by Susan Barrie
Not only did he look as if he had been recently taking exercise in that attractive, half-frozen world beyond the windows, but he brought that faintly resinous smell of the woods with him. As he stepped inside the room, after hesitating for only a moment while Mrs. Burns openly beamed at him, he looked about him for a moment in slight curiosity, as if he was unfamiliar with this particular wing of his house, sent a quick glance towards Karen who was still clutching the arms of her chair, and then looked inquiringly at Mrs. Burns.
“I haven’t arrived at an inconvenient moment? You haven’t been putting the patient into a flutter getting her ready, to receive me?”
His tone was jocular, but his eyes were keen as they bored their way into the housekeeper’s face. She answered at once, as she prepared to slip past him and out into the corridor.
“Of course not, Mr. Iain! And, as a matter of fact, I think it’s high time Miss March saw someone apart from myself to cheer her up a bit.” Her smiling look roved between the two of them. “But remember this is the first time she’s been out of bed for a week, and I can’t allow you more than a quarter of an hour or so.”
With this injunction she left the room, and the door closed behind her. Karen supposed it was because she was so ridiculously weak, but every pulse in her body seemed to be fluttering nervously, and her confusion showed in her eyes. This morning they were very blue, but they were also unnaturally large, and the pupils themselves looked dark and distended. Heir long eyelashes seemed to be lightly dusted with gold dust at the tips, and they wavered uncertainly as he moved across the room and stood beside her.
His smile was curious, enigmatic. His eyes dwelt on her thoughtfully, making no attempt to conceal the fact that he was deliberately studying her, and they were the cool, detached grey eyes she remembered, under the almost feminine eyelashes. But how exceedingly masculine he seemed this morning, and by comparison with herself how one-hundred-percent fit. And it was obvious that his tailor knew how to make the most of his lithe, graceful proportions. His shoulders were broad, but not too broad; his hips were narrow, and she imagined he would look at his best in a kilt, and at his very best in Highland evening dress. But even in tweeds, faultlessly made as they were, there was something about him which set him apart from any other man she had ever met before. He wore a silk shirt and a flowing tie that was the badge of a well-known public school, and Karen became distressfully aware of her shabby dressing-gown that was not even particularly durable any longer, as she felt that his eyes flickered over it.
“Well,” he asked, “how are you?” and the kindness in his voice was, she thought, carefully introduced into it. There was just the right amount of kindness, and no more. If her appearance affected him with any concern it was barely noticeable in his expression as he stood gazing down at her.
Karen made a little, rather helpless movement with one of her hands. She did not answer his question, but said huskily:
“Why didn’t you stop at Nannie McBain’s that night you brought me here? You didn’t, did you?”
“Didn’t I?” For an instant he looked genuinely amused, and he took a seat on the arm of a chair and continued to study her. “Perhaps I thought it would be a waste of time, and it was important to get you into a warm bed with as little delay as possible.”
“But you couldn’t have known Nannie was away from home—you’d been abroad and you’d only just returned! You brought me straight here.”
“Which was plainly a very sensible thing to do, because your Nannie’s house was empty, and still is, and I was quite sure Mrs. Burns could take charge of you just as adequately as Mrs. McBain.”
“But that isn’t the point.” Her voice was even more husky, but she was determined to get this matter off her chest and dealt with without allowing herself to be side-tracked. “Don’t you see that you’ve put me under an obligation? I mean, Nannie might have been there, and she might have got my telegram, and—and—”
“But she wasn’t, and she didn’t, and you are here!” he replied with a soft, smooth note in his voice. “Aren’t you comfortable? Is there anything you feel that you lack? Because you have only to tell Mrs. Burns.”
“Of course not,” she exclaimed, a little impatiently. And then as she saw him remove his cigarette case from his pocket and then tuck it hastily back again she said more naturally: “It’s quite all right for you to smoke, for I’m hardly coughing at all now. In fact. I’m so much better that I feel I oughtn’t to allow myself to be waited on as I am being. I feel a bit of a fraud.”
“Do you?” Iain Mackenzie murmured, but this time both his voice and his look were gentle. It was a gentleness that brought a faint flush to her cheeks.
“And I’m being a nuisance, too. I’m giving you a lot of trouble,” she went on.
CHAPTER FOUR
He did not advantage of her permission to smoke, but stood up and wandered to the window and stood looking out at the view, which was obviously one of his favorites.
“In a few weeks from now,”‘ he told her, “there will be nothing but a sea of young green foliage and green shoots everywhere to be seen from this window. But the mountains are pretty much the same all the year round. Smiling one minute, and frowning the next. This morning, because it’s your first time up, they’re smiling at you.”
“But Mrs. Burns says there’s plenty of time for snow yet,” she told him, rather sombrely. “In fact, she’s expecting it. She’s expecting Craigie to be cut off by snow.”
He turned with a kind of half smile.
“Oh, Mrs. Burns! She loves to be a little dramatic. But does the thought of being imprisoned in Craigie by snow fill you with any sort of alarm?”
“No.” She shook her head to emphasize the negative, but she met his eyes squarely at the same time. “However, I mustn’t think of remaining here for much longer, must I? I’ve already inflicted myself on you for a week, and that was something you never expected when you met me for the first time outside King’s Cross station.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, dropping down on to the cushioned window-ledge and thrusting his hands into his pockets. “But talking of King’s Cross station—how often have you visited Craigie before? And when was the last time you were here?
“Oh, not for several years.” Her eyes smiled a wistfully, a little reminiscently, as she recalled that last occasion. “But I’ve always loved it, and thought it the most enchanting spot in the world. But the odd thing is,” gazing at him in perplexity, “that I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing of Craigie House before. If Nannie mentioned it—and she must have done—it left no impression on my mind. Perhaps that’s because you were not living here at the time. I’m quite sure I would have remembered you if I’d seen you, even if I was only small”—looking faintly abashed because his eyes became amused—“or I’d have been puzzled by a likeness—”
“I don’t really think that’s very likely,” he answered, the amusement in his voice as well. “One has to allow for the fact that when you were last here there were still a good many years between us, and we do alter as we grow older, you know. And, in any case, my family were not very addicted to Craigie in the first flush of my own youth, and we only came here for holidays as a rule.”
She looked about her at the large room, with its garlanded ceiling, its wide white fireplace, and other graceful features.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, still more wistfully. “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to live here.”
“I always think that when I come back to it after an absence,” he admitted. “Especially after a prolonged absence.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then he leaned a little towards her, his hands removed from his pockets and clasped between his knees.
“I haven’t bothered you before this because I thought you’d rather be left alone with Mrs. Burns until you felt stronger. But I do want to have a little talk with you about—yourself!”
He sensed rather than observed her instant reaction to
this—something inside her tensing itself, becoming taut and anxious, perhaps a little on the defensive.
“Y-yes?” she stammered.
Mackenzie’s smile at her was intended to do away with that tension and enable her to relax.
“You do realize that you were heading straight for pneumonia again that night when you arrived at Inverlochie?”
She nodded, and swallowed something in her throat.
“The doctor seemed to think I should have had a second dose of it.”
“And old Moffat knows what he’s talking about. He’s a good doctor. One of the best. And he thinks you’ve got to be handled very carefully.”
“But that’s absurd”—she felt herself flushing painfully—“quite absurd. I’m not really in the least delicate, only I happened to neglect a chill, and that sort of thing happens to lots of people. It’s the time of year when one develops chills, and I can’t wrap myself up in cotton wool.”
“But until you’re a little bit stronger, at least, someone will have to wrap you up in cotton wool, or a repeat performance of what happened to you at Inverlochie is almost certain to follow—according to old Moffat!”
The blush burned like fire in her cheeks.
“You mean, I—I’ll make myself a nuisance to other people?”
“Well,” with an odd smile, “you can’t very well make a practice of fainting in the arms of unknown males, can you? For one thing, they may not always be provided with a car, or a convenient house to which they can take you, and the consequences could be disastrous for you. I think if it’s humanly possible we must avoid any possibility of the Inverlochie incident repeating itself in your case.”
“But I—I have to earn my own living.” Her voice was wavering now, and the distress in her eyes was unmistakable. “When Nannie comes back, I know she’ll have me for a week or two, and then I can go back to London and get another job, if my old firm won’t have me back. But I have got to work to keep myself!”
Iain Mackenzie stared at her in a hard and embarrassing fashion for what seemed to her a painfully long period of time.
“Have you?” he said slowly, at last. “Well, we’ll see!” He got up and started to pace about the room, and then came back to her. “I’ve been in touch with your Nannie McBain, and I might as well tell you now that there isn’t the remotest hope that she’ll be back at her cottage under a month, at least. She’s nursing a relative whom she apparently can’t leave, and although she’s distressed about you there’s nothing very much she can do to help.”
“Oh!” Karen exclaimed faintly.
“So I’m afraid you’ll have to make up your mind to stay here. It’s the only thing you can do.
“But that’s impossible!” She sat up very straight in her chair, and once again she gripped the arms of it. “Oh, don’t you see,” she appealed to him, “I can’t possibly go on forcing myself on you like this? For one thing it isn’t very fair and—”
“You don’t find it very comfortable?”
“Of course it’s comfortable—it’s wonderfully comfortable! But it isn’t even as it—as if you were—I mean, you’re not even—not even—”
“Married?”
The confusion in her face answered him.
“That’s quite true,” he agreed, starting his leisurely pacing up and down again, “and this is a strictly bachelor household. But I got over that difficulty at the beginning by telling Mrs. Burns—who no doubt passed it on to all her underlings!—that you and I were thinking about marrying one another, and that’s why I brought you north! I didn’t even let her know that we met for the first time in the process of catching a north-bound train, and if you’ve unwisely informed her otherwise then it can’t be helped, but there’s all the more reason why we should stick to my early tale and pretend, for the time being, at least, that we’re engaged. It won’t do you any harm to put up a little pretence, and if you don’t I shall have to think up some excuse for leaving home again fairly soon, and that won’t benefit you at all because you’ll probably think up some plan for running away also, and back you’ll be in further trouble. So what do you say?”
Karen was unable to say anything for a few moments, and she was not quite certain whether a return of light-headedness was causing her to imagine things, or whether he was indeed in earnest. In the end the absolute coolness of his look as it bored into her convinced her that that was just what he was—coolly and calmly in earnest!
“But—but—”
“Do you realize that I’ve been away from home for over a year, wandering, as my old aunt puts it, ‘about the globe’ and it’s a little upsetting to my plans to have to think about finding other accommodation just now? So what do you say?”
“I don’t know what to say,” she confessed weakly. “I’ve never heard anything so—so—”
“Don’t say it,” he urged her. “It’s not in the least fantastic really—it’s merely expedient. A remedy for a difficult situation which we’ve got to face up to. In a few weeks you’ll probably be so fit that you’ll be able to say goodbye to me with equanimity, but at present you’re so very far from fit that it doesn’t seem to me you have any choice in the matter.”
“I could go into hospital,” she whispered. “The doctor could get me into hospital.”
“He could,” Iain agreed, “but he would probably think it strange to be requested to do that when I’ve already told him you’re my fiancée, and Craigie has any number of empty bedrooms!”
After that he was almost shocked by the sudden whiteness of her face, the bewildered look in her eyes, and he paused and bent over her and put his hand on her shoulder for a moment.
“Look,” he said gently, “you don’t have to make any decision about this today. But have you told Mrs. Burns anything at all about yourself?”
“Only that I expected to stay with Nannie McBain.”
“Well, that’s perfectly all right. She knows Nannie McBain, and you would probably have preferred to stay with her. Mrs. Burns will understand that. It’s perfectly natural.”
“But you mustn’t even think about leaving your own home just because of me! It would be dreadful if you had to do that—” with an appalled quiver in her voice.
“Don’t worry about that.” He patted her shoulder lightly, and Karen was amazed at the sudden softening of his face, the compassion in the grey eyes. “I’m not proposing to leave it today, anyway, and the important thing at the moment is to get you back to bed. I’m going to call Mrs. Burns, and tomorrow, if you feel like it, we’ll have another talk. But in the meantime don’t worry about anything.”
Before the next day dawned, however, the cold brilliance of the weather had passed, and by evening there were leaden skies and a bleak north wind was blowing. Before Karen opened her eyes in the morning the soft, feathery flakes were fluttering down, and by the time she was sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray resting comfortably on her lap it was a white world outside. It was also a grey and ominous world, with the howling of the blizzard making a constant noise in her chimney. And when the wind dropped the snow simply continued to fall until every sound outside the windows was muffled by it.
Mrs. Burn was almost triumphant when she drew back Karen’s curtains and let her see what was happening, and had happened, outside.
“I told you, didn’t I?” she said. “And I’m never wrong! The snow’s late this year, but it means business unless I’m no a weather prophet at all!”
Karen, from amidst her piled-up, lace-trimmed, feather pillows, gazed fascinatedly out the whirlwind of drifting white particles, and hardly knew whether to be concerned by what she saw or not. If this weather continued there was certainly no hope of her getting away from Craigie—there was no hope of anyone’s getting away from Craigie!— and the situation inside the house would be extremely odd. She and her host would be pinned here together for weeks perhaps, and Mrs. Burns and the household staff already believed that they were contemplating marrying one another!
What an altogether absurd thought, Karen decided but she toyed with it for a moment as if it fascinated her. Two people who had not even known of one another’s existence a week ago talking of becoming husband and wife, and pretending to be engaged for the sake of satisfying the proprieties.
But evidently Iain Mackenzie had firmly made up his mind that the proprieties would have to be satisfied—and he had done that before there had been any danger of being snowed up! How would he feel about the necessity for such a pretence after they had been cooped up together for weeks?
CHAPTER FIVE
It was once more a morning when the sky was blue and the sun shone, but the atmosphere was no longer freezingly cold, and there was even, a certain softness—like a far-away breath of spring—in the air.
Most of the snow had vanished, save where the drifts had been tremendously deep, and where it still clung to the roofs of outhouses and stable buildings, and lay powdered and unbroken in the deep shade of the woods. But the roads were free and open once more, and Craigie House was no longer an entity entirely separate and cut off from the village of Craigie.
In the drawing-room of Craigie House Karen watched from the window a robin adventuring along the window sill outside, and she was certain the starry cluster of aconites in the bed outside the window had not been lifting up their faces to the friendly kiss of the sunshine the day before. There were some snowdrops in a vase near to her, too, which gave off a delicate fragrance, and these had been brought in from the shrubbery by Mrs. Burns, who had declared that they were actually forcing their way through what remained of the snow.