A Man Called Cameron

by Margaret Pargeter

  David and she went downstairs together just as the long shadows were beginning to creep over the lawns, as the sun slipped quietly behind the craggy, magnificent mountains drawing slowly with it the brilliant, panoramic colours of a fading day. David, chatting happily about the wild horses he had glimpsed, was fortunately unaware of the afternoon’s more momentous events and was his usual quietly engaging self.

  Janey took to him immediately and even Mrs. Cameron’s eyes lost some of their frostiness as they watched him approvingly, more approvingly than they surveyed his sister. It was Mrs. Cameron’s clothes, and Janey’s, which made Petra conscious that the two outfits she had worn for dinner continually were long past their best. The cheap material hung limply, attracting several surprised glances from both of them which they made no real attempt to disguise. Janey was nice to her in a distant way, but most of Janey’s attention was centred on Oliver, whose side she rarely left.

  Neil Cameron sat at the head of the table and Petra found her eyes returning to him again and again. He was so like her dark Highlander of the painting that sometimes she could scarcely bear to look away. In deference, no doubt, to Oliver, who was still in his blue denims, he wore casual dark slacks with a shirt and tie. Even without a jacket he managed to look as he always did, elegant and handsome, enough to turn any woman’s head.

  Mrs. Cameron, Petra knew, would have liked to ask her a great many questions, but Neil mysteriously headed her off, although he did it so discreetly that only Petra seemed to realise what he was doing. Why he was taking the trouble to divert his stepmother’s pointed curiosity regarding her circumstances, Petra couldn’t guess. Or was he doing any such thing? Perhaps he was merely bored and had no intention of listening to a precise description of the area where Petra lived, or what it was like in Hyde Park when it rained. It was more likely, however, that he didn’t want to draw Oliver’s attention to her any more than was necessary and was doing his best to relegate her to a mouse-like anonymity.

  After David left them they had coffee in the lounge and to Petra’s dismay Oliver left Janey’s side to come and sit by her. All through coffee she was conscious of his gaze and well aware that this didn’t altogether please Janey. Oliver even put his arm along the back of the sofa, where it might have seemed Petra had intentionally sat, and occasionally he dropped it affectionately to her shoulder. If Petra could have excused herself and gone to bed she would willingly have done so, but at nine o’clock she could think of no valid reason to escape upstairs.

  Eventually, not surprisingly, Janey grew restive as her eyes clouded increasingly with suspicion. She got to her feet, wandering restlessly to the window, frowning as she turned quickly to survey the two on the couch.

  It was then that Neil, as if sensing a mild crisis, exclaimed lightly, ‘You might have forgotten, Oliver, but there’s still your truck to collect from the lake. I forgot to mention it to the men and it would be simpler now to fetch it ourselves.’

  ‘Oh, God, yes with a yawn Oliver stretched ruefully. ‘A good job you remembered, Neil. I guess I’ll need it later.’

  ‘I think we’ll go with you, Petra and I.’ Janey’s face lit up. ‘Petra can talk to Neil while you and I hold hands in the back,’ she giggled.

  Petra was so startled when the lake was mentioned she could scarcely hide her acute aversion. She didn’t want to go there again—well, not immediately. She felt too raw about what had happened on the island, and Neil's wrath. ‘I’ll stay with your mother, Janey,’ she stammered, ‘or maybe go to bed. It’s almost ten and I’m feeling tired.’

  She thought she caught a hint of warmer approval in Mrs. Cameron’s eyes than had been there all evening. Then Neil spoke again.

  ‘We can’t allow that you’re tired at your age, Petra. You don’t even have to make the effort of fetching a wrap. The night’s still warm, so no excuses. If you think I’m risking having no one to talk to while these two have ears for themselves alone, then you can think again!’

  Petra lowered her lashes so he wouldn’t see her despair. Why did he have to spoil things? ‘It’s only a few miles,’ she protested.

  ‘All the more reason why you should come.’ Neil actually smiled as he marched her outside, after pulling her ruthlessly from her comfortable seat. ‘Do you have to play so dumb!’ he bit out in terse undertones, as Janey and Oliver followed more leisurely.

  ‘Even if I hadn’t been here they could still have sat in the back!’ she retorted fiercely, under her breath, as he reversed swiftly away from the door.

  ‘I couldn’t think of anything more awkward,’ he drawled, his voice still low, ‘and I’ve no intention of getting myself embarrassed.’

  That would be the day! she thought waspishly. ‘I didn’t want to go back to the lake tonight,’ she protested faintly, making sure that Janey, conversing gaily behind them, didn’t hear.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Neil drawled cynically, ‘it’s better to go straight back—to the scene of the crime, so to speak. To look a bout of foolishness, or whatever, straight in the face almost immediately can often save one from making the same mistake twice. It just has to be driven into your head, sweet Petronella, that Oliver is not for you!’

  Petra’s fingers clenched tightly into fists and she didn’t see his eyes glance narrowly down on them before returning to her pale face. ‘What will it take, I wonder, to knock all this romantic nonsense from your head? Oliver seems to have made quite an impression in one short week.’

  Ignoring this with a great effort, Petra fell silent, feverishly glad when, as if wearying of whispered undertones, Neil didn’t press for an answer. How could she explain that she suddenly felt she couldn’t bear to discuss another man while sitting so close to him here? She was too conscious of his every move as he drove the heavy truck ruthlessly through the moon-splintered darkness, of his every breath as he began to whistle snatches of popular tunes in a low key. When he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her deliberately closer she was too bewildered to move away. Did this mean he was sorry for losing his temper earlier, that he wanted to make amends? Feeling it might be easier to go along with this line of thought, she snuggled closer. It was surely wiser than fighting him and when he was being friendly he was quite nice. Sleepily, she realised that this last gesture might merely have been to impress Oliver!

  Once at the lake she had thought they would be going straight back to the ranch, but apparently this was not to be so. When Janey suggested they all stroll around it in the moonlight, Neil nodded lightly and said he didn’t mind. Petra, her cheeks still flaming with humiliation on being aware that once again she had fallen into one of his little traps, wanted to decline, but was allowed no option.

  ‘A breath of fresh air will help you sleep, Petronella,’ Neil quipped, ‘even if you don’t look over-pale. While these two walk along the shore and catch up on all their news, I’ll show you a view of the ranch you won’t ever forget. As you’re a visitor to our shores we perhaps owe it to you. If you hitch up that long skirt over one arm it shouldn’t come to any harm.’

  By this time, perhaps because of the many disturbing elements of the day, Petra just didn’t seem to have the strength left to argue. A view from any hilltop was inviting, but some dark, cautionary instinct warned her this might not be all that it seemed. No matter—it surely could do no harm to play along. If Neil was so determined that Janey should get what she wanted, hadn’t she better help him? By doing this she might even be inadvertently helping herself, and if it only meant climbing to the top of one hill then it shouldn’t prove too difficult.

  Oliver was the only one to protest mildly and this seemed to merely set the seal on Neil’s determination. ‘See you,’ he grinned sardonically, taking Petra’s arm and moving away. He was so arrogantly careless about it that further objections seemed pointless, if anyone had dared proffer them. Soon, as the darkness of the trees engulfed them, Petra heard nothing at all.

  She grasped her long skirt, as Neil had instructed, and let him help he
r over several heaps of large boulders and logs. ‘Now,’ he smiled, as they traversed the last of them, ‘it should be easier. These logs are swept up from the water during storms and the boulders come tumbling down from above to join them.’

  ‘In winter?’ she asked, already breathing deeply as the incline grew steeper. How did he imagine she would ever manage this, dressed as she was?

  ‘Sure,’ he drawled. ‘Winter, in these parts, can be quite something, Petronella. We usually have snow lying for months and the cold is no respecter of persons. Pity the man who has no wife to keep him warm at night, girl.’

  The heat was in her cheeks again although she realised he was just taunting her. ‘To a man like you that should be no problem,’ she retaliated dryly, the wind blowing her hair across her mouth so she sounded as if she might be choking.

  His mouth curved at the corner. ‘The roads are always blocked for weeks. It can be very cosy, or it could be with the right company.’

  She trembled a little, hopelessly unsure, forced to continue impersonally when the odd inflection in his voice seemed to put everything on quite a different level. ‘How do you manage to get out, away from the ranch, I mean?’

  ‘The helicopter, occasionally.’

  ‘So you aren’t entirely cut off.’

  ‘No,’ she thought he sounded distantly amused, ‘but we’re often so busy we might as well be. You sound interested, Petronella?’

  His jeering taunt flicked her cheek. He couldn’t suspect what she had in mind, surely? Her pulse jerked and her fingers curled into her hands in an effort to restrain it. ‘Naturally I’m interested,’ she rejoined stiffly.

  She caught the glint of his mocking smile which seemed reply enough and with the light glint of sky on the hilltop above them, she tried to hurry, to put even the distance of a few yards between herself and this man who could so bewilder her. The first steepness levelled out and thankfully she found she could manage nicely but, try as she might, she still remained only a step in front of him and her pulse, instead of slowing, beat faster.

  Not knowing why, she heard herself asking, ‘Why couldn’t we have gone with the others? Wouldn’t it have seemed more friendly?’

  Neil’s voice came harshly, ‘Still hankering after the unobtainable?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oliver.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ she burst out, then sobered immediately. ‘He could believe he was in love with me, though.’

  His snort of disbelief was scarcely flattering. ‘You really think that’s on—in little over a week!’

  Coming from him that was mysteriously painful. ‘People have been known to fall in love in less. Even at first sight.’

  ‘Leaving out unpredictable desire, what makes you think you’re qualified to make such comments?’ he grated.

  Disliking his tone intensely, Petra toiled on, thinking how she had been in love with a portrait and then completely disillusioned with the flesh and blood reality. ‘No,’ she conceded unhappily, ‘it’s just some sort of attraction.’

  ‘Well, Petronella,’ he scoffed softly, ‘there has to be something to make the world go around. We have to consider the future generation ...’

  Now he was making everything horrid again! Striking into her a kind of fear, a chill, like the sharp call of the lone coyote further down the creek. Janey would hear it and it would be an excuse to cling to Oliver, but Petra knew she would find no such comfort in Neil’s arms. It could never be comfort a man like Neil Cameron would be after—would think of supplying, in spite of all his talk of cosy winter nights!

  Shivering, all her old nervousness of men returning, she hurried her stumbling feet, not daring to continue such unsettling thoughts. She reached the summit a little way ahead of him but knew this was because he took his time. As she stood in the light breeze it blew her wide skirt against her long slender legs, causing her thin blouse to cling to every soft curve of her figure. It lifted her long silky hair sensuously, but the view was so mind-taking she didn’t even stop to consider. Through a gap in the trees she could see away down below in the distance the white, spaced buildings of the homestead. Then spreading wide before it, out beyond the foothills, shadowed and silvered in the moonlight like some limitless waste, the prairies rolled onwards, it seemed, to eternity. Standing here, Petra felt she could be as remote as the moon.

  The wind sighed through the tops of the huge pines and there was silence, a wild, scented soul-stirring silence, a reflection somehow of the high Rockies above her, making her feel suddenly very small.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Well, what do you think of it?’ As Neil came up beside her he put an arm around her as she swayed against the wind, drawing her protectively to him.

  Petra stiffened, feeling a tremor go right through her already breathless body. Maybe he was just trying to make up for his former unfriendliness, but when he held her close like this she had no means of coming to terms with the way he could make her feel and she was in no position to oppose him. Her mistake must lie in coming up here with him in the first place, but he had a way of sweeping one along. With her mind she could attain a certain aloofness, but near to him, her body seemed forever to be curving towards him, as if some invisible current drew her to him whether she wanted it or not.

  Honestly she tried to answer his question, putting this other aspect from her. ‘It’s beautiful. No—out of this world. I mean ...’ helplessly she tried again, seeking for the right words to describe the riveting panorama before her, ‘it’s rather like Scotland on a much bigger scale. I can’t seem to find the right words and I don’t want to sound superficial.’

  His breath came warm against her ear as he turned his head. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Parts of this country have even the best writers beat. I guess there aren’t words, not in our vocabulary, to do it justice.’

  To lighten the atmosphere, which somehow appeared to be pressing down on her, she replied flippantly, ‘So you wouldn’t say I wasn’t trying?’

  ‘Not in that direction anyhow.’ He sounded sardonic, but his arm tightened. ‘I still haven’t got you exactly weighed up, but just for the moment I’m not even trying.’ Far from reassuring, this only spelt danger to Petra, who was increasingly aware that in a tight corner she would have no idea how to handle him. He might hold his suspicions lightly, yet he never let her forget he had them. And soon he must know!

  Nervousness accelerating wildly, she tried to move away. ‘I think we should go down now. Oliver—’ she had been going to say ‘and Janey’ when Neil swung her around hard, choking the words in her throat before she could utter them.

  ‘You never give up, do you?’ he cut in coldly. ‘It leaves me with no alternative other than to chase all thought of Oliver from your charming head.’

  ‘No!’ she cried, her voice too frail a barrier to protect her in any way as he put both arms around her and drew her closer.

  ‘You’d only be wasting your breath if you shouted up here, Petronella,’ he mocked, running his hand through her moon-gilded hair, tugging gently until her head came back against his shoulder and he could see her face. Then his fingers were tracing the line of her cheek, lifting her quivering chin, holding her in a vice as his mouth slowly descended.

  Holding her so tightly, he must have known her resistance could never be physical, that he hurt her, he waited until the hard flame of his mouth seared right through her, and she collapsed weakly against him. It was only then that his grip eased and one hand slid from her back to curve the vulnerable softness of her breast. As he heard her swiftly indrawn breath the pressure of his mouth increased, sensuously.

  There was a singing noise somewhere in Petra’s ears, as if from the flame which seemed to be kindling to a blazing fire within her. She had no means of escaping and now she wasn’t sure she even wanted to. Her heart was beating so swiftly it was like a pain beneath his probing hand and the heat under her skin seemed to be increasing alarmingly. But if there was danger she w
as scarcely aware of it. She should have been fighting him yet, this close, she had no defence. Rather, as the ache of longing inside her increased, she only wanted to be nearer. Her arms went up around his shoulders to curve the back of his head, her fingers aching with a kind of urgent pressure to match his own. Never could she understand why she should be clinging to Neil Cameron like this, but suddenly she didn’t care.

  He lifted his mouth from hers to explore her slender white throat, to linger and soften on the pulse which beat so frantically at its gently hollowed base. ‘What price Oliver now?’ he whispered, returning to her face.

  Feverishly, it seemed, she no longer wanted to waste time thinking about Oliver. As if instinctively knowing she might never, after tomorrow, be in his arms again, she only wanted Neil to go on kissing her. It was an intolerable sweetness she never wanted to stop and, shamelessly, she invited his wandering lips. ‘You don’t let me think about him,’ she murmured witlessly as he seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  His mouth played with hers again, with consummate skill, as if he understood her bewildering degree of response better than she did herself. ‘Would you, perhaps prefer not to think of him, Petronella? You don’t strike me as being half in love with another man.’

  And all this was just his way of finding out. The thought filtered through and she should have been furious, but no anger came. She might have been beyond it. The smooth planes of his face were hard, promising nothing, but she could only see so much. She found him suddenly infinitely exciting and she felt her heart leap. ‘Just hold me,’ she pleaded, wanting much more, but not knowing how to ask.