Prisoner of Love (16 page)

“They went out as soon as you were landed,
”
he was told, and Laura saw Blair frown as he bought Lachlan a drink.

Lance was waiting out on the quay, watching for the first sign of the returning yacht, and when they had wished Lachlan a polite goodbye, Blair and Laura joined him.

It was half an hour before
Northern Bird
sailed around the south end of Scalpay, and it was Callum who rowed ashore in the dinghy to collect them. He was and looked completely scared.

“Yon man should never be allowed to handle a boat!” he said before Blair could stop him. “He’s frightened—fair frightened of the sea!”

The atmosphere aboard
Northern Bird
was tense all the way back to the mainland. Blair had no right to question Julius, and no explanation had been offered for the yacht’s unheralded cruise with Julius in complete command, yet Laura knew why her husband had taken
Northern Bird
out alone. He had been determined to prove to himself that he could handle a boat as well as Blair could, with only a fraction of his experience.

It was a strange conviction, but she knew that it held truth. In so many ways now, Julius was Blair’s enemy.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I
t’s no use blinking the fact,” Morag said. “All these injections and things are no good to anybody. Doctor Cameron is nearly back to where he was when he first came here, and you
’
ll not tell me that they haven't something to do with it!”

Laura bit her lip. She had been pretending to herself for days that the present state of affairs was no more than a very slight relapse, but Blair was not picking up as he should have done.

For the first time, too, he seemed to be suspicious of the injections Julius continued to give him, although Julius had been careful to tell him each time what he was using. When a new drug came onto the market he had tried that, too, with Blair’s full consent, but now it seemed almost as if Blair had ceased to care about an ultimate cure. The hoped-for improvement in his health was not making itself manifest and Laura was too inexperienced in these matters to be aware of the immediate effects of some of the lesser-known drugs.

Julius had kept a record of his patient’s reactions, together with a list of injections and the dosages given, and she added her own report whenever Blair was left in her charge, a rare occurrence.

Once or twice she had wondered if Julius might not be using the wrong type of drug in the circumstances, taking a risk because he hated to be defeated by anything.

She remembered the risk he had taken that day on the far side of the Minch, and shivered. Was it only a week ago? Could anyone have gone down as Blair had done in just over seven days?

She dared not question Julius. It would only result in her being withdrawn from the sickroom altogether, and somehow she felt it imperative to keep some sort of link between herself and Blair.

Lance fretted and grew restless, waiting for Blair to get well.

“It was going to be such a wonderful holiday,” he grieved. “We were going to do so much once
Northern Bird
was in the water!”

And now
Northern Bird
rode at anchor in the bay, a deserted ship because a week of violent storms had kept her sheltering there. Even Blair would not have taken her out under these conditions, Laura realized.

“Why don’t you go up to Garvie Lodge for a day?” she suggested. “I’m quite sure the MacKellars would be grateful for some extra help, and—you could tell them about Blair,” she added, her heart beginning to pound slowly and heavily as she remembered the last time she had spoken to Zachray and the warning he had seen fit to give her. “Tell Cathie that I’d like to see her if she can spare an afternoon to come down,” she added. “I haven’t seen her for weeks.”

Lance went off rather disconsolately. The moor was no real substitute for the sea so far as he was concerned, but a visit to Garvie would take up most of the afternoon, and that would always be a few hours nearer to Blair’s recovery.

Laura spent the afternoon on the terrace with a pile of mending, which had to be done before Lance returned to school. She sat with her back to the sea wall, sheltered from the wind, and presently Julius came out to stand beside her, looking down at her busy fingers as she plied her needle. She felt that she dared not stop working in case he should see the trembling of her hands, the sudden nervousness that his presence always caused her these days. Her nerves were well on the way to becoming frayed by the constant tension they lived under, and she wondered how long they could go on like this.

“I won’t be back to dinner, Laura,” he said. “I’m going over to have a word with the local doctor about Cameron.”

Her head came up, for a moment she seemed paralyzed, unable to speak. “A second opinion, you know,
”
he shrugged. “It’s always safest in the long run.
”

“Safest?” She echoed the word, her lips suddenly gone dry. “Why, Julius?” she demanded. “Why?”

“In case of accident.” His voice was low-pitched and deliberate. “One can’t be too careful, and these local fellows feel flattered at being consulted.”

“But—what good will it do?” She tried to keep her voice from rising hysterically. “What real help can the local doctor give you with Blair?”

“None really, at this stage. I fancy, though, that it’s always best to keep them in the picture.”

He turned away, and she wanted to rise and run after him, forcing him to make a fuller explanation of his visit, but her limbs felt frozen. Wasn’t this what Julius had done when Helene was so ill? Hadn't he “kept the local man in the picture” so that it was easy enough to procure the death certificate when he wanted it?

Oh, no! No! Her hands flew to her face, pressing against her ears as if to shut out the terrible accusation she had just made in her heart. Zachray believed that Julius had killed Helene, but not this way! Not murdering her in cold blood!

Was what he had done so very different, though? Helene had been frail and weak and broken-hearted in this cold north country, and Julius had subjected her to the humiliation of his jealousy and the terror of his love. He had kept her virtually a prisoner, and in the end she had escaped him, but only through death.

Putting her work away, she went to find Morag. Morag who was sane and sensible and whose conversation was always so completely down-to-earth. But even Morag had condemned Julius’s handling of Blair’s case, she remembered.

“I’ll take up Doctor Cameron’s tray,” she said when Morag had set out Blair’s meal. “We’ll be alone, Morag, if Lance doesn’t come back from Garvie. Will you take yours with me?”

She could not bear to be alone. She was losing her courage as well as her sense of proportion, she supposed.

When she went into his room Blair looked considerably brighter. “Chicken broth
à
la Morag, veal, potatoes and spring cabbage, if you can cope!” she announced cheerfully.

“Put it down,” he said, “and come and talk to me.”

She swung the bed-table, across his knees.

“No effort to eat, no conversation!” she declared firmly. “We’ve got to defeat the germ.”

“I wonder if that’s all,” he said.

She looked at him sharply.

“Of course,” she said. “You’re brighter today—quite perky, in fact!”

“I ought to be able to get on to my feet,” he said. “I've had almost a year of this nonsense.”

“It takes time.” She was trying to assure him and herself. “The relapses haven’t been nearly so frequent lately, and each attack may be gradually lessening until soon we will have forgotten how long it was since you had one.”

He looked at her oddly.

“I hope so,” he said, and suddenly he was no longer listless. “I’ve got to get away, Laura,” he said. “I’ve thrust myself on you and Julius for far too long.”

Her heart seemed to turn over and lie still. What did he suspect? Did he
know
what Julius was doing? Yet his decision to go might be quite a normal one. She could not argue against it, because suddenly she knew that this was the one way out.

“Yes, Blair,” she said in a voice that seemed to hurt her throat. “You ought to go.”

He looked up at her in the rapidly waning light while something seemed to die in his eyes. All the blue had gone out of them, and they were slate-gray and expressionless when he finally turned his head away.

“I’ll give you your injection when you’re ready,” she said, “and then perhaps you’ll be able to sleep. Julius left it ready.”

She turned to the tray where the hypodermic syringe was lying between the folds of a small towel, and as she picked it up her eyes were full of tears.

Oh, Blair! she whispered in her heart, Blair, my dear, my very dear—this is goodbye!

Until she could blink the tears away she stood with her back to him. She knew that he was watching her, saying his own silent farewell, perhaps, because in the morning he would tell Julius his decision.

When she had swabbed his arm she pressed the needle home, trying to look professionally cool and failing miserably, she supposed.

“You’ll sleep,” she said unsteadily, “till the morning.”

He did not answer, and she went back to the washbasin to clean the syringe. As she did so she caught sight of a small ampoule lying on the edge of the table. Curiously she picked it up. It was empty, and she knew it had contained omnopon.

Swiftly she crossed to the bed.

“Blair,” she asked as steadily, as casually as she could, “have you ever suffered pain—severe pain? Ever in one of these attacks?”

“No.”

“I see.”

Had Julius anticipated pain? Because omnopon was a pain-killer. The individual doses in which it was prepared were small and safe, but it could, in time, suppress the regulation center of the brain and stop appreciation of fact, because it contained morphia.

She seemed to be reciting all these in her mind from the storehouse of her memory, going back to her early teaching, yet, even now, half rejecting what it might reveal. She had no real proof that she had just injected a dosage of omnopon—no real proof!

But if she had done? If she had done, she thought desperately, Julius was using her—fiendishly—as the instrument of his diabolical treachery! It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t possibly be true! She felt the perspiration breaking along the line of her upper lip and her mouth going dry as she crossed to the bed a second time. Did Blair know? Had he guessed, and was that why he had made up his mind to go?

He was almost asleep now. She could not rouse him. She must wait. But how long? A desperate panic seized her as she stood there, knowing that she could do nothing now until the effect of the injection had worn off.

Slowly she went from the room, going down to the hall to find Lance waiting there.

“How is Blair?” he asked.

“He’s—asleep.” She followed him through to the dining room. “Blair will be leaving soon, Lance,” she said dully.

“Going away?” Lance looked as if the possibility had never occurred to him until now. “But not too soon—not before the beginning of term, surely?”

She forced a smile.

“You’ve only one week of the holidays left,” she pointed out while her mind was still busy with thoughts of Blair. “It has gone so quickly.”

“Do you think Blair will stay till next week?” Lance asked anxiously, and then, brightening: “We might even be able to travel back to London together. That is, if Julius hasn’t planned anything else.”

“I don’t know what Julius’s plans are,” Laura said in a constricted voice, her hand tightly clasped under the table. “I—he may decide to remain here.”

“Anyway,
”
Lance said, “I hope we’ll be able to have one more trip on
Northern Bird,
before I go. D’you think Blair will be well enough for that? Inside a week, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Laura repeated. “It’s all so uncertain, Lance. This germ must be something the doctors don’t really know about. Blair doesn’t seem to be responding to the treatment as quickly as he should—”

“But he’s so tough!” Lance pointed out defensively. “Between these bouts of fever he’s as fit as can be.”

“Yes,” she agreed unsteadily, “that’s the baffling thing.”

“Well, I suppose if Julius can’t think up a cure, nobody can,
”
Lance said loyally enough. “He’s terribly clever, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Laura said, “terribly.”

Morag came in, and they spoke of his visit to Garvie Lodge during the meal.

“Golly!” he exclaimed when Laura had poured out their coffee, “I’m tired! All that sun and wind up there on the moor was grand, though,” he added. “Zachray MacKellar says I ought to be a farmer when I start to work.”

“Would you like that?" Laura asked, already half prepared for the answer she received.

“It would be all right, but I think I’d rather go to sea.”

“Well, bed’s more convenient at the moment!” Laura laughed. “Up you go. I won’t be very late, either.”

She felt exhausted by the day’s happenings, wondering if Julius would mind very much if she went to her room before he got back. He was already late, but perhaps he had found congenial company in the local doctor. She had never met Doctor Dumbreck, but she knew that he was greatly liked and much respected in the neighborhood. Would Julius and he have anything in common? She could not think so because, from what she had heard of him, John Dumbreck was a simple man. There was nothing oblique about him, nothing secretive, it would appear.

Standing outside Blair’s bedroom door, she listened but could not hear any movement. The drug had done its work.

“Goodnight, Lance!” she called as she passed her brother’s room, but he was already asleep, the sound, natural sleep of the very young, she thought with a catch of fear at her heart.

If only Blair could sleep like that
...

All in the house was quiet, and in the sleeping world outside there was only the eerie, distant cry of an owl foraging somewhere among the trees. Yet Julius had not returned.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Laura wanted to rush from her room down the wide staircase and bar the outer door. It was never locked in the ordinary way, but tonight she found the need to shut herself in. Her jarred nerves kept her awake, listening to the clock at the head of the stairs striking the hours and half hours, beating the passing of precious time into her tired brain. In a week, perhaps day or two, Blair would be gone.

At some point she must have slept, dozing off into unconsciousness to be awakened by a sound that was no definite sound, a vague awareness of movement in the corridor outside her door.

Trembling, she rose and stood listening, but the sound was not repeated. Then, drawing on her dressing gown, she went quickly to Blair’s room.

The door stood ajar, and in the dim circle of yellow light thrown by the bedside lamp she saw Julius. His fingers had closed over Blair’s pulse and in his other hand he held a hypodermic syringe.