Highland Mist (12 page)

But for that kiss she might have married Charles. But for that kiss...!

She turned impulsively to leave the room—and get well away from that revealing chest of drawers!—when Celia came in with an armful of linen and deposited it on the unmade-up bed. She said, speaking with her usual quickness and briskness:

“Darling, have you got those drawers emptied yet? I expect the girl will have a mass of clothes, and she’ll need somewhere to put them—”

Then she looked in surprise at Toni’s face.

“What’s wrong, darling? You look as if the bottom has dropped out of your world! Has Euan been protesting because we’re shifting his things, and he said he wanted to shift them himself? Men are always so difficult over their personal things, and hate other people to touch them.”

“No, he hasn’t protested to me,” Toni said, and made her escape quickly. Celia’s eyebrows rose, and then she started to make the bed. When she heard Mrs. Briggs’ footsteps in the corridor she called out to her peremptorily.

“Come and give me a hand with these sheets, Mrs. Briggs.” When Mrs. Briggs joined her, dourly, she was looking as if her natural element was that of a hostess preparing to receive guests. “This is such a delightful house, Briggsie,” she observed chattily. “By the time I’ve had my way with it, it will be even more delightful.”

“You’ll want quite a staff to cope with things if you’re going to start having people staying here,” Mrs. Briggs remarked.

Celia glanced at her, as if not even the knowledge that she wasn’t liked could dim her pleasure in her present self-appointed job.

“One day Inverada will be as it used to be,” she declared. “A house worthy for people to stay in.”

“I probably won’t be here by that time,” Mrs. Briggs replied.

“Not even if Dr. MacLeod marries, and brings his wife to live here?”

“Aye, that might make a difference,” Mrs. Briggs admitted. “But I’m wondering who the lady is who’ll be his wife,” she added, and sent a long look at Celia.

Celia smiled.

“Perhaps the next few days will decide that,” she answered.

Toni watched Celia in her smart clothes, and with her untouchable complexion, drifting about the house and performing all the last-minute tasks of the mistress of the house before visitors arrive. Try as she would, she couldn’t prevent a faint sensation of revulsion as she looked on at her arranging flowers in bowls and vases, interviewing Mrs. Briggs about menus, and giving instructions about the guests’ rooms.

She felt that Celia already looked upon herself as mistress of Inverada—an Inverada that had already benefited greatly from the lavish expenditure of Euan MacLeod’s money—and, in view of the fact that Penelope Parsons was probably already on her way north, it seemed utterly wrong, somehow.

She wondered what Penelope Parsons would think about her, Toni, too—and their joint occupation of a house which, after all, belonged to Celia. So at least she had some right to be living there!

But Toni felt that she had absolutely no right, as she drifted much more aimlessly about.

Penelope and her travelling companion were expected at Inverada from Edinburgh in time for tea, and Toni decided to go for a good long walk that afternoon, and not get back until well after the guests arrived. Although it was a very unpleasant afternoon, with a thick mist hanging about the moors and quite hiding the face of Ben Inver, she walked about in the mist for an hour or more, and when she was finally driven in by the sheer inclemency of the weather, her hair was soaked and her shoes caked with mud. She got rid of her shoes in a little room off the hall, and went upstairs to her room to do something about her hair, but when she returned to the hall her face was white and set, and her hair still looked as if even a rough bath towel had been unable to absorb all the moisture it had collected during the afternoon, and was much more straight than usual.

She heard voices coming from the drawing-room as she crossed the hall, and one of them was loud and pleasant, with a strong American accent. Toni felt like an interloper as she entered the room and made the acquaintance for the first time of the girl who made no attempt to modulate her tones and was not so much pretty as wholesomely good-looking—in a fair, fresh-skinned, red-lipped, white-toothed way. They were rather large and well-cared-for teeth, as Toni noted, as they shook hands, but her complexion could put even Celia’s to shame. For Celia spent a lot of time in darkened rooms with face packs adhering to her sensitive cheeks, whereas Penelope Parsons, Toni felt quite certain, had never had a face pack adhering to her face in her life.

Her clothes were well cut in an American way, and her manner completely confident. Her companion—an elderly woman—seemed worn out by a great deal of travelling about Europe that hadn’t appealed to her very much, and was looking forward to returning to America as soon as Penelope, as she put it, was “settled”. But what exactly she meant by Penelope being settled Toni could only guess at, and Celia looked as if she disliked the constant use of the term—which had been repeated many times before Toni entered the room—very much indeed.

Wearing something extremely smart and well cut, and looking almost unbelievably youthful, she had been entertaining the visitors for some time before her daughter appeared on the scene, and by the time Toni did at last appear she was not only feeling the strain a bit, but annoyed with Toni for absenting herself.

And one glance at her when she came in—lank haired, pale-faced, and wearing one of her least attractive outfits—made Celia bite her lip, and look as if she fought down annoyance with difficulty.

Penelope was obviously prepared to be friendly with the whole wide world, and it simply didn’t occur to her—or so Celia decided—that in Toni she was face to face with a rival. The English girl appeared thin to the point of gawkiness, and with little or no make-up there wasn’t much that her mother could hope for.

She bit her lip again, hard.

Euan sent Toni a curious, eyebrow-lifting glance when she came into the room, but he said nothing beyond making the necessary introduction. Miss Parsons beamed affably, and said at once that she could tell Toni liked walking.

“You’ve obviously just returned from a long hike,” she said, “and you look like I do when I’m staying on my father’s ranch in Montana. Just don’t care how I look, and wearing whatever comes handiest.”

“My daughter’s suit was bought in Paris only a few months ago,” Celia pointed out, with a cold edge to her voice. “It was part of quite a famous collection!”

She didn’t add that, in the first place, it had been bought for herself, and then handed on for some reason that she couldn’t remember now. Except that the colour hadn’t seemed quite her colour.

“Oh, dear!” Penelope said, with a faint laugh in her voice. “Then it must be that it doesn’t exactly suit her.”

Toni sat down on the edge of a Regency chair and felt for the first time for days as if she could laugh herself. Celia was vexed, and she herself hadn’t bothered to take the shine off her nose, and Euan was looking gravely thoughtful. His eyes on Toni’s face told her nothing at all, except that there could have been just a shadow of rebuke in them.

Because she had been tardy in welcoming his guests, and that was a source of annoyance to him?

Toni—under the influence of a reckless, heedless, unhappy mood—didn’t care.

“Of course, I think the Paris collections are wonderful,” Penelope’s companion remarked. “But although I love Paris, I’ll be glad to get back to the States!” She said it fervently. “There’s nowhere like the United States!”

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Ethel,” Penelope begged her. “We’ve only just arrived in Scotland, and from the little I’ve seen of it I think it’s wonderful.” She turned eagerly to her host. “This is such a dream of a house, and you must love it. I can quite understand your wanting to settle here.”

“I intend to settle here,” Euan remarked, as if it was all arranged.

The American girl smiled at him brilliantly. “And I think you’re absolutely right! You’re a little cut off here, but what does that matter if everything else is as you want it?”

“The house does happen to belong to my mother,” Toni couldn’t resist interrupting at this point. “Dr. MacLeod is only her tenant.”

Penelope glanced at her as if she was amused.

“Oh, yes? But I’m sure she’ll be quite happy for him to continue as a tenant. Under the circumstances—”

“What circumstances?” Toni shot at her, just a trifle belligerently.

Penelope hesitated, and then smiled again.

“The fact that he’s getting married.”

Celia said quickly, addressing her daughter: “Darling, do go and make absolutely certain Mrs. Briggs understands about dinner. We’re having it half an hour later than usual, and if she wants some assistance you might lend a hand!” She smiled sweetly at the visitors. “Mrs. Briggs is an excellent cook, but she gets a bit flustered sometimes.”

Toni, who had never known Mrs. Briggs in the least flustered—in fact, she was a distinctly dour type, who objected to being given instructions and having offers of help thrust at her—departed kitchenwards with a feeling sitting heavily upon her that a disaster long feared had at last occurred.

Euan was getting married! Penelope Parsons had just stated quite bluntly that
Euan was getting married,
and he was quite obviously marrying her, since he was in love with her and would probably have married her long ago if she hadn’t turned him down when he hadn’t any money. In the midst of her dazed condition Toni felt anger seething in her because the American girl had once refused to marry him, and now that it was standing out ten miles that she regarded him as a suitable match owing to the improvement in his financial circumstances, she was going to become Mrs. Euan MacLeod!

Toni passed through the green baize door to the kitchen, and heard—or thought she heard—a masculine voice calling after her. But she didn’t pause for a moment to allow the owner of it to catch up with her, and when she had delivered her message to Mrs. Briggs used the back staircase to reach her own room and lock herself in.

She felt that she had to be alone to fully absorb the intelligence that had been passed on to her.

Euan—the man who had caused her to see Charles in a different light—was getting married!

That night, at dinner, she tried not to appear as if she was feeling slightly stunned still, and when Mrs. Ethel Wilberforce, Penelope Parsons’ companion, started to talk to her, she answered as brightly as she knew how, and hoped fervently that no one guessed just how stricken she felt at heart. Every time she glanced at Euan, in his well-cut dinner jacket and startlingly white linen that threw up his bronzed skin, sitting at the head of the table and looking remarkably complacent although he had recently taken such a momentous decision, she felt she could hardly believe it. And then she glanced at Miss Parsons and found it perfectly easy to believe.

Miss Parsons was looking strikingly attractive in a short dinner dress of uncomplicated blue, and with her pink and white complexion and well-dressed fair hair she would fit beautifully into the seat at the bottom of the flower-decked table—at present occupied by Celia—when the time came for her to take over the role of hostess.

And when that time came even Celia would probably think twice about invading the house and accepting a prolonged invitation to stay there with her daughter.

For one thing, if she could be induced to let the house on a long lease, she would probably not receive such an invitation. And that meant that Toni would not receive an invitation, either, and—refusing the sweet when it arrived, and deciding that she couldn’t face up to a savoury, either—that would be perfectly all right with Toni, for she was making up her mind as she sat there that at the very earliest possible moment she would depart from this house of Inverada and never under any circumstances return to it.

If only she had never seen it she would not now be feeling as if her only hope of happiness had been snatched away from her. Which was utterly absurd, in any case, for a man who looked like Euan MacLeod and had his cold blue eyes and uncompromising mouth and jaw, could hardly be likely to provide any woman with happiness.

Although Miss Parsons certainly looked quietly radiant as she sat there at his right hand and smiled interminably.

After dinner, while Celia was wondering aloud whether they could make up a bridge four, Euan suddenly appeared beside Toni and asked her whether she felt like enjoying a little air on the terrace. It was a wonderful night, he assured her, now that the mist had withdrawn itself, and if her afternoon’s exercise hadn’t exhausted her...

His voice was very dry as he implied that it might, but Toni answered at once, and very distinctly, that she was as fresh as if she hadn’t been out at all that afternoon.

“But I’m perfectly comfortable where I am,” she told him in the same voice. “Take Miss Parsons to look at the moon. If she hasn’t seen a Scottish moon before I’m sure she’ll love this one.”

“Very well, I will,” Euan answered in a low voice, and Toni found herself deserted almost immediately while he went across and asked the American girl to take a turn on the terrace with him.

She sprang up at once, slipped a hand inside his arm, and accompanied him out on to the terrace. Toni avoided meeting her mother’s eyes as she and Mrs. Wilberforce embarked on a somewhat stilted conversation in connection with America, and as soon as she thought she could do so without it appearing in the least odd she rose and sought the sanctuary of her own bedroom, where for the second time that day she locked the door in order that no one—and it was her mother she was secretly afraid of—should follow her and attempt to offer something in the nature of sympathy or advice about Charles.