Winds from the Sea

by Margaret Pargeter

She wanted to hit out at him frantically, to beat her small clenched fists against him, anything to break that inflexible self-control. “I hate you,” she said soberly, from the very depth of her being.

  “And heaven help me!” he exploded with soft violence which flicked her as sharply as a knife. A dangerous light flickered through his eyes as they took in her extreme pallor. The crystal chandeliers hanging from the ornate ceiling spilled brilliant light over her face. There was nowhere to hide. Hugh looked like murder, plain unadulterated murder!

  “I know all about dear Mr. Brown. That is,” he amended tersely, “I do now. And as far as I know I can agree with you that he’s all right. But that’s not the point, and you know it! You deliberately set out to deceive me, and I don’t give a damn for extenuating circumstances. I asked something of you, and you agreed, but behind my back you’ve fought me all along.”

  Sara’s eyes, too big for her white face, met his beseechingly as pain and resentment raced through her veins.

  “I don’t see it that way, Hugh. I thought I was acting for the best. If I considered my own part at all it came only secondary to my concern for Jill.”

  Anger washed over his face and his voice was derisive. “Such a neat little speech, Sara. Did you expect an ovation? Instead of protesting so much, why not confess that you were determined to have your own way from the start? Rather like a spoilt child. Well, thanks to Beth, my eyes have been opened, and now I know exactly what you are.”

  “How dare you!” Hot colour ran wildly over her cheeks, turning her into a small fury. The dance ended with the music crashing in a final crescendo, and they stood staring at each other, regardless of the people around them. Anger stiffened Sara’s spine, chasing the tears from her tight throat, and she threw back her head defiantly. “Don’t you think,” she cried frankly, “that the boot could be on the other foot? You discovered that you were mistaken about Colin Brown, but you didn’t think of enlightening anyone else with the information! However did that slip your fabulous memory? Both Jill and I could have been grateful.” Barely coherent, she turned, not waiting for a reply as she almost ran from his side. No great lover of scenes, she was already aware that she and Hugh were attracting some attention. Quickly she made her way out of the ballroom, her heart flooding with relief when almost immediately she bumped into Ian.

  He was walking down the hall, obviously looking for her, and she felt a guilty sense of shame as his face lit up as she emerged from the doorway. Was she really as deceitful as she felt? Perhaps. But she found it impossible to fight the emotions which drove her on.

  “Please, Ian,” she begged, distraught, clutching his arm, her face white, “I’ve the most dreadful headache. Could you possibly take me home?”

  Ian frowned as he looked at her intently, his eyes anxious, his medically trained mind instantly alert. “You haven’t had an accident, or anything like that, have you, Sara?”

  “Not really ... not unless you could call an argument with one’s boss an accident,” she replied rather wildly, with a forced laugh. “The dance is nearly over, Ian. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind leaving?”

  “Oh, of course not.” He looked at her a little oddly before glancing at his watch. “Actually I was just going to suggest it myself. In another half hour we’d probably be stuck behind a queue of cars a mile long. If you can manage to find your coat, I’ll have the car around to the door in a jiffy.”

  Sara still felt slightly ashamed when she thought about it a few hours later. It was only after he had left that she realized that he had said very little more. It was almost as if he had inadvertently guessed where her real feelings lay. He had driven her back to Lochgoil without making one adverse comment, although she sensed that he had been curious about her disagreement with Hugh. Well, he would almost certainly find out soon enough—after she had gone.

  Her head still ached, in spite of the tablets which he had insisted on her taking, but she tried to ignore it as she jumped out of bed. At least she had had a short, if uneasy, sleep.

  It had been the sound of a car in the courtyard below that had woke her up. She remembered that Hugh had arranged to spend the day with John Finley, and would be leaving early. Obviously he wouldn’t allow any dispute with his secretary to interfere with his pleasure.

  She reached the window just in time to see him disappear, just catching a fleeting glimpse of his dark head as he drove away. As she turned abruptly her eyes fell on her discarded party dress on the floor. In the small hours of that morning, when she had taken it off, it hadn’t seemed to matter what happened to it. Nor did it now. In fact there seemed only one thing to do with it. Swiftly she went to the commodious wardrobe and opened the door, reaching for her suitcases and an armful of clothes which she hastily packed.

  She must leave Lochgoil straight away. She couldn’t bear to stay and face Hugh again, not after the fiasco of the ball. His contempt for her would be too much of an embarrassment between them, apart from her love for him which she might not be able to hide. And there was also a girl’s pride. Not, she thought, with a painful jerk of her heart, that she had much of that left—just enough to make her determined to escape. Besides, her work here was nearly done. Hugh shouldn’t have any difficulty in completing it himself. Probably Beth would be willing to give him any assistance he might require.

  Quickly finishing her packing, Sara made plans. She would ring for a taxi from Salen. The man there was always very obliging. There would be a ferry from Craignure. She didn’t know what time, but he would tell her—the island people always knew these things. From Oban she would catch a train to Glasgow, and then London. With any luck she could be home by late evening.

  Two hours later she sat on the pier at Craignure. It was only eleven o’clock, but the taxi proprietor had said that the ferry would be there before twelve, so she hadn’t long to wait.

  The household at Lochgoil had still been sleeping when she left. She had written a short note which she had left in the library for Hugh, and told Biddy briefly that she had been called away. Whether Biddy believed her or not she couldn’t be sure, but she had promised to tell the others when they came down. No doubt Hugh would think of a suitable explanation when he returned,,

  Now, she sat on an overturned fish-crate, just as she had done so many weeks ago when she had first arrived. Only this time she looked towards the sea, rather than the land. And this time it was a boat that she waited for, not a man with a sharp tongue and even sharper eyes, with whom she had formed such a turbulent relationship.

  It was a beautiful morning, cool and fresh, with only a faint drift of cloud on the horizon. Sara closed her eyes resolutely against the almost magnetic pull of the scene. Once away from the island she was sure to feel better, but until then she was determined to keep her mind sphinx-like and refuse to think.

  Then suddenly her tear-hazed eyes flew open, her heart began pounding, and there was a weakness in her lower limbs. A Land-Rover wheeled off the north road, raced along the pier and drew up with a scream of brakes by her side. A man jumped down, tall and dark ...

  Oh, no! Sara’s hand flew to her throat. Not again! Unmindful of the weakness of her legs, she stumbled unsteadily to her feet, blinking her thick lashes, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes.

  This time he didn’t stop to ask questions. Without speaking, or even looking at her properly, he picked up her luggage with familiar ruthlessness and flung it haphazardly into the back. Then with the same utter disregard for her feelings he took her forcibly by the arm, and after thrusting her into the passenger seat, jumped in beside her and slammed the door.

  “Just where did you think you were going?” he ground out, as he reversed dangerously off the pier.

  He was in a furious mood, as she could see, but there wasn’t much she could do about it as something seemed to have paralysed her voice. At last she managed, weakly, “You have my note?”

  “Yes.” He changed gear savagely on a corner. “I certainly have! I’ve also s
een Jill, but that’s beside the point. Jill has no brains, but I expected more of you.” His extreme sarcasm was not lost on her. She turned very quickly and stared out of the window, tears stinging the back of her eyes. “I thought you’d gone for the whole day,” she murmured inaudibly.

  His jaw clamped tight. “And so you were running home to Jane, and London,” he said tersely.

  There was a long silence. The palms of Sara’s hands were moist and she clenched her fingers around them tightly. The Land-Rover sped on. The road narrowed, and suddenly he whipped the vehicle up a side-track and stopped. They were surrounded by tall pine trees. She recognized the place immediately. It was where they had stopped before, on that first day.

  Hugh switched off the engine and rounded on her at once, his eyes grimly noting her startled expression. “Now,” he said sharply, unmercifully, “we’re going to talk, you and I.”

  Something was aching at the base of Sara’s throat and she pressed her hand to it instinctively. “Well, do so by all means if you think it will make any difference,” she forced herself to say carelessly.

  His hand shot out to her shoulder, deliberately hurting, gripping it hard. “Just listen!” The dark eyes glinted sardonically, and the inflection in his voice brought a flush to her cheeks.

  “I’d arranged to spend the day with John Finley, but after what happened last night I changed my mind. Unfortunately he’s not on the phone, so there was no other way but to drive over and explain. Mistakenly, I expected you all to be still in bed when I got back.”

  His dark eyes held hers until she could stand it no longer. Her eyelids dropped. “You said you’ve seen Jill?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he bit off curtly, “and she’s explained a lot. All about bullying you to go along with her plans to keep her boy-friend hidden. I’m afraid she was quite furious when I told her it hadn’t been necessary.”

  As he paused reflectively Sara said urgently, “You said something about Colin at the dance. Something about him being all right?”

  He put a finger under her chin, making her look at him again. “Colin Brown had been caught in a drugs raid, in a big city club. I don’t suppose Jill thought to mention that!”

  As Sara shook her startled head he went on, “Fortunately he was cleared, but before this happened Jill’s mother received disturbing news about her first husband in America. You see, she’d been a widow for five years before she married my father, and if the information she had received was correct it could have meant that her first husband was still alive, and I suppose, technically speaking, that she’d never been legally married to my father at all. And all this on top of my father’s death! The poor woman was nearly out of her mind.

  “However, it has proved to be a case of mistaken identity. To cut a long story short, her first husband was lost in a bad air crash over Mexico, and his papers had fallen into another chap’s hands. Then after all this time this same man is involved in a serious accident, and these papers are found on him. They were the only means of identification the police had, and this is why they contacted London.”

  Dismayed, Sara tried to sort it out. “Couldn’t Jill have gone with her—or you, perhaps?”

  “She refused to consider this. Of course her sister in Baltimore is with her, but she doesn’t want Jill to know anything about it, especially now that there’s no need. Rumours have an insidious way of getting around.”

  “And so she asked you to keep an eye on Jill while she was away, and you more or less ordered my cooperation as soon as I arrived ...”

  His mouth was mocking and tender. “Remember, Sara, the domestic scene wasn’t mine, not then, at any rate. Maybe I did overplay it a bit. A heavy-handed defence against a pair of beautiful blue eyes.”

  She tried to retain a degree of sanity and to ignore her racing heart. “Last night, you said you knew that Colin was all right, yet you never mentioned this before.”

  He grimaced wryly. “Because I didn’t think it necessary. I actually thought that Jill had forgotten about him. Put it down, if you like, to my state of mind!”

  “But when did you find out?” Sara persisted. “When I went down to London and saw James Kerr. He was looking into the case for me. This was when,” his eyes softened, “I met Jane Marlee, and we talked.”

  The breeze through the open window stirred Sara’s hair. She refused to be sidetracked. “Last night you were so furious!”

  “Of course, my darling,” his tone was light, purposely mocking. “You might recall that I wasn’t aware that Mr. Brown was on the island, let alone firmly established in a cottage, and when Beth murmured the information so sweetly in my ear I’m afraid I saw red. Not particularly about his being here—it was your knowing about it which rocked me.”

  Her eyes were wide, deeply shadowed. She looked back at him, her soft curved lips parting with contrition.

  “I am sorry, Hugh. Please believe me.”

  “Darling,” he caught her close, feeling with fierce satisfaction her slender yielding body against his own. “I’m the one who must apologize, not you. I can only say that love can make a man sensitive as well as blind. Last night I wanted to beg you to marry me. Heaven knows, I’ve never let anything stand in my way before. It was something crazily mixed up with Ben and Ian MacKenzie that stopped me. I wanted the setting right, perhaps because I’d never proposed to a girl before. Normally Beth’s sweet vindictiveness doesn’t bother me.”

  “You don’t love her?” Contrarily, and very femininely, Sara’s arms went up around his neck.

  Hugh leaned down to her. “There’s never been anything between Beth and me, darling. She only thinks she likes me more than other men.”

  She smiled gently but didn’t argue. Somehow Beth Asquith didn’t matter any more.

  His lips were against hers with gently deepening pressure, and there was nothing humble about him now. He was all demanding male as his arms crushed her to him.

  “I love you,” he said, in a low swift voice. The moan of the wind was the only sound for some minutes, until he lifted his dark head and stared down at her softly flushed face. “I love you, darling,” he repeated thickly, “but would you be prepared to marry me and live at Lochgoil? I intended running the estate and keeping an eye on the London office from here.”

  From the whirlpool of emotions surrounding her she raised starry eyes to his, her mouth quivering.

  “I’ll look after you, Sara,” he promised. “I’ll try to make up for all you’ve lost.”

  From somewhere out in the woods a bird was singing, and the air was filled with the green summer fragrance of the island. There was a tenderness in his voice which she couldn’t deny.

  “Darling,” she murmured indistinctly, “I love you so much that I wouldn’t mind where we lived, but Lochgoil would be perfect. Lochgoil, and the two of us together,” she whispered, as his lips came down on hers once more.

  She had come here such a short time ago with an aching heart. Now it was thundering in tune with the man who held her so tenderly, and there was nothing in her heart but the sound of the sea, and music.