'How soon before we can take our final curtain call?' Rolf hissed sarcastically, abandoning all pretence of urbanity. 'If I'd known I was to be involved in a charade, set upon a stage to pull faces and entertain an audience like some dancing puppet, I would have insisted upon an elopement!'
'You underestimate your talents.' Claire's smile was full of sweet acidity. 'There's one role in particular in which you excel—you have, after all, managed to convince most people that you're civilised!'
She slipped out of his hold, managing just in time to evade the grip of fingers intent upon inflicting bruising chastisement upon her waist, and hastened to gain protection at her father's side.
'Everything is ready,' he beamed upon his mystified son-in-law, 'it's time for Claire to dance off her crown.'
She did not dare so much as a sideways glance as her father escorted them both into the ballroom where all the guests had been segregated, the women at one end of the room and the men at the other. Knowing exactly what to expect, she made no effort to resist when a crowd of girls descended to blindfold her and to push her into a circle made up of every unmarried girl in the room. Holding her crown in one hand, she began groping for the nearest girl who, once caught, would be entitled to wear the silver crown, as superstition decreed that she would be the next to follow Claire's example and get married. Amid much shouting and laughter, she managed without difficulty to pin down a victim who then took her place in the centre of the circle and proceeded with the dance that went on and on until every maiden had been crowned.
She chanced a look to the far end of the room where her bridegroom was undergoing a ceremony that was meant to be similar but which, because of their high spirits and the amount of aquavit downed by the young men involved, had predictably developed into a minor brawl. She was just in time to see him being tossed into the air, then descend, swiftly disappearing beneath a scrum of broad shoulders.
For the first time in weeks she laughed aloud with genuine pleasure, thoroughly enjoying the thought of his discomfiture, but her laughter turned into a gasp when without warning she was lifted from her feet and carried in strong outstretched arms above the heads of wildly cheering guests.
With the ease of an athlete Rolf transported her upstairs and into her bedroom where she was dumped unceremoniously on to the bed. Touslehaired, aggravated, yet with barely quickened breath, he commanded:
'We're getting the hell out of here! I'll give you five minutes to change into something sensible, and if you're not ready when I get back I'll perform a fertility rite of my own that has a guaranteed, one hundred per cent rate of success!'
Her suitcases had been packed earlier and stored in the boot of the car. Her going-away outfit, a suit of lightweight cream wool woven especially for her by the islanders, looked as forlorn as she felt when she unhooked it from the rail of a cavernous wardrobe. With shaking hands she slipped into it, keeping one eye on the clock, ever mindful of the forcible promise made by Rolf Ramsey. He had not spoken lightly, but more in the manner of a man whose patience had suddenly snapped. He had coped better than she had expected with a day that to him must have been full of shocks and surprises; it said much for his ability to adapt to circumstances that, mostly, an indulgent smile had played around his lips, his attitude of easy-going tolerance had remained unruffled. But now he was angry and did not care who knew it—it was as if the kitten she had been teasing had suddenly developed into a growling jungle cat!
Her bedroom door burst open just as she was zipping up her skirt.
'Good! I'm pleased to see that you've acted upon my advice.' He strode soft-footed into the centre of the room, dark, lean, his profile as godlike as the ones primeval Indians had chipped out of sheer granite walls—all sharp, all edge.
As he eyed her she waited, complacent that he could find no fault with her impeccable appearance. But his irritable comment came as a shock.
'Don't you ever wear bright colours? Must you always be so conscious of your dignity—can't you relax, shriek, yell, or even indulge in a very feminine weep?'
Rapidly, she blinked, determined that he would never know how nearly he had shocked her into displaying just such a sign of weakness.
Pinching her chin between thumb and forefinger, he raised her head high and peered suspiciously down. Aloof grey eyes returned his stare, patrician nostrils flared slightly, her mouth pursed prim with disdain. He grinned, half admiringly, when she refused to back down to his challenge.
'Inside, all fire and guts—outside, a Nordic ice queen,' he drawled. 'Which qualities did Heywood find most attractive, I wonder?' His lips curled into a snarl. 'My guess is that he leant upon your strength, enjoyed the protection of your attitude of command, your imposing hauteur, your condescending manner. Did he feel safe and pampered under your wing?' His dark head swooped until his lips were hovering a fraction away from her distressed mouth. 'I don't intend to worship you from afar, ma chérie, to play consort to your queen. I'm your husband—a parched hungry human—and I want a warm, eager wife in my bed!'
He plundered her mouth with a roughness she found terrifying. Desperately she willed her body to stay calm, not to respond by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, but when he pulled her deeper into arms coiled tightly as a snake, every nerve end reacted with rapture to the lean, supple threat of his powerful body.
'Mon ange,' he murmured hoarsely, 'mon ange blanche ... Look at me, let me see into the depths of your honest grey eyes when you tell me that you love me!'
Though her heart was pounding, roaring like a fireball, her mind a whirl of confused thought, Claire slowly allowed her lashes to lift until they lay in a thick golden fringe around eyes turbulent as a storm-tossed sea. As he held her, staring long and deeply, his smile faded and two parallel furrows of displeasure appeared on his brow.
'Why the frown?' she scathed, panting as if she had been running a race. 'Don't you like what you see? Surely you weren't foolish enough to believe that because you'd bartered and paid for your bride in the manner of your Indian friends, I should willingly adapt to the role of a quiet, submissive wife, prepared to walk two paces behind you for the rest of my life? Look hard, Rolf Ramsey, if you want to see the truth! I hate you! I despise you! Your touch fills me with revulsion! My disgust at the way you treated Jonathan—roasting his nerves on a spit of anxiety—will remain with me for ever! If it's a wife you want, then go back to the north woods where you belong and take your choice of the many squaws I'm sure you'll find available!'
When his white teeth snapped, ready to interrupt, she trembled out the accusation, 'Don't pretend to be outraged—Charity told me about Angus Ramsey and his Indian wife, the woman from whom you've no doubt inherited your very basic ways!'
His hands dropped to his sides and as he stepped away from her she shivered, feeling stripped by eyes staring ferociously out of a face totem-grim. 'So that is the reason why you're afraid of me!' He stood with arms folded tightly across his chest as if curbing an impulse to shake her violently. 'Your virgin flesh creeps from my touch because I'm too basic, too much of an animal to appeal to a puritanical nun! It's time you grew up, Claire,' the grating timbre of his voice made her jump, 'time to face the ultimate separation from a dominating parent who has taught you every social grace but deprived you of the sensuality that is the right of every beautiful woman. You sense in me the beast that's in every man—I can't deny that it exists-— but only time will convince you that I'm not a sadistic brute.'
'Time…?' Her head jerked upward to cast him a look of hauteur. 'You mean you intend to impose your presence upon me even though I've made my aversion plain?'
She felt pleased, sensed she had scored a point when a muscle jerked violently in his cheek, but her smile froze when with a cat-like bound he closed the gap between them. Thonged-leather fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arms as, quietly murderous, he hissed, 'You're my wife, today we were joined together in matrimony, and whether you like it or not, together we're going to work at our marriage
to make it as good as can possibly be managed!'
Schooled to obedience by the threat of being dragged forcibly from the house before the eyes of scandalised guests, Claire allowed him to lead her downstairs, across the deserted hallway, then slid without protest into the passenger seat of the car that was standing in the driveway ready to transport them to the airport. A couple of times she felt tempted to escape his loose grip upon her arm and run pleading to her father, but was prevented by the certainty of what his reaction would be. In her father's eyes, Rolf Ramsey had assumed every virtue desirable in a son-in-law, not the least being the fact that his roots were buried deep upon the island. 'Manx must marry Manx!' he often reiterated, complacent in the knowledge that his own family's pedigree had remained pure. If she were to try to explain he would become patronising, simply refuse to believe that to her sloe-eyed, hawk-faced husband she was no more than a prize that he had won, a piece of barter that he would not hesitate to discard the moment some other girl took his fancy.
The atmosphere inside the car was pregnant, filled with a heavy pulsating throb that had nothing to do with the sound of its racing engine. They drove some miles in silence, then Claire felt driven into breaking the unbearable tension with a quavered question.
'What time does our flight leave? I suppose we're going to Canada?'
'That was my intention,' he agreed coolly, then surprised her, 'but I've change my mind.'
He did not elaborate, seemingly preoccupied with his task of negotiating safely the many curves and blind corners that made the quiet, hedge-lined roads hazardous to unwary drivers. They passed through many small parishes, each with its own tiny church and surrounding graveyard where incised crosses leant drunkenly, and ancient moss-covered headstones had inscriptions written in the ancient Manx language.
When the car breasted a steep hill, she recognised immediately the panorama of sea, sky and heather-land that was typical of the southern end of the island. Suspicion became confirmed when through the gathering dusk she glimpsed the lights of houses lining streets mounting upwards from a small harbour. Beyond, she knew, lay nothing but an isolated stretch of gorse and heather that rolled on and on until it tumbled over the edge of massive cliffs that were home to colonies of razorbill, puffin, and guillemot.
Unnerved by his silence and the prospect beckoning, she questioned sharply, 'Where are we going? This isn't the way to the airport.'
'Why are you sounding so panic-stricken?' he drawled. 'Is the thought of solitude so appalling? Lovers are supposed to seek it, or didn't you know that, ma chérie?' When she treated his observation with contemptuous silence, he continued, slightly regretful, 'I'd planned—had looked forward—to introducing you to my wilderness. I wanted to watch the amazement on your face when you saw for the first time a mere segment of the northwoods looming as an infinity of trees, sombre, brooding, almost overpowering in their majesty. We would have journeyed into the interior to see-massive outcrops of granite—portions of the earth's crust so old it dates back to an era that ended some six hundred million years ago—rocks that form sudden steep precipices, sharp ledges, odd, ungainly shapes that are beautified by splashes of red and green lichen. And then there's the water…' She shifted in her seat, puzzled by the dreamy overtone that had developed in his voice as he recalled treasured memories for his own benefit. It was almost as if he had forgotten her very existence.
'… what an inadequate word to describe such a varied abundance of gently flowing, tumbling, cascading magnificence! And to stun your mind further, there's the impact everyone feels at their first sight of centuries-old trees towering healthy and strong, though the bases of their trunks show the ravages of a fire that erupted over a hundred years ago.'
Feeling a surprising eagerness to see for herself the sights that were imprinted so indelibly upon his mind, she uttered with involuntary pleasure, 'It sounds wonderful—I should love to go there!'
He deserted his memories of the northwoods to flash her a derisory look, then confused her with the cryptic observation, 'Perhaps you will, one day, but not until you're ready to really appreciate it. At the moment your vision is not clear enough, your sympathies are not sufficiently attuned. These are problems of immaturity that will resolve themselves once you dare to stretch your foot to the full length of your blanket.'
Feeling affronted, Claire would have lapsed into a sulky silence were it not that such an action would have helped to confirm Rolf's inference that she had not yet grown up. She was saved the effort of speech, however, when the outline of a cottage loomed out of the deserted dusk. She guessed his intention immediately he braked and slowed the car to a standstill on the footworn path that ran past the cottage, squat and sturdy as the landscape, with walls built of thick local stone set in clay mortar that seemed sugar-iced with layer after layer of whitewash that had been applied regularly year after year.
Its quaintness was emphasised by a roof of straw thatch held down by herring net and ropes tied horizontally to projecting stone pegs in the gable walls then interwoven by others slung over the ridge, forming a secure network that reminded Claire of a granny wearing an ancient hairnet.
As she clambered from the car she braced, mustering defiance of his next, obvious, suggestion.
'Shall we go inside?' He did not disappoint her.
'Why…?' Her chin tilted. 'The interior will come as no surprise to me, it's a typical early-Manx cottage,' she patronised, airing her knowledge, 'a survival of an ancient Celtic type of farm settlement. A few families—half a dozen or so—would each build a cottage, forming what's known in the West Highlands as a clachan, and between them would work scattered acres of corn plots and rough grazing. Some of the men supplemented their meagre income by fishing, quarrying flagstones and lintels from the cliffs, weaving, cobbling, doing smithy work, anything, in fact, that brought in a few extra coppers. They lived in a world of their own, all speaking only our mother tongue, Manx Gaelic, and never mixing with others outside of their own tightly-knit community. This cottage is probably the only one surviving of the last of the clachan.'
'Thank you for the resume of my family history,' Rolf tossed laconically over his shoulder as he turned an ancient key in a well-oiled lock. When the small black-painted door swung open he ducked his head and proceeded inside without inviting her to follow. As she stood teetering on the step there was a glimmer of light that slowly developed into a warm golden glow that suffused the interior of the cottage, eventually reaching far enough to spill over the step.
'Welcome to Balla Ramsey!' He approached her, watchful, narrow-eyed. 'Shall I carry you across the threshold?'
Without waiting for her reaction, he scooped her into his arms, kicked shut the door, and carried her into the middle of the room.
'Put me down'.' Claire pounded angry fists against the wall of his chest. 'You still haven't answered my question—why have you brought me here?'
When, grim-faced, he set her down upon the stone floor she shivered, imagining she could feel the chill of stone seeping into her very bones. His dark eyes were sombre as he towered over her, the oil lamp behind him casting an eerie, elongated shadow across stark, whitewashed walls. He spoke without emotion, yet to her over-sensitive ears his voice seemed to echo with the vengeance of spirits long departed.
'By your choice of wedding ceremony you demonstrated plainly your preference for living in the past. But you were playing, Claire, as a child plays at dressing up in her mother's clothes, which is the reason I decided that it's high time you began facing up to reality. Here, at Balla Ramsey,' he waved an encompassing hand, 'you can indulge to the hilt your thirst after nostalgia by learning to cope with life as it was lived over a century ago when deprivation bit iron into men's souls and bonny young brides were turned into aged hags before they reached thirty! Nevertheless, those women remained loyal loving wives to the men they married —does that help to supply an answer to your question, Claire, are you now beginning to understand what lesson you've been brought here
to learn…?'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Claire stared fixedly at the fly-blown dial of a grandfather clock so ancient it seemed to have become over the years an integral part of the wall. Its steady ticking thudded into a mind so stunned it was struggling to suppress wild notions that she might be losing her sanity, or that the cheerless, poverty-stricken cottage filled with antiquated jumble might be the setting for some unspeakable nightmare.
Her eyes slewed from the dresser filling almost the width and height of one wall, its shelves packed with lustre jugs, rosy basins, and a complete willow-patterned dinner service, towards the open hearth that took up the whole of the gable-end wall of the cottage. A pile of burnt-out ashes lay on the worn hearth stone that was level with the floor. There was no grate of any kind, just a lugged iron cooking pot and kettle hanging by a long pot-chain fixed inside the throat of the chimney flue. A spinning wheel stood at the side of the hearth—was he really expecting her to use it, she wondered dully, to spin her own thread and knit him a gansey to wear when he went fishing?
Her eyes drifted upwards to the ceiling where the undersurface of scraa, long felt-like strips of top sod laid neatly from room ridge to wall top, was visible between the spaces of laddered roof beams.
There was no doubt in her mind that the arrogant Manx-Canadian had meant every word he had said. He was determined to see her humbled—she was equally determined that he would not! Her best defence, she decided, would be to adopt an attitude of mute defiance, to ignore his ridiculous edict and carefully avoid becoming involved in any argument.
He had turned away, giving her time to absorb his shock announcement. The spurt of a match drew her attention. He was squatting by the hearth, coaxing flame to ignite a pile of dried-up twigs and twisted paper. She heard him grunt satisfaction when the twigs caught alight, but was not quick enough to evade his look when he slewed round to face her.
Marriage by Capture Page 6
