Prisoner of Love
Page 19
“It’s over,” she murmured foolishly. “Over—”
Blair lifted her and carried her out of the room.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Seven weeks!” Lance mused, stretching out full length in the sun. “It's been a super holiday!”
“By the look of you,” Blair commented, “it’s high time you were back at school, my lad! You’ll soon not be able to spell cat!”
“If we had another boat,” Lance suggested dreamily, ignoring the remark, “we could stay up here all the summer.”
“All your summer holidays, perhaps,” Blair amended with a grin. “Would it be too much to ask you to stand up so that I can check your reflexes?”
“Not at all,” Lance agreed politely. “I can stand up to anything now.”
“Even to going back to school? Well, well!” Blair smiled. “Times change!”
“Why do you say that?” Lance asked as Blair tapped professionally here and there. “Didn’t you like school much?”
“Not a lot,” Blair admitted, concentrating on something else. “You’re as fit as a fiddle!”
“You sound surprised.”
Blair did not answer that. He was smiling very quietly to himself. “Does Laura know you’re coming south with me tomorrow?” Lance asked after a pause.
“I don’t think so.” Blair still appeared to be concentrating on something apart from the immediate future. “I may tell her this evening.”
“After I’ve been packed off to bed at seven o’clock ‘because I’m still something of an invalid’,” Lance grumbled.
“I don’t think that excuse is going to wear very much longer,” Laura said as she came up behind them. “I didn’t see you come down, Blair,” she added. “How do the others feel about the lodge?”
“They agree that there isn’t much point in their staying on,” he told her, “although they were generous enough to say that I had been looking after them nearly as well as Julius could have done. I suppose they’re right about not staying on,” he added. “The cure has worked for most of them.”
“And you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It has worked for me, too.”
She hadn’t exactly meant that. His cure was obvious. What she wanted to know was what he was going to do about the future. His own future. Perhaps she should have put it that way, she thought, because she was not at all sure that it involved her. Blair had been curiously silent and engrossed during these long weeks of Lance’s recuperation. He had remained at the lodge, treating Julius’s patients and visiting Dunraven every day to see Lance, but he had not spoken about the days ahead.
Tonight, however, she felt that she must ask him what he meant to do. She had decided to sell Dunraven because it held nothing for her but memories of Julius, but the lodge was a different matter. If Blair wished to come there from time to time, she would rent it to him. She knew that he had been happy up there and that the MacKellars were now his very good friends.
When they were alone at last, she said:
“I’ve made up my mind to sell Dunraven, Blair.”
He looked down at her and nodded.
“I think you’re wise,” he agreed as they walked toward the open door. “It’s very remote.”
“I’d like to keep the lodge,” she said in a rather unsteady voice. “In some ways I’ve been happy here—happier than I’ve ever been in all my life before. I—don’t want to lose it, and—there would be the MacKellars to come back to—if you didn’t want to use the lodge.”
He looked at her, surprised.
“I didn't know you were offering me that chance,” he said slowly, “but I have to find my feet first, Laura. I have to go back to London and see how things are going to work out for me there.”
“You know they’ll work out!” she said swiftly, turning to face him as they came to the terrace edge. “You haven’t any real doubt about that now, Blair.”
“No,” he said, looking at her with a deep tenderness in his eyes that she could no longer mistake for anything but love. “You have done that for me, Laura. You have given me back my faith in myself.”
“It would have come. Gradually, perhaps, but it would have come back in the end,” she said steadily. “You would never have gone completely under, Blair.”
“Once I came very near to it,” he said. “But why remember that now?” He held out his hands and she went swiftly into his arms. “Laurie!” he said, caressing her hair. “Laurie! If only I could believe myself worthy of your love!”
“Worthy?” She drew back a little way to look at him. “Worthy!” she repeated. “Don’t make the mistake I made, Blair. Only love is worthy of love.”
“Yes,” he said, “I think I can see that now.” When he kissed her his lips were firm and strong on hers. “I think, too, that I can go on with my work—on from here!”
“Of course you can! This is only the beginning. You’ve done a wonderful job against odds.” Suddenly her voice was not quite steady. “Lance owes his life to you, Blair. It’s the first step on the way ahead.”
He held her very close, looking toward the future with eyes that were steadily assured.
“We’ll walk it together, Laura,” he said, “whatever happens!”