Highland Mist (10 page)

Again she shook her head.

“I would have been—a few months ago,” she confessed simply. “But now it’s too late.”

“You mean—?” He looked incredulous.

She put back her brown head on its slender neck—like a slender flower stem—and her eyes were very big in the moonlight. Big and regretful.

“I’ve loved you all my life, Charles,” she told him, “but now I’ve got over it. I’m still terribly fond of you, but not ... as I imagined I was fond of you a few weeks ago. And in any case I’ve always looked upon you as Mother’s property.”

“Mother’s what?” he caught her up sharply.

“Mother’s ... well, someone who belonged to my mother.” Her eyes reproached him. “After all, you have always behaved as if you were terribly interested in her, and I’m quite sure she’s interested in you. At least—” and here again she had to break off and let the words wander in the air.

Was her mother still as violently attracted by Charles? And, if she was, what did she mean by displaying so much sudden interest in another man who was even younger than Charles, and whom she had once decided airily would make her an excellent son-in-law? Toni felt suddenly cold. Had the same thing happened to Celia that had happened to her, Toni? Had Euan MacLeod’s attractions become so noticeable to her that she no longer coveted him for a son-in-law? That she could forget Charles altogether, and allow herself to be carried away by the vitality, the excessive masculinity, the aloofness—the plum that is out of reach?—of the doctor with the red in his hair, and the fortune that was large enough to restore all the beauties of Inverada?

“Celia and I are friends, nothing more!” Charles said sharply. “We never have been anything else, and never will be, although you may have imagined otherwise. Now what did you mean when you said that you’ve got over me? A child like you doesn’t ‘get over’ a man she’s in love with as quickly as that! At least, not until he’s done something to disillusion her ... and I haven’t seen enough of you lately to disillusion you. What did you mean, Toni?”

She shook her head helplessly.

“I thought I loved you, and I don’t. It was nothing but a schoolgirl crush—”

“And what made you discover that?” inexorably.

“I ... oh, I just discovered it.”

“When Euan MacLeod came on the scene?” shrewdly. “A younger man, and a man who saved your life...? As you’ve no doubt girlishly convinced yourself! But, my dear child, any qualified doctor could have done the same for you that night.”

“But Euan was the only qualified doctor,” she reminded him simply.

He released her and let her go. He laughed harshly.

“What an extraordinary thing to happen to me! What an astounding thing! To fall in love with a slip of a girl whom I’ve known since she was knee-high and be told that she’s in love with someone else! To be willing to give up my comfortable bachelor existence in order to marry her, and be told that it’s too late! My schoolgirl has transferred her affections—this time seriously—and the only thing I can offer to do is to be best man at her wedding!”

“Charles!” Toni exclaimed pleadingly. “If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry, and there’s no question of a wedding. You’ve entirely misunderstood...”

“There’s one thing I haven’t misunderstood,” he said quietly, “and that’s the appeal all this must have for your mother ... old Uncle Angus’s heir, and her pretty little daughter!”

The french window behind them opened, and Celia and her host came out on to the terrace. Celia looked exquisitely fair in her golden silk, and as usual she was hanging on the arm of MacLeod.

“Anything wrong, darling?” she asked with an extraordinary note of complacence in her voice, as Charles subjected her to one long and slightly scornful stare, and then turned and strode off along the terrace, making for the flight of steps at the opposite end which led down to the garden and the nightingale-haunted wood.

Toni bit her lip.

“Not—not really,” she said, and Celia smiled She tapped the arm she was holding confidentially and looked confidentially up into the dark face above her.

“I’m afraid we’ve interrupted something,” she said. “A lovers’ quarrel.” Then, to Toni: “Go after him, darling,” she advised, “and tell him you didn’t really mean it!” Toni wondered whether her ears were playing her false. “Kiss and make it up, and then let’s all go in and listen to the radio. Or perhaps we could have a game of cards...”

Her voice trailed off lightly, easily, naturally.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The
weekend passed, but it was not the most pleasant weekend Toni had ever spent.

The two men behaved towards one another as if the dislike that had reared its head at meeting had become something barely endurable, and each was so conscious of it they had to make a supreme effort not to be openly rude to one another.

As Euan was the host, and Charles had been very well brought up indeed, he forced himself to cling to some semblance of politeness. But Euan wasn’t so meticulously polite in return. He more or less ignored the other man, and but for Celia and her efforts to maintain a sort of harmony it might have been a very awkward weekend indeed.

On Sunday morning they all went to church, but the primitive condition of the building and the uncomfortable pews did little to restore Charles’s normal good humour. He looked very correct and immaculate in his well-cut dark suit, hat and gloves; but Euan, who wore a tweed suit, fitted in much better with his surroundings. Celia joined in the singing in a light soprano voice and looked as if her mind was dwelling on orange blossom and bridal white as she stood between the two men and kept her large blue eyes fixed dreamily on the distant rafters of the church.

Afterwards she insisted they must all go for a walk after lunch, and Charles changed into less formal attire—although his expression remained grim and uncompromising—and set off with the other three at an hour when he would have infinitely preferred to be enjoying a comfortable chair, a book and a doze.

But Celia, for once, was keen for exercise, and as a concession to the irresistible urge which had overtaken her she wore smart but sensible shoes (perhaps a little more smart than sensible) a delightful wool suit and a headscarf tied over her exquisitely styled hair, and led the way with Euan across the moor. She had stated that she wished to be shown the cottage where her daughter and her old friend had passed two highly uncomfortable nights, and when they arrived there she examined the place with an air of great interest, and announced that it was not quite as bad as she had expected.

Certainly, in the warm sunshine of a May afternoon, with every bush and shrub in the garden a haze of tender green, one or two thwarted flowers upturning their faces to the blue of the sky, and even the inside looking as if it had been recently swept and garnished—there were a couple of chairs in the living-room that had not been there before, a case of books and quite a solidly respectable table—it bore little resemblance to the inhospitable cottage of the night of blinding white blizzard.

Celia sat down in one of the chairs and looked about her thoughtfully.

“And this,” she asked, “is as it was when Toni and Charles stayed here?”

Euan shook his head.

“Not quite,” he admitted. “I took pity on the place after they’d gone and dressed it up a bit.”

“Why?” she asked, her blue eyes opening wide as she gazed at him.

He shrugged. He walked to the bookcase and lifted out a couple of books, and some colourful chintz curtains at the window flapped in the breeze and touched his shoulder.

“Reasons of sentiment, shall we say?” he replied at last, his dark eyebrows lifting sardonically.

Over by the opposite window Toni felt as if her pulses gave a sudden uncontrolled leap, and she waited for him to explain what he meant by reasons of sentiment. He looked across at her, his blue eyes cool and a trifle challenging, but otherwise quite unrevealing.

“Some people put up plaques,” he said, “when their houses are honoured by visits from people they want to remember. Your daughter stayed here for a couple of nights, and it was so entirely unsuited to her that I thought I owed it to her to ensure that no one like her would ever have to endure such discomfort again. Considering the time of year and the lack of amenities, she behaved like a heroine!”

And across the room his eyes grew warm and admiring for the very first time as they met Toni’s.

Celia said, “well, well!” and Charles looked even grimmer than when they first arrived at the cottage.

“She certainly did,” he agreed, and then added that he would never understand why a man who didn’t have to should have elected to live in such a place.

Euan’s eyes grew cold again.

“I offered you hospitality, but you didn’t have to accept it,” he said.

Charles replied disdainfully:

“If Toni hadn’t been with me you can take it that I wouldn’t. I would have pushed on to Inverada somehow.”

Then he went out into the garden, as if the inside of the cottage was too filled with painful memories to make it possible for him to remain any longer, and Celia followed him. She did so after another thoughtful look at Euan, and an inexplicable one at her daughter, and left alone with him Toni suddenly felt acutely self-conscious, and wondered if she wouldn’t be behaving more wisely if she plunged out into the garden after the other two.

But Euan’s voice prevented her. He asked with a coldly amused note in his voice:

“Haven’t you and the impeccable Charles made it up yet?”

She merely looked at him.

“You quarrelled last night,” he reminded her, “and he left you alone on the terrace. Your mother advised you to go after him and offer the olive branch, but for some reason you didn’t do so. Why was that?”

He extracted a cigarette from his case while he waited for her to answer. She bit her lip, and then decided to answer truthfully.

“We didn’t quarrel, but he was ... upset. And there was nothing I could do about it.”

His eyebrows ascended.

“Nothing?”

She shook her head.

“No, nothing.”

“Except marry him, of course. Which you will do eventually! And then I shall send you both a handsome wedding present!”

Suddenly she felt strangely angry with him, strangely bewildered.

“Why are you so anxious for me to marry Charles?” she demanded outright. “Why do you talk as if it’s as good as settled—when you know it’s nothing of the sort!—and it’s something that will give you great satisfaction?”

“Nothing of the kind,” he assured her, quite calmly. “Your marriage couldn’t possibly give me satisfaction, but I like people to get the things they hanker after—the things that will give
them
satisfaction. And as it was standing out ten miles that you were in love with Charles when you came north with him before, and he quite certainly is in love with you—although I wasn’t quite certain of that before—then the natural sequence of events is marriage. Your mother agrees with me, and we’re both waiting to shower you with rice when you come out of the church.”

His eyes were dancing with that cold mockery she so thoroughly disliked, and suddenly she bit her lip again, hard.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll wait a long time,” she said.

He studied her curiously.

“Tell me something, Toni,” he said.

She waited.

“Those two nights you spent here in this cottage you
were
in love with Charles, weren’t you? I mean ... it was he you wanted to sit beside you and hold your hand when you were feeling better, and every time you looked at him there was a sort of shining adoration in your eyes. It was young and pathetic, but it was there ... and that sort of thing doesn’t pass in a matter of weeks. Besides, your mother tells me that you’ve always adored your precious Charles, and now even she considers that the logical outcome is that you shall marry him.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

She turned away. How could she tell him that her mother had had Charles earmarked for herself for years, and she wasn’t in the least likely to hand him over to a daughter now? And if he, Euan, was attracted by her mother...

She walked across to the couch on which she had spent two nights, and touched one of the cushions—covered now in the same chintz as the window curtains—gently.

“I shall never forget the nights I spent in this cottage,” she said, as if she was communing with herself.

Euan came up behind her.

“And I shall never forget the girl with the big brown eyes and the snow-wet hair who sat on this couch and didn’t know why she had come north at all at such a season of the year. The girl was small, cold, wet, miserable... and in love!” he added. “When you were a bit lightheaded you babbled of finding it all an adventure...” He turned away. “An adventure! As if any man with sense wouldn’t have made you turn back when you got to Edinburgh when he saw the way the weather was worsening.”

Toni sought quickly to defend Charles.

“But I know he thought we ought to turn back...”

“Ah!” Euan exclaimed, with a kind of mocking triumph. “So it was you! You who were so set on enjoying your little interlude with Charles that you wouldn’t turn back! I knew I hadn’t made a mistake about you. I’ve seen too many young girls like you on board ship—particularly on holiday cruises—young, eager, ardent...”

Suddenly she felt her indignation with him get quite out of hand, and she stamped her foot.

“I may be young, but I’m not eager and ardent,” she denied furiously. “And, if you must know, I once had a girlish crush on Charles, but it’s cured now. It will remain cured!”

“Ah!” he exclaimed softly, and came across the room to her. “And since when have you been cured of worshipping the one-and-only Charles? Has it anything to do with the two nights you spent in this cottage?”

“Nothing at all,” she answered him, not quite truthfully, but with vehemence.

He picked up one of the cushions of the couch, and then tossed it back into place.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, his blue eyes narrowed to mere gleaming slits as he looked down at her. “Charles Henderson may persuade you that you haven’t quite got over him—yet!—and marry you, but there’s one thing he’ll never do. I have deprived him of something, haven’t I? The sweetness of a young girl’s
unkissed
lips!”

She felt the scarlet creeping up the back of her neck.

“How did you know I’d never been kissed?”

He laughed, with sudden enjoyment.

“I didn’t. But it seems that you—hadn’t—doesn’t it?”

Toni was never more thankful than she was at that moment to hear her mother’s voice as she came moving briskly into the cottage.