by Susan Barrie
THE HOUSE OF THE LAIRD
Susan Barrie
When Karen collapsed in his arms at the railway station, lain Mackenzie had been more than gentlemanly. He had insisted she regain her health at his lovely Highland estate.
But Karen wasn’t only grateful for his kindness—she was deeply in love with him. And he wanted to protect her for the rest of his life.
Yet ... did he really love her, or was it just pity? Karen had doubts that such a marriage would ever work, so she ran away...
CHAPTER ONE
The rocking and roaring of the train as it plunged headlong through the night was like something out of a nightmare to Karen, seated alone in a corner of her third-class compartment. It had been going on for so long, for one thing—it seemed an eternity since they had left King’s Cross—and the lights in the compartment glowed like yellow eyes through the fog that had seeped in through a badly-fitting window after they passed through a tunnel, and induced a sensation of macabre unreality. And as there was no one to exchange even a word with, and no one passed either up or down the corridor, which was a ribbon of gloom winding into nothingness, the slightly feverish conviction was taking root in her mind that there were no longer any other human beings in the world, and that this nightmare progress during which she could not snatch even a wink of sleep might go on for ever.
She shook her head to free it of this absurd conviction, but the feeling of unreality—the deathly weariness that was acting as fuel to her always rather vivid imagination—remained. It would not have been nearly so bad if she could have found one single comfortable spot on the padded back of the seat behind her against which she could rest her head, and having found it, closed her eyes and drifted, if only for a few minutes, into an uneasy slumber. But the back of the seat might have been made of iron so far as her head was concerned, and her whole body was so full of weariness that it was one continuous ache.
She supposed that this was only the normal result of undertaking a long journey almost immediately after coming out of hospital, and it would have been much more sensible if she had delayed this journey for another twenty-four hours at least. But her little two-roomed flat in the Bayswater district of London had struck her as so completely unhotel-like, and there had been no one but her landlady to do anything at all for her—and that very grudgingly! She had felt she simply had to get away at once, and Nannie McBain had been the only person she could think of who would receive her with open arms.
Ever since she left King’s Cross she had been thinking of Nannie, and the welcome that awaited her when she finally reached the end of her journey. Nannie—or Ellen—McBain had looked after her when she was very small. Her parents had been in a position to maintain quite a staff of servants in those days. At least, there had been a cook and a couple of housemaids, as well as the rosy-cheeked Scotswoman who had got married to one of her own countrymen shortly after Karen’s seventh birthday, and gone away up into the far north of Scotland to live. And shortly after that Karen’s father, whose interests were all bound up with the Stock Exchange, had made some sort of a wild plunge that had resulted in the family’s fortunes being completely reversed, and they were no longer able to keep even one housemaid, let-alone a cook. Karen had been sent away to school and therefore it had been unnecessary to replace Nannie McBain.
But more than one holiday had Karen spent with Ellen, and the two had kept in close touch, especially after an air disaster had deprived the girl of both parents. In the long and often lonely years devoted to the slow process of growing up and arriving at an age when she could be reasonably expected to take care of herself—and at twenty-three one certainly ought to be able to do that quite adequately, she thought a little wryly, as she sought to ease her position in the corner seat, and longed for the night to pass—she had been glad to know that there was Ellen, as solid and dependable as the Rock of Gibraltar, not too easily reached in her remote cottage, but definitely there if one needed her. She had been glad of Ellen’s cards at Christmas time, and her parcels of home-made gingerbread and knitted undergarments on her birthdays, with a little loving note folded into the stout vests which were never worn. In hospital, while she made the feeblest efforts to throw off pneumonia (which she had incurred, she knew, because of her cowardly fear of her landlady, and her dislike of troubling her when she caught a bad bout of flu which had been consequently neglected, and she was lucky not to have departed this life altogether instead of being whisked into a white ward by a chance visitor who called to see her), her mind had clung to the thought of her old nurse like a drowning person clinging to a raft.
Ellen, in the small, grey stone cottage which was just one of several exactly similar cottages in the tiny village where she lived. Ellen’s front room, which was so full of knick-knacks that one could hardly get into it, and which smelt a little of mothballs, although her kitchen always reeked superbly of the kind of cooking which should have won her a medal. And her tiny spare bedroom, with its snowy white counterpane on the deep feather bed, and the dressing-table standing in a. kind of pink sateen petticoat, while the walls were almost entirely obscured by large, colorful prints. Karen felt sure that as soon as she was free to gratify her almost over-powering longing for something dear and familiar that was the one room in the one house in all the world where strength would flow back into her veins, and where, despite Nannies almost certain scolding because she had so stupidly allowed herself to get pneumonia, and have never worn the woolly vests which might have prevented it, she would soon be quite herself again.
So almost immediately she was discharged from the hospital she had sent a telegram to Ellen, whom she had neither seen nor heard from for several months, to announce that she was on her way, and had then packed a few things in a suitcase and set off for King’s Cross.
But she had been hardly prepared for the wearisomeness of this journey, and the fact that she was so far from well yet that it was almost, an agony to her to have to sit upright for hours on end, because she could not afford a sleeper. The thought of stretching herself out at full length on a comfortable bed began to have the same effect on her as the thought of drinking cool water would have on a man dying of thirst in the desert, and the confusion of her mind was increased by the rattle and roar of the train.
But shortly before dawn she did manage to sink into a doze, and it was just as she was drifting into this doze that the recollection of the man who had come to her assistance at King’s Cross passed vaguely across her brain, and she found herself wondering for a moment in which part of the train he was, and whether he was enjoying his sleeper.
For she was quite certain he was occupying a sleeper, and as a result of their brief acquaintance she was just as certain that it would be first-class. Very definitely he was the type of man who always travelled first, whether it was on a train or a boat or on an air liner—and from the vast quantity of luggage which accompanied him, heavily plastered with labels covering half the globe, or so it had seemed to her, and most of the cases made of pigskin or calf, he was most decidedly a traveller who really merited the title.
His taxi had come up behind her own when she had arrived at the station, and while an obsequious porter had attended to his luggage and she had fumbled in her purse for change for her own taxi fare he had glanced in an indifferent manner across at her. Perhaps because she looked young, and was not particularly smart, and the driver of her taxi eyed her doubtfully while she tried to make up her mind about the size of the tip he should receive—she was always a little afraid of under-tipping taxi-men, in case they should let her see their displeasure—no porter came hastening up to her to assist her with her luggage. Although it was only one suitcase, it was heavy, and while she was trying to struggle wi
th it herself she managed somehow to drop her handbag; her purse fell out and a shower of coins cascaded from it and ran in all directions over the grey flags of the station yard.
She was bending in confusion to pick them up when the man with the mountain of baggage strolled quietly across to her and started to assist her; and at last, flushed and almost stammering with embarrassment, she managed to thank him for collecting most of the coins. She looked up at him as she offered her thanks. He seemed to be towering above her, and because it was a bitterly cold January evening the heavy duffel coat he was wearing struck her as the most highly suitable garb in the world. He was hatless, and his hair was very black, and in the harsh brilliance of the station lights she could see that his eyes were cool and grey. Something flickered in them for a moment as she tried to find words to express her appreciation, and when she thought about it afterwards she wondered whether it was amusement, or perhaps a mixture of amusement and surprise...
“I think that’s the lot,” he said, as he handed over several half-crowns and some smaller silver. “I don’t think you’ve suffered any serious loss.”
“No—no. I’m sure I haven’t,” she answered, and tried to smile at him shakily.
He bent to pick up her suitcase, which looked very shabby compared with the beautiful specimens of his own luggage, bulging at the seams as it was.
“Do you want a porter?” he asked, with a faintly raised eyebrow. “Or are you by any chance travelling on the same train as myself—the Night Scot? Because if you are I can put this into your carriage for you.”
“Thank you, that—that would be kind,” she told him, and realized that after the little excitement of rescuing her money and finding herself confronted by this tall stranger her breath was behaving erratically; in fact, it was coming very unevenly, and much too quickly for comfort. And although she did not know it, once the painful blush slid out of her cheeks it left her looking almost alarmingly pale by contrast, and she thought the man’s eyes rested on her searchingly.
But he said nothing as they walked side by side towards the platform prescribed by the indicator, and once they reached the train he stopped beside the door of a first-class compartment.
“This do?” he asked, grasping the handle of the door.
But Karen quickly undeceived him.
“I’m travelling third” she said simply.
Again he said nothing, and they went on until they came upon a line of thirds. He put her into the empty compartment, her suitcase on the rack, and then stepped down again on to the platform. He looked up at her before he closed the door.
“All right?” he enquired.
“Perfectly all right, thank you,” she managed, and watched him walk away briskly along the platform in the direction of his luggage and the porter who was carefully guarding his own seat for him.
But just before the rattle of the wheels faded from her consciousness, and the yellow lights in the compartment ceased to be yellow, watchful eyes, she had a brief, clear glimpse of his face, as if it had been photographed and placed directly in front of her, and there was nothing she could possibly miss about it. His hair had a slight wave above his left eyebrow, and it was sleek and shining like the plumage of a bird, and his features were wonderfully regular. He had very black eyelashes, too— almost feminine eyelashes. But there was nothing feminine about the gleam of the grey eyes behind them, and the set of his mouth and chin. His was the kind of chin, that had nothing whatever to do with weakness.
She sighed, a queer little fluttering sigh that began deep down inside her, and she said to herself that he was nice—nice and kind!
It would have been almost a physical impossibility for her to carry her own suitcase to the train, which showed how ridiculously weak she was!
CHAPTER TWO
Late the following afternoon she stood on an almost deserted platform at Inverlochie station and watched the few people who had alighted from the train disappearing through the barrier. There were one or two cars drawn up on the other side of the barrier, and beyond the cars a steep street wound upwards between neat houses and shops to the tower of a stoutly built church which lifted itself above the climbing roofs and soared in splendid isolation into the cold, sunset-flushed air.
This sunset light also bathed the purple wall of hills which ringed them in, and the dark woods clothing them in patches. The sky was clear, like a sea of tender turquoise, or an inverted blue lake across which very soon now the shadows would fall. With the falling of those shadows the cold would increase, and already it was intense enough to set Karen’s teeth chattering almost uncontrollably as she gazed rather helplessly about her. She had a hollow, slightly sick feeling inside, for she had eaten practically nothing at all that day, and although when she arrived in Edinburgh that morning she could have breakfasted very comfortably she had made do with a cup of coffee because at that time she had not been inclined to bother with food. For some reason, although at times she felt extremely hungry, at others even the thought of forcing some solid substance past her lips filled her with nausea.
But now, after the warmth of the train, the long hours of sitting, and probably as a result of her empty interior, she was conscious of feeling so bewildered by the cold that her cramped limbs bent under her, and it was well-nigh impossible to prevent them from shivering. She tried to force herself to think clearly, telling herself that it would be impossible for her to reach Ellen that night, because the last bus which left for her village must have left already, and the only sensible thing was to find herself a hotel. There was almost certainly more than one hotel in Inverlochie, and at this season of the year they would not be full; one of them would be small and reasonable and provide her with a bed, at least, into which she could crawl as soon as she reached it, and in that way stop this dreadful shivering which was making her knees knock, and her teeth chatter harder than ever.
She saw the porter at the barrier looking towards her somewhat curiously, and she bent to pick up her suitcase, which somehow she had managed to persuade to leave the rack in her recent train compartment, and allow itself to be dumped on the platform. But now she couldn’t get a grip of the handle, and in any case it was too heavy, and—
She heard a voice speaking to her, sharply, out of hazy clouds of bewilderment, and she thought she recognized a face as it wavered in front of her.
“Can I help you?” the voice asked. “Have you any idea at all where you’re going?”
And then the voice ceased abruptly, and the man caught her as she sagged and swung her up into his arms, where at least she was no longer in any danger of falling. The porter, who had been collecting tickets, hurriedly deserted the barrier and joined him, and the two of them stood looking down at the limp form of the girl whose fair head dangled pathetically over the duffel-coated arm of the tall man who held her, her small, heart-shaped face absolutely colorless. It was a delicately-featured face—rather like a flower when color warmed it, although an exceptionally fragile flower, at that—but now the soft lips were pinched and blue, and there were heavy purple smudges beneath the closed eyes. The porter, who had a daughter of his own about this young woman’s age, gazed sympathetically, and then he said quickly:
“Come along with me, Mr. Mackenzie, sir, and we’ll get her out of this cold wind. ‘Tis like knives tearing into you, and I’ve no doubt at all it’s from cold she’s fainted.”
But Iain Mackenzie was not so sure of that as he stood beside the hard horse-hair sofa on which his recent burden had been placed, in a somewhat dingy waiting-room where, however, a bright fire was blazing half-way up the chimney, and waited for her to show some signs of returning consciousness. He had managed to get a little brandy between her lips, and had vigorously chafed her hands and her small, ice-cold feet, but the waxen pallor of her face remained, and he felt a strange anxiety deep down inside him; a feeling of guilt, also, because the night before when she had struck him as being quite unfitted for travel at the late hour of the night he had done noth
ing about it, and asked her no questions.
And yet, on the other hand, what questions could he have asked her that she might not have resented? And what business was it of his, anyway?
Nevertheless, he caught his lower lip between his hard white teeth and gnawed at it thoroughly for several seconds while he continued to gaze at her, and his black brows met in an almost straight line above the noticeably high bridge of his nose. When the porter made his appearance with a steaming mug of hot tea he waved it away.
“Let’s make another attempt to revive her with the brandy,” he said, and held out a lean, commanding hand for it.
This time he succeeded in getting her to swallow some of the raw spirit, and within a matter of moments after that the faintest tinge of color stole into her cheeks and dissipated some of that alarming pallor. Her long eyelashes lifted, and as he picked up one of her hands and held it strongly between both his own a pair of dull blue eyes—that reminded him of a blaze of blue larkspur seen through a misted window—gazed back into his own, and a thread-like voice enquired:
“What—what has happened?”
“It’s all right,” he assured her, as she attempted to struggle up into a sitting position. “You fainted when you got out of the train just now—I don’t think you’ve eaten very much for a good many hours, have you?” with a shrewd, considering look at her. “But you’ll feel better when you’ve got inside a little of this.” He placed the cup of hot tea in her shaking hands, taking the precaution of keeping a firm grip of it with one of his own hands while she took a few uncertain sips. “Don’t talk for a few moments, but try to drink as much as you can.”
She obeyed him, lying back against the hard pillow of the horse-hair sofa, and thinking in a kind of vague wonderment how extraordinary it was that he should be the man who had apparently come to her rescue yet again! The man with the dark hair and the quiet grey eyes who travelled first, and who had wanted to put her into a first-class carriage also! The color increased in her cheeks, and as the combined effects of the hot tea and the brandy she had consumed drove away the last of the icy chill from her limbs, and a warm and comforting glow began to take its place, her eyes also started to glow a little, until the effect of a misty window was banished along with her pallor, and at the same time they were suddenly so acutely shy that she could hardly meet his look.