Love and the Clans

CHAPTER ONE 1876-1

CHAPTER ONE

1876“But you must marry sooner or later and you must marry money.”

The Dowager Duchess spoke up with a determined note in her voice that her son recognised only too well.

The Duke of Barenlock walked to the window and looked out at the sea.

“I have already told you, Mama,” he said quietly, “that, although the girls in London would have been only too willing to accept me because I am a Duke, they would not fit in here at the Castle.”

“I don’t know that you mean by that,” the Dowager Duchess replied.

“I think you do, Mama. You have always been a wonderful hostess to anyone who is staying here. Also you know, without my saying it, that everyone in the village loves you.”

For a moment she could not think of how to reply and then, as she rose from her chair in which she had been sitting with her sewing, she sighed,

“You always have an answer to everything, Alpin, but at twenty-seven it is high time you settled down and produced an heir.”

She felt that now she had had the last word and had no wish to prolong the conversation.

She therefore walked out of the library, closing the door behind her.

The Duke turned again to gaze at the sea.

Barenlock Castle was indeed one of the North of Scotland’s greatest houses. It had been built in 1400 and the Chieftain of the McBaren Clan had always lived there.

The Duke owned thousands of acres in the County of Sutherland and the Castle was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful buildings ever erected in Scotland.

The only difficulty there had been down the ages was to make sure that there was an heir to the Dukedom that came from a very ancient lineage.

As the present Duke was an only child, his mother and all his relations continually begged him, almost on their knees, to take a wife.

The Duke travelled a great deal and spent a certain amount of time every year in London and as he was tall, handsome and most intelligent, it was not surprising that ambitious mothers presented their daughters to him.

Yet, for some reason his family could not discover, he always returned from London alone, still a bachelor and apparently with his heart untroubled.

“What you have to realise,” his mother had said to him over and over again, “is that as Head of the family and of the Clan, it is your duty to marry and produce an heir – several sons if possible. You must carry on the traditions we have all followed even before the Castle was built.”

The Duke had heard this lecture so often he knew every sentence by heart.

But he listened to his mother because he loved her and he knew that she adored him.

He had heard the same plea over and over again and it merely made him more determined than ever.

He would not marry until he found someone he loved and with whom he would know intuitively that he would be happy and content.

Of course there were women in his life and a great number of them.

His many and frequent affaires-de-coeur had been well known in London and whispered about amongst the Clan in Scotland.

On his last visit, from which he had just returned, his name had been linked with one of the most beautiful and sensual ladies in Mayfair.

She was in fact herself a Baroness and half English and half French.

She was incredibly lovely and her husband closed his eyes to her indiscretions.

As he said to one of his friends confidentially,

“I am growing too old to be fighting a duel at dawn every other day. So I just close my eyes, shut my ears and when my wife returns to me, as she always does, I think not of the past but of the future.”

This strange laissez-faire attitude enabled the Duke to spend a very pleasant two months making love to the glamorous Baroness. He was entranced by her as all her lovers were.

Not only was it her alluring beauty that excited him but the subtle way she invariably made him feel he was the only man in her life at that very moment.

Now that he was back in Scotland the Duke was having to listen to the usual family refrain that he should be married – if he did not do so, how would the McBarens survive without a Chieftain?

“They survived under another Chieftain before I was born,” he had muttered yesterday to his mother, “and I imagine they will survive after I am dead.”

“I cannot think how you can talk like that, Alpin. You know how much our name means in Scotland and if you married a rich wife, we could do all the repairs to the Castle we have been dying to undertake for so long now.”

The Duke made a sound, but did not interrupt her.

“And, of course,” she rattled on, “you could build the museum you have contributed so much to and make it one of the most celebrated in the whole of Scotland.”

The Duke knew this to be true.

Unfortunately, as he had so often pointed out, their name explained the difficulty they were now in.

When the Vikings first came to Scotland, one of the easiest places for them to land was at the bay where the Castle now stood.

There had been an old and dilapidated keep on the site now occupied by the Castle that possessed, so legend related, many treasures that had been stolen by violence from other Clans and this plunder had made the owners of the Castle exceedingly rich.

It had always been a great tragedy for the family when later the Vikings had taken away everything they could pack into their ships, as well as the most attractive young maidens in the neighbourhood.

That they had stolen the Clan’s cattle was of course a familiar story.

But the Duke, even when he was a small boy, had always regretted that he had not seen the treasure that had been taken from the old keep, even though it had been acquired quite illegally by his Clan in the first place.

It was when the old keep was finally demolished that the Clan had changed its name to McBaren.

They claimed that they now possessed nothing and they had no wish to remember the happier days when they had been so powerful.

Then their fortunes changed.

The Chief of the Clan had married a great heiress from the North of England.

It was she who had built the new Castle and it was she who had made the Clan, despite the fact they had kept the name of McBaren, more powerful than any other Clan in the North.

The Castle had then been added to year after year and the Dukedom, an English title, was presented to the McBarens at the end of the seventeenth century.

Money had been spent on the estate in a manner that had made the rest of Scotland gasp.

It was not only the Castle itself that grew larger and more beautiful year by year, but there were villages with delightful houses built round it.

There were gardens filled with flowers that seemed to have come from Fairyland and were attended by a whole army of gardeners.

But it was only when the Fourth Duke became the Chieftain of the Clan that it was discovered that his father had been spending enormously above his income – in fact the whole estate was steadily moving into debt.

“I just cannot believe it,” the Dowager Duchess had moaned a thousand times.

But unfortunately it was too true.

It was therefore quite obvious that since the Clan was dependent on him, the Duke must put matters to right.

As he was so good-looking, he could easily marry an heiress and she would make the Clan as powerful as it had been in the past.

The only difficulty was the Duke himself.

“I will not,” he had insisted over and over again, “be pushed into marrying someone simply because she is rich. I cannot imagine anything more hateful than being bound to a woman I do not love, and who could make life exceedingly unpleasant for me if she holds onto the purse strings.”

“But, dearest, we just cannot go on as we are,” his mother would retort. “We are overdrawn at the bank and there are thousands of repairs and renewals that require urgent attention on the estate.”

The Duke did not question her and she continued,

“One of our tenant farmers who lives on the border of the estate called in to see you yesterday. As you were out, he told me a really pitiful story of how the MacFallins are stealing our cattle and making life impossible for those who are trying to keep their heads above water in that part of the County.”

The Duke sighed deeply.

For the last three centuries the McBarens had been the enemies of the MacFallins.

This animosity between the Clans had broken out from time to time into actual fighting.

Now they were merely stealing each other’s sheep and cattle or, if they met in a village pub, fought each other verbally and sometimes with their fists.

All for no particular reason except that each hated the other Clan.

Now that his mother had left the room, the Duke tried to forget all they had been talking about.

Instead he wanted to appreciate the beauty of the flowers beneath him and, beyond the immaculately tended garden, there was the shining sea.

It always pleased the Duke when he returned from the South that he could travel home in his yacht rather than by train.

Then he could sail into the bay below the Castle and walk from the wooden jetty into his own garden.

It was at such times that he told himself how lucky he was.

Yet he knew as soon as he arrived that there would be a certain look in his mother’s eyes and it signalled a repeated question to which he alone held the answer.

‘I cannot do it,’ he would mutter to himself when he walked up to bed after a long argument.

Now, as he always felt upset when they quarrelled, he walked out into the garden and down to the sea.

It was a glorious day with the sun shining through a clear sky.

The waves seemed to be dancing with a light that came from the Heavens.

The Duke stood for a long time gazing dreamily out to sea.

He wished that he was in a ship setting forth on an adventure to foreign lands –

*

When finally he returned to the Castle, it was to find his mother waiting for him.

With her was one of his relations who lived about five miles away. It was Moira, the Countess of Dunkeld.

“I heard you were back, Alpin,” she began, “and I am sure you enjoyed yourself in London.”

“I did, Cousin Moira,” he replied, “and it was very gratifying to be invited so often to Marlborough House.”

“Oh, do tell us what that naughty Prince of Wales is doing now,” his cousin begged.

She and her husband owned a house and a small estate that had been in the hands of the Dunkeld family for almost as long as the Dukes had been at Castle Barenlock.

“Of course,” the Countess carried on, “we were all hoping you would bring back exciting news that you were to be married. But your mother tells me no lovely lady in the Beau Monde has yet touched your heart and you are still determined to remain a bachelor.”

“I will not be forced into marriage, which is a very different thing,” the Duke replied somewhat aggressively.

“Well, I have news for you,” the Countess added. “I have two charming girls coming to stay with me. One is my daughter, Charlotte, who you know and the other is a very rich – very attractive American!”

She said the last words slowly, emphasising them.

The Duke laughed.

“If you are trying to tempt me up the aisle with an American, you are wasting your time. There were quite a number of them in London, all very keen to return home with a title. In fact I believe a few Italians have availed themselves already of such pleasant offers.”

“But you refused even to contemplate them. Oh, dearest Alpin, what can we do with you?”

“The answer to that is quite simple, Cousin Moira, I want to be left alone. When I do find the right person I wish to marry, I will naturally notify you all.”