‘There. I’m sure you can manage the rest yourself—getting out of those damp things and into something dry.’
She slid her hand over the seat of her jeans in a gesture of restraint. How she would have loved to slap that smirk off his face.
‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly. She could have been saying thank you for anything. Thank you, I can manage. Thank you for bringing the towels. Thank you for humiliating me as I have never been humiliated before. Or—and this one was somewhat belated—Thank you for braving the loch and coming to get me.
‘I wondered when you’d get round to that.’
‘Don’t make it sound as though I’m ill-mannered. You haven’t given me much time to say anything. I’m exceedingly grateful. I might have survived on my own, but I have no guarantee of that. It was a lucky chance that you missed me and came after me.’
He said very slowly, injecting his words with a specific importance, ‘You can thank Angus that I did.’
‘Angus? He’s . . . here?’
‘At this moment he’s thawing out in the kitchen. I came looking for you when he arrived. If Angus hadn’t come I wouldn’t have realized you weren’t in the house.’
‘He brought the boat out in this? He wouldn’t have attempted it in this unless . . . Oh, no! Ian . . . ?’ He nodded.
‘Is he . . . ?’ She didn’t seem capable of finishing a sentence. Not that it mattered. Her meaning was clear.
‘No. But there’s no knowing how much longer he can hold on. His mind is wandering. No one can be certain how much he’s aware of. But he’s asking for you.’
‘For me? But I can’t . . .’
‘Oh, yes, you can. I’m taking you to his bedside and you are going to play the part of loving fiancée. If you don’t, it will be the last thing you’ll ever be asked to do because I personally will break your neck. Take off those damp things, give yourself a brisk rub down, put some dry clothes on and then we can get the hell off this benighted island.’
‘It seems I have no alternative.’
‘You do. The alternative is for me to take them off for you.’
‘Get out. Out, do you hear? I’ll be as quick as I can, damn you!’
* * *
It was a nightmare journey through the icy, mist-wreathed waters and only Angus’s skill kept the boat on course and got them safely to the mainland, where Maxwell’s car was waiting for them. Maxwell took over and drove the car to the hospital. Snowplows had been out in force and made a good job of opening the major roads, with a backup of sand trucks to keep them that way. Even though Maxwell tempered his desire for speed to meet the conditions it was still a hazardous journey. Gemma, whose nerves were strung on steel pegs, heaved a sigh of relief as he signaled and turned to drive through the dreaded hospital gates. The real ordeal—being presented to Ian as his fiancée—was still before her.
Poor Ian. Her heart bled for him. How could she do this to him? How could she get out of it? She had tried and tried and tried, but no way could she convince Maxwell that she wasn’t Glenda. It was stupid and frustrating and it was going to cause unnecessary suffering, and Ian had suffered enough already.
They were shown into a waiting room by a Scottish nurse who said she would alert Sister of their arrival. It was comfortable by hospital standards, more like a sitting room with its deep armchairs, restful green walls and newspapers and magazines scattered on various surfaces. This room was made available to people who were visiting a sick relative or a close friend. Could anyone lose himself in daily events or escapist reading while burdened with the sort of worry entailed? She didn’t think she would have the concentration. It was an idle conjecture, meant to take her mind off having to face Ian.
She absentmindedly pushed at a newspaper—and then grabbed it up and began to read the headlines with avid interest
GLENDA CHANNING, HEIRESS TO THE CHANNING EMPIRE, STILL MISSING. FRANTIC FATHER UPS REWARD. In small print it went on to say that Mr. Clifford Channing, the missing girl’s father, admitted to the possibility that his daughter might have gone into hiding on her own. If this was the case he appealed most strongly to her to return home, or at least to contact him.
Maxwell came up behind her, curious to see what had captured her attention, and read the headlines over her shoulder.
She twisted her neck round to look at him, but the entreaty in her eyes was lost on him.
‘Do you still insist that you aren’t Glenda Channing?’ he said curtly.
There wasn’t a photograph of Glenda, not even of the usual smudgy, barely recognizable newspaper sort, but there was a description. Blue eyes, blonde hair, petite build, age twenty-two. Gemma was puzzled. What did this mean? Glenda certainly hadn’t been kidnapped. It was obvious that she had gone into hiding somewhere on her own. Why would she want to disappear like that? Gemma had always felt that there was something, a key factor, which she didn’t know. She’d think about it later and try to figure something out when her mind was dearer.
‘My eyes are gray,’ she informed Maxwell, pointing out the one discrepancy in the description.
‘So they are,’ he said scathingly. ‘So what? Obviously a misprint.’
‘What will it take to convince you?’ she said, sounding both despairing and haughty. ‘For Ian to denounce me? Or his distress at having a strange girl masquerading as his fiancée?’
He didn’t even gratify that with a reply, although he awarded her a long and searching look. His mouth fixed into a straight, obdurate line. He hunched his shoulders, a bitter gesture that seemed to imply that he was steeling himself against her, and walked away.
A grave-faced doctor arrived with the ward sister at his heels. The doctor said something to Maxwell, Maxwell replied, and then the heads turned in her direction. Partly by assumption and partly by lip-reading Gemma gathered that her relationship had to be explained before she would be allowed near Ian’s bed. The looks the doctor and the ward sister gave her were cutting, and she didn’t blame them. If she really had been Ian’s fiancée, and if she hadn’t bothered to visit him before now, their disapproval and contempt would have been justified. She dipped her head, feeling as wretched as if she really had deserted Ian in his need.
Ian was in a private ward. Two women sat by his bed, one small, motherly, and dumpy with a round face and a brave smile forcing itself through her grief; the other woman was much younger. She had a broad face tapering into a narrow chin, set upon a swan-like neck. Her coloring was striking, red hair with green eyes. She had long elegant hands and feet to complement her height and she was the most beautiful woman that Gemma had ever seen. But it was a cold beauty, with no stirring of warmth beneath the hard perfection of her porcelain features.
She turned her head and there was no welcome in the look she gave Gemma; that was saved for Maxwell. She leaped to her feet with the grace of a dancer and threw herself into his arms. ‘Thank God you got here. I thought you weren’t going to make it in time.’
‘Bless you, Fiona,’ he said. For all his great height he didn’t have to bend very far to drop a kiss on her forehead. ‘Say a quick hello to Glenda,’ he instructed. ‘Glenda—Fiona.’
They shook hands and Gemma’s heart sank, not because of the unfriendly lightness of the other girl’s handshake, which almost amounted to distaste, but because Fiona and Glenda hadn’t met before. She realized that she had been clinging to the hope that Glenda and Fiona had met previously and that Fiona would say, ‘But this isn’t Glenda.’
There was still the other woman, but that expectation was just as quickly dashed.
‘Glenda—Morag,’ Maxwell introduced tersely.
The crinkling of the eyes in the round, apple face was the first intimation of welcome, even though the voice was tart. ‘Come away in with you. She got to her feet. ‘Take my chair.’ Her tone stilled any demur Gemma might have made. ‘It’s been fit to break a body’s heart, the poor wee laddie calling for you and you not here.’ Her voice softened and filled with love as she turned to
the figure on the bed. ‘She’s here, Master Ian, so fret nae mair, bonnie laddie.’
Even so, Gemma still needed the push Maxwell gave her to go forward.
A voice, so weak as to be barely audible, said, ‘Is that really you, Glenda?’
A hand groped on the coverlet. Her own closed round it, gently, so as not to hurt. What else could she do? It was obvious that Ian was so full of pain-killing drugs that he was past recognizing anyone. She had no compunction in telling the lie.
‘Yes, it’s Glenda. I’m here, darling.’
A deep sigh of content came from his lips. His eyes were almost closed, as if he was very weary and wanted nothing more than to sleep for a long, long time.
Gemma had no idea how long she sat there, holding Ian’s hand. Her own arm went dead with holding it too long in one position. She would have liked to have changed hands; but Ian looked so tranquil that she didn’t have the heart to disturb him and so she endured the pain and discomfort.
It was Maxwell who finally extricated her fingers from Ian’s. She rubbed the numbed tips, trying to get the circulation back, and it wasn’t until he took her by the elbows to assist her out of her chair that she understood.
‘Is he?’
‘Yes, it’s all over. We must go now. We’re in the way here.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
Tears filled her eyes, as they would have done for any young life cut off so abruptly. It was tragic, such a waste.
Maxwell said somberly, ‘He would never have walked again. For Ian that would have been worse than death. I’ve heard others say that time and time again and I’ve always thought it sounded so heartless. You’ve got to go through it yourself to understand. But it really was for the best. I’m glad we got here in time.’
‘Yes. So am I.’
To quote Maxwell’s words, it was all over. Maxwell had done what he’d set out to do, bring her to Ian’s bedside, although he had hoped it would be to aid his brother’s recovery and not to say goodbye. There was nothing to keep her here now. Much as she wanted her release, she felt sad at heart. She hadn’t wanted it this way.
Fiona and Morag had gone on ahead and were talking to Angus in the waiting room. Gemma’s feet dragged. Every step was taking her one step farther away from Maxwell.
Resentment whipped through her at the cruel twist of fate that had brought her and Maxwell together in circumstances where there could be no future for them.
‘Ian’s at rest,’ she heard Maxwell say. ‘Its the living who matter now.’
She was still busily pursuing her own thoughts. If only there was something she could do, some way to stay on and fight for Maxwell’s love, but there wasn’t
Defeated she said, ‘It only remains for me to go home now.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ His eyes were dark with suffering, but he was as indomitable as ever. ‘It only remains for us to get married.’
9
At the time it didn’t seem in any way like a strange proposal; only the circumstances leading up to it were strange and it never occurred to her not to take it seriously. All she could concentrate on was that Maxwell wasn’t going to let her go and that he wanted to marry her. She could hardly expect him to go into raptures and declare his love in these clinical hospital surroundings. With Ian’s death weighing heavily on his mind it wouldn’t be right.
He was still under the impression that she was Glenda Channing, of course, but he had proposed to a girl, not a name, and that could be sorted out later. For now she slid her hand into his and the act of giving it to him was her answer as she walked by his side with a much lighter step.
It was a sad and for the most part silent journey to Glenross and the house where for generations the Ross family had lived. As before, Maxwell drove. Gemma sat by his side; Fiona, Morag, and Angus occupied the back of the car. Morag sniffed into her handkerchief and Angus made murmurs of comfort. But no one really spoke until Maxwell turned off the main road and brought the car to a stop before the tall ornate gates giving access to a long, tree-lined drive, and even then he was the one to break the silence.
‘We’re home,’ he said for Gemma’s benefit
Angus was already getting out of the car to open the gates. Home? thought Gemma as Maxwell drove through, stopping the car to wait until Angus had closed the gates and resumed his seat.
The word ‘home’ conjured up a picture of warmth and love and contentment of the heart A place where you shut the door on the cares of the world. A cozy refuge. When it came into view she could have hugged herself for joy. Solid and square, large enough to be comfortable but not too large to be without a soul. It was just the kind of house she had always dreamed of coming home to. Some trick of the moonlight—the particular way the light slanted onto the latticed windows—touched her dreamer’s fancy and gave the house an inner glow that Gemma took as a good omen.
She could hardly believe it when the car drove straight by. She must have gasped, she might even have said something, or perhaps, with uncanny Scots instinct, Fiona read her thoughts.
A dry laugh came from behind, mocking her stupidity. ‘That’s the lodge.’
‘You’ll see the house when we get round this next bend,’ Maxwell said, and his voice seemed to contain some of Fiona’s amusement.
It gave Gemma an outsider’s feeling of being ganged up on by two people who were very close. That thought was lost as the soaring gray-stoned house loomed in front of her astonished eyes. Huge, austere, perhaps it did have a certain commanding beauty, but she was too overawed to see it. Steps led up to a door of fortress-like proportions, and to Gemma’s eyes it looked every bit as forbidding. Even the kindly benevolence of the moonlight couldn’t lessen this effect or still her qualms. A sick, cold feeling of apprehension walked with her and she lagged noticeably behind the others as she entered that imposing door.
The inside, still a long way from homey by Gemma’s concept of the word, was such a vast improvement over the exterior that she felt the first easing of relief in her throat
Despite the lateness of the hour a young maid, who answered to the name of Jeanie, had waited up and Morag sent her to prepare a room for Gemma. The housekeeper then set about preparing a meal and the thought of food made Gemma feel better still. She realized with some surprise that the last meal she and Maxwell had eaten was breakfast. No wonder she was almost passing out.
As a matter of course Morag arranged three settings at the dining table, then, on Maxwell’s instructions, added two more places for herself and Angus. Gemma was glad that he had relaxed the formalities to invite his housekeeper and her husband to share his table. She wished he’d taken it a step further, as she would have preferred the informality of the kitchen.
Morag brought in a huge ham and a joint of beef, which she carved at the side table, transferring generous portions to the plates.
Maxwell stated baldly, making no effort to lead up to his words, ‘Glenda and I are going to be married.’
He had to tell them sometime, but not like that. It was too soon, and the words were too matter-of-fact, like a business arrangement, and because the table was between them he couldn’t take hold of Gemma’s hand. The announcement should have been made later, much later, when she’d had time to get acquainted with both Fiona and Morag, because although Morag was an employee she seemed so much a part of the family. And it should have been done with Maxwell’s arm sliding round her as he pulled her to his side, the grief he felt at the loss of his brother softened under a glow of pride, perhaps giving a self-conscious laugh as he said, ‘Gemma—’ by then she would have convinced him of her real identity, of course—‘Gemma and I are very much in love and we are going to be married.’
This way wasn’t fair to her, and it wasn’t fair to Fiona and Morag and Angus, either. Particularly to Fiona, who looked as if the bottom had suddenly fallen out of her world.
Gemma cast her eyes down and pretended to be absorbed in the plate of cold meat before her, but all she
could see were the uneasy glances that passed between Morag and Angus and Fiona’s stricken disbelief. Although Morag’s and Angus’s approval mattered, because she was family, Fiona’s reaction was the one that counted most and Gemma knew she would be haunted by the look she had seen on Fiona’s face for a long time. Not only had Maxwell done it all wrong, but he’d got his facts wrong, too. Fiona hadn’t been interested in Ian in the way that Maxwell thought. It was too early for Gemma to tell whether or not Fiona loved Maxwell, but one thing was absolutely certain in her mind: Fiona’s sights had been set on being his bride.
As soon as the meal was over she was dismissed and sent to her room so that the remaining foursome could talk. At least, it seemed that way to Gemma.
‘You must be tired, Glenda. Jeanie will show you to your room,’ Maxwell said, and it had the peremptory ring of a command.
Perhaps it was silly of her, selfish even, to want to drag Maxwell away from the others when he’d only just got back, but she had hoped that he would come with her. She had anticipated a good-night kiss and a kind word to say that everything was going to be all right, because people in love sense things and he would know about her fears. Then she wouldn’t feel so lost and frightened. But he hadn’t mentioned the word love. Yet why else would he want to marry her? If it was only physical he would have thought in terms of an affair. He wouldn’t have proposed something as long-standing as marriage. But he should have said that he loved her. That wasn’t something a girl could take for granted.
Jeanie took her up to her room. It was spacious, despite the large and cumbersome, by current standards, bedroom suite, which was handmade and had that satin patina you only find on old and cared-for furniture. It was a much grander room than the one she had occupied at Iola, but it didn’t make her feel as welcome.
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