Highland Mist (3 page)

“Unless you’re both made of very poor material you’ll survive such an experience as this,” the young Scotsman said brusquely, and thrust a torch into Charles’s hand. “Take this, and direct the beam of it at your feet, so that you don’t both break your necks, and follow me!”

He disappeared into the darkness ahead, and Toni clung to Charles’s arm, and followed as best she could. But the freezing quality of the cold numbed her wits, and her feet felt as if they were made of lead, and refused to obey the feeble messages her bewildered brain sent out to them. More than once she nearly dragged Charles down with her into a drift that looked like the wall of a house as it reared up beside them, and but for the somewhat surprising strength of his arm nothing could have prevented the torch being lost and the wall of snow collapsing on top of them and burying them.

MacLeod had extracted a couple of their suitcases f-om the boot of the car, and armed with these he forged ahead, impervious to drifts or the white wilderness into which he plunged. Toni could have admired the uprightness of his figure and his indifference to the petrifying cold and the storm that beat at them if she had been capable of admiring anything at all just then. But the truth was she was appalled by the thought of covering a quarter of a mile under such conditions, and she very much doubted whether she could cover more than half a dozen yards.

Charles kept his arm tightly about her and addressed her reassuringly every few seconds—at least she didn’t wonder now what her mother would have done under such conditions, or how Charles would have behaved towards her, for her mother simply would never have allowed herself to become caught up in an adventure such as this, and Charles was already more than a little out of patience with her. And when a blinding flurry of snow came at them he put up his hand to shield his eyes and dropped the torch on which their ability to crawl forward at all depended.

Such blackness closed down that Toni remembered it all the rest of her life. And she remembered the cold round moon that suddenly sailed into a patch of clear sky above their heads as she stood helplessly with Charles’s arm temporarily withdrawn from her, and Charles himself swearing softly a foot or so away. It was so extraordinary that the clouds should thin sufficiently at that moment to allow the face of the moon to be seen that Toni lost her balance gazing at it, and before Charles could recover the torch she was rolling down a bank and into the utter silence of a bleak pine wood.

She felt hard stones bruise her as she rolled, despite the fact that they were covered inches deep in snow, and the iciness of the frozen snow itself was an additional shock. She heard Charles call out to her in an alarmed fashion at the very moment that she crashed into a tree root and lay still.

“Toni, in heaven’s name where are you?” MacLeod stopped forging ahead as if the weather was perfectly clement, and the night serene and still, and turned back.

“Don’t tell me you’ve lost track of the girl?” he said to Charles impatiently.

The snow had ceased temporarily, and the moon was riding high above them. Charles picked up his torch and gestured with it to the bank down the sloping side of which Toni had disappeared, and the younger man dropped the suitcases and plunged down the slope. Toni was sitting up dazedly and calling in a faint voice, “I’m here,” and when he reached her her voice grew stronger with relief.

“I don’t quite know what happened,” she admitted. “But I was so surprised to see the moon.”

“What a daft thing to be surprised about!” he exclaimed, and hauled her to her feet.

“You’d better let me carry you,” he said, and swung her up into his arms and bore her back up the slope to the snow-filled road where Charles awaited them. In the mild light of the moon he was looking considerably disturbed, and he wanted to know at once whether Toni had hurt herself, and if so how badly. He even wanted to delay their progress to make absolutely certain she wasn’t even slightly hurt—and, concealing the fact that her ankle was hurting her badly, she assured him that she wasn’t—but MacLeod’s impatience wouldn’t allow him to halt for longer than a few seconds. And during those few seconds Toni lay against the front of his duffle coat as if she was no more than a feather he was carrying, and felt even more secure than she had felt in the back of his bumping and lurching car.

‘The thing to do with Miss Drew is to get her into shelter,” he declared. “And if you’d taken a good grip on that torch there wouldn’t be any need to examine her!”

Charles opened his mouth to say something cutting by way of reply, but MacLeod strode on, taking advantage of the merciful lull in the storm to reach the gate of his cottage.

At least, Toni decided it must be the gate of his cottage when they reached it. It was small and white-painted, and a narrow garden path began on the other side of it. There was a tumbledown-looking porch, which the moonlight clearly revealed, and a cat was sitting waiting for them and mewing on the step.

“Sorry I’m late, Heather,” Euan MacLeod apologised to the animal, and although he kept Toni up in his arms he admitted it first to the cottage when his key turned in the lock and the door swung open.

CHAPTER FOUR

It
wasn’t until she was really warm that Toni realised how cold she had been, and not merely cold, but wet through with snow. Her shoes were soaked, and her stockings, and her hair had to be rubbed vigorously with a towel before it started to curl naturally again instead of lying plastered to the sides of her head. At the end of the towelling it was swinging softly on her neck in a combined mixture of lamplight and firelight, which let her see clearly the interior of Euan MacLeod’s cottage.

To say that it was comfortless would not have been fair, for the fire he had lighted on the hearth in the one and only living-room was blazing away merrily, and where there is firelight there is never an entire absence of comfort. And while he was engaged in lighting the fire she couldn’t help observing his methods, and marvelling at the expeditiousness with which he got a strong flame roaring up the enormous gap of a chimney, feeding it with only a very few of the twigs which he plainly kept in reserve for such an occasion as this.

The cottage was so tiny that in Chelsea, where she lived with her mother, it would be advertised as a bijou residence. It was rather like something out of
Hansel and Gretel,
with a steep roof and a stone floor, and despite her shiverings she would not have been surprised if a witch-like figure had been bending over a cauldron when she was carried in to it.

But the place where the cauldron might have stood was black and bare, and MacLeod had to leave them for a minute or so while he went in search of his dry wood and then started building up his fire with long brown fingers and a skill that aroused a flickering of admiration in Toni while she watched.

But while they were waiting for the wood to be fetched, Charles stood looking about him with so much disapproval—even undisguised horror—that Toni never quite forgot it. The lamp was burning dimply—the glass had to be allowed to warm up gradually before the wick was given full play—and the shadows on the ceiling were quite fantastic, the cold was penetrating, there seemed to be an entire absence of furniture save a table, a chair, a wooden couch, and the stone floor gave off harsh echoes every time one trod across it.

“You don’t mean to tell me you
live
here?” Charles said, when MacLeod returned with his wood.

Euan sent him a curious glance.

“Of course.”

“How many other rooms have you?”

“None.”

“None
?”

“Only an outbuilding which I make use of for storage, and where there’s a sink. Why, have you never tried living simply?”

Charles regarded him with an aghast expression.

“I’m thankful to say I’ve never had to. But you must have one other room, at least, where Miss Drew can spend the night if we’ve got to stop here?”

Euan glanced at the window that was caked with snow on the outside, while a fresh flurry of flakes was hurling itself at it.

“You’ll have to stay here all right.”

“Then where will Miss Drew sleep?”

Euan shrugged his shoulders.

“She’ll find the couch not uncomfortable—I sleep on it myself!—and you and I can make do with a chair. Fortunately I’ve another one in the outhouse.” He knelt down to begin his fire-lighting, but Charles obviously felt forced to protest.

“But that’s an arrangement that’s hardly civilised! Miss Drew must have some sort of privacy, and you and I—”

“Miss Drew requires warmth more than anything else, at the moment,” MacLeod said crisply. “And if you want to be really helpful you’ll fetch that towel that you’ll find hanging on the back door and help her to dry herself. Her hair is absolutely soaked, and requires a good rubbing.”

So that was how Toni’s hair was restored to its normal lightly fluffy condition, and if anyone had ever told her that one day Charles Henderson, her mother’s favourite escort and elusive man-about-town, would take over the intimate task of drying her hair for her she wouldn’t have believed them. She certainly wouldn’t have believed that, while another man hastened to do something about the freezingly low temperature inside his humble abode, Charles would send furious glances at the back of his impervious head because there were so many limitations inside that abode, and at the same time ask Toni anxiously whether she was feeling just a little warmer.

“I usually carry a brandy flask, but I don’t seem to have it with me at the moment. If our—er—host can spare a moment from his absorbing occupation perhaps he can produce a little spirit.”

“As soon as I’ve got this fire going I’ll shove the kettle on and make some coffee,” the Scotsman announced with annoying aloofness.

“By that time Miss Drew will be in need of it,” Charles said bleakly. In an aside to Toni he confessed: “I feel all this is my fault. I shouldn’t have allowed you to make this journey at this time of the year. At least when we got to Edinburgh I should have insisted on turning back.”

She smiled up at him wanly through the wild tangle of her hair.

“But you’ll remember we agreed that, if it was to be an adventure, we’d look upon it as one.”

He put back some of the hair from her face, and regarded her with concerned grey eyes.

“You’re too young for adventures of this kind. Too young, and not tough enough.” By which she knew he meant too sheltered.

“She’ll probably die of pneumonia if you don’t help her off with her shoes and those soaking wet stockings,” their host observed from his kneeling position in front of the now leaping fire. He added another log carefully, and then rose to his feet. His hard blue eyes fixed themselves on the other man. “Good heavens, man, this is no time to discuss whether or not you should have travelled as far as this! You’re here, and Miss Drew is suffering because you started out, and she’ll suffer still more if you don’t remember that these are the Highlands of Scotland, and London is far away. The Highlands of Scotland in the dead of winter! Get her out of those clothes, and do it as quickly as you can!”

When he returned from the tiny room adjoining he was bearing in his hands an old camel dressing-gown, and Charles was assisting Toni with awkward things like buttons, and not even looking at her face. MacLeod took away her wet woollen dress, and helped to wrap her up in the dressing-gown, then he fetched an old plaid rug and placed it over her knees, stuffed in a couple of shabby cushions at her back, and announced that he would make the coffee. Fortunately he had enough provisions in the cottage without going back to the car for the ones he had fetched that afternoon from the nearest town, and might even manage some supper for them.

“Baked beans on toast and a can of soup,” he added laconically, with a flickering glance at the pair of them before he left them alone.

Charles turned once more to Toni and took both of her hands. She looked quite unlike herself in MacLeod’s dressing-gown, with a flush in her cheeks due to the fire-glow and the returning circulation in her veins, and her hair like the soft plumage of a mother blackbird all fluffed about her face and shining with coppery lights where the firelight touched it. She was warm, and her teeth had stopped chattering, but her hands clung to his. He gathered that she was more than slightly appalled by the situation in which she found herself.

“I’m sorry, Toni,” he said softly, earnestly. “I’m really terribly sorry!”

But her concern was not for herself, but for him. “You must be wet, too,” she said. “And you’ve nothing to change into. At least ... Mr. MacLeod did bring our cases from the car.”

“But I think he dropped them outside, somewhere in the snow! But it doesn’t matter. I’m not turning this into a changing-room for all and sundry,” with a glowering look at the lean-to behind them, as if forbidding the owner of the place to make any such suggestion. “I’ve been wet before, and I’ll be wet again, but actually I’ve dried out in the warmth of this fire.”

“It’s a wonderful fire, isn’t it? Mr. MacLeod got it going very quickly.”

“Mr. MacLeod is obviously accustomed to domestic chores.”

Toni glanced at him. She didn’t need to be told that he had taken quite a dislike to Euan MacLeod, and in his eyes there was something about a man who was domestically inclined that called for a measure of contempt to be poured out over him.

“But what would we have done if he hadn’t turned up at the station when he did?” she asked.

“Probably found someone else to give us a lift to Inverada who could drive through a snowstorm without getting stuck in a ditch.”

She felt an odd little wave of irritation wash over her.

“But there
wasn’t
anyone else to drive us,” she reminded him. “And I thought he did very well driving through that awful snowstorm. And at least we can stay here until it stops snowing.”

“That might be days away.”

“What?” She looked at him in quick horror.

He glanced round the appallingly bare cottage room and smiled inscrutably.

“As he reminded me just now, we’re in the Highlands of Scotland here, and I’d say this particular corner of them is dead off the beaten track. Celia must have been very unnoticing when she stayed here as a little girl, or else she has a particularly faulty kind of memory. I rather gathered from her that her uncle held gay house-parties even at this season of the year, and she said nothing about getting snowed up. The house seemed to have every sort of convenience, and was not in the least remote,” with great dryness.

“But actually it isn’t remote, is it?” she sought once more to defend her mother. “Only a couple of miles—perhaps three—from Inverada station.”

“And Inverada station is a halt set down in the middle of nowhere!”

“Oh, dear!” she said, and sounded so perturbed that he squeezed her hands.

“Don’t worry, infant! We’ll make out all right, but I hope you don’t get pneumonia, as that fellow MacLeod suggested you might. I can’t tell you how much I blame myself for dropping that torch and giving you the opportunity to roll down the hill. The shock alone was more than you ought to have had to put up with.”

“I’m very comfortable now, but I’m afraid you’re not going to spend a very comfortable night on that hard chair.”

He directed at the chair on which he was seated a disparaging look.

“Of course, I suppose I could make an attempt to get through to Inverada—”

But she made a little clutching movement at him as if afraid that he might seriously contemplate doing anything so foolhardy.

“No, no, you mustn’t think of doing that! You’d never find your way, for one thing, the house is empty, for another, and—”

“It would mean leaving you alone here with that chap MacLeod, wouldn’t it?” he said, looking at her very hard. “Don’t worry, my dear, that’s the very last thing I’ll do—leave you alone!”

She flushed slightly under the peculiar intensity of his regard. She was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she was more or less undressed, and that a strange man’s dressing-gown was all that protected her from the cold and the curious searching quality in masculine eyes. Not that she had ever felt embarrassed before in Charles’s company, and he had sat beside her in bed when she developed measles during a school holiday.

And if she had to be left alone for a matter of hours with Euan MacLeod it wouldn’t have worried her ... not seriously. His eyes, although masculine, were too detached, and she had the feeling that he regarded her as nothing more than an infliction due to the storm. To him she was sexless—the impatient way he had ordered Charles to help her free herself of her wet clothes had proved that—just as, in actual fact, she was sexless to Charles.

Celia’s daughter...

But he put an arm around her slight shoulders, and repeated that he wouldn’t leave her.

MacLeod came in with a tray of cups and a piping hot pot of coffee, and he spared them a glance that was largely tolerant.

“Here,” he said, “this’ll warm you, and while you’re drinking it I’ll rustle up something to eat.”

He glanced at Toni, and a tinge of mockery invaded his eyes. Henderson’s arm was still slightly clasping her shoulders, and Henderson’s expression was still wary and watchful, with no more friendliness in it than when they met in the stationmaster’s office at Inverada.

“I won’t ask you to help me,” he said to the Englishman. “I’m sure you’d much rather sit there and keep Miss Drew company.”

And for the first time Charles looked something more than dislike at him. He looked surprised.