Sally Wentworth - Tiger in His Lair

by Sally Wentworth

  'Yes, of course.' He got to his feet at once. 'I'll get your things for you. And when you've changed I'll run you home in the car.'

  He began to clear the table while she put on her dry clothes, beautifully warm from the drying cabinet, so she didn't have to tell him to turn his back this time. 'You promised me a comb,' she reminded him.

  'Of course.' He found one for her and she combed her hair in a mirror.' Now you're respectable again,' he commented. 'Ready?'

  They ran from the boathouse door to the car through the rain that was still falling quite heavily, and James drove past the castle to the road and down the short way to Abbot's Craig, taking her all the way down the drive to the entrance to the courtyard. He would have driven in, but Romily stopped him. 'This will do, thanks.'

  'Right.' It was almost dark now, she could hardly see his face as he turned to her and said, 'Afraid to be seen with me?'

  Slowly she said, 'It avoids—complications.'

  He gave a rather grim laugh, but said, 'Fair enough. When will you come out with me again?

  'On the boat, do you mean?'

  'No, out to dinner.' Adding when she hesitated, 'I should point out that I did keep my word today. We were just friends enjoying ourselves together, right?'

  Romily nodded. And it had been fun, so why not do it again?' 'Dinner on the same terms?'

  'Whatever you want,' he agreed.

  'All right, then. How about Wednesday?'

  'Fine. I'll come down to the house and pick you up at seven-thirty, shall I?'

  She immediately shook her head. 'No, I'll meet you at the top of the drive, same as last time.' Opening the door of the car, she said. 'Thanks for the boat ride and everything. Goodnight.'

  'Goodnight, Romily. Oh…' He leaned across the car as she was getting out. 'And thanks for making my dream come true. It was quite something.'

  Her eyes widened as she realised that he'd been awake all the time he'd been kissing her, but before she could say anything he had pulled the door to, and driven off with a wave and a wicked grin!

  Carol and Gerald were upstairs working on their flat again. Romily called up to them that she was home and then went up to her room, but she hadn't been there very long before Carol gave a tap on the door and came in. 'Hallo. Had a good day?'

  'Mm, not bad. How was your party last night? I didn't even hear you come home.'

  'No, it was nearly four by the time we got to bed. I'm afraid we had a bit too much to drink, but we really enjoyed ourselves. It was the first time I've really felt in the swing of things since we came back to Scotland. Lots of our old friends were there.' Carol went on talking about the party, the frown of worry about the hotel quite gone as she described it.

  'And they were all terribly interested in the hotel project and promised to help all they could by advertising and that kind of thing. Some of them even said that they might come to dinner here instead of going to a restaurant in Inverness. I explained that we hadn't really thought about catering for other than the hotel guests, but it's quite an idea. What do you think?'

  Romily took time before she answered, realising that it would probably mean a whole lot more work for her. Also, she could envisage them deciding to keep the place open as a restaurant during the winter instead of closing down completely, which was entirely different from what she'd anticipated. 'How many would you expect to cater for?' she asked warily.

  'Well, the dining-room holds twenty-two, and we could put another table for four or six in that little hallway that leads out to the terrace if we block the door off. That would be twenty-eight at the very most, and there would only be one sitting, of course.'

  I should hope so, Romily thought wryly. Decisively she said, 'I think you'd have to give me at least a month after we've opened to settle in before you start the idea. And if there are any more than twelve people in to dinner, then I should have to have help in the kitchen in preparing the meals as well as actually cooking them.'

  'I said I'd help in the kitchen,' Carol pointed out.

  'You can help in the preparation, certainly. But you can't act as waitress and help to cook as well; we'd get in a hopeless muddle. And anyway, in a hotel like this you'd probably find that everyone wanted to eat at the same time. If that's all right, then I'll be happy to give it a try.'

  'That's marvellous!' Carol's face lit up. 'I'll tell Gerald.' She began to walk towards the door, then stopped. 'Oh, and we thought that we might have a party—a sort of hotel-warming a little later in the year. It will give you a chance to meet our friends.'

  'Fine,' Romily agreed. 'Whenever you like.'

  'We'll have to work out a day when we think we won't be too busy. Where did you go today, by the way?'

  'Into Inverness,' said Romily in a half-truth.

  Carol wrinkled her nose. 'The place is dead on a Sunday. What on earth did you find to do?'

  'I—er—looked at the boats in the harbour.'

  'Good heavens! All day?'

  'No, I ate out and listened to some music.'

  'You're lucky, there was nothing open at all on a Sunday when I was your age,' Carol told her, her mind obviously too full of her own schemes to take much notice. 'See you later.'

  'OK.' Romily sat back in her chair and propped her feet up on the bed, wondering why she had lied to Carol. No, not lied, just let her believe what was far from being the whole truth. But right now Romily wanted to keep her outing with James to herself; not only because she knew Carol would disapprove, but also because she just wasn't in a secure enough state, mentally and emotionally to discuss her private affairs with anyone. But it had been fun today. A small smile played around her mouth as she remembered. And James had been good company, and kept his word, except for that stolen kiss. Her smile widened. It had felt right being with him, and she was looking forward to seeing him again on Wednesday. That thought quite startled her; she hadn't expected to feel contented in a man's company ever again.

  The clocks had been adjusted for summer time and the evenings were lighter, but at seven-thirty on Wednesday evening it was still dark enough to need a torch to light her way up the drive. Tonight she had taken trouble with her appearance, washing her hair and putting on one of her newest outfits. She felt good and was alive with anticipation, wondering where James was going to take her.

  He was already at the road, leaning against his car and waiting patiently for her. 'Hi,' he greeted her. 'Am I allowed to kiss you yet?'

  'Certainly not!' she rebuked him, but there was no severity in her tone.

  He grinned at her as he opened the passenger door. 'A man has to try! You might have had a change of heart since I saw you last.'

  She raised her eyebrows at him. 'Now why on earth should I do that?'

  He looked crestfallen as he got in the car beside her, but it was only pretence. 'You're a hard woman, Romily Bennion.'

  'Of course I am,' she agreed, trying to look hard and failing completely. 'What else did you expect?'

  James looked at her, his eyes alight with laughter, but slowly the laughter died, his eyes lit by an entirely different emotion. 'I wish you'd learn to trust me,' he said softly.

  Romily met his look for a moment, then deliberately turned away, her cheeks flushed. 'Where are we going?'

  His lips twisting in self-mockery, he said, 'To the theatre.'

  They did go to the theatre, but not to see a show; instead going to a restaurant called The Bishop's Table in the Eden Court Theatre, where they helped themselves from a sumptuous buffet. They sat at a table beside a big window looking over the River Ness, the twinkling lights of this capital of the Highlands spread out before them. There was unobtrusive music that formed a background to the murmur of voices and the chink of cutlery in the large room, but they were able to talk comfortably, finding interests they had in common other than the love of speed. James, too, liked to walk, but he had done some really tough ones, like walking from one side of England to the other on Hadrian's Wall, the wall the Romans had built to kee
p the barbarian Scottish tribes out of England. 'I'd like to do that new coastal walk round the South of England one day,' he told her.

  'Mm, and I've always wanted to walk the Pilgrims' Way, the route that Chaucer took to Canterbury,' Romily enthused.

  'So why don't you?'

  She shrugged. 'Maybe I will one day. It's rather a long way from Scotland.'

  'But not far from London. Why haven't you done it already?'

  Picking up a fork, she traced a pattern on the tablecloth, her face shadowed. 'I've never had the opportunity,' she evaded.

  James watched her speculatively, but she didn't raise her head, and after a moment he went on to talk of something else.

  Their meal over, they went back to the car and

  James took the now familiar road out of Inverness. Romily felt a little stab of disappointment. It was still early and she didn't want the evening to end yet. It was too early to go home and go to bed. And the hotel was due to open next Tuesday, so this would probably be her last opportunity to have an evening out for ages. She almost said as much to James, but held her tongue; maybe he was tired of her company. She bit her lip; the raw loss of confidence that she had experienced after Richard returning to make her hold her hands tightly together in her lap.

  But her feelings did a complete about-turn as James drove calmly past the driveway to Abbot's Craig. He's taking me to his boathouse again, she thought wildly, and prepared to be angry and standoffish, but he went past the track leading down to the lake, too, and she looked at him with questioning eyes.

  He drew up outside the castle and returned her look mockingly, apparently fully aware of what she'd been thinking. 'Welcome to my castle, fair maiden,' he said teasingly.

  Slowly she relaxed and smiled. 'Will I find any dragons there, sir knight?'

  'I've driven them all away.' Lifting his hand, he gently stroked her cheek. 'There's nothing there (hat will harm you.'

  'And you won't lock me in the highest room your topmost turret?' she asked, perhaps only half jokingly.

  'Ah, would that I could.' He looked rueful. 'But I've a feeling you'd scream the walls down!' Getting out of the car, he opened her door for her, then took her hand to walk her across the stone bridge that replaced the old drawbridge that had lain across the now green-lawned moat.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was a small castle as castles go. They went through an archway into a well-lit courtyard that had ferns growing against the walls among old millstones, and there was an old lead water butt full of plants. On the right there was a wide wooden door with a coat of arms carved in stone above it, which led to a passageway and on into what must once have been the great hall but was now a pleasantly furnished drawing-room. The room was very high, with a ceiling of great pine beams and at one end a minstrel gallery hung with a heraldic tapestry. At the other end was a huge, unlit fireplace, although the room felt pleasantly warm, which was strange because it should have felt cold being so high and with so much stonework, but there were thick peach-coloured velvet curtains at the windows and a fitted carpet on the floor which took any echoing emptiness away. The room was brightly lit by many lamps and the furniture was light, complementing the many colourful portraits on the walls in their rich gold frames.

  Romily looked round the room and immediately became awestruck; she had worked in many luxurious hotels, but this was James's home, for heaven's sake! 'It's—er—very nice,' she managed inadequately.

  With an amused grin, James took her hand and led her up a twisting stone staircase built into a narrow turret to show her the rest of the house. He took her into rooms hung with rich tapestries, into passages adorned with displays of ancient weapons, down to a dark dungeon with chains embedded in the walls, into an old kitchen still hung with glowing copper pans and jugs, and into a bedroom with a four-poster bed with a headboard of sumptuously carved and painted acanthus leaves.

  Romily had been silent most of the time, but now she exclaimed in spellbound wonder, 'My God, do you really sleep in that?'

  James laughed. 'Only on very special occasions. If I slept in it regularly it would probably fall to bits. I have a very much more modern bed in my own room. Would you like to see it?'

  Shaking her head, Romily said lightly, 'Thanks, but I'm already overwhelmed. How do you find time to use all these rooms?'

  'You grow into them, I suppose,' he shrugged. 'Let's go up to my sitting-room and have a drink.'

  She could tell at once that this was the room he used most. There were shelves full of books and magazines and a desk with trays of letters and other paperwork. And here there was a fire blazing welcomingly in the Victorian-looking fireplace.

  'This is part of the wing that one of my ancestors built on in the nineteenth century,' James explained. 'I like it because it looks out over the gardens and the burn.'

  'The what?' Romily asked with a puzzled frown.

  Coming up to her, he put an arm around her waist and led her towards a dusty-pink upholstered love- seat, set her down in it and put his hands on her shoulders. 'A burn, you lovely Sassenach, is a brook or small river. If you listen, you'll be able to hear it running below the castle walls. Now, what would you like to drink?'

  'Do you have sherry and tonic water?'

  He raised his eyes to heaven. 'My God, what a mixture! But a sherry and tonic you shall have.'

  While he went to fix it, Romily closed her eyes and listened hard. And yes, that faint noise that was always in the background could be the rustling of water over stones.

  'Romily.' She opened her eyes to see James standing over her with a drink in his hand. He gave it to her and went to sit in the other half of the love- seat, so that they were facing opposite ways but their heads were close together. 'What do you think of the place?' he asked as he sipped his own drink.

  'As I said, overwhelming. I didn't know that places like this existed in private ownership. I thought they'd all been taken over by the National Trust.'

  'You'd be surprised; there's still quite a few of us who manage to hang on to our homes, mainly because of good husbandry by our ancestors, who took care to make the estate productive and viable, and married rich heiresses when they got desperate,' he added with a grin.

  Romily wanted to ask him if he was desperate, but instead pointed to a painting on the wall of a man in full tartan dress. 'Who was that?'

  'An ancestor who was a staunch Jacobite. He had that portrait painted in 1762, wearing the tartan as an act of defiance when all Scotsmen were banned from wearing it after the battle of Culloden.' He nodded to a ring of claymores on the wall. 'That's where all those came from. It's only a few miles from here.'

  'From the actual battlefield?' He nodded without speaking, and after a moment Romily said stiffly, 'Is that why you dislike the English so much?'

  He raised a surprised eyebrow. 'What makes you think I dislike the English?'

  'You said that you didn't want them invading the Highlands.'

  With a shake of his head, James said,' No, I said I didn't want hordes of tourists. We get people coming here from all over the world, and from lowland Scotland, too. I'm not anti-English. Some of them I even find quite fascinating,' he murmured, his eyes darkening as he looked at her. 'I'm sorry, Romily,' he said thickly, 'but I'm just going to have to kiss you.' And leaning forward he sought her mouth with his.

  She could easily have moved her head away, and for a moment intended to do so, but the urgent, seeking need of his lips was irresistible and she let him take her mouth. But she held herself stiffly, poised to move away, her head rigid and making no response. James kissed her with restrained hunger, his lips exploring hers yearningly, touching, caressing, trying to awaken a reaction yet frightened of scaring her off.

  It was so long since she had been kissed like that. She sat numbly, letting him do what he wanted, all her senses and emotions concentrated in the feel of his lips on hers. Gently he tried to open her mouth, but she kept hers firmly closed and he didn't try to push her, instead c
overing her lips with small kisses and then touching them lightly with his tongue. It was only their mouths that touched, he didn't try to put his arms round her or anything, and somehow this total concentration on what he was doing to her lips slowly got to her. Romily gave a long sigh and slowly opened her mouth under his, tilting her head back as she began to respond at last.

  She felt the quiver of mingled pleasure and triumph that ran through him, and then James was kissing her with ever-deepening passion, avidly exploring the inner moistness of her mouth, his hunger for her let loose now as he kissed her with ardent yearning.

  He was reluctant ever to let her go, but eventually they broke apart, their breathing ragged, Romily slowly opening her eyes to stare at him in bemusement.

  James's eyes were still dark with need and he was breathing rather unsteadily as he said huskily, 'Thank you.' Adding when she didn't speak, 'For trusting yourself to me at last.'

  Immediately Romily got agitatedly to her feet and walked away from him. 'Just because I let you kiss me it doesn't mean—doesn't mean that I…'

  James, too, got to his feet, put down his glass and came over to her. 'Doesn't mean what?' he asked, taking her glass from her and setting it down.

  'That I'm going to go to bed with you,' Romily told him baldly, backing away from him.

  He gave a short laugh. 'I wasn't aware that I'd asked you to.'

  'But you were going to,' she retorted. 'A man doesn't kiss a girl like that unless he wants her.'

  James's eyes shadowed. 'And have many men kissed you like that, Romily?'

  Her face flushed with anger. 'And just how many women have you kissed like that this year? This month? This week?' She turned to stride from the room, but James caught her wrist and pulled her back, his face set.

  'Not nearly as many as you've damn well been led to believe,' he said forcefully. 'OK, I used to play the field when I was younger, and there have been a few women in the last ten years, but I'm no—no libertine. I'm a man of my time, Romily, and this age isn't exactly noted for its prudery.' His blue eyes met her challengingly. 'As I think you know for yourself.'