A Man Called Cameron

by Margaret Pargeter

  ‘So,’ Neil Cameron’s sharp gaze went narrowly over the two of them, ‘you were merely considering staying a night or two?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, too quickly, but not wishing to give David a chance to blacken his soul, ‘something like that.’

  ‘Something like that?’

  ‘Oh, maybe a week!’ Defensively Petra lowered her eyes, unable to sustain the impact of his any longer. Must he always pounce on the most vulnerable part of every sentence? He appeared to be considering this, as if he searched astutely for the more devious reason she sought to conceal. To have people staying, she realised, suddenly almost as shrewd as he, would not bother this man with his large residence overmuch, but to be deceived in any way would!

  Fear, that he might be on the verge of discovering what she would rather he did not, made her rush on indiscreetly, ‘You don’t imagine I enjoy having almost to beg, do you? If it hadn’t been for your stupid—er—steer it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but seeing how it’s almost wrecked our car I don’t see how we can leave immediately. You must be about a day’s drive from any other place!’

  He nodded smoothly, his eyes on her finely flushed cheeks. Of a sudden, maybe too suddenly, he appeared to capitulate, as if her fiery indignation intrigued him in spite of himself. ‘A town of any size,’ he agreed, thoughtfully. ‘It might not be convenient, but I do see your immediate problem and I suppose I could be held partly responsible. Not that I should worry too much about the car if I were you. Some of my men are already bringing it in, and I expect you’re insured.’

  Was this supposed to be consoling? It just happened to be one more thing she wasn’t sure about. One more thing she had never anticipated. The car would have to be repaired. How was she to arrange it?

  Neil Cameron went on, ‘I suggest we leave any further discussion until David is in bed. At his age a lot of talk can be boring.’

  So he was actually asking them to stay, or maybe he was merely permitting them to remain, which might not be the same thing! However, Petra thought, bitterly cynical, better one foot in the door than nothing at all. The eventual outcome could only be up to her. What had she to grumble at? She didn’t realise that exhaustion was rapidly overtaking her, there was only a barely comprehensible feeling of being almost at the limits of her endurance. All the trauma of weeks of momentous decisions was catching up on her, their mishap with the car and the ensuing shock seeming to be bringing everything to a head. This, along with the additional discouragement of Neil Cameron not being as she had imagined him, turned all her prevailing nervousness into a fearsome terror which tied her stomach up in painful knots. Her face paled with the almost unbearable strain, her eyes widening, the pupils darkening before the cold-blooded appraisal of his. Helplessly she found herself agreeing that David was indeed tired and would probably be better in bed.

  Neil Cameron rang a bell, which Petra presumed was to summon a maid or someone to see them upstairs. She hadn’t given his staff a thought. He might not be suitably placed to have staying visitors. Before she could ask he stepped closer, his eyes keen again on her face.

  ‘That cut above your eye, is it giving much trouble?’

  ‘No.’ This close the blue of his eyes was like a midnight sea and just as intimidating. ‘It stings, but it’s not actually painful.’

  ‘I’ll dress it for you when you come down for dinner,’ he said, as the door opened and an elderly woman entered. He introduced her as his housekeeper. ‘Mrs. Allen will show you to your rooms,’ he assured Petra, as if it was far from unusual for them to have unexpected guests. ‘She’ll also bring you a tray of tea. I think this will be better than a drink until later.’

  Which made Petra feel rather ashamed at her niggling resentment at not being offered anything so far. For herself, perhaps, she wouldn’t have minded, but David looked ready to drop. She didn’t drink much herself, she couldn’t afford to, but even when her father had been alive she had never touched anything but a little light wine occasionally at dinner. Still, wasn’t it crazy—and extremely selfish—to expect Neil Cameron to provide anything for free? There was only a debt, which he might never acknowledge.

  ‘I’ll put your brother next door.’ Mrs. Allen stopped outside a prettily appointed bedroom. ‘There’s a bathroom a little further down the corridor.’ She gave Petra another quick glance and left.

  No clues there as to whether she was liked or not. Petra, looking after her for a second, shrugged, not having entirely lost everything she had been taught as a child—that staff were to be considered but not taken too seriously. If Mrs. Allen seemed rather old and abrupt, there had been someone very like her at Redwell. They were women who had worked hard all their lives, who refused to be pensioned off, and who usually ruled with a rod of iron. To compensate for this their loyalty to the family was almost always phenomenal. Was this the case here? Would she have to be prepared to fight Mrs. Allen as well as Neil Cameron?

  David’s room was as nice as her own if a bit more spartan. ‘It’s a lot better than London,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, I told you it would be, didn’t I?’ Petra replied quickly, almost as if she, too, feared walls could have ears. ‘Look, darling,’ she continued hurriedly, ‘you’d better have the bathroom first. There’s probably more than one, but I don’t know where and I’d rather not ask. I’ll wait and see if our luggage arrives.’

  David hesitated. ‘Afterwards, Petra, do you think Mr. Cameron would mind if I went straight to bed? I do feel tired.’

  Petra glanced at him, frowning. His shoulders drooped and his face looked all angles. Anxiety sharpened within her, yet she managed to smile. ‘Of course not. Maybe I can ask for something light to be sent up? I’m sure you’ll be excused, at least this once.’

  David was actually tucked up in bed when someone came with their cases, and when she returned from her bath she felt even more grateful to find the tea which Neil Cameron had promised. The latter she carried in to David along with the small bowl of fruit and plate of cookies which had been included on the tray. She was glad of these as she doubted he would still be awake before she could find something more substantial. For this one night this would be sufficient. It might be better for him to go straight to sleep. He was almost asleep when she left him, quietly closing the door.

  Wistfully, as she stood regarding her small quantity of clothing, Petra wished she could have done the same thing, although the pain in her wrist was such that she guessed she would never have slept. She might have wept, but that was another thing! Resolutely she tried to pull herself together. To have got this far could be no small achievement, but it could, if she bungled things, amount to nothing. Having to change course in mid-stream was in itself no easy matter. She had come all set to charm a fatherly figure, or at least someone older, perhaps malleable and lonely. While Neil Cameron might be in his thirties this was far from being elderly, and if he did live by himself he would never, she was convinced, be lonely! Not for feminine company, anyway. Tall and broad-shouldered with a lean, hard body, he was certainly attractive. While she wasn’t sure she liked such blatant masculinity, Petra realised most women would find him exciting, and he looked as if he found them easy game. His mouth was sensuous and she had the distinct impression he did more than speak with it!

  A quiver of feeling, like a crackling vibration, hit Petra sharply, moving right through her, a pain to accentuate the already throbbing one in her wrist. Now she realised why she couldn’t think of him as a stranger. He was the image of that earlier Cameron whose cleverly painted likeness had hung in her father’s study for so long. Charles Sinclair had never had any clear idea where it had come from other than that it had been stacked away with a lot of old junk which had been cleared from his grandfather’s attics when he’d died. He had known only that it was one of his Scottish ancestors. Petra remembered how, years ago, her mother had banished it to her father’s study, declaring laughingly but with determination that it was too strong a face for daily perusal, and a
s no one was at all conversant with the man’s history it surely couldn’t matter where he hung.

  But it had mattered, in some strange indefinable way, to the young Petronella. Even then she had found that face, which gazed so proudly beyond her head with such dark blue eyes, oddly fascinating. In later years she had been much given to a more furtive contemplation of it, spending time in the study while no one was there staring at it earnestly. Over the years she had become quite fascinated by the strength of those hard-hewed features, the arrogant set of his head. She had begun to weave dreams around him even while she had tried to keep a sense of proportion, aware that it could only be foolish to become so fascinated by someone no longer alive. It might make people laugh at her, if nothing else.

  Yet when her father had parcelled it up and taken it to London she had been desolate. It had happened about a year before he died. He had said it was to have it cleaned and valued and given all sorts of excuses for not bringing it back. Petra had asked so often, but like a young girl in the throes of her first love affair, she had self-consciously not dared to insist. After the fire, when it had been returned by the genealogist, she had realised that if it hadn’t been there she would have lost it for ever.

  It had been the one thing from the wreck of her father’s business she had had no scruples about taking. Whether it was worth five pounds or five thousand—which she doubted—she had no intention of handing it over. Deliberately she had told no one about it, keeping it for herself. It had been something of a shock to find its replica in the hall of a ranch-house, but not so devastating as the one she had received on meeting Neil Cameron in person.

  Meeting him had been like seeing someone, quite literally, step down from a wall, out of a painting. A painting she had grown perhaps unreasonably attached to. Somehow, in her mind, she must separate the living Cameron from the one of her dreams, yet how was she to do so when he seemed only a harder, more ruthless version of the one in the portrait?

  How Petra wished at that moment for someone she could have confided in. Even the man on whose horse she had arrived seemed oddly comforting compared with Neil Cameron. She must make enquiries about that man, his foreman. In spite of his coolness and mockery his arms had been strongly protective, and she might need a friend here.

  Swiftly, while her mind considered and struggled with her increasing problems, she drew from her case a long skirt and the silky top that went with it. As they had travelled by air she intended making this an excuse to justify the smallness of her wardrobe. She hoped no one would notice the cheapness of it. There was only a pair of jeans and a skirt, apart from this skirt and another dress for evening wear, and she might not have had these if she hadn’t managed to purchase them for next to nothing in an early summer sale. As she slipped the blue blouse over her head and belted the badly cut black skirt to her narrow waist, she thought ruefully of the beautiful clothes she had once owned, which had all been destroyed in the fire. Those days, however, were gone for ever and no amount of longing would bring them back. She could only pray that Neil Cameron was no authority on women’s clothes, so he wouldn’t notice if she wore the same thing night after night. Always assuming she could make sure there was to be a continuation of nights!

  The frightening suspicion that she could be on her way tomorrow strengthened her apprehensive conviction that she must do everything she could to charm Neil Cameron. Her face, even without make-up, was nothing to be ashamed of, but she had been taught how to make the most of it in the expensive school she had attended. A little extra allure now might not come amiss, but it was difficult to manage satisfactorily with only one good hand. Her left she still couldn’t move without considerable pain and while, with her other one, she could brush her long hair she was unable to tie it back. Attempting to obtain a small dab of foundation, she managed to spill half of it and could have wept to see the precious fluid spread over the dressing table instead of her skin. With a tissue she hastily mopped it up, having an inbred respect for beautiful things, and the wood of this bedroom suite was indeed lovely. Eventually she succeeded in getting a little of everything on to her face, then, tidying all her paraphernalia carefully away, she stole downstairs after looking in again on a still sleeping David.

  Neil Cameron was standing in the hall as she came down and she was surprised to find him there. He might be polite to unexpected guests, even those who claimed to be cousins, but she had not thought he would put himself out. As his eyes followed her progress closely she almost stumbled on the last tread. Grasping the open rail unwittingly with her injured arm, she could scarcely stop herself from crying out. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip and her cheeks whitened beneath his sharpening regard.

  ‘I merely waited to show you into the lounge while Mrs. Allen puts the finishing touches to our dinner. I’m not so terrifying, surely, that you should go pale at the sight of me, Miss Sinclair?’

  Dismay fluttered Petra’s long lashes uncertainly. If he was convinced he really was her cousin would he have called her that? ‘I wasn’t aware I had gone pale, Neil.’ Ignoring an unbearable impulse to nurse her sore hand, she deliberately chose to address him thus, hoping it would give the impression that the doubt was all on his side.

  His smile glinted as he walked towards her without once removing the lancing penetration of his eyes. ‘Whatever your—er—accomplishments, you don’t lie easily, my dear. Let me see your hand. When you clutched the rail you positively winced. You could have hurt yourself more than you realised when your car ran off the track.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Isn’t it childish to put your hand behind your back?’

  It might be, but she wouldn’t admit it. In spite of his more favourable expression she didn’t like his tones. Momentarily she forgot she must do her best to impress him. ‘I’ve told you, I’m all right!’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  Rather desperately her eyes darted sideways. ‘You’ve a very nice house.’

  ‘Petronella!’

  ‘As you wish,’ she capitulated dully. Yet, perversely, it wasn’t her hand she stared at as she drew it out reluctantly; her violet-shadowed gaze was riveted on his threatening face. There it was again, the strange feeling of familiarity, as if she had known this man a long, long time and long ago. Drat that portrait, inwardly she panicked, the small tremor going through her betrayed by her sharply drawn breath. This Cameron was living and breathing flesh, so much more than a mere painting on a wall!

  His eyes glittered as he took hold of her hand and this time there was no mistaking her small whimper of pain. ‘I thought as much!’ His exclamation was uttered over a swift examination of her wrist, as he experimentally but very gently flexed her long, fragile fingers. ‘Why didn’t you mention this?’

  She said a little distractedly, oddly affected by the touch of him, more than by the pain in her hand, ‘I didn’t think—I still don’t think it’s anything to make a fuss over. I’ve probably wrenched it. I should imagine it will be completely recovered by morning.’

  His eyes once more raked her gently perspiring face, and he seemed quite unimpressed by any show of bravery. ‘I’d better put a bandage on this before you pass out on me. In the morning I shall take you to see a doctor, if I deem it necessary.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Swiftly, a panicky pulse beating hard against the softness of her throat, she tried to pull away. A doctor here would cost the earth and she didn’t have that kind of money. Scarcely any money at all—if she had to think about it!

  ‘Why not?’ His eyes still clamped coolly on her. ‘It won’t be a big thing, if it’s money you’re worrying about. In any case, you must be insured against such mishaps.’

  ‘The car, you mean?’

  ‘No, medically.’

  ‘I ...’ Her eyes huge in her shaken white face, Petra hesitated. Why confess when she might easily recover without professional treatment? Neil Cameron, she suspected, would be something of an expert with a medical kit, living in such isolation out he
re. ‘If you could put a small bandage around it, I’m sure I’ll recover,’ she said.

  His white teeth snapped together, as if in exasperation, but he didn’t press the issue. He merely took her other arm and led her down the hallway. ‘It won’t take a minute,’ he assured her smoothly. ‘I’d better tell Mrs. Allen to see to your young brother when he comes down or he’ll wonder where we’ve got to.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Petra confessed, ‘he’s gone to sleep. He was tired. You see he is not very strong.’

  ‘Or you probably pamper him too much,’ came the noticeably unsympathetic reply. ‘Sisters and mothers are always doing it.’

  Petra was thinking how to point out politely that he must have had at least a mother himself, when he added curtly, ‘It’s perhaps as well David has gone early to bed because, as I suggested before, you and I have quite a lot to talk about.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘How old is your brother, Petronella?’ Neil Cameron enquired before they had taken many more steps. The clasp of his fingers under her arm hardened a little, as if he was finding the situation called for more patience than he was willing to expend.

  ‘He’s almost twelve, I’m twenty,’ Petra obliged quickly, wishing him in a more amiable mood and feeling the only way to achieve this was to humour him. It must be a favourable sign that he had called her Petronella for the second time.

  ‘Most people call me Petra,’ she told him, with a dazzling smile. ‘It’s quicker.’