“This is absurd,” he declared, making her sit down on a stone and take off her shoe in order that he could inspect the extra-large blister she had acquired that day. “This prowling about like a gipsy has got to cease. At least, unless there is someone who is willing to go prowling with you.”
“There isn’t,” she returned happily, and then winced when his fingers probed the blister, and he shook his head grimly.
“What a girl! Chills, blisters ... stupidity!”
“I’m not stupid,” she assured him, and looked up at him with a gleam of something that was almost provocative in her big brown eyes, as soft as velvet in the dusk. “I’m not really a bit stupid. It’s simple that you think I am.”
“You’re quite unable to take adequate care of yourself. I shall have to carry you the rest of the way home now because of that blister on your foot,” and he swung her up in his arms as he spoke. With a little gasp she realised that he was carrying her with the utmost ease—as he had carried her once before, only through deep untrodden snow—and when they plunged into the heart of a pine wood he didn’t even pause because of the deeper twilight beneath the trees. “There’s news for you at the house,” he said. “A telegram from the conquering hero Charles!”
“What?” she said. And then: “Oh!”
His voice sounded jibing in the gloom as he asked her:
“Aren’t you terrified in case he’s not coming?”
“Isn’t he coming?” with an acute and extraordinary awareness of the dark chin on a level with her cheek and the swinging cloud of her hair.
“I’m afraid so. The telegram simply states—it was addressed to your mother, by the way!—that he’ll be here tomorrow evening.”
“Oh!” she said, somewhat feebly, again.
He came to a halt in the very middle of the wood, and invited her to listen to a sudden liquid babble of sound. At first she wouldn’t believe that they were nightingales who were pouring forth their hearts in the wood—two of them, singing against each other, running up and down the scale in the still, warm night, and threatening to burst their throats.
“But it’s unbelievable!” Toni protested. “In May! I thought one had to wait until June at least to hear nightingales.”
“Not up here in the north. It’s been warm as a June day today, anyway.” Which was true. “Look at that blue, blue sky above our heads! Did you ever see anything like that before, Toni?”
Her hair swung against his shoulder.
“No. Not even in Switzerland.”
“You don’t have to go to Switzerland to see blue skies—or snow,” he added reminiscently. “We get plenty of both here at Inverada.”
She was silent, and he was silent, and he made no move to go on. She began to be uncomfortably conscious that she must be a weight in his arms, but if she was it didn’t seem to be troubling him. Suddenly he asked quietly:
“What do you want most of all from life, Toni?”
“I ... don’t think I quite know,” she answered, after a pause.
“Charles?” he enquired, with harsh, grating mockery, turning his head so that his blue eyes were looking into hers ... or she could see the blue gleam of them in the dusk.
She looked back at that blue gleam, and while she did so her heart started to beat strangely, and rather heavily, as if she had been climbing a hill at too great a speed, with the result that she began to feel breathless. She wanted to look away from him, but somehow she couldn’t. He was compelling her to meet his eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re not sure?” he said, mockery in his voice playing along her nerves.
“I...” she began, and then closed her lips. The truth was that she was no longer sure that she wanted Charles—her mother’s property!—above everything else in life. And in any case, it was nothing to do with him.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “You may get Charles one day—you almost certainly will!—but if he ever kisses you like this I’ll give away everything Uncle Angus left me to feed the poor of destitute countries!” and she felt his mouth burning against hers, scorching her as if it was a fire.
It was a hard, fierce kiss, pressed most unfairly on her lips at a moment when she could do nothing to prevent it—when she wasn’t even prepared for it!—and not merely did it rob her of breath, but it changed the whole course of her life for her, there and then, in the heart of the tiny Scots fir woods.
The nightingales had stopped singing—afterwards she wondered whether it was surprise that had rendered them voiceless—and she herself was quite incapable of speech for several seconds. Euan drew a long breath, as if this time it was he who had been climbing a hill too fast, and then plunged forward into the wood, miraculously keeping low branches away from her face, and still carrying her as if she was no greater burden than a feather.
But when they reached the house she didn’t dare look at him ... she knew she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes for an instant. Her face was burning most revealingly, and she felt like someone who had received a shock.
Euan set her down quite casually.
“Shall I come up to your room and dress that heel? Or can I do it in the bathroom if you’d rather.”
She looked at him quickly, and then away. She had never seen him look more imperturbable ... even slightly bored.
“No, thank you, I’ll do it myself,” she said, and not even noticing the pain in her heel, made for the stairs.
The next night Charles arrived, and from the look in his eyes when he shook hands with Toni he was quite charmed to see her. Celia he merely glanced at casually, and then fastened his look once more upon Toni.
“Heavens, what a long week it’s been!” he said, as if he meant it. “I wanted to get away earlier, but it wasn’t possible. Quite a few things on hand, for once, and this was the first opportunity I could seize to get away.”
Euan looked at him sardonically, but said nothing. Celia, in golden silk, and simply wreathed in smiles, assured him that they were delighted to see him. Toni, she also assured him, had been thrilled by his telegram.
“Were you, Toni?” he asked, his grey eyes lighting up as he waited for her confirmation.
Euan made an impatient movement towards the drawing-room door.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said. “I’m sure you can do with one, Henderson, after your journey.”
And Toni was saved from uttering a barefaced lie. For never again would anything Charles could do or say thrill her. Euan MacLeod had seen to that ... with one single whimsical kiss!
After dinner Celia insisted that Charles take Toni out on to the terrace to watch the late moon-rise.
“It’s a sight you simply mustn’t miss at Inverada—not at this season of the year, anyway,” she said. “And I’m sure Toni’s simply dying for an opportunity to be alone with you, Charles,” she added, with an archness that astounded Toni, and made their host look a trifle bleak. “The sweet child has done nothing but talk about you ever since we left London! I’m afraid that little trip you made up here together has put ideas into her head!”
Outside on the terrace Charles took Toni’s hands and asked her bluntly whether her mother’s words were true. She was wearing a short evening gown of leaf-green velvet, the moon as it rose behind the pines was silvering her hair and the childish curves of her face, and she looked even more like a young dryad that had escaped its element than she had looked in her mother’s drawing-room in London, when she had worn her new water-green nylon dress.
“If I make an admission to you, Toni, will you make one to me?” he asked, holding her hands so tightly that she didn’t even try to snatch them away. There was a slightly rueful look on his handsome mouth, an even more rueful smile in his devastatingly good-looking grey eyes. But, for the first time, as she met the direct gaze of those eyes, Toni’s heartbeats refused to quicken, and in fact she had never felt calmer and more composed in her life. She realised that the fascinating Charles of her schooldays—and right up until a
few days ago—was no longer fascinating to her. He was just a very attractive bachelor and an old friend, and he was saying all the wrong things when it was far, far too late.
“I ... what sort of an admission do you mean?” she asked, wishing she could free her hands, and wishing still more that her mother could behave now as she always had behaved, and not like a coy parent with some special scheme of her own on hand to be hatched.
Charles shook his head at her.
“I may have changed, but you’re still the same, aren’t you, Toni?” He looked at her searchingly. “You haven’t changed ... in any way?”
Toni appeared perplexed.
“What do you mean?”
He smiled still more wryly.
“You’re still the same charming schoolgirlish creature who looked upon me as her ‘Uncle Charles’. Remember? Uncle Charles, who had an excellent memory for favourite brands of chocolates, and enjoyed taking an adopted niece for a drive? I used to think you quite liked me, but never in my wildest dreams did it occur to me that one day I would want the niece to turn into something else, and hope and pray she’d stop thinking of me as an uncle! Toni ... Ever since we came up here to Inverada together I’ve been tormented by the fear that you’ll never stop thinking of me as ‘Uncle Charles’ ... someone quite outside your age group.”
“Oh, Charles!” Toni gasped.
He caught her by her shoulders.
“That night you met me at Euston, and your eyes were so big and brown—with a spark of excitement in them!—and you were so thrilled at the idea of going off on some sort of adventure, I began to be interested in you in a different way. I began to watch you constantly and to take a kind of delight in watching you, and when you were ill in that ghastly cottage for the first time in my life I felt half demented with fear in case something happened to you. I was furious with Celia for letting you run the risk—you, who obviously aren’t a terribly strong type—of travelling north at such a season, and I was livid with MacLeod because he was the only man who could do anything for you, and I thought he wasn’t the right type. Toni—” his fingers bit into her shoulders—“since then I’ve faced up to the astounding truth, and I know that I’ve fallen headlong in love with you!”
Toni stood absolutely still between his hands, and her only sensations were sensations of regret because this was a declaration that had come too late. It was something she had longed for, but now didn’t want, and the irony of it rendered her dumb.
Charles pleaded a little huskily:
“Darling, if I’ve shocked you—?”
But she shook her head.
“No, you haven’t shocked me.”
“But you’re not interested in ... anything I’ve told you?”
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 c
hurch, 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.”
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