Smiling at him.
All the reasonable arguments for ending their relationship he had elaborated in her absence had flown out of his mind instantly, and he had gladly and blindly plunged back into their deceptively domestic routine.
Luncheon at McCauley's.
A stroll by the loch – not the sea as he had explained to Mary again and again.
Tea at Evans'.
Not correcting the wrong assumptions about Lady Carlisle.
Building a crystal bubble that threatened to burst into a thousand shards the longer their affair lasted.
"To be fair, I almost didn't," she admitted, her head tilted, as if she tried to escape his scrutiny. "I was afraid to leave my parents alone at Duneagle with an inquisitive Aunt Susan."
"The MacClares are back in Inverness? Wonderful…" Richard made a mental note to send a telegram to warn his father before he left Edinburgh to visit their family in the North.
"Is there a problem I'm not aware of?" Mary enquired, obviously glad for this change in their conversation.
Richard took the hand she had put on his knee to turn on her chair and stare at him directly.
"Well, I told you that the MacClares and my mother's family aren't exactly in good terms?"
"Yes, and I've heard horrid stories about the Dunbars since the first time I visited Duneagle for the first time."
"But, clearly, they never told you about the time when my father put the MacClare boy headfirst into a barrel of cod because he refused to leave one of our cousin alone," he explained, apologetically kissing the tip of her gloved fingers.
"James? My cousin James?"
"Well, I was out of the country at the time, but, from what I gathered, my father gave him the proper scolding the boy desperately needed at the time, or so my old man said."
A slight crease appeared on Mary's forehead as she considered this new piece of valuable information. Richard loved it when she did that. He leaned toward her, absently playing with her fingers as he patiently waited for her to draw her conclusions.
"Now, I remember that James changed radically in the course of the summer of 1908," she reminisced, barely controlling her giggling. "All of a sudden, he had decided to stop bothering me and Patrick, and to focus on the university exams he had royally ignored for the best part of the holidays, much to his parents' relief."
"Blame my father for that…"
"Congratulate him, you mean!" Her laughter became contagious. "James made quite a career after that, you know."
"I'm afraid Lord Flintshire doesn't agree with your assessment of the situation," he replied, failing to control his laughter.
"I think that's because of the infamous nickname that will accompany James till his grave in Inverness. Is that also your father's invention? Cody? Really?"
"That indeed sounds like one of my father's puns. Still, I didn't know the nickname had had such a long existence," he asked, hating the feeling that he was missing something really funny.
"You never heard it from me, swear it." Mary's lips were smiling, but her eyes were serious. Or half-serious.
"I swear," Richard answered good-naturedly, raising his right hand like a schoolboy.
"Lord Flintshire's nickname is Shrimpy…"
This made Richard's eyes open wide.
"Good Lord… I swear my father didn't know about it…" He made profit of the fact she was facing him and claimed her lips for a light kiss. When she raised a suspicious eyebrow, he went on: "Had he known, he would have come out with something much, much worse." He managed to steal another kiss before sitting back in his chair.
The hell with any thought of serious conversation, those moments were too precious and he could not abandon them, even if it meant he was utterly pathetic. Both of them had already broken all the rules they had agreed to set when the affair begun, repeatedly.
No jealousy. No pettiness. No strings attached.
He would never complain about her marriage.
She would never complain about his occasional flings with well-known actresses.
No encounter would be taken for granted.
The first time one of them broke one of these basic rules, the affair would be over. That was what they had agreed upon.
Yet…
Mary was more and more unable to keep the venom out of her voice when she evoked the latest pretty brunette she had seen at his arm on the covert of some magazine.
Richard's bitterness about Matthew's very existence came out more often than not, almost as much as the fact that the affair as it existed satisfied him less and less.
The quarrel that had preceded this separation, their first real dispute since Christmas 1919 in fact, was the obvious sign that they should put an end to the relationship. The last two years had been wonderful, and Richard did not want these memories to be tarnished by resentment.
It was how all his affairs had ended in the past, with a clean, friendly break, with no heartbreak. All the signs were there, he should get out of here as soon as he could, and stay unscathed. He could have used this separation as an occasion to finalize the break-up. That was what he would have done, with any other woman than Mary.
Instead, he had written her to make amends and rebuild bridges, and awaited her answer anxiously. When he had read her letter, he had not thought twice and invited her to Eilean Donan, to the very place where they could forget about the outside world and ignore unwanted reality, the place where playful conversation soon replaced serious attempts at rationalizing what was going on between them.
Richard felt like a pathetic, weak man.
Still, if it meant he could keep on sharing quiet afternoons by the loch and passionate nights like the one Mary's tender expression promised, he found that he did not mind it.
Not at all.
The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, now, and the slight shiver of Mary's shoulders was the usual telltale sign she was getting uncomfortable. The woman was so stubborn she would never admit out loud she was freezing and would rather let her clicking teeth speak for her.
"Shall we go home?" he proposed, cringing at his unconscious and revealing slip-out. Richard got up and offered his jacket, as usual.
"Please," she accepted the invitation, and the jacket, giving no sign of having caught the significance of his words.
Silently, they walked to the car, his left hand in his pocket, his right arm around her shoulders. By his side, Mary leant into his warmth, the way she snuggled tenderly against him, her arm around his waist, her whole posture full of promise for the night to come.