Prisoner of Love

by Jean S. MacLeod

  “Time?” he mused, not looking at her. “Yes, I suppose that really doesn’t matter so very much to me now. There was a period in my life when I believed I would never have enough time to do all I wanted to do—”

  “You'll do it again,” she whispered urgently. “You'll get over this. You’re still young, still at the beginning of your career.”

  He looked at her, and she knew that he did not share her faith. He was convinced of failure.

  “What about Northern Bird?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly. “When will you put her back in the water, Blair? We really ought to have a launching ceremony—”

  Abruptly he got to his feet.

  “It’s no use, Laura,” he said. “Don’t let’s pretend. The experiment has failed. I’m wasting Julius’s time. All he can do for me now is to give me the odd drug to let me sleep.”

  “No!” Her cry of protest was so sharp that it startled her. “That isn’t the truth, Blair. You’ve got to get well. You’ve got to climb back again to what you were.”

  He looked at her and smiled, and it was then that she felt most strongly that she had come up against a hard, dark wall, the impenetrable barrier of Blair’s strange indifference.

  “I’m going home,” she said almost flatly. “Will you walk down to the road with me, or do you feel it might be too far?”

  “No,” he said quietly, “I think I can manage that.”

  When they parted he held her eyes for a long moment.

  “Don’t worry too much Laura,” he said. “I’ll get by.”

  Two days later Laura came down with influenza. It was irritating, to say the least of it, and also inconvenient. Julius was due in London the following afternoon, at a medical conference, and he had planned to take her with him so that she could collect Lance from Ashleigh at the end of the school term and they could all travel back to Dunraven together.

  “Well,” Morag said, standing at her bedside, “you can’t go, and that’s that! You’ll be far better here, anyway, than traipsing away to London as often as you do. The doctor will bring your brother back and you’ll be on your feet again, long before they come.”

  On the morning of the third day, with Julius and Lance expected from London before the end of the week, they saw Callum hurrying toward the causeway. He looked flurried and anxious, his small animal face flushed with his exertions as he ran the last few yards across the bridge.

  “It’s yon woman!” he gasped when Morag led him into the hall. “Yon nurse. She’s in her bed an’ fair ravin’ mad!”

  “What happened to her, Callum?” Laura asked, coming into the hall in the middle of this somewhat garbled statement. “Has she had some sort of accident?”

  “Not her!” Callum answered. “She wakened up out of her sleep like it. The sweat was pouring off her face and she just mumbled when she talked. Och! Yon was an awful sight!” he groaned. “An awful sight! She had lost all her teeth. She was like a witch—or a bochdan!”

  “There are no such things as ghosts!” Morag told him firmly, but kindly. She looked at Laura. “It’s flu, as likely as not,” she decided. “Anyway, I’ll go up and see.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Laura offered. “There will be the patients to see to.”

  In her heart she knew that she was thinking only about Blair. Julius had left explicit instructions with Nurse Scyler about all his patients, and quite possibly special ones in Blair’s case.

  It was pretty much as Morag had foreseen. Nurse Scyler was in the grip of influenza and had been slightly delirious in the small hours of the morning, but Blair had prescribed for her and she was how asleep.

  Blair himself looked haggard from want of sleep, but somewhere in the background there was a new assurance about him, and he certainly had taken over quite efficiently when Nurse Scyler had gone down.

  Laura did what she could in the sickroom while Morag bustled about in the kitchen preparing a meal, and Blair went out to chop some wood for the fire. Hearing the regular ring of the axe as he worked, Laura felt her heart lift a little. The whole problem of Blair’s health was confusing, but certainly he did seem as if he was improving a little now.

  She crossed to the dresser where Nurse Scyler had set out her toilet requisites and began to tidy it. A haphazard collection of personal belongings was mixed up with the instruments of her profession in a most unhygienic way, Laura thought, fishing out a clinical thermometer and a pocketwatch, which had stopped at three o’clock. She found, too, a small hypodermic syringe that had not been properly cleaned after use, and took it to the washbasin on the far side of the room. There, on a sidetable holding a collection of bottles and a towel or two, she came upon another syringe. It was much larger than that normally used for the administering of injections. Five cubic centimeters, she thought. Ten to twelve grains—or more. With certain drugs it would be a killing dose—

  She dropped the instrument back into its box, unable to see for a moment. Who had been using the syringe?

  Suddenly her hands were trembling, but she told herself that the idea—the suspicion—was fantastic. All sorts of syringes were used for all sorts of purposes.

  Nevertheless, she found herself searching for the record of sedatives administered in Blair’s case. She could not find it.

  For the next thirty-six hours she gave Blair his injections herself, cutting the quantity down to the bare minimum, and she could not believe that it was only in her own imagination that he seemed brighter and free and far more full of life.

  What am I to do, she thought, faced with such a ghastly, half-formed suspicion? I can’t challenge Julius and I can’t question Nurse Scyler. I can’t confide in anybody, least of all Blair!

  She found herself walking toward Garvie Lodge. I’ve got to know about this. I’ve got to know, she kept repeating.

  Zachray was ploughing out the only bit of arable land that Garvie boasted. He grew the household vegetables there and some of the winter feeding for the sheep, working on it in his spare time. Cathie concentrated on the small walled garden immediately surrounding the house, but in spite of the fact that it was a glorious day, she was nowhere to be seen.

  “She’s away to Inverness for the day,” Zachray informed her as he stopped the plough and came to shake hands. “It’s the first time she’s been able to go any distance since the snow cut us off.”

  There was still quite a lot of snow up here on the moor, lying in the hollows and along the line of the gray stone dykes, and she could see where they had been compelled to dig themselves out during the heavier falls. Zachray had piled it up into a solid wall on either side of the path leading to the door, and it would remain there as a reminder of their winter for many weeks to come.

  “I’d like to have seen Cathie,” Laura said, “but it can’t be helped. I would have been up sooner, Zachray, but I’ve had flu, and now Nurse Scyler at the lodge is down with it.”

  “And Blair?” he asked sharply.

  “No,” Laura said, “he hasn’t had flu. Mercifully, he has escaped that.”

  “Then—there’s something else?” He was searching her eyes with an intensity she had not expected, seeing the reflection of her distress before she could attempt to hide it from him. “He didn’t look particularly good to me last time I saw him.”

  “He’s had a relapse,” Laura explained, but could not bring herself to speak of her fear because suddenly, up here on the open moor with the fresh wind blowing against her cheeks and Zachray smiling at her in a sane, normal way, it seemed ridiculous.

  “Come in,” he invited, “and I’ll make you some tea. I’m sorry about Blair,” he added, “but maybe this fine weather will help.”

  He looked across at her, as if waiting for her to confirm his suggestion. After all, she was the nurse.

  “I hope so,” she said uncertainly.

  She made the tea while he foraged for something to eat.

  “Is your husband at Dunraven just now?” he asked as she handed him his cup.

>   “No, he’s in London. I would have gone with him,” she explained hurriedly, “but for the flu.”

  He stirred the sugar in his tea.

  “Laura, you know that I was in love with Helene,” he said unexpectedly.

  “Yes.”

  He looked beyond her into the fire.

  “She didn’t know,” he added at last. “But Julius did.”

  Laura drew in a quivering breath, waiting for him to go on, because she knew that he had something further to say.

  “She died as the result of a chill—lobar pneumonia. The certificate was made out by the local doctor, and I checked on it.”

  What did he suspect? Why had Zachray “checked” on the death certificate? Laura felt herself trembling violently, but all he said was: “She died naturally, it would seem, but all the same, I think Julius killed her. There are so many ways—”

  “No, Zachray!” She bent toward him, touching his hand. “Don’t go on thinking that. It will only spoil your life.”

  He rose to stand beside the window.

  “I’ve told you this because I think Julius is mad,” he said. “Insane jealousy is a form of madness, and I think he already suspects you and Blair.”

  Laura got to her feet. She could no longer sit still.

  “Don’t go on, Zachray,” she said. “I know you’re doing this because you feel that you have to, but—but it could all so easily be a figment of our imagination.”

  He turned from the window, but she had already admitted her own doubt by that one word “our.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that is so,” and they did not speak of Julius again. Zachray walked with her back to Dunraven, but she could not persuade him to come in.

  “I’d like to get that bit of land ploughed out before dark,” he excused himself.

  Laura watched him go with a strange, dead feeling in her heart. Zachray MacKellar would never have spoken to her as he had done if he had not considered a warning vitally necessary.

  Wild with anxiety for Blair, she paced up and down in the turret room, watching for Morag’s return, seeing the deep gulf that had widened between her and the man she had married in simple faith. She saw, too, her own obsession with greatness, her almost idolatrous worship of Julius’s brilliance and success, and the irony of the love she was at last forced to admit.

  For she loved Blair. The knowledge had come to her slowly during this past, desperate hour. She was hopelessly, pointlessly in love with Julius's “failure”!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nurse Scyler did not rally as well as might have been expected in a woman of her build and undoubted vigor, and she was still dangerously ill when Julius returned to Dunraven.

  He had brought Lance with him, and Laura hugged her brother to her and hoped that Lance’s bright approach to life would help her to forget some of the horror of the past few days.

  Seeing Julius again, she could not credit him with murder. Suave and distinguished, he looked everything that he had ever seemed to her, yet instinctively she knew that he would not hesitate to sweep any obstacle from his path.

  Lance’s first action, as soon as he had eaten, was to rush down to the bay to look at Northern Bird, and it was then that Laura told Julius about Nurse Scyler.

  Looking faintly perturbed by the news, he rose immediately.

  “I’ll walk up there now and see what I can do for her,” he said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Laura asked.

  He looked back at her as if he scarcely understood her request. “Not really, Laura. Have you been going there regularly while I have been away?”

  “Someone had to go as soon as we heard that she was ill.”

  “I suppose so,” he agreed, his brows drawn darkly together. “I’m sorry you had to have this extra responsibility thrust on you like this,” he added, “especially as you have been ill yourself. When I come to think of it,” he added, surveying her critically, “you still look rather peaked. Is there anything else the matter?”

  “No.” She felt the last remnants of color fading out of her cheeks, but she forced herself to meet the casually interested eyes. “There’s nothing, Julius.”

  “I wondered," he said, and turned away.

  “Julius.”

  “Yes, Laura?”

  “I’ve been dealing with all the patients, giving them the injections you prescribed before you left, but I haven’t been able to find a record. I’ve written down the dosages I’ve administered on a piece of paper and left it with Blair. You will see that I have reduced the quantity of Sedormid he has been having nightly.”

  She waited, shaken and uneasy, for him to speak.

  “Perhaps you will tell me,” he asked, “what made you do that?”

  “I thought he might be able to sleep quite well without it.” With an effort she had managed to keep her voice normal. “These things can become dangerous if they are taken over too long a period, or if they are given in conjunction with—something else.”

  His smile, when he looked at her, was faintly indulgent.

  “Allow me to know what I am doing, Laura,” he said. “Cameron’s case is not quite the straightforward one you seem to imagine it to be. He is still suffering from the effects of a tropical fever, so that I am not, in any way, experimenting with his life.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but I thought it the best thing to do. He has seemed so well these past few days—so different.”

  He left her without making any comment about that, and she found a woollen coat and joined Lance down in the bay. He was already covered in paint, but she hadn’t the heart to reprimand him.

  “I wonder when we’ll be ready to launch her,” he said, standing back a foot or two to admire his efforts with the brush. “Blair said she could be in the water by the middle of April, and it’s April now. April the first!”

  “Patience,” Laura informed him, “is a virtue. One well worth cultivating in fact, my impatient mariner!” She put an arm about him. “Have you been writing regularly to Blair?”

  “Every week. He didn’t always answer, but I kept writing, just the same. When he didn’t write, I knew that he’d been ‘under the weather.’ That’s what he used to say. He said his mind took notions to go blank occasionally.”

  Laura held her breath. Why had Blair said that? If it were true, surely there must be something seriously wrong?

  “He’s had a relapse, but I think he might be all right now,” she said, scraping vigorously at the far side of the deck. “Perhaps when we get Northern Bird out it will help.”

  “D’you know,” Lance said, “I think Julius is afraid of Northern Bird.”

  “What a strange thing to say!”

  “No, it isn’t. People can be afraid of a thing because it’s too big for them or too difficult. One of the masters at school said that,” he conceded modestly. “What I mean is that Julius may be afraid of Northern Bird because he can’t handle her properly. Not without Blair and Callum being there.”

  “He hasn't had the same experience of the sea as Blair has,” Laura pointed out in all fairness to her husband. “He can learn, of course.”

  “Some people never learn about boats,” Lance said with decision. “You’ve got to have a feel for them, Blair says. It’s like handling a horse or even a car, though a car’s easy.”

  “Just you wait till you attempt to drive one!” Laura laughed. “But I think maybe you’re right about boats. One has the sea to contend with.”

  “Was it rough up here after I went back to school?” he asked eagerly. “Blair told me about the snow and the old jetty being washed away. Julius is going to build a new stone one, but he’s not sure if it can be started before I have to go back at the end of these holidays.”

  He was so eager to be part of their lives, Laura realized, so keen to share everything and help Blair.

  “Will Blair be coming down to work on Northern Bird tomorrow?” he asked.

 
; “I don’t know,” Laura said. “I—expect so.”

  It was all so natural, Lance expecting Blair to come, expecting them to finish the overhaul of the yacht in the shortest possible time so that they could sail out across The Minch and in and out among the Islands. It could all have been wonderful for her, too, but for the dreadful, insinuating doubt in her heart.

  When Julius came back from the lodge he did not mention Blair. “Nurse Scyler is a very sick woman,” he said. “I may have to get someone in her place. But the point is that I can’t move her just now.”

  “Do you want to bring her here?” Laura asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “What I was thinking was that, if I have to employ another nurse right away, there’s not going to be an available room for her at the lodge.” His eyes narrowed a fraction as he watched her. “It would mean one of the patients having to come here for a week or two. Cameron, I thought.”

  Laura’s hand was halfway to her throat before she checked the nervous little gesture, but she managed to say casually: “If that’s what you want, Julius. He’s been spending quite a lot of time on the yacht, and I suppose he must want to finish her and get her into the water.”

  “Yes,” Julius mused, crossing to the window. “I shall need Cameron on Northern Bird for a trip or two, at least till I am quite able to handle her myself.”

  “Lance is very keen,” Laura heard herself say. “He has just been asking me when you will be ready to take her out.”

  “Doctor Cameron is dubious about the weather at present.” There was the faintest trace of scorn in his voice. “He thinks we ought to play safe and conform to the local superstition that the ‘Blue Men’ may still be lying in wait for would-be adventurers on the far side of The Minch at least till the middle of April!”

  “All these local legends,” Laura reminded him, “probably stem from cruel experiences in the past.”