A Dark and Distant Shore (50 page)

But the jealous, selfish, possessive boy had changed in the last three years, or seemed to have changed. Had he? He had said he loved her, but how deep, she wondered, did it go?

She twisted round again and sat up. Did it matter? Dear God,
did it matter
?
He swore he was in love with her, and that was enough.

The sun was sinking now, and the castle lay below her like some rare and precious trinket from Croesus’ treasure chest, lapped around with gold and chrysoprase. The sheer beauty of it lacerated her heart, and tears sprang to her eyes as, steepled fingers pressed tight against her lips, she tried to control the emotions warring within her. Love, and need, and a bitter self-disgust.

To set out, coldly and with calculation, to make use of another human being for her own private ends... She had done it once before, when she married Andrew, promising herself to make it up to him so that he would never know he had been cheated, never know that he was only a pawn in the game she was playing with her own destiny. Innocently, she had thought that good intentions would be enough. And then Perry Randall had entered her life and she had found out her mistake.

The tears were pouring down her cheeks now, and she could do nothing to stop them. The memory of Perry, repressed so resolutely and for so long, flooded through every nerve and muscle in her starved body – the memory, not of the irresolute man who had loved and failed her, but of the man
she
had loved and in whose arms she had found a joy that was almost beyond bearing. She had tried to make herself recognize that she would never, could never, know such a perfect relationship again, and because of that – or in spite of it – had rejected, with a light and absent smile, the advances of several worthy, and a few less worthy, suitors. They had called her heartless, but had not given up their pursuit, and she had finally become almost a recluse because she could not bear the kisses, clumsy or practised, of any man who was not Perry Randall.

She dropped her face into her hands, and it was as if all the torments of the years, all her complex needs and desires, concentrated themselves into one soundless cry of longing, deep in her heart.

Afterwards, she tried to persuade herself that what happened wouldn’t have happened except for a trick of the failing light. She became aware that she was no longer alone and, slowly, because there seemed no help for it, she raised her head. There was a man standing watching her from a dozen feet away, his tall, lithe figure outlined against the sky. She could scarcely see his face, but his hair was dark, and a single, waving lock of it drooped over one eye. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if unsure of his welcome, and then he smiled, with a flash of teeth that lent the smile a familiarly engaging quality. Her own face was pitilessly exposed in the glow of the setting sun, and she didn’t realize until much too late what a light had sprung into her drowned green eyes in that brief moment when she thought she saw the only man in the whole wide world she wanted to see.

Her face was the face of a woman welcoming her lover, and it told Luke Telfer more than he would ever have dared ask. With a passionate relief in his heart; he flung himself down on the turf beside her and gathered her into his arms.

She was too stunned, at first, to make any response at all. Even as, slowly, almost voluptuously, she struggled back to the hillside, and the golden evening, and the words of love and desire Luke was murmuring against her lips, she didn’t believe any of it. It was as if her limbs, and her consciousness, remained trapped in the clinging web of dreams. A small voice, somewhere, whispered, stop him; you must stop him. And a second voice said,
but not quite yet.
Resist him, you must resist him. And the second voice said,
but not too strongly.
He must have seen the invitation printed on your face. Don’t let him suspect it was for another man.
Wait for the right moment, and then stop him.
Gently. But she couldn’t think how.

And even as her brain debated the issue, her body resolved it, responding with forgotten sweetness to the hands drifting over her flesh as seductively, as potently, as those other hands, the mouth that ravaged hers as gently, as demandingly, as that other mouth. There was no wild lifting of her heart, but she had been starved for too long to withstand the caresses, adroit and felicitous, that Luke Telfer had learned from lovers far more experienced than she. Warm, heavy with the pleasure of it, she lay in his arms and didn’t resist him, or help him or stop him.

Because he had dreamed but never carried his dreams so far, and because she had dreamed without hope of fulfilment, they met and matched and came together like musician and instrument, the one at the height of his powers, and the other perfectly tuned and waiting for his touch. It was swift, and beautiful, and almost mystical. And afterwards they lay hand in hand, together, until the sun dropped below the horizon and a chill wind sprang up with the afterglow.

Just before they turned back down the hill to the castle, he took her in his arms and, resting his lips on the heavy, silken hair, murmured, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you! May I come to you
– please
may I come to you – tonight?’

He could feel her hesitating, and then she said, ‘No. We mustn’t.’

Knowing that she would be bound to say that, like any other gently-bred woman, he took her shoulders in a crushing grip and stared down into her eyes. ‘Why not? We love each other so much. Why not? It
can’t
be wrong!’

But she dropped her lashes, and a little smile began to quiver at the corners of her mouth. ‘The age-old cry of illicit lovers! No, my dearest, not tonight. Give me time, please. Not tonight.’

It rained ferociously the next day, and again the day after.

Lucy and Vilia, from their closed carriage, watched a sodden Lord Colchester snip a sodden tape and declare the Bridge of Braddan officially open, although through the drumming of rain on the roof they could scarcely hear the dutiful hurrahs raised by the crofters and tenants huddled round its approaches.

‘Oh, Vilia!’ Lucy exclaimed distressfully. ‘It should have been a
beautiful
day, with hundreds of people cheering, and you out there with the others receiving congratulations. For everyone says the bridge is a triumph for you, and a vindication of all your efforts at the foundry!’

Vilia’s smile was mechanical. It was almost as if she weren’t interested, but Lucy knew it couldn’t be that. Perhaps it was just the weather, which was enough to depress anyone. Shivering a little, Lucy drew the fur pelerine more closely about her throat.

Lord Colchester, duty done, turned and made a dignified scuttle for cover, closely pursued by a group of local worthies. Lucy was reminded that the day’s trials weren’t by any means over yet. She said dismally, ‘I can’t imagine how on earth we are going to dry them all out in time for dinner!’

Vilia returned temporarily to the present. Fortunate Lucy, to have such clear-cut problems. She said, ‘Not easy.’

‘If only Charlotte or Harriet had been well enough to have them at Glenbraddan! But by the time we get back to Kinveil the rain will have soaked right through, and there won’t be a dry stitch on anyone.’

‘Except Luke.’

‘That new cloak of his? Well, at least today ought to prove whether Mr Mackintosh really
has
invented something waterproof. It’s a pity it weights so much with those heavy layers of cloth and whatever-it-is bonded in between!’

‘Rubber.’

‘Is it?’ Lucy considered her son’s tall figure as he strolled easily behind the others towards the waiting carriages. ‘Although I will say he carries it off well. He has quite an air these days, don’t you think? Thank heavens we sent him off on the Grand Tour, for although I would say it to no one else, I
can
say to you that he was the greatest affliction to me when he was growing up. Such a relief to find that his travels have civilized him where my own efforts had no success at all.’

Vilia never ceased to be surprised by Lucy’s objectivity, which somehow didn’t match the sweet placidity of her temperament. But all she said was, ‘He has certainly gained in assurance.’

He had waylaid her that morning on the tower stairs, pulling her into the shelter of a doorway and straight into his arms, kissing her devouringly, and pinning her body so tightly against his that, even through all the fashionable layers of skirt and petticoats, she could feel him hard and avid against her. She had struggled, furiously angry, her palm itching to slap his handsome face, and when he had raised his head a little, she had said through clenched teeth, ‘Let me go this instant! I am not some chambermaid to play kiss-in-the-corner with!’

He was breathing roughly, and the lids were heavy and lax over his eyes. ‘I want you. God, I want you! Tonight,
please.
I must come to you tonight!’

She clutched at the first excuse she could think of. ‘No. Kinveil will be full of guests. It would be madness.’

He had one hand behind her neck and, against all her resistance, forced her mouth back within reach of his. Then, his feverish lips brushing hers, back and forth, he murmured, ‘What does that matter? We
are
mad, and we need each other so much.’

‘No. I know it is necessary for us to talk...’

His head had come up at that, the eyes sultry and mocking, and anger surged in her again.

‘I really mean
talk.’
She made an intense effort to control her temper and find the right words. In a voice that was caressingly reasonable, she added, ‘We must try to be wise.’

It was a relief to find that she could still dominate him, as long as brute strength wasn’t involved. But she knew she couldn’t rely on it if she were to find herself alone with him behind locked doors. This time, however, he dropped his arms and she was able to step back, her legs weak and trembling. As she readjusted her huge, puffed velvet beret and shook out the folds of her skirt, she said with something that was almost pleading in her voice, ‘I’m not a – an incognita!’

He said nothing for a moment, and she could see that he was trying to force discipline back on his body. Then he sighed, and smiled, and dropped a light, carefully nonchalant kiss on her cheek. ‘No, of course not. In that bonnet you look more like a
kugelhupf
–
quite delicious.’

And so the awkward encounter had passed, and despite her anger she found she didn’t regret it. Since the episode on the hill, her mind had been spinning with arguments and plans and speculations, and all of them inhibited by the nagging doubt in her mind as to whether it was really love that had driven Luke, or only the kind of hunting instinct that was snuffed out in the moment of achievement. Now, at least, she knew the answer to that.

Lucy rapped on the panel, and Willie Aird’s face appeared. ‘Yes, mistress?’

‘Turn the coach now, Aird. We must make sure of being back at Kinveil before our guests.’

‘Yes, mistress.’

Lucy settled back. ‘Thank heaven we don’t live in the Isles. Just think of having Lord Colchester stormbound with us for days and days and days. Not,’ she added without much conviction, ‘that he isn’t a delightful man, of course.’

Vilia smiled faintly. ‘It’s just that it’s like having both Houses of Parliament on your hands.’

‘Precisely.’ Vilia was a soothing companion. She always understood how one felt. Lucy sighed regretfully. ‘What a pity you have to leave so soon.’

Tomorrow. And Vilia had still no idea what she was going to do. Two nights ago, lying drowsy and fulfilled in bed, she had thought that Fate had relieved her of responsibility, and that there was nothing to do now but go on. In the chill light of day, however, the inescapable question had presented itself – go on where?

Everything would have been so much simpler if Luke had not come to her on the hill and played havoc with her bodily peace. Then the only question to tease her would have been whether she should, and indeed whether she could contrive to, marry him for the sake of Kinveil. Love wouldn’t have entered into it. And that would have been true, too, if he had been awkward or graceless. But he hadn’t been. Even the memory of his mouth and hands and smoothly muscled thighs was enough to bring her own body back to dissolving awareness. Who, she wondered, had taught him such practised sensuality? Not Kirsty Macintyre or Jinty Macleod. He must have known women far more sophisticated than they; had mistresses, perhaps, in Paris, in Rome, in Venice. She wasn’t jealous of them. If things had been different, she might have considered becoming one of their number, for the idea of pleasure without responsibility had a seductive charm. She had spent thirteen joyless years paying for her one transgression, but she was older and wiser now. Between herself and Luke, there would be a kind of rightness about such a relationship, for although he had become attractive and amusing and assured, it was only her body that was in love with him.

And that was what was confusing her. English gentlemen seldom married their mistresses. If she persisted with the thought of marriage, she would have to withhold her body from what it so much desired until the day she became his wife. One lapse might be forgiven to a woman supposedly carried away by love, but not a second. It wasn’t coyness or lack of desire, but realism, that had made her forbid him to come to her room. With bitter amusement, she remembered that soothing ‘no choice but to go on’. If she left matters to take their course, there was little doubt in her mind that the course would lead inexorably to bed, but not to the altar.

Which did she really want? Which did she want to be
sure
of! A week ago she would have said, unhesitatingly, Kinveil. And that was still true. It was just that she wasn’t quite sure whether she could live with herself if she deliberately manipulated Luke into marriage. If he were to ask her voluntarily, and without pressure... But she didn’t think he would.

If Lucy hadn’t been there beside her, Vilia would have wept. She had to decide. Had to make up her mind by tomorrow. Kinveil was the stake, and she wanted it unequivocally. Feverishly searching for a way to postpone the decision, to give herself more time to think, she suddenly remembered a piece of sound business wisdom Mungo had once passed on to her. ‘Folk are aye girning about having no choice, when half the time they could have had a choice. Just you remember! When you have to make a decision, look well ahead. It’s like chess. If one move’s bound to land you in check, and there’s another that leaves you with a move open – however unpromising it looks – take the second one. If it does nothing else, it’ll give you time. You have to keep your options open if you’re going to succeed in business.’