Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress
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Mrs Campbell frowned. ‘I am sorry, Catriona,’ she said, ‘but I do not think that so distant a connection is entirely reliable.’
‘No,’ I said, trying not to look at Mr Sinclair, who looked the absolute antithesis of reliable. ‘Perhaps you are correct, ma’am.’
We were saved from further dispute by the arrival of the carriage from Glen Clair. With a cry of relief, Mrs Campbell swept me up, carried me out into the yard and installed me in the coach without even permitting me to finish my crab soup.
‘All will be quite well now, my love,’ she said, ignoring the fact that the coachman was the most villainous-looking fellow that one could imagine. ‘You will be safely in Glen Clair by nightfall, and I know your family will be delighted to see you.’ She kissed me enthusiastically on both cheeks. ‘Pray write to me often.’
Mr Sinclair was handing my bags up to the groom, and suddenly I felt very alone. Neither the coachman nor the groom seemed inclined to speak to me, and neither had vouchsafed anything beyond a surly greeting.
Mr Sinclair came alongside the window to bid me farewell, and for once the impudent light was gone from his eyes. He looked sombre and very serious.
‘I wish you good fortune, Miss Balfour,’ he said, quite as though we might never meet again.
‘Do you ever go to Glen Clair to call upon your third cousin twice removed, Mr Sinclair?’ I asked impulsively.
He smiled then. ‘Very rarely, Miss Balfour,’ he said. ‘But you will see me in Glen Clair before the month is out.’
I felt relief and a strange sense of pleasure to hear it, but naturally I was also rather annoyed with myself for making it appear that I actually wanted to see him again. I tilted my chin haughtily and gave him my hand in what I hoped was a dignified manner. But he simply turned it over, kissed my palm, and gave it back to me with quizzically lifted brows. The colour flamed into my face and I wished Mr Sinclair at the bottom of the loch.
‘Thank you,’ I said frostily, ‘for the service that you have rendered me, Mr Sinclair.’
‘A pleasure, Miss Balfour,’ he said. He smiled straight into my eyes. ‘Should you reconsider my offer, you need only send to me.’
‘A refusal so often offends, Mr Sinclair,’ I said. ‘You must be a brave man indeed to risk a second rebuff.’
He laughed. ‘You have not seen Glen Clair yet,’ he said cryptically.
‘So you are the lesser of two evils?’ I enquired. ‘I shall bear that in mind.’
His laughter was still in my ears as the carriage lurched out of the inn yard and away along the cobbled street that fronted the quay. I craned my neck for a last view of the sea, until the road turned inland towards the high mountains and the last shimmer of sparkling blue was lost from my sight. And though I tried not to think of Mr Sinclair paying court to the ladies of Edinburgh, the thought of him stayed in my mind for most of the long journey to my new home.
Now, it may appear to readers of my narrative that I am much concerned with modes of transport, but it could not escape my notice that the carriage sent from Glen Clair was much inferior to that of Lord Strathconan. As I sat down on the straw-stuffed seat a thick cloud of dust arose and settled on my skirts in a clinging grey film. I was sure that I saw a flea jump out of the cushions.
It seemed that with every rut in the track the coach threatened to shake to bits. I began to feel a little travel sore, so to take my mind from the journey I tried to concentrate on the view as we lurched along the road. Afternoon was well advanced by now, for our progress was slow, and the sun was dipping behind the high mountains. The heather on the slopes merged with the bracken into a purple and amber mist. Above the rocky peaks soared a single eagle, the sun bright on the gold of its head. The road wound its narrow way along the valley bottom beside a trickling burn fringed by pines. It was very beautiful, but to me, accustomed to the friendly scatter of the homesteads at Applecross, it seemed an empty landscape and a deserted one. I imagined that the jagged peaks and the bare hillsides might drive some men mad with loneliness.
The sun had long vanished behind the mountains, the purple shadows were fading to shades of grey and I was very hungry when we turned down an even narrower lane, rattled over a wooden bridge across the stream and drew alongside a broad loch that I realised must be Loch Clair at last. I sat forward, searching the dusk for my first glimpse of the house, but there was nothing ahead—no lights, no sign of life but the last flickering silver of the light on the water.
I sat back again, feeling slightly disappointed. As I did so the carriage lurched to a stop and there was a silence. I waited a few moments for one of the servants to come and tell me the reason for the delay. No one appeared, so I tried to open the carriage window to see what was going on. But the frame was splintered and the window stubbornly refused to move. I opened the door and stuck my head out.
We had stopped halfway along the edge of the loch. To one side of the carriage there was the water, and on the other side the rocky wall of the hillside rose straight and sheer from the edge of the road. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I was able to open the door wide enough to jump down.
Gathering up my skirts, I hurried around to the front of the coach. The horse—a tired old beast with a white star on its head and manners far more pleasant than that of its driver—whickered in greeting and nuzzled my pockets for a treat. I patted his nose.
The road unrolled before me, stretching away to a small wood at the end of the loch. There was no sound but for the whisper of the wind in the reeds by the water. The same wind brought the scent of woodsmoke faintly on the air. It was cold air, and it breathed gooseflesh along my skin, for the coachman and groom had completely vanished.
A second later instinct made me aware that I was no longer alone on the road. I spun around, but I was a moment too late. Strong arms had caught me from behind, pulling me backwards against a hard male body. A hand came down over my mouth. Through my struggles—for I wriggled and kicked and strained to be free, of course—I had a confused impression of movement about me, and I heard the scrape of steel on stone.
I never scream. I have never been able to. When I was a child and the village boys teased me and pulled my hair, my cries of anger always came out as frustrated squawks. It was most vexatious to lack this accomplishment at a moment when it would have been useful to scream loud enough to make the mountains ring. It would also have been useful to be built along more generous lines, for I was slight and thin, and no match for my captor’s strength. In less than a moment he had both my hands held behind my back in just one of his. His grip was tight, and he held me hard against his own body so I had no chance to escape nor even to see his face.