by Susan Barrie
The drive was such a successful experiment that it was repeated the following day, and although on the first day they merely drove through the village and then back home by a road which brought them to the rear of Craigie House, the second day they ventured farther afield. It was so beautifully warm on this day that spring itself might have been just around the corner, and Karen’s eyes were gladdened by the prospect of brown fields lying open now to the kiss of the sun, and scarlet berries in the hedgerows that told their tale of a hard winter drawing rapidly nearer to its close. There was even a faint touch of scarlet in her own cheeks when she got out of the car at the completion of that day’s drive, and although she was certain that heads had popped out of doorways, and faces had watched them behind curtains, as the big black Mackenzie car stole silently through the village and between the rows of Cottages, she had thoroughly enjoyed it.
Iain looked at her approvingly.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll try a short walk and test the strength of those legs of yours.”
The walk, too, was something which Karen remembered in after days as having a strange quality of magic about it, for apart from discovering that her legs were perfectly well able to support the rest of her slender body as she started on her first real bit of exercise for weeks, the path they took and the hidden corners of the grounds they visited convinced her, if she had needed any convincing, that Craigie House, in its setting of woods and distant mountains, was far more beautiful than anything she had ever known at such close quarters.
In not much more than a few weeks the gardens would be a blaze of every sort of spring flower, and already they were unfolding themselves timorously in sheltered corners. There would be wave after wave of daffodils sweeping down to the shores of the lake, where the brown reeds bent backwards from the steel-grey water, and the little island in the centre of it, which seemed to be placidly afloat, would be a film of new green leaves instead of a wilderness of bare branches.
Under the sheltered south side of the house there would be wallflowers scenting the air with their sweetness as the spring advanced, and the long grass of the orchard would be starred with white narcissi. Looking even farther ahead, into the long summer days, Karen could imagine the peace that would be like a benediction over Craigie while the hours were filled with sunshine, and the lawns would look like emerald velvet under the clear, cool blue of the northern sky. The evenings would be full of the scents of dove pinks the drawing-room cascading roses from every vase, and the sun went down at last, the mountains, that were still grim and forbidding on a day in February, would look dreamy and remote under the first light of the stars.
She could see it all so dearly that it was almost as if she had the power of second sight, but her heart felt a little heavy when she remembered that in the summer she would not be there. She would be back in London, in her microscopic flat, working for someone like her old employer, who would demand nothing more of her than that she should receive his dictation and type his letters with a fair amount of a adequacy, and then allow her to go home at night to cook her own supper over a gas ring.
But as she walked the paths of Craigie with Iain Mackenzie at her side, and everywhere the air was full of the sound of water that had started to bubble and not merely to flow free of ice once more, and birdsong that was a little premature because winter might yet have a final fling in reserve, she was conscious of feeling physically so very much stronger that future events were just then more or less unimportant, and when they arrived back at the house her host’s chief concern was that he had not overtired her and that she was warm after her walk.
He looked somewhat doubtfully at her tweed coat, even after she had assured him that she was beautifully warm, and, in fact, glowing after the unaccustomed exercise.
“You don’t seem to me to be wrapped up as much as you should be,” he remarked. He felt the shoulder of the tweed coat. “Is this really thick enough for a winter coat?”
She knew what he was thinking—that her clothes were none of them up to the standard he would have looked for in a reasonably well-dressed woman, and she felt herself flushing as a sudden thought attacked her.
“You don’t think your aunt and Mrs. Barrington, when they arrive, will think I’m a little—well, shabby, for your fiancée?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“My dear girl, what a ridiculous question,” he answered, looking down into her upraised, sensitive face. “And, in any case, I wasn’t thinking of shabbiness.”
“No, perhaps you weren’t, but Mrs. Barrington isn’t in the least shabby, is she?”
He smiled with obvious amusement.
“She used to be very much the reverse, but perhaps widowhood has changed her in some respects.”
“I should hardly think so,” Karen remarked, as if a good deal of the enjoyment of her walk had already departed from her. “Smart women don’t generally become dowdy even as a result of losing their husbands.”
Then she went away upstairs to remove the offending coat.
When she came down to dinner that night she was wearing a little cherry-red dress that was the only really expensive purchase she had made since she had started to earn her own living, and at least she was not ashamed of it. The color did something to emphasize the extreme delicacy of her appearance, and her host stared at her rather hard when they sat facing one another at the table.
For the first time since he had brought her to Craigie he was wearing a dinner-jacket, and she thought how well it became him, and how undeniably attractive he was in the soft light of the candles. They flickered in tall, Georgian candlesticks, and the rest of the table was heavily loaded with Georgian silver, although there were only the two of them.
Iain looked along it and said suddenly and almost abruptly to the girl at the opposite end:
“There’s something I want to ask you, Karen. Will you become engaged to me in earnest?”
Karen set down the small silver spoon with which she had been coping with her sweet and looked at him in astonishment.
“Whatever for?” she asked.
Prout, the parlormaid, returned with their coffee, and when she had poured it out she brought bottles of liqueur from the sideboard and set them on the table Karen shook her head when Iain offered her a brilliantly green chartreuse, and as soon as the maid had departed again she said with an odd, uncertain note in her voice,
“Are you really asking me to marry you?”
“I am.” He was frowning at the bottles and not looking at her. “I think if you would consider it, it would solve quite a few of your problems, and there are other reasons why I personally feel it would be a good idea.”
“What other reasons?”
He looked at her this time, and his look was contemplative—probing.
“Oh, there are quite a few of them, really, but the main one is that you need looking after. I’m a little bit concerned about you because I don’t quite know what you are going to do when you leave here, and I feel very strongly that you ought not to be allowed to leave at all. Also—well, Craigie can do with a mistress, someone to run the place. And I’m sure you could do that quite adequately.”
Karen stared at the green chartreuse he had poured out for himself, and she hoped he was not aware of the fact that a pulse at the base of her throat was beating like a frightened bird imprisoned in a cage, and that she was feeling a little sick inside at the same time. It was the coat, she told herself dully. The coat had caused him to make up his mind about this, and in order that she should be provided with suitable coats, and alarm no more strangers by fainting in their arms at inopportune moments, he was prepared to marry her. He was also a little afraid because Fiona Barrington was coming back into his life, and he had no desire to fall a victim to her a second time. He was probably well aware that there was a very grave danger of his doing so, but if only he really was engaged to be married—or, better still, actually married!—then the danger could not touch him. He was playing for safe
ty, and he thought she did not know it!
“Well?” he asked, as she made no attempt to answer him.
She lifted grave, but otherwise slightly inscrutable, blue eyes from the liquid in his glass, and gazed at him.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head, “no, I couldn’t marry you.”
His eyes lifted slightly.
“You’re quite sure about that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Very well,” he murmured, the tone of his voice providing her with no clue to what he was thinking. “We won’t discuss the matter again, but it struck me this afternoon that it was a good idea, that’s all!”
Then he rose and pushed back his chair, and as she walked ahead of him into the drawing-room he suggested that they should play chess.
“Or shall we try something else for a change?” he further suggested. “What about two-handed rummy, or piquet? Can you play piquet?”
He brought out the cards, and set the little table up between them, and as he proceeded to instruct her in the art of a card game she had not so far attempted to play she found herself watching him and feeling curiously fascinated by the sight of his bent head and absorbed expression. He might have asked her in the dining-room just now to let him run her in to the nearest town to do some shopping, or something of the sort, and not anything as momentous as whether or not she could bring herself to marry him.
Marry him!...
Somehow she was not even quite certain that she had heard him aright. II it had been a serious proposal it had been so casually made that surely no other woman had ever received one quite like it before! ... “Craigie can do with a mistress, someone to run the place. And I’m sure you could do that quite adequately.” She took a deep breath, and wondered how she would be feeling at this moment if she had said “Yes.”
She stared hard at his hands—such beautifully shaped hands, strong and capable, with admirably cared-for finger nails that were dealing expertly with the cards. There was a gold signet ring on one of his little fingers, and it winked like a bright eye in the fire glow. The white line of his cuff as it escaped from the blackness of his sleeve was almost startlingly immaculate, and an equally white handkerchief tucked partly up his sleeve brushed the top of the table as he demonstrated with the pack.
Karen lifted her eyes to his face, and not for the first time she thought what an utterly purposeful line of jaw he had. There was no weakness about the mouth, either; it was an attractive mouth when he smiled in a certain fashion, because there was something faintly provocative about his smile. His eyes reminded her of the grey of roof slates with the frost upon them when he was not smiling, but at other times they could resemble the grey running of the stream at the bottom of the garden, quiet but buoyant, deceptively placid, sparkling in the sunlight. And the sleek smoothness of his hair, so dark that it made her think of a blackbird’s plumage. If only she had said “Yes” she could spend the rest of her life like this, watching him whenever she wanted to do so, knowing that he would never be far away, that he was someone who had taken upon himself the right to care for her and look after her. Craigie would be her home, and the seasons would come and go there, and everything would be very peaceful, because Craigie was peaceful. But, above all, if she had said “Yes” she would have the right to call herself the wife of Iain Mackenzie!...
She felt that excitable little pulse beating wildly again in her throat, and for a solitary instant she wondered just as wildly as the pulse was beating why she had not said “Yes.” And then as he looked up and met her eyes she felt the vivid pink dye her cheeks, and she looked away abashed—terrified lest he should be able to read, in her face the thoughts she had been thinking.
But all he said was:
“Are you a little bit tired tonight? Would you rather go to bed and learn this game another night? We mustn’t forget you’ve had rather a lot of fresh air today—for you—and you’re probably sleepy.”
She agreed at once that she was, and as he stood up to open the door for her she felt anxious to dart past him wildly and escape. But instead she forced herself to walk sedately towards the foot of the stairs, and although she knew he was still watching her she mounted them slowly.
But she thought in almost a frantic fashion: “He must have guessed!... I’m sure he guessed!...
CHAPTER SEVEN
Two days later Aunt Horatia Montagu-Jackson and Mrs. Barrington arrived just in time for lunch, without any warning whatsoever. They drove up in an old-fashioned chauffeur-driven Daimler. Aunt Horry was wearing tweeds and a hat rather like a Tyrolean hat, with a feather stuck in it. She was small but agile, with grey hair and a pair of bright blue eyes that beamed from under the Tyrolean hat, and an incongruous note was added to her appearance by a great many diamonds, in the shape of brooches, bracelets and ear-rings, that adorned her diminutive person.
She advanced upon her nephew when he arrived to greet her in the hall and embraced him with obvious fervor, kissing him heartily on both cheeks.
“You look,” she told him, “extraordinarily well, and I’m delighted to see you.”
“And you,” he told her, “don’t look even half a day older!”
“My dear, I’m being treated by a wonderful Italian doctor who’s performed miracles—simply miracles!—for my rheumatism, and in fact I just haven’t got it any more!” She looked around her as if searching for someone, and then exclaimed quickly: “But where’s the young woman? My new niece-to-be! I must see her—I must see her at once, because I’ve been simply dying to know what she looks like!”
As Karen emerged from the shadows of the hall she felt rather than saw the keen blue eyes fasten upon her, and then Aunt Horatio darted forward and caught her by her slender shoulders and looked at her so hard that the girl’s blush rose uncontrollably.
“H’m!” the elderly lady exclaimed, at the end of her inspection, and then “h’m!” again. She sent an oddly quizzical sideways glance at her nephew, lightly patted Karen’s cheek, and then released her. And then they all turned as footsteps sounded at the end of the hall near the open front door, and Fiona Barrington appeared, moving gracefully towards them, with her arms full of flowers and parcels she had stopped to collect from inside the car. It was a habit of Mrs. Montagu-Jackson’s—her husband had been Montagu Jackson, who made a fortune out of baby powder and other nursery toilet requisites many years before he died, and after his death she had decided to give herself a double-barrelled name by including his Christian name—to bring with her, on her visits to her nephew, large quantities of useful provender, such as eggs from her own farm, and vegetables cultivated by her gardener, being firmly of the opinion that they were always most acceptable to a bachelor. So behind Mrs. Barrington came the chauffeur who maintained the Daimler at such a shining pitch of perfection, bearing the heavier articles which the slight figure of the widow could hardly be expected to carry.
Karen, who realized that she had been waiting with something not nearly so stimulating as curiosity for this moment, knew that all her worst fears were instantly realized when she took her first look at Fiona Barrington.
To begin with, the coat she was wearing was so obviously mink that Karen’s heart dropped like a plummet when she remembered her own cheap tweed. And she was wearing a little mink cap, too, specially designed to call attention to corn-silk hair. Not fair hair, like Karen’s own, but a deep, shining, lustrous gold.
Her eyes were golden, too—golden as quartz or topaz—and they were smiling in an enchanting way under the mink cap. She couldn’t have been much older than Karen herself, in spite of her widowhood, but she had all the sophistication and the poise in the world, and as she shook hands with Karen the latter caught the first faint breath of the delicate perfume she brought with her, like something belonging exclusively to Paris in the springtime.
“And this is the little fiancée?” she said, and just as Aunt Horatio had done she shot a sudden, sideways glance at Iain’s face that had the merest suspicion of so
mething both quizzical and amused in it.
Mackenzie’s face remained cool and slightly aloof—an expression that had appeared in it the instant he had ceased greeting his aunt. But Karen did not dare to look at him, and she only knew that she herself had failed to create an impression that could quite truthfully be described as favorable—or, at any rate, she herd been something of a surprise to both of these women visitors. Although she was wearing her best tweed skirt, and a jumper that was neat and unspectacular, she had all the colorlessness of an invalid about her—or one who was only just ceasing to be an invalid—and it was plain at a j glance that she lacked both confidence and poise, and moreover that she was almost desperately shy and aware of how badly she fitted in just then.
She wanted to escape with Mrs. Burns when the housekeeper appeared to receive instructions about extra places at the luncheon table; and she would have been happy to have been simply Prout, whose only task was to hand round drinks in the drawing room before they all went in to the meal. But she was the prospective mistress of the house, or so they all fondly believed, and she could not merely sit tongue-tied and afraid that if she did open her lips she might say something unwise and foolish that would glaringly proclaim her to be acting a part.
It was not so bad while lunch was in progress, for the service of the meal caused enough diversion, and Mrs. Burns was agitated because she had not known beforehand that the visitors were preparing to descend upon them. She infected Prout with some of her own agitation as a result of supervising her too closely whenever they were in the dining-room together, until, in order to pour oil on the troubled waters. Aunt Horatia declared when they were nearing the coffee stage that the lunch was far more perfect than anything she ever enjoyed |n her own house, and Mrs. Burns at least was happy again.