Prisoner of Love (11 page)

“I think Julius ought to know,” he said firmly. “We can have you more or less dried out before he arrives, but bed is called for, I think, to help retard shock.”

Yes, Laura thought, shock was the danger due to the suddenness of the events that had pounced upon her. Out of a blue sky so much that was dark and unfathomable had come to cloud her day.

“You must be wet to the skin.” She heard Blair’s voice, cool and practical, coming once again from a great distance, and when she swayed uncertainly he was there in an instant to steady her. “All right, Laura, I’ve got you,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’re back here at the lodge, quite safe.”

Quite safe! She found herself repeating his words, again and again, clinging to them for the comfort she needed as she undressed in one of the bedrooms. Yet how could they hold any real comfort for her? Julius’s anger, which seemed inevitable, would be a terrible thing, crowding out any comfort that could be offered. The very fact that he had not come down to the burn in search of them made her curiously afraid.

What was becoming of her, she wondered, that her nerves should be on edge like this all the time? There had been an accident and Julius had come home unannounced and had come in search of her and driven away again. That was all. Why imagine some sinister background of disapproval and anger on that score? Something had gone wrong—a letter as yet undelivered or an unexpected change of plans on Julius’s part—that had brought him back to Dunraven without warning.

Without warning. Without warning! Why did the words have to drum so strongly in her ears? She peeled off her wet clothes and rubbed herself vigorously with a bath towel Blair had provided. He had also given her a set of pyjamas to put on, and she forced a smile as she struggled into them. They were much too big and she looked swamped in them, and it was even worse with the dressing gown he had produced.

When she came out into the central lounge he laughed at the picture she made.

“Little girl lost!" he grinned, although there was still a good deal of concern behind his gray eyes. “How do you feel now?” he asked.

“Swamped—but gloriously dry and warm!” she tried to return lightly. “Why should you look so respectable,” she challenged, “when you were just as wet as I was two minutes ago?”

“Because I’m fairly quick off my mark," he said, “and because I had dry clothes on hand.”

Her own were already steaming in front of the stove in the kitchen, where Callum was still brewing cocoa as if he expected a regiment to turn up to the rescue at any minute.

“I think I ought to make an effort to get back to Dunraven before Julius comes," Laura said nervously, holding a steaming beaker between her hands, partly to help to steady them. “If he has been traveling all night he will be tired.”

“That’s entirely beside the point.” Blair’s voice was suddenly harsh. “You’ll have to wait here till someone gets back with dry clothes for you—even if it’s only Lance.”

But Laura knew that it would be Julius who would come. When they heard the car she got to her feet, standing pale and tensed beside the window till he reached the verandah steps. She was conscious of Blair watching her and then, before Julius reached the door, he turned away.

Julius came heavily up the wooden steps. There was no formal greeting between them. He stood in the doorway for a full second, looking at them before he spoke.

“You appear to have had quite an adventure, Laura,” he suggested coldly. “I came up here an hour ago,” he added when she didn’t answer, “but I thought it—rather a pity to spoil your summery idyll.” He walked across the room, laying the clothes he had brought for her on the table between them. “A highly unconventional situation,” he remarked acidly. “When you have changed I shall take you back to Dunraven.”

Blair moved as if to retaliate, but Laura looked at him beseechingly. He seemed to check himself with an effort and she saw that all the blood had drained out of his face. Julius was angry, coldly angry, and beneath the surface, showing only in the narrowed, watchful eyes, the fires of a dreadful suspicion leaped and burned. They could so easily consume him, she thought, and his jealousy looked as if it might break all bounds. Anxiety beat against her mind all the way back to Dunraven. “Julius,” she said when they were approaching the causeway, ‘Tm sorry. I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. I wouldn't have upset you, but—it was an accident.”

“Your surreptitious little picnic under the rowans was no accident, I gather,” he said, the suppressed passion in him showing clearly in the way he gripped the wheel and sent the car leaping forward at a rapidly increasing pace. “That is what I find so irritating, Laura. Your disloyalty and disobedience.”

“Disobedience?” She echoed the word stupidly. “I don’t know what you mean.
”

“You know that I object to these casual friendships,” he said. "My patients are here under my professional care, not to—philander with my wife.”

“Julius!
”

“What other construction do you expect me to put on it?” he asked as he pulled up at the front door. “You deliberately went out of your way to seek this friendship with Cameron.”

“Because I thought I might be helping you!” Her voice was almost too low for him to hear. Something seemed to be chipping away the foundations of her love, attacking the pinnacle she had put Julius on ever since she had known him.

Ever since she had known him? Not so very long, she thought, when it was measured in days and weeks.

“I have no intention of prolonging this scene,” Julius informed her as Lance and Morag rushed out. “You had better get something to eat and go to bed for the afternoon.”

Like a naughty child, Laura thought, and tried to smile.

But she would not go to bed. Instead, she lay on the wide settee beside the windows in his study while he wrote innumerable letters and seemed to have forgotten her until their tea was brought in.

Morag glanced at her anxiously.

“Are you feeling all right, ma’am?” she asked, always more formal in Julius’s presence than when they were alone together in the kitchen. “Not shivery or anything like that? You’re very pale.”

“No, nothing, thank you, Morag,” Laura said. “It wasn’t a very serious wetting.”

She couldn’t have told Morag, in that moment, that Blair Cameron had probably saved her life. Julius looked up and across the desk at her.

“I’m making arrangements to go back to London,” he said when Morag had left the room.

“Oh?” Laura looked up in amazement. “But you’ve only just come back, and—and I thought you intended to make Dunraven your permanent home?”

“Nothing has changed in that respect,” he told her, “but I now feel that I ought to take you with me when I move about. You have not proved yourself entirely reliable when left to your own devices, I’m afraid.” She flushed scarlet.

“I’ve been to Garvie Lodge, and I’ve been up to the glen on two occasions, fishing with Lance—”

“And Cameron,” he reminded her stiffly.

“Yes," she agreed flatly. It was futile to argue.

“Is he in love with you?
”

Her eyes flew to his, swift denial in them and no small amount of contempt.

“I see you’re not quite sure about that,” he went on before she could find words to answer him. “Nevertheless, we won’t take risks. I have to go to London again in two weeks’ time, and you will come with me.”

“For how long, Julius?” she asked. “I offered to come with you this time, too, you know.”

There was no reply. He wrote a final address on an envelope and sealed it, rising as she poured out his tea.

“Have you heard the result of Lance’s exam?” she asked uncertainly, aware that the conversation about her own immediate future was now closed. “I hope he has passed.”

He took his cup to the fire, placing it on the high mantelpiece before he answered.

“Is there any reason why he should fail?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “No, I suppose not.”

“We’ll be taking Lance back to London with us,” he said. “The term at these schools begins around about the twentieth of September, I think. We should hear the result of his examination before that, of course.”

It would be a dreadful disappointment for Lance when he heard that they were leaving Scotland so soon, but Julius had already made his plans.

“What about—the lodge?” Laura asked. “Will you discontinue the treatments there?”

He seemed to take an eternity to answer and the silence drained the blood away from her heart.

“No,” he said, at last. “I never abandon an experiment halfway. I have already engaged a nurse to come to the lodge and I shall always be available in an emergency.”

The word nagged at Laura
’
s mind for days afterwards. What kind of an emergency did Julius expect?

He told her nothing. The subject of Blair’s health became a sealed one between them. When he went to the lodge, he went alone, and there were no more trips in the yacht.
Northern Bird
rode, alone and deserted, in the blue bay beyond the headland until the day before they were due to leave for London. Then Julius sent for Callum and took it out across The Minch alone.

When he came back there was a dead seal aboard and a look of terrible, vengeful anger on Callum
’
s face. The seal had been shot through the neck.

Laura turned away, sickened, remembering the sleek gray seals as they had fed their young on the sun-baked skerries that day when Blair had steered
Northern Bird
into the safety of the bay.

That evening the nurse who had been engaged to take charge at the lodge arrived in her own car. She had come from somewhere locally, and Julius remained closeted in the study with her for an hour. When he opened the door at last, Laura was crossing the hall on her way to the dining room, and she thought that she had never seen such a hard, dead face in all her experience of hospital work. There was no humanity in it, no pity. It was the face of a martinet—or a robot.

When Julius introduced them Nurse Scyler examined her through the thick lenses of her spectacles and was evidently disappointed in what she saw, yet she said with reserve: “I’m pleased to meet you,” leaving Laura to wonder how she could possibly be pleased to meet someone she had never seen before.

I’m getting rattled, she thought in the next instant, because all this has happened so swiftly, putting me out of my stride, unsettling everything.

She was beginning to feel settled at Dunraven. She could quite easily have made her home here in this fair corner of Scotland for the rest of her life if only—

If only!
These simple words that held so much meaning and despair! What was it she lacked? What did she want other than what she had?

Blair came t
o
say goodbye to them. Lance had been going up to the lodge, as usual, but Laura had not gone. It was late August now and the weather stained the moor a deep purple high up on the breasts of the hills. These mellow days, with their first hint of approaching autumn, would have been a keen delight to her if only Julius had allowed her to enjoy them, but he seemed to watch her incessantly, giving her no time to be alone.

“I ought to have gone and said goodbye to the MacKellars,” she said as Blair held her hand. “It seems a rather churlish way of rewarding their friendship just to go off without a word.”

“They’re coming down,” he said unexpectedly. “I told them yesterday that you were leaving.”

He relinquished his hold on her fingers and they stood waiting for Julius to join them on the stone terrace surrounding the house.

“Before you go, Laura,” Blair said quietly, “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”

“I’ve done nothing,” she said, not looking at him. “I’ve only tried to be friendly—and kind.”

There was a little silence.

“That must have been it,” he said, smiling a trifle grimly.

The MacKellars’ Ford came lurching and bumping over the glen road even before Julius appeared, and Zachray drove it along the causeway with a tight mouth and remote, dark eyes. His sister got out but he remained behind the wheel.

“We couldn’t let you go without a visit from us,” Cathie declared. “It’s been quite sudden, hasn’t it, this decision of Julius’s?”

“In a way—yes,” Laura tried to say lightly. “We would have had to go, of course, in about two weeks time, to see Lance safely settled in at his new school.”

“Of course!” Cathie said, turning to where Lance was standing beside Blair. “You’re going to a fine school, aren’t you?”

“I'd much rather be staying here!” Lance told her without hesitation. “It’s the most wonderful place I’ve ever been to!”

Blair ruffled the dark hair over the suntanned brow.

“Why worry?” he said. “You’ll be coming back in next to no time.”

“Three months,” Lance mused. “Maybe it’s not so very long, after all. I’ll be back before Christmas for the holidays. Will you still be here?” he added eagerly. “You might still be up at the lodge, mightn’t you?” Laura found herself waiting for Blair’s answer with a curiously constricted feeling in her throat.

“It isn’t so very long,” he agreed slowly. “I’d like to be completely cured by then, of course, but—who knows?”

“I think you’re cured now,” Lance said. “You couldn’t fish if you weren’t, or walk so far across the moors, and yesterday you said you might even tackle Suilven before the winter set in in earnest!”

“That was proud talk,” Blair answered. “We’ll leave the mountaineering till the spring, I think.”

Laura knew that he was talking to please Lance, so that there was no reason to believe that he would still be a patient at the lodge on their return.

This, then, might be their final goodbye. A tremor of regret ran through her as Julius came out on to the terrace, and Cathie turned toward the car.

“Don’t go, Cathie,” she appealed suddenly. “I’ve hardly had a word with you and I haven’t seen you for over two weeks. Won’t Zachray and you stay and have a meal with us?”

Cathie looked swiftly in her brother’s direction and just as swiftly shook her head.

“It’s kind of you, Laura,” she said, “but Zachray is on his way to Ullapool. He has a meeting there at eight o’clock.”

It was not quite half-past six. They could have strolled on the terrace for a while, or even had a drink, but Julius did not extend the invitation, even to Blair, whom he had said he wanted to see professionally before he went back to the lodge.

“Have you finished your packing, Laura?” he asked when the silence became oppressive. “We have a fairly early start in the morning, you know.”

Hot color rushed into Laura’s cheeks. This was insufferable! Julius was treating her like a child again.

“It’s all but finished,” she told him with a cool dignity she was far from feeling. “I can quite easily do the rest in the morning.”

His quickly-raised brows accentuated his displeasure, but she was determined not to take any notice.

“Will you come in for a moment, Cathie?” she asked. “Morag has been making a bla
ck
berry preserve which she says you like. She has left two jars for you in the kitchen.”

They crossed the hall, shadowed now that the sun had left the front of the house, and Cathie said:

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have come. I think we have vexed Julius.”

“Why shouldn’t you come to say goodbye?” Laura turned, and there were tears in her eyes, tears of vexation and tears that went deeper to a hopeless sort of humiliation which Julius had no right to make her feel. “You made me very welcome and very happy at Garvie, Cathie—”

She broke off, suddenly unable to control the rush of frustration and sadness that swept across her heart at the thought of going away. Cathie put a friendly hand on her arm.

“I’d like you to come to Garvie whenever you wish,” she said, “if Julius doesn’t actually forbid it.”

Laura’s distressed eyes flew to hers.

“Why should he?” she demanded. “It’s not the sort of thing a grown-up person does.”

“No,” Cathie agreed, looking as if she wished she had never started the conversation. It was embarrassing her and hurting Laura, she thought. “Perhaps Julius will change.”

“Change?”

“Change his mind,” Cathie countered hurriedly.

“About
allowing
me to come, do you mean?” Laura’s voice was dangerously low-pitched and uneven.

“Don’t let’s talk about it anymore,” Cathie appealed. “It won’t do any good.”

Laura faced her.

“Because Julius was like this with Helene?” she suggested levelly, although there was a desperation in her voice which Cathie MacKellar was quick to hear. “That was what you meant, wasn’t it, Cathie?” Laura rushed on. “Julius has always been like this. What was Helene really like?” she asked unsteadily. “I’ve got to know. Don’t you see, I’ve got to know!”

“She was young and sweet and lovely.” Cathie could not quite control the quiver in her voice. “I’ve never known a nicer person, and she wouldn’t have hurt a fly.”

“Yet she hurt Julius?”

Was it in defense of Julius or in defense of her own marriage that she asked that? Laura wondered.