The Kilted Stranger

by Margaret Pargeter

  Inside the shop she asked the price and was startled when the woman told her.

  ‘It is really beautiful, madame. ’ The woman eagerly took the set from the window, to show Sue the intricate filigree of delicate silver on the waist. ‘It was just made for a girl like you.’ Her eyes flickered admiringly over Sue’s slim figure.

  Greatly against her better judgment, but with the filmy material between her fingers and unable to resist, Sue agreed to buy. By swift mental calculation she decided she could just about afford it and have enough left over for a warm anorak and pair of slacks. Her money, she knew, was rapidly running out. There hadn’t been as much in her mother’s account as she had expected, and she had earned nothing herself since going to Glenroden. The sale of her Mini might be one possible way of raising funds, but without it she would lose her independence. There was no bus service within miles of Glenroden, and if she did find a job, which she must, she would inevitably need transport.

  But until she did find work such extravagances as this would have to stop. Hastily she took the carefully wrapped parcel from the pleasant, smiling woman, and left the shop quickly before she was tempted to buy more. How practical such a flimsy garment would be in a Scottish winter, she had no means of knowing, yet, in a moment of temporary lightheartedness, she didn’t really care.

  Long before Tim called for her that evening Sue was tired. She took him back to the hotel, leaving him with a drink while she bathed and changed. And when he suggested that they ate in the hotel’s very good restaurant she was more than willing to agree. It was only afterwards, when he talked of going on somewhere, that she demurred, but seeing his disappointed face she gave in. After all, it could be a long time before she was back in London.

  It was after midnight before they returned, later than Sue had intended, but the nightclub had been fun and, in a strange way, had seemed to release some of the tensions of the past weeks, possibly because of its very gay atmosphere. They had drunk a sparkling white wine and relaxed, talking desultorily. Tim had surprised her by reverting almost to his old companionable self, and when they had said good-bye outside the hotel Sue liked him better than she had done all day. In the morning he and his immediate superior were on their way to Devon to do an important tax assessment, so she wouldn’t see him again before she left.

  ‘You mustn’t forget to give me a ring and write, he instructed as he left her. ‘If you don’t I’ll be worrying as usual.’

  With what amounted to nearly a sigh of relief, Sue collected her key from the desk and went up to her room. She had half expected that Tim might be awkward. That he might try to extract promises of marriage or meetings, but apart from the few words as he left her, he hadn’t said a thing. Perhaps he had decided that if he was patient she would return to London in the near future. He might have been surprised to learn that almost before she closed her bedroom door Sue had forgotten about him.

  Once in her bedroom weariness claimed her, washing everything from her mind but the desire to sleep, making even the effort of getting ready for bed insurmountable. In the adjoining bathroom she creamed her face before taking a quick shower. The warm water revived her a little, and she put on her new negligee. In the centrally heated room it would be much more comfortable than the pyjamas still packed in her overnight case.

  Ready at last, she climbed into bed, but no sooner was her head on the pillow than there came a knock on the door. Uneasily her heart thudded. Surely Tim hadn’t returned? But he wouldn’t know her room number, and if she had forgotten something he could have left it at reception. Unhappily as the knock came again she got up, not bothering to switch on the light as she stumbled to the door.

  Wrenching it open, she was startled to find Meric standing outside on the corridor. Surprise ran through her, widening her eyes. Determinedly throughout the day she had kept him from her thoughts. Even when Tim had referred to him so disrespectfully she had refused to allow herself to dwell on him for a moment longer than it had taken to defend him fairly. Meric had said, she remembered, he would check to ensure that she was in. Unfortunately she had forgotten all about it. If she had thought about it she might well have pictured him retired for the night, or still out with Carlotte.

  ‘If you wait,’ she said blankly, before he could speak, ‘I’ll put on the light and my dressing gown.’

  ‘Whichever way you like,’ he replied sardonically. ‘When I think of the time, not to mention the shoe leather, I’ve wasted traversing between this floor and the two above, another few minutes can’t hurt me.’ He leaned against the door jamb, casual and relaxed, but his voice was edged with sarcasm.

  Sue took one look at him and fled, her fingers fumbling for the light switch as she snatched her wrap from the bed. The bedside lamp lit the room dimly but enough. Conscious suddenly of the thinness of the pink negligee, she hugged her arms around herself as she went back to the door. Meric was already stepping through it.

  ‘Just to make sure you don’t start combing your hair and all the other things women tend to do when confronted by a man,’ he muttered dryly. ‘Even one they don’t like.’

  As on another occasion she decided he had a fine conceit of himself and her eyes flashed. ‘I’ve done no more than necessary,’ she retorted, ‘as you can see.’

  His eyes went over her tumbled hair, her slightly dishevelled appearance. ‘What I see I like,’ he grinned. ‘It’s made my wait rewarding.’

  Her eyes, dark smudges of weariness, stared at him apprehensively, missing the smooth satire of his remark, While she didn’t appreciate his humour, she could guess that his patience was wearing thin. ‘You’ve been here before?’ she asked, rubbing confused fingers across her brow.

  ‘Don’t tell me you forgot?’ His hard mouth set in lines of mockery and amusement.

  ‘You said you’d check if I was in!’

  ‘And I’ve been doing just that for the past hour.’ His voice jolted her wide awake. ‘I thought you’d have the sense to be in before this.’ The fathomless eyes flicked over her face, harshly interrogating.

  Sue continued to stare at him, her fringed eyes defensive. She need not have worried about being decently covered up. In his present mood he probably wouldn’t have noticed had she been naked! ‘I spent the evening with Tim Mason,’ she said faintly.

  ‘Now I just thought you might’ His voice was a long, cool drawl. ‘It also crossed my mind that you must have other friends, but undoubtedly it didn’t occur to you to let everyone know you were in town?’

  Dazed, as her mind attempted to absorb and dissect, she blinked at him, her pupils dilated. ‘It would scarcely have been feasible,’ she whispered, her throat constricted. ‘I wasn’t exactly holding a party. ’

  With a shrug he moved slightly away from her, his height casting bulky shadows against the wall. Too late she wished she had used the main switch. The light from the small lamp, which flooded palely, was too intimate. She watched nervously as he turned smoothly to face her again. She lifted her head, braced for the onslaught, and he gave a short laugh.

  ‘So you concentrated on one man - Tim from the tax office! And what does he think of your next move? Does he approve, I wonder?’

  There was a cleft in Meric Findlay’s chin, etched deeply below his firm, chiselled lips. Sue fixed her gaze on it, refusing to meet the mockery in the dark smouldering depth of

  his eyes.

  She drew a long, quivering breath, and tried to retaliate with a mock flippancy she was far from feeling. ‘I could have a tax problem, for all you know. Tim is very obliging. Secondly, he doesn’t like the idea of my moving away, but he hasn’t actually said much against it. Does that answer your questions?’

  ‘Not completely, but then having no personal knowledge of your friend I don’t know how his mind works.’

  Sue’s shoulders moved just perceptibly. If, as Meric claimed, he didn’t know Tim personally, then how did he know he worked for the Inland Revenue? But she wondered idly, too tired to probe, realizing s
he might only get an evasive reply. A man like Meric Findlay would make it his business to know of anything that could touch him even indirectly. Her presence at Glenroden, if only temporary, no doubt provided an excuse for detailed surveillance.

  She mumbled carelessly, scarcely looking at him, 'If I have omitted any relevant information then I’m sure you can supply the deficiency.’

  Just as carelessly his hands came down on her shoulders, a means of emphasizing his point, nothing else. ‘You’d better decide once and for all that the Tim Masons of this world don’t count. Not so far as you’re concerned. You can leave him behind tomorrow and start a new life. A clean break is the only way.’

  At the touch of his hands an awful feeling of weakness swept over her and she stirred restively, attempting to concentrate on what he was saying, thrusting the merely physical from her mind. Glenroden was important to Meric. It seemed he would go to any lengths to protect it. He nursed the estate along like a baby. No adverse breath of wind was allowed to blow over it! But in doing so, didn’t he realize he could be downright hurtful?

  ‘You can’t rule everything according to the book,’ she cried, fire slipping through her, holding her taut within his hands. ‘You should allow for the human element.’

  ‘Your own?’ he asked sharply, catching her off guard.

  She jerked away from him a little wildly, but he held her still. He looked so strong and unassailable, a man with power to make her feel soft and vulnerable, ready to collapse into his arms.

  ‘Tim and I like each other.’ She spoke on a little note of desperation, hugging her body still tighter with her arms, ‘I couldn’t hope to be as ruthless as you are.’

  His wary eyes mocked her. ‘You don’t strike me as a girl who’s been swept off her feet, but perhaps you feel happier with both feet on the ground?’

  Aroused, Sue’s glance clashed angrily with his. ‘The emotional side of my life is none of your business, Meric Findlay! ’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ His dark eyes suddenly narrowed, raking her pale skin, her pink negligee, the curtain of ashen hair about her upraised face, ‘I remember an occasion when you seemed to enjoy being emotional in my arms. Do you always say please after Tim kisses you?’

  A sparkling tension united them, making static the air between them, and her breath escaped audibly through her parted, rose-tinted lips. Irresistibly her eyes were drawn to his mouth, against her better sense. Only too well did she remember the imprint of it on her own from another evening, and longed crazily to repeat the experience. That he should guess the longing which threatened to consume her was utterly beyond comprehension.

  ‘I think I’d like to go to bed,’ she said indistinctly, her wits departing with her precarious poise.

  His head went back at that, a brilliant smile lighting his dark face as his gaze slid again over her sensual young figure, over the lovely curves of her body which her protective arms revealed, had she but known it, more than they concealed. ‘Could that be an invitation?’

  His fingers were burning her shoulders through the flimsy material of her gown, and heat swept through her blood like a fever, like nothing she had ever known before, and she quivered with the shock of revelation. Unable to check her trembling, she sought refuge in words. ‘Why do you enjoy twisting everything I say? I don’t know why you came here tonight, but I do know it’s not because you feel attracted to me!’

  ‘You’re very charming, Miss Frazer. I shouldn’t underestimate your charms if I were you; nor your capacity to enjoy the purely physical in life. Don’t tell me that Tim didn’t kiss you good night?’

  Tim had tried, but she hadn’t felt in the mood. At least she had told herself this as she had pushed him away, pleading tiredness. Not that she intended confessing this to Meric Findlay! Resentful that he should even ask, she stayed mutinously silent, until his hands moving over her arms brought sensations which swept everything else from her mind.

  Like quicksilver he read the thoughts she tried to hide. ‘So you feel cheated. Maybe you would like me to supply the deficiency.’ His slanting dark eyes touched the pulse in her throat. He bent his head, slowly and deliberately, and she felt his lips against the bare skin of her shoulder, lingering and drifting over the bone to the nape of her neck, while his fingers curved, pressing soft flesh until she cried out. As a grand finale, as if to punish her a little for even one small note of protest, his head lifted and on her parted lips he dropped a kiss, brief and hard, hurting her in the split second before he let her g°.

  ‘Which might just about prove my point,’ he spoke tautly. ‘That you’re not the frozen little iceberg you pretend to be.’

  He moved away as she collapsed on to the edge of the bed, barely knowing what she was doing. Nothing of what he alleged could be true, but even if there had been some modicum of truth surely he had no right to inflict his views in this manner?

  Her flushed face paled as she stared at him, and her heart turned over. Big and powerful, he stepped back and through her blood ran a wild, stormy longing. Desperately she tried to gather every grain of common sense which had been scattered in those few mad moments in his arms.

  In her ear she heard him saying, ‘If you’d had the sense to get back in decent time none of this might have happened.’

  ‘So it’s my fault?’ Childishly she refused to look at him.

  ‘Listen, Sue, I don’t intend entering any sixth form argument as to where the blame lies. Maybe,’ a faint smile quirked his mouth at one corner, ‘it could be placed with the assistant who sold you that very fetching night attire, if that would ease your mind.’

  ‘You surely don’t think I bought it specially?’ Driven beyond normal constraint, Sue choked untruthfully. ‘I’ve washed it several times.’

  ‘Liar.’ His voice was soft, his face full of glinting amusement as he stepped suddenly to her side. “Unless we now have washable price tags!’ Swiftly his fingers pounced, filching a tiny slip of cardboard from the frills on her neckline to show it to her.

  Meric’s voice was light, purposely mocking, but Sue had lost hers, owing to the hard constriction in her throat. But he gave her no opportunity to answer, dismissing the incident with a brief shrug before he went on, ‘It was necessary to see you tonight, Sue, because I have to meet someone again in the morning. I’ll probably just manage to catch the afternoon plane by inches. I’ve settled everything up here and arranged for you to have a taxi to the airport, but I had no idea how you were getting on. For all I knew you could be having difficulties. I had to make sure you were all right.’

  He had moved to the door, watching her carefully, his hand turning the knob as he waited. Sue’s gaze, in spite of her attempt to divert it, went tenaciously to his face. Silently she prayed feverishly he would leave quickly, ignoring the intensity of her feelings which cried out just as wildly for him to stay.

  She made a tremendous effort to pull herself together, to concentrate on what he was saying as she nodded her head. ‘I have an appointment with my mother’s solicitor in the morning. I believe there are a few papers to sign, but apart from that I don’t think there’ll be anything much. I have the key to the flat ready to give him, and he’ll see to everything else. I have all my personal belongings packed, like you said ...’ Her voice trailed off uncertainly. There didn’t seem to be anything more to add.

  ‘Fine, then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Go to the airport and wait for me there.’ His tone had reverted to normal, alert and decisive. “I’m sorry it’s all been such a rush. Maybe another time we’ll have more time to spare.’

  Sue flinched as he was gone sharply, and for fully a minute she remained staring at the closed door. If she had been dreaming then her awakening had been too abrupt, almost more than she could cope with. Her hair spilled over her flushed cheeks as despair and taut nerves jerked her into action. Quickly she jumped to her feet, finding her overnight case, tipping the contents haphazardly on to the floor. In a few fumbling seconds she had removed her new ne
gligee, pushing it carelessly to one side before finding her old pyjamas and putting them on. They were a bit short and too boyish, the thin cotton entirely without charm, but in them Sue felt her old, level-headed self.

  Satisfied, yet curiously unhappy, she slid back into bed. It might seem a wicked waste of money, but in the morning the pink negligee could go into the dustbin! Or, on second thoughts, she could give it to the little chambermaid with the nice smile. Wherever it went, she never wanted to see it again. If Sue was sure of nothing else, she was sure of that!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ONCE back in Edinburgh Sue tried to view the whole incident sensibly, as merely a trick of the night playing on senses too finely balanced. Meric Findlay was patently not the kind of man to indulge in such interludes, but, she supposed, any man might have his moments of indiscretion. He had probably been as tired as herself, and what had happened had been without design or intent. A clear case of one thing leading to another.

  Such reasoning, while mundane, was momentarily comforting, and she clung to it as a drowning man might cling to a straw.

  They arrived at Turnhouse in the late afternoon, and Meric insisted they had tea before leaving for Glenroden. ‘It’s a fairish drive,’ he said, ‘and once on the road I’d rather not stop.’

  Sue glanced at him quickly as they drove into the city but made no comment. She had enjoyed the flight better this time. There had been no Carlotte, and Meric had sat with her naming the various landmarks which had eluded her previously. With the expertise of a seasoned traveller he had answered all her questions, telling her all she wanted to know. Unfortunately there had also been time to sit and think, something she hadn’t appreciated quite so much.