by Susan Barrie
Not that it should have mattered—they had been parted, and he had come back to her, and her bones were prepared to melt into water at one word or sign from him. But the door had been closed for nearly half a minute before he spoke to her, and then there was something more like polite concern in his voice than anything else as he said:
“Are you sure you’re feeling quite all right now? I thought you looked terribly pale when you dame into the room before tea, and Fiona said you couldn’t have stood the car trip this afternoon. Did you have a bad headache, or something?”
Karen lifted her eyes to him with a return of her astonishment, and she thought she understood why Fiona had made that excuse for her. Fiona had not wanted to be accompanied by her that afternoon, and returning with Iain alone in the car had been the first opportunity to be alone with him that she had deliberately made since her return from Italy.
“No—there was really nothing wrong with me at all, only—only it looked like snow—”
It sounded such a feeble excuse, but she had to say something. Fiona had already said quite a lot in an apparently convincing manner, and there seemed little point in trying to pin-point her as a distorter of the truth.
“I see,” he said quietly.
“And Aunt Horry thought it might be best—”
“Oh, quite!” he agreed, with greater emphasis. “We don’t want to risk your catching any more chills, and although I was disappointed I understood immediately. Although, as it happened, the afternoon turned out to be quite fine after all.”
“But—you were disappointed?” She seemed to clutch at this like a drowning man clutching at a straw, and he was amazed to see the look of sudden eager hopefulness which swept into her eyes as she turned them up to him again. He crossed over swiftly to her chair and sat down on the arm of it, possessing himself of both her hands and holding them tightly within his own.
“Of course I was! Why, darling. I’ve been simply living for the moment when I’d be back with you again! You know that.”
“H-have you?” But her lips was quivering all at once. She turned her face from him in order to hide it, and he could feel her whole slender body shaking with fiercely restrained emotion. But it was heaven, at least, to her to have him near to her again. “I wanted to come and meet you—I wanted to come and meet you so badly—You mustn’t have any doubts about that!”
“I haven’t,” he assured her, while his arms went round her, and at last he was holding her tight. “But all the same, I did think your welcome was just a little repressed—I wasn’t even quite certain that you were glad to see me back!”
“Not certain?” She put back her head and gazed up at him as if this was the most amazing piece of Intelligence she had ever heard, and her eyes were enormous and the dark pupils distended.
“Well, you didn’t exactly hurl yourself at me, did I you?”—smiling gently down at her—“and I haven’t so far been permitted even to kiss you!”
“But I wanted to hurl myself at you!” She made the confession while her fingers clung to him, and her eyes implored him to believe her. “But how could I do so in front of your aunt and Mrs. Barrington? And I’ve been thinking all through tea that perhaps you—perhaps you didn’t want to kiss me!”
“What!” he exclaimed, and she thought that his face whitened with the sudden intensity of his feelings. “Not want to kiss you when I’ve been separated from you for a fortnight, and craving to get back to you? What sort of man in love do you think I am?” And before she could draw breath he had stooped his head swiftly and she could feel the hard warmth of his lips on hers. She gave a little gasp of pure happiness and wound her arms about his neck, surrendering her own lips without any reservations whatsoever.
The kiss was the most satisfying they had so far exchanged, and at the end of it they were both pale, and unable to speak for several seconds. Then she felt his hand caressingly stroking her short fair hair, and he breathed huskily, close to her ear:
“So you really have missed me?”
“I’ve been counting the minutes until you returned! I was terrified lest something happened, and you were unable to get back when you said.”
“Foolish darling.” But his eyes were full of tenderness as they gazed at her. “As if I would have let anything prevent me! ... And hasn’t it occurred to you that I’ve missed you, too? Missed you so much that I could never even begin to tell you just how much!”
“Oh, Iain!” she breathed.
He held her so closely that for all too brief a while it was exactly as she had imagined it would be when he came back to Auchenwiel, and the feeling of hunger in the arms that held her corresponded exactly with her own craving to be in them. While he held her every doubt she had even entertained vanished like morning mist before the first warmth of the sunshine, and she knew that she was completely and almost deliriously happy.
And when he let her go from him at last for a moment it was only in order that he could produce something from his pocket which he handed to her. When she saw that it was a ring-case the breath caught in her throat.
“Well, open it!” he said, gently, beside her.
The ring-case was round, and of red morocco, and against the whiteness of her fingers it had a striking beauty all its own. But when she shakily snapped it open and looked down at the ring lying on a bed of velvet, the sheer beauty of the large and flawless opal surrounded by tiny diamonds drew from her another gasp.
“Somehow it seemed the only really perfect stone for you,” Iain told her, while he watched her face, with its expression of unconcealed delight. “You’re not superstitious about opals, are you? Because if you are we’ll change it.”
“Oh, no!” Somehow she managed to control the quiver of breathless delight in her voice. I think it’s absolutely perfect!”
“And you don’t want me to change it?
“Oh, no!”
Karen felt as if her heart swelled within her as she surveyed her ring—the first outward and visible symbol of their belonging—and when he removed it from its case and slipped it on to the appropriate finger of her left hand she felt also as if her heart missed a beat. The fit was so perfect that it was astonishing—although he admitted to her afterwards that he had possessed himself of one of her small gloves and taken it to London—but it was a purely fleeting astonishment, because he carried the slender-fingered hand up to his lips and softly kissed the ring.
“In a very short while now—if you’re quite, quite sure you haven’t changed your mind?—we’ll have a neat gold band below that ring,” he said, and the tone of his voice, and the look in his eyes when they gazed straight at her, turned all her bones to water. She felt as if she simply melted into his arms when he stood up and drew her upwards with him and securely into them.
“Oh, darling,” he whispered to her then, darling.”
The rest of that evening passed like a dream—a rainbow-tinted dream which might never occur again—and it was a dream of unadulterated happiness so far as Karen was concerned. She wore her cloudy black evening frock, and with the color returned to her face and her blue eyes alight with happiness, she knew that she was looking her best, and Iain’s eyes seldom left her face. They sat side by side at dinner, and although Fiona sat facing them in one of her spectacular evening gowns it didn’t seem to matter in the least, because under the protection of the table Iain’s hand was continually seeking hers, and the pressure of his fingers almost hurt her at times.
Aunt Horatia looked thoroughly contented as always, and was full of the dance which was to take place the following evening. Both she and Mrs. Barrington had exclaimed over Karen’s ring, and it was left to Fiona to remind Karen that opals were generally considered unlucky, and to express surprise because Iain had chosen one.
“But perhaps you’re not superstitious?” she said, with the lightest tinge of mockery in her voice. “Or perhaps you’re merely brave, and feel you can keep anything in the nature of unhappiness at bay?”
And it
was only when she was lying in her own bed in the darkness of her room that Karen remembered, for no reason that she could think of, that Judith Drew, who was Nannie McBain’s near neighbor, had told her that there was a ring at the bottom of her cup.
But the wedding bells were muffled!...
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The amount of trouble Aunt Horatia had taken to ensure that her dance was a success was well repaid. It was a surprise to Karen to discover that despite the apparent isolation of Auchenwiel large numbers of people lived near enough to have accepted invitations, and the drive was filled with cars bringing beautifully-dressed men and women to the brilliantly-lighted house.
Craigie, with its gentler beauty and much smaller size, was a fitting background for intimate small dinner-parties, and perhaps occasionally a very informal dance; but Auchenwiel, with its impressive panelled hall and staircase, its suits of armor and its portraits, huge public rooms and specially built-on ballroom, was exactly the type of house to provide a perfect setting for an occasion such as this. It was little enough used in this way, because Aunt Horry so disliked anything in the nature of severe weather that she fled abroad to her Italian villa for increasingly lengthy periods. But tonight, although a light mist hung about the silent hills, and only a few stars showed through wisps of trailing vapor, the cars had come considerable distances, because a dance at Auchenwiel was something which everyone knew they would thoroughly enjoy.
Karen wore the white dress patterned with silver leaves, and she looked really enchanting with her shining fair hair and glowing eyes, especially as Aunt Horry had decided she was so nearly a Mackenzie that she should be permitted to wear a tartan sash draped over one shoulder which all Highland ladies wore on occasions such as this, and which served to emphasize the beauty of her white dress.
“I feel a little bit of a fraud,” she said to Iain, when he took her in his arms in the quiet library shortly before the first guests arrived, and a kind of breathless excitement assailed her because the tartan sash which so emphasized her youthful slenderness was the same as the Mackenzie tartan of his own kilt and plaid. “I haven’t any right to wear the Mackenzie tartan—at least, not yet,” with an adorably shy upward glance at him.
“In a few days, my darling,” he told her, resisting the temptation to crush her close to him and thereby possibly damage her dress, and kissing her lingeringly on the top of her head instead, “you will possess the right not only to all I am and possess, but to my name and everything else about me. Only a few days,” sighing softly against her hair. “And then you’ll be my wife!”
“Have you seen the vicar?” she asked, suddenly covered in shyness.
“Yes; I have—only we don’t call them vicars in’ Scotland,” he answered, laughing’ at her gently. “I’ve seen the minister, and we don’t have to have our banns called, or anything like that, because I’ve provided myself with a licence which entitles me to marry you at a minute’s notice if I feel like it, Miss March.”
“But—but was that necessary?” she stammered, blushing uncontrollably.
“It was,” he answered. “I don’t propose to wait three weeks for you, my little love, and I think you know that!”
They heard the noise of the first arrivals, and then the orchestra which had arrived from Edinburgh started to tune up, and after that there was so much danger of the library being invaded that he kissed her hurriedly—although very satisfyingly—on the lips, and they left the library together.
Dancing with him later, Karen decided inwardly that if she had been born for no other purpose than to dance with him tonight in such a setting it was almost, if not quite, a sufficient justification for her existence. She was feeling so much stronger, and he was such a perfect partner, and the music was so tuneful, that for the first time for many weeks she felt as if happiness was a thing which could never escape her, and looking up into the face of the man she was to marry she felt utterly confident of their future together.
She might not be the kind of wife he should have had—she would not make a perfect mistress for Craigie, like Fiona, for instance—but she loved him with all her heart, and held in his arms like this she knew without a doubt that he loved her.
Afterwards she danced with one or two of the younger men visitors, to whom she was proudly introduced by her hostess, and with Aubrey, who was not really a very good dancer, however, and managed to catch his heel in the hem of her dress, with the result that he practically succeeded in ripping it off.
Fiona Barrington, who was passing at the time in the arms of a man who had paid her a good deal of attention all evening, paused and went to Karen’s rescue, shaking her head over the torn hem and the clumsiness of Aubrey at the same time, and then leading her away to a far corner of the ballroom where she could inspect the damage more carefully. Then she said:
“You can’t dance any longer like that. You’ll probably catch your foot in that tear and fall down or something, so you’d better come up with me to my room and I’ll see what I can do to effect a quick repair.”
Karen was at first loath to trouble her and interfere with her enjoyment of the dance, although Fiona had worn an expression ever since dinner which suggested that she was not greatly enjoying herself. However, she gave in, and Fiona led the way up the broad staircase to her room, and there brought out a work-box and a needle and thread.
“Just a few stitches,” she said, “and at least you’ll be able to continue dancing. Iain would hardly enjoy his evening if you had to fall out, would he?” looking at her a trifle dryly.
Karen thanked her, and hoped that they might return downstairs as quickly as possible, but Fiona seemed in no hurry—in fact, she seemed very much the reverse, and after tacking the hem up again she suggested that as it was very hot downstairs, and very cool where they were, and that Iain, in any case, had a few duty dances to perform, they might as well enjoy a few moments of respite.
“Sit down,” she said, “and have a cigarette.
She pushed a comfortable chair towards Karen and took another herself, then produced an exquisite toy of a gold and enamel cigarette-case from her evening bag and offered it to the younger girl. Karen so seldom smoked that she would have preferred to decline, but she thought at once that this might cause Fiona’s lovely sleek eyebrows to lift a little in amusement because of her lack of sophistication, and so she accepted one instead.
She had already observed that the bedroom was very similar to her own, but it was filled with so many of Fiona’s own costly things that it looked extremely luxurious. The bed was already turned down, and there was Fiona’s nightdress—an exquisite froth of transparent peach-colored georgette—laid out ready for her across it. Fiona’s black satin house-coat lay across the foot of the bed, and a pair of tiny velvet mules were placed ready for her to step into.
The dressing-table was loaded with cosmetics and various gold-stoppered bottles and flagons, as well as magnificent gold-backed hairbrushes and a hand mirror. A photograph in a neat but expensive-looking frame occupied a prominent position amongst the various toilet articles, and as the room was flooded with soft but brilliant light it was easy enough for Karen to recognize the face of the man who seemed to be looking straight towards her.
She sat almost bolt upright in her chair as she recognized Iain, and Mrs. Barrington, lying languidly back in her own chair, smiled a slow, appreciative smile.
“Ah, I see you have caught sight of Iain’s photograph!” she exclaimed.
Karen looked at her as if she was seeking an explanation, and then back at the handsome, faintly smiling face of the man she was to marry. The photograph had probably been taken three or four years before, but it was Iain as she knew him—and loved him!
“Are you so very surprised to see that I treasure his photograph?” Fiona demanded softly.
“I don’t think I quite understand,” Karen began. “I mean—I know, of course, that you were once engaged to be married—”
“Just as you are at th
e present time,” Fiona murmured, as if the thought amused her. “You’re going to marry Iain now—and I was going to marry him two years ago. But I made a mistake and let him go, and of course I lived to realize how wrong I was! You may live to do just that very thing, and that’s why I thought it would be a very good plan to remain up here for a little while and have a little talk with you instead of rushing back to the dancers. One can dance at almost any time if one seriously wants to, but once one’s made a bad mistake like rushing into an unwise marriage it isn’t so easy to extricate oneself.”
“I still don’t think I understand,” Karen managed to articulate, very softly, and the other woman smiled pleasantly.
“My dear girl, that’s because you’re young, and at the moment you think you’re in love—but are you quite sure Iain’s in love with you?”
“I—” Karen put a hand up to her throat, as if she felt a tightness there—“I—You’ve said yourself that we’re going to be married!”
“Yes, of course you are, my dear—or you will be, if you feel like going through with it. But what I asked you was—is Iain in love with you? Not just temporarily carried away because you’re so young and helpless, and he happens to be the type of man to whom helpless creatures appeal! I think I told you once before that he’s terribly kind, and you more or less put him into the position where he hadn’t much choice but to ask you to marry him, didn’t you?” Her smile remained pleasant, and even sympathetic. “Oh, my dear, I understand perfectly. He’s terribly attractive, and you couldn’t say ‘no’ when he asked you, of course.”
Karen found that she was voiceless. Inside her she had gone very cold, and something was still and waiting deep down amongst the roots of her being—waiting for the moment when everything she valued most would be wrenched away from her.
“Listen!” Fiona leant a little towards her. “Shall I tell you the truth about Iain and myself?” As Karen made no attempt to answer she continued: “We adored one another years ago, and I adore him still. I married another man because he was wealthier than Iain, and because I was a fool. But the moment I was free I wrote to Iain and told him I wanted us to meet again, and he agreed it was the only sensible thing to do. Because when two people have been so deeply in love that they know they can never experience anything like it again they can’t afford to let pride stand in the way! And Iain had already wandered unhappily about the world for nearly two years because of me. So when his aunt asked me to stay with her I thought it a splendid idea, and Iain would have thought it a splendid idea—but for you!”