The Name of Love

Chapter One-2

'Don't get too familiar,' Mother said. 'The servants are not our friends.' She arrived in the walled garden when Mr Mitchell was explaining the elements of grafting. Mr Mitchell was making sure I understood each step before progressing to the next.

'Mitchell!' Mother often spoke sharply to the servants when she was trying to convince me of my elevated position. 'Cook needs more potatoes.'

'Yes, Mrs Hepburn.' Mr Mitchell said. 'I'll get them to her directly.'

Mother watched him stroll away. 'You'd better get washed, Mary. It is not a gentlewoman's place to get her hands dirty.'

'Maybe I'm not cut out to be a gentlewoman,' I said.

'Maybe not,' Mother was unperturbed. 'Be that as it may, you are a gentlewoman. None of us can escape our destiny.'

'I can try,' I said.

I knew that mother was correct. I was the last Hepburn of Cauldneb. It was my destiny to produce sufficient heirs to ensure the continuation of the family line.

'We are what we are born to be,' Mother told me. 'We have a guest coming a week this Saturday. Mr John Aitken.' Her smile wrapped around me like a snake. 'You'll like him.'

'Oh.' I could not think what to say. John Aitken. 'I don't know any Mr John Aitken. I thought I knew all the local gentlemen.'

'Mr Aitken has recently moved into the area from up north,' Mother's smile did not falter. She touched my shoulder. 'The family has purchased Tyneford. You don't know him, Mary. I know that you will like him.'

'Will I?' I looked away. 'I should choose my own man.'

'If you find somebody,' Mother said, 'let me know, and I'll judge his suitability.' She stepped toward the exit of the walled garden. 'I've already judged the suitability of John Aitken.'

'I might not like him,' I said.

'You will,' Mother told me. 'He is very respectable and eminently suitable.'

When Mother left, I felt as if she had closed the door on my life. I knew my mother. In her eyes, the match was done and dusted. It was only a matter of time before I walked down the aisle and became Mrs John Aitken, a respectable married woman to raise a whole brood of little Hepburn-Aitkens suitable to continue the family line for another seven hundred years. I knew that Father would try to persuade this John Aitken fellow to change his name to Hepburn.

The thought that Mother had already decided my future was not pleasant. I could not bear to remain where I was. I had to move, I had to walk. I had to feel the wind in my face and the ground under my feet.

With the name John Aitken rolling around inside my head, I nearly ran from our walled garden.

Nowadays everybody had heard of Lammermuir or Lammermoor as some people tend to spell it. Sir Walter Scott immortalised it in his novel The Bride of Lammermoor, which brought hundreds of readers to our neck of the woods. However, in my day nobody came to Lammermuir. The mail coach from London to Edinburgh passed at a distance, and the odd hardy traveller ventured onto the heights to cross to the villages of the Merse, the fertile, lowlands of the far south-east of Scotland. Apart from the farmers and shepherds and an occasional gaberunzie man - that's a wandering pedlar - very few people knew Lammermuir.

Let me explain. Lammermuir is a plateau of low heather-ridges on the south-east shoulder of the nation, bleak, empty and open to the grey sky above. I had grown up wandering the muir, so I knew it well. It was bare, wind-tortured and in winter desolate beyond description. I loved it. I loved the space. I loved the emptiness. I loved the wildlife, the wild hares and the lizards, the kestrels and sparrow hawks. I loved the plants peeking from the burns that gurgled through the heather. I liked the fact that I could be alone with my thoughts.

That afternoon, my thoughts were as dark as the peat holes that waited to trap the unwary. I was used to my life of freedom; now I knew that would change if my beloved mama married me off to some unknown stranger. John Aitken: what an uninspiring name.

To access Lammermuir, one has first to negotiate an initial steep slope that leads to what is essentially a plateau. I took the slope at speed, leaning my hands on my thighs to propel my legs through the heather. Ignoring the rasping of my breath, I pushed on, to reach the summit with my heart pounding.

Lammermuir stretched forever before me with a constant breeze stirring the heather, so it appeared like a browny-purple sea. As always, I stood there for a long minute to drink in the scenery and taste the Lammermuir wine. That is what I call the scent of this magical area, where the breeze carries the fresh smell of the heather, sometimes mingled with earthy peat or the wild aroma of sheep. The combination of space, heather and fresh air, all under a canopy of God's good heaven, makes Lammermuir a place like no other. It is my bit, as we say here.

When the hammering of my heart calmed down, I walked into the muir. I took long steps, revelling in the freedom, enjoying the play of light from the sky on the undulations of the landscape. I breathed deeply, trying to forget Mother's intention to marry me off to some unknown man. John Aitken. The name seemed as dull and featureless as one of the boulders that littered this muir. After half an hour of constant walking, I perched on a handy rock to think.

When I smelled the smoke, I knew that all was not as it should be. As there was no house in the area, there were only two possibilities; either some careless person had set the heather on fire, or somebody was operating a whisky distillery. Of the two, the latter was more likely. At that time there was open warfare between the illicit whisky distillers and the Excisemen the length and breadth of the country. The tax on small-scale distilling was so high that only a very few could afford it, leading to hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal distilleries springing up. Most were in the Highlands, but we had our share in the Lowlands as well. Naturally, the government were opposed to this tax evasion, and employed a small army of officials, often backed by regular soldiers, to quell the trade.

I knew that some of these illegal distillers could be a little bit rough, so you will forgive me being cautious as I approached the source of the smoke. Now, you may be wondering why I did not turn away completely from any source of danger. Well, if the truth is told, I am generally not an inquisitive sort of woman, but I do like to know what is happening, especially in my own muir. Lifting the hem of my skirt away from the longest of the heather stems, I slowly approached the smoke, watching for the ankle-trapping peat holes that wait for the unwary.

The distillery was so cleverly hidden that I could not see it. All I could see was the drift of smoke above the heather. If I had not known Lammermuir, I might have believed the smoke was mere mist. Going down on all fours, I crawled closer, feeling for an opening.

'Who the devil are you?' The voice was nearly as unfriendly as the hard hand that grabbed my shoulder and yanked me upright.

I looked around, squirming in the man's grasp. 'I am Mary Hepburn,' I said, more chagrined at having been caught than afraid. 'Who are you?'

The man was of middle height, with an unshaven face and red-rimmed eyes. He was not in the slightest bit handsome. 'Mary Hepburn, are you? What are you doing snooping around here, Mary Hepburn?'

'I live around here.' I twisted in his grasp, trying to escape. I may as well have tried to fly to the clouds. 'You, however, do not.'

'What do you have there, Peter?' A second man joined the first. Younger but every bit as unkempt, he held a stout cudgel in his hand.

'A woman, Simmy.' Peter shook me, much as Gibby, our terrier, would shake a rat. 'I found her snooping around.' His broken-toothed smile was unpleasant.

'A woman?' Simmy came closer, tapping the cudgel in his left hand. 'What shall we do with her?'

'I've got some ideas on that,' Peter leered closer. His grip tightened. 'We could teach her to mind her own business.'

'Aye,' Simmy tucked his cudgel under his arm. 'We could.' I would put him at 28 or 30, a stocky, broad-shouldered man. 'Let me have her, Peter. I'll show her things she won't forget.'

Peter smiled again. 'We can both show her things she won't forget.' He pulled me closer, shaking again. 'Mary Hepburn is it?'

'There's lots of Hepburn's around here,' Simmy said. 'Too many blasted Hepburns.'

'I know a quiet spot where we can deal with this Hepburn,' Peter said. 'Nobody will disturb us there.'

Until that point, I had not been seriously alarmed. Now I had a notion of what they intended. 'Take your hands off me!' I tried to shake myself free. 'Let me go!'

'She's got spirit, this one.' Peter dragged me across the heather, with Simmy at his side, laughing high-pitched. 'I like a woman with spirit.'

'Let me go!' I swung an open-handed slap at Peter, catching him across his mouth.

Rather than obeying my command, Peter shook me again. 'You'll pay for that you little minx. By God, you will!'

'Who'll pay for what?'

My muir seemed crowded that day. I looked up at the new voice. The owner was a gentleman by his voice and appearance; a tall, long-faced man with his hair tied back in a neat queue under a silver-embossed tricorne hat. He stood on a small clump of heather, legs apart and hands on his hips, yet it was his eyes that attracted my immediate attention. You can tell a lot from a man's eyes. This gentleman's eyes were deep brown, fringed by lashes that any young woman would have been proud to own. At that minute they were focussed on me.

That initial image will be with me always.

'We found this woman snooping around, Captain Ferintosh.' Peter's suddenly humble voice reinforced my belief that the newcomer was a man of importance.

Captain Ferintosh? This man was either a ship's captain or an officer in the army. How romantic!

'Did you indeed?' Captain Ferintosh stepped down from his heather. He tapped Peter's arm with the cane he carried. 'Release her.'

Peter obeyed at once.

'Do you have a name, my Lady of Lammermuir?'

'I have, Captain Ferintosh.' I dropped into a passable curtsey, given the circumstances. 'I am Mary Hepburn.' I said no more, for I did not think it altogether wise to release my address when rough men such as Peter and Simmy were within hearing. The less they knew of me, the better.

'Miss Mary Hepburn.' My gallant captain met my curtsey with an elegant bow. 'I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Hepburn, although I would wish that the circumstances and company were somewhat better.' His smile revealed even white teeth.

'I think your arrival was extremely fortuitous, sir,' I said.

'You two.' Captain Ferintosh snapped at Peter and Simmy. 'Leave us!'

Simmy and Peter stepped back at once. I swear that Peter looked nervous.

I did not expect what happened next. Captain Ferintosh swung his cane, catching Peter a sound stroke across the shoulders. As Peter gasped, Captain Ferintosh pushed him backwards onto the heather. Simmy dodged the captain's next blow, unbalanced and fell face forward onto the ground. At once, Captain Ferintosh stepped forward, flicked up the tails of Simmy's coat and landed a smarting blow across Simmy's posterior.