Newlyweds of Convenience

CHAPTER TEN

THE PHONE was still dead the next morning. Mallory had fallen into a restless doze eventually, but she woke very early, with a sick sense of premonition.

For a few moments she let herself hold onto the hope that Torr had magically arrived when she was asleep. She saw herself walking into the kitchen and finding him slumped in a chair. He would tell her that he hadn’t wanted to wake her, that he been very quiet so that she could sleep.

Almost eagerly, Mallory threw back the duvet and hurried into the kitchen, but the room was cold and empty. There was no Torr, no Charlie. Never had she felt more alone.

Panic scrabbled at the edge of her mind, but she made herself stay calm. There was no point in getting hysterical. She had to find out what had happened to him, that was all.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked ghastly. Her face was white and pasty, her hair lank, and there were dark bags under her eyes.

Mallory’s whole body was buzzing with tiredness and tension, but that was too bad. Somehow she was going to have to find the energy to walk to Carraig and find a phone. It was a good twenty miles, but not impossible, and she had to do something.

So she put on the walking shoes that she hadn’t used since Charlie had died, and zipped up her old dog-walking jacket. Some time in the night the gale had subsided, but a stiff wind still blew off the steely-grey sea and heavy clouds jostled over the hilltops. It was hard to believe that it was June already. In Ellsborough she would have expected sunshine at the least, but here she was just glad that it wasn’t raining.

Worry and exhaustion had created a tight band behind her eyes, and her head throbbed, but Mallory kept her head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She made bargains with herself. If Torr’s all right, I’ll never complain about anything again.

I won’t say a word when I see him, she promised herself. I won’t tell him how worried I was. I’ll be sweet and understanding and make him glad that I’m there to take him home. I’ll do anything as long as I find him.

On she plodded, with the wind whipping her hair about her face, and dark forebodings circling endlessly and uselessly around her brain. It took her over an hour to get to the end of the Kincaillie track and onto the single-track road that wound through the hills. Surely someone would come along and give her a lift now?

But she had walked a good mile or so before a glint in the distance caught her attention. A car was bowling along the road from Carraig, its metalwork flashing as the sun came out from behind a cloud for one brief, dazzling moment before it was swallowed up behind the greyness once more.

Mallory’s heart leapt with hope. It was coming from the wrong direction, but that didn’t matter. This was the Highlands, not Ellsborough. The driver would stop when he saw her and take her back to Carraig, or at least on to the nearest phone. The road was very narrow, but she went on to the next passing place and stopped to wait impatiently.

It seemed to take a very long time for the car to reach her, and she began to be afraid that it had turned off when the sound of an engine made her straighten and begin waving frantically as it came round the bend.

So convinced was Mallory by then that Torr had been in an accident, that it took a few moments for her to recognise the vehicle that braked hastily at the sight of her.

It stopped right in front of her and the driver wound down the window and leant out. ‘Mallory?’ said Torr in astonishment. ‘What on earth are you doing out here?’

Torr. Torr, with his dark blue eyes and his austere mouth and his dark brows contracted in a frown. Not being cut out of his car, or in a hospital bed, but whole and healthy, making the hills recede with the immediacy of his presence.

He was all right. That was all Mallory could think at first. She stared at him as if hardly daring to believe her eyes, only to find that the dizzying rush of relief was swiftly succeeded by white-hot anger.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, the desperate bargains she had made with herself utterly forgotten.

‘In Carraig.’

‘Carraig? Carraig?’ She glared at him. ‘What were you doing there?’

‘I spent the night at the pub-’ Torr started to explain, before she cut him off.

‘Do you mean to tell me that I’ve wasted all night worrying about you, and all the time you were in Carraig?’ Mallory was spluttering, practically gibbering with fury. ‘I suppose it was too much trouble to drive the last twenty miles!’

Torr drew an exasperated breath. ‘It wasn’t-’

‘Why would you bother, after all?’ She ignored him. ‘It was just me waiting for you. Just stupid old Mallory, who can’t climb mountains and isn’t any use for anything. Just your wife. What do I matter?’

‘I couldn’t get through.’ Torr had to raise his voice to interrupt her. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you. The storm blew down a couple of trees and the Carraig road was completely blocked, so I went back to the pub inn and spent the night there. I did try to phone you, but the lines were down too. There was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have walked,’ said Mallory, incandescent at the thought that she had been tossing and turning all night while Torr had been comfortably tucked up in bed at the pub, and no doubt sleeping soundly. He had probably been enjoying a good breakfast too, while she was trudging through the hills in search of him!

Torr stared at her. Her hair was wind-blown, her eyes dark and furious as she glared back at him.

‘Walked?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You wanted me to walk twenty miles through a storm in the dark, and then back again this morning to collect the car with all your shopping in it? You don’t think you’re being a touch unreasonable?’

‘Unreasonable! I’ll give you unreasonable!’ Mallory was beside herself by now, beyond thinking clearly. ‘You drag me up to the back of beyond to live in a ruin, and then abandon me so that you can spend a little quality time with your precious Sheena! That’s unreasonable! I’ve had a hellish night,’ she told him, her voice shaking. ‘I was stuck in the set of some horror movie on my own, with no phone and no way of getting help, but I was prepared to walk twenty miles!’

‘What for?’

‘To find out what had happened to you, of course! Did it never occur to you that I might be worried?’

‘Well, no,’ said Torr. ‘You made it fairly clear yesterday morning that you didn’t care whether I stayed away or not.’

‘I don’t care!’ shouted Mallory, the fear that she was about to humiliate herself completely by bursting into tears only making her angrier. ‘Not about you, anyway. I just needed you to come back with the car so I could leave this godforsaken place!’

There was an unpleasant silence, while the hills around them seemed to ring with her last furious words, then Torr let out an abrupt breath.

‘You’d better get in,’ he said, reaching across to open the passenger door. ‘Unless you want to carry on walking, of course,’ he added sarcastically, when Mallory hesitated.

After a moment, Mallory went round the front of the car and climbed in. There was no point in walking to Carraig for the sake of it, and she was too tired to walk back to Kincaillie just to make a point.

It was only when she slumped into her seat that Mallory realised just how tired she was, but she closed her eyes against the tears that threatened. There was no way she was going to start blubbing in front of Torr now.

He glanced at her as he put the car into gear. ‘Why are you so angry?’ he asked.

Wearily, Mallory opened her eyes, but averted her face. ‘I’m angry at this whole stupid situation,’ she said as she stared unseeingly at the heather-covered hillsides. ‘I never wanted to come to Kincaillie, and we both know that it’s only blackmail that keeps me here until I’ve paid off the money I owe you. In the meantime, I’ve got to live in a filthy, crumbling dump of a castle and work my guts out doing hard labour to pay off my debts!

‘As if that’s not enough, you swan off to Inverness and leave me all on my own in a nightmare,’ she finished sulkily. ‘You wanted to punish me by bringing me up here, didn’t you? Well, congratulations, you’ve succeeded! You couldn’t have thought of a better punishment than last night if you’d tried!’

Torr’s expression was set. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I was late leaving Inverness. My business took longer than I expected, but I should have realised that you would be scared.’

Mallory opened her mouth to tell him that she hadn’t been the slightest bit scared, but stopped herself just in time. Torr might wonder why she was complaining so bitterly about his absence if she had been perfectly all right. If she had been less frantic with worry perhaps she might have been more nervous, but as it was she hadn’t spared a thought to any imaginary horrors. She had only cared about Torr.

Not that she had any intention of telling him that.

‘Of course I was scared!’ she snapped instead. ‘Any normal person would have been! I suppose you think it was perfectly reasonable to expect me to spend a night on my own in a creepy castle?’

‘No, I don’t think that,’ said Torr in a level voice. ‘I can see that it must have been difficult for you.’

‘It’s all difficult.’

Mallory was cross with him for ducking out of the full-blown argument she was longing to have to relieve her feelings. She didn’t want him to be understanding now. She wanted him to be arrogant and disagreeable and annoying, so that she could remember just why she was so angry.

‘There’s nothing easy about being married to a man you hardly know and then being dragged off to the wilds of Scotland to live in three grotty rooms with no friends around, nowhere to go and nothing to do, just work and look at the rain and hide from the midges! I wish I could just go back to Ellsborough and be normal again!’

Torr kept his eyes on the road ahead, but as she finished he let out a strange little sigh. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you back to Inverness this afternoon, and you can get a train home.’

‘What?’ Mallory swivelled round to face him blankly.

‘If you want to go, go,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It was unreasonable to expect you to cope with the conditions at Kincaillie, so let’s call it a day. Our marriage was a mistake from the start. There’s no point in carrying on any longer.’

For a long, long beat of silence Mallory couldn’t speak. Torr’s calm announcement had been like a fist driving into her belly, and she was still reeling with the shock of it. Had she heard him right?

‘What about the money I owe you?’

‘You’ve worked hard,’ he said. ‘We’ll call it quits. You don’t have Charlie any more, so you can go and stay with your sister and make a fresh start, if that’s what you want.’

He seemed serious. Mallory turned back to stare through the windscreen, thrown into utter confusion by being suddenly granted the one thing she had wanted for so long.

‘Is it what you want?’ she asked.

Torr changed down to round a sharp bend. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a voice empty of all expression. ‘I think it will be better for both of us if you go.’

‘Well…fine.’ Mallory was feeling cold and rather sick. She had just been released from nine months of labouring. She ought to be feeling relieved, but she struggled to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘Great.’

They drove the rest of the way in a silence that reverberated with unspoken words. He wanted her to go. That was all Mallory could think. He wanted her to go, and she had no excuse to stay.

Torr parked the car exactly where he had done the night they’d first arrived at Kincaillie and switched off the engine. They both stared through the windscreen at the great door without speaking or moving, while the silence yawned around them.

‘What now?’ asked Mallory at last. Her voice sounded thin and reedy.

‘Why don’t you go and pack?’

‘Now?’

‘If I’m going to take you to Inverness I’d rather do it straight away,’ he said. He reached for the door handle. ‘I’ll stretch my legs on the beach while you get your things together. I know you haven’t got much.’

It was true. There wasn’t much. Mallory found the one case that she had brought with her and began emptying the drawers that she had cleaned out so carefully when she’d first arrived. Her hands moved steadily, but inside she was shaking. How had this happened? One minute she’d been promising anything if only she could see Torr alive, the next she had been in the middle of a furious argument.

And now he wanted her to go.

Like a zombie, Mallory went over to the wardrobe and pulled out the skirt that she had worn to the ceilidh. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she smoothed the skirt over her lap, remembering how it had felt swirling around her legs as she danced, how it had rucked up under Torr’s hands when he kissed her, how it had slithered to the floor as he undressed her.

That had been the first time they had made love. Her heart squeezed at the memory.

She would never touch Torr again. Not like that. She would never feel his mouth and his hands and the hard possession of his body, never wake in this bed with him warm and strong and safe beside her. If she closed her eyes she could picture him exactly. She knew every angle of his face, every line at the edges of his eyes. She knew how he frowned, how the stern mouth relaxed so unexpectedly into a smile, the way he brushed the dust from his clothes at the end of the day.

Mallory looked out of the window. She could see the apple tree where he had buried Charlie for her. The kitchen garden was flourishing. She had cleared and dug and planted, and still there was so much to do, but she was proud of it. It was her garden now. She’d had plans for more vegetables, and had thought it would be nice to plant some flowers next year too. But she wouldn’t be here.

She would be home at last.

But when she closed her eyes and thought about home she saw the kitchen, with its range and its worn table, and the shabby armchairs where she and Torr sat in front of the fire. She saw Kincaillie, settled squarely in the shelter of the mountains. She saw the sea and the islands, a hazy blue on the horizon. She heard the birds wheeling and crying on the breeze, and smelt the air, freshly rinsed by the rain.

This was home.

Slowly, Mallory laid the skirt on the bed and got to her feet.

Torr turned as her feet crunched on the shingle behind him. His face was set, but his voice was quite steady. ‘Ready?’

‘No.’ Mallory shook her head and he frowned.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said simply.

Torr stilled. They looked at each other in silence, the breeze lifting their hair and flicking white caps on the waves. Mallory could feel the sting of salt on her cheeks.

‘I thought you wanted to go back to Ellsborough,’ he said at last.

‘I thought I did too,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t until you said that I could go that I realised I didn’t want that at all.’

She turned to look out at the islands in the distance. ‘It’s true that there are lots of things I’ve missed about Ellsborough, and I may go on missing them, but if I go back there I will miss Kincaillie more. There’ll be no garden in Ellsborough, no sea, no mountains.’ She paused. ‘No you.’

There was a shattering silence.

‘Mallory-’ Torr began hoarsely, but she held up a hand to stop him.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she said.

‘Do you?’

‘Of course. We’ve talked about this before, and you’ve always been straight with me. You’re going to remind me that our deal was never about love. I know that. I know you’re in love with someone else, and because you’re the kind of man you are I know that you won’t stop loving her.’

‘No,’ said Torr with a strange, twisted smile. ‘I won’t.’

Mallory’s heart dipped, but she kept her chin up. ‘I’m not asking you to love me back, Torr. I just want to stay here with you and take whatever you have to give. I know it won’t be everything, but don’t make me go away. I couldn’t bear it.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I can’t bear the thought of being without you now.’

‘Isn’t that what you thought about Steve?’ He broke off as a spasm crossed her face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t fair.’

‘No, it was fair,’ Mallory insisted. ‘You’ve seen me utterly wretched about Steve, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t love him. I did, I loved him terribly, and when he left me I didn’t think I’d survive. But I did, and I’ve learnt that it is possible to love again. I don’t love you the way I loved Steve,’ she told him. ‘I was dazzled by Steve, swept off my feet by him. When I was with him it was like being in a perfect dream…and I learnt the hard way that a dream was all it was. It wasn’t real at all. But with you…’

Mallory gazed out to sea, trying to find the words to explain. ‘With you it’s different. Maybe you won’t believe me, but the way I love you is stronger, truer. I don’t think you’re perfect, the way I thought Steve was perfect.’

‘Thanks!’ Torr interjected a little wryly.

‘Well, you’re not easy,’ she pointed out. ‘But when I’m with you I feel safe and…and complete in a way I can’t explain.’ She paused. ‘Kincaillie isn’t perfect either. It isn’t romantic. It isn’t a dream. It’s cold and uncomfortable and isolated, and living here is hard work, and for a long time I thought I hated it, but when I went to pack just now I realised that I don’t hate it here all. I love it.’

She turned back to face him. ‘I don’t know how or when it happened, but Kincaillie is a part of me now-just as you’re a part of me, Torr.’

His expression was indecipherable, and apprehension tickled the base of her spine. What if he insisted that he wanted her to leave? She swallowed and straightened her shoulders.

‘I can accept that you don’t love me,’ she told him. ‘I’m just asking you to let me stay so that we can go on as we have been doing. I know I’m not the one you really want, but if you’re never going to be in a position to marry her…?’ She trailed off hopefully.

‘The thing is, she’s already married,’ Torr confided.

‘I see…and there’s no question of divorce?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then…why not have me as second best?’ asked Mallory, a hint of desperation in her voice.

Torr only shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not a man who settles for second best.’

‘Oh.’ Mallory turned back to stare blindly at the sea, her throat tight with disappointment and her eyes blurry with tears. She blinked them furiously away. ‘Oh. I see.’

‘Mallory…’ Torr took her hands and pulled her back round towards him, but she kept her face averted, not wanting him to see the humiliating tears that were trickling out of the corner of her eyes in spite of her best efforts to hold them back. ‘Mallory, look at me.’

Forcing her reluctant gaze to his at last, he looked down at her. ‘Don’t you want to know about the woman I love?’

As if she would want her nose rubbed in it! ‘I’d rather not,’ said Mallory stiffly.

‘Even if I tell you that she’s married to me?’

‘To you?’ She stared back into his eyes, confused. Surely he wasn’t trying to tell her that their marriage was bigamous? ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s very simple,’ said Torr. ‘I’m in love with my wife, and have been ever since I laid eyes on her.’

‘But I’m-’ Mallory began, still puzzled, then stopped abruptly, as if finding herself teetering on the edge of a precipice.

Torr smiled down at her, a smile that made her heart crack, and his fingers tightened around hers. ‘You’re my wife,’ he agreed.

Deep inside her something unlocked, and a terrifying hope crept through her. ‘Me?’ she almost whispered.

‘Of course it’s you,’ he said. ‘It’s only ever been you. How could you ever be second best?’

‘You’re in love with me?’ Mallory couldn’t quite take it in. Or perhaps she didn’t dare to believe what she was hearing-didn’t dare to trust that this wasn’t a cruel joke when Torr’s laugh would be all it took to send her toppling into the abyss.

‘Yes,’ said Torr, and took her firmly in his arms to convince her, with a kiss that sent her tumbling over the edge anyway-but instead of plummeting into despair, her heart took wings and soared into dazzling light.

Mallory clung to him, terrified of discovering that this was just a wonderful dream, kissing him while she could, before she woke to cold reality.

But his mouth tasted like Torr’s, and his lips were as slow and sure and wickedly exciting as Torr’s, and when she pressed into him he was so warm and solid and he felt so right that she knew that it really was Torr, kissing her because he loved her. And, oh, it was so wonderful to be able to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him again, to feel his arms closing hard around her, holding her so tight she was giddy with the joy of it.

When they broke for breath at last, she buried her face in his throat, and Torr laid his cheek against her hair and told her he loved her again, and Mallory finally let herself believe that it was real. She was in Torr’s arms, and there she could stay.

She pulled back slightly to look up into his face. ‘I love you,’ she told him shakily, and this time the tears that trembled on the end of her lashes were tears of happiness.

‘And I love you,’ he said. ‘I’ve always loved you, Mallory. I always will.’

Mallory’s eyes were shining as she smiled and kissed him again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked as they sat down on the shingle, careless of the stones and the cool breeze.

‘Because I knew that you were in love with Steve.’ Torr settled himself more comfortably and pulled her close into his side. ‘I’ll never forget when I first met you.’

‘I came to the house to talk to you about a design scheme for your interior,’ she remembered, snuggling into him. ‘I thought you were very stern!’

‘I was. I wasn’t the kind of man who fell hopelessly in love at all. My first marriage was a disaster, and none of the other women I’d known had made me think that anything more than a brief, physical relationship was worth the hassle. I had money, I had sex. Why would I need love?

‘And then you walked into the house that day,’ said Torr, ‘and everything changed. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were throwing open fabric books and showing me wallpaper samples, and your face was alight with enthusiasm. You were so vivid, so beautiful,’ he remembered, stroking the breeze-blown hair from her face, his voice deeper and warmer than Mallory had ever heard it.

‘You made the house come alive, and when you left everything seemed cold and flat. I wanted you the way I’d never wanted anyone before.’

‘I had no idea.’ She put her hand on his thigh, and the realisation that now she could touch him wherever and whenever she wanted made her shiver with delicious anticipation.

‘Why should you? You were too wrapped up in Steve to notice me. It was obvious that I was just another client to you, and I told myself there was no point in pursuing you. You weren’t available, so I tried to put you out of my mind, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I only invested in Steve’s wretched company because it gave me an excuse to see you,’ he confessed.

Mallory made a face. ‘And lost a fortune as a result!’

‘It was worth it,’ said Torr. ‘I got you instead.’

‘But I was so…’

‘Unhappy?’ He nodded. ‘I know. I could tell that you were broken by Steve’s betrayal, and I’m not proud of the way I used your debts as a lever. I stopped short of outright blackmail, but I could see that you had very few options, and selfishly I saw it as a chance for me. I’d always thought of myself as someone who got what he wanted, and I wanted you.

‘It seemed simple then,’ Torr told her. ‘I told myself that it was just desire I felt for you. I thought it would be enough just to have you, but of course it wasn’t. Our wedding night…I’ll never forget the repulsion in your face.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mallory, wincing at the memory. If only she had known then how much she would come to love him!

Torr lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a warm kiss into her palm. ‘I’m the one who should apologise to you,’ he said. ‘I effectively blackmailed you into marrying me and then forced myself on you. I’m not surprised you were revolted, but at the time I was furious-with you for still loving Steve after the way he’d treated you, but most of all with myself.’

‘With yourself? Why?’

‘Because I’d been a fool. I’d known how you felt about Steve, but I’d let myself believe that somehow you would miraculously fall in love with me. I’d wanted you to be someone you weren’t,’ said Torr, remembering. ‘I had this fantasy about you, and then I didn’t like it when I realised that you weren’t a fantasy, you were a real person, and you were deeply unhappy married to me. It seemed pretty clear that I was going to be unhappy too, and it was all my own fault.

‘I should have ended the marriage there and then,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never been good at admitting that I was wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Mallory. ‘I would never have come to Kincaillie if you’d done that. I would never have fallen in love with you.’ The thought made her shudder, and she kissed him with relief.

‘That’s true,’ Torr agreed, winding his fingers in her dark hair and kissing her back. ‘But it’s no excuse for treating you the way I did. I was so angry and disappointed and jealous of Steve, and I took it all out on you.’

‘So you were trying to punish me when you brought me to Kincaillie?’ She had been right about that, anyway.

‘Partly,’ he admitted. ‘But I really wanted just to see you here, too. Even if I couldn’t make the marriage work, I thought I would at least have memories of you here to keep me going. At the same time, I was hoping that a fresh start might help us make a go of it after all-I wasn’t thinking very logically at the time!’

‘It’s good to know that you’re not always cool and rational,’ Mallory teased him, and he snorted with laughter.

‘Cool is the last thing I’ve been since we got here! How could I be cool when I had to share a bed with you? You were so gorgeous, even in those long john things you used to wear. I’d lie there and feel how soft and warm you were, and I’d smell your perfume and my head would reel…You have no idea what those nights cost me!’

Mallory laughed. ‘They were just as bad for me, you know. I wish I’d known how you felt,’ she sighed, thinking of all those wasted sleepless nights.

‘I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid of spoiling things just when they seemed to be getting better. I didn’t want a repetition of our wedding night! Besides,’ he said, ‘I’d promised you that I wouldn’t touch you, so I couldn’t go back on that-especially when you kept telling me how much you still loved Steve.

‘I knew I wasn’t being fair to you. I’d trapped you into marriage and brought you somewhere you hated. I hadn’t realised quite how bad the conditions were until we got here,’ Torr admitted guiltily.

‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ said Mallory, resting her head against his shoulder and forgetting everything she had flung at him in her fury on the road to Carraig.

‘You say that now!’ Torr tweaked her nose. ‘That wasn’t what you said at the time, and you were right. You coped so much better than I thought you would, too, and that just made me feel worse.

‘I think that’s when I started to fall in love with you properly,’ he said. ‘Until then, I’d just seen you as a beautiful, desirable woman, but when we got here, and you got stuck into cleaning and painting, I fell in love with you as a person too. The more I got to know you, the more I loved you-and the more I realised just how selfish I was being. I wouldn’t have blamed you at all if you’d simply walked out-or driven out, maybe-so when you offered to stay for a year I knew that I was lucky that you were prepared to do that.’

‘I thought you were relieved that I’d decided to go!’

‘I did feel relieved,’ Torr confessed, ‘but only because I thought a year would give me a chance to persuade you to change your mind.’

‘You didn’t do much persuading,’ Mallory teased him. ‘I practically had to beg you to make love to me!’

‘I had to be sure you wanted it as much as I did,’ he said, and she smiled at him.

‘Are you sure now?’

‘Well, now you come to mention it, I might need a little convincing…’ said Torr, a laugh in his voice as he drew her down onto the shingle for a long, long kiss. ‘It’s just as well these stones are so uncomfortable,’ he murmured a little breathlessly into her ear at last, and Mallory laughed, not really caring about the discomfort as long as she was with him.

When Torr pulled her back to a sitting position, she leant blissfully against him once more. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me how you felt once we were sleeping together,’ she said.

‘You made such a point about it being just a physical relationship that I thought it would be easier for you if I pretended that was all it was for me too,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t at all sure how you felt. Sometimes I let myself hope that you were starting to feel something for me, but at others it seemed that you disliked me as much as ever.

‘Then Charlie died, and I hated seeing you suffer again.’ His arm tightened comfortingly around her. ‘I could see how lonely you were without him, and how much you missed having a dog. I knew you would never be able to replace Charlie, but I hoped that if I found you a new puppy it would be a distraction for you.’

Mallory straightened in the circle of his arm. ‘A puppy?’

He paused and tucked a strand of hair tenderly behind her ear. ‘That’s what I was doing in Inverness yesterday. Sheena told me that she knew of a litter of puppies, and I wanted to see if they were suitable before I offered to take you up to choose one.’

‘Oh.’ Mallory bit her lip guiltily, remembering how jealous she had been about his trip to Inverness. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I should have done, but I wanted it to be a surprise. More fool me,’ said Torr dryly. ‘By the time I left, I was wishing I’d never thought of it. You were so cool that I was beginning to think that I should just give up. And then when I met you on the road this morning, I realised that it was time to stop hoping. When I thought about the terrible night you must have had, I knew it wouldn’t be fair to make you stay any longer when all you wanted was to go back to Ellsborough. I just had to face the fact that I would lose you.’

His jaw worked at the memory. ‘That drive back this morning was the worst of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought of going inside with you, of sitting there in the kitchen, knowing that you were packing, and that when you came out you would be leaving me on my own for ever. I came down here and tried to imagine Kincaillie without you, but all I could see was an empty ruin and an empty future.’

Torr laid his palm against Mallory’s cheek and traced the outline of her mouth tenderly with his thumb. ‘I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to bear Kincaillie if you weren’t here. I’d decided that I would follow you back to Ellsborough and start again there, try and build a proper relationship from scratch if I could persuade you to give me another chance. We can still do that, if that’s what you want,’ he said, but Mallory shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘This is where I belong now. It’s where we both belong. I didn’t realise how much I loved it here until I had to face the thought of leaving. Last night was awful-but not because Kincaillie is isolated or scary. It was because I was afraid I might never see you again and I’d never had a chance to tell you how much I loved you.’

A smile that left her dizzy with happiness started in Torr’s eyes and spread over his face. ‘Tell me now,’ he said.

‘Take me back to bed and I will,’ said Mallory, and Torr hauled her to her feet and helped her up onto the springy turf above the beach. The hills rolled into a blue haze in the distance, and behind them the sea glittered in a burst of sunshine as she headed back to Kincaillie with her husband, to the warm, wide bed and the future they would share, together.