Highland Mist (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

In
the morning Toni realised that she was not going to escape scot-free from her experience of the night before, and that she had caught a chill. Her throat was dry and sore, she knew she had a temperature, and although the couch on which she had been bedded down for the night was comfortable enough, her bones ached.

Charles, who had spent the night on his hard chair in preference to stretching himself out on a pile of blankets on the floor—which MacLeod had done as if there was nothing at all of discomfort in such a manner of passing the night—also felt as if his whole frame was one large and weary ache, and he had never been more thankful to see the light of dawn come struggling through a snow-caked window. But to Toni waking in such a room was not merely grotesque, but quite fantastic.

The hearth was stone cold, and the ashes of the previous night’s fire looked bleak and friendless. The room was full of grey twilight that gradually gave place to a cold snow-light as dawn gave place to sunrise—without any sun—and outside heavy clouds hung over a desolate countryside, with mountains and lochs and frozen rivers.

The snow had ceased, but when Euan MacLeod tried to open the front door it was so wedged with the fall of the previous night that he had to use all his force to get it open. Then he fetched a spade to clear a way through to the white gate.

Charles looked at him questioningly when he came back into the room.

“We’ll get through all right today, I imagine? I mean, we’ll get to Inverada House?”

MacLeod shrugged.

“We’ll have to dig my car out first, and if the engine hasn’t seized up altogether we’ll probably gel. through. At least,
I’ll
get through, but you’d better stay here until I’ve ascertained whether there’s any point in you getting through.”

“But we can’t possibly stay here—!” Charles was beginning to protest, when his host held up his hand.

“I understand! ... You’ve had a ghastly night, and you’re thinking in terms of a comfortable bed and a good hot bath and shave, but you won’t get any of those things at Inverada unless I’m greatly mistaken. You might get the bed—a damp one!—and you might get a tepid bath—if there’s fuel for the boiler!—but you won’t get anyone to feed you or look after you unless, as I say, I’m happily very much mistaken. That’s why I say you’d better stay here until I’ve made a sort of reconnaissance. If things are impossible you’ll be better off returning to London.”

“Please,” Toni said rather faintly, from the couch, “is there such a thing as a cup of tea? If you’ll show me where the kettle is, and you’ve got a spirit-stove, I’ll make one.”

Euan went across to her. Without saying anything at all he bent over her and felt her forehead; then his long firm fingers grasped one of her wrists. He frowned.

“I’m all right,” she said, with undisguisable hoarseness. “I’ve just got a bit of a cold.”

His frown knit his thick brows together. She felt as if his hard blue eyes were searchlights, boring into her.

“You’ve collected a nasty chill,” he said. “Stay there while I make the tea.” Just before he disappeared out of the door he turned and spoke brusquely to Charles. “And you’d better get a fire going. A good fire, unless you want her to be seriously ill!”

Toni would never have believed that Charles would obey a curt request of that sort—an order, in fact!—and she also wondered whether her temperature was very high and none of the things around her were actually happening when she saw the man whom her mother occasionally criticised as being too dependent on the ministrations of a highly-paid manservant, kneeling in front of the cold cottage hearth and almost frantically attempting to coax the embers of the dead fire into a blaze. Euan brought him a pair of bellows—since, apparently, the fire was not as dead as it looked—and a pile of dry kindling, and in quite a short space of time there were flames leaping merrily up the chimney, and the atmosphere of the cottage was a little less like the atmosphere of some cold stone vaults, or an icy railway station—Inverada, for instance—in the dead of winter.

Euan came in with the tea, and Toni accepted her cup thankfully. She looked upwards gratefully at the tea-maker as she gulped the hot liquid eagerly, and he stood looking at her thoughtfully before he drank his own. Charles built up his fire and then concentrated his own concerned regard on her, but Toni tried to reassure him that she was perfectly all right. If she had a couple of aspirin tablets there wouldn’t be a thing wrong with her.

Euan said nothing, but produced a thermometer and stuck it under her tongue. She watched him anxiously when he took the reading, and Charles watched him more anxiously still.

“Well?” Charles demanded impatiently, as his host still remained silent.

“You won’t be able to shift Miss Drew today, if that’s what you’re hoping for,” MacLeod remarked laconically. “She’s got quite a high temperature, and she’ll have to stay where she is. Fortunately, I’ve plenty of wood, and we can keep a good fire going. Also I’ve something I can give her.”

“You’re not suggesting doctoring Miss Drew yourself, are you?” Charles asked incredulously. “If she’s ill she’ll have to have a doctor brought to her.”

“From where?” Euan asked, eyebrows ascending in his turn. “Inverachy’s a good seven or eight miles away, and we’re not on the telephone. I very much doubt whether my car will start, even when I’ve got her out of the ditch, and the only doctor who could have been fetched without much difficulty packed up his practice here a good six months ago. So you see, there isn’t any alternative to my doctoring.”

Charles looked as if such a situation had never occurred to him in his wildest imaginings.

“But you don’t have to worry,” MacLeod said dryly. “I am a doctor. A fully-fledged one, with all the usual qualifications, and a couple of years’ experience in private practice.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Charles wanted to know, with greater incredulity than before.

Euan shrugged, and tightened his lips.

“Shall we say I’m having a holiday?” he said. “At this time of year, and in a spot like this?” Another shrug. “Perhaps I’m one of those people who can’t take their holidays at the proper season.”

Then he approached the couch, and bent once more over Toni, who was shivering despite the warmth from the fire, and feeling absolutely wretched He tucked in an end of the plaid rug, and placed another cushion under her head.

“That better?” he asked, almost gently. “I’ll give you a tablet that will help bring down your temperature, and you’ll have another one in about four hours. I’ve some coats in a locker that I’ll pile on top of you to keep you warm, and I’ll fetch your case that I dumped in the front porch last night. There may be some things inside it that you’d like to have.”

“There’s a hot water bottle,” Toni said, between her chattering teeth, remembering that Celia had popped one in at the last minute—a pretty pale pink one, encased in a quilted satin cover. “And there’s a bedjacket and some warm pyjamas.”

“Then I’ll get them for you.”

Charles stood in the background, looking and feeling as if the situation appalled him. Dr. MacLeod smiled sideways at him with detached mockery, his kingfisher-blue eyes bright and gleaming, his teeth hard and white between well-cut lips.

“And while Miss Drew changes into her own things you might start digging my car out,” he suggested. “I’ll come along and help you when I’ve made sure the case is where I left it last night.”

For the next forty-eight hours Toni had no real idea of what went on around her. She only knew that she was chained to the couch with its wooden framework, and pillows that were so hard she thought lightheadedly of the Japanese, who are reputed to prefer wooden pillows to any other kind, and she wondered whether Dr. MacLeod had ever visited Japan. And once she stopped shivering she was so hot she wanted to throw off all her covers, but was firmly restrained by the blue-eyed doctor, and she ached so much, and her throat was so dry, her head throbbed and her eyes watered to such an extent that she didn’t greatly care what was going on around her, and the fact that Charles was not allowed to do anything at all for her never even penetrated to her understanding.

He spent most of that first morning that they were confined to the cottage out of doors digging out Euan’s car, and when summoned in for a meal was in such a state of repressed fury, resentment and indignation—behind which was his concern for Toni, who was in his charge—that his Scottish host thought it best not to attempt any conversation while they ate. He had prepared—in his little lean-to kitchenette-cum-storehouse-cum-workshop—quite a savoury broth, followed by an equally savoury omelette, and a batch of oatcakes, but the Englishman didn’t even think of praising the meal, and was secretly absorbed with plans for getting away from the cottage, and getting Toni away, too.

But in the meantime, MacLeod looked after Toni with a skill and tenderness that were all part of his training, and she ceased to feel in the least shy every time he appeared at her bedside to do something for her. He lifted her, bathed her face—and, that night, when her temperature was rocketing, sponged her slight body and changed her pyjamas while Charles sat helplessly in the lean-to and wondered why he had never taken up medicine—fed her spoonfuls of broth, and mixed her long, cooling drinks, all while Charles sat hopelessly by and gnawed at his lower lip because he had never felt so futile in his life.

Or disliked anyone as he disliked the capable MacLeod.

In the early hours of that horribly long night Toni began to feel a little better, and when dawn came creeping through the window she was sleeping peacefully, the perspiration shining on her face, the hectic flush died down.

MacLeod, who had sat beside her all night, his face grim, his fingers on her pulse every quarter of an hour or so, allowed himself to relax a little, and in the harsh light Charles saw how haggard he looked when he was unshaved—unshaved and feeling the reaction after a long and anxious vigil. Charles himself looked almost as haggard, but he had shaved twice during the night for something to do—and also because he couldn’t bear an unshaved condition—and he had only guessed at the weight of responsibility that rested on the other man’s shoulders, and known he could do nothing about it.

It was he who had brought Toni away from the amenities of civilised life at the wrong time of the year, and he ought to have had more sense ... but he hadn’t had more sense, and if MacLeod felt responsible because he was a doctor and she had suddenly become a patient, Charles felt responsible because without the other man’s medical experience they might have been in a very serious mess indeed. Snowed up—or almost virtually snowed up—in the Highlands, and with no one near.

What would Celia say if anything happened to Toni?

How would Charles
feel,
if anything happened to this tall, slight willow-wand of a girl, with the pearly skin and the huge eyes, who had been so looking forward to an adventure?

He felt himself grow so haggard at the thought that he wondered whether his expression was very revealing as he moved silently to the side of the improvised bed and joined with MacLeod in gazing down on the sleeping girl.

He whispered hoarsely:

“She’s better, isn’t she?”

Euan nodded.

“Very much better?”

The doctor frowned.

“She’s sleeping, and that’s a good thing. But it won’t be a good thing if you wake her, so please don’t talk unless you feel you must.”

Charles looked at him, his expression hardening. The old resentment rose up in him, taking the place of his relief. What right had this man to talk to him as if he was a kind of half-wit? As if Toni wasn’t any real concern of his, and he hadn’t any right to feel gnawing anxiety! The most intense anxiety for her well-being!

When Toni opened her eyes several hours later both men were looking distinctly grey, and Charles made her think of a rather sulky schoolboy as he sat glowering in his corner. She held out her hand to him, and his handsome face brightened instantly ... became transformed. He rose and walked softly across the room to her.

“Feeling better, infant?”

She smiled.

“Much better.”

“You’re looking better. And it’s morning. Some time today I’ll get through to Inverada and give you a report on the house.”

Euan MacLeod rose and looked at them both without any expression at all on his face.

“I’ll get you a cup of tea,” he said. “I expect you can do with one.”

Instantly she dragged her eyes away from Charles and smiled gratefully at the man who had sat beside her all night, and because she had sensed his nearness and she knew very well that she owed quite a lot to him, she held out a hand to him, too.

“Dr. MacLeod! ... it is Doctor, isn’t it? We ought never to have called you
Mister
MacLeod?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, as if it really didn’t matter. “It’s quite unimportant.”

“But the stationmaster called you Mister.”

“Yes,” he said indifferently.

She smiled at him with a most attractive light in her unnaturally large brown eyes.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been such a nuisance to you. You’ve been so good.” A vague memory crept back to her of him sponging her body as tenderly as if he had been a woman, and a flush returned to her cheeks. “It was too bad of me to make myself such a nuisance.”

“Not at all,” he replied, with the same sort of indifference, and the flush brightened a little before it faded.

Charles bent over her.

“Of course you weren’t a nuisance, infant,” he said softly. “But I don’t mind admitting to you that you’ve become an awful responsibility.” He smiled ruefully. “Last night I wondered what your mother would say if I had to send for her to come all the way up here to see you.”