by Lucy Gillen
the same roof with him. Almost as if he found the situation very much to his liking, his mouth curved in to one of those rare and transfiguring smiles that drew fine lines at the corners of his eyes and made them warm and glowing.
‘Then for the love of heaven, woman, will you stop raising difficulties ! Come away into Corrie with me and let’s find you something more flattering than that skirt that’s too long for you ! ‘
CHAPTER SEVEN
BEING a house guest at Ben Ross, Melodie realised, would make it difficult for John to visit her as often as he was in the habit of doing and he was probably wondering how best to contact her, since Jessie McKay’s assurances that she was unhurt after the cottage fire. It was with the idea of letting him know exactly what had happened that she decided to try and see him the following morning.
He still rode the Ben Ross horses so the stable was the most likely place to see him, even on a Sunday morning, though not too early, she thought. It had simply not occurred to her to get up as early on Sunday morning as she did in the week, and when there was no sign of Neil at the breakfast table she assumed he was taking a well earned-rest.
A remark to that effect, however, brought a sharp response from Jessie McKay. Mr McDowell had already breakfasted and had now retired to the library to read a newspaper, she was informed. He was always early for
Sunday morning breakfast because he knew that Jessie only waited to serve him before getting herself ready to walk down to the kirk in Glen Ross.
It was very obliging of him, Melodie thought, although he might simply be one of those men who were completely helpless when it came to getting himself a meal and the arrangement suited him. But Melodie was by now quite accustomed to getting her own meals and said so.
‘Oh, but you needn’t have bothered about me,’ she told Jessie when she brought her in a pot of fresh tea. ‘I can always get my own breakfast if you’re in a hurry, Mrs McKay.’
Jessie frowned indignantly, her brown eyes gleaming. ‘Indeed you cannot, Miss Carne!’ she said firmly. For one thing I’ll not have strangers in my kitchen, and for another Mr McDowell would not tolerate the idea of his house guest cooking her own breakfast, and rightly so too!’
‘Oh, but I’m not really a house guest,’ Melodic denied, and wondered just what exactly she was. `I’m a sort of refugee, I suppose you could say.’
Jessie, however, was not convinced and she looked as fiercely discouraging as ever with her hands folded at her ample waist. `If Mr McDowell says you’re to be a house guest, Miss Carne, then that’s how you’ll be treated, and your meals will be cooked and served to you, as is fitting.’ Despite her disapproval, it seemed to Melodie that she was prepared to make allowances, and the idea of Jessie’s austere character allowing her to relent at all was surprising. ‘You’ve mebbe not been told that we serve breakfast early on Sunday so that I’ve time to walk down to the kirk,’ she said.
‘No, I didn’t know or I’d have made the effort.’
‘Ah well, no matter.’ She cast an expert and critical eye over the well provided breakfast table and nodded. ‘You’ll have all you need now, I think, Miss Carne, so I’ll away and get maself ready.’
‘Yes, of course, Mrs McKay, thank you.’
The austere features relaxed a little more as she nodded, and Jessie turned in the doorway before she went out. ‘Mr McDowell’s in the library,’ she reminded her, and Melodie nodded.
‘Yes—thank you.’
‘Aye, well.’ Another brief nod and Jessie was gone, leaving a curiously pregnant silence behind her.
It seemed ridiculous to even suggest it, and yet somehow Melodie could not rid herself of the impression that in her own rather pedantic way Jessie McKay was trying her hand at matchmaking, and when she considered it it was something of a compliment if it should be true. Her employer was in-his middle thirties and he must have had other opportunities to take a wife, but she wondered if perhaps Jessie McKay looked upon a comparatively young woman as less of a threat to her position of authority in the household.
Left on her own in the snug little breakfast-room Melodie mused on the prospect for some time while she ate her meal, then realised suddenly what she was doing. Shaking herself impatiently, she put the whole thing firmly out of her mind, for whatever Jessie McKay might have in mind, it was pretty certain that Neil, once her two months’ stay was over, would take no further interest in her, and she preferred not to even think about her own feelings on the subject at the moment.
For all her reluctance to dwell on any suggestion of a relationship between her and Neil, she felt that yesterday’s shopping expedition had gone rather well. Neil had proved far more communicative than she expected, and she had spent rather more money than she intended because he was persuasive when she hesitated.
In fact the deep pink dress that she was wearing had been bought, she frankly admitted, because Neil had made some passing comment on it in a shop window, but it suited her very well, and she would probably have chosen it anyway. Its colour made a stunning background for her black hair and blue eyes, and flattered her light tan, and she knew she looked pretty in it, which was good for her ego.
On her way to look for John she made a turn towards the back door of the house when she left the breakfast-room, then hesitated as she came out into the hall and looked across at the library door. She changed direction almost without realising she was doing it, and felt a light fluttering beat to her heart as she crossed the quiet hall.
The library door was ajar and she pushed it a little further open before putting her head around the edge. Neil was not relaxed in an armchair, as she expected, but on his feet with his back to her, busy packing tobacco from the jar on the mantel into the same old briar pipe he had smoked yesterday, and she watched him for a moment with a curiously unfamiliar sense of intimacy.
She had half expected to see him in riding clothes, but apparently the daily round of the estate was waived on Sundays, for he was wearing light grey slacks and a navy shirt that showed up the fairness of his hair. He was tall and bronzed, and sometimes with his blond colouring he looked almost Scandinavian so that she had more than once been tempted to ask him about his
ancestry. Only the possibility of a curt response had deterred her, though it was still in her mind to do so one day.
‘Good morning, Neil.’
The swiftness with which he turned seemed to suggest that he had not heard her approach, and for a moment his eyes registered such surprise that she wondered if he had forgotten her presence in the house. ‘Good morning, Melodie.’ The pink dress was noted and approved, and she felt another quick flutter in the region of her heart. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my not waiting breakfast for you.’
‘Not at all.’ She laughed, rather breathlessly, she was dismayed to notice, and walked over to join him, her mission to find John momentarily forgotten. `If I’m too lazy to get up in the morning, I don’t expect others to wait for me.’
The pipe was clamped firmly between strong teeth and he reached for matches from the mantel to light it with. ‘I forgot to say that we usually have early breakfast on Sundays.’ Briefly the grey eyes flicked to her face again before resuming interest in lighting the pipe. ‘Did Jessie say?’
‘Jessie did say,’ she admitted, pulling a wry face. ‘I was firmly reprimanded for sleeping through half the Sabbath!’
‘Were you indeed?’
His voice and the way his head came up told her that she had misjudged his tolerance with regard to Jessie McKay, and she hastened to amend the impression she had given. ‘Oh, I don’t mean literally of course,’ she denied, ‘but I was very late and she was waiting to get ready for church. If I’d known I’d have come down earlier.’
‘You may do as you please, you have my word on it!’
Gratified at being indulged, Melodie shook her head, smiling ruefully. ‘You don’t know me,’ she told him, ‘or you wouldn’t make such a rash statement! All I hope is that you won’t live to regret takin
g me in, once you’ve found out how hard I am to put up with.’
A screen of smoke half concealed his features, but the grey eyes watched her steadily, disconcerting as always. One arm lay along the high old-fashioned mantel, and a foot rested on the brass and iron fender. He looked completely at ease and the effect his relaxed appearance had on her own mood was too reassuring to be questioned at the moment.
‘Just as long as you don’t get setting fire to Ben Ross as well, I’ll not regret anything,’ he told her quietly, and the charge, however lightly made, startled her.
She looked at him wide-eyed for a moment. ‘I hope you’re joking, Neil,’ she said, and her voice was huskily uncertain. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
It was a moment or two before he answered and the concealing haze of tobacco smoke that drifted up before his face made it impossible for her to see his eyes clearly, and guess whether or not he was in earnest. Then he took the pipe from his mouth and inspected its bowl rather than look at her while he answered.
‘I’d not joke about the burning of a cottage,’ he assured her, ‘but it’s not known what caused the fire yet—I expect to hear tomorrow.’
‘Can they tell?’
Her rising indignation was overriden for the moment by curiosity, and Neil was nodding his head. ‘Mostly they can these days.’
‘Then I have nothing to worry about!’
For a second the grey eyes became clear behind the
smoke screen, and she noticed that they were serious, though not as much as she expected from his tone. ‘You didn’t leave the cooker burning or anything of that, then?’ he asked, and she shook her head firmly.
‘And neither do I smoke ! ‘ she declared, giving the smoking pipe a meaningful look. ‘Nor does John!’
‘Then it was evidently an electrical fault or something of the sort,’ he guessed, and looked at her curiously when she frowned. ‘Does that strike a note, Melodie?’ -
‘Yes, it does.’ She remembered the flickering light that had annoyed her in the kitchen just before she went to bed. ‘The light in the kitchen was flickering on and off, it had done it before and I thought it was something to do with the pylons—I’m not very technically minded,’ she added when she saw him frown.
‘Did you not think to say something to me about it?’ ‘No, I just thought
‘You were very foolish not to mention it to somebody,’ he told her, and sounded very much as if he was scolding, so that Melodie looked at him with a dark look of warning in her blue eyes.
‘You’re blaming me, aren’t you?’ she accused, but shook her head without giving him time to answer. ‘Well, I’m sorry about the cottage, but I refuse to accept that it was my fault that it burned down! You must think I’m a complete idiot to take chances like that—it could have been me that was burnt to a crisp, as well you know!’
‘Melodie.’ His quiet voice belied the gleam in his eyes. ‘I know—remember?’
She stared at him for a moment blank-eyed, her anger dying into the stunned realisation that she had forgotten for the moment he had been in as much or more
danger than she had herself, and she shook her head
slowly, the tip of her tongue briefly moistening dry lips.
`I—I’m sorry, Neil, I didn’t think. You know better than anyone how close it was for me. If it hadn’t been for you I’d never have got out of there alive.’
There was a glimmer of warmth in his eyes again as he regarded her steadily, and for so long that she wished she could look away instead of gazing at him as if she was mesmerised. ‘A kiss would never have woken the sleeping beauty I found,’ he told her in his softly accented voice. ‘I’d to shake you like a rag doll, and even that didn’t wake you properly.’
She could so easily recall the strength of his arms as he swept her from her bed and thrust her forcibly through the bedroom window out into the night air and safety, that she shivered, a warm glow in her cheeks at the memory of how she had fought him. How she could have forgotten, however, briefly, was beyond her.
‘I remember,’ she said, barely above a whisper. ‘You must have had my guardian angel at your elbow that night.’
‘It’s still hard to believe,’ Neil said. ‘I thank God I was out that night, for we’d never have seen the fire from the house until it was too late.’
It was a new aspect that Melodic had not thought of before, and she looked at him curiously for a second, her interest plain in her eyes. ‘I—I didn’t know how you came to be there,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even think about how, only that you were there.’
‘I saw the flames from the Glen Ross road as I came up from the village,’ he told her, ‘and I put my foot down hard. At first I thought it was Ben Ross, you see.’
‘And you heaved a sigh of relief when you saw it wasn’t!’ Melodic suggested without stopping to think
Neil eyed her narrowly for a second, then shook his head slowly. ‘If I thought you meant that seriously,’ he told her, `I’d make you sorry you said it—but I think I know you well enough by now, Melodic, to know you sometimes speak without stopping to think.’
`I’m sorry, Neil.’
‘Aye,’ Neil said softly, ‘I know you are.’
He continued to regard her with the same disturbing steadiness and she dared not look at him again. There was a strangely exciting atmosphere in the big book-lined room that tingled along her spine and brought a flush of colour to her cheeks, and she had completely forgotten about John for the moment. Another swirl of blue smoke curled like a halo about Neil’s fair head for a second or two, and when it cleared he seemed to snatch himself back from a moment of daydreaming.
Easing himself away from the tall mantel, he swept a slow and deliberate gaze over her slim shape in the rose pink dress. ‘Were you going out?’ he asked.
His tone suggested that he had hoped she was staying, and Melodie made no pretence of being other than ready to be persuaded. Her conscience urged her to remember John, but if Neil asked her to she would see John some other time.
‘I was thinking about it,’ she admitted, and he nodded.
‘You’ll be wanting to see John Stirling, of course,’ he guessed, `to tell him what happened. He’ll be anxious if he hasn’t seen you since the fire.’ He smiled faintly. ‘You’d best reassure him.’
He was doing no more than voice the self-same reasons that had made her decide to see John that morning, but somehow hearing him encourage the -idea
struck her as a bitter disappointment when she had anticipated his trying to persuade her to keep him company. And, illogical as it was, she resented her own reaction, so that she shook herself impatiently.
‘That’s what I had in mind,’ she told him, and Neil inclined his head behind his screen of blue smoke.
‘I think I heard him a few moments since—you’ll mebbe find him still in the stable if you hurry.’
As if he could not wait to be left in peace again to read his paper and smoke a pipe, Melodie thought. There seemed nothing else to say, so she turned without another word and walked across the room aware that Neil’s grey eyes were following her to the door, and she had her hand already on the handle when he called to her.
‘Tomorrow,’ he suggested, ‘I could maybe drive you into Corrie to buy paints and whatever it is you need to start work again.’
Melodie half-turned, her hand on the door’s edge, looking at him over her shoulder. ‘You’re in a hurry to put me back to work?’ she asked, and the grey eyes held hers steadily, suggesting all sorts of reasons for keeping her busy. Like the fact that she saw less of John when she was working—but that she swiftly dismissed as unlikely.
‘I’m thinking about my painting of Glen Ross,’ he said. ‘It was lost with the rest of your things, was it not?’ ‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘The sooner you’ve more paint and canvas, the sooner you can begin another,’ he told her, but some perverse imp in her make-up made Melodie stick out her chin as she looked across at him standin
g with relaxed confidence in front of the huge fireplace.
‘But you’ll be busy, Neil, and I couldn’t take up your
time. John’s on holiday and he won’t mind in the least taking me in to Corrie for paints if I ask him.’ She hastily avoided looking at him as she pulled the door to behind her. ‘Thanks all the same, Neil.’
She hurried across the hall and hated herself for having been so childishly perverse. If only he had not been so ready to send her out to find John when she had thought he was going to ask for her company himself it would not even have occurred to her to react as she had. Shrugging in vague helplessness, she made her way to the rear of the house in search of John—nothing ever happened the way she meant it to with Neil.
John had willingly abandoned his plans to ride when Melodie found him in the stable as she expected, and instead he unsaddled his horse again and joined her for a walk. With his arm about her shoulders and hugging her close she was aware of something a little more intimate in his manner than she had noticed before, and yet she felt strangely helpless to do anything about it.
It was a lovely bright morning and they walked as far as the hillside that sloped steeply down to where tiny Loch Lairdross lay like a blue gem in the rusty green hollow of the glen, reflecting the morning sun like a mirror, clear blue and hazed with mist.
It was Melodie who suggested that they sat there for a while on the springy softness of turf and heather. The view was magnificent and she felt she would never grow tired of it—the panorama of mountains and glens enchanted her and she so easily became lost in the spell of it that she gave only half her attention to John when he spoke.
‘What happens now?’ he asked, and Melodie turned and looked at him rather vaguely for a moment. ‘Where
are you staying since you were burnt out on Friday night—in the groom’s cottage in the yard?’
She thought he knew very well she was not using the groom’s cottage, for it was very obviously unfurnished, but he simply did not like the idea of the alternative. ‘Neil has a new man coming into the cottage,’ she told him, confident that he knew it already, ‘it isn’t available, John. Neil took me up to Ben Ross on Friday night and I’ve been there ever since.’