by Lucy Gillen
It took a moment or two, but then she felt him begin to relax and the taut muscles in the arm she held eased their tightness. He looked down at her for a moment, then shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t quite believe that I became so involved with you that I forgot—momentarily at least—the news I have.’
Melodie’s heart was beating anxiously hard in her breast as she searched his face for some hint, then she found it in the bright, glowing darkness of the grey eyes suddenly, and felt an overwhelming surge of pleasure. A pleasure that banished the last shreds of their brief disagreement.
‘Oh, Neil ! ‘ Her voice was husky with emotion and her eyes had the bright shining look of jewels as she searched his face. ‘You’ve got Ben Ross—it’s yours, isn’t it?’ His expression was confirmation enough and she flung her arms impulsively around his neck and kissed him beside his mouth. ‘Oh, I’m so glad!’
His pride was such that she felt a momentary flick
of jealousy for the vast acres of Ben Ross, because he loved them so much and so completely. `So am I,’ he said softly. ‘It’s been quite a while.’
Her curiosity was aroused, but Melodie did not propose to question him, only prod gently to satisfy some inner longing she felt to know all there was to know about him. ‘Have you always wanted to own Ben Ross?’ she asked, and he did not immediately answer.
‘For quite a long time,’ he admitted at last, then shook his head and half smiled. ‘It’s a long story, but maybe I’ll tell it to you one day.’
Through her thick lashes, she looked up at his lean brown face and felt the sudden rapid urgency of her heart. ‘Not now?’ she coaxed, and he shook his head.
‘Not now—perhaps when you tell me how it is you understand my reasons for saying what I did about horses and people, hmm?’
She would have found some reply, though heaven knew what there was to say in response to such a provocative suggestion, but before she could even draw breath he had spanned his broad hard palm under her chin, and his fingers were stroking the softness of her cheek.
She half expected the gentle kiss he pressed on to her mouth to be merely a prelude to the same passionate and fierce caress that had stunned her on that earlier occasion, but instead he released her after that brief, light touch and she tried hard to stifle the sense of disappointment she felt.
The flush in her cheeks was even more pronounced, and she felt horribly vulnerable suddenly as she fought hard to remain matter-of-fact. ‘Whatever the story behind your wanting it, I’m glad you’ve got what you wanted, Neil.’
That glow of warmth was in his eyes again, and he smiled. ‘Aye,‘he said, ‘I believe you are.’
‘What happens now?’
It was not her own situation that she had in mind when she asked the question, though obviously that was what Neil thought, and he raised a brow, a half smile teasing her gently for her anxiety. ‘Oh don’t worry,’ he told her, ‘I’ll not evict you from the cottage, Melodie. I promised, did I not?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about myself, I meant—’ She shrugged uneasily, wondering suddenly if he would see her interest as an intrusion into his privacy. ‘I just wondered if it would make any difference to you, that’s all.’
‘Very little.’
‘Except that you’ll really be the laird of Ben Ross now.’
His eyes narrowed slightly and he looked at her for a moment in silence. ‘Is that what he calls me?’ he asked, and she did not have to question whom he referred to.
‘Not only John, apparently—most people around here refer to you in that way.’ She looked up at him, seeking to put matters straight. ‘Not in a derogatory sense, Neil—after all, it’s been true, hasn’t it—even before today?’
Neil seemed to take a moment to decide, then he nodded, and she wondered if he saw himself in the part as well. ‘I suppose it has,’ he agreed. ‘For five years before Duncan Ross died he did little on the estate, but left it to me, and for the past eight years I’ve not even had anyone to oversee what I do. I’ve run the place for the past thirteen years—my way.’
And how he had hated to see it go to a woman when old Duncan Ross died, Melodie thought. After five
years of caring for the place as if it was his own, he had probably felt that he owned it already, although his fierce pride in Ben Ross was still puzzling to her in one way. How could a man give his life to a place when he had little or no hope of ever making it his own? Perhaps this day had been his goal all along—the possibility that one day he would own it.
‘You deserve to have it,’ she told him, and Neil said nothing for the moment, but simply shook his head, as if he found it still too much to believe.
‘We’ll see,’ he said, and seemed to deliberately seek out another subject for discussion.
Picking up her painting where it still lay on the table, he held it at arm’s length for a moment or two and studied it, while Melodie watched him from the concealment of her lashes, trying to decide what his opinion was. His expression gave no indication whether or not his opinion was favourable, and she waited for it with a certain amount of anxiety.
‘I’ve been trying to decide about that,’ she told him with a slightly unsteady laugh, and when he spoke it was without turning round.
‘Do you sell your work, Melodie? Are you a professional artist?’
It was not quite the answer she had expected, and she watched his face for a moment from the concealment of her lashes. ‘Why—yes. I’ve sold them at various times—whenever someone wants to buy them.’
‘I’d like to buy this one.’
Melodie was too startled for a moment to quite realise what he was saying, and she stared at him with wide eyes. ‘You—you really like it?’
‘I like it very much.’
‘You don’t think it’s—’
‘It’s fine—I like it.’
She could not rid herself of the suspicion that for some inexplicable reason he was simply trying to please her, and yet there was no earthly reason why he should go to such lengths to please her, and she shook her head slowly. Nevertheless she had to be sure, and she touched his arm lightly with her fingertips to make him look at her.
‘Neil—you really want it?’
After a moment he smiled, and it was one of those smiles that glowed in the grey eyes, and brought a hundred tiny lines to the lean contours of his face. ‘You’re not a very good salesgirl, Melodie,’ he teased. ‘Yes, I really want it—the first thing I’ve got for Ben Ross since it became mine.’
His reason touched her more than she cared to admit, and she reacted impulsively, as she so often did. Putting her own hands over his as they held the painting, she squeezed his fingers persuasively. ‘But won’t you please let me give you the painting for a housewarming present, Neil?’
He hesitated, and she watched him almost anxiously, then after a second or two he smiled again. It was not as wholehearted as the last, but none the less warm for all that, and it expressed his appreciation of the gesture. ‘Maybe it’ll sound a wee bit strange to you, Melodie, even ungracious since you’ve offered to make it a gift, but—I’d like to buy the picture for myself—for Ben Ross. Will you let me do that?’
She thought she understood, though she would gladly have given it as a present, so she nodded. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said in a small soft voice. ‘I understand.’
It was a second or two before she realised that she had used those exact words once before, and when she
glanced up at Neil, it was clear that he remembered too. The grey eyes held hers for a moment with that disturbing steadiness that shivered a thrill of sensation along her spine, and briefly, for a second or two, that glowing warmth was in their depths again.
`Aye, I think maybe you do,’ Neil said softly.
It had been a long and quite tiring day one way and another and, having seen John out, Melodie yawned lazily and thought about going to bed. She had been a town dweller all her life, including the time she spent in Australia, and the hours
she now spent in the rich Highlands air made her pleasantly sleepy so that she was always a little heavy-eyed by late evening, and had slept like a baby ever since she came to Ben Ross.
John was still a regular visitor and came most days, so that she wondered if he as well as Neil had taken it upon himself to keep a caring eye on her well-being. John, in fact, had made it increasingly plain recently that he would like their relationship to develop into something much more intimate, although so far Melodie had done nothing to encourage him.
She thought it was doubtful if he knew about the official change of ownership of Ben Ross, or he would almost certainly have said something to her about it, but she had no intention of being the one to inform him. If Neil wanted it made public knowledge he would let John’s uncle know—he probably would in time, along with the rest of the estate employees, although it would make virtually no difference to their positions at all.
Smothering yet another yawn, she went through into the tiny kitchen and on impulse opened the door of a cupboard tucked away in one corner. Normally it
housed only brooms and dusters and the paraphernalia of house cleaning, but its prime purpose as far as Melodie was concerned was as a store for her painting equipment, and from the top of the pile she picked up the painting that Neil had asked to buy.
Frowning over it for a moment or two while she decided whether or not it was dry enough to varnish, she came to the conclusion that it was perhaps better than she had first thought. Maybe Neil was a better judge than she was herself—it really wasn’t too bad at all.
There was still quite a lot of daylight outside, but inside the little cottage the small windows admitted only a limited amount of light, and she switched on the overhead light for a moment while she studied the painting further. The light flickered unsteadily for a second or two and she frowned up at it. It had been happening quite often lately and she supposed it was a technical fault—something to do with those huge skeletal giants of pylons that strode across the hills and spoiled so much of the landscape.
When it happened again she switched off and put the painting back in the cupboard, glaring impatiently at the light. ‘Stupid things!’ she declared, condemning the pylons for being ineffective as well as ugly.
Tomorrow she would varnish the painting and then, after another day or two, Neil could have it and hang it in his newly acquired domain. She must ask him, she thought as she undressed for bed, just where he had in mind to hang it—it would please her to think he wanted it somewhere where he could see it often, but she was not going to fool herself to the extent of thinking that he really cared that much one way or the other.
Outside the last of the daylight glowed in the evening sky, and through her open bedroom window the sound of a light wind in the shrubs and trees that surrounded the cottage rustled and whispered in a comfortingly familiar voice, lulling her off to sleep almost at once. It was the last sound she heard as her eyes closed, until a sudden loud and urgent voice yelled quite close to her ear what seemed like only seconds later, and snatched her from her sleep.
Her brain was dull, deadened by sleep, and her eyelids refused to open beyond a narrow, hazy slit that unbelievably showed Neil McDowell’s stern face bending over her, while his hands gripped her shoulders with bruising force as he tried to shake her awake.
‘Wake up, Melodie, for God’s sake—wake up and get out of here!’
‘What—I don’t ‘ She shook her hazy brain into as
much wakefulness as it was capable of at the moment, and glared at him indignantly. ‘Don’t do that! Stop it, Neil—leave me alone!’
‘Oh, God in heaven, you’re still half asleep!’
His voice seemed even closer suddenly and more urgent, and she cried out instinctively when the bedclothes were pulled back roughly and arms grabbed her up from the bed in one frantic movement, while she still fought to make him stop.
‘Stop it, for heaven’s sake, you little idiot! Stop fighting me!’
There was a curious and unfamiliar smell in the room, but she was incapable of recognising it for what it was at the moment, she could cope only with more immediate things. Like the strong, unyielding arms that she struggled against, blindly and instinctively, right up to the moment when they pushed her un-ceremoniously through the bedroom window and into the cool night air, and she cried out in indignant protest when she landed among the shrubs outside the cottage.
The shrubbery probably made a softer landing ground than the hard ground would have done, but its leaves and branches were prickly, and she had no better protection than her nightdress, so that the impact was sharply uncomfortable. Her skin was scratched and grazed as she struggled to her feet and she stared at the cottage, the last remnants of sleep driven from her brain by the realisation of what it was all about. Smoke and flame seemed to be pouring from every window in the cottage and even the bedroom where she had been sleeping was filled with smoke.
‘Neil!’
The cry was as instinctive as her struggles had been earlier, and she gazed at the window through which he had pushed her to safety, with a cold sense of panic in her breast, for there was no sign of him. No matter if the stony ground hurt her feet, she went to the window and raised her voice above the angry crackle of flames consuming tinder dry furniture and rafters, the heat scorching her cheeks as if an oven door had been opened.
‘Neil ! ‘
Her voice cracked in panic and she felt a tightness in her throat when she spotted him at last, over near the door as if he had been trying to get through into the rest of the cottage and had been driven back by the fire. He managed to close the door while she watched and she saw him hesitate for a second before striding across to the old-fashioned wardrobe that took up nearly half of one wall of the bedroom. He turned the
handle and nothing happened—the wretched thing always stuck when she tried to open it herself.
‘Neil, please—get out of there!’
She gave a sudden sharp scream of terror when the door of the bedroom burst inwards before a long licking tongue of flame that came within inches of where Neil still struggled to open the wardrobe door and she shook her head in despair. A great billow of smoke followed and more flames, spreading rapidly through the dry timbers of the old cottage, and Melodie cried out to him again.
‘Neill Neil, please!’
She saw him start towards the window, then dart suddenly across to where her robe lay across the foot of the bed, snatching it up as he came. He was across the room in a matter of seconds after that with the fire at his heels, and Melodie stepped back quickly from the window for fear of hindering his ,escape.
Smoke billowed out behind him as he climbed over the sill, and he shook his head as if to clear it, brushing a smoke-blackened hand across his brow, while in the other he held her robe, carelessly bundled into a mere handful. It looked such a little thing to have risked his life for, even though it was probably all she owned in the world at the moment.
He held it out to her and she was trembling like a leaf while he helped her into it, for it afforded little more protection than her nightdress did, and she stood like a small pale ghost in the vivid red firelight for a moment. Dazed and suddenly chill, she turned to him instinctively when he reached out, and hid her face for a second against his shoulder, while his arms held her close.
‘That damned robe was all I could get for you,’ he
said, as if he needed to explain, and Melodie was shaking her head urgently.
‘You shouldn’t have taken such a risk—it wasn’t worth it to get my clothes.’
Limp and unresisting, she would have stayed where she was, in a curiously satisfying limbo of inaction, but Neil was taking off his jacket and wrapping it around her, his big hands strong and reassuring, and the grey eyes scanned her face in a swift searching scrutiny, as if he found it hard to believe she was unharmed.
‘Are you all right?’
It seemed such a commonplace question in the circumstances, and she felt vague
ly lightheaded, so that she almost smiled. Instead she nodded assurance and her eyes in turn searched his dark, smoke-grimed features for a sign of hurt.
‘Are you?’
His nod was brief but reassuring, then he cast a swift downward glance at her flimsily clad shape, only partly covered by his jacket. ‘You’ll be getting chill if you stand around in this night air,’ he declared with almost his usual matter-of-factness. ‘I’d best get you up to the house as soon as possible and let Jessie take care of you.’
‘The house?’
It had not yet occurred to her what was likely to happen now that she was virtually homeless, but taking refuge in Ben Ross was the last thing she could have foreseen, though the only possible one in the present situation, she realised. Neil was looking at her with raised brows and a hint of impatience. she feared.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Did you think I’d leave you to spend the remainder of the night under the hedge?’
‘Oh no, but
She got no further with her explanation, for she was
lifted once more into his arms and carried round the end of the burning cottage to where his car stood on the drive. Neil put her into the passenger seat, then came round quickly and got in beside her, turning his head briefly to look over his shoulder at the blaze.
In the flickering red light his face had a curiously tired look suddenly, and his grey eyes appeared more black than grey, so that she tried to imagine what he was feeling. Then he turned back, a tight stern look about his mouth as he started up the engine.
‘I’m sorry, Neil.’ From the way he glanced at her it was clear that her apology puzzled him, and she hastened to explain. ‘It’s your property,’ „she reminded him, ‘and it seems such a shame that your ownership should start off so badly.’