‘These are all guest rooms along here,’ he said, and opened the door to one. ‘They’re basically the same. Feel free to photograph any you like.’
She glanced inside at a large, tastefully decorated room, done in green and white wallpaper, dominated by a huge four-poster bed in the centre and a fireplace on the opposite wall. ‘Do they all have fireplaces?’ she asked, taking out her notebook.
‘It stays a little chilly here all year round. Best way to cut the heating costs.’ He opened another door. ‘Bath.’ She had a glimpse of blue tiles and modern facilities before he closed the door again.
She enquired, ‘Where does the family sleep?’ and the sudden twinkle in his eyes made her want to bite her tongue.
‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘a very astute question, and one I’m most happy to answer.’ He led the way around a corner and through a small, tan door, up another narrow flight of stairs, much shorter than the last, and through another door.
Dawn protested, ‘I didn’t mean you should go to the trouble of taking me there.’
He replied, ‘No trouble at all. You see,’ he glanced over his shoulder with a slight, provocative smile, ‘fate has happily arranged it that your bedchamber should be directly across the hall from mine.’
Swallowing her discomfiture, she followed him down a windowless stone corridor dimly lit with electric lamps in amber sconces. Though the faint lingering odour of paint and cleaning fluid suggested this part of the house had also recently been renovated, it was obviously much older, and a more authentic sample of castle life. The floors were stone, the portraits on these walls original and faded with age, and the tapestries, one particularly enormous one of the Lord’s Supper, she imagined were priceless. Byron paused with one more reversion into his tour-master’s tone to explain, following the direction of her gaze, ‘That one dates back to the fourteenth century, done by the mistress of the castle while her husband was away at wars. It was a common occupation back then, when the men were often away ten and twenty years at a time, for the women to fill the hours creating works of art. It was an altar cloth, rescued from the chapel when the old place finally tumbled down in the eighteenth century. It’s a little the worse for wear, I’m afraid.’
Dawn gazed at it admiringly, but dared not touch. She had been warned to ask permission before snapping any antiquities, as some proprietors were very peculiar about the damage flashbulbs could do to ancient artifacts. As she was on the verge of doing so, Byron moved away from her and swung open the large wooden door to another room.
She almost made the mistake of following him, thinking she was being escorted to her own room. But on the threshold she paused as he stepped inside. It was very obviously a man’s room, filled with dark wood and the scent of sandalwood and a spicy cologne—the same scent, she noticed immediately, that he now wore. It was enormous, a king’s chamber, one area arranged with comfortable couches and chairs, book stands and a writing desk, another filled with a huge, curtained pedestal bed, a black oak wardrobe, dressing-table and bureau. It made her uncomfortable, being in a man’s bedroom, because to her the bedroom epitomised what was most private and individual about a person, and perhaps the feeling was intensified by the way he stood there, smiling in that faintly challenging way, his hand extended to invite her in. She refused to move.
He said, ‘I assure you, I won’t bite ... not at this stage of our relationship, anyway.’ Dawn stiffened, and the reaction seemed to delight him. ‘Come in, we’ll have a pot of tea sent up and really get to know each other, shall we?’
She said, coldly but politely, ‘Thank you, I would prefer to be shown to my own room now, please.’
His expression changed subtly, although whether it reflected amusement or annoyance she could not be certain. ‘Strange,’ he murmured. ‘I was so certain it was my room you wanted to see.’ He moved towards her and she stepped quickly out of his way, bristling at his deliberate misinterpretation of her motives. But he did not touch her. ‘At any rate,’ he tossed lightly over his shoulder as he moved across the hall to another door, ‘now you know where it is, should, you ever need to find it again.’
She replied, clasping her hands tightly together to control her tone, ‘I doubt very much that such an occasion will ever come up.’
She reached the door just as she thought he would open it; he did not, but turned to lean over her with one arm propped on the frame, his eyes glinting softly. ‘Ah, but my dear Miss Morrison, you are premature in your judgment of the future. All things are possible in Scotland, the land of romance and adventure.’
Deliberately, she reached beneath his arm and opened the door. She was glad that he spared her the awkwardness of ducking beneath him to enter the room by moving easily aside to allow her to pass. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable here,’ he said. ‘These are prestige quarters—for very important guests. But for you,’ again a challenging glance, ‘only the best. You’re commissioned to write a glowing description of our promise as a tourist trap and we must of course do everything within our power to make that task easier for you.’
‘I’m assigned,’ she corrected, walking away from him, ‘to give an unbiased report on what I see here, and no inducement of yours will make me do otherwise.’ But so far she had seen nothing to indicate that report would be anything other than favourable, and this room was no exception.
It was a semi-circular room, the walls were covered in a gold-flocked paper with matching brocade curtains and a carpet of a similar hue underfoot. The cherrywood furniture was elegant and gleamed softly in the light of one lamp and a low-burning fire. She stepped up to the window embrasure and looked out on a portion of the lake and a splendid, beautifully sculpted garden of clipped hedges and neat, colourful beds. She turned. ‘Is this a tower room?’
‘The entire floor is a tower,’ he explained. ‘This is only part. My room and yours, you see, were at one time joined into a single, massive chamber. Alas for its present-day occupants, they are now separated by a corridor and doors with locks.’
She almost smiled. Really, he was offensive and crude, but there was something rather charming in the offhanded way he made those unexpected passes—almost as though he were laughing at himself while baiting her.
‘Of course you will see the rest of the castle,’ he continued in the most casual tone. ‘Feel free to explore at your leisure.’ He passed by her on his way to the door, a peculiar half-smile on his lips. ‘Of course,’ he added politely, ‘for a very special guest, I imagine I could arrange a private tour. By candlelight, of course. Ghost-ridden chambers and legend-filled halls should never be viewed by anything other than candlelight.’
She protested quickly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of imposing—’
He lifted a finger in light warning. ‘It’s a promise. And the Boyd clan is renowned for keeping its promises.’
The door closed behind him and Dawn was left in the elegant gold room, half of her hoping that was one promise he would forget, half of her hoping he would not. And she justified both of them by telling herself it was only in the interest of the article that she should care at all.
Deliberately, she began unpacking, moving back and forth across the padded carpet from suitcase to drawers to armoire, busily making plans for the rest of the day. She could manage the self-assured Mr. Boyd, if need be, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he must be as eager to have the article in print as she was, or else she would never have been invited. That guaranteed a certain amount of co-operation on his part, and as long as she maintained a clearly businesslike tone to their dealings there was no reason to believe he would not do the same. She would begin, she decided, by taking afternoon shots of the castle facade, when the light would lend a particularly romantic aura to the whole, and intersperse some views of the lake and the colourful garden.
But when Maggie brought up what the English call ‘high tea’—a substantial luncheon of cold sliced turkey and watercress sandwiches accompanied by the ever-present pot of steaming blac
k tea—she began to yawn, and even Maggie noticed she was succumbing to the unaccustomed effects of jet lag. She kindly suggested that she lie down for a while before dinner, and when she was gone Dawn stretched out on the cushiony softness of the white satin coverlet, telling herself it was only for a few minutes, and fell immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.
She started when the maid tapped lightly on the door, announcing dinner in half an hour, and sat up on the bed, disorientated for a moment and looking in some confusion about her. Darkness had come through the drawn-back curtains, the fire had burned down, but the lamp still glowed warmly. A glance at her watch told her it was seven-thirty. She got up quickly and began to strip off her rumpled travelling suit.
She stood before the wardrobe in her underthings, looking with some criticism at the selection of clothes she had brought with her—sensible suits, plain shirtwaisters and skirts, a few singularly unattractive dresses. For the first time she wished she had brought something a little more festive—the sheer white blouse with its Victorian collar and cascades of lace, the yellow voile with the plunging neckline and billowing skirt, the clinging aqua knit ... all of which she had bought on impulse and hardly ever wore.
With a sigh she finally selected a white wool, plain and simple except for the delicately scooped neckline and full, puffed sleeves. It was a light fabric, pleated at the bodice to flow about her figure sensuously as she moved, and reserved strictly for social occasions. She did not know why she should regard her first dinner across the table from the subject of her research as a social occasion.
She spent little time on make-up—with the pressures of her career she had soon learned she simply did not have it to spare—but applied a touch of blusher to her cheeks, a crease of shadow to deepen her naturally large eyes, a pale shade of lip-gloss. Then she sat before the dressing table and unbound her hair, brushing it forward over her shoulder, and for the briefest moment had the wild notion to wear it loose tonight.
Sternly, she reprimanded herself, and wound it into a tight knot at the nape of her neck. She would never make a professional woman if she allowed herself to be transported into whims of romance by every new place she visited!
In completion of her toilette she fastened a thin gold chain about her neck and stepped out into the corridor, for a moment facing confusion about which way to turn. Fortunately, she was spared that decision by the emergence at that same moment of Byron from his room across the way, and he only stood there, looking at her, until she felt a tingle of embarrassment add to the artificial blush on her cheeks.
He examined her with the experienced eye of a connoisseur of women, and she found herself wishing she had chosen instead the plain navy knit with its straight lines and high collar. When, as he closed his door, the slight draught it created moved the fabric gently against her body, outlining each detail from the soft swelling of breasts to flat abdomen to slender thighs, she thought his eyes missed nothing. And the appreciative light there confirmed her suspicions as he moved towards her and said softly. ‘The transformation is an improvement.’
She replied, ‘Thank you very much, I’m sure, but I wasn’t seeking your approval.’
‘Oh, yes, you were. Every woman dresses for the approval of a man. It’s the natural order of things.’
The fact that, on this occasion, she harboured a vague and annoying suspicion that he was right only added to her indignation and she jerked angrily away from his protective hand on her elbow. ‘Can’t you come near a person without touching?’ she demanded.
‘It’s a weakness of mine,’ he admitted, calmly replacing his hand with a more dominant grip, ‘which strangely only manifests itself in the presence of women.’
Dawn glanced at him, and wondered if the philosophy of a woman’s dressing habits could be applied to men as well, for the transformation in him, too, had been an improvement. He wore a dark grey suit that set off his powerful shoulders and slim waist to such perfection there was no doubt it was tailored specifically to fit his form; the silk tie he wore was a becoming shade of light blue ornamented with a modest, though lustrous, pearl stick pin. The handkerchief in his pocket matched the tie, and his shirt was of such a pale blue as to be almost white, like a spring sky overcast with translucent clouds. His dark hair was thick and glossy and framed a face which, she was surprised to notice, could be almost handsome in its austerity.
They took the lift down, and its silent motion and padded interior made their confinement seem almost too close. The little room was filled with the faint, aromatic scent of Byron’s cologne which she found both alluring and distinctively his own. Her entire range of vision was dominated by him, every sense touched by him, and she knew she would not have been so uncomfortable had he in any way been less essentially masculine. Unconsciously, she began to inch away, and he glanced at her in amusement. ‘You do have claustrophobia, don’t you? That must be very awkward for you in—er—’ he lifted his brow suggestively, ‘intimate social situations.’
Dawn lifted her chin and stared defiantly straight ahead, saying nothing until the lift bounced to a gentle stop. ‘You’ll have to get lost a few times before you begin to know your way around,’ he said as they stepped out into the foyer. ‘Of course, if you prefer to play it safe you can always take the lift.’ He glanced at her. ‘Do you like to play it safe, Miss Morrison?’
She replied, following him through the tiled corridor and into a warm, richly scarlet anteroom, ‘Where business matters are concerned, yes.’
He paused and gestured her to precede him into the room. ‘Are there ever any other matters in your life besides business, I wonder?’ he drawled, and she did not reply, because Maggie was there before them and turned with a warm greeting.
‘Oh, there you are. You made it with no trouble, I see. We just have time for a drink before dinner, so come, let’s relax a minute. Did you have a nice rest?’
‘Very nice, thank you,’ Dawn replied as a cool glass of amber liquid was pressed into her hand, and she was unconsciously relieved for the presence of Maggie between herself and Byron. ‘I’m only sorry that a whole afternoon has gone by, and there was so much I wanted to do.’
‘There’s plenty of time for that,’ said Byron, filling his own glass, and turned to her with a salute. ‘A toast. To the beginning of a profitable venture for all of us.’
Dawn smiled politely, but could not help wondering how he could change so drastically from one mood to the other, and whether or not his toast was meant facetiously.
‘Why, Miss Morrison,’ he commented in some surprise, ‘You’re not drinking. Don’t you approve the toast?’
‘I don’t drink—much,’ she answered, and searched for a table upon which to set her drink.
‘How refreshing,’ he murmured, observing her through narrowed eyes. ‘And also a little insulting. You see, this family has been producing the best Scotch whisky in the Hebrides for over five generations, and war has been declared before on men who refused a drink in this house.’
Maggie declared, ‘Oh Byron, really you’re being rude.’
‘Again,’ he enquired lightly, ‘or still?’
Maggie ignored him, turning back to Dawn. ‘What do you think of what you’ve seen so far? How do you think it will appeal to your readers?’
‘It’s marvellous,’ Dawn replied enthusiastically, although she knew that, empirically, she had very little data upon which to base such an unqualified review. ‘The guest rooms are very comfortable and tasteful, and the grounds are simply breathtaking. The castle—what I’ve seen of it so far—has such wonderful character, without the musty feeling one finds in so many old houses. I think your guests will be delighted with the accommodations and charmed by the atmosphere, and will gladly come again and again.’
‘Perhaps we could ensure that,’ suggested Byron, ‘by staging a little entertainment here and there. Nothing elaborate, you understand, just a note of local colour. We could bring the natives in their plumes and feathers to do a danc
e every evening in the back garden. And, as a special bonus on Saturday night, how about a regiment in full Highland battle dress to stage a raid on the old place? Complete with bloody sabres and ear-splitting shrieks and maybe a maiden or two carried off for good measure. Your fat old widows would be quivering in their diamond-studded slippers and loving every minute of it.’ Again the sharp note of bitterness in his voice as he turned abruptly to lift the glass to his lips, and Dawn had restrained herself long enough.
‘Do you have a prejudice against Americans in general,’ she demanded, ‘or simply American tourists? And is your bigotry limited to tourists, or does it extend to include all mankind?’
At first he looked startled, then his eyes narrowed ominously as he scrutinised her. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said coolly, ‘my “bigotry” as you choose to call it, extends only to that group of impertinent, money-grubbing rabble who force themselves into my home and invade my privacy.’ Which included her, she realised with a start. She belonged to the lowest class of money-grubbing tourist in his mind, for not only was she invading his domain and taking advantage of his hospitality, but she was encouraging others to do the same—and for the indisputably banal purpose of selling more magazines. That explained if nothing else did, his domineering, mocking, faintly contemptuous attitude towards her, and she thought that was blatantly unfair.
Maggie said somewhat uncomfortably, ‘As you’ve probably guessed, it wasn’t Byron’s idea to open the house. I just thought it would be such a good idea—there’s so much of the charm of the islands no one ever knows about—and I do think it will bring in a nice income... ’
‘Stars above!’ he exclaimed in exasperation. ‘As though it was necessary! What you’ll make here in a year won’t even pay the export taxes on my whisky for a single month. Money is no excuse.’
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