by Jessica Hart
‘Quite a transformation,’ he said.
She got to her feet and brushed the knees of her jeans. ‘It was absolutely disgusting,’ she told him.
‘Actually, I was thinking about you.’
‘Oh.’ Mallory laughed awkwardly and grimaced as she looked down at her filthy T-shirt. ‘I must look a complete mess!’
‘I was just thinking that you look better than I’ve ever seen you,’ said Torr slowly.
There was a tiny pause. Her eyes met his, only to skitter away. ‘What, with spiders’ webs in my hair, smut on my nose and dirty jeans?’
‘Even with all of that.’
‘You’ve done a good job in here,’ said Torr that night, as he sat on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. He looked around him. ‘It’s not a bad room now you can see it properly. It seems twice as big, for a start.’
‘I know.’ Mallory propped herself up on one elbow to survey the results of her hard work with some satisfaction. She had washed the walls as well as the floor, before packing away their clothes in the newly polished chest of drawers and the rickety old wardrobe, which had had an airing for the first time in years. Even in the feeble light of the overhead bulb the room seemed fresher and cleaner and tidier, and bigger, as Torr had said. It smelt better, too.
‘All it needs now is a lick of paint,’ she said. ‘I thought I would do the bathroom and the kitchen as well. It would make all the difference.’
‘Good idea,’ said Torr. ‘Let’s get some paint in Inverness next week.’
Mallory brightened and pulled herself higher on her pillows, momentarily forgetting the awkwardness of going to bed with him. ‘What about a couple of bedside lamps? They would make the room look so much nicer, and it would save you groping your way to bed in the dark.’
‘Get whatever you want,’ said Torr, hoicking his jumper off by the scruff of its neck. ‘In fact, you’d better start a list. We won’t be able to go very often, so we’d better make the most of it.’
‘If I get whatever I want it’s going to be very long list,’ said Mallory, to distract herself from fact that Torr was taking off his trousers without the slightest embarrassment.
She was tempted to duck back under the duvet, but it was too late to pretend that she was asleep, and anyway, it seemed a bit silly. It hadn’t been an uncomfortable evening. There had been that moment before lunch, when something had flared in the air between them, but then Torr had turned away, talking about sandwiches, and it had gone. Lunch had been easy, and that evening they had cooked a meal together and then shared another warming whisky in front of the fire. Mallory had let herself believe that everything would be all right after all. It hadn’t even been that awkward coming to bed tonight, so it would be a shame to spoil the atmosphere now by suddenly turning coy.
‘What more could you want when you’ve got all this?’ said Torr, gesturing ironically around the room as he went over to switch off the light.
‘It’s paradise as it is, I know,’ she told him in the same spirit, ‘but perhaps just one or two tiny things-a heater, for instance, and a lampshade, a blind, a new mattress, a rug, a chair, a dirty clothes basket, a mirror-would make it even more perfect.’
‘If you’re thinking of getting all that, we’d better take the trailer!’
The light snapped off and the room was plunged into darkness. Mallory held her breath, waiting for Torr to get into bed beside her, and when she felt the mattress sag she exhaled very slowly. It was all very well, making practical arrangements and talking about being friends, but the physical reality of a man in your bed was hard to ignore.
She cleared her throat. ‘It wouldn’t take that much to make ourselves more comfortable. An electric blanket-that’s another thing,’ she remembered, because somehow it seemed easier to talk than to lie there thinking about how close he was, and wondering whether she would be able to press into his warmth again. Would he turn his back to her, like last night?
Torr was making himself comfortable, thumping his pillow into shape. ‘What on earth do you want an electric blanket for?’
‘Why do you think? It’s freezing in here!’
‘But you’ve got me to keep you warm,’ Torr pointed out.
There was a shade of reproach in his voice, and Mallory wished that she could see his face. She thought he was teasing, but she wasn’t quite sure. Not that she could ever tell what he was thinking by looking at him anyway. Torr was inscrutability personified.
Strange to think that before they’d come here it would never have occurred to her that he might be teasing, that a sardonic sense of humour lay behind the austere mask he wore. They had been strangers until now, going through the motions of a marriage, he grim and distant, she wrapped in frozen misery. Less than a week at Kincaillie, and they had both changed.
‘If we had an electric blanket I’d be warm enough to stay on my own side of the bed, and I’m sure you’d be a lot more comfortable.’
‘I’m sure I would be, too.’ There it was again, that undercurrent of dry amusement. Had it always been there? Mallory wondered. Perhaps she just hadn’t been listening for it before. ‘Our marriage may not be very exciting or passionate,’ he said, ‘but at least it could be about keeping each other warm.’
Mallory wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that. Of course she was relieved that Torr had accepted her reluctance to sleep with him so completely, but did that mean he found her unexciting too?
Still, she could hardly start objecting to the lack of passion and excitement between them now. ‘We should have made it part of our new agreement,’ she said, trying to match his tone, but not really succeeding. She had a nasty feeling she just sounded petulant instead.
‘Agreement?’ Torr’s voice came out of the darkness.
‘The one where I stay for a year,’ she reminded him a little tartly. How many agreements did they have, after all?
‘Oh, that agreement,’ said Torr. ‘Yes, perhaps we should add a clause. Clause seven (b), subsection (iv): no sex, but entitled to use each other as substitute for hot water bottle. And talking of hot water bottles,’ he went on, shifting on his side to face her, ‘we may as well get settled now. Come here.’
In spite of herself, Mallory tensed as he reached for her, and all the breath whooshed out of her at the touch of his hands. ‘Now you won’t need to come creeping up to me like you did last night, will you?’ he said in her ear.
‘You were asleep!’ she protested involuntarily.
‘Not all the time.’ Torr shifted to make himself comfortable, and tucked her closer into the curve of his body. ‘You can relax now. The terms of our revised agreement are quite clear,’ he said in a mock businesslike tone. ‘No sex. No passion. No excitement. And no touching other than in the interests of warmth. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Er…yes,’ said Mallory, and then was appalled at how doubtful she sounded. Because that was what she had wanted. What she still wanted.
Wasn’t it?
‘Yes,’ she said again more firmly.
‘Well, now we both know where we are, we can get comfortable and go to sleep,’ said Torr.
If only it were as easy as that! The longer she lay there, the less comfortable Mallory felt. It was all right for Torr, who seemed to be able to fall asleep without any problem, but how could she relax when her mind was still fizzing? When, instead of feeling reassured by Torr’s matter-of-fact attitude, she was letting her thoughts start to drift perversely in quite the wrong direction? When she couldn’t seem to stop herself wondering what it would be like if they had an exciting, passionate marriage after all?
What would it be like if they could touch each other? If they did touch? If they couldn’t keep their hands off each other? Mallory screwed her eyes tightly shut in an attempt to blank out the picture that was forming in her mind with alarming clarity, but it was no good. She saw herself turning within Torr’s arms so that she could let her hands drift over his flank, under his T-shirt to feel
his warm, smooth flesh, down to the bottom of his spine. She saw him smile in response and kiss her throat the way he had kissed her last night, but this time he didn’t fall back into sleep. He didn’t stop. His mouth was travelling tantalisingly downwards, his lips slow and sure along her clavicle, at her breast…
Startled-no, shocked-by how clearly she could imagine it, Mallory sucked in her breath. Her heart was thudding and deep inside her a long-buried hunger was uncoiling with terrifying speed-as if Torr really was kissing her, if his hands really were exploring her possessively.
This was crazy! What was she doing fantasising about Torr? She had only just got round to thinking of him as a friend, let alone as a husband, a lover.
Lover. The thought stopped the breath in her throat. She wasn’t ready for that. She had never been able to imagine wanting anyone but Steve to touch her, but there was no denying that her hormones were stirring.
It must be the situation, Mallory tried to reassure herself. It was nothing to do with Torr himself, and it didn’t mean anything. It was just that it was hard not to think about what might happen when a man and woman lay closer together in the dark.
Not that Torr appeared to have any difficulty in putting it out of his mind. What was it he had called her once? A marble statue. If he still thought of her like that it was no wonder he had made no effort to persuade her to change her mind.
Which was good, of course, she remembered hurriedly. If Torr wanted her, it would be hard to resist him in this bed. If he rolled her beneath him, if his palm was warm against her leg, if it slid tantalisingly up her calf, gentle behind her knee, smoothing over her thigh. If his lips teased down her throat, if his body was hard and his hands possessive.
And she would want to resist him…wouldn’t she?
Mallory’s mouth was dry, and she couldn’t prevent a slow shiver of something perilously close to anticipation.
‘It’s not that cold,’ Torr tutted through the darkness, but his hold tightened anyway.
Mallory swallowed hard. Cold was the last thing she felt right then!
‘It takes me a long time to warm up,’ she muttered, which was the best explanation she could come up with when her pulse was booming so distractedly.
‘You can say that again,’ said Torr, but so quietly that Mallory wasn’t sure that she was meant to hear him.
By the time they left for Inverness Mallory’s list had grown so long that they did indeed take the trailer. The kitchen and bathroom had both been cleaned beyond recognition, and she was starting to look at them with a designer’s eye.
The kitchen especially could be a lovely room, Mallory had realised with pleasure. Cleaning the windows alone had had a startling effect. She had explored some of the rooms upstairs, where she had found a whole stash of curtains that had been folded and put away. Most were damp and dirty, but all some needed was a good wash, and she was glad that she’d brought her sewing machine with her. She planned to adapt a pair for the bedroom, and use the material to make blinds for the kitchen too. Batons and cords were on her list to buy in Inverness.
Once the kitchen and bathroom were ready for painting, Mallory had turned her attention to the kitchen garden. She’d been there with Charlie one day when she had recognised a blackcurrant bush, half strangled by the tangle of undergrowth. She had found some straggly rosemary too, and had begun to wonder what other plants had survived the years of neglect.
‘This would have been a thriving garden once,’ Torr had said. ‘Kincaillie was a busy place in its heyday in the nineteenth century. Judging from the stories my grandfather used to tell, there were lots of servants, and the family used to have house parties and shooting parties. All those people had to be fed, so presumably a lot of the fresh fruit and vegetables were grown here.’
It was hard to imagine Kincaillie alive with people and laughter, Mallory had thought, surveying the tangled garden, but she’d poked around in the outbuildings and found a rusty old fork. Once she had started to clear, she’d found all sorts of fruit bushes and old raspberry canes. Apples and pears were pleached along the south facing wall, and there were great clumps of rhubarb gone to seed.
Having never had more than a pretty little courtyard garden in Ellsborough, Mallory hadn’t thought of growing vegetables before, but now she was seized with a most unlikely enthusiasm for it, and had added gardening tools and an instruction book to her list.
Between cleaning and exploring, and walking Charlie and making plans, it was amazing how quickly the fortnight had gone. Astounding, too, how quickly she was getting used to Kincaillie. There was surprising satisfaction to be had in steadily clearing and cleaning their living quarters, and Mallory was positively looking forward to painting the rooms now that she could see their potential.
She was even beginning to contemplate the much bigger task of starting work on the rest of the castle with interest rather than horror. She was finding her way around, and it now seemed quite ordinary to pick her way across weed-infested flagstones, up and down worn stone stairwells and past rusting suits of armour.
Every day she and Charlie explored a little bit further outside, although they stuck to the shore as much as possible. Mallory told herself it was because she didn’t want to get lost, and because Charlie was so happy by the sea, but the truth was that the looming mountains still frightened her. They were so big and so bare, and they made her feel very small. She was always glad to get back to the familiar kitchen.
So, while it would be too much to say that she was feeling at home, she was definitely feeling more positive. Perhaps she wouldn’t have chosen to spend a year at Kincaillie under normal circumstances, but the prospect was certainly less bleak than it had been when she’d arrived.
Things were much easier with Torr, too. Just as she had hoped, the hard physical work gave her less time to think about Steve, and sometimes it was possible to think that her shattered heart might even be slowly healing. Torr had showed her how to use the range, and they took it in turns to cook in the evening, with Charlie getting under their feet and music in the background. Afterwards they sat by the fire like a staid married couple, and talked easily about everything except the state of their marriage or life before they came to Kincaillie.
It all felt very normal.
The only thing Mallory couldn’t get used to was sleeping with Torr. Tired as she was at the end of every day, she was always reluctant to leave the fire for the bedroom. It was more than the cold, though. In spite of their agreement, the more times they shared the bed, the more awkward it felt-or that was how it seemed to Mallory, anyway. Somehow it had been easier when they were hostile to each other.
Torr always offered to take Charlie out for a last run while she got ready for bed, so she was huddled up under the duvet and piles of blankets before he came in. And then the conversation which had been easy by the fire in the kitchen suddenly dried up, and there wasn’t quite enough oxygen in the little room.
Mallory tried to get over it by being as matter-of-fact as Torr himself, but she was excruciatingly aware of him every time they settled themselves close together, and it made her so tense that she found it difficult to get to sleep.
At least in Inverness they were likely to get a mattress without a great dip in the middle, she told herself. She was looking forward to the trip with the same excitement with which she had once planned a visit to Paris. It was hard to believe that she’d only been at Kincaillie two weeks. She might be making the best of things here, but she still craved some city air, some noise and some crowds, and some paving stones beneath her feet.
When Torr had studied the list she had drawn up, his brows had crawled up to his hairline as he’d turned the page. ‘There’s no way we’ll get all this in a day-even if we didn’t have the architect to see. We’ll need to do a big supermarket shop too. We’d better spend the night,’ he’d decided.
‘What about Charlie?’ Mallory had asked.
‘We’ll take him with us. I’m sure we can find a ho
tel that accepts dogs.’
Better and better.
Mallory’s spirits were high as they set off early that morning. It was the first time she had left Kincaillie since they had arrived in the middle of that awful storm, and excitement tingled along her veins as they hit the tarmac road at the end of the Kincaillie track at last.
She looked about her with interest. The darkness had been so complete when they’d arrived that she had seen none of this before. For a while it was just more hills, but after fifteen miles or so they came to a sizeable village, with a post office-cum-general store and a square whitewashed hotel.
‘Civilisation at last!’
Amusement bracketed Torr’s mouth. ‘This is Carraig,’ he said. ‘You may mock, but there’s more here than you think. This will be the hub of your social life for the next year!’
Mallory eyed the single empty street. It was hard to imagine she would find any kindred spirits here. ‘I think I may be popping up to Inverness for a fix of city life instead,’ she said, and Torr glanced at her.
‘You might change your mind when you find out how long it takes us to get there.’
CHAPTER SIX
A FTER two weeks of isolation, Inverness seemed incredibly busy. Mallory blinked at the traffic. Here were the people, the cars, the shops and all the signs of a thriving city that she had missed so much at Kincaillie, but instead of feeling at home she felt like a stranger arriving in a different country.
Perhaps it was just because she was English?
They checked in at the hotel first. Torr had booked separate rooms without asking her, and Mallory told herself that she was relieved.
‘Didn’t they think it was a bit odd?’ she whispered as they waited for their key. ‘A married couple asking for separate rooms?’
Torr only shrugged. ‘Who cares what they think?’ he said, sounding disconcertingly like the ruthless businessman he had been before Kincaillie. ‘We’re paying good money for two rooms. That’s all that matters.’
