A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(13)
“What in heavens?” Aunt Cait gasped from behind us. “Uncle Donald, what is all this yelling about?”
But Barbreck ignored her, retreating to his study and slamming the door behind him.
My stomach still quavering, I shifted even closer to Gage and the protective arm he’d wrapped around me, before daring to look behind me toward the trio gathered just inside the doorway. Aunt Cait’s eyes were round with astonishment, while deep furrows cut through Uncle Dunstan’s brow. Only Morven appeared entirely composed.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” I murmured. “I simply thought it was wrong for him not to know the truth.”
“Oh, we know, dear,” Lady Bearsden reassured me as the others advanced into the room, though they could know no such thing.
“What happened?” Aunt Cait asked evenly, sinking down on the bench with her knees on the other side so that she had to turn sideways to face me.
Gage’s warm hand moved up and down my back, continuing to offer me support.
“I noticed there was something that wasn’t quite right with one of the paintings in the long gallery this afternoon.” I swallowed before stating the matter outright yet again, albeit in a small voice. “The Van Dyck is a forgery.”
A pleat formed between Aunt Cait’s deep blue eyes—the shade slightly darker than my lapis-lazuli ones—as she exchanged a look with her husband. “You’re certain?”
“I would never have said anything if I wasn’t.”
She pressed a hand to my arm. “Yes, yes, of course. I know you wouldn’t have.” She sighed. “And Barbreck should have realized that as well. I know he takes great pride in his collection, but I still can’t fathom why he reacted so heatedly.”
“I suppose that takes you out of the running for his favorite,” my cousin replied flippantly, spreading out her dusky blue skirts as she sank down into a mahogany armchair.
“Morven,” her mother scolded.
But I appreciated her effort to break the tension. In any case, she wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll talk to him, lass,” Uncle Dunstan told me. “Dinna fash yerself.” He turned to look over his shoulder toward his uncle’s study, reaching up to stroke the sides of his chin covered in a curly gray beard. “There’ll be an explanation.” But he didn’t sound very certain of that.
Regardless, my thoughts had strayed back to Barbreck’s words. In particular, the comment I hadn’t understood. “Who is ‘she’?”
My uncle and aunt looked to me in confusion.
“He asked me if ‘she’ put me up to it?” I reiterated, using the same emphasis the marquess had. “But I don’t understand who ‘she’ is.”
By the speaking look Aunt Cait and Uncle Dunstan shared, I could tell they had at least some inkling.
“When Barbreck refers to ‘she,’ he usually means Miss Campbell,” Aunt Cait explained with chagrin. “I’m afraid there’s no love lost between those two.”
Uncle Dunstan nodded. “For as long as I can recall, there’s been animosity between Barbreck and the Campbells o’ Poltalloch. Though I dinna ken exactly why. ’Tis likely no more than the continuation o’ some feud between clans. After all, Barbreck’s mother was a MacLachlan, and she despised the Campbells ’til the day she died, even though the Duke o’ Argyll”—the chief of the Campbells—“helped save her cousin’s lands when the government intended they be forfeit after her uncle, the clan chief, was killed at Culloden fightin’ for the Jacobites.”
I made a quick calculation in my head, startled to realize Barbreck’s mother would, indeed, have been alive to see the Battle of Culloden. At eighty and some odd years of age, Lord Barbreck would have been born sometime around 1750, not long after the last stand of the Jacobites in 1746, and the end of much of the Highland way of life.
But for all that his mother had been a MacLachlan, his father had been an upstart Lowlander, granted these lands and a title for services to the Crown. Part of me wondered if those services had anything to do with the events surrounding the final Jacobite uprising. If so, it made sense that he would have requested his lands be at the edge of those controlled by clan Campbell, for Argyll and the Campbells had been staunch Hanoverians, helping to crush the rebels, and as such, not likely to be as acrimonious to their new neighbor.
It was possible Barbreck had adopted his mother’s opinion of the matter and the Campbells, but that did not fit with what I already knew about the marquess. He was nothing if not a savvy investor and negotiator, and his politics leaned far more toward the Tories and a staunch support of a robust government and ruling upper class than the reformist Whigs.
“It wouldn’t be the first time, or the dumbest reason, our countrymen held a grudge,” Morven stated bluntly, perhaps entertaining the same doubts I had as to the origin of his enmity.
“Yes, but he referred simply to ‘her.’ Miss Campbell. Not the entire family,” I pointed out.
“Poltalloch,” Lady Bearsden ruminated aloud, drawing our attention. Her gaze remained trained on the ornate ceiling; her eyes narrowed in thought. “Hmmm, I wonder.”
“Have you thought of something?” I prompted, having learned never to doubt her prodigious memory. Sometimes it took her a bit of time to sort through the reams of gossip she’d collected over the past seventy years, but eventually she found the connection she was searching for.