‘It wasn’t really my intention,’ she defended herself, ‘but I can hardly abandon a three-year-old child in a strange village, can I?’
‘Surely,’ he suggested, ‘you made some kind of provision for this kind of emergency.’
‘Not really.’ Katherine was remembering how little time Coralie had given her to arrange anything. ‘Coralie—my friend was quite sure her sister would be here.’
He looked about him.
‘It’s remote enough,’ he acknowledged with a hardness she had come to recognise in him. ‘Where have you parked your car?’
Katherine felt suddenly cold. Everything Coralie had told her about this determined man was probably true.
‘At the cottage,’ she said dismissively. ‘And I really must go. I thought I would pick up some sweets for the journey.’ She turned towards the confectioner’s shop next to the post office. ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave Sandy for too long.’
He probably knew that she had recognised him as a potential enemy because she had ranged herself on the side of his former wife, but he no longer barred her way and she passed him without further explanation. She saw him loitering on the pavement outside the bow-fronted window of the confectioner’s with its pebble-glass panes and the jangling bell which heralded her approach to the counter, and the sharp ping of the bell seemed to echo too loudly in the silence as she waited.
‘Can I help you?’
She was jolted back to the present by the question to find herself confronted by the shopkeeper.
‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’ She cast an apprehensive glance at the waiting figure on the pavement outside. ‘Is there another way out?’ she found herself asking.
‘There’s the tea-room.’ The woman behind the counter looked surprised by her question. ‘You could go through there and out into Beck Street.’
Hastily Katherine purchased some home-made candy, going quickly through the door which led to the tiny tearoom with a definite fear in her heart and running most of the way back to the cottage in the lane. Supposing something had happened to Sandy in her absence? Supposing he had been spirited away? Kidnapped had been the ugly word Coralie had used. ‘His father is trying to kidnap him,’ she had said with conviction. He would be ready to go to any length to recover his son, and that was the undoubted impression Katherine had formed during the past ten minutes as she had faced Charles Moreton across the cobbled pavement of the village street. He was a man who would offer no quarter once he had established the fact that she was in the plot to frustrate his immediate plans to take possession of his child.
Her heart sank as she thought about him, of the way she had reacted to his obvious charm on so short an acquaintance and the unexpected kiss which had shaken her to the foundations of her being. He had been playing on her susceptibility, flagrantly planning to use her for his own ends for as long as he could. Coralie had said that he would be ready to go to any lengths to recapture his son.
Sympathy vibrated in her for a moment as she realised how much he probably loved his child, but he had broken the law—or was about to break it—by snatching Sandy away.
Why? Because he was determined to get his hands on a great deal of money, Coralie had declared; because Sandy was a considerable heir under his uncle’s will.
If the accusation was difficult to believe that was just another proof of her own gullibility, she told herself, running towards Beck Cottage with the bag of candy in her hand. She had told herself a hundred times not to accept people at face value, and it was a kind of madness to think that Charles Moreton might have been different.
Beck Cottage bore the same deserted look, but she drew a deep breath of relief at the sight of Sandy riding astride the neighbour’s gate with the ducks in attendance.
‘You get right down from there!’ she admonished, her voice sharp with relief. ‘We’re leaving right away.’ She moved towards her parked car. ‘You can say goodbye to the ducks.’
‘Did you get the sweets?’ Sandy came obediently towards her.
‘Yes. Get in.’ She put the striped candy bag into his hand. ‘We’ll say goodbye to Mrs. Yates and be on our way.’
Trying to find some trace of Charles in Sandy’s bright little face, she drove back down the lane towards the road, but the child was too like Coralie with his fair, curling hair and sweeping dark lashes half veiling the incredibly blue eyes to bear comparison with anyone else. There was nothing in Sandy’s features to suggest that Charles might be his father, but resemblances were not always easy to establish and Charles had acted out the part of her pursuer. Even now, he might still be waiting for her outside the confectioner’s shop.
The fact that he could still be there firmed her resolve to get away. Whoever Charles was, she must leave him behind as fast as she could because she couldn’t afford complications while she had yet to make up her mind where to go, but one thing she was certain about was the fact that she must keep her promise to Coralie, for Sandy’s sake.
The Carlisle bypass was the most obvious way north, but she decided to take a more roundabout route when she came to the next junction. Both signposts said Penrith, and she drove on to the narrower road through Matterdale and Caldbeck.
All the way along the lovely, hidden dale she was conscious of a mounting tension, looking for a following car, but the innocent switchback road stretched empty behind her, the mountains closing in companionably as she drove north, and her spirits lifted.
‘We’ll play a game,’ she suggested. ‘Blue cars again, like your anorak. Let’s count blue cars going the other way.’
Not grey cars. Definitely blue ones!
It was several miles before they met the first car, parked outside an inn on the valley floor where a narrow blue lake reflected the stretch of cloud-free sky above their heads.
‘We’ll have something to eat here,’ Katherine suggested.
The innkeeper was a jolly, talkative man.
‘I don’t suppose you get many people here at this time of year,’ Katherine remarked when he had set coffee and orange juice on the table before them.
‘Not many. You’re only the second today, in fact.’
Katherine’s heart lurched, because she had been thinking of Charles Moreton.
‘Was it long ago?’ she asked.
‘About an hour. He didn’t wait. That’s odd,’ he added, glancing through the window to where she had parked her car by the lakeside. ‘He asked if a girl in a blue car had passed this way with a child.’ He looked from Katherine’s flushed face to Sandy, who was half-way through his glass of orange juice, vastly intrigued by the red straw which had been provided with it. ‘He must have been searching for you.’
‘Was he driving a grey car—a Rover?’
‘He was that, and he seemed in a great hurry, but perhaps you’ll meet up with him on the motorway.’
It was the last thing she wanted to do, because she was convinced that it was indeed Charles Moreton who had enquired about her. Katherine rose to her feet. No more stops at obvious hotels, she thought, since he had been astute enough to choose the less frequently used dale road in his pursuit of her. The fact that he had left ahead of her was a bonus which she felt immeasurably thankful for, but they could so easily meet up with him again at a hotel farther along the road.
‘Could you let me have a few sandwiches?’ she asked. ‘Just something light to eat in the car. We’ll be having a meal somewhere when we stop for the night. I’d also be obliged if you could let me have some milk.’
‘For the little ’un? Why, of course you can.’ The innkeeper was greatly impressed by Sandy. ‘You look as if you’ve come away in a hurry,’ he observed, ‘but we do packed lunches for the climbers, so I can let you have a couple. Alice will get you the milk if you come round to the kitchen,’ he added. ‘And I’ll find you a couple of plastic beakers.’
Katherine was grateful and soon they were on their way again. Full of orange juice and biscuits, Sandy fell asleep and she put him in th
e back seat for safety—or was it because, lying down with the travelling rug wrapped securely round him, he would be less obvious from a passing car?
They reached the Border without incident, keeping off the motorway and threading their way along the side roads through little towns and villages, going by the less obvious route through Annan and Dumfries towards the coast.
Katherine had consulted her road map before Dumfries, making her decision to keep to the west in her attempt to shake off a grey Rover which would surely have kept to the main way north.
Suddenly carefree, she looked about her at the bright panorama of the Kirkcudbright hills, at Corserine and Merrick with their heads in the clouds and the deep valley of the Doon opening up before her. Surely no one would think of following her along such an unlikely route.
Sandy stirred and they ate their sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs on a hilltop where they could look down on the loch.
‘We’ll stretch our legs,’ she suggested, running down the hill as he followed her. ‘It’s like having wings, Sandy, isn’t it, with all the wind behind us?’
The blue eyes sparkled.
‘I’ve got a kite,’ he said. ‘I can fly it on the moor when we get to Glassary.’
It was the first time he had spoken of any sort of home environment, a brief reference to the past which had obviously no connection with a London flat, but Katherine thought that the memory of Glassary might disturb him and steered the conversation in another direction. No child, no matter how young, could fail to remain untouched by a broken marriage, and Sandy was a sensitive little boy who evidently remembered his former home. The fact that he had rarely mentioned Coralie also disturbed her, but boys often kept a stiff upper lip even at a tender age, and she decided to amuse Sandy without mentioning his mother.
When they set off in the car again she followed the course of the Doon to Ayr where they had their first glimpse of the sea. The vast, open Firth of Clyde sparkled in the spring sunshine, delighting Sandy, who gazed out across the blue water to the hills of Arran, pressing his nose close to the window to watch for boats.
It was his obvious fascination which made her think of the car ferry from Gourock which would take them across the estuary to Dunoon, but the ferry was pulling away from the pier as they rounded the point at the Cloch lighthouse and she knew that she would have an hour or more to wait for the next one. Better, she thought, to press on and put Loch Lomond behind her before she thought of somewhere to spend the night.
Wondering again about her final destination, she came to the conclusion that there was only one thing to do. She must go ahead with her own plans and take Sandy with her. His small tartan grip was in the boot of the car beside her own suitcase, packed for a lengthy stay with Miss Edgar, who was now in Austria, address unknown, so it was more or less inevitable that she should look after this child till she could eventually contact his mother, who had been so certain that he would be safely installed in Beck Cottage in a remote Lakeland village by now.
Once or twice during the next hour as she skirted Glasgow by using the Erskine Bridge to cross the river, she wondered if she had any real right to continue her journey in this way, but then she remembered Coralie and the blue eyes which were so like Sandy’s and felt herself justified. She would carry on with her own plans to go to the Trossachs until she could contact Sandy’s mother and ask Coralie to collect her son at a given rendezvous farther north.
Sandy was delighted with their flight across the bridge which rose in a high, slender arc above the narrowing Clyde, his large, sombre eyes taking in the strange atmosphere with interest.
‘Will Mummy come?’ he asked unexpectedly, gazing down at the grey river as they passed.
Taken by surprise, Katherine hesitated.
‘Soon,’ she promised. ‘I’ll phone her when we stop for some tea, just to make sure.’
An odd reluctance to part with him had made her hesitate, but there really wasn’t any room for sentiment at this stage, she tried to tell herself. Sandy wasn’t hers, although how anyone could part with him as casually as Coralie had done was beyond her comprehension. The word Coralie had used about him was ‘docile’, but it wasn’t quite true. At the tender age of three and a bit there was an odd sort of acceptance about Sandy which had already touched her heart.
By the time they had reached Loch Lomond he was asleep again and she was forced to make another decision—whether to go on or spend the night at Tarbet. Sandy was tired and so was she, but at least Sandy was able to sleep. She pressed on, reaching Ardlui as the sun dipped towards the western mountains and going into Glen Falloch in search of a suitable resting place for the night.
She had travelled that way before, but she had completely forgotten about its loneliness and the lack of amenities among some of Scotland’s grandest mountains. The Trossachs had been her vague destination, but now she was to the west of them with the great bens and lochs of the Highlands ahead of her.
To go on, or veer to the west towards Oban and the Isles?
The car made her decision for her. The engine noise of which she had been vaguely aware since Ardlui became more pronounced, reaching a grinding crescendo as she pulled into the next passing-bay.
Sandy slept on in blissful ignorance of their plight, undisturbed by the fact that the soporific motion of the car had ceased, and Katherine decided not to waken him even to offer him one of the left-over sandwiches from their alfresco lunch.
Lifting the bonnet, she gazed at the engine, realising how little she knew about the mechanics of her hitherto reliable mode of travel, and finally coming to the conclusion that she was in need of professional help. Looking about her, she was quickly aware that she could not have been stranded in a more lonely place. She was well into the glen surrounded on every side by formidable mountains rearing their heads against the paling blue of the northern sky as they crowded the horizon, one above the other, rising over three thousand feet to the knees of Ben More. The great ben dominated everything, with Stob Binnein and Stob Garb and Cruach Ardrain crowding around the lesser giants of the Grampians to form a barrier to her further progress.
The suggestion of their invincible might dismayed her for a moment until she forced herself to think back. A little way along the road she had passed a telephone kiosk. It could not be more than half a mile away and it was her only means of dealing with her present situation. In over an hour she hadn’t passed another car.
Tucking the travelling rug more securely around her sleeping passenger, she locked the back door and set out, but when she reached the kiosk it was out of order—vandalised. Not here, she thought. Surely not in a place like this!
The fact remained, however, that her one means of reaching the outside world had been denied her, and she hurried back to the lay-by. She had not passed one single vehicle in the time it had taken her to walk to the kiosk and run back.
Breathless, she opened the car door. Sandy had gone.
Seconds passed as she gazed incredulously at the empty back seat. Her travelling rug lay on the floor, the cushion which had cradled Sandy’s head tossed aside as if to suggest that he had no further use for it, yet nothing else had been disturbed. She searched the boot, but both her own suitcase and his little tartan grip were still there.
‘Sandy!’ she called in her desperation. ‘Where are you?’
It was a cry from the heart, she realised, a plea which she really didn’t expect to be answered, and her mind seemed to go blank for a moment, but finally she told herself that a child of Sandy’s age would hardly wander away from the security of a parked car even if the sun was still shining and only the great shadow of the bens darkened the glen.
She shivered as she looked about her at the stark beauty of the surrounding mountains which she would have appreciated so much under happier circumstances. There was no sound except for the gurgle of running water somewhere near at hand, nothing to suggest human habitation for the next few miles.
She listened, tensed, for the so
und of another car, but all was quietness and peace. Peace in nature, but not in her own heart, she thought, knowing a sudden, panic fear. She had done the most foolish thing imaginable, leaving Sandy asleep in the car and locking the back door but not her own. It had been such a short distance to the kiosk, not much more than half a mile, but in the space of time it had taken her to reach the box and run back Sandy had disappeared.
Why had she felt impelled to run? Even before she had reached the lay-by there had been a sense of panic in her, the need to protect a little boy with curly fair hair and amazingly blue eyes who had put a small, trusting hand in her own and gone with her willingly into this absurd adventure.
Angry with herself and her mechanical ignorance, she explored the engine again, although with little real hope, her head under the bonnet as she checked water and oil, which was something she did know about. Then, shattering the silence, she heard the sound she had been waiting for. A car was approaching along the road ahead of her. Help was at hand.
Even before the Rover swung into the lay-by she knew who her rescuer must be.
‘Having trouble?’
Charles Moreton had caught up with her.
‘So it was you?’ Katherine glared at him angrily. ‘What have you done with him?’ She searched the back of the grey car. ‘You took Sandy, didn’t you? You’ve—kidnapped him!’
Charles looked slightly amused.
‘It’s a strong word to use, but yes, I’ve taken him,’ he agreed. ‘If you’re concerned about his safety, however, you needn’t worry,’ he added. ‘He’s in good hands.’
‘Yours, I suppose you mean?’ she challenged. ‘But that isn’t quite good enough. I promised to look after him, to—to protect him.’
‘You weren’t exactly doing that when you left him alone in a parked car with a door open,’ he pointed out, the smile fading from his eyes.
Katherine took a step towards him.
‘What have you done with him?’ Her voice was not quite steady, although it was absurd to suppose that he had harmed his own child. ‘Where have you taken him?’
Moreton's Kingdom Page 4
