Читать книгу The Forbidden Promise - Lorna Cook - Страница 14

The cottage door slammed open, the metal catch clanging as it crashed against the stone wall inside. Constance was breathless; she’d been running so hard. In the woods she’d realised with every pounding step that, with a combination of duty and a longing to help him, she was desperate to see the pilot before he left as he’d sworn he would.

‘You’ll never have to see me again,’ he had said. And for one awful moment as Constance stood at the threshold and looked in, she believed it was true. As she’d left the cottage last night he had been drifting to sleep by the armchair. But the space he’d inhabited was now empty. During the night he must have thrown a few more logs on the fire, their charred, smoking remains reduced to dim embers in the grate.

She ran upstairs to see if he had chosen to sleep in the bed, but the bedclothes remained unruffled and the scent of settled dust lingered in the room. With her heart full of disappointment, Constance descended the staircase.

He had gone.

The pilot, Matthew, had moved one of the spindle-backed dining chairs from its position by the kitchen table and over to the fireside. Over the back he had draped her dress. She imagined him picking it up from the floor after she had left, touching it, taking the effort to look around the room, to find something appropriate from which to hang it; putting it a suitable distance from the fire so it would dry easily but not shrink from the proximity to the heat. She touched the dress with her fingertips, wondering at the effort he had made for her; such a small act but it held meaning that Constance couldn’t understand. He hadn’t just left it crumpled on the floor as others might have done. She stood, not quite knowing what she should do next. Somehow, going back to the house, back to her daily life, didn’t feel right. It was almost as if the events of last night, the aircraft disappearing into the water, swimming out to find the pilot, relief at finding him alive, sitting with him in this very room, held meaning, held an opportunity for … something? Not excitement. No. There had been plenty enough of that last night, heart pounding, frightening excitement. But something else nonetheless. The opportunity to be useful, to break free of the confines of the house and to embrace the war effort, even if it was only starting with keeping a stricken pilot safe while he recovered and came to his senses. It was a start. She looked around. All trace of him had gone.

It wasn’t really for Constance to worry about, but she was worried for him. She couldn’t help it. And now she would return home and see Henry, who had stayed the night, and her family at the breakfast table, other than Mother, who always took a tray in her room. Douglas would be talking non-stop about flying, about the ‘Hun’, about training or some such other nonsense. Henry, oh she didn’t know what to do about him, but in all likelihood he would be shooting daggers at her for spurning his advances last night. Or would he remain as confident as ever, as if nothing had happened at all? The boys were due to return back to their base at Kinloss today. Henry had seemed pleased that he’d been posted there, but Douglas was livid. He wanted to be down in the south of England, down in what he called ‘the real thick of it.’ He was desperate for his squadron to be posted almost anywhere other than on his own doorstep.

Constance thought him rather lucky. He wasn’t exactly out of harm’s way up here what with all the docks and Royal Navy Fleets to protect. But he didn’t seem to relish being a defender of his own patch of Scottish sky. She would have given anything to do something for the war. But until it became obligatory for women to join, if it ever became obligatory, Father had forbidden her. ‘Work isn’t for women like you,’ he had said. But Constance was twenty-one now. Didn’t that count for something? Was there really nothing she could do that would take her away from the incessant, stifling boredom of Invermoray? They were no longer travelling down to spend time at the London house each year and most of her friends had joined the war effort, travelling far and wide for whichever of the services they’d entered and sending letters about how they were wearing the ‘most ghastly uniform’, and ‘eating the most frightful rations’. But their letters had been tinged with excitement, happiness, purpose. Father had closed up the London house the moment war was declared, deeming it foolhardy to decamp to a city where bombs may fall any minute. ‘What kind of father would I be?’ he had asked. ‘If I took us into the eye of the storm?’

And so now they were shut up here for the foreseeable future. She felt as though her home was her prison. She would not go back to the house. Not yet. Constance often took herself off on long walks around the loch or the estate, for exercise and for something to do, and so they would not worry for her. She’d gone to bed with the story of her headache and had risen to walk it off. That’s what they’d think. No one would care enough to ask. She folded the gossamer dress over her arm and reluctantly stepped out into the cool morning air. Perhaps the pilot was right. Perhaps running away was the answer?

What if she did as he had done, arrived somewhere in the middle of the night, no one at home any the wiser as to where she had gone? What if she packed a bag and made her way into a city where she might engage in some kind of war work? But what could she do? What were her skills? After her governess, there had been finishing school. That had instructed her how to be fashionable in polite society, what to say and what not to say in her native tongue and in French, which she had promptly forgotten the moment she’d set foot back on Scottish soil, although she had tried so hard to remember. In essence, it had primed her for marriage. But it had given her no useful skill in the middle of war. She thought of her brother and how men were given the gift of thorough education and the expectation that ran alongside it. Constance was expected to do very little and allowed to do even less.

Pinecones crunched underfoot as Constance walked. She knew the forest so well she paid scant attention to her direction. Before long she would find herself at the road that ran along the edge of the woodland. She didn’t want to see a soul. Not that she would. Not since petrol went on the ration almost the very moment war was declared. Many of those living in Invermoray village didn’t have cars anyway. That level of modernity had yet to stretch to her corner of Scotland and there was no danger of the bus passing at this time of day to and from Beauly.

After a while the rumble in her stomach alerted her that she should probably return home. She would sneak into the kitchen and see if she could snaffle a few treats left over from her unwanted birthday party. She would disappear into the pantry, as she often did, and Mrs Fraser – the cook – wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Constance and Douglas were forever below stairs; had been ever since they were children. With hardly any other friends nearby, they had frequented the kitchens and spent time with the loud, laughing Highland staff. It had felt more familiar than above stairs.

With her father’s nose perpetually in a book and her mother attending the plants in the hothouse, Constance had made herself scarce most days when her governess was not present. As a child, as long as she was neither seen nor heard she had elicited no strong words from either parent. And so, with very little else to entertain her, Constance had been taught to skin the rabbits she had caught when out with the ghillie. It had given her a huge sense of silent satisfaction at dinner when she looked at her parents elegantly eating from their plates, not knowing that their daughter had both caught and prepared their food. They would have been horrified and found her some other, proper yet awful way to express her energy or, heaven forbid, employed her governess for the vast majority of the time rather than just a few days of the week.

And then when Douglas had returned home from school at summer and Christmas, Constance’s life had been complete again. He often joked that school had been his undoing and that if he’d stayed behind – like her – it would have made more of a man of him. He followed Constance and the ghillie about the estate, discovering patches of it he’d long since forgotten, helping to keep the deer populace down but closing his eyes at the last minute when he pulled the trigger, the bullets always missing their mark until he gave up one summer and decided, ‘never again’. He’d never quite bought into the much-lauded idea that with no wolves in Scotland anymore it was the estate’s responsibility to keep a check on its own numbers. Constance and the ghillie had admired his sense of decency but had often taken the gun from him and continued the job themselves while Douglas sighed resignedly behind them; happy to help wrap the venison into brown paper and string parcels but preferring to play no part in the animal’s actual death.

It had always been Douglas who had been fussed over by the staff, his time with them precious, before he returned to a school he loathed. She hadn’t minded a bit about that. She was just grateful for her brother’s return – a bit of company for a few short weeks, a few times a year. But that was then, when they were younger, back when they’d had more staff. Now it was just Mrs Fraser and Mrs Campbell – the housekeeper – along with a couple of local daily girls who cleaned for them. But Mrs Fraser had mentioned there’d been rumblings the daily girls were intending to join the war effort. For one thing they thought they would be paid more, which was probably true. Constance didn’t know, but at least then they’d meet people. Other people. Anyone. Whenever Constance mentioned work, she faced an onslaught of argument from her parents. No one married a girl who worked.

Her stomach rumbled again. She realised she hadn’t eaten a morsel last night, what with so many guests to talk to and thoughts of escaping Henry, there simply hadn’t been time.

After she’d eaten something she would sit in the window seat in the library and read or stare out at the loch, which now held a Spitfire within its murky clutches when yesterday, it hadn’t. She wondered if she would ever reveal that to anyone. Perhaps to Douglas, one day. But not yet. She would give the troubled pilot time to move on. She would not be responsible for a search party assembling.

In the middle of the forest, she walked towards the trickle of the river, intending to scoop a few handfuls of water to drink. The ghillie had spent many an hour showing her how to tickle trout out of the river, before he had gone to war with the rest of the male staff, other than the gardener who was too old to fight and the gardener’s boy, who was too young. Eventually Constance had got the hang of gently ushering trout from the stream of flowing water with nothing more than the tips of her fingers. She wondered what her mother and father would say if she did it now, returning casually to the house with tonight’s dinner in her arms. She laughed out loud. She’d be condemned as a heathen.

The splashing of the stream was louder than usual and as she approached she realised that there was someone in there. The sound of blood swooshed in her ears as she realised it was him – the pilot, Matthew. She was overjoyed. He was still here. She still had the chance to help him and to apologise for her appalling behaviour yesterday. He hadn’t seen her but she had seen him. His clothes, or rather the ghillie’s, were piled up on the mossy bank. He was standing facing the other direction and Constance could see he was completely undressed. He was splashing himself clean in the icy cold water.

He hadn’t heard her approach over the rushing of the water so she took the opportunity to move. She would not hail him. His nakedness embarrassed her into moving quickly to stand behind the trunk of a tall tree. She hoped she was hidden. She turned and pushed her back against the trunk, her fingers splayed out behind her, her nails almost dug into the bark as she stared into the forest, full of joy that he was still here; that he hadn’t yet left.

She moved, just a fraction, intending to peer round the trunk – just to see if he had got dressed yet, just to see if it was safe to come out from her impromptu hiding place, but then all thoughts of movement were interrupted.

‘Is there someone there?’ he shouted from the water.

Constance’s chest tightened as she inhaled sharply.

He repeated himself and then, sounding nervous, added, ‘Come out. Show yourself.’

She was trapped. She couldn’t stay here all day hiding in a cowardly fashion but likewise couldn’t just spring out. She stalled, thinking.

‘I swear to God if there’s someone there …’ he called loudly, aiming for threatening, Constance was sure.

‘I …’ Constance called but further words failed her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m here.’

There was no reply. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t see him naked again, she just couldn’t. The embarrassment of it. Her fingernails dug further into the trunk and she stared straight ahead into the forest. The pine trees swayed of their natural accord but she was almost unseeing of anything around her. What was he doing?

The answer became clear as the pilot appeared suddenly in front of her. He’d put his trousers back on but they clung damply and tightly to his skin.

‘What are you doing here? Why have you come back? Are you on your own?’ He looked around nervously, firing questions at her like bullets. His dark hair fell over his face; his eyelashes still held droplets of water, framing his light green eyes.

‘Yes,’ she almost stuttered, shocked that he had sprung at her so quickly. ‘I’m alone.’

He was so close she could feel the heat from his body. He stepped back. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I was worried you’d brought someone.’

‘Why would I?’ Constance asked.

‘To take me in, of course.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

The statement hung in the air between them.

He frowned, inching a fraction towards her. He pushed his brown hair back from his face and water ran down his neck. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. Although she did know. He’d seemed so fragile of mind, so bewildered, so shocked by his ordeal last night. He’d talked nonsense of running from his duties. Perhaps he just needed time. And if so, she could give him that. Time was something she had plenty of.