Highland Mist (5 page)

She glanced round the bare little cottage room—a room, she decided, in that grey dawn light, that
could
look attractive, if one worked hard over it—and found herself quite unable to picture Celia sitting on one of the hard wooden chairs.

“Celia would never have come,” she said simply.

He frowned.

“She would if I’d thought it necessary...”

A voice spoke to him reprovingly from the doorway of the lean-to.

“Don’t talk too much to my patient at this early hour, Henderson. And, if you must talk, don’t discuss the patient’s health with the patient.”

Charles muttered resentfully.

“That fellow! I’ve got to get you out of here, Toni, but I realise that you can’t be moved until you’re better. However, as soon as you are better ...” He glanced balefully at the door of the lean-to.

“What is the weather like?” Toni asked, without much curiosity, glancing at the window.

“It hasn’t snowed since yesterday,” Charles told her, in a more cheerful voice. “And the stars have been bright all night. I’ll get through to Inverada today,” he added.

Toni’s eyes fastened on his face. She had adored it so long that it seemed strange to have it constantly so near her.

“But Dr. MacLeod has been so kind,” she said doubtfully. “We mustn’t appear too anxious to be gone.”

She thought Charles’s expression was distinctly grim as he replied:

“I’m so anxious that I don’t have to appear anything at all!”

CHAPTER SIX

That afternoon Euan reported that the road to Inverada House was badly blocked, and there was no hope of getting through for at least a couple of days. There were no ploughs in that part of the world, and the only thing they could hope for was that the weather would hold, in which case—and with the aid of a little sun—they might get through in a couple of days, but if the drifts were deep it would take longer.

Charles, thoroughly depressed by the prospect of having to spend two more days and nights in the cottage—and, aware of his own limitations, convinced that he couldn’t stand it—suggested to Toni that they make for Inverechy and put up at the hotel there. Euan’s face was at its most expressionless when he was approached on the subject of the road to Inverechy, and he admitted that it was not nearly as bad as the road to Inverada House. He had explored it for a short distance himself, and in addition he had received reports from Willie Bride, who had delivered a couple of sacks of chicken meal to him that had been left at Inverada station.

“So you don’t think it’s impossible for us to get through to Inverechy?” Charles asked, looking straight at him.

“Not if you wait until tomorrow, when Miss Drew will be a little more fit to travel,” Euan replied.

“Ah, yes.” Charles looked anxiously at Toni, who was sitting huddled up in her own dressing-gown by the fire. “Do you think you’ll feel fit enough to drive seven or eight miles, infant? In any case, it would be much better for you to be in a hotel, where you can be properly looked after, and receive proper treatment, if necessary. I’m sure your mother would agree with me, and in fact I feel very guilty, because I haven’t been able to let her know what has happened.”

“I’m surprised Miss Drew’s mother allowed her to travel up here from London at this season of the year,” Euan remarked bluntly.

Charles—although he agreed with him—looked at him as if he thought the observation was presumptuous.

“Will you be able to drive us to Inverechy?” he asked.

Dr. MacLeod shrugged.

“I’ve no alternative, if you insist on going.”

Charles frowned.

“It’s not a question of insisting. We came up here for a purpose, but everything seems to have gone wrong, and I feel that I ought to restore Miss Drew to her right type of background without delay. Of course, we’ll pay you for the use of your car,” he added, with supreme tactlessness, “and for any inconvenience caused,” rather loftily.

Toni felt as if the breath caught in her throat as she saw Euan MacLeod—who so seldom betrayed any kind of emotion—turn red. Or rather, a dull red rose up underneath his tanned skin, and the line of his lips grew so taut that for some reason she thought of finely-tuned violin strings, and their tendency to snap suddenly. By contrast with the betraying fire in his cheeks his blue eyes grew cold as northern ice floes as he looked back just as steadily at Charles as Charles was looking at him.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Henderson,” he said. “My cottage is humble, but I don’t charge for shelter, and I don’t charge for driving people about in bad weather.”

Charles refused to see the warning light.

“But you’ve done quite a lot for Miss Drew ... doctored her, in fact. Without your medical knowledge she might have been seriously ill, and I should certainly have called in a doctor to her if one had been near enough. I think you ought to accept a fee.”

“Charles!” Toni exclaimed, and felt her own face grow hot.

Euan walked to the window, and stood looking out at the tiny, neglected wilderness—buried under snow just then—that was his garden.

“You can forget that I ever told you I’m a doctor,” he said curtly. “I only did so because Miss Drew needed attention, and I certainly don’t consider that for anything I did for her I’m deserving of a fee.”

Charles studied him curiously, and then obviously decided he had abandoned his practice for eccentric reasons, and was in himself something of an eccentric.

“Very well,” he said. “If that’s the way you’d rather have it, I won’t say anything further on the subject of payment. But I’d be grateful if you’d drive us to Inverechy tomorrow. And perhaps you know of an hotel that would be likely to take us.”

“The Inverechy Arms is quite comfortable,” MacLeod replied. He was still staring out of the window—apparently at nothingness, for his eyes had a strange unseeing look in them, in spite of their vivid blueness and brightness between his stubborn black eyelashes—but he turned suddenly, and looked with a kind of open disdain at Charles. “But take my advice and don’t keep Miss Drew in Inverechy for long. The weather may still have a few nasty surprises up its sleeve, and you’ve seen what it can do at its worst. Forget Inverada House until the spring or summer, and in the meantime take her home.”

“What! And turn this into an entirely fruitless journey?” Charles enquired arrogantly.

“You can take my word that it’s not as fruitless as it may seem to you now.”

Charles said nothing further on the subject of returning to London without seeing Inverada, but later that evening, when Euan was concocting some supper for them in the lean-to, he went across to Toni and ran a lean finger down the side of her cheek, which was very wan in the fireglow. He knew that she should be in bed, really, but she had insisted on sitting up because it was uncomfortable for the two men to have to sit on hard chairs all the time, and at least the couch could be shared when she wasn’t occupying it. And she felt less of a responsibility to them huddled in her dressing-gown and trying to pretend that she was feeling almost completely fit again.

She was feeling better, but she also felt absurdly weak and in need of a certain amount of pure unadulterated creature comfort. The cottage was the barest thing she had ever known in her life, and she failed to understand why Euan MacLeod was living in it in preference to carrying on his life as a doctor in some civilised community where he might be badly needed.

He had looked after her most attentively for forty-eight hours, and she would never forget it. She would never forget the comfort of his hands, the gentleness of his voice—particularly when it normally had a harsh edge like a rasp—and she knew from her own experience that he was a good doctor.

What, therefore, was he doing in such a benighted spot as Inverada? Such a lonely spot?

“I think we’ll go straight home to London as soon as you’ve had a chance to have a good night’s rest, a good hot bath and one or two decent meals at the hotel in Inverechy,” Charles said, rather thoughtfully, as he went on testing the softness and the smoothness of Toni’s cheek. “I feel horribly responsible for you, infant, and I want to get you home.”

She looked up at him rather wistfully.

“And our adventure is to end like that? Just going home!”

“It hasn’t been a very pleasant adventure, has it? For you!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She withdrew a little from his hand and stared into the fire. “But I feel it wouldn’t be fair to you to keep you up here any longer, and if the weather isn’t likely to improve for some time there’s not much point in courting further trouble by going on to Inverada. If there’s no one there we couldn’t stay—not even for a night—and according to Dr. MacLeod it’s hardly the place to visit at this time of the year.”

She almost felt the relief that surged up in him.

“And you won’t feel terribly disappointed if we go back without seeing the house?”

She shook her head without looking at him. She didn’t know whether she would be disappointed or not, but she was extraordinarily loath to return to London and the usual daily round there. This
had
been an adventure, something she would remember always.

But naturally Charles didn’t feel the same way. Charles was used to comfort—luxury ... it had been grim for him!

Later still that evening, when Charles had gone outside to look at the stars—extraordinarily bright, these northern stars, as he reported when he came in later—Euan came in from the lean-to with some steaming mugs of coffee on a tray in his hands.

He set them down rather grimly on the deal table.

“At least you won’t have to drink out of cups like these when you get to Inverechy,” he observed.

She looked up at him. There was something sardonic about his well-cut features, something definitely cynical, although his voice was without expression.

“Dr. MacLeod—” she said, and found herself putting out a hand as if to touch him.

He stood very still and looked down at her, particularly at the small and very white hand, with untinted but delicately buffered nails, that had extended itself in his direction, and then withdrawn.

“Well?”

“You mustn’t take any notice of Charles,” she said quickly, and more than a little awkwardly. “He’s a very nice and kind man, and he doesn’t mean to be rude.”

“An important friend of yours?” he asked, with a sort of emphasis on the “important”.

“I seem to have known him all my life. He’s a friend of my mother’s, really.”

“Oh, yes?” he said, and she thought his blue eyes glimmered with rather harsh amusement as he gazed at her.

She felt herself flushing.

“If you think—”

“I don’t think anything,” he told her, lightly, brightly. “Except that you’re very attractive, and he seems to have quite a lot of things—looks, money, an assured position. He may be a friend of your mother, but I think you’ll marry him one day, and then you can come up here for your honeymoon and discuss the dreadful time you had when you stayed in this cottage before. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you spend your honeymoon here ... Inverada House would be much more comfortable, if you spend a pile of money on it, but the Inverechy Arms is quite good in the summer. Make it a summer wedding,” as if the thought of it afforded him cynical amusement.

She felt suddenly quite the reverse of amused.

“I am not in the least likely to marry Mr. Henderson,” she told him quietly.

“No?” His glance at her was like the penetrating glance of a vivid blue searchlight. “Well, they say that lookers-on see most of the game, and I think you will.”

“Dr. MacLeod,” she said, in an even quieter voice, “I’d like you to believe that I’m awfully grateful for everything you’ve done for Charles and myself. My mother will be grateful, too, when she hears.”

“What kind of a woman is your mother?” he asked, as if he was genuinely curious.

“She’s very beautiful and very successful,” she told him.

“I had an idea she might be,” he said. “Beautiful, anyway.”

“Perhaps you’ll see her one day... if you come to London.”

“I don’t like London, so I shan’t be visiting it,” he answered curtly.

“Then when she comes up here to have a look at her house...”

“I hope I won’t be here then,” he answered, without any actual rudeness, but somehow it sounded rude. Deliberately rude.

She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“Then at least I hope you’ll believe I’m grateful, and accept my thanks.”

“Oh, I do,” he answered casually. He indicated her mug of coffee. “Drink this. It will enable you to face the thought of another night on that hard couch.”

“Dr. MacLeod,” she burst out, because she had to, “why do you stay here? Why?”

He shook his head at her, and in the fireglow his thick dark curls had some coppery gleams in them like her own.

“It’s nothing to do with you,” he answered, a little curtly. “Now drink up your coffee!”

“Will we ever meet again?”

“Entirely unlikely,” he answered crisply.

She sighed, although she didn’t quite know why she sighed.

“Ships that pass in the night?”

“Yes, ships that pass in the night. Or, if you prefer it, wayfarers whose roads will never touch again!”