Prisoner of Love

by Jean S. MacLeod

  He shook his head.

  “No. That was left to me.”

  In the silence that followed he seemed to have closed the book on his family’s history, and Laura supposed she would never know whether his parents were dead or alive. Certainly it did not seem as if either of them lived with him here in this lovely old house.

  “I trained at St. Clement’s,” he said, volunteering the information when the silence between them might have become oppressive. “The remainder of my experience has been gained abroad and in hospitals here in London, over the years.”

  “Not so many years,” she reminded him. “You have had a very full life.”

  “Full enough,” he agreed as the butler came to announce that dinner was ready. “But that is the point of living, isn’t it?”

  She followed him across the hall without answering, and in the perfectly appointed dining room they sat facing one another across a table that had been set for two.

  “I think you ought to meet Holmes,” he said, turning as the butler moved toward a side table. “He’s my complete Man Friday—valet, butler, housekeeper at times! I should be entirely lost without him.”

  Laura turned, considering Holmes in more detail. She did not like him. There was nothing she could fault in his manner. He was deferential without being obsequious, but his eyes seemed always to pass beyond her while still seeing everything. He had, too, a curiously scarred upper lip, which exposed his teeth, and his pointed features and receding hairline all added to the rodent look about him that she had found rather disquieting when she had seen him for the first time in the full light of the hallway. He bowed to her gravely, but she had the feeling that he did not expect to see her there again.

  It was slightly disconcerting to be dismissed in such a way, but she made up her mind to forget it. Once or twice however, as the meal progressed, she was aware of his concentrated gaze. It was faintly quizzical but always discreetly averted as soon as she turned her head.

  It really didn’t matter a great deal whether she liked him or not, she hastened to assure, herself as dessert was brought in and placed before her. They might never meet again.

  Holmes withdrew and she was left alone with her host. They had chatted pleasantly enough throughout the meal and, as if he had guessed her desire and her keen interest, they had “talked shop.” Laura had sat entranced, listening most of the time, aware of the fascination all this held for her and discounting its danger with a reckless deliberation.

  “Will you stay at St. Clement’s?” she asked. “Do you intend to go on consulting there?”

  “For the moment,” he said. “I’m not quite sure that I want to make long-term decisions, though. It’s never entirely wise.”

  She looked up at him, surprise in her eyes.

  “That surprises you?” he suggested.

  “A little. I would have thought that planning ahead would have appealed to you.”

  He smiled, watching her closely.

  “It did at one time,” he confessed, “but I have lived to see the futility of looking too far ahead.”

  “We all try to do it, in one way or another, I think,” Laura said.

  “What have you planned for yourself?” he asked abruptly.

  She looked across the table at him, smiling a little.

  “I’m not quite sure,” she confessed. “You see, I haven’t any outstanding ability.”

  “Does that matter in a woman?” he asked. “Provided that she has all the other attributes?”

  She felt the color rise and glow under her skin and she could no longer meet his eyes. They seemed to strip her of all pretence. He knew she admired him, and he must know that he was physically attractive, quite apart from the fascination his genius held for her. Yet, almost instantly, she felt curiously repelled. By his own admission he was a man who pursued his desires relentlessly, a man who knew exactly what he wanted and left no stone unturned until he possessed it.

  “You know, I suppose, that I married two years ago,” he said.

  The knowledge shocked her, coming so unexpectedly out of the blue. She had not known, and she could not understand why he should be telling her now.

  “No,” she confessed. “I had no idea.”

  “Strange,” he mused, “considering the far-reaching tendrils of the St. Clement’s grapevine! Of course,” he added abruptly, “we never lived in London for any length of time.”

  “You have a home somewhere else?” Laura asked.

  “In Scotland,” he answered. “I hope you will see it one day.”

  His eyes held hers so that she could not look away.

  “Laura,” he said, “I want you to marry me.”

  “But that’s impossible.” Something dry and hard had risen in the back of her throat, threatening to choke her. “Your wife—”

  “My wife is dead,” he said. “Our marriage lasted only a year.”

  “I’m sorry.” All power of reasoning seemed to have left her. “I didn’t know.”

  “How could you?” His eyes were greener than she had ever seen them. “She died in Scotland—in one of the remoter parts.”

  “But—it must have been less than a year ago!”

  Her words were a protest, an appeal to his memory and his former love. “We made a mistake,” he said. “We were completely unsuited to one another.”

  “How does one know that?” she asked rather desperately as he pushed back his chair and came around the table to stand beside her.

  “Like this!”

  He drew her to her feet, pressing her hard against him, feeling the sudden wild and tumultuous beating of her heart, which was a confession without words. He tilted up her face and looked into her eyes, and before she could protest for a second time he was kissing her. She felt his hands, hard and possessive, on her bare shoulders and his mouth crushing hers. There was a moment of incomparable excitement, of ecstasy and a strange fulfilment as her whole soul seemed to be drawn through her lips, and then she was shivering with something like fear.

  “What is it?” he demanded, still holding her. “Does the fact of my first marriage upset you, Laura?”

  “No,” she said, “it isn’t that.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He released her, picking up her fallen table napkin.

  “I should have given you more time to think about it,” he said, “but I expected you to know what you wanted as definitely as I did.”

  “I didn’t expect you to propose to me!” she laughed shakily.

  “And now that I have?” he asked almost casually, “how long do you want to make up your mind?”

  “I don’t know.” She found herself looking away from those searching, half-demanding eyes. “I ought to be able to answer, but I can’t. There are so many things to consider—”

  “If you can name a few,” he said, “we can quite easily dispose of them while you are here.” He opened the door to lead the way back across the hall to the drawing room, where Holmes was setting out the coffee cups. “Leave the tray, Holmes,” he commanded. “Miss Elliot will see to the coffee.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Holmes straightened and withdrew. He had put liqueur glasses on the tray and Julius crossed to the cabinet in the corner and drew out a slender bottle, which he held to the light.

  “Well, Laura,” he said, “what have we to consider? Is there any bona fide reason why you can’t marry me?”

  Her hands, busy with the percolator, were shaking. There were so many reasons, but she wanted to sweep them all aside. She wanted to share his life, to watch the unfolding of his future success at close range, to help, if that were possible, although she did not think he was a man who needed help, particularly with his career.

  “I have my brother to look after,” she said unsteadily. “That is my main reason. I have to make a home for him.”

  He poured two liqueurs and set one of them on the table at her elbow. “Not exactly an insurmountable obs
tacle,” he decided briefly. “Until I have a son of my own it will be interesting to supervise your brother’s education. You must leave all that to me, Laura.”

  A lump rose into Laura’s throat. Lance was all she had been worrying about, really—whether Julius would accept him or not. And now he was being more than magnanimous about him, offering him a home and a life far removed from the rather haphazard upbringing he was receiving in the Chiswick flat, through no real fault of her own.

  She saw the drab pattern of their lives gilded out of all recognition by this man’s kindness, saw a brightness in the future for Lance that she could never have given him on her own, but she could not make her decision all at once. She had to think, too, about what she could give in return.

  “I need someone to look after me, Laura,” he said, as if he had read her thoughts or guessed at her indecision. “We have the same interests, the same ambitions, and I could teach you to love me.”

  Perhaps that had been the omission she had been waiting for him to correct. He had not mentioned love before, yet his kisses had been wholly passionate, his hands hard and demanding on her bare flesh. If love meant attraction and respect and something that was akin to hero worship, she already loved him. It was only that it was difficult to believe, out of the blue like this, that he had really noticed her as a person and not just as a unit when they had met at the hospital, difficult to realize that he wanted to marry her.

  Her pulses stirred when she turned to look at him and he lifted her glass and passed it across the table to her.

  “Need we wait?” he asked. “Let’s drink to the future, Laura. Our future together!”

  “Can I tell you tomorrow?” she begged. “I feel that I may have some—adjustments to make.”

  “You are far too conscientious!” he said, but he did not attempt to kiss her again, and when she rose to go an hour later he walked with her to the door and halfway down Harley Street to find her a taxi.

  It was only when she was in the taxi and alone that she seemed able to draw breath.

  The flat was very quiet when she reached it. All the lights were out and she supposed that Anne and Gillian were having one of their rare early nights. Lance had been in bed and almost asleep before she had left, so that she was surprised when he called to her as soon as she switched on the light.

  When she went through to his room he said in the weary, impatient voice of the sleepless, “I wish you could do something about this eye, Laurie. It’s getting worse.”

  She had noticed a redness about his left eye when she had returned from the hospital, but he had dismissed her comment—rather evasively, she thought now.

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, looking at it in the brighter light from the overhead lamp. “It’s black and blue. What happened? It looks as if you've been in a fight.”

  He said dismally, rubbing the offending eyes, “It wasn’t much of a fight—not really. A gang of older boys came over from Hammersmith when we were playing football and—well, we had an argument.”

  “I see!”

  Laura’s tone had been lightly practical, but as she went to heat water and find something with which to bathe the blackened eye there was a good deal of doubt in her heart. Could she really care for Lance and work at the hospital as well? The word “gang” had frozen in her mind, and although she did not think for one moment that the present skirmish had been at all serious, she began to wonder about the future. No matter how she might plan, there was always that gap between Lance’s coming home from school and her own return. If there happened to be an emergency or if she was kept later than usual for some other reason, he had to get his own supper and put himself to bed.

  True, he was quite capable of doing all these things successfully, but was it fair to ask him to do them and study, too?

  Tears were very near her eyes as she went to sit on his bed and bathe the injured eye.

  “Lance,” she said after a moment, “what would you feel about my getting married?”

  There was a small, rather startled silence in which he peered at her incredulously from under the pad of cotton wool over his eye.

  “D’you mean that you’re going to be married?” he asked at last.

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Would you go away from London?” he asked anxiously, the eye forgotten.

  “Of course not! It would be just the same in a good many ways, only more comfortable for both of us,” Laura explained. “You would still go to school—perhaps to a different school—but I would be at home every day when you got back instead of your having to fend for yourself.”

  “Who is it?” Lance asked after a pause. “The man you’re going to marry?”

  She smiled at the decisiveness of the question. Lance already took it for granted that she had made up her mind to marry Julius.

  “You saw him once when he brought me back from the hospital,” she explained.

  “Not the doctor with the Bentley?”

  “Yes—Doctor Behar.”

  He said rather awkwardly, “When will it be, Laurie?”

  “Quite soon, I think.” Laura finished bathing his eye, gave him a light sedative and tucked the bedclothes securely about him. “No more gang warfare!” she admonished. “That eye should keep you out of action for a day or two. We’ll see what it’s like in the morning and decide whether you should go to school or not.”

  “I’ve got to go,” he said sleepily, “because of the exams. They’re most important, Laurie.”

  Laura did not sleep very well. She had made up her mind to marry Julius Behar. The decision, once it had been made, should have set her mind at rest, but her sleep was curiously disturbed. She got up early and made Lance’s breakfast, seeing him off to school afterwards with a sense of relief because the eye appeared much improved.

  “Come to tea,” Julius had said when he had discovered she had time off during the afternoon. “I have a consultation, but I should be through by four o’clock. Holmes will make you comfortable if you have to wait.”

  Walking down Wigmore Street in the afternoon sunshine, Laura remembered suddenly that Julius Behar’s home had been devoid of flowers and she wondered if she might buy some for Julius. Flowers were a necessity to her; she bought them for the flat when she could afford them, going without something else so that she might have them.

  She bought daffodils and jonquils, a great armful of them because they were in season and therefore cheap, and carried them toward Harley Street with a touch of spring in her heart. All her doubts had left her. This was the beginning of a glorious new life. Only the beginning!

  Nearing the door of Julius’s home, she felt suddenly shy and a little nervous, wondering if she should have brought a gift at all. Perhaps Julius did not like flowers. Perhaps he might even consider them out of place in the discreet atmosphere of a house that was, first and foremost, a consulting room. Yet she had seen flowers in a hospital ward make all the difference to sick people.

  She looked down at the golden sheaf in her arms, thinking how little she really knew about this man she was going to marry. Then, swiftly and deliberately, she walked the few remaining steps to her destination.

  As she did so the door opened, held just wide enough to let a tall man in a thick overcoat out into the street. He carried his hat in his hand, and as he turned to bid the butler a brief “Good afternoon”, she noticed how his dark hair grew well into the nape of his neck.

  Because of his height, perhaps, he seemed to stoop a little.

  She was on the bottom step when he reached the top one, and suddenly she looked up and into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. With a profound sense of shock she was immediately aware of the naked pain in them, the sharp reflection of a soul’s torment momentarily revealed.

  In the next instant they had avoided each other with a brief murmur of apology and passed on, Laura to step into the hall where Julius Behar was waiting for her, and the tall young man to hail a taxi and drive away in the direct
ion of Wigmore Street. Yet in that split second Laura knew that she would remember the look she had surprised in those vividly blue eyes long after she had forgotten the man himself.

  “I wondered if I would get rid of my last patient before you arrived,” Julius said, helping her off with her coat and giving the flowers to Holmes. “He was quite a problem, by the way.”

  “I bumped into him, I think, on the doorstep,” Laura found herself confessing while she wondered what Holmes was going to do about the flowers. “He looked as if he had taken rather a jolt.”

  “I suppose he had,” Julius said with a frown. “He had all the makings of a brilliant surgeon up to a year ago, it would seem. It’s easy enough to recognize a coming man. He’s had the most infernal luck. He went abroad—out East somewhere—and picked up a bug. It has practically destroyed his nerves. It’s all rather sad,” he observed, leading the way into the drawing room where a low table had been set for tea before the fire. “I’m taking on the case, of course, but I’m afraid he will never operate again. He’s rather depressed about it, as one might imagine,” he added, pulling forward a chair for her. “He considers himself a failure, and that’s not good for any man.”

  “But he’s young!” Laura protested. “Surely something can be done?”

  “It may be a long process,” Julius said. “I’m sending him to Scotland. I think he would be better away from London for a spell. There’s no doubt that the pace is killing nowadays, especially if one’s nerves are not too strong.”

  “Anyone can pick up a germ,” Laura mused. “It’s terribly bad luck. He didn’t look the ailing type.”

  “That’s rather the point,” he said, turning as Holmes came in with the teatray and plugged in an electric kettle on the hearth. “The ‘ailing type’ accept a spell of inactivity without trying to fight it. People like Blair Cameron never will.”

  Blair Cameron. The name awakened a memory in Laura’s mind, but it was a vague one and she did not pursue the train of thought. She could have heard it in the hospital, she supposed, yet it seemed to stir up impressions of high mountains and the waste places of the earth.