Highland Mist

by Rose Burghley

“For the summer, yes ... with the option of buying later on. And I invite you both to stay with me for at least a part of the summer.”

  “That is charming of you,” Celia said slowly, digesting the idea. “But I’d rather it was spring, and not summer, if you don’t mind. And I don’t want you to get the place in order before I visit it. I’d like to help with the refurbishing of it myself. And Toni, too. I know Toni would love that.”

  Euan looked directly at her.

  “Would you, Miss Drew?”

  “Call her Toni,” Toni’s mother suggested affably. “If we’re all going to work together to one end we must be really friendly, and avoid all unnecessary formality.”

  Euan ignored her.

  “Would you, Toni?” he repeated.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered rather breathlessly. “I would.”

  “Even if Mr. Henderson refuses to face the rigours of that part of the world again?”

  “He won’t,” Celia said confidently. “I’ll see to that. And—perhaps Toni!” she added, with a gleaming, amused glance at her daughter.

  MacLeod seemed to tighten his lips.

  “Then we’ll draw up an agreement—or my solicitor can do so—and I’ll put in some active servants in Inverada, and at least stop up a few rat-holes before you arrive.” Celia shuddered theatrically. “The place, as you’ll remember, is overlooking a loch, and it’s been damp for years. Dampness and rats go together.”

  Celia’s eyes grew wide and alarmed as a child’s.

  “How fortunate we’ve got to know you,” she said. “The first hint of a rat and Charles would have refused to do a thing. But you’re so extraordinarily helpful.” Her eyes seemed to caress him. “Toni has already found that out. She might not be here but for you, Euan...”

  He turned a little impatient.

  “We mustn’t dramatise your daughter’s stay in my cottage,” he said curtly. “She caught a chill, and I nipped it in the bud. I’d have done the same for anyone.”

  “Of course,” Celia said soothingly. “I understand that perfectly.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was several weeks later that Toni saw Inverada—or the road which led to it—for the second time, and by that time it was spring and she hardly recognised anything she saw.

  Celia was with her, and she grew quite enthusiastic because the green of the woods was so new and delicate—more like a tender film clothing the bare branches—and every hurrying stream gave off a babbling sound, as if eager to be on its way, and hard-pressed because the melting snows in the mountains were coming down much too fast. Toni had never seen such clear water, although it was also brown as a ribbon as it wound its way round boulders and clove a way through the rocky countryside.

  So many rocks, so many boulders ... such turbulence in a quiet way. The fever of spring was in every leaping cascade and every triumphant spurt of green. Toni tried to picture the same scene blanketed in snow, and her imagination—or rather, her memory—failed her utterly. The resinous smell that floated on the wind, the stir of innumerable feathered things, the silver fish gleaming in the shallows, made memory an uncertain thing. She began to wonder whether indeed she ever had been here before, and the serene lochs before her eyes, the brown summits of the mountains rising all around, were features of a landscape that she had never visited before.

  Celia was so delighted with everything that she quite failed to appreciate how very different it had been in early February. What a very different welcome from these remote Highlands Toni and Charles had received.

  “I told you it was always wonderful staying with Uncle Angus,” she enthused. “It’s true I never stayed with him in the winter, but I can remember autumn gales and large fires, and that sort of thing. I do hope Euan—” by this time, as a result of much correspondence, it was always ‘Euan’—“has got some good fires going for us, and that one at least of those new servants of his is a good cook. I simply can’t stand bad cooking.”

  Then she let out a little exclamation—the delighted exclamation of a young girl.

  “Oh, look! I can see the house at last, looking right out across the small loch. It’s a superb situation, with the woods behind it and the water in front. On a fine morning in the summer you can see Ben Inver looking like an amiable smiling giant from the drawing-room windows, almost as if he was at the bottom of the garden instead of several miles away ... Scottish miles at that!”

  In her excitement she neglected to drive as carefully as she normally did, and the small cream car in which they had travelled from London described a slight skid. Toni offered to take over the wheel, but Celia gripped it firmly and said they mustn’t stop now, even for a moment. She was dying to arrive at the house itself and pull up in front of the porch.

  Toni watched carefully as the distance between them and the house lessened. This was Inverada House, that had caused her a bout of near-pneumonia when the weather was at its worst, but which she was very anxious to see. Perhaps not as anxious as Celia—whose hobby it was at the moment; but she was curious to know why Euan MacLeod had been willing to pay a heavy rental for it to her mother, and why, in the past few weeks, he had started to spend a lot of money on it.

  The road dipped down from the open moorland and curved through a little larch wood before it entered the gates of Inverada. A handsome pair of wrought-iron gates, they guarded the approaches to this once well-kept house. And no doubt the grounds had also been well kept, and were fairly extensive, as Toni realised.

  Celia put on a burst of speed—when it would have been wiser to travel more cautiously, considering the twists and turns in the drive—and then, all at once, the house was before them, with a kind of semicircular gravel sweep in front of it.

  Toni felt instant pleasure well over her. It reminded her of a tiny fortress with its pepper-box towers, but the portico was Georgian, and was flanked by Georgian windows. Celia ignored the front door and drove round an angle to the side of the house, where there was a wonderful view of the loch which reflected the summit of Ben Inver as clearly and sharply as if it had been a mirror. And not only did it reflect Ben Inver, but every fleecy ball of cloud that was sailing serenely across the blue sky above it—an intense blue sky, an intense northern blue, which has so much in common with Neapolitan blue that only the fierce warmth of a Neapolitan sun is missing when the weather is fine and the clouds roll onwards to make it visible.

  At other times, anything less like or reminiscent of a corner of Italy than northern skies and dark clumps of fir wood has yet to be envisaged.

  This time it was Toni who let out a cry of sheer delight.

  “Oh, how wonderful! How absolutely beautiful!” She was looking at the loch. “I never dreamed it was as beautiful as this!”

  But Celia was looking hard at the house, and her brows had become puckered.

  “What on earth was the matter with Uncle Angus in his declining years that he allowed the place to fall into this condition of decay? Look at that peeling plaster, and that faded stucco! And the paintwork’s all blistered and scarcely recognisable as paintwork!” She indicated it with an appalled finger. “I simply can’t understand...” She looked about her vaguely. “And the garden’s a complete wilderness, and would take a positive regiment of men to get it into anything like order under a period of six months. Why, these grounds used to be the apple of Uncle Angus’s eye!”

  “The view across the loch is gorgeous,” Toni said, still feasting her eyes on it, and marvelling at the magical light that hung about it.

  Celia frowned still more.

  “I simply don’t understand,” she was repeating, when the side door opened and Euan MacLeod appeared on the terrace raised high above the loch. He was wearing a kilt and a well-cut tweed jacket, and the red in his hair flamed in the sunshine. A good deal of the perplexity died out of Celia’s eyes, and she smiled at him approvingly.

  “You look the part, at least,” she said. “The Laird of Inverada! But what has happened to the house?” glancin
g up at it as if it defeated her.

  He followed her glance with a slightly cynical gleam in his eyes.

  “What did you expect?” he asked. “After so many years! Your uncle was an old man when he died, and for years there was no one he cared about, or who cared about him. So why should he have put himself out to preserve his house? It was good enough for an old man to live in, alone save for a couple of servants ... or that was the way he looked at it.”

  Celia changed colour very slightly, and her expression was faintly guilty as she said:

  “But I wrote to him ... sometimes! Well, every Christmas, anyway. I didn’t think he’d want to receive visitors. I gathered he’d become something of a recluse.”

  “He had ... he was. But that was the result of old age and loneliness. Shall we go in? I hope you had a good journey from London?”

  “Oh, yes,” Celia gushed. “A wonderful journey. Couldn’t have been less eventful,” with a side glance at her daughter as if she was the one with the unhappy knack of turning journeys into awkward episodes. “And thank you so much for booking rooms for us at the Inverechy Arms for last night. We had a beautifully comfortable night!”

  “Good,” MacLeod said, and moved aside for them to precede him into the house. His eyes were on Toni with a faint, flickering smile in them, and she was not surprised when he said: “Did you have a good night, Miss Drew? If so, I’m a little surprised. Your first nights in this part of the world don’t tend to be comfortable.”

  She refused to smile back, and in fact her expression was almost grave as she replied.

  “My first night in Inverada wasn’t really so terribly uncomfortable, but I’m afraid yours was ... as a result of my visit, I mean. I expect you’ll always remember it, because it was such an extremely uncomfortable night.”

  “I shall remember it,” he answered. “But not because of the amount of discomfort!”

  His vivid blue eyes—and they were uncannily blue in such a sparkling atmosphere—held hers, and she felt a certain amount of astonishment rise up in her. He was not the sort of man who ever dissembled, and his eyes were telling her something ... but she couldn’t be in the least certain what it was. She only knew that, for one moment, she felt an odd, strange quickening of her pulses.

  Inside the house they could hear Celia exclaiming. “Oh, dear! Poor Uncle Angus must have lost interest! And I always thought this such a charming hall!”

  It was, with its gracious staircase and fine proportions, but time had attacked the paintwork and the beautiful moulded ceiling, and the gilded cornices were tarnished, and even blackened with neglect. Although high above the loch the house was old and exposed, and when the mists swept down from the summit of Ben Inver they fairly wrapped it about, and, minus central heating, there was little that Inverada House could do about it. The panelled walls looked as if the damp had fairly eaten into them, and the velvet curtains that hung before the various doors were stained and mildewed. But when Dr. MacLeod opened the door to the drawing-room—a magnificent room that overlooked the loch—Celia could see at once that already the slow process of decay has been arrested. Or was being arrested.

  The dark rose wallpaper was in poor condition, but the temporary tenant had had the room so thoroughly spring-cleaned that there was no longer any smell of mildew, and only a very faint fustiness when the door was opened. The windows to the terrace were standing wide, and the brilliant shimmer from off the loch came right into the room and dispelled the gloom that crouched in the corners. The elegant Regency furniture was shabby, but that, too, had been subjected to a recent overhaul, and the woodwork at least was highly polished. The faded damasks and brocades had much in common with the tarnished cornices in the hall, but even so they were lovely ... in the way that a faded woman is often lovely, especially if she has once had everything to commend her.

  “At least you’ve done something here!” Celia exclaimed. “Uncle Angus would thank you!” Her lips curved curiously. “But then he did leave you the bulk of his fortune, didn’t he?”

  “He left you this house,” Euan replied quietly. “And he loved his house.”

  Celia went round the room thoughtfully, carefully inspecting every piece of furniture.

  “I suppose we could get rid of all this stuff,” she remarked, “and buy new.”

  “I don’t think Inverada would take kindly to new furniture,” Euan replied to that. “Not modern furniture, if that’s what you have in mind. It’s an old house, set in its ways, and careful restoration is what is needed. And some of the pieces in this room are very valuable, even as they are.”

  “H’m!” Celia said, and studied him with interest. “It wasn’t only Uncle Angus who loved this house, I can see! You’re quite keen on doing the best you can for it yourself, yet you’re only the temporary tenant!”

  “I told you I would like to spend a certain amount of money on Inverada,” he returned, unabashed. “You can call it a whim, if you like.”

  “Or decide that you’re merely quixotic,” with one of her most alluring smiles directed full at him. She made to remove her coat, and reveal herself in an adorably slim-fitting suit, but he was quick to forestall her and place it over a chair. “Are there any drinks in this place? And is there someone who can take our bags up to our rooms?”

  “Yes, of course,” hastily, tugging at an ancient bell-rope that hung beside the fireplace. “I’ve secured an excellent couple, who’re prepared to stay here for the summer, at least, and I’ll get one of them to bring you some refreshment. I’m afraid I’m not used to acting the part of host.”

  “No?” She accepted a cigarette from him, and continued to smile meaningly up into his face. “Not even when you were a doctor on board ship? A cruising liner, wasn’t it? What about all the pretty ladies who sat at your table, and simply loved being looked after by the ship’s doctor?”

  He met the teasing sparkle in her eyes—the provocative curve of her scarlet mouth—with a long look back at her, and Toni turned away and walked, without quite realizing what she was doing, to the window. Euan moved after her swiftly and offered to take her coat, too.

  “No, I think I’ll go outside,” she said.

  She was careful to avoid even attempting to meet his eyes.

  “Why?” he asked coolly. “Can’t you wait to do a little exploring?”

  “I’m curious to see all there is to see.”

  “You can do that presently,” he replied. “Have some coffee first, or a drink if you’d prefer it.”

  “Toni is horribly abstemious, and never sips at anything but a glass of sherry,” her mother replied for her. “Let her run away and enjoy herself, Euan.” She came across the room and slipped a hand inside his arm.

  “Yes, I think I’ll go...” Toni said, for some reason desperately anxious to get well away from them both.

  But Euan spoke as a doctor speaks.

  “You’re looking much better,” regarding her critically. “You’re fatter, for one thing.”

  “I’ve been feeding her up,” Celia assured him flippantly. “I agree with you that slimness is attractive, but thinness is an offence. Toni tends to the most distressing kind of thinness when she’s been ill ... even if it was only a very slight illness! Now, do run away, darling, and don’t stand there looking as if you’re poised for flight! I give you my word there’s heaps to see at Inverada.”

  When Toni had left them alone she turned once more, smilingly, to Euan, only this time it was a very definitely provocative smile.

  “Poor Toni,” she said. “The child misses her faithful Charles, but he’s promised to join us at the weekend, if that’s all right with you? I don’t intend to forget for one moment that you really are the master here for the time being, and Toni and I are only guests. But it must have struck you before that Charles is such a very important person in Toni’s life.” Her eyes were as clear and frank as the sunrise as she lifted them to his face, and just for an instant a quiver of maternal anxiety (or that was what it w
as intended to be) hovered about her mouth. “So important that I sometimes wonder ... well, he’s much older than she is, but I’m afraid they’ll marry in time.”

  Euan’s expression hardly altered, but his voice had a meticulous coolness as he asked:

  “And you don’t object to him being older than Toni is?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “No, not really ... no, I don’t think I do. And the main thing is that she’s had a kind of crush on him ever since she was tiny, and now I think she absolutely adores him. It may be May and December, but I’m sure he adores her, too,” with smooth complacence.

  “I see,” Euan said, his mouth thin. There was a knock on the door, and a woman who was the exact antithesis of what is known as a “guid Scots body”, being thin and rather sour-looking and obviously hailing from Lancashire or the Midlands, brought in a tray of tea. She said she thought Celia would be glad of it after a journey, and looked at Celia as if she was hardly attracted by what she saw.

  “I always say there’s nothing like a good cup of hot tea,” she remarked.

  Celia attempted to freeze her with one of her disdainful looks, disliking familiarity in servants.

  “I spent the night in Inverechy,” she observed, “and that is only a few miles away. I should hardly call that a journey.”

  Euan accepted the hint, while still looking a little bleak about the mouth.

  “Ask your husband to bring in a tray of drinks, Mrs. Briggs,” he instructed.

  “Very good, sir.” She glanced at the tray of tea. “And what will I do with this? Shall I take it away, or will the young lady have some when she comes in from the garden?”

  Euan glanced out of the window at the neglected wilderness, running between the house and the shore of the lake, that was the garden. Something told him that Toni would not come in very quickly from the garden.

  “You can take it away,” he said curtly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Toni wandered in the garden, and made her way down to the edge of the loch. It was all so beautiful, and all so overlaid with the gossamer charm of spring, that she had some excuse for prolonging her exploration of her unknown Great-Uncle Angus’s property, which he had left to her mother.