Winds from the Sea

by Margaret Pargeter

  Jill, perched on top of a stool, glanced from him back to Sara sullenly. “I’m sorry, Sara,” she said abruptly but in slightly warmer tones. “I suppose to you this all looks like a string of lies and intrigue, but Colin and I really are in love and want to get married. Sometimes one is driven to say the wrong things out of sheer self-defence. You probably don’t know, but neither Hugh or Mummy would even bother to meet Colin. They condemned him out of hand because he’s an artist. They seem to imagine he’s starving in a garret!”

  Sara frowned, her blue eyes thoughtful. She remembered Hugh admitting that he hadn’t met Jill’s boy-friend. Surely no one had the right to dismiss the feelings of others so sweepingly. And maybe Mrs. Fraser, only recently bereaved and with business worries in America, had forgotten how painful such criticism and indifference could be.

  Mentally Sara strove to weigh things up. While feeling sorry for Jill she must be careful. The little minx could be very appealing, but was probably capable of deceiving anyone if she put her mind to it.

  She sighed wryly, looking rather unhappily at Jill again. “Surely you could have contrived a meeting of some sort, Jill? I wouldn’t have thought you lacking in ingenuity.”

  Jill shot Colin a quick glance as she shook her head. “I’m afraid someone told Mum a weird story about Colin. It wasn’t true and I tried to convince her, but she refused to believe me, and you know how things blow up. After that I did everything I could to keep them apart. I suppose that actually Hugh got her version when he came home. Anyway, he read me a lecture and things have been a bit precarious ever since.”

  It took little effort to imagine that lecture along with Hugh’s uncomprising attitude. Sara could guess its devastating effect.

  “Suppose,” she said slowly to Jill, while looking rather pointedly towards Colin, “you start afresh by introducing me to your friend? Then we can consider one or two possibilities.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The occasional drone of a bee drifted in on the warm fresh air through the open window. The sound was relaxing and slightly soporific and made Sara realize that she was tired. But the atmosphere in the small cottage room was too tense to allow for relaxation.

  Jill alarmed Sara by sitting quite still, a deep frown on her defiant face, almost as if she disliked her proposal. There was a long awkward silence. Then suddenly, with a careless shrug she slid off the stool and going over to Colin, drew him forward.

  “I suppose,” she stared broodingly at Sara, “I’ve been behaving rather childishly, but I just didn’t think. Anyway, as you insist, this is Colin Brown, arch-villain from London!”

  Colin glanced from Jill to Sara with a quirk of amusement as he held out his hand. For the first time Sara really saw him properly. He was tall, and in the dim light his young face seemed all bone and hollow, and his mouth curiously strained in spite of his casual demeanour.

  “So we meet properly at last, Miss Winton.” His dark eyebrows rose as he looked at her closely. “I must confess to having seen you since the day I rescued your bag, but I thought it wiser to keep my distance. I might have known you would catch up with me sooner or later.” He grinned as he pulled Jill to him affectionately. “Now I can see you’re wondering just what Jill and I are cooking up between us.”

  “Well, that’s putting it rather bluntly, Mr. Brown.” Sara met his twinkling grey eyes and returned his smile. She liked his firm handshake. “I’ll admit,” she went on, “to being slightly worried. Would you think me over-curious if I asked what you do exactly? There are so many different kinds of artists.”

  “Not at all.” His voice was quietly confident as he glanced at Jill. “I started with a big firm as a commercial artist. Then I went freelance. It was a bit hazardous to begin with, but now I’m doing quite well. I work chiefly as an illustrator and enjoy doing the odd landscape. At the moment I’m doing birds and animals for a new children’s book with a Highland setting.”

  “But you came up three weeks ago?”

  Colin smiled wryly, hugging Jill’s arm. “To get some work done before Jill arrived. It seemed rather callous leaving her in hospital, but actually she insisted. You see, I like to photograph my subject before I paint it. It helps as a check for colour and detail, and when Jill’s with me she talks so much that she scares every bird within miles.”

  “And how,” Sara looked patiently at both of them, “did you expect to remain here undetected? Hugh is bound to find out.”

  “It was a chance,” Jill declared mutinously, “and we took it. Hugh only intended being here for a short time to wrap up the estate. Now he talks of living here permanently, so I suppose he’s bound to find out one of these days.”

  Sara’s heart gave a sudden lurch. If, as Jill said, Hugh intended staying here, perhaps he would keep her on as his secretary, if he needed one. And if this was wise! She knew a crazy urge to be in his arms again, to feel his lips on hers, moving with unspoken desire against her own.

  She drew a quick trembling breath, thrusting his image to one side. “I really think, Jill, you should take Colin to see him and state your case clearly. After all, Hugh couldn’t stop you from marrying, as you’re over eighteen.”

  “But I like my family,” Jill protested, a little too vehemently, before Colin could speak. “I would rather have their approval.”

  “Look,” Sara glanced swiftly at her watch, “I must get back or they’ll be sending out a search party. It’s almost five. I suggest you follow me, Jill, and we’ll try to come to some decision later this evening. After dinner, perhaps.”

  “The sooner the better,” Colin agreed tersely, as he followed them out of the cottage. “This hole and corner business doesn’t appeal to me.”

  Despite various interruptions dinner went off smoothly, but before Sara could pin Jill down to a constructive course of action Beth called with two young friends.

  Thinking about Jill’s love affair, as she helped Katie prepare an extra pot of coffee, it seemed to Sara that there was nothing that a little common sense couldn’t put right. Colin Brown, at close quarters, appeared to be a very likeable young man and, if what he said was true, with a very promising future. If Jill would let her broach the subject to Hugh when he returned. Sara felt sure she could make him take a more realistic view of things. Not that she looked forward to such an interview, but it seemed quite clear that someone must try to straighten out a situation which had apparently only arisen from a series of misunderstandings in the first place. It would be much better, she felt, if Jill was allowed to see Colin without further opposition. It would at least enable her to see her romance in its proper perspective without this unnatural aura of drama.

  For the next hour Sara poured coffee, passed biscuits, and made herself generally useful in the background. If Beth Asquith remembered their sharp exchange earlier on the telephone, she made no reference to it, indeed, contrarily, she seemed to go out of her way to be charming, even to the extent of renewing her invitation to the dance in such a way that Sara found it impossible to refuse. But it was Jill’s attitude which puzzled her most. Why, she wondered, was the girl gushing so now over Beth? Again a definite feeling of mistrust smote Sara. In the end she gave up trying to fathom it out, and after washing up the empty coffee cups and seeing Biddy comfortably settled for the night, she went to bed herself with an aching head.

  Jill sought her out next morning in the library as she was filing away the morning’s mail. It was almost midday, but Jill still yawned sleepily, as if she had been up half the night. “I’m awfully sorry, darling, but I’m tired,” she explained unnecessarily. “Beth was late in going and when I looked in you were fast asleep. I almost woke you up, but you seemed to be having such pleasant dreams. Who were you dreaming about—Ian McKenzie?”

  Jill!” Sara turned rather impatiently to look at her, brushing back her long fair hair which she had been too busy to tie back before breakfast. “I had a busy day yesterday trying to sort out your affairs, and this morning I slept in. Now just tell
me what it is that you want, then leave me to get finished here.”

  She wasn’t sure that she should be talking to her employer’s sister in this fashion, but with Jill she had discovered it was little use beating about the bush.

  However, Jill wasn’t so easily discouraged. “Please, Sara,” she begged, “don’t be cross. I must have a word with you, in case Hugh comes home unexpectedly. It would just be like him!”

  Attractively dressed in wide blue trousers, she perched neatly on the edge of Sara’s desk, staring at her with huge appealing eyes. “It’s about Colin. I don’t want Hugh to know that he’s here. At least not straight away. Let it stew for a while—until Mum returns, perhaps?”

  “But, Jill,” Sara exclaimed, “don’t you think if you won Hugh around you’d have crossed your biggest hurdle? And,” she added deliberately, “how about Miss Asquith? She knows about Colin, even if she doesn’t know the details.”

  “I know!” Jill shrugged indifferently. “But somehow I don’t think she’ll spill the beans. If she wants me for a sister-in-law she knows she has to treat me right.”

  Jill didn’t like opposition. Her bottom lip stuck out peevishly.

  “Would Miss Asquith let a small thing like that deter her?” Sara queried drily, stung, by Jill’s egotistical reasoning.

  “You’d be surprised,” Jill smirked shrewdly. “I may be Hugh’s stepsister, but his father is just like a father to me, and Hugh’s awfully fond of Mum. And I certainly could tell him a thing or two about his darling Beth!”

  “Jill—Jill, be quiet!” Defensively Sara placed her palms flat over her ears and turned away from the girl’s determined little face. Why did she feel either years older or younger than Jill, never the same age? She took a breath and tried to attack from another direction. “I wonder if you quite realize what you’re asking. I’m to turn a blind eye while you spend hours in a lonely cottage with a stranger? Here on the island where you’re so well known, in fact anywhere, it just wouldn’t be ethical. Besides, I think Colin would agree.”

  “Of course he would,” Jill retorted with smug sarcasm. “He’s almost as strait-laced as you are. And if that’s all that’s worrying you I’m able to set your mind at rest. He rang this morning to say that his sister has arrived for a fortnight, so we should be well chaperoned.”

  Sara stared at Jill for a full minute before she spoke. There was too much to assimilate in too short a time, and she had a sinking feeling that it would take a brain much brighter than hers to weigh the situation up properly. However, there seemed no harm in allowing Jill and Colin this chance to get their relationship sorted out properly. Without opposition and its attendant stimulation, they might even discover they weren’t really so much in love after all.

  She looked at Jill squarely as she jumped to her feet. “All right, then,” she said stiffly. “If what you say is true, then I won’t say anything to Hugh, but neither will I deliberately cover up for you. You refuse to tell him yourself, and if he finds out some other way, well—just don’t expect my sympathy!”

  Before Sara had time to fully realize the enormity of her promise to Jill, Hugh came home. He came that same day, in the evening after dinner, walking in while she was sitting talking to Beth, who had called again unexpectedly on some slight pretext which Sara felt she was in no position to question. Jill, who had been out all afternoon, was obviously tired, and yawned fitfully as she turned over the pages of a month-old magazine.

  Beth saw him first as he opened the door.

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, a proprietorial air touching her delighted smile. “We didn’t expect you so soon. Have you had dinner?”

  “Yes,” he said, briefly returning Beth’s smile, and Sara twisted her head to look at him as he removed his heavy leather jacket before crossing to the fire. Underneath the jacket he wore one of his thick white sweaters which as usual seemed to emphasize his height and breadth of shoulder. His glance went from Beth to Sara, who for one taut moment saw herself reflected in the darkness of his eyes before he turned to Beth again. “I flew up with Jim Dixon from Carsaig. He conveniently happened to be in London on business.”

  “But you’re sure you’ve had dinner?” Beth asked again. Almost as if she was already mistress of the house, Sara decided, as Hugh with an audible sigh of relief sat down.

  “I had it at Carsaig. Jenny would have me stay. Jim ran me home, but he’s had a long day and wouldn’t come in. A cup of coffee would be welcome, though, if you have one handy?”

  “We’ve just finished.” Beth smiled, her eyes sparkling smugly. “Sara—or Jill, perhaps you could ring.” But Sara was already on her feet, clutching the cold coffee tray as if it was a lifebelt. Anything to escape Hugh’s darkly devastating eyes!”

  “I’ll make some fresh,” she said swiftly. “It’s Katie’s evening off. She and Jean have gone down to the village.”

  Bewilderingly he was by her side in a trice, ignoring Beth’s frown, taking the tray from her. “Let me,” he grinned smoothly. “I’ll come and get it. There are one or two things I’d like to discuss.”

  Sara pause, then Jill astonished her by jumping up and suggesting overbrightly, “Why not let me—rather than fight about it, Hugh?” She reached up and kissed him lightly on one cheek. “It’s nice to have you back, and if I get the perishing coffee you can sit back and relax. Your business with Sara can’t be that urgent!”

  To Sara’s surprise he didn’t argue. He thrust the tray passively into Jill’s outstretched hands, and promptly did as he was told.

  Sara watched as he stretched his long legs and gave his attention to Beth again.

  “You must be extremely tired, Hugh darling,” Beth remarked, her thin voice oozing sympathy as she regarded him tenderly. “But if you want to speak to Miss Winton about something, don’t mind me. Go right ahead.” Her sharp eyes glanced at Sara derisively.

  Sara bit her lip, unconsciously resentful. It seemed that he enjoyed making her a target for Beth’s disparaging remarks. She stared at him with a kind of helpless, unexplainable anger, until he turned his head. The dark eyes mocked and his shapely mouth twisted sardonically as he guessed what was on her mind. It was an effort to look away, and his next words enveloped her like a cloud.

  “What I have to say to Miss Winton will keep for five minutes. We can go to the library later.”

  Behind his words lay just the trace of a threat. What was she guilty of now? She shivered, wondering why this enigmatical man should arouse such a complex of feelings.

  “Any time you wish,” she-agreed readily enough, forcing a smile to her lips, reluctant to reveal even a hint of unrest, especially before Beth. But her voice sounded breathless even to herself as a hundred doubts nervously invaded her head.

  He was home sooner than anyone expected. Although Sara definitely remembered him saying that he would be back in a day or two, she hadn’t taken it literally. Had some new business cropped up in connection with Lochgoil? Something, perhaps, which could only be sorted out from this end? Or could it be Jill? Had some hidden aspect of her romance come to light? In London maybe he had discovered the whereabouts of Colin Brown!

  Such thoughts could only be painfully confusing. Sara ruthlessly clamped down, listening silently as Hugh talked to Beth about friends and acquaintances in London. She received the impression of time well spent, but not of any great catastrophe! It was a relief when Jill came back at last with fresh hot coffee.

  “Any news of Mum, Hugh?” Jill asked, smiling, as she sat down beside him and poured it out.

  Hugh shot her a lazy glance, slightly watchful. “I was in touch from London,” he told her. “She could be home very soon, probably within the next two weeks.”

  Sara noticed that Jill’s cheeks went pink. “She might have rung me,” she retorted indignantly. “I’ve scarcely heard from her since she left. Why should she phone you?”

  “It was mostly business, my dear,” he said placatingly, drinking his coffee off in one long draught and
refilling his cup himself. “And actually I rang her.”

  “You’ll be hearing very soon, Jill, I’m sure,” Beth frowned at Jill with a slightly reproving smile which made her seem much older. “You know she has a lot on her mind.”

  “On holiday,” Jill snorted, staring sullenly at Beth.

  “You’re tired, Jill.” Hugh put down his cup with sharp emphasis. “And it’s getting late.” He stared pointedly at the clock. “Beth was just saving she must be going, and I would like a word with Sara before she goes to bed. If you would go along to the library, Sara, I’ll join you in a minute, after I’ve seen Beth off.” His eyes slewed to where Sara sat very upright in her chair.

  Sara looked away from him quickly as she rose to her feet, pausing just long enough to say tensely, “If you don’t mind I’ll pop and see Biddy first. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  Not daring to keep him waiting, she flew upstairs to make sure that Biddy was comfortable for the night. She had taken her some hot milk and biscuits about nine o’clock, and now she found her just dozing off. It seemed to please her greatly to know that Hugh was home, again.

  “I’m very thankful that Mr. Hugh’s back safely,” she cried. “Indeed I have never cared for those flying machines!”

  She smiled happily as Sara tucked her in gently and switched off the light.