Page 59 of Highland Fire

When the house party broke up the following morning, and Cranley’s guests had departed to go their separate ways, most of them to their townhouses in London, on the spur of the moment, Rand made up his mind to follow them.

“I shall expect you to join me in a week or so,” he told his startled family over luncheon.

“That should give you time to pack your bags and do whatever it is you need to do for a prolonged stay in town. I shall take a small contingent of servants with me to open up the house. Once it becomes known that Caitlin and I are to take in the season, I’ve no doubt there will be a flood of invitations waiting for your attention. ”

His words were received with mixed feelings. The twins were in transports, the dowager was stoic, Peter was faintly puzzled, and Caitlin was downright aghast. Rand scarcely gave them time to come to themselves before he was off.

The Randals’ townhouse was in Berkeley Square, in the very heart of Mayfair. In short order, Rand had informed his resident butler, Willis, what was afoot, and after washing away the dirt of his journey and changing his garments, he quit the house and made for his club in St. James.

For three days and nights he tried to blot out what he was thinking by giving himself up to the pleasures of drinking and gaming in convivial masculine company.

When that did not work, he took to putting in an appearance at dos and parties where he knew he would be welcomed with or without a gilt-edged invitation card.

Here, he thought to himself, surrounded by the most beautiful and sophisticated women in the whole of Europe, he would be able to put what he felt for his own little wife into its proper perspective.

And the London scene was like a breath of fresh air.

Caitlin could not hold a candle to these alluring women of the world.

Their hothouse beauty pleasured his senses, their practiced flatteries made him feel ten feet tall.

It amused him inordinately to try to introduce subjects which were of the keenest interest to Caitlin, such as crop production at high altitudes, or whether or not horses produced the most superior manure.

As was to be expected, these sophisticates looked at him as though he had insulted them.

Every night, he fell into bed laughing his head off.

A full week was to pass before it was borne in upon him that the most beautiful and sophisticated women in the whole of Europe bored him to tears.

It came to him suddenly when he was sitting in his dining room in Berkeley Square, having just consumed a most delectable dinner which his French chef had prepared.

He knew it was delectable because Ladubec would have cut his own throat before he would have served up anything that was less than a masterpiece.

Rand looked at his empty plate, and for the life of him, he could not remember what he had just eaten. Groaning, he threw his napkin on the table and leaned back in his chair, gritting his teeth. It seemed he had lost his taste for everything but the society of one impossible witch.

In one last, superhuman effort to break her spell, he shut his eyes and tried to recall his first impression of Caitlin.

It was useless. It seemed to him he had been lost from their first encounter on his last night of furlough on Deeside.

It was irrational. He had not even caught a glimpse of her face, had not exchanged more than a few words with her before David had spirited her away.

But he had kissed her, and even then the magnetism that always drew him to her had come into play.

It was not so when he had returned to Deeside to find the witch who had ensnared him.

He’d taken one look at her in Crathie Church and had put her down as a mouse.

It was what she had wanted him to think, what she had wanted all men to think.

It had not taken him long to sniff out her true nature.

He had sensed and responded to the depths of passion which lay dormant just beneath the surface. He had wanted that passion for himself.

He had known about David, of course, but in his usual, unthinking way, he had discounted whatever might have been between the two of them.

David had been a mere boy. He was a man.

He would be the one to awaken her and teach her what it meant to be a woman.

And he had done it, and had had more joy of her than he had ever had of any woman.

Then everything had begun to lose its savor.

In that part of him he never cared to examine he had guessed, no, he had known that the relationship was unequal.

Without understanding his resentment, he had become hard and demanding, as though by mastering her he could most truly possess her.

It was nothing to him to make Strathcairn a showplace and develop the estate as Caitlin dreamed of doing.

What had begun to prick his pride was the suspicion that in the sweet giving of herself, she had an ulterior motive.

Strathcairn and Deeside were all that truly mattered to her.

The knowledge that his love was unrequited made him writhe.

If she ever discovered it, she would pity him, as he had pitied former mistresses who had bestowed a love he had neither sought nor wanted.

How pathetic their attempts to force the words from him!

How wearying their jealous rages over trifles!

And how relieved he had been that he could be shut of them with a quick kiss and a fat purse to soften the blow to their pride.

The future pattern of his days with Caitlin passed before his eyes.

The picture revolted him. He saw himself as a lovesick suppliant begging for her favors.

She didn’t know it yet, but she had it in her power to make him do almost anything she wanted.

Sooner or later, he was bound to betray himself.

He took that sobering thought to bed. In the morning, when he awakened, the notion had become fixed in his mind that he needed time to master himself before coming face-to-face with Caitlin.

Over a solitary breakfast, a number of schemes came to him and were rejected.

Though he had almost lost interest in delving into Caitlin’s background, he finally decided to pursue the lead his mother had given him on Ewan Grant.

Penning a quick note to the effect that he had gone into Dorset to inform his uncle of his nuptials, he gave it into his butler’s hand with the information that he hoped to return within the week.

As he approached Dorchester, Rand had time to reflect that the journey, more rash than wise, was also open to misinterpretation.

Cranley was not so very far out of his way.

It would have delayed him by only a day to stop off there, advise Caitlin of his change in plans.

Then again, it would seem churlish to her if he did not invite her to go along with him.

He could hardly tell her that he was avoiding her in the interests of self-preservation.

The trip itself, he did not regret. It was more than time that he sat down with his uncle and gave him an account of David’s last days.

When he was last in Dorset he had found his uncle so sunk in grief that he had abandoned the attempt.

He might have expected to see Eric Randal at Cranley making up one of his mother’s house party, if the old boy had not been in Shropshire visiting a married daughter and her children.

As his closed chaise bowled along the avenue that led to the house, more and more, Rand found his thoughts focused on David.

He remembered another time and another carriage ride, when he had traveled to the Highlands, and how he had been consumed with guilt and a vague determination to make everything up to his cousin for what he had lost at Waterloo.

He remembered that the girl had been uppermost in his mind.

The girl had mattered to David, and he, Rand, was going to take care of her.

He grimaced and looked out for a moment at the tranquil scene, lush lawns and horse-chestnut trees bursting into leaf.

In the Highlands of Scotland, the snows in the hills and mountains would be melting and the rivers would soon be in full spate, but he doubted if the trees would be in leaf.

He sighed and slumped against the banquette, closing his eyes.

He was thinking that on Deeside he’d picked up the threads of his own life.

Caitlin Randal had soon deflected him from his resolve to find out what his young cousin had wanted of him.

The irony was, if he had only listened to Caitlin, he would have known what was on David’s mind. He knew that now.

He’d made a royal fool of himself, accusing Caitlin of bartering her sexual favors for his patronage.

She was his wife. He could take her any time he wanted.

Besides, it wasn’t like that between them.

He knew it wasn’t. He’d been fishing, hoping that she would not only deny his vile accusations, but go one step further. He’d come by his just desserts.

He made a resolution right there and then that he was going to return to Deeside with Caitlin and give her a free hand in the management of his estates.

It would be a costly and unprofitable business in his estimation, but that did not weigh with him.

He owed it to David to do right by him. He owed it to Caitlin to make up for David’s loss, a loss from which he had profited.

David and Caitlin. Both had denied that their friendship was anything but platonic.

Soul mates . There was a time when Rand would have sneered at that word.

It was so unmanly. He wasn’t sneering now.

He was beginning to think he didn’t know the first thing about how to appeal to a woman of Caitlin’s sensibilities.