Bride of Alaine Read online

  “You’ve had a shock,” said Urquhart surveying her thoughtfully with his sleek head on one side, and one of those slender eyebrows partly raised.

  “Not really,” she answered. “Only we missed the boat, and I was horrified because I was afraid we might have to spend the night in the open. Not,” she added hurriedly, “that I expected you to put us up.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, in the same cool manner that he adopted towards his servant. “If you want to go back to the mainland tonight Duncan can take you back, but if you wish to stay here you can stay. It all depends, I imagine, on the condition of your friend when we find her. By the way,” putting away his pipe in the rack on the mantelpiece and helping himself to a cigarette and offering her one at the same lime, “don’t you think we ought to do something about that graze on your cheek?” He surveyed it critically. “It is only a graze, but it’s still bleeding a little.”

  He handed her a large, immaculate handkerchief.

  “There’s a woman in the kitchen, cooking the dinner. I’ll get her to bring you a bowl of water.”

  “No, no,” Amanda answered, gazing back at him with her large, golden-brown, slightly haunted eyes. “I couldn’t think of troubling you...”

  This time his “Don’t be silly,” made her feel like a child.

  He went out and came back with a bowl of warm water and a clean towel. A woman, almost as large and as ungainly as Duncan, accompanied him. She stood staring at Amanda as if she, too, was afraid she was seeing a ghost.

  “Will I put a couple of fires in the rooms?” she asked, wiping her hands on her coarse apron. “ ’Tis almost certain they’ll smoke, but if the ladies are staying...”

  The way she said ‘ladies’ made Amanda glance round at her curiously.

  “Yes, put fires in the rooms,” Urquhart answered. “And don’t,” he added drily, “forget to make up the beds.”

  Amanda apologised hastily to the woman.

  “I’m so sorry to give you all this trouble! But there was nowhere else I could go.”

  “It’s no trouble, miss,” the woman answered, and then with the same faint rolling of the eyes that had betrayed Duncan’s uneasiness she left the room.

  Amanda bathed her cheek in the warm water and then dabbed at it with the towel. She longed to possess a comb or a powder-compact, but those were both in her handbag, and her handbag was with Judy. And, in any case, she could not turn this extraordinary baronial and yet primitive apartment into a dressing-room, particularly with her host looking on.

  While she was still dabbing at her face with the towel she asked:

  “What did your man mean when he talked about someone he seemed to think was a bride?”

  Alaine smiled.

  “ ‘The Bride of Alaine.’ It’s just a superstition. Both Duncan and Jean—who, by the way, is Duncan’s wife, although she looks as if she might be his sister—are primitive, simple people. You mustn’t take any notice if they behave as if they’re seeing things.”

  While they waited for Duncan to return with Judy Amanda sat in her chair by the fire and took some discreet looks round the room. It was appallingly shabby at first glance, but a more careful inspection of it brought to light the one or two good rugs that were strewn about the hard stone floor, the desk that was quite a handsome affair hidden away in an alcove, and the books that lined two of the walls from floor to ceiling.

  This was undoubtedly the library of the house, and as it had one enormous window it was probably quite pleasant in the daytime, when sunlight flooded the room. Then the shabby leather chairs probably looked less shabby, and the colours in the Oriental rugs would show up more pleasingly. And if a woman lived in the house who was accustomed to making the best of things a few bowls of flowers scattered about the room would probably improve it still more.

  Amanda, who many times in her life had had to make the best of things, began to feel quite interested in the possibilities of this room while her host sat quietly smoking and asking no questions on the other side of the hearth, and a golden-eyed black spaniel with long satin ears emerged from under a side table and came somewhat belatedly to greet her and make her acquaintance. She bent down and stroked the animal as it looked straight up into her eyes, and as if answering her unspoken question Urquhart said: “That’s Jasper. He’s not used to visitors, and he’s also rather old. Otherwise he would probably have given you a noisier welcome.”

  Duncan came in with Judy in his arms, and as if to complete the fantastic unreality of this extraordinary evening Judy, despite a certain amount of pain in her foot, had been employing herself usefully in the wood, and her make-up was almost, if not quite, without fault. She had no disfiguring mark on her cheek, and her lovely hair, although bright with drops, was well combed and sweeping to her shoulders like a red-gold cloud. Her beautiful, pansy-dark eyes were full of bewitching smiles.

  For the first time the remote Alaine Urquhart looked intrigued. He accepted Duncan’s burden from him, and then laid her tenderly on a well-worn couch. She looked up at him and sighed with relief and satisfaction.

  “This is a wonderful moment for me,” she told him. “In a sense, I feel that I’ve come home. I’m Judith Macrae, and my grandmother worked here as housekeeper for years before she married my grandfather. They went to Australia, and I’m afraid they made a lot of money ... which makes it all the more romantic, don’t you think?” while Alaine displayed signs of quickening interest.

  “It does indeed,” he returned. And then he shook his head. “But I’ll never believe that you and Duncan are blood relations. That is something you’ll never convince me of!”

  And Duncan, muttering something in his beard, as it were, escaped from the room to fetch the tray of drinks his master ordered, while Judy lay on the couch and gave to the room the final touch of loveliness it needed to make it really interesting, and the dark, cool, suave Alaine, in his dark blue velvet doublet and Mechlin lace, stood looking down at her as if he could scarcely believe in his good fortune.

  And over on the far side of the fire Amanda still shivered a little, and felt miserable and an intruder.

  CHAPTER III

  IN the morning Jean entered her room with a large can of hot water, and dumped it down beside the wash-stand.

  Amanda sat up in bed and tried hard to remember where she was. She had slept well, but she had also slept heavily, and in consequence her thoughts were scattered—wildly scattered, as if she had travelled far and wide while she lay supine, in the old-fashioned four-poster bed.

  Jean, in a clean print apron, drew back the curtains and let the morning sunlight into the room. It was very bright, clear sunlight, and it seemed to be falling from a sky that was a hard and brazen blue, with the glitter of the northern hemisphere about it. The clouds that sailed across it were very white clouds. A dark shoulder of bare hillside could be seen through the window, and a cluster of pines that swayed with the force of the morning breeze.

  Amanda could remember stars that blazed in a still night sky before she went to bed. No mist... the mist had evaporated, and below her window there was a forest of trees. It had been cold in the room despite a huddle of logs that gave forth a few occasional sparks in the grate, and filled every inch of space with smoke that made the eyes run. Before getting into bed she had quenched the logs with water from the hand ewer, and she was afraid it had made rather a mess.

  Jean gazed at it now with a gloomy expression on her face.

  “I don’t blame you for dousing the fire,” she said. “The last time a fire burned well in this room Urquhart’s mother was alive ... and she’s been dead a good five years now. I told Duncan the chimney’s so stuffed with bird’s nests and the like there’s no room for the smoke.”

  “I was beautifully warm in bed,” Amanda said, hugging her bare arms to prevent her teeth chattering all over again ... for in this vast mausoleum of a bedchamber comfort, unless one was buried beneath the mountain of bedclothes, seemed out of the question.


  It was all coming back to her, and she remembered that Judy was sleeping somewhere near to her. Only Judy’s fire had behaved reasonably well, and her room had had a rather more pleasing aspect. The bed-curtains were not so badly frayed as those which partially enclosed Amanda’s bed, and she had had a warm sheepskin rug in front of the dressing-table, and her commodious wardrobe was not so vast that it could provide refuge for half a dozen men fleeing from justice. Neither did it smell so badly or strongly of mothballs. And her dressing-table was rather a nice Victorian dressing-table with triple mirrors, and there were a lot of handsome cut-glass jars and bottles with silver tops to intrigue her every time she sat down to make up her face.

  Judy was disgusted because the silver tops were badly tarnished, but Amanda would have preferred them to the bare wooden top of her dressing-table, standing in a petticoat of striped satin that was ready to collapse at a touch.

  She remembered that they had had dinner in a vast, candlelit room that was colder even than her bedroom, although the food had been good and plentiful. And afterwards they had returned to the room in which she had been first received by the Lord of Ure, and Judy had lain once more on the couch that had been drawn close to the brightly leaping fire by Alaine himself. She, Amanda, had poured out the coffee that had been carried in on an enormous silver tray that had obviously been brought out of store for the occasion and given a hasty shine, and the coffee cups had been extraordinarily delicate and beautiful by contrast with everything else, and Jasper, the dog, had put his head in her lap and kept it there until she went to bed. It had seemed to be tacitly understood, right from the beginning that there could be no question of them returning to the mainland that night. And Judy had been made so comfortable, and so welcome, that she hadn’t apparently considered it necessary to apologise for her intrusion. She had explained why she was there, and she seemed to think she had a right to be there; and the Lord of Ure was so concerned lest she should do further damage to her ankle that, after getting Jean to go down on her rheumaticky knees and apply alternate hot and cold compresses to it, he had himself carried Judy into the dining-room, and as a matter of course he had carried her back.

  Judy, who had a reputation for being as delicate and sensitive as a hot-house plant, had laughed and chatted with him until the dock in the hall chimed a wheezy midnight, and Amanda had been so dead with sleep—or the longing for it, rather—that she had staggered like a drunken thing up the spiral stairs that led to the upper rooms of the Tower, and the one thing she couldn’t remember was saying good-night to her host.

  She was fairly certain that Judy had bidden him a very gracious good-night, and no doubt she had thought a lot about him after she went to bed. For Judy loved men, almost all men, and she had a particular preference for highly personable ones.

  And whatever else he was not—and that one would only discover on a closer acquaintance—Alaine Urquhart was very definitely and decidedly personable.

  “I’ll bring ye ye’re breakfast,” Jean said, and then noticed that Amanda had retired to bed in her thin silk slip, and it was extremely inadequate for her present surroundings. “And ye can have the loan of my old dressing-gown to wrap around those shoulders,” she offered. “Otherwise ye’re like to die o’ the chill o’ this place!”

  Amanda was certainly grateful for the dressing-gown, which was faded camel-hair, and she hugged it to her as she ate her breakfast. Porridge, toast, a boiled egg and some thick slices of home-made oatcake with honey, accompanied by strong tea and a jug of cream, went down so well that she felt a new woman when the final crumbs had been dusted from her fingers, and she set aside the tray.

  Now was the moment, however, of unpalatable truth, for she had to leave her warm bed and make the journey to the comfortless bathroom that fortunately, however, was on the same floor, although not precisely en suite with her room, in order to wash and dress and get ready to go downstairs.

  The one real piece of good fortune that she could boast of was the fact that her handbag contained not only her comb and her compact and a lipstick, but a packet of face tissues and a spare toothbrush. She didn’t know why she had carried it around with her in its cellophane case, but she had, and after braving the hazards of the old-fashioned geyser it was a great treat to give her teeth a good scrub in the ice-cold water from the cold tap which felt as if it had come bubbling down from some frozen ice field to provide her gums with a healthy tingle.

  Then she went back to her room and dressed, after which she felt able to look in on Judy.

  It had never occurred to her that Judy, too, wouldn’t be up and dressed by this time, and it was something of a shock to find her reclining in bed on piled-up feather pillows as if she had every intention of remaining there for the rest of the day.

  She, too, had had a well-filled breakfast tray, but being Judy she had scorned the porridge. And having Judy’s figure very much in mind she had ignored the jug of cream. But tea with a faintly smoky taste and a cigarette from her handbag had provided her with a sense of repletion, and since she now had a fire in her room which was burning brightly and clearly she had no need to borrow anyone’s dressing-gown to cover her milk-white arms and shoulders as she relaxed against her pillows.

  “Good heavens!” Amanda exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of staying here all day?”

  Judy smiled at her mysteriously. She had such very beautiful dark eyes that an admirer had once likened them to ‘brown velvet with a hint of starshine.’

  “Not all day, darling.” She had a faint Australian accent which Amanda, who had spent only a few months in Australia, couldn’t hope to emulate, although it fascinated her. “But Jean agrees with me that it would be a good idea to rest my foot until lunch time. It gave me hell in the night, and I didn’t sleep awfully well.” She looked up mournfully at her friend. “And you know how I am when I don’t sleep well.”

  “But I don’t understand.” Amanda leaned on the foot of the bed and sounded exasperated. “Last night, although you knew perfectly well we would miss the boat, you insisted on catching what you called a ‘glimpse’ of this place. Then, having caught your ‘glimpse’ you vanished, and I had to fight my way through dense jungle, as it seemed, to find you. By that time you’d sprained your ankle and I had to get help. I didn’t so much mind asking for the help—although that creature Duncan thought I was a ghost, or something of the sort!—but I didn’t make it plain you intended to put up here. Don’t you realise your host is a bachelor?”

  “Of course.” Judy’s smile grew mysterious again. “And such a devastatingly handsome one, too! But you needn’t worry, poppet, I’ve been invited to stay ... and you, of course! I couldn’t possibly stay on here without you! Just until my ankle’s better.” Amanda pressed lightly on the ankle and she didn’t even wince.

  “You’re a fraud,” she said, contemptuously. “All that fuss about hot and cold bandages! There’s nothing really wrong with your foot, is there?”

  “Not much.”

  “Then you don’t need to stay here.”

  “I intend to stay here.”

  Judy reached for her friend’s handbag, that was dangling on her wrist, and extracted her cigarette-case.

  “Sorry, darling, but I’m short,” she said, lighting one. And then: “Listen!” surrounding herself with a haze of smoke. “You know I came here largely as a result of curiosity because my family once lived on this island? Well, now that I’m here I mean to stay and savour the place for a while. Duncan will row you across to the mainland and you can go back to that hotel where we dumped our things—and, incidentally, booked rooms for a week—and cancel the booking and pack up our things, and then Duncan will bring you back here. It’s all arranged. When you were practically asleep last night, dozing over the fire, our host suggested it, and I accepted. He seemed to think I’d be an invalid for a while, and it would be cruel to submit me to the rigours of a boat journey.”

  “What rot!” Amanda exclaimed. She started to p
ace up and down the room. “What do you think Duncan and Jean will think of us?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “But Duncan is a sort, of relative of yours...” She glanced at Judy.

  “Not really.” Judy shook her head vigorously. “The Macraes are a large family, and he comes from the mainland. Besides, even if he was a relative, what difference would that make?”

  “You’d be related to a member of the domestic staff, and by rights should be relegated to the domestic quarters.”

  “How dare you say such a thing?” Judy’s delicate face flushed, and she was suddenly indignant. “My father owned more Australian sheep than Alaine Urquhart has pennies in the bank, and if there’s any gap in our social positions the advantage is on my side. I’m what the Sydney gossip columnists describe as an ‘extremely eligible young woman,’ and I’ll impress that on Mr. Urquhart when the moment is ripe. Don’t think I’ve come all this way to underline my blood connection with the Macraes. So far as I’m concerned the family could die out to-morrow and I wouldn’t care!”

  “Then why have you come all this way?”

  “To see Ure, and to discover for myself what the last of the Urquharts is like. I’ve already decided that he’s most attractive, although probably a little eccentric, and I may offer to buy him up lock, stock and barrel before I leave.”

  Amanda stared at her as if she simply couldn’t believe her ears.

  “What for?”

  “Because I’ve taken a kind of fancy to this island, and the Tower fascinates me. It’s almost literally tumbling down, but it could be restored.”

  “Have you the least idea at what cost?”

  “I’ll go into all that later.”

  “And you think a man who has lived here all his life, and must be exceptionally devoted to the place or he couldn’t exist without electric light and a few ordinary home comforts, will accept your money and go away and leave you to take over in his place? A girl who isn’t even an Urquhart!”