Highland Mist (13 page)

If Celia started to talk to her about Charles tonight she felt she couldn’t bear it.

When she reached her room she crossed to the window and, without disturbing the curtains, looked out into the night. The terrace below her, that looked right out to the loch, was a white sheet of moonlight, and in its radiance two figures were leaning against the parapet and looking out across the water. As she watched, Toni saw them move nearer to one another, and instead of the girl holding the man’s arm in an almost comradely way, he put his arm around her and drew her close against him.

Toni felt as if her heart stopped beating as she saw them kiss. She wasn’t in the least prepared for such a sight—in spite of her knowledge that they were contemplating marriage—and if someone had slapped her sharply across the face she couldn’t have felt more startled and shocked.

True, it was only a quick kiss, but ... that same hard masculine mouth had lingered on hers in the pine wood—had kissed her awake out of a kind of schoolgirlish sleep—and to her it seemed an outrage that it should ever come in contact with another woman’s lips.

There had been odd occasions when she had thought that Celia was trying to flirt with Euan, and that she would not stop short of kissing him—or allowing herself to be kissed by him—if she got the chance.

But that was different. It would have been most unpleasant if she had witnessed it, but still it was different.

This girl—this American heiress who had let him down, and was now plainly only too eager to take him back—was entirely different, because she was not a flirtatious type—somehow Toni was certain of that—and she wanted to marry him.

She meant to marry him!

Toni turned quickly aside from the window, unable to bear the thought of seeing them kiss again, and all in a moment she knew what she would do. She would go to Charles ... Charles, who needed her, and had always been good to her—Charles, who understood her and would ask no questions if she told him that she would marry him after all! After all, she had once thought that marriage to Charles would be heaven on earth.

She knew now that it would be nothing of the kind. Her heaven on earth was down there on the terrace, the property of another woman,, and she simply couldn’t stand by and watch her consolidate her gains moment by moment and minute by minute, unendurable hour after hour!

She wouldn’t merely go to Charles, she would go to him at once, and if Celia didn’t like it—if she still had some lingering affection for Charles—then Toni hoped she would forgive her.

That she would get over it.

But as she had been looking upon him as a son-in-law for the last few weeks she almost certainly would get over it. She would forget any private regrets in preparations for a grand white wedding!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In
the morning it was Euan who drove Toni to the station. She was astonished—and secretly even more cast down into a world of deep depression than she was on waking after a restless night—that no one offered very much objection to the idea of her leaving so suddenly.

Not even Celia, whom she had expected to raise the most forceful objections.

“If you feel you’ve had enough of it here, then go home, child,” was all Celia said. “I’ve promised to run things for Euan for a bit, so I can’t get away, too. But I’ll join you in London in a week or so.” She sounded as if there were other more important things on her mind than the opening up of the London flat, and Toni’s lonely return to it. And as for the call of her own London office ... well, that could wait. “Have a good journey, darling,” she said, smiling at Toni vaguely. “If you want any money for housekeeping I’ll give you a cheque.”

But Toni refused the cheque—said she had enough money of her own for her own expenses—and wondered whether Charles would betray more excitement when she contacted him from London.

She was catching the eleven o’clock train from Inverada halt, and would travel to London on the night train from Edinburgh. Euan looked it all up for her when her mother told him at breakfast that she was leaving.

Miss Parsons was breakfasting in her room, and so was her elderly companion, so there were only the three of them at the breakfast table.

“You will see her to the station, won’t you, Euan?” Celia appealed.

He glanced first at Toni’s set face—she looked as if she had taken a decision that gave her very little pleasure, and was trying hard not to change her mind since no one else was attempting to change it for her. Looking very brown and alert in his well-cut tweeds, and very blue-eyed and dispassionate, he passed Celia his cup and asked for more coffee.

“Of course I’ll see her to the station,” he said casually.

He brought his car round to the front of the house at about a quarter past ten. It was only a twenty minute drive to the station, but he said they had better allow plenty of time in case the train was early—apparently the service that touched at Inverada was somewhat erratic—or Willie Bride had run out of tickets, and had to go off to his house to fetch a fresh batch.

Euan’s car was a very different affair from the one in which he had once travelled through deep snow with Toni and Charles as passengers. It was new and expensive—a low-slung Jaguar—and it gleamed in the morning sunshine.

Euan tucked Toni’s cases away in the boot ,and then got in beside her behind the wheel. The car slid away from the front of the house—with Celia waving cheerfully on the top of the steps—and down the short drive to the road. By this time Toni was quite familiar with the road, and as she watched it winding in and out of the dark patches of fir wood, with the loch glittering below them and Ben Inver looking benign and smiling in the clear morning atmosphere, Toni felt her heart sink.

She even knew in those moments that she was doing something irrevocable that she would always regret, but there was absolutely nothing she could do about it! She was going to Charles, who was the only person in the world apparently who really wanted her, and Charles at this moment was in utter ignorance of her coming!

She couldn’t even be sure that he would be delighted to see her. But of course he would be ... he must!

Euan said nothing at all as they took the fork to Inverada—the main road led on to Inverechy—and Toni, who felt incapable of speaking or answering any curious questions, was glad of his silence. It was only when she realised that they were stopping outside the white gate of the cottage that still belonged to Euan that she sat up very straight in her seat, and then looked at Euan in surprise.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Euan said conversationally, “but there’s something I want to pick up here. We’ve plenty of time, so won’t you come in for a few minutes and have a last look round?” His eyes were mocking as they rested on her face, but behind the mockery there was something compelling. “It probably will be your last look round, you know!”

Toni stared at the front of the cottage, that looked extraordinarily serene, and somehow cosy, in the clear morning light, and suddenly nodded her head. Her voice sounded dry and toneless as she replied.

“I don’t mind. If you think we’ve got time?”

“Time for what?” Euan enquired, as he held open the door of the car for her to alight.

She glanced at him in surprise.

“To catch the train, of course.”

He smiled somewhat tightly.

“I assure you we have loads of time.”

She followed him up the path to the front door of the cottage, and he produced a key from his pocket and put it in the lock. When the door swung open he stood aside for her to enter.

Toni felt her breath catch in her throat as she did so. So plainly could she see herself on the settee in front of the fire—although there was no fire now, only a neatly swept hearth—and so vividly did the memory of the two nights she had spent in the cottage return to her that she felt shaken.

Euan looked at the cold hearth critically.

“I could soon get a fire going in that,” he said.

“Why?” She sounded startled all at once. “There isn’t time, and we don’t need one, anyway.”

He ceased prowling about the tiny room as if he was looking for something that didn’t appear to be there, and moved close to her. He took her hands, that felt small and cold in his warm ones, and looked at her hard.

“There’s always time to avoid making a mistake, Toni,” he said quietly.

She tried to withdraw her hands, but he held on to them strongly. His long, firm fingers bit into her flesh.

“Toni! Why are you going back to London?”

“I—” she began, and then found that the rest of her explanation wouldn’t come.

“To see Charles? To tell him that you’ve given the matter a lot of thought, and you’ve decided that you can put him out of his misery after all?”

She shook her head, then just as quickly nodded it. Her bottom lip was trembling, and she felt as if the blue gaze of his eyes was the blue beam of a searchlight.

“Because you’re in love with him?” mockingly. “Because you always
have
been in love with him?” This time the shake of the head was decisive.

“I’m not in love with him,” she said huskily. “But I do like him.”

“And you think liking is enough for marrying?” If only he wouldn’t hold her wrists so cruelly, she thought, striving almost frantically to wrest them away. But he advised her, unless she wanted to hurt herself, to keep still.

“Toni, I told your mother before we left that I’d keep you here in Scotland. At the moment I’m holding you against your will, but surely it needn’t be against your will?” His eyes were pleading, the hard blaze gone from them, and all she wanted to do was gasp as they went on pleading with her. “Toni, when I first met you I thought you rather stupid, but I soon altered my mind. Even now I don’t think you’re stupid enough to believe—in your heart!—that I’d kiss you once, and not want to kiss you again?”

“But,” she gasped, “last night I saw you...”

“Never mind what you saw last night,” he returned, and buried his mouth on hers. She felt herself surrender to him like one who had been craving secretly for this very moment, and his arms crushed her up against him so that she could feel the hardness of his body. Almost brutally he went on kissing her, and in a kind of ecstasy she yielded. Neither of them could say a word until several minutes later, and by that time she was completely dazed.

“Well?” he demanded, against her lips. “What have you to say now?”

She clung to him.

“Nothing, except that I—”

“You still want to go to Charles?”

“How did you know I was going to Charles?”

He held her a little away from him.

“It was the reason why you were going to London, wasn’t it?” He looked at her so searchingly she couldn’t deny it. “It was the only thing you could think of since you were too blind to recognise where you belong, and—”

“Where do I belong?” she whispered, hiding her face against him.

He looked down at the top of her brown head.

“If you honestly don’t know that, I don’t see why I should tell you,” he said harshly. “It should have been obvious to you from the beginning, only I suppose Charles got in the way.”

“I did think I was in love with Charles at one time,” she confessed, her face still hidden. “But it was only because he was always so nice to me, and I’d never really seen any other men...”

“And then I came along—or rather, you were forced to put up with me for two whole days and nights!—and Charles should have faded into his proper background! You should have known, from the moment that I had to dive into a snowy hollow to rescue you after you’d fallen into it, that
I
was the man who would fill the whole of your future.” He put his fingers under her chin and forced her face into the open, and compelled her to look up at him. “My little love,” he said, rather huskily, “you needed a man to wake you up out of your fairytale sleep and teach you that life is real and life is earnest ... not a dilettante type like Charles! He could never wake any woman up!”

“But...” She was gazing up at him a little disbelievingly still, needing reassurance on one much more important point ... to her. “Euan, what about Miss—Miss Parsons?”

“Well, what about her?” he asked quietly. “I’ve known her quite a long while ... at least three years, as a matter of fact.”

“And you wanted to marry her?”

“Never,” he answered, with absolute finality. “There was a time—” as if he was diffident about making this disclosure—“when she wanted to marry me, but we cleared things up and became good friends. That’s why she’s staying here now.”

“But Celia said...” Her eyes were wide, and she sounded utterly astounded. “Celia told me a story about your being in love with her, and about your being let down by her ... and last night I saw you kiss her!” accusingly. “It was after I went upstairs to bed, and I saw you both from my window.”

“Spying?” he enquired, but he was not in the least confused. He did, however, smile a little. “Your mother seems to have been rather clever—bless her!—and implanted the idea in your head that I was in love with someone else when she knew very well—because I told her when I met her in London—that I was in love with you, and wanted to marry you as soon as I could sell the idea to you. But it wasn’t a very easy business, selling it to you,” ruefully, “and so I suppose your mother thought it was a good plan to elaborate on the few facts I confided to her about Penelope. You see, I was rather afraid Penelope might be something of a clinging vine still, and I didn’t want any wrong notions to get about when I knew she was coming here. At least, you might have got hold of the wrong notion ... which, apparently, you did!”

She faced him reprovingly.

“I did ... but I still don’t understand how it was the wrong notion, when she said last night that you were contemplating marriage, and later—on the terrace—kissed you!”

He put back his head and laughed, showing all his hard white teeth.

“Oh, bless Celia for doing a good job of work. She evidently knows her daughter well!” And then, more soberly: “Penelope mentioned the fact that I was contemplating matrimony because I told her quite bluntly I hoped to marry you! And last night on the terrace she let me into a secret. She’s marrying some chap she met while she was touring the Continent, and they’re to be married soon. We kissed to show there was no ill-feeling between us, and to prove that we’ll always be good friends. There!” a little dryly. “Does that suit you?”

Toni drew a long, long breath of relief.

“Oh!” she sighed. “How wonderful!”

“I’ll agree with you that everything is quite, quite wonderful,” he told her, cupping her face in his strong brown hands, “if you’ll say just one simple word, and say it quickly! Say you’ll marry me and live at Inverada, Toni, my little love? Say it!” he pleaded.

She said it, with stars in her eyes as she gazed up at him.

“Oh, yes, Euan! Oh, yes!”

“And that goes for Inverada as well? You won’t mind living there?”

“I’ll love it,” she confided.

“Well, at least I can feel relieved about that,” he told her. “Because I’ve bought the place from your mother, and that’s why she’s putting herself out so much to get it ready for us.”

“And I never guessed,” Toni sighed ecstatically. “Though, knowing Celia, I should have realised that she had a reason!”

Ten minutes later she unwound her arms from about his neck and looked round lovingly at the tiny cottage room in which they were standing.

“And we’ll keep this?” she asked. “We’ll always keep it, won’t we, Euan?”

Euan replied with emphasis:

“We’ll most certainly keep it, and whenever we have any differences we’ll come here and sort them out.” Then he drew her back into his arms. “Oh, Toni, I love you. You’re really rather absurd, and you would have ruined both our lives and married Charles, but I love you just the same!”

Toni refuted the charge.

“I wouldn’t have married Charles. I couldn’t, when I love you so desperately!”