by Lucy Gillen
CHAPTER FOUR
BILL was looking at her in much the same way as Barney had often done, Samantha thought. As if he despaired of ever being able to see her reason, only Bill looked more tolerant and, in the necessarily brief look he had given her, she thought he was at least trying to see her point of view, and he was smiling. 'It isn't that I don't want to come to your home,' she told him, 'but well, I don't think it's right to involve you in my private quarrels.' They were driving along a deserted country road and there were few distractions in the way of traffic so that he was able to give at least a part of his attention to her. 'I'm already involved,' he reminded her. 'I'm aiding your escape, remember?' 'And I'm very grateful. Bill, honestly I am.' She was only vaguely aware of the wonderful scenery they were driving through, too conscious that Bar-ney's fast, pursuing car was hot on their trail to be relaxed enough to enjoy it. 'You don't have to be grateful,' he told her. 'In fact I'm quite enjoying my role as knight errant. As long as your Barney doesn't catch up with us,' he added, with a quick glance in the rear view mirror. 'I thought I saw someone behind us just now, about a couple of hundred yards back. 'That'll be him,' she said. 56 Bill frowned. 'Then that settles it,' he said. 'If he's that close behind us, I'm not abandoning you at the local pub. You must come home with me.' Oh no, please. Bill, I'd much rather not. You don't know Barney. I don't want him to to make a scene at your home, with your family there.' You think he'd go that far?' She shook her head. 'I don't know,' she confessed. But I'd much rather not take the chance. Bill, honestly.' 'And I'd much rather you were at the house where I can keep an eye on you.' She shook her head firmly. 'No, Bill. It's very sweet of you, but I won't involve your family in my troubles. After all, it's my own fault Barney's behaving as he is and I can deal with him quite well on my own,' She hoped the latter part was true, but it wasn't fair to involve Bill or his family in her differences with Barney. She smiled at him and put a hand on his arm. 'I'll be O.K. at the local inn,' she said softly, 'and you'll be close enough to run to if I need you.' And I hope you will run to me,' he told her, with a brief glance over his shoulder. 'You're beginning to be pretty important to me, lovely Samantha.' She smiled, a little uncertainly. Of course Bill would expect this whole thing to end in only one way, and she was very uncertain at the moment whether she was prepared to step out of the frying pan into the fire. Barney was as much as she could cope with at the moment. 'You've been a wonderful knight errant. Bill,' 57 she told him. 'And I really do appreciate it.' He looked at her again and smiled wryly. 'I hope you don't think I make a habit of doing things like this,' he said. 'I don't know what came over me exactly, but as soon as I saw you at that hotel in Brighton, I knew you were going to be something rather special.' 'Bill ' 'All right, all right,' he said hastily, before she could say any more. 'I suppose you've got as much as you can manage at the moment with your Barney on the trail, so I won't rush into anything, but I don't want you to think that I'm doing this from entirely unselfish motives.' She sighed. 'I'll remember,' she said. The small local inn in the village of Barsheil was almost too good to be true, Samantha thought when she took time to look around her. The village itself was every bit as pretty as Bill had claimed it was, and she was quite enchanted with it. Looking out of a little window, tucked away under the eaves, she smiled and thought of Brigadoon. Barsheil too, had a certain fairytale quality about it. A collection of tiny houses clustered in the lee of tall, blue mountains that shimmered in the summer heat. From here too, she could see the big grey stone house that squatted part way up one of the nearer mountains, surrounded by tall green trees. The house that Bill had pointed out to her as they drove into the village. 'I'm not too far away when you want me,' he had 58 told her. 'And I'll give you my telephone number.' She had wondered just how many visitors the little pub could take, for there was already another staying there when she arrived and she rather hoped that there would be no room for Barney when he came. She heard another car draw up outside and there had been no sign of it leaving yet. A hasty look had confirmed that the new arrival was Barney and from the look of it he would be staying. As if to confirm it, a moment later there were heavy footsteps on the old wooden stairs and she sighed as they passed her door. Evidently the Laird o' the Glen was bigger than it appeared from outside. She washed and changed her clothes, feeling a kind of resignation about Barney. He seemed determined to follow her wherever she went and there was little she could do about it. She was giving the finishing touches to her hair when there was a tap on the door and she stared at her reflection in the mirror. For a moment she did not answer the knock, she did not even move, then she turned and looked at the solid wooden door uncertainly 'Sam!' He had the discretion to keep his voice down at least, but he was rapping the door again, much harder this time, and she hastened to open it before someone else heard it too. He looked even darker than usual standing there on the dimly lit landing, and incredibly tall under the low, beamed ceiling, his smile showing white and wide as he leaned on the door jamb. 59 Hello, darling.' Samantha struggled for a moment with an unexpected temptation to laugh, but she resisted it firmly and instead put on the sternest face she could summon. 'Go away,' she told him. 'Go away, Barney, or I'll call someone.' His grin widened and he put one foot over the threshold. 'Bill Smith?' he suggested, and laughed. 'I'll call the landlord,' she threatened. 'I'll say you forced your way in here and attacked me.' Barney shook his head, tut-tutting reproachfully. 'Oh, that's terribly old-fashioned, darling, and he wouldn't do anything about it anyway.' She eyed him suspiciously. 'Of course he will,' she said, but he was still shaking his head. 'He knows all about it. I told him.' 'You you told him what?' She stepped back, too stunned for the moment to even protest when he followed her into the room and carefully closed the door behind him. 'What have you told him. Barney?' He grinned,, watching her with raised brows, waiting for her to react. 'That my wife's run off with another man, and I'm trying to get her to come back.' Samantha's eyes widened incredulously. 'Your_ your wife?' He nodded, still smiling. 'You oh, you you liar ' 'Well, it's near enough,' Barney said, blandly unconcerned. 'It's only a matter of a few days now.' 'I'm not your wife,' Samantha declared firmly. And I never will be.' 'Oh, I'm sure you will, darling, in just let me 60 see, what day is it today?' I don't care what day it is,' she argued desperately, feeling suddenly trapped. 'I'm not going to marry you. Barney. I'm not!' 'You promised,' he said softly, another step bringing him closer so that she instinctively clenched her hands. There was a dark, determined gleam in his eyes that did nothing to reassure her and she wished desperately that Bill was there to deal with it. 'I didn't promise at all,' she denied, a little breathlessly. 'I was I was ' 'If you say forced into it, darling,' he said quietly, 'I shall probably get violent, as our friend downstairs recommended.' Samantha blinked her disbelief. 'He he did what?' Barney nodded, his face serious, although there was a wicked gleam in his eyes. 'He said I should take a tough line,' he told her. 'Apparently it's the local custom to beat runaway wives you might remember that when next you consider swapping me for Bill Smith.' 'I don't believe it.' 'What? That they don't beat their wives?' He shook his head slowly. 'Ooh, I don't know, darling, they're a pretty hard lot, these Scots, you know.' 'I don't believe any of it.' Any more than I believe you were forced into saying you'd marry me,' he told her. 'You agreed to it of your own free will, and I dislike being left at the altar at the last minute.' 61 'Oh, I seel' She nodded wisely, a small, scornful smile curling her lip. 'It's your pride that's hurt. You don't care a damn about me at all, it's because you don't like the idea of being being jilted that you're chasing me all over the country. I might have known it ' 'Have you quite finished?' he asked quietly, and she turned her back on him. 'Quite finished,' she said. 'So you might just as well go back without me.' 'And leave you to Young Lochinvar?' He laughed softly, standing so close behind her that she felt the warmth of it flutter against the top of her head. 'Oh no, darling, when I go, you're coming with me.' 'Then you're in for a long wait,' she retorted. 'And stop calli
ng me darling.' 'Why? I'm supposed to be courting you, remember? I'm laying seige to your hard little heart, and I'm not easily deterred.' She turned round and faced him again. 'Oh, Barney, please I I don't I don't want you here.' His dark face looked completely serious now and he was still standing much too close for her comfort. The hard, thudding beat of her heart was something new and the fact that it was happening when Barney was there, both puzzled and dismayed her. There had never been anything like that with Barney. None of the usual things that are supposed to happen when a girl's in love. She shook her head when he reached out his hands for her, but was too late to avoid them and she felt herself drawn into his arms inexorably. 'No, Bar62 ney!' It sounded almost like a plea, and she put her clenched hands against his chest as he kissed her, gently at first, and then with a fierceness that took her breath away and left her trembling. When he released her and she opened her eyes again it was to see an expression on his face that she did not recognise. She had seen him serious often, 'even angry at times, but this was something quite new that sent a chill shiver slipping along her spine like an icy finger. 'He's not going to take you away from me,' he said huskily. 'I'm damned if I'll let himi' 'Barney!' , 'Get packed,' he told her, his hands tight on her arms. 'I'm taking you back where you belong ' 'Nol' His dark eyes blazed at her in a way she had never seen before and she felt a sharp shiver of fear for a second as she looked at him. Then he took a deep breath and shook his head slowly. 'O.K., Sam, have it your way.' 'You you mean you'll go home, and stop following me?' It was ridiculous, but she could have sworn that the sensation she felt at that moment was disappointment. Disappointment that he should give up now, and apparently so easily. A hint of smile crooked his wide mouth, and he shook his head. 'Oh no, darling, not just like that. But if you want to keep on running, I'll be right behind you. You do it the hard way, if that's how you want it!' 'Bill won't let you ' she began, but he was 63 shaking his head again, and he looked dismayingly confident. 'Bill Smith has a business to run,' he told her. 'He can't stand guard on you all the time.' 'It's it's persecution,' she declared, feeling tearful and at the same time annoyed because she was afraid he would discover it. Tears would be bound to be taken for weakness and she wasn't going to weaken. Not having come so far. Not a bit of it.' 'What about your business?' she asked. 'You've gone off and left your office, why shouldn't Bill?' He looked at her steadily for several seconds. 'Quite a few reasons,' he said quietly at last. 'A I have the full approval of both my partners in this and, B I doubt very much if Bill Smith would consider it worth disrupting his business for a lost cause.' 'I'm I'm not a lost cause!' she denied vehemently. 'I won't be treated as if you own me, and I won't go back with you, ever. I'm staying here.' 'For good?' He was beginning to revert to his more normal manner again. More amused than angry, and she knew that those threatening tears were not far away now. 'For as long as I like. Until you go home.' He was actually laughing now, softly and almost to himself, and he was shaking his head in that same inexorable way that dismayed her. 'Not without you, darling. When you go I go, and not until.' 'He means it,' Samantha said plaintively, when Bill 64 I: came down to see her the following morning. She was a little disappointed that he had not appeared the previous evening, but she supposed he had a lot to say to his family, having been away for some time, and it would be necessary to explain to them why she had not come to the house with him as they had planned. He looked more serious too, than she had expected, less as if he was ready to offer consolation. , 'He means it. Bill,' she insisted. -He's as as stubborn as a mule. I know him.' I expect you do,' he said quietly, but she was too concerned at the moment to question his meaning. 'Do you really think he'll stay on here?' Samantha nodded. 'He'll stay, if he says he will' She looked at him appealingly, her huge eyes deep blue between their thick fringing of lashes. 'Oh, Bill, what am I going to do?' He had that uneasy look again, and this time she noticed it, wondering what had happened to change him, until he spoke again. 'Samantha__ Obviously what he had to say was not coming easily and her heart sank when she thought she recognised the signs. 'I was speaking to McFee, the landlord, just before you came down, and I I wondered at my chilly reception.' He did not look at her as he spoke, but down at his hands, and Samantha guessed what was coming, even before he said it. 'Samantha. he says this this Barney claims to be your husband. 'And you believe him?' She sounded bitter but she couldn't help it. Bill was bound to resent being taken for a wife-stealer, but he might have taken 65 her word for it, rather than that of the landlord or, indirectly. Barney. 'I didn't say I believe him,' he denied, but it was all too obvious he had. 'But well, it does place me in rather an awkward position, Samantha, when McFee believes it.' 'I suppose it does.' 'He won't keep it to himself,' he went on. 'He's a gossip and soon everybody in the village will know that I brought a a runaway wife home with me.' 'But I'm not a runaway wife,' Samantha said. 'You know I'm not. Bill.' J know you're not,' he agreed, and sounded so reasonable about it that she could almost see his point of view. 'But who else will believe you're not? I've known these people all my life and they'll take a very serious view of it, a much more serious one than you'd believe, probably.' 'What you're trying to say,' Samantha said bitterly, 'is that you find me an embarrassment, is that it. Bill?' 'I don't blame you, of course I don't,' he insisted. 'But with him following you all the way up here it does lend colour to the statement, you must admit.' 'I admit nothing,' she declared. There were tears of angry frustration prickling at the back of her eyes and she sat with her hands clenched tightly, almost ready to submit to Barney's particular form of blackmail, and go home. 'You're staying on here?' 'I don't know.' She shook her head slowly, then raised her eyes and studied him for a moment in 66 silence, so that he could not look at her. 'I don't suppose there's much point now, is there. Bill?' She laughed shortly and got to her feet. 'I'll bet you're glad now that I didn't come to the house, aren't you?' 'Samantha ' 'Oh, it doesn't matter!' she told him impatiently. 'There are other places I can go.' Her lip curled for a moment wryly. 'And other knight errants, I expect, if I need them. Thank you for helping me so far. Bill.' He was on his feet, his face a picture of remorse as he tried to take her hands in his. 'Oh, please, Samantha Don't go away thinking so badly of me!' She looked up at him so nice and ordinary. Maybe that was why he couldn't face the disapproval of the people he had known all his life, no matter how he professed to feel for her. It would take someone like Barney to face that prospect without turning a hair. Someone definitely not nice and ordinary. There was no one about the next morning when she came down to breakfast, and the landlord looked at her with a rather jaundiced eye, she thought, when he saw her. Td I'd like my bill, if you please,' she told him, and did not miss his swift glance upwards, as if he was thinking of Barney'Ye'll be away then?' he asked, and she nodded. 'If I can get a car or something to take me to the 67 nearest station,' she told him. Ts there any chance of it?' He looked dubious and shook his head. 'There'd mebbe be a chance if Willie Brown is going that way,' he told her. 'But otherwise it means a walk for ye.;"Is it far?' She was determined to leave, now that he seemed bent on discouraging her. 'Aye, about three miles.' 'Three miles!,' She stared at him, her dismay evident, and she could almost have sworn he smiled as he turned away to get on with his morning chores. 'Ye'll be havin' a guid breakfast inside ye before ye leave?' he asked a moment later, and she hesitated. 'I I can't walk three miles carrying a suitcase,' she said. 'It's a tidy wee step.' She swallowed that understatement without comment, and sat down miserably on one of the bar stools. 'I don't see what else I can do, though,' she added. He turned and looked at her over one shoulder, his round, rubicund face wearing a faint look of triumph, as if he had manoeuvred the whole thing himself and was quite proud of it. 'Ye could get ye're husband ta take ye,' he suggested, and Samantha felt the colour high in her cheeks as she glared at his back. 'He's not my husband,' she declared firmly. 'And you have no right to suggest that he is.' He turned round then and faced her across the 68 r broad wooden bar, his deep-set eyes l
ooking at her speculatively. 'He seems an honest enough mon ta me,' he told her. 'An' he claims ye're his wife_I'm I; no inclined ta argue wi' him about it.' I 'Well, I am,' Samantha retorted. 'I'm leaving right now, with or without breakfast and with or without transport. I refuse to stay here another minute under the same roof with him. Please make out my bill, Mr. McFee.' The broad, bulky shoulders shrugged and he went off to the nether regions of the living quarters, presumably to do as she asked, and make out her bill. [ She thought she heard footsteps on the old stairs, ; but there was no sign of Barney yet and the landlord returned after a few minutes with her bill. A surprisingly reasonable one, which she paid promptly and received a receipt, all in silence. 'I'll fetch your case down for ye,' he offered, and was off up the stairs before she could say anything. 'Thank you.' She looked down at the heavy suitcase unenthusiastically. It would be a lot less pleasant carrying it along those narrow, almost deserted roads for three miles than it had been coming, with Bill for company and the car to make things easy for her. 'Mind how ye go.' The admonition was accompanied by a smile that made her suspicious, but she did not stop to enquire into its meaning. The road was rough-surfaced, but fortunately it was possible to walk on the coarse, springy turf that edged it, and stretched away for what seemed endless miles on either side. It was quiet, and rather 69 beautiful at the moment, but after three miles no doubt she would see it rather differently. The sun grew hot more quickly than she had anticipated and her case seemed to be far heavier than it had ever been before. She had stopped to ring Uncle Nicholas from the telephone in the bar, but he had scarcely been encouraging and she had merely told him that she was leaving the Laird o' the Glen and going on somewhere else. She could not tell him where she was going because she didn't yet know herself. Surely that station could not be much further now. She set down her suitcase and stood upright, a hand to her aching back, taking off her shoes for a moment to rest her feet. Some disturbing sound on the still air brought her round sharply, and she though she recognised the sound of a car engine, but could not be quite sure yet. She stood there beside the winding road, with the wide endless-seeming moors around her and the sky high and blue over her head, a tiny, lonely figure in that vast landscape. Her red-gold head caught the sun and shone like silk as she swung it back from her face the better to try and see the approaching car. Then her heart sank and the first tears of tiredness and frustration ran dismally down her cheeks. 'Ohnol' She closed her eyes and stood for a moment trying not to recognise the red, shiny familiarity of Barney's car as it sped towards her. When she opened them again it was even nearer and she sat down on her suitcase, resigned to the inevitable. 7o It was only minutes before he drew up alongside her and from his grin she knew he expected to find her in exactly this state of dusty tiredness. He opened his door and got out, coming round to her and standing for a moment, hands on his hips looking down at her. 'Had enough?' he asked then, and Samantha burst into tears. He was beside her in a moment, his arms holding her close to him, while she hid her dusty, tearful face against his clean white shirt. 'Sami Oh, Sam, why are you so stubborn?' He spoke close to her ear and there was a kind of exasperated tolerance in his voice. 'You had no need to do this, you know.' 'I I w-wanted to g-get away from you,' she sobbed miserably, lifting her face at last and rubbing, at her eyes. Why were handkerchiefs always so elusive at moments like this? 'Here I' He pushed a large white square into her hand, and she accepted it with a muffled thanks, mopping at her dusty face with it, still standing in the circle of his arms, as if she had not yet realised where she was. 'Better?' he grinned down at her, and she realised at last, and pulled away from him. 'Yes thank you.' 'And ready to be sensible and ride with me?' 'No!' He put his hands on his hips again and regarded her much as he might have done a particularly stupid child who refused to learn. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Sam, stop digging in your heels. You can't walk any further with that damned case, and you 7i don't know where you're going anyway, do you?' 'I'll decide when I get to the station,' she told him. 'If you get to the station,' he retorted. 'You never will at this rate.' 'I'll manage.' She viewed the road that snaked away on either side of them and her heart sank. Maybe she wouldn't manage this time, and she should take advantage of his offer, at least as far as the station. 'You won't, you know!' She glanced up at him and saw an expression that boded ill for any argument she might put forward. I can ' He bent and lifted her off her feet, somehow managing to retrieve her shoes at the same time. 'I'm not standing here all day arguing with you, you'll do as you're told for once.' He dumped her unceremoniously in the passenger seat of the car and went back for her suitcase, and she was so relieved to be able to get off her feet and sit on something comfortable at last that she made no fuss_for the moment. He put her case in the back of the car with his own and slid behind the steering wheel again, glancing at her as he started the engine. 'O.K.?' he asked, and she nodded. They drove in silence for what seemed like a very short time and then the first small dwellings of another village came into sight and she looked out for a station. It was a bigger place than Barsheil, and almost a small town, and she caught a brief glimpse 72 Sof a tidy little stone building as they sped through the main street, turning in her seat as they passed & by. 'Barney!' j He did not even look at her, but she could see a Jhint of a smile round his mouth as he drove on. I'Nice little place, isn't it?' he said amiably. 'That was the station I' ? 'I know, but you don't need the station now, ;you've got me.' 'I don't want you I' She spoke through her teeth and he turned his head briefly and frowned at her in mock reproach. 'Now don't be like that, darling. I can save you an awful lot of train fares.' 'I don't want to go home!' He shook his head. .'Uncle Nicholas would be very hurt to hear you say that.' 'I know now that Uncle Nicholas is as bad as you are,' she told him. 'He's he's on your side, and it's not fair.' 'Of course he's on my side, although you make it sound like gang warfare the way you say it.' 'He wants me to marry you for the same reason you do, and Uncle Robert. You're all ganged up against me.' 'Oh, stop making yourself sound like some poor little downtrodden orphan,' he told her impatiently. 'Nicholas and Father are as fond of you as I am, and you know it.' 'That's the trouble,' Samantha wailed plaintively. 'You should feel differently at least.' 73 'How can I, when you won't let me?' She looked at him for a moment, uncertainly, wondering if it was possible she had misjudged him. Then she shook her head decidedly. 'I know you only worry about being jilted,' she told him at last. 'You don't like the idea and you'll do anything to stop me changing my mind. Even even make love to me if you have to.' She saw the way his hands tightened on the steering wheel and made the knuckles white, wondering if she had gone too far this time. 'I ought to__' He set his wide mouth in a straight, tight line and kept his eyes on the road ahead of them, and for a long while he was silent battling, she thought, with a temper that was more fierce than anything she had seen before. Then he gradually relaxed, shaking his head as if to rid himself of the mood. You take a lot of convincing, Sam,' he told her quietly after a minute or two. 'But I will convince you if it takes me the rest of my life.' She sat still for a while, then ventured a glance at him from the corners of her eyes, a new idea formulating in her mind. A rather intriguing idea, she thought. 'I could do with a holiday,' she said at last. 'A change of scenery.' 'Well, you're getting that, aren't you?' 'Yes.' She looked at him, wondering if she was stretching his tolerance too far. 'You want to convince me how sincere you are,' she went on, watching him closely. 'Are you prepared to take me around the country? Wherever I want to go?' He was a moment or two answering. 'You mean 74 tyou want to go on with this this jaunting?' he said, land she nodded. J 'I'd like to. Apart from one or two times, I've I'quite enjoyed myself.' I He gave her a swift, meaningful glance over his shoulder. 'Yes, you would,' he told her. 'You would enjoy playing me up and leading that poor benighted Bill Smith around by his nose.' 'I did no such thing!' she protested indignantly, remembering how she had been what she considered deserted. 'How did you manage to get away from him?' he asked then, and she hesita
ted to tell him, knowing he would find the truth much to his liking. 'He he believed that silly tale you told McFee,' she said at last. 'He believed I was married to you.' He laughed, as she had known he would, and she clenched her hands tightly. 'So he dropped you like a hot brick,' he guessed. 'Oh dear, poor old Sam! Your knight in shining armour wasn't quite up to standard, was he, darling?' 'It was your fault,' she accused. 'If you hadn't told that monstrous lie, it would have been all right.' 'It is all right as far as I'm concerned,' he told her with a smile. 'At least I've achieved my object and got you to come with me, even if I have had to promise to cart you around all over the country.' Samantha looked at him, her mouth curled into a smile he would have viewed with suspicion, if he had been able to see it. 'You'd better wait and see if you still want to take me around all over the 75 country,' she told him. 'I feel like spreading my wings and you may not like the way I fly.' 'That,' Barney said with a hasty glance over his shoulder, 'is highly unlikely.' 76