Sweet Bondage (14 page)

It was easy to be fanciful when there was no pressing need to be practical. Back home she would have been despairing over how she could get to work, her mind full of visions of impassable roads. Possibly she would be switching on the radio for the latest bulletin, shivering at the horrendous reports of the inevitable spate of accidents, some fatal, listening to the accounts of abandoned cars causing further hazards to the intrepid motorist, telephone wires down, and communications systems out of action.

She wondered how Miss Davies was coping. Not just today, but every day, and whether a temporary agency had been asked to send someone to help with the work.

Closing the window with a sigh, she knew that her delight in the winter scene was self-defeating. It meant they wouldn't be returning to the mainland today with Angus as Maxwell had said they would. Angus wouldn't bring the boat across in this and they were trapped on the island until conditions improved.

Looking
across the breakfast table a little while later at Maxwell's sullen face she realized he wasn't used to having his plans thwarted. Having made up his mind on an immediate return to the mainland he was furious at nature's intervention. If it hadn't been to her own disadvantage to be trapped here she could almost have been glad that he wasn't the power unto himself he thought he was and that something could get the better of him.

Despite his ill temper he cosseted her in cotton-wool for the next two days, sweeping aside her insistance that, apart from a bruised shoulder and the odd stiff joint, she hadn't come to any real harm from her fall.

At first his solicitude was amusing, but after a while the constant watch for some seemingly anticipated deterioration in her health became downright irritating. Finally, feeling like a specimen under a microscope, she turned on him. ‘Lay off, will you? I'm not going to have delayed-action concussion or anything like that Stop watching me. It's unnerving. Would you like it if you felt that someone was monitoring your every move?'

He grunted, conceding nothing. But after that his surveillance relaxed and so did she, now that she could move around with ease. The freedom of the house was hers. Maxwell gave her permission to wander at will, to dip into the library of books and the vast collection
of
tapes and records, built up over the years and guaranteed to provide something to suit every taste. He entreated her to use all the facilities available to make her enforced stay more pleasant. She curtailed herself and refrained from prying into drawers and cupboards for reasons prompted only by nosiness. During her explorations she discovered a trunk in one of the upper rooms that was a terrible temptation, especially for someone of Gemma's vivid imagination. It was a very old-fashioned trunk, the kind that's usually handed down from generation to generation, and was probably chock-full of fascinating things, but she left it unopened.

She took over the housekeeping and had no such compunction about delving into the built-in kitchen cupboards and pillaging the shelves. There was plenty of bread in the deep-freeze, but Morag's cake and scones had all been eaten. She knew she could not hope to eclipse Morag, or even to equal her, but she could whip up a light sponge cake. Although she viewed the unfamiliar oven with trepidation, much to her delight the cake came out beautifully, golden brown and springy to the touch. She lifted it carefully from its tin and put it on a wire tray to cool. Later she would split it and fill it with jam from the supply on the pantry shelf.

She was spurred on by her success, wondering what to do next; then a battered
cookery
book caught her eye. As she lifted it down from its home it fell open at a section that had obviously seen more use than the rest. She turned the pages to find a fund of recipes, many with penciled notes in the margins in beautiful copperplate script. Things like:
This recipe is over a hundred years old and came from my great-grandmother and is given to the children at Hogmanay. Hogmanay is derived from the Norse word for fairy. The festival is very much bound up with superstition, although some prefer to call it tradition. Or this little gem: Spread with butter and rowan jelly; best eaten the same day. Not for Duncan with his troublesome indigestion.
Sympathizing with poor Duncan, whoever he was, for being deprived of this mouth-watering if indigestible treat, she read on,
Don't drown the miller.
Presumably a warning not to add too much water to a pastry mixture. Of the humble haggis it informed: A
must for Burns Supper. Carry to the table
to
the accompaniment of pipe music. Serve with a dram of whiskey to toast the immortal memory of Scotland's ain Rabbie Burns.
But by far the most intriguing message of all was next to a recipe for a rich chocolate cake.
Maxwell's favorite. I always make it for him as a special birthday treat.
When was Maxwell's birthday? she wondered, flicking the pages back to a simple oatmeal biscuit recipe.

They had fallen into the Scottish way of eating a midday dinner and a high tea. They
left
the dining room closed and either ate at the kitchen table or, and this was now Gemma's favorite way, made it a tray meal, sitting deep in the armchairs. It was pleasant to draw the heavy curtains against the night and toast their toes before a leaping log fire. The fact that she had started baking was received in taciturn Scots fashion. Although Maxwell made no comment, his hand went back several times to the old-fashioned cake stand which Gemma had found in a cupboard. She was flattered that not a crumb was left on his plate.

Sitting across from him one evening, Gemma decided that if she'd described this to anyone a picture of cozy domesticity and companionable harmony would have sprung to mind, a picture which couldn't have been farther from the truth. The freeze was on in the house as well as outside; it had been ever since her unsuccessful bid to escape and the emotional scene that had taken place afterward. Things had gone too far between them—yet not far enough. Sometimes she looked at him and caught a glint in his eye that told her he was regretting that bringing-her-to-heel kiss which had snowballed on him. He hadn't meant it to deepen the way it had, stirring things already on the boil between them, the antagonism melting beneath a surge of longing, a hunger that demanded appeasement in only one way, a hunger denied
and
therefore more rampant in its demands.

She noticed the way his hands cupped the arms of his chair, an action that seemed to annoy him because he dragged them fiercely away as if the feel of the padded leather contours was too reminiscent of firm rounded flesh. He would crush his fingers together as if crushing the memory from him. He wore an agonized look on his face, but she felt the pain. She felt responsible and she couldn't bear it Not that she was solely responsible for his brooding preoccupation; Ian was also on his mind.

Her ability to read his moods was startling. She was like a transmitter picking up his thoughts so that she knew when her presence was causing him agony and when he was sad because now that Angus couldn't get through by boat he didn't have a daily account of his brother's condition. For all he knew Ian could be picking up or, and she read the fear of this in his eyes, he might have given up the struggle.

She tried to harden her heart against him, telling herself that he was in the wrong for bringing her here. The latent regret he had shown was only because of the remoteness of the island. He had said nothing about letting her go once they got to the mainland and she was sure that he still intended to take her to see Ian the moment he was up to receiving visitors. Even though his motive was
understandable,
and to some extent praiseworthy, as the victim it was stupid of her to be in sympathy with him. But she was. She couldn't help herself. Every time she felt that she was steeling herself against him a weakness invaded her mind and she wanted to reach out to him, wrap her arms round him, kiss the mockery from his mouth and take away his suffering.

For herself, the time was passing quite nicely. If she hadn't been concerned for Maxwell and saddened by thoughts of the worry she might be causing back home she could have enjoyed the break, looked upon it as a highlight in a life that had become mundane. Although the vague stirrings had been there before she hadn't been aware just how mundane until she got away. What of any importance had she left behind? Work that was pleasant enough but lacked the ability to fulfill her. A charming little cottage, the cost of which ate deeply into her salary and the upkeep of which took up most of her free time. Dates with Barry that she had come to regard as routine rather than enjoyable. A television serial she had watched conscientiously through to the next but last installment.

Here she was comfortably housed, with any number of diversions at her fingertips. Good food to eat, good books to read, good music to listen to, and the company of a man who
intrigued,
infuriated, and fascinated her. No television, true. She would have liked to have watched the last installment of that serial because now, unless there was a repeat at some time in the future, she would never know who the murderer was. But, that apart, she wasn't an addict and hardly missed the box.

Outside it snowed, thawed, and froze by turn. Gemma found that by choosing her time and the path she took very carefully she didn't have to be confined indoors. She had always been a good walker and took the wind, the sleet, and the snow in stride. Her sheepskin coat and boots were blissfully warm and she muffled her head in a long scarf of Maxwell's. She enjoyed the sharp crunch of snow beneath her feet and watched out for the hazardous drifts that leveled the land and hid enormous gulleys.

Quite often Maxwell walked with her, with her but apart. An invisible barrier had come down between them which was difficult to penetrate. Sometimes he looked at her as if he hated her and she found herself getting angry with him about that, but she did her best to disguise it. She never discovered whether he walked with her to protect her, because he considered the exercise beneficial or because he shared her enthusiasm for walking. She suspected that it was a combination of all three.

She had hoped that winter had merely
cracked
its whip in a token warning to show the extent of its power, but instead of getting milder, after a freak thaw, the barometer dropped sharply. The snow was hard-packed and slippery underfoot, and Iola was held in a grip of ice. The small loch froze over. She remembered what Maxwell had told her, on their first walk together, about testing the ice when he was a boy to see if it was safe to skate on. It had been a boyhood memory full of nostalgia and she had felt privileged to share it.

As they paused to look across the frozen expanse only his eyes were turned frontward. She could tell that his thoughts were again digging back into the past.

‘Where are the skates now, Maxwell?' she inquired, a speculative look on her face, then answered her own question. ‘I suppose that when you grew out of them they were thrown away.'

‘I doubt it. Grandmother was what the English call a horder and the Scots call canny. She saved anything and everything in case it would come in useful at some future date. I've no doubt that my old skates are tucked away upstairs somewhere in a cupboard or a trunk'

‘There is a trunk upstairs. A very old one.'

‘Grandmother's memory trunk. Everything went in there, all the junk and relics of our childhood. It's even possible that a pair of outgrown and outdated skates will have found
an
honorable burial there. Why the interest?'

‘I thought perhaps I'd like to skate.'

‘No. I forbid it.' The change in his manner was dramatic. One moment he seemed almost amenable, certainly pleasant to talk to, and the next he had reverted to being the unapproachable Highland laird whose word was law. It was imprinted across the dark contours of his face; ‘I will not be disobeyed in this.'

‘But you did,' she challenged.

‘I was a boy, remember. A featherweight,' he countered with dangerous coldness.

‘I'm not that heavy,' she replied, but the resolve was slipping from her voice. It seemed to be a pointless argument as she didn't have any skates and so had no chance of disobeying him even if she could have found the strength of mind to stand up to him.

His teeth gritted. He seemed not to have noticed that she had backed down, because he gripped her arms with bruising force, causing her to wince despite the thickness of her coat. ‘I was young and reckless and wouldn't listen. But you are damn well going to listen. What's more, you are going to heed what I tell you. The loch is fed by an underwater spring, so even when it looks safe there's always a danger. Don't be like me and find out the hard way, by being on the receiving end of an icy ducking. We thought the grownups were just showing their authority, being overcautious
when
they made it a condition that we were only allowed to skate when one of them was with us.'

‘Us?'

‘Fiona, Ian, and myself, and any other kids who wanted to tag along. Once we desperately wanted to skate. We'd been waiting for days and just when it seemed right everyone was involved with something else and kept passing us from adult to adult. We decided that if no one could be bothered to come with us we'd go by ourselves. There is one part of the loch, over there by that overhang of trees,' he said, pointing, ‘where we knew never to go. I thought that if we kept clear of that we'd be okay. Fiona and Ian were of an age, I was three years older and therefore responsible for them. Fiona was doing a bit of showing off, she really could cut quite a dash on the ice, and I was watching her. Ian shouldn't have been on that side of the loch at all. Apart from the ice being dodgy there, it's where the water is deepest. The ice gave way; Ian went in. He almost drowned. I thought he had drowned, he was so stiff and cold by the time I got him out After that the loch was out of bounds and, to see that this order was enforced, Grandmother took possession of our skates.'