Bride of Alaine Page 4

  “Oh, dear!” Amanda exclaimed, her great brown eyes literally shining with sympathy. “How awful for you! And, I suppose, Duncan,” she added. “But I’m sure he likes working for you, and so does his wife, Jean.”

  “They’re faithful retainers,” he admitted.

  “Of course,” she said impulsively, “I suppose if you were to—well, marry someone with money...?”

  Urquhart nodded his sleek dark head, and his well-cut mouth quirked upwards at the corners with amusement.

  “An heiress would be a boon to me,” he agreed.

  She was quite certain he was mocking her slightly, and she flushed.

  “All the same, it would be a way out.”

  “Do you happen to know any heiresses—preferably extremely beautiful, of course!—willing to take over me, the island and Ure?” he asked her as her coffee arrived, and she busied herself pouring out a cup with definitely rather relieved fingers.

  She looked up at him swiftly. She was about to say ‘Judy,’ and then realised that would be involving Judy unpardonably, however much, later on, the Australian girl might begin to involve herself.

  “No, of course not,” she said instead, and then found it necessary to apologise for that, too. Her brown eyes reproached him a little as they met his this time. “You know very well that you’re joking,” she said.

  “Then you don’t think I ought to marry for money?”

  His eyes were teasing her, making her feel almost like a schoolgirl who had blundered in where angels feared to tread, and that in itself annoyed her. She supposed that if she had been a beautiful young woman with money he would not have dared to talk to her like this.

  “About last night,” he said suddenly, surprising her. “I really am sorry Duncan made such an ass of himself and talked all that rot to you about the Bride of Alaine. I know he doesn’t see many people like you—at least, not on Ure at that hour of night—and he’s versed in the history of my family, and has it at his fingers’ ends, so to speak. But the fact that there’s a ridiculous myth about a long-lost bride of one of my forebears coming back to restore the family fortunes was hardly an excuse in itself for the greeting you received last night. You must have thought he was a trifle mad when he ushered you into my presence looking as if he honestly doubted you were flesh and blood, and would have taken to his heels with the smallest encouragement.”

  Amanda smiled wryly.

  “Poor Duncan,” she exclaimed. “If he thought I looked like someone with the power to restore the fortunes of Ure he must have been mad!”

  Alaine Urquhart spoke quietly.

  “It all depends what he thought he saw,” he remarked obscurely.

  CHAPTER V

  BY the time they returned to Ure Judy was up and dressed and waiting impatiently for the rest of her belongings. She looked suspiciously at Amanda when she followed Duncan into the room with a pile of coats over her arm and Judy’s expensive camera slung round her neck.

  “What kept you?” she asked a trifle incautiously.

  Amanda glanced warningly at Duncan, burdened by a wardrobe trunk which he had had to manoeuvre all the way up the awkward stairs by himself. Judy had forgotten that she was the victim of a sprained ankle, and she was pacing up and down like an elegant caged tiger.

  “We had to wait for Mr. Urquhart,” Amanda told her.

  “Oh! So he went across with you, did he?”

  “No. He was there when we got there.”

  Duncan dumped a couple of cases down beside the wardrobe trunk and departed. Before he did so he directed a meaning look at the Australian girl’s foot. Just in time she collapsed gracefully on to a settee at the foot of the bed and complained loudly of the inconvenience of being unable to get about normally.

  “If my ankle hadn’t been hurting me so much I’d have gone across with you,” she said. Then, when Duncan was safely on the other side of the closed door, her tone changed again. “What was Mr. Urquhart doing that kept you hanging about on the mainland waiting for him?” she asked.

  Amanda decided to let her have it straight “Nothing very much, so far as I could judge,” she replied. “Apparently he likes to go across to the hotel for a drink and to meet a few friends, and he bought me a drink and we talked for a while.”

  “He bought you a drink?”

  “A coffee.” Amanda smiled. “I believe he had whisky.”

  “All Scotsmen drink whisky.” But apparently Judy was mollified a little, coffee sounding so innocuous that it evoked no picture of a girl presented with an opportunity making the most of it over a dry martini or something of the sort. However, from her creased brow she was not entirely pleased because she herself had been left out, and as she went over to the dressing-table to stare at herself in the mirror she issued a warning.

  “I had nothing very much to do while you were out but think,” she said, “and I want you to get one thing really clear, Amanda. I’ve taken a big fancy to Ure, and since Urquhart goes with it I mean to have them both, by hook or by crook, before we leave here. Or perhaps I should say before you leave here, because once I’m mistress of the place I can come and go as I choose, and it’s as good a place for a honeymoon as any I can think of. I’ve travelled about a bit, and to Paris and Rome, and places like that. But Ure is different. It’s got something, something that can be developed. With my money it can be turned into the most exciting place in Scotland.”

  “Are you going to tell Mr. Urquhart that you intend to draw up a blueprint for putting his house on the map?” Amanda enquired quietly, although she was secretly convinced that her friend was not entirely serious. How could she be when she hadn’t yet seen the whole of Ure, or caught so much as a glimpse of her host in the broad white light of day? “And will you propose to him, or will you simply suggest taking him over with the house, lock, stock and barrel?”

  To her surprise Judy did not look even faintly amused.

  “I shall not propose to him,” she said. “That won’t be necessary. But I’m not the sort of girl who believes in leaving everything to a man. Situations have to be helped along, and there are occasions when it is not immodest to put oneself forward. Besides, in this modern age men don’t propose. They merely wake up one morning to find that preparations for a wedding are in full swing. And when they get to the church and their lovely bride comes walking towards them down the aisle they’re perfectly happy about it, even if they didn’t have any voice at all in the arrangements, and they’re even a bit hazy as to how the whole thing got started, let alone matured.”

  “Really?” Amanda said, her eyes widening as she stared at the delicious dark beauty of Judy. “You surprise me!” she added.

  Judy shrugged.

  “Don’t take me too literally,” she said. “Of course a lot of men fall madly in love.”

  “And you’re used to having men fall in love with you?”

  “I’ve had a few... experiences.” The night-dark eyes grew faintly reminiscent. “But I wouldn’t insist on a man being madly in love with me before he asked me to marry him. Love is like a flower. It can grow, you know, after marriage.”

  “Especially if the girl has money?”

  “One or other of the parties must have money.”

  “That, you consider, is absolutely essential?”

  “Oh, yes.” She turned away and started to unlock one of her cases, dragging out the contents in a search for something fresh and becoming to wear for lunch. There was a note of finality in her voice with the faint Australian accent, that in itself lent her a touch of matter-of-factness. “Always remember that love flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door, and love simply doesn’t have a chance if it’s poverty right from the word ‘go.’ Oh, bother!’ she exclaimed, as she searched for the belt that went with a fine wool dress. “Why don’t you come and help me, Amanda? I can never find anything when I’m looking for it!”

  There was a slight tap on the door when she was finally ready, and Amanda was beginning to wonder
whether she would make a pretence of hobbling downstairs ... or whether she proposed to send for Duncan to carry her. Alaine Urquhart stood outside the door when Amanda opened it, and he smiled in an engagingly one-sided, if slightly diffident, fashion, which had the effect of elevating one of his dark eyebrows.

  “I wondered whether I could be of service?” he said “Your friend mustn’t attempt to walk downstairs.”

  Amanda stared at him.

  “You don’t mean that you’re offering to carry her?”

  “If she’s not afraid that I’ll drop her!”

  Judy hobbled forward painfully, melting gratitude in her pansy-dark eyes as they met the somewhat quizzical eyes of her host.

  “Oh, how kind!” she exclaimed. And then, ridiculously, since she looked like a fragile reed in her leaf-green dress, with an Alice band holding back her hair, and a pair of hand-made kid slippers on her slender feet: “But I’m dreadfully heavy, you know! And I don’t want to make myself more of a nuisance than I already am!”

  For answer Alaine advanced into the room and stood smiling down into her eyes in such a way that Amanda felt a positive intruder.

  “If you’re a nuisance,” he observed, as he swung her up into his arms, “then I hope I’m favoured with a good many more nuisances of this kind before my days are numbered.”

  Amanda followed them down the stairs, and when she reached the bottom she had to return upstairs again because Judy had left her handbag behind, and she wanted a clean handkerchief. She also wanted a flask of French cologne which she had left on the dressing-table, and a packet of specially blended cigarettes which she wanted to try out on her host.

  Amanda was quite breathless after toiling up the steep spiral staircases, and then hunting feverishly for both the cigarettes and the cologne—which was not, after all, on the dressing-table—and finding it necessary to do a quick tidy-up of the room before she left it because it struck her as unfair that Mrs. Duncan should have to undertake the extra duty, by the time she rejoined the other two in the main living-room of the Tower.

  Judy was once more reclining on the well-worn leather-covered settee, which, since it was always cool within the stout walls of the Tower, however fine and warm it might be outside them, had been drawn close to the crackling log fire, and the dark green velvet of her headband seemed to emphasise the lovely warm colour in her cheeks, and the delightful and provocative glow of her lips. Alaine poured her a drink, which he assured her he had mixed specially for her, but Amanda declined anything in the nature of liquid refreshment before going in to lunch.

  The same ridiculous procession formed again when Jean announced that lunch was ready. Alaine carried Judy in his arms, Amanda followed with her friend’s cardigan over her arm and her handbag dangling from her wrist—her own contained so little that she had left it upstairs in her bedroom—and the dour Scotswoman came behind to pull out the chairs. She was looking a trifle grim, as if her morning had not been entirely free from over-exertion, and she was beginning to look upon the situation with a distinctly jaundiced eye.

  Duncan himself waited at table, and Amanda was surprised because he did it very well, although he, too, looked as if the imposition was almost too great to be borne, and he might have a lot to say about it later ... in private to his master.

  The conversation at table was largely carried on by Alaine and Judy, and it certainly did not lack sparkle. Despite the professed discomfort of her foot the Australian girl was enjoying herself thoroughly, and it was obvious that Urquhart was fascinated by the glowing, dainty beauty of her. This was no girl from the backwoods, whose father and grandfather before him had reared sheep, but a highly civilised, expensively educated, pampered product with the power to appeal to all things masculine. She had but to flutter her eyelashes and the eternal male was intrigued. One movement of one of the slim white hands with the rosy fingertips and his attention was arrested, a slight husky appeal in her voice and he was metaphorically on his knees. She had practised the art of bringing a man to his knees so often that she didn’t even have to exert herself, and the result was always the same ... highly satisfactory from her point of view.

  Amanda had watched her, fascinated, on many occasions during their recent travels together, and although she occasionally felt sorry for the man she had never really felt critical of Judy until this moment ... since their arrival on Ure Island, that is. She had much more often been amused instead of critical. But now she recognised a certain new technique that Judy was making use of, and Alaine Urquhart was somewhat different from all the other men Judy had exercised her charms on.

  To begin with, it would be impossible to predict how, and in what way, he would react. He was so good-looking himself, so cool and assured despite his whimsical humour and his polished attentiveness, and there must have been many women in his life who had found him attractive. With his crumbling Tower for a background he was a romantic figure, and yet because of his isolated way of life he might be vulnerable. It was just possible he remained determinedly attached to his Tower to escape the pitfalls of existence, and in the case of a man who looked like him, and had only the modest means of supporting himself and his two faithful retainers, they could be great.

  The woman with money, the motherly woman, the giddy-headed girl, the girl who was easily carried away and impressed by externals to such an extent that she became a menace, they would each and all find in Alaine Urquhart a fascinating figure to stir their pulses and arouse dreams of possession. Only an extremely level-headed young woman like Amanda herself, who had trained herself to expect little or nothing from life, and had such a genuinely humble opinion of herself that she simply couldn’t imagine the day when a man would sit and watch her with the same air of being completely captivated that Alaine brought to the compelled way in which he sat and studied Judy, could at on the sidewalk, as it were, and be completely impartial about him.

  And although it might not be at all a bad thing for him if a rich woman married him, she was by no means certain that he would enjoy being married to Judy... who was by no means everything that she appeared to be on the surface.

  He might find that he had been taken over, lock, stock and barrel, as she had put it to Judy herself that morning. And some men would hate that.

  She looked down at the handsome piece of crested silver, beautifully bright and sparkling with silver-polish, with which she had been provided to deal with her savoury, and the thoughts inside her head made her face look very thoughtful indeed. She heard Judy say something about being sure she would be able to get about in a couple of days, and after that, of course, she wouldn’t dream of trespassing on her host. And Alaine replied that, since his life was not particularly colourful or full of variation on Ure, he considered himself fortunate that, he had been provided with the opportunity to act host to her—and her friend and companion, of course, glancing a little whimsically at Amanda. If the two of them didn’t think they would be bored he would be delighted if they would remain as long as they wished, and since Miss Macrae had an interest in Ure and had made the island a kind of pilgrimage there were many things he could show her, and, he felt certain, interest her in, when her ankle was better. It was the right time of year for her visit, the weather could, and probably would, be perfect during the next week or two, and she must not think of returning to Australia before she had seen all that she wanted to see, and had some pleasant memories to take back with her.

  Judy, who had been ecstatically admiring the fine Venetian glass that had been brought out to grace the table, and the same handsome crested silver that had temporarily diverted Amanda, looked positively enchanted, but insisted that she must not allow herself to become a nuisance.

  “And there’s one other thing,” she said, as if it had only suddenly occurred to her, and her eyelashes fluttered and she glanced sideways at him. “One thing that we shouldn’t overlook.”

  “Yes?” Alaine said, with that mildly amused—or was it indulgent?—note in his voice, while he
continued to find it difficult to remove his eyes from her.

  “Well,” Judy played with a fork, tapping the fine damask tablecloth with it, “we shouldn’t forget, Amanda and I, that you are a bachelor, and,” with a delicate confusion that was new in Amanda’s experience, “the people at the hotel where we stayed might think it a little odd if we overlooked the fact. I mean,” colouring enchantingly, “I don’t believe in ignoring conventions, and—”

  “Oh, as to that,” Alaine replied, ordering Jean to take the tray of coffee to the drawing-room, “I’ve thought the whole thing out, and I don’t think anyone’s finer feelings are going to be offended by your stay here. I’ve an old aunt who is due to pay me a visit, and I’ve already written to her asking her to put the date forward, if she can, and she’s the most obliging soul in the world, so I’m depending on her. She’ll probably be here sometime to-morrow.”

  “Oh!” But there was a certain doubt in Judy’s eyes, as if despite her reverence for the conventions she would have dispensed with another visitor if she could. “But won’t that be putting her to a great deal of trouble? I know I’m already giving enough trouble, and to inconvenience your aunt...”

  Urquhart smiled.

  “Nothing ever inconveniences my aunt. She’s small, birdlike, redoubtable and dependable. She’ll enjoy acting the part of chaperone.”

  “But won’t she think it odd? That we should be here at all?”

  For the first time Amanda thought his whole expression reflected amusement.