Highland Fling (39 page)

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. Nice and warm.’ She got in next to him. It was warm, and rather cramped, given that she was trying to keep a gap between them.

‘I think you’ll be more comfortable if you just relax against me.’

‘Oh. OK.’ She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and relaxed. It was bliss, lying so close to him, but it wasn’t conducive to sleep. And when his arm came round her waist it was more blissful still. Her breathing became faster and she struggled to control it.

‘What’s the matter?’

She couldn’t tell him, so she made something up. ‘I – I’m just lying on the wrong side, that’s all. But I’ll get used to it in a minute, I’m sure.’

‘No need to. Just turn over.’

‘Easier said than done.’

They both shifted about, both tight against the sleeping bag.

‘Perhaps we should undo it,’ she said.

‘It’s OK. I’ll just get my arm free.’ Then somehow, she didn’t know how it happened, but she found herself lying underneath him. ‘How’s this?’ he said, and kissed her.

This time there was no element of punishment. It was all sensuality. Her head spun and stars exploded inside it and she felt so near to fainting, if she’d been upright, she knew she would have fallen.

‘God! I’ve been waiting a long time to do that!’ he said raggedly, several minutes after their lips had first touched.

‘You did it yesterday. Or was it today?’

‘That was different.’

‘Mm,’ she agreed, putting her arms round his neck and pulling his mouth down to hers again.

‘God! Jenny …’ he breathed, and then he was pulling at her clothes, as she pulled at his. One of them unzipped the sleeping bag, but it was still a tussle as they fought off the layers. Eventually they stopped undressing each other and pulled the rest of their clothes off themselves.

Jenny had never felt such desire, such passion, such an intense level of sensation. His hands, his lips, his chest, made her both weak with longing and on fire with lust.

At one point, when they were both naked, both sweating and panting, he said, ‘We’d better stop. I’ve got nothing with me.’

Realising what he meant, and what it signified, but unable to stop the torrent they had started, she said, ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right.’

He said, ‘We’ll just have to get married if it isn’t.’

But he didn’t move and she had to take matters into her own hands.

Afterwards she felt overcome with emotion. She wept, silently, trying to keep still, so he wouldn’t notice. She was appalled at her reaction and was
certain he would be too. She wasn’t a virgin; she’d been living with Henry. She’d wanted what had happened quite as much as he had, and yet here she was, crying like an unwilling bride on her wedding night.

She was certain she hadn’t been shaking, certain not a sob had got past her bitten-together lips, and yet he knew. He settled her head onto his shoulder, wrapping his arms around her.

‘It hasn’t been like that for me before either,’ he whispered. ‘Although I thought it would be pretty spectacular with you, I never guessed quite how spectacular.’

She let the last tear fall down her cheek onto his chest and sniffed. It was so lovely to be held, to hear the thump of his heart under her ear.

‘Sweet Genevieve,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘I love you so.’

She sighed. ‘I love you too.’ She was so happy she felt there was a real risk of dying from it. It was such a perfect moment. She knew it was just a moment, and that the rest of life was hard and long and fraught with difficulties and disappointment. But this moment was perfect.

‘We’d better get dressed, or we’ll get dreadfully cold later,’ he whispered. ‘Let me get you your clothes.’

Later, she fell asleep in his arms, not knowing or caring which side she was lying on.

He woke her with a kiss, like a warm butterfly landing on her lips. ‘We’d better get up. We’ve got to get home and it sounds as if the wind is back with a vengeance.’

He was right. When they emerged into the outside
world, the wind was almost visible, blowing the fallen snow around, and bringing more. It was as if that still, moonlit night had never existed.

‘Oh, my goodness! Whiteout!’

Ross smiled, but didn’t contradict her. ‘Come on. Are your boots tight enough? Then come here and let me tie this rope round your waist. You might as well help me carry it.’

‘The snow is making me feel dizzy,’ said Jenny, a bit later, wishing they hadn’t so far to go.

‘One foot in front of the other will do it,’ said Ross. ‘It always does. Come on.’

Chapter Twenty-four

It took Jenny a while to realise that she really was feverish, and it wasn’t just her surroundings that were making her head feel peculiar. She found walking through snow strange at the best of times, now she really was guessing and hoping each time she picked her foot up that when it came down it would eventually stop, but she couldn’t calculate when.

Ross asked her if she was all right when they first stopped. She just nodded and said she was. Unless he could produce a sledge to lie her on, hot honey and lemon and several tons of goosedown to cover her, there was no point in telling him that her limbs were aching, she was hot and cold in turn and that her head felt like she was on some powerful but unpleasant psychedelic drug.

The second time they stopped he put his hand on her forehead. ‘You feel as if you’re on fire. Are you ill?’

Jenny’s teeth were chattering so hard she could hardly speak. ‘There’s been flu going round the mill. I think I may have got it.’

He muttered an expletive. ‘How bad do you feel?’

She couldn’t think how to measure or describe the awfulness so she just flapped her hands.

After a moment of them both standing in the snow,
gazing at each other, nonplussed, he pulled off his rucksack and produced what was left of the whisky. ‘I won’t let you get hypothermia, promise.’

When she’d disposed of it, she felt so drunk she no longer cared about the aches in her bones, and it seemed quite right and proper for the landscape to swirl and move about.

It was very dark when they finally got back to Dalmain House. Jenny was looking at life from the wrong end of a very long telescope and found herself being half carried up the stairs, laid on the bed, and her boots being undone. When she realised it was Ross who was doing it, she felt terribly, terribly pleased, and terribly sad all at the same time. There was something about Ross that made her feel sad, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

Hot-water bottles, a thermometer, and a surprisingly capable Felicity featured in the next half-hour of her life. She was given pills to take, a hot drink, which made her sweat, and extra pillows.

She heard fragments of conversation: ‘Call the doctor’, ‘No point, he’ll only say paracetamol, plenty of fluids, keep an eye on her.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’ Ross’s voice came from a long way away. ‘Just until she goes to sleep.’

Jenny didn’t want to go to sleep. She liked lying in bed with Ross sitting in the chair next to her. But while it wasn’t quite like sleep, she did lapse into a dream world of snow, and the mill and Ross, in which time passed quickly. When she came to, she was alone. She looked at her bedside clock but couldn’t make sense of it. She took a sip of water and passed out again.

*

Time passed in a blur. Every now and then Felicity would appear with pills and insist she take them. Henry turned up with jugs of lemon barley water. And once, embarrassingly, Lady Dalmain came to see how she was getting on. Her eyes feeling like half-sucked boiled sweets, and her mouth and throat feeling as if they had just received a good rub down with coarse sand paper, Jenny said she felt fine, thanks. She didn’t ask if Ross had phoned to see how she was. She didn’t want to know if he hadn’t.

On the fourth day after she had first been put to bed she awoke feeling better – very weak but no longer feeling drunk. She also felt for the first time as if she’d really been asleep, and not just on some long, convoluted journey in her head. A tentative trip to the bathroom was encouraging. She felt pathetic having to hold on all the way, but at least the ground didn’t keep coming up to meet her.

She had just come back and was just looking round the room for her kettle, when Henry came in.

‘Hi, there,’ he said, more quietly than usual. ‘How are you today?’

‘Better, I think. I’ve stopped aching and I can only see one of you, and you’re keeping still. I would really love a cup of tea, though. I’ve just been to the loo and I feel shattered.’

‘No wonder. You’ve been really quite ill. I’ll get you the tea. Everyone’s been so worried about you.’

‘Why? It was only flu, the same as everyone at the mill has had.’

‘You’re not usually this ill. Lady D. says it’s because you spent all that time out in the cold. What happened, by the way? On Christmas night?’

It took a few moments to work out what Henry was talking about. It not only seemed a very long time ago, but it also seemed to have happened in an alternate universe.

‘Oh,’ she said, when she’d sorted out some of the relevant facts, and filed away others. ‘We had to spend the night in a snow hole. Ross knew where one was. It was quite comfortable in a strange way. Cold, though.’

Now she wondered if everything she remembered had actually happened, or if it was just something her delirious mind had invented.

‘It was just as well Ross found you. You could have died.’

‘Mm. I do feel dreadfully guilty when I think about it. I never knew a simple walk in the snow could be so dangerous. I feel such a fool.’ But it wasn’t Ross rescuing her that made her feel guilty, that was so dangerous, or that made her a fool, but rather what had gone on in the snow hole. ‘I don’t suppose there’s enough hot water for a bath? If I boiled a few kettles?’

‘Lady D. said you’re to use her bathroom.’ Henry grinned sheepishly, reminding Jenny that he could be rather sweet. ‘It was only when you weren’t here cooking and organising everything that we all realised how much you did. And we all hope you’re going to be well enough to come with us to the Malcolms’, for New Year’s Eve.’

‘When is New Year’s Eve? I’ve lost all track.’

‘Tomorrow. Of course, if you’re not well enough to come, someone will stay behind with you.’

That will be a popular assignment, she thought, somewhat acidly. ‘Let’s see how I feel after my bath, shall we?’

As she staggered along the passage, clutching her towel and her washing things, she knew that somehow she would make sure she was well enough for Hogmanay, and not only so no one would feel obliged to miss out on it with her. Ross would be there, and she wanted to thank him for rescuing her.

Only when anaesthetised by the blissfully hot water did she give herself a reality check, and force herself to acknowledge that she and Ross had had unprotected sex, and it had been her fault. She sighed so deeply she almost rose above the level of the water. But what sex! She closed her eyes as she admitted that she’d do it all again, given the opportunity. There was no hope for her. She’d turned from being a nicely brought up, sensible girl, to an idiot, driven by her hormones, in less than overnight.

‘That man has stolen my critical faculties and my sense of self-preservation. He’s dangerous. I should keep well away from him.’ She spoke quietly, but firmly, trying to rustle up a bit of enthusiasm for her lecture. Then she sighed deeply again and submerged her head so she couldn’t hear herself, and washed her hair.

The Dalmain House party, which included Meggie and Iain, were to have dinner before setting out in convoy for the Malcolms’ ball.

Jenny, knowing she was still fragile and that she only had so much energy, asked if she could skip dinner and have a sandwich in her room while she got ready.

‘It’s going to take quite a bit of paint to make myself look less ghoul-like,’ she said to Felicity, who was
protesting. ‘And I need to conserve my energy. I don’t suppose it’ll be the sort of party where I can just hang around in the kitchen.’

Felicity gasped in horror at the thought of Jenny being allowed near the kitchens at the Malcolms’. ‘Jenny! Honestly! It’s not that sort of house!’

‘It’s all right, Felicity. Even if I could find the kitchen, I probably wouldn’t be able to walk that far.’

Meggie came and lay on Jenny’s bed, feeding Anna. ‘So, will Ross be there?’

‘I’ve no idea. Do you think I’ve overdone the blusher?’

‘A bit. I’ll do it for you, if you like.’

‘No, it’s all right. You feed Anna, and it’ll be time for you to go down and eat soon.’

‘I can make an excuse to look after you, if you like. You know dinner with Felicity and the Matriarch isn’t really my thing.’

‘I thought you were all getting on much better lately.’

‘Well, Felicity is certainly much happier, now she’s got Lachlan, but she still makes snide remarks about my feeding herself here.’

‘You wait. She might be doing it herself, a year from now.’

‘Jenny! She’s ancient!’

‘Nonsense, plenty of child-bearing years left. Now if Anna’s had her dinner, you’d better go and have yours and leave me to make myself look’ – she peered into the mirror – ‘like a hag.’