by Flora Kidd
He looked up and across at her and it seemed to her that his blue eyes danced with secret amusement, although it might have only been the glitter of the light in them.
'But how did you get here without me seeing you come back from the jetty?' she exclaimed, staring at him.
He switched off the radio which was on the table before answering her.
'I haven't been to the jetty,' he replied coolly, continuing to eat. He was having lamb chops, potato chips and peas, and the smell of cooking still lingered on the air, making Helen realise how hungry she was.
'You mean you were here in the house when I went out?' she said, advancing slowly towards the table, remembering how the stairs had creaked and her suspicions that someone had been watching her.
'I was.' A faint smile twitched at his lips and again the blue eyes seemed to glint with wicked amusement. 'I put out the lights you left on,' he added dryly.
'Then… Then you didn't go in the boat to meet Blair.'
'No, I did not go in the boat to meet Blair,' he said, unkindly mimicking her Lowland accent, and she realised suddenly that he had been speaking to her without any accent at all and without any of the Gaelic phrasing he had used when speaking to her earlier. He had changed. He was no longer a vague, somewhat wild islander glad to have the job of looking after a castle for its owner. He was a calm, confident, sophisticated person, fully in control of the situation and more than a little amused by her bewilderment. 'You see, Blair isn't coming here,' he added.
'Not coming? Has he phoned you again?' Helen untied the knot in her headscarf and drew it off her head. Her blonde hair shimmered silkily in the electric light as she shook it free. It had come loose from its confining clasp and flowed freely about her face and shoulders.
'No, he hasn't,' Magnus replied.
'Then how do you know he isn't coming?'
'I know because he didn't plan to come here at all,' he said calmly, and finished eating the food on his plate.
'But he phoned me this morning to tell me we were coming here. And he phoned you too,' she said in puzzlement, her suspicions sharpening as she stared at him. 'Did he tell you he wasn't coming here when he phoned you earlier?' she demanded. 'Oh, if he did, you should have told me and I'd have gone back to Glencross. I wouldn't have come here with you. Oh, why didn't you give me his message? Why didn't you tell me?'
'Because I wanted you to come here with me,' he replied softly. 'I wanted to separate you from Blair and prevent you from spending the weekend with him.'
Her tawny brown eyes wide in her suddenly very pale face, Helen took hold of the back of one of the spindle-backed chairs and pulled it out from the table. She sank down on it as if her legs had turned to jelly. She felt as if she had been caught in one of those strange dreams in which there was no logic, and across the table she stared at the man who called himself Magnus but who was no longer the Magnus who had brought her across to the island, hearing again the cadence of the voice which had spoken to her over the phone that morning, the slight difference there had been in it from Blair's voice; a difference she hadn't been able to describe when she had first heard it but which she now recognised as a deep resonance which Blair's voice didn't have but this man's did have.
'It was you, this morning, on the phone,' she whispered. 'You pretended you were Blair!'
'I did.' He grinned suddenly, teeth flashing white; a mischievous mocking grin which robbed his lean face of its austereness and gave it a boyish warmth. 'And I must have done a pretty good job of imitating him too, because you fell for it; you agreed to come here, and now you're going to stay with me for the whole weekend, until Monday afternoon, just as you would have stayed with him.'
'No, I'm not. I'm not staying here with you!' retorted Helen. 'You can't make me stay here with you!' She sprang to her feet, hoping to break the dream, hoping to find herself in bed at her flat on the mainland; hoping to find that Friday morning was only just dawning and that she hadn't yet agreed to meet Blair and go away with him for the weekend. But the dream didn't break. She was still there in the castle's kitchen and the man called Magnus was leaning back on his chair, tipping it on to its back legs, keckling, her mother would have called it, and doing the chair legs no good at all. And he was still grinning at her mockingly.
'I'm not staying here any longer,' she insisted loudly. 'I'm leaving now.' She turned about and made for the porch, charging towards it rather blindly. Surely when she opened the door and left the kitchen the dream would end.
But he was there before her, long and lean and somehow devilish, blocking her way. Again she turned and stared across the room towards the hallway, intending to leave by the front door, only to collide with him when he stepped in front of her again. Hands on her shoulders, he held her upright when she lost her balance.
'Let me go! Take your hands off me!' she seethed.
'Not until you stop behaving like a fool,' he said sternly, giving her a shake. 'Where would you go on this island if you don't stay here? It's getting stormier by the minute outside and there's no other shelter on the island. None at all. Unless you fancy spending the night in the old boathouse. But I wouldn't recommend it—it's very damp.'
'The boat!' she exclaimed. 'Where is it? It wasn't at the jetty, so I thought you must have gone over for Blair in it. Oh, it must have broken loose and been washed away.'
'In that case,' he drawled softly, his eyes seeming to soften and darken, his hand moving gently and caressingly along her shoulders, fingers sliding amongst the silkiness of her hair, 'we are well and truly stranded here, together, but not to worry— we have plenty of food and drink. And we have each other for company. No need for either of us to feel lonely, Eilidh.' His voice deepened. 'No need at all.'
Mesmerised by the sensuous expression in his eyes, by the musical seduction of his voice, Helen made no attempt to move or to break free of his hold, even though she knew that she should if she wanted to avoid being kissed by him. As if in a trance she watched his face come closer. It blurred. She saw one intensely blue eye fringed with black lashes, felt the tip of his nose and the roughness of his jaw against her cheek and then his lips were pressing against hers and she was being kissed as she had never been kissed before, not even by Blair, slowly and expertly, until her head was whirling and she had to close her eyes against a sudden dizziness of desire.
CHAPTER TWO
What am I doing? Why am I letting this stranger kiss me like this? The cool sensible part of Helen suddenly asserted itself, overcoming the inner passionate woman who was longing to be loved, and she pushed free of Magnus's hold and wrenched her lips from his. For a moment of tense silence they stood still close to each other staring, she glaring at him in outrage, on the verge of slapping his face, he frowning at her in puzzlement. Then as if to underline what he had said about the storminess of the weather the wind howled in the chimney and the window rattled, drawing the attention of both of them to it.
'You see how foolish and impractical it would be for you to go out now?' Magnus said smoothly. 'Why don't you take your coat off and sit down,' he continued, turning away from her and going over to the cooker. 'In anticipation of your return I cooked enough chops for two and it won't take me long to fry up some more chips. I'm sure you must be hungry.'
Slightly disconcerted by the quick change in him from would-be lover to practical cook, Helen stayed where she was, watching him out of the corners of her eyes. She could leave now, while his back was turned. She could run from the house through the back door. But where would she run to? Again the wind howled and the window rattled, and she shivered suddenly, imagining the wildness outside, the black clouds racing across the sky, the sea roaring and heaving. Out there everything would be moving and uncertain and dark and she could easily get lost. In here everything was still and bright and the only danger was the man who was now emptying sliced potatoes from a colander into a pan of smoking hot fat. The fat spat and sizzled when the cold, damp potatoes hit it.
Slowly, admit
ting reluctantly that he was right and it would be foolish and impractical for her to go out into the storm, Helen slipped off her raincoat and, after putting it over the back of one chair, she sat down in another.
'Why? Why did you pretend to be Blair and suggest that I came here?' she demanded.
Magnus glanced at her over one shoulder, his bright blue glance flashing vividly like lightning before he looked back, at the cooking chips.
'To help a friend of mine,' he replied laconically, giving the pan a shake to move the chips around in the fat. 'Knives and forks are in the right-hand drawer of the dresser if you'd like to get them for yourself. I don't mind cooking for you this time, but I hope you don't expect me to wait upon you hand and foot while you stay here,' he added mockingly.
'I don't expect anything from you,' she retorted, getting to her feet and going over to the dresser. 'I'm quite capable of looking after myself.'
'Good. I'm glad to hear it, because looking after people isn't my line at all.' He gave her another bright sardonic glance. 'That's why I'm not married. You won't catch me fetching and carrying for a woman or slaving at a nine-to-five job just to provide her with a roof over her head and clothes to dress up in.'
'Oh, I have no difficulty in imagining that you're selfish to the core,' Helen scoffed as she set a place for herself on the table. 'And most women with any common sense would avoid a man like you like the plague. No woman worth her salt wants to be married to a selfish egotist.'
'Ha!' His laugh was short but truly amused. 'That's a sharp tongue you have, Eilidh Melrose.' He looked at her again, more slowly this time, his glance lingering deliberately on her lips, then on her softly rounded chin and then on the shapes of her breasts, taut under the poplin of her blouse, until she felt the blood rising willy-nilly to her cheeks and had to subdue a wild urge to pick something up from the table and throw it at him. His eyes met her wrathful glare and he grinned at her again, mockingly. 'Do you know that Blair is married to Wanda Murray?' he asked casually.
'Yes, I do. He told me,' she replied stiffly.
'And yet you were going away with him for the weekend, for two nights and two days, in fact. Tut, tut, Eilidh!' he clocked his tongue tauntingly. 'What would your friends and relatives say if they knew you're having a torrid love affair with a married man?'
'Blair and I are not having a… a torrid affair!' she retorted furiously. 'We… well, we're just good friends. Anyway, his marriage is a farce. He and Wanda hardly ever see each other now.'
'Don't they?' he queried dryly. 'Are you sure?'
Blair told me they've been separated for nearly five years.'
'And you believed him, of course,' he remarked with heavy irony as he took a plate out of the oven on which there were two lamb chops and began to scoop up chips from the pan to put on the plate. 'He can make up quite a good story when he wants to,' he continued, coming across to the table and setting the plate of food down in front of her. 'And when he wants something,' he added dryly. 'Something he can't have. Presumably he wanted you, but you wouldn't play, so he told you the sad tale of his marriage to Wanda and you felt sorry for him and agreed to go away with him this weekend.'
'You know nothing about Blair and me,' she defended hotly. 'Nothing at all. And you have no right to sneer at us!'
'I know enough,' he retorted, sitting down in the chair opposite to her. 'And I know Wanda. It was to help her that I pretended to be Blair and invited you to come here today. You see, she wanted to see him this weekend. She wanted to have him to herself.' He glanced at his wristwatch. 'She and Blair must have met by now and they could be on their way to the place he had planned to take you.'
Helen looked down at the plate in front of her. The lamb chops were small but looked succulent. The chips were crisp and golden. Her mouth watered, and picking up her knife and fork she began to cut into one of the chops.
'I don't understand how Blair's wife could possibly know about me or that he and I had planned to go away together this weekend,' she said after a while. 'We've tried to be careful.'
'You may have been careful, but Blair hasn't. He likes to boast of his amorous conquests, particularly to Wanda. It's his way of drawing her attention to him. He'd fold her he had a new girl-friend, so all she had to do was to have him watched.'
'Watched?' exclaimed Helen. 'What do you mean? Have you been watching him?'
'Good grief, no. I've much better things to do with my time than to spend it spying on Blair,' he replied disgustedly.
'Then who has been watching him?'
'A private detective employed by an agency that searches for missing persons and keeps tabs on erring husbands. Or wives.' His lips curled scornfully. 'It's not a job I'd like to do. I'm not keen on spies of any sort.'
'You just prefer to do the kidnapping, I suppose,' she remarked acidly.
'But I haven't kidnapped you,' he replied mildly. 'I merely invited you to come to Carroch and you came.'
'You deceived me by impersonating Blair and you've prevented me from leaving this island!' she hissed at him.
'I haven't prevented you from leaving. The weather has done that,' he retorted.
Helen was silent again as she went on eating, although it seemed to her that the food had lost its taste. Blair had told Wanda that he had a girl-friend! After agreeing to keep their meetings as secret as possible he had then betrayed her to his wife. Oh, how could he have done that to her? How could he? And he had been watched. For how long? For how many weeks or months had his goings and comings to and from the hospital, to and from his house, to and from her small flat, been watched by observant suspicious eyes?
And if he had been watched he had been seen with her, and that meant her goings and comings had been subsequently watched too. Oh, it made her feel sick to think of being spied upon! It made her flesh creep to think of some obscure little man—he had to be little so that no one noticed him, she argued—wearing a raincoat and a tweed cap so as to be inconspicuous, watching Blair and herself. It made her feel cheap, and that had the effect of spoiling her friendship with Blair and all her outings with him. It made her feel she never wanted to see him again. Never.
'Eat-up,' said Magnus, his voice deep and soft. 'No point in going hungry just because you're angry.'
She looked across at him. He was keckling the chair again, leaning back with his hands in his pants pockets, and he was watching her, his lean face devoid of expression, and now he seemed like no one she had ever met before; not like the wild islander who had met her at Macleish's cottage; not like the cool sophisticate who had welcomed her when she had returned to the kitchen; and not at all like the sensualist who had kissed her as she had never been kissed before. He seemed to have the ability to change his personality quickly, like a chameleon changes its appearance, and now he seemed like a friend, someone who was concerned about her welfare.
'Wouldn't you be angry if you'd just realised you'd been spied on for weeks, possibly for months?'
'I suppose I would,' he admitted. 'But who are you angry with?'
'With you, for imitating Blair and deceiving me into coming here. And with Wanda for paying someone to spy on Blair and me.'
'But not with Blair or yourself?' he jibed, changing again from a friend into a foe, bewildering her. 'You know, if you hadn't decided to have an affair with Blair in the first place Wanda wouldn't have had to pay someone to spy on him or on you, and I wouldn't have had to imitate Blair so as to entice you to come here.'
'I've told you already,' said Helen, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a deaf person, 'Blair and I have not been having an affair; not in the way you mean.'
'Oh, sorry—I forgot,' he jeered sarcastically. 'You're just good friends, aren't you? You'll be telling me next that he's never talked about getting married to you as soon as he's managed to divorce Wanda.'
Helen had no retort to make to that. She could only look at him, the expression on her fair face betraying that Blair had talked about marriage to her.
'He says it to all his girl-friends,' Magnus went on as if she had admitted openly to him that Blair had suggested marriage. 'So never think you're the first.' His glance was pitying. 'There was the woman doctor in a hospital in Glasgow, a nurse somewhere else, a model in Paris, the American student he met when on holiday in Greece—'
'Oh, stop it, stop it!' Helen cried. 'I don't want to hear any more of your lies!'
'Or you don't want to hear there've been others before you,' he scoffed. 'If it's any comfort to you, you've lasted the longest, and now that I've met you I think I can understand why.'
'I don't believe Blair is like you say he is,' she retorted. 'Anyway, if he's had so many extramarital relationships why hasn't Wanda divorced him?'
'That's exactly what I… and her other friends… have been asking for some time,' he said, and gave her a vividly blue ironic glance. 'Maybe she's been blinded by love to his faults, like you are,' he suggested mockingly, and stood up. 'You might wash up when you've finished eating.'
He strode from the room and she heard his footsteps retreating up the stairs. Left alone, she sat at the table for a while poking with her fork at the cold food left on her plate, thinking over what Magnus had told her. Blinded by love. His scornful remark cut to the quick. Was it true? Was he right? Had growing affection for Blair blinded her so that he had been able to lead her on these past nine months, lead her into this present dangerous situation?
Picking up her plate, she carried it over to the sink, emptied the uneaten food into the garbage bin and automatically turned on the taps to fill the sink with water for washing up. By the time she had washed and dried the few dishes and had cleaned the pans she had decided that it was important to get in touch with Blair. She would phone his house and if he was there she would tell him exactly what had happened. Poor man, he must be in a terrible state wondering where she was and why she hadn't been at her fiat when he had called to pick her up.