To her surprise, Logan
took them out for lunch. He didn't consult them about it, he simply put them
back in the car and drove them to the hotel. Just as if they were two children
instead of one! Thea didn't know whether to feel vexed or pleased. The hotel he
took them to was a little distance out of Fort William and strictly in the
luxury class. They could have stayed in the town, he said, but he thought they
would enjoy the drive.
As they sat down in
the well appointed dining-room, she glanced about her anxiously. It was
probably silly, but she was so used to thinking of Logan as poor that she
worried when he spent anything. She wasn't really surprised to find him an
expert on food and wine, not when she remembered he must have been fairly
wealthy to have paid what he had for the Drumlarig estate. Idly she wondered
how he had managed to accumulate such a lot of money. Then, because money, even
to think of it, still depressed her, she turned to Jamie, happier to begin
explaining things on the menu, which was partly written in French, to him. She
wasn't conscious of Logan listening curiously.
The remainder of the
week passed slowly, but it wasn't until after the New Year that Logan called
her to the library. Jamie and Martha had gone to bed when the kitchen door
opened and Logan walked in. Instinctively she realised why he wanted to see
her.
'It's no use,' he
immediately divined her apprehension, as their eyes met across the kitchen
floor. 'It's not something that can be postponed for ever.'
Blindly she rose from
her chair beside the stove, where she had just been considering what kind of
biscuits he would like with his coffee, and followed him, as he turned abruptly
and went out again. It wasn't until he was closing the library door behind her
and motioning her to a chair that she found her voice.
Swallowing hard, she
turned to him. 'Wouldn't it be better if I just packed up and went? I'm sure
there can be nothing you want to discuss.'
'Maybe not,' his eyes
were cool. 'It could be up to you. Sit down.'
She didn't want to sit
down. She wanted to rush to her room, to prepare herself for the ordeal of
having to leave Drumlarig. Drumlarig and Jamie had become important to her, but
Logan was even more so. To be put through torture was bad enough, without
having to discuss the best ways of doing it!
She remained standing,
even when she sensed his growing impatience. 'When you say it's up to me,
do you mean that you'd like me to stay until you find someone else to look
after Jamie?'
'No.' Taking no notice
of her apparent determination to hold back, he drew her firmly towards the
fire, pushing her gently down into a deep chair. From his great height he stood
regarding her, noting she had gone extremely white. *You were making enquiries
about trains to London, I believe, when we saw my mother off?'
'I was checking, yes.'
She stared at the fire.
'You don't really want
to go, do you?'
She never knew when
his statements were questions, requiring an answer. She waited until he
repeated the last two words before shaking her head, "No,' still she
couldn't look at him, 'but you know that, Logan. We've been through it all
before.'
*Not everything,' he
amended grimly, without taking his-eyes from her face. 'I couldn't have a
housekeeper of your age, Thea, for reasons which, I agree, we've already gone
into, but I could easily have a wife.'
'A wife?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, I see ...' For
one startled moment her heart leapt, but thank heavens sanity returned in time.
It was Ingrid, of course. He was informing her of his future plans so she
wouldn't worry so much over Jamie. It was kind of him, knowing how much she
cared for the boy. Cold with despair, Thea nodded. 'You've decided to marry
your sister-in-law, Mrs Murray?'
"Now we are
jumping to wild conclusions!' She shrank from the mockery in his voice.
'Whatever gave you that
idea? No doubt she
would do very well, but she doesn't
altogether
suit my purpose. For one thing, I suspect Jamie
doesn't care for her.'
'Then
...?' as though drawn by the magnet of her own
senses, Thea's
eyes flew to his. 'Logan?' she whispered,
'please don't tease me.'
'I'm
not trying to,' he retorted, his eyes shifting to the trembling unsteadiness of
her mouth. 'It's you I have in
mind, for a wife,' he said quietly.
'You don't think I'd
discuss my marriage with anyone else but the
woman con
cerned?'
"No
...?' Her eyes shimmered and she knew she must
looked dazed. She
was dazed, stunned. If she had felt shaken before, it was worse now. 'You'd be
willing to
marry
me, for Jamie's sake?'
There
was a little pause of foreboding while his mouth
twisted cynically.
"Not entirely for his sake, my dear.
You've proved yourself -
a' very competent little house
keeper, I can't remember
being so comfortable before. With
you as my wife, a lot of
my domestic troubles would be
over.'
'But
there's more to life than the domestic side of it,'
she faltered. 'Would I
be the right kind of wife for you in—in other ways?'
His
eyes, as always fathomless, met her wholly fright
ened
ones, assessing the uncertainty that was sending
visible tremors
through her slender young body. Calmly he
said, 'You're young
enough to mould to my ways. You
couldn't,' he added
cruelly, 'be worse than Kay.'
'Kay?'
Thea stammered raggedly, having to ask. 'You
loved her very much?'
*No,'
his glance was cold on her hot cheeks, 'and you
can believe me.'
Thea wanted to. Yet it
didn't seem logical and the
pain inside her
wouldn't let her be content with such a
brief reply. 'Then why did you marry her?' She shouldn't
persist, but she couldn't seem to help it. 'You
must have
had a reason?'
'Not
necessarily,' he rejoined flatly. 'It was something
we
just drifted into. Kay and I met abroad. We were both
wandering—myself
with some purpose, Kay with none.
We were convenient to
each other without the drawback
of emotional ties. Then
Jamie was on the way, something
I never intended should
happen, especially as we had
begun to drift apart. Kay didn't want
marriage, but I in
sisted, so I have only myself to blame. I was
beginning
to do well and saw myself with a stable home and family,
but she didn't want any of these things. From the moment
we married she changed and after Jamie was born she left
us.
She kept coming back, but just for one thing—money.
Occasionally
she even stayed a few weeks, but we never
lived together again.'
Thea
had been desperate to know such details, never
dreaming that Logan's pain would only
add intoler
ably to her own. His face
was so hard it seemed to prove
how
painful this period of his life had been, but before
she could tell him she had heard enough, he went
on grimly,
as if determined to
punish her curiosity by making her
listen to the whole of it.
"When
I sold my assets abroad to buy Drumlarig, she
was furious. She
came here to look, to rage, to make
demands financially
which I couldn't meet. The last time
she came she had her
lover with her and they were both
killed in an accident,
driving back to London. I'd be a hypocrite if I said I wasn't relieved, but
none of it seemed to make sense. It still doesn't. In a way I still blame my
self.'
Thea
swallowed a thick lump in her throat, T think
perhaps you've
done this too often. How old was—Kay?'
'The
same age as myself.'
'So
she must have been old enough to be at least partly
responsible for her
own destiny.'
'Perhaps.'
His face was hard again, closed against any
further sympathy.
Uncertainly,
Thea stared at him. 'I'm sorry, anyway.'
'Don't
be,' he replied curtly. I regard it merely as
something you'd
better know before you decide to marry
me.' Again his voice hardened. 'If you decide
to marry
me it might help to know I'm not
still mourning my former
wife.'
Not
finding this quite as comforting as he apparendy in
tended
it should be, Thea hesitated. If only it were as easy
as
that! Yes must be one of the simplest words in the
English
language, but it might also be one of the most dangerous. In this case it both
tempted and repelled, leav
ing her wallowing in miserable confusion.
Something
of this must have shown on her face. Logan
eyed her grimly. 'If you had somewhere to go,
Thea,
even a good job to go to, I wouldn't
be offering you mar
riage. Let's
face it, you're practically destitute—and be
lieve me, I know what that means. If I sent you
away now,
put you out, I'd .feel as
if I was doing it to Jamie.'
If
he knew she had a home, and money, he wouldn't marry her. Confession on the end
of her tongue, Thea
actually bit it and just stopped herself from
crying out as
her nerves jumped with pain. She had a
choice, maybe seconds to consider it. Either she must marry Logan and
learn
to live with this impression he had of her, or she
must
never see him again. She could stick to her former plan to give all her money
to charity or find some means
by which Logan and Drumlarig could
benefit from it.
This latter way appealed to her most, but
whatever happened she knew that Logan must never hear about it.
She
seemed to have no choice, but it was a decision she
didn't
make without pain. She didn't easily practice
and following Logan's confession she had im
pulsively
thought of the relief of making her own. Now
she
couldn't—it was as simple as that. Just as she couldn't
possibly
refuse to marry him. If Logan had loved her she
might have felt
able to tell him everything, but as things stood between them she couldn't
afford to take any risks.
Unconsciously,
as if some small, protesting part of her
was still trying to put
off the moment of complete com
mitment, Thea stammered,
'You wouldn't want a proper
marriage, of course? It would be
what's usually called a—
a marriage of convenience.'
His
mouth relaxed, but the smile he produced was grim
rather
than humorous. 'That's one thing I want you to
consider
seriously. If you do marry me, it won't be a mar
riage of convenience.'
Her
cheeks uncomfortably flushed, Thea looked away
from him. His
last words had been so heavily accentuated
she could never pretend
to mistake his meaning. She
wasn't as naive as all that, but the
thought of belonging to
him completely was more than she could easily
contemplate.
Not immediately ... 'You don't love me,' she
whispered
hoarsely,
'so how can it be anything else?'
Showing
a flicker of anger, he stared at her, as though
fast losing
patience with her wide-eyed pretence of inno
cence. 'A lot of
marriages are reasonably successful without
love.'
This didn't answer her
question, but she dared not
push him. 'I
suppose so ...' Her voice faded uncertainly
as she glanced blindly down at the hearthrug.
'Thea,'
he sighed, his eyes on her downbent head, 'I
can't promise the
kind of marriage you seem to have in
mind—friendship
only, separate bedrooms?'
'But
I've read about it.'
'It
never works, not with two normally healthy people.'
'No?'
She didn't know what else to say. He wasn't help
ing
with his so down-to-earth attitude, and her mouth felt so dry it was difficult
to speak at all. She tried to look at
him, to voice some of her
fears, but found it impossible.
His manner was crisp
as he sat down beside her, his
piercing
glance seeing her soft mouth trembling with un
certainty. 'Thea, I could promise a whole lot,
but I'm a
man and you're a woman,
and there you have it. There is also some kind of magnetism between us which I
think
you're aware of.'
Her
mind flinched from this, as her body shrank from
his nearness. It
was something they might have imagined. 'But we aren't animals,' she countered
hollowly. 'You don't
love me.'