Lady of Fortune by Graham Masterton Page A

of land, in Roxburgh, and Berwick, and Argyll. Seven hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds, in shipping, and steel, and wool. It’s my life; it’s what I’ve worked for. It’s what I am. And you’ll have to take it because there’s nobody else.’
    He sat down. ‘You didn’t know your grandfather,’ he said. ‘He was a harsh man; harsh in the way that a father was expected to be in those days. He’d give you a strapping as soon as ask you how you were. He was quite well off in the early days, when I was wee. You could almost say he was wealthy. But he had no sense of how to make his money grow; and he took to dining out on credit, and buying his meat on credit, and asking for tick at the public house. The poorer he grew, and the more afraid he was, the harder he thrashed me. He died without a penny; and the only way my mother supported herself was by taking in sewing, and by the lucky chance of inheriting that house on Home Street.’
    There was an embarrassed silence, and then Thomas Watson said, in a voice that was so quiet they could hardly hear him, ‘I struggled all of my life to protect myself from bankruptcy. That was the one ghoulie that haunted me; never mind the urisks or the sluagh. Well, I succeeded. You could call me a man of invulnerable means now. But what has it brought me? All those years of hard work, what have they brought me? I mean me, myself.’
    â€˜It’s brought you respect,’ suggested Robert, uncertainly.
    â€˜Respect?’ asked his father, without looking up. ‘Respect is something that happens in other people. I’m talking about me. Am I wiser? Am I more satisfied? Am I changed, or bettered?’
    He paused, and then he slowly shook his head. ‘I am the same boy who was afraid of his father’s labourings. I am the same boy who cried when the bailiffs chased his father down Canongate, and the men in the crowd took bets on whether he would reach the sanctuary line before the dogs caught his coat-tails. I am the same.’
    He raised his head, and examined his boys with those chilly eyes of his, and said, ‘All this fortune of mine, it was a mistake. I made it out of fear, and now all I can do is pass it on to two sons who are strangers. It has done me no good. It will do you no good. It is nothing more than a monument to my own wasted existence.’
    Robert and Dougal glanced at each other, embarrassed by their father’s sudden show of despair. Usually, he was all bluster and cant; a man of moralizing rage and pontificating certainty. Sure of himself, sure of Scotland, sure of God, and directly and confidently answerable to all three. It had never occurred to either of his sons that he might not be happy.
    Robert volunteered, uncomfortably, ‘Mother and Effie have gone out for a walk.’
    Thomas Watson turned and looked out at the snow falling. ‘Too cold for a walk, wouldn’t you say?’
    â€˜Maybe they needed the fresh air,’ put in Dougal.
    Thomas Watson nodded, like a man dreaming. ‘Air,’ he repeated, as if it were a clever explanation for the whole of his life.
    He never spoke to them like that again; or even mentioned that he had. But they knew now that they should never live their lives in the pursuit of security. There would never be security, or peace of mind. There would always be fear, and their lives would have to be lived in spite of it.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    It was sleeting when the overnight train from Edinburgh clanked and jostled over the points into Kings Cross station. There was whistling and shouting, and the bursting of steam, but Effie could see nothing out of the carriage’s grimywindows for all the impatient passengers who had already gathered up their bags and their coats and their umbrellas and were queueing to get out of the doors.
    Dougal reached across the aisle and touched her hand excitedly. ‘We’ve arrived,’ he told