Highland Mist Page 6

  She might have been twenty, Toni thought ... or even eighteen. A delightful, girlish figure with a radiant complexion and the most beautiful chestnut hair in the world.

  “Oh, my dear, why can’t you be your age?” Celia pleaded. “And, as Charles reminded me only the other day, you’re nearly twenty, so you ought to be able to follow a process of natural thought. Most girls of nearly twenty have at least a dozen young men hanging round them—” As Celia had always discouraged young men hanging round her only daughter, who was so useful as a housekeeper, this was not entirely fair—“but so far as I know you haven’t even a solitary boy friend! Now, Euan MacLeod met you under extraordinary circumstances and has obviously thought about you more than once since—”

  “Mother!” Toni exclaimed in a startled voice, following the line of her thought at last.

  “Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to answer my letter,” Celia finished complacently. “He doesn’t know me, or want to know me; to him I’m just the mother of a girl who intrigued him, and I might be fat and matronly, just like any other mother of a twenty-year-old,” with a tiny smile of satisfaction because she was not. Indeed, nothing of the kind. “So I’m going to seize the bull by the horns and get you fitted out with a complete new outfit of clothes, and when he comes to London we’ll dazzle him ... or you will!”

  Toni protested, almost with a feeling of outrage but Celia didn’t even listen to her horrified exclamations because such a plan of campaign was so horribly blatant, and in any case Euan MacLeod wasn’t the sort of man to be caught in such an obvious net. He was a man who didn’t appear to have very much time for women, for one thing.

  “No?” Celia went off to Bond Street with rather a pitying look of amusement in her eyes. “All men have time for women, and this one has provided me with an entirely new idea ... in connection with Inverada House, I mean. I no longer want to run it as a guest-house. I’ve thought of something much nicer for it!”

  When Charles Henderson looked in one morning about a week later he found Toni almost knee-deep in tissue paper, and on every chair and occasional table there were cardboard boxes cascading some delectable examples of feminine wearing apparel. Toni herself was holding in her hands an evening gown of water-green nylon tulle, with some crystal embroidery like dewdrops on the bodice, when he walked in—he never bothered to knock, and just turned the handle of the front door, which was usually unlocked—and regarded her thoughtfully.

  “Hullo!” he said, as her brown eyes were raised to him above the green dress. Then something about the combination of warm brown eyes and such a delicate green, some absurd thought that entered his head and was concerned with dryads and woodland glades, prevented him saying anything more.

  “Hullo!” Toni echoed, rather shyly. Since her trip to Scotland with Charles she was often shy when she greeted him, in a way she had never been before. It could have had something to do with the way he looked at her nowadays, not as if she was her mother’s cook-housekeeper, but a girl he had only recently discovered.

  “What’s all this in aid of?” he asked, indicating the tissue paper and the dress boxes. “Don’t tell me Celia’s decided to buy you a trousseau before you’re even engaged?”

  There was a certain wryness about the twist of his lips as he spoke, but Toni didn’t really notice it. She was only thinking, as she always did, that few men managed to do their tailor the justice that he did, and marvelling that she had once been isolated with him in the lonely Highlands of Scotland, with only another man—who was almost as interesting in quite a different way—to turn them into a trio.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, returning the green dress to its box and folding the tissue paper round it lovingly.

  “I think it could hardly suit you better than it does, if that’s what you want to know,” he replied with a smile.

  She smiled back at him, with the same tinge of shyness.

  “Celia has been spending a lot of money on me because she thought I needed some new clothes,” she told him.

  “In order that you can complete the devastation you’ve already worked on a young man who has just come into a nice fortune of one hundred and twenty thousand?”

  She gazed at him in astonishment.

  “How did you know?” she asked, and then coloured furiously and added: “Of course, it’s only a ridiculous idea of Celia’s, and you know very well that Euan MacLeod hardly took any notice of me. I can’t imagine him taking notice of any woman.”

  “Can’t you?” He walked right into the room and sat on the arm of a chair that was not occupied. “Well, I don’t know about ‘any woman’, but he was very concerned about you. I think he took an instantaneous dislike to me because I was with you. He would have much preferred it—and probably been many degrees politer and more charming—if I hadn’t existed at all!”

  “What rubbish!” she declared, and looked at him with the colour fluctuating in her cheeks.

  “It isn’t rubbish,” he told her soberly. “It’s the truth. And it’s because it’s the truth that he’s agreed to come to London.”

  Her brown eyes were very serious as she studied him steadily. She wondered whether he would be shocked—and whether, perhaps, he would be badly alarmed—if she told him what Euan MacLeod had predicted for her future, and how he had linked that future up with Charles’s.

  “He may be a friend of your mother’s, but I think you’ll marry him one day.”

  That was absurd, of course, but a man who had taken even a fleeting interest in a girl didn’t predict her marriage to another man ... not casually, cynically, coolly. With hard blue eyes a trifle harder than usual.

  “Don’t take any notice of my mother,” she said hastily, gathering up more tissue paper and thrusting it back into the boxes. “She gets these ideas, as you know ... ideas like that one about turning Inverada House into a guest-house.”

  “But now, in case you didn’t know it, she has decided that you and Euan MacLeod can live there and be happy ever afterwards ... following a certain amount of repair to the house, complete refurnishing, and so forth. And on his money that should be quite a simple matter!”

  “Oh!” Toni exclaimed, and this time her face flamed like a peony. Charles went to her and lifted her chin and looked deep into her brown eyes. “Didn’t you know that, Toni?”

  “I just know that she’s being rather foolish.” He kept his hand beneath her chin, and went on looking into her eyes. She could smell the heady fragrance of his shaving lotion and the faint fragrance of his tobacco, and her head whirled. She knew that her heart was beating very fast.

  “I’m glad you’ve got some pretty things, Toni,” he said quietly. “Celia hasn’t been very generous to you up to date, and you deserve pretty things. But they’re not to be worn for the benefit of this MacLeod person ... at least, not all of them! Let me take you out to dinner one night and wear that green dress you were holding up to yourself when I came in just now. Will you?”

  Toni stared up at him, trying to prevent her long eyelashes from blinking in utter surprise.

  “But what would Celia say?” she got out with the awkwardness of a schoolgirl.

  She could almost feel him stiffen and freeze.

  “It has nothing whatever to do with Celia ... except that I’d have to ask her permission!”

  But she couldn’t accept that.

  “Nothing?” she echoed faintly.

  “Nothing.” He frowned in such a way that she knew he was suddenly acutely annoyed, and his voice sounded harsh and rebuking. “I don’t know what kind of ideas a small head like yours is liable to get inside it, Toni, but your mother and I are excellent friends. You believe that, don’t you?” She didn’t answer.

  He pinched her chin and then released it, and walked away to the window.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow night, Toni.”

  “I’m afraid we’re dining with Dr. MacLeod.”

  “Ah, yes.” There was something mocking in his tone as he turned
towards her. “I shouldn’t have forgotten then, for Celia has already made me aware of your engagement for tomorrow. But one night when you’re not tied up with MacLeod will you dine with me? Make it a promise!”

  She stood quite still, staring at her feet, wondering whether he could hear the violent beating of her heart—wondering, also, whether he had quarrelled recently with her mother, something that did happen sometimes and affected their attitude towards one another.

  “All right,” she said, at last. “It’s a promise!”

  “Good girl!” he exclaimed, and walked to the door. Without saying another word—not even a casual goodbye—he walked out of the flat, and she stood staring down at her new clothes, wondering why they no longer delighted her as much as they had done. Wondering why she suddenly had a mental picture of herself wrapped up in MacLeod’s dressing-gown, that had been much too large for her and had also smelt of tobacco.

  But not the expensive kind Charles used.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The following night she wore the water-green dress, and Celia’s eyes grew rather wide when she went into her room to inspect her before expressing approval or otherwise.

  There was no question of it being otherwise. Toni had been born to wear just such a dress, and as Celia herself had worked over her hair with a brush and a silk handkerchief it had the gloss of polished bronze. It framed her face in an aura of light, and caressed the smooth sides of her neck as if it loved them. Just a touch of mascara and a little eyeshadow had given her brown eyes an extraordinary brilliance, and, cleverly lipsticked, her wide, lovely mouth was even lovelier.

  “I feel as if I’ve been got up for an occasion,” Toni remarked, and Celia agreed that that was precisely what had happened to her.

  “A very special occasion, darling. I want someone to see you looking nice.”

  Toni felt obstinate and difficult all at once.

  “I can’t think why,” she protested. “Dr. MacLeod isn’t likely to be in the least interested, and I wouldn’t be interested if he was.”

  Her mother looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “Give up that schoolgirl crush for Charles, darling,” she requested casually. “It won’t get you anywhere, and it will only bore Charles!”

  With which lightly emphasised observation she went out of the room and into the elegant Regency sitting-room to see to the drinks—for at the last minute she had ventured to alter the arrangement for the evening, and had asked Euan by telephone to come and have dinner with them. She had spent the whole of the afternoon in the kitchen doing things with casserole dishes and special saucepans—for she was quite a good cook when she felt like it and wished to impress someone—and at the moment that the leading beneficiary under the terms of her late Uncle Angus’s will knocked at the door she was busy with a wine-cooler in the dining-room.

  Somewhat hesitantly Toni made for the door, but Celia forestalled her.

  “No, leave this to me, darling. This is my show, and I’m organising things.”

  When the door opened Euan MacLeod was studying the name of the occupant of the flat beside the white-painted door, and he looked round casually when Celia spoke to him. He was wearing a dinner jacket that was extremely well cut, and his linen could hardly have been more immaculate. His thick dark hair had been disciplined, and lay almost sleekly against the sides of his head, and he was beautifully shaved. In fact, Charles himself could not have appeared more well turned out. At sight of Celia he appeared faintly surprised.

  “Mrs. Drew?” he said. “She’s expecting me.”

  Celia extended both hands to him, in one of her dramatic gestures.

  “Of course she’s expecting you, Dr. MacLeod! And ... it is Dr. MacLeod, isn’t it? I’m Marceline Drew, and my daughter has told me all about you. In fact, she told me so much that I’ve been dying to meet you!”

  “Indeed?” Euan said, his surprise obviously growing. He glanced over her head, and caught sight of Toni, emerging from the kitchen with a plate of snacks in her hand. He said nothing further, only inclined his head to her. Actually, something like a bow.

  Celia conducted him into the sitting-room, and it was there that the light shone full upon Toni. Charles had called her a dryad, and she looked like a dryad. Her hair swung, and her hands were nervous, but she was as graceful as a reed, and her eyes were enormous.

  Euan accepted one of Celia’s specially mixed cocktails from her hand with a long grave look of something that was not surprise, but a kind of queer, unfathomable interest. Then he turned to his hostess, and for the remainder of the evening he seemed to be charmed by her, completely fascinated.

  She was so astonishingly youthful and attractive that almost any man, whether young or old—particularly one who had just come south from a particularly wild part of Scotland—could be excused for coming under her spell, and although at first Celia seized every opportunity to draw Toni into the conversation, by the time dinner ended she was not making such vigorous efforts, and Toni was dismissed to the kitchen to make the coffee ... a task which Celia had appointed for herself.

  Toni didn’t mind. She was so accustomed to the effect her mother had on members of the opposite sex that she wasn’t even greatly surprised. Not until she was alone in the kitchen, and she thought the matter out, and then for the first time she realised that she was surprised. Euan MacLeod was so unlike the men with whom her mother came into contact—with whom she herself came into contact—that she was even vaguely disappointed.

  In Inverada Euan MacLeod had struck her as a man of iron, a man who could resist anything ... until she had discovered that he had that softer side to him, that sudden charm which leapt out when he forgot to be aloof and smiled unexpectedly, that almost feminine streak of gentleness which had caused her to see him—at odd moments—in an entirely new light.

  When she returned to the sitting-room with the coffee, Celia was sparkling like the facet of a diamond with the delight of having temporarily intrigued a man. Without the smallest difficulty she had discovered the reason why he was living in Inverada, in such a tiny cottage, and explained it all to Toni as she poured out the coffee.

  “Dr. MacLeod—although I’m going to call him Euan from now on, because we are in a sense related—has been telling me the reason why he parked himself temporarily in that awful little cottage.” Toni reacted quickly inwardly, for she had never once said that it was an awful little cottage—it was Charles who had done that—but Euan MacLeod was gazing thoughtfully at the tip of his cigarette and didn’t seem to mind what anyone thought about the hospitality he had offered. “He was a ship’s doctor for a couple of years, and then he got bored with the sea and decided he didn’t know quite what to do. So he went and buried himself in Uncle Angus’s cottage—Uncle Angus gave it to him years ago—and then Uncle Angus died and left him all his money. He doesn’t quite know what he’s going to do with it, but I’ve put forward a few suggestions.”

  She beamed radiantly, and Toni felt uncomfortable.

  “What suggestions?” she asked quietly.

  Euan MacLeod lifted his eyes to her, and she thought he smiled oddly for a moment.

  “Your mother has suggested that I buy Inverada House from her and doll it up again,” he said rather brusquely. “As it was when she was a little girl, and Uncle Angus hadn’t developed into the recluse he became in later life.”

  “Then he was a recluse?” Toni said, for want of something better to say.

  “Oh, yes.” His smile was more inscrutable this time. “And that sort of thing must be catching, for I was on the point of developing into one myself until your mother wrote to me.”

  “You mean, until you inherited all that money,” Celia said quickly. “Of course you couldn’t develop into a recluse after that!”

  Euan’s eyes rested on her, in her sleek ice-blue brocade gown, and with her perfect make-up.

  “I can assure you it wasn’t the money that altered my attitude. Curiosity brought me south, but you must believe that the news
that Uncle Angus had left me so much meant nothing at all to me.” He spoke harshly, almost grimly. “Human contacts, however, do still mean something, and I wanted to meet this distant connection of mine who had inherited Inverada. I rather pitied her, because Inverada is a hopeless proposition without money.”

  “But with money one could do a lot with it, couldn’t one?” she said, looking at him coyly. “Charles, for instance, was willing to back me when I proposed turning it into a hotel.”

  “Charles?” His eyebrows ascended, and then his eyes grew cold. “Oh, Charles Henderson. Why,” he enquired quietly, “has he a lot of money to throw away, or has he some particular interest?”

  “In Inverada, you mean?” looking even more coy. “Or do you mean has he some particular interest in furthering my interests, or—shall we say?—Toni’s!” to Toni’s utter astonishment. She felt her mouth drop open with surprise, and MacLeod crushed out the stub of his cigarette in an ashtray.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “I’ve an affection for Inverada, but I won’t do anything in connection with it without a reason. I cannot imagine Mr. Henderson being interested in such an isolated spot, and your daughter has discovered to her own cost what an isolated spot it can be.” He looked hard at Toni. “But I’m not saying I’m not interested in Inverada, and I might even be willing to buy. I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

  “Oh, yes?” Celia said eagerly, leaning towards him.

  “I’ll go back north in about another week, and I’ll have a good look at Inverada. I’ll get it made habitable, and put some staff in there, and then if you can spare the time I’ll invite you all up there as my guests.”

  “You mean,” Celia said shrewdly, “that you’ll lease the place?”