There was no repeat of that sunny day lying together in the dunes, and the rum remained largely untouched, as though it represented a temptation that might lead us into indiscretion. I will confess, though, that on one occasion I was walking back to the croft when I caught a glimpse of Neil washing in the pool by the spring and chose not to walk on or to avert my eyes. We both washed in the freshwater pool occasionally, because although sea bathing was delightful it was also salty and sandy, so that by the time you had walked back up the beach you needed another wash.
On this occasion I had been collecting loganberries from the far side of the island and came upon the pool from the windward side, which was probably why Neil did not know that I was there. He was standing with his back to me, naked to the waist, sluicing the clear water over his head and shoulders. The lines of his body were hard and clear cut against the pale blue of the twilight sky. As I watched he raised his hands and smoothed his black hair down, so it was as sleek and wet as an otter’s pelt. The low sun glistened on the droplets of water running down his shoulders and back. I stared, my mouth as dry as though it were full of sand, my heart thumping.
I must have made some sound, for he turned and for a long moment his eyes met mine. My legs trembled so much I thought I was going to tumble over in the marram grass. Still holding my gaze, he strode out of the pool and reached very deliberately for his shirt. He shrugged it on and the material clung to his damp torso. Then he walked away without a word.
We did not speak at all that evening, and the air between us was so thick with tension that you could have cut it with a knife.
It was the following day, in an effort to break the strain between us, that I asked Neil to make a wooden chessboard. Now that September was well advanced the evenings were drawing in, and I was reluctant to sit with Neil night after night in silent unease. I collected shells from the beach to use as the pieces—scallop shells for the pawns, limpets for the knights, cockleshells for the rooks and beautiful fan shells for the kings and queens.
‘You do play, don’t you?’ I asked, after we had eaten salt pork stew for our supper and cleared a space on the floor for the board.
‘Of course,’ Neil said. ‘I’ve played chess since I was a child. I’ll wager I could beat you easily.’
This, naturally enough, raised my competitive spirit. My papa had taught me chess, and I had been accounted quite good, but of course I brought to my chess-playing the same recklessness that categorised other aspects of my behaviour. I was so desperate to win that I was careless, and I soon discovered that Neil was a strategist when he had me and my queen in check.
‘Let’s play the best of three,’ I said quickly, setting the pieces back to their original places. I could see that Neil was laughing at me, and thought he would have another easy win, so I tried really hard and concentrated hard as well the second time. I almost beat him.
‘Did you learn woodwork as a child as well?’ I asked, when I had at last conceded and was running my fingers idly over the smooth surface of the board he had made. ‘It does not seem the type of occupation I would expect in the grandson of an earl.’
‘I learned my woodworking from the gardener at Strathconan,’ Neil said. His face was grave in the firelight. ‘My father did not approve.’
‘You never speak of your parents,’ I said. I drew my tartan shawl more closely about my shoulders and huddled nearer the fire, for a storm was blowing up outside and the wind was chasing little piles of sand across the floor, setting them dancing in the draught.
‘No,’ Neil said. He shifted a little. ‘I was a disappointment to them. They wanted me to be the sort of sprig of nobility who spends his time mindlessly oppressing tenants and shooting feathered creatures. My interests were all more practical than that, and they thought it beneath me.’
I picked up one of Neil’s driftwood carvings. He had polished it smooth, so that it felt like silk beneath my fingers. In the dim light of the cottage the wood looked ghostly pale.
‘I think your work is beautiful,’ I said. ‘And I thank God you are practical, for I do not know how we would have managed these weeks past had it not been for you making things to ease our life here.’
I stopped and looked up. Neil was smiling at me, and my heart gave a little flip before I blinked and looked away.
‘I only have book learning,’ I said, a little randomly, ‘for that is what I was taught. But at least my papa was always proud of me.’
‘My parents died years ago, when I was barely sixteen,’ Neil said. ‘And although it was a shock when it happened there was a part of me that was relieved to be free of the burden of their disapproval. But you—’ He tilted his head to look at me. ‘You must still miss your parents very much, I think. There are times when you look so sad.’
My grief felt painful in my chest. ‘I do miss them,’ I said gruffly. ‘There have been times recently when I would have welcomed my father’s wise counsel and my mother…’ I paused. ‘Well, she was simply the most beautiful, loving and generous person in the world, and it was so hard to lose her.’
Neil did not offer any platitudes or false comfort, but he took my hand and linked his fingers with mine. His touch was warm and strong and comforting, and it made me feel better even as it undid almost all of the flimsy defences I had placed in my heart against him.
I knew then. I knew I could not stop loving him just because I willed it. I knew it was going to be a long, hard journey for me.
‘What about your uncle, the Earl?’ I said. ‘Does he approve of you?’
Neil laughed and let me go. ‘He has little choice, since I am the only heir he has.’
‘But you said that he is a good man,’ I persisted.
‘He is a good man in that he works with his tenants rather than throwing them off his land and enclosing their pastures,’ Neil said. His voice was hard. ‘I admire him for that, when all about us we see landowners grabbing whatever they can get.’
I thought of Squire Bennie, enclosing the common land at Applecross, and of some of the crofters moving away to find other work because there was no way they could provide for their families otherwise. If the Earl of Strathconan was more considerate of his tenants than the majority of his peers there would no doubt be those who thought him soft and foolish, but I admired him for it.
‘And does he approve of you being a Navy man?’ I asked.
‘Not in wartime,’ Neil said. ‘When I was a troublesome sixteen-year-old and he did not know what to do with me he thought it a fine idea. But now he is afraid I will do something foolish and end up dead.’ He threw a piece of driftwood on the fire, and in the spurt of flame that followed his expression was moody.
‘It is natural that he should worry if he cares for you—’ I began. But Neil shook his head and that silenced me.
‘He cares that the Strathconan title should not die out,’ he said abruptly. ‘That is all he cares about.’
It seemed to me then that Neil had never had anyone who loved him for himself alone. His parents had wanted a pattern card son. His uncle wanted a dutiful heir. Miss McIntosh had wanted someone rich enough to buy her a dozen pairs of stockings on a whim. Love was unfamiliar to him, unknown and strange. It had had no place in his upbringing. Instead there had been pale imitations—approval when he pleased his family, respect for his money and status, physical desire and admiration from women—but no pure love given unconditionally. He was not loved and he did not know how to love in return. Whereas I had been materially the poorer, but had known every day of my life that my parents loved me unreservedly.
For a moment I was so close to throwing myself into his arms and demonstrating to him all the love that I had for him. I looked at him, at the pure, clean line of his jaw in the firelight, and the hard curve of his cheek, and the silky softness of his hair, and I was submerged in my feelings of love and lust. Then the wind rattled the shutter and I shivered and drew back. I could not weaken now, for both our sakes. If Neil did not want to love—if
he was afraid of love—then I could not push him towards somewhere his heart did not lead.
The shutter banged again and the wind howled. Sometimes on stormy nights—and days—I would go out onto the strand and let the rain wash my face, the wind knit my hair into knots again. I would stand on the hill and feel the raw power of nature, and think of the Cormorant in her watery grave on the seabed below. But tonight I wanted to sit tight beside the fire and feel safe, until the storm had swept by and the sun rose on our island and the raindrops twinkled in the machair and the breeze was calm again.
‘I wonder what is happening in the world,’ I said suddenly. ‘I wonder if we are at war again. And, if we are, will we win?’
‘Of course we will,’ Neil said. ‘I was with Nelson at Copenhagen last year. There is a man to inspire his fleet! Such daring and courage and skill! He makes his men believe he can conjure victory from nothing, and when we believe anything is possible.’
We talked long into the night, until the wind died down and the island was calm again. That was the start of it, and after that Neil and I would spend the autumn evenings in talk or playing chess. Sometimes I even won a game, and I do not think he let me win on purpose. We talked of his childhood and mine, and the places we loved and the things that we believed in. We spoke of everything and anything other than how we felt about one another and what would happen after we left the island. I kept my feelings for him locked away as though they were in a padlocked box, and yet every conversation we had only helped me to fall more deeply in love with him, just as I had known I would. Love was not always a matter of passion and desire, but sometimes an outcome of shared adversity and day-to-day intimacy. I had not realised that before, but I understood it now.
As the October days slid towards November, and we had been on the island for over a month, I think that both of us started to assume that we might be there for the winter. We had enough food salvaged from the wreck to see us through, although it was becoming rather monotonous to eat salt beef or salt pork or biscuits or porridge. I had had to throw the cheese away when I had found things living in it. We supplemented our diet as best we could with berries, and some potatoes I had found growing in a neglected vegetable plot behind the cottage, and even with seaweed on occasion.
Sea fogs were becoming more common at night now, their grey shroud pressing around the cliffs and outcrops, smothering all sound. The fine days were few and far between, and when it was not foggy it seemed to rain with either a soft drizzle that was penetratingly wet or with great sheets of water flung in on the wind. Even the sunny days had a cold, cutting edge.
It was on one of the rare sunny days that I was watching the beacon whilst Neil was fishing from the rocks. The wood was damp, as it always was now, and had been slow to burn and was now hissing spitefully and sending out great belches of smoke. It was probably this that saved us, for the smoke was caught on a brisk breeze that carried it northwesterly. I was not really paying much attention to the sea, for I was watching a lizard that was sunning itself on a sparkling mica rock, when suddenly a sea eagle cast its huge long shadow over us and I looked up. The bird was already soaring away, but beyond it, nearer than the horizon, I caught a flash of colour from the sails of a ship.
Panic and excitement gripped me and at the same time a fear that I would see the ship turn and slip away and once again our hopes would be lost. I fed the fire feverishly, desperately trying to fan the meagre smouldering to a blaze, throwing as much wood as I could find onto the pyre with no thought for what we might do if the ship vanished and the beacon had to be built up again. But the ship did not disappear. It came closer and closer, until I could see the sails and the flag of St George. It was a small Navy cutter, a reconnaissance ship. I remembered Neil saying when we were on the Cormorant that the Irish Squadron were patrolling these seas against Napoleon’s fleet.
I shouted for Neil then, even though I knew he was away to the east and could not hear me, and I ran across the heather in my bare feet to find him, tripping and stumbling, all the time throwing backward glances at the treacherous beacon in case it went out and the ship turned and left. Neil came running up from the rocky outcrop when he heard me, a couple of salmon dangling from one hand and the line in the other, and I fell into his outstretched arms.
‘A ship!’ I gasped. I had one hand pressed to my side, where I had such a stitch I could barely breathe.
Neil turned and ran up to the beacon, and when I finally managed to lumber back up the hill to his side the cutter had dropped anchor a respectful way out from the reef and they were lowering a boat over the side.
Neil gripped my hand so tightly that I thought the bones might crack. Neither of us spoke. I think we were both terribly torn then, knowing that the rescue we had hoped and prayed for was here, and yet realising that this meant the end of our island life. Everything was going to change.
When the longboat reached the lagoon we went down onto the beach to meet the sailors. There was a lieutenant who looked pin neat and elegant in his uniform compared to our raggedness. I was acutely aware of the stares of the boatmen as they took in my rather unorthodox tartan-wrapped gown, but the Lieutenant did not betray by even the slightest twitch of an eyebrow that he thought there was anything amiss. He saluted Neil.
‘Lieutenant George Rose of His Majesty’s ship Agamemnon, sir!’ he said smartly. ‘Captain’s greetings, and would you care to come aboard, sir?’ Then his demeanour relaxed into a grin. ‘The Captain is damned—sorry—dashed relieved to have found you, Mr Sinclair. Your uncle has been turning the Admiralty upside down this month past.’ He bowed to me. ‘How do you do, madam?’
Neil took my hand and drew me forward. ‘This is my fiancée, Miss Catriona Balfour,’ he said.
And that was how Neil Sinclair proposed marriage to me.
Chapter Fourteen
In which my stubbornness and pride prompts me to make a bad decision.
It was a shock. I admit it. And I am not sure exactly what expression showed on my face. Yet after two seconds thought I understood why Neil had done it. We had been living alone together for over a month. I had not a shred of reputation left. Truth to tell, my good name had been lost from the moment I had been carried aboard the Cormorant. Now we were back in the real world, and it was marriage or ruin.
Everyone was looking at me—Neil included. There was tension in his eyes, and I knew he was afraid I would refuse him point blank there on the beach, with half of His Majesty’s ship Agamemnon in attendance. I knew he was only doing this out of honour, to save me, and for a moment my pride almost prompted me to tell him not to be foolish, that I cared not a rush for my reputation and would go and live in a bothy at Glen Clair and keep sheep and the world and its opinions could go hang.
But I did not. I did not contradict him. Instead I smiled graciously and accepted the sincere and slightly relieved congratulations of Lieutenant Rose. After that it was official, and there was no going back—at least not for now. I had every intention, however, of waiting until all the fuss had died down and the scandal was forgotten, and then breaking the engagement and going off to live in a bothy at Glen Clair and keep sheep.
You may be wondering why I intended to turn Neil down, given that I was hopelessly in love with him. It is true that I loved Neil so much that it was like a physical ache inside me. I loved him for his courage and his gallantry on board the Cormorant, I loved him for saving me in the shipwreck, and I loved him for having the principles that I had originally thought he lacked. But none of that changed the fact that he could not love me in return, and I was not going to sell myself short and settle for second best.
There was, however, no chance to talk to Neil about it now. Lieutenant Rose was anxious to get us aboard the Agamemnon before the tide turned. I insisted on dashing back to the cottage to collect my meagre belongings, such as they were. This amused the sailors mightily, but they provided a small oilskin bag for the purpose and in it I stowed some shells, the smallest of Neil’s carv
ings, and a few other bits and pieces of sentimental value. And as I was standing there, looking around the little room that Neil and I had shared, a sudden pang of loss and sorrow hit me as I realised matters would never, ever be the same again.
I went out of the door one last time, then down the sandy path through the machair to the beach and to the future.
The Agamemnon was a neat little ship, and it was immediately clear how different it was from the Cormorant both in terms of tidiness and the discipline of the crew. As we went aboard Neil’s face broke into a grin as we reached the deck and found the captain waiting to greet us.
‘Johnny Methven! They have given you your own ship at last! Whatever possessed them?’
Captain Methven was only a few years older than Neil himself, with blue eyes bright in a tanned face and fair hair bleached pale in the sun. He shook Neil’s hand, laughing.
‘Thank God we found you, Sinclair. I’d never have been able to look Lord Strathconan in the eye again, had we failed.’ His gaze swept over me thoughtfully. ‘Trust you to be the one to be shipwrecked with a mermaid!’
Neil’s smile faded abruptly. ‘This is my fiancée, Miss Balfour, Methven. Catriona, this is my cousin, Lord Methven.’
‘Your fiancée. Of course,’ Captain Methven said, straightening. His tone changed to one of the utmost respect and he bowed to me. ‘A pleasure, madam.’
But I had seen the surprise and speculation in his eyes, and I knew that as Neil’s cousin and friend he would be aware of Celeste McIntosh, and all the other women, and would know, too, that Neil’s marriage should be a very different business from this scrambled affair or should be a match with an heiress of good family, who had been approved by Lord Strathconan himself.
Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress Page 15