Dorothy Eden Read Online Free Page A

love.”
    “Then it must have been a long three years for you since you last saw Mr. Blaine.”
    How could she tell him that she had only really fallen in love with Paul since getting that last letter, that unexpected tender passionate letter that said all the things she ever wanted a man to say? He would laugh at that confession.
    “Oh, it was. Terribly long. But Paul explained about that. He had been in hospital a lot of the time having skin grafts, and he didn’t think it was fair to write to me until he knew that he would be all right. He had bad face wounds, did he tell you? I completely understand how he felt. He would be so sensitive about it until he was presentable again.” Suddenly she was saying a little uncertainly, “I suppose I shall recognise him?”
    “I didn’t know him in the past,” Davey said. “He has only faint scars now.” He added in his slightly contemptuous voice, “You don’t need to be nervous, Miss Paget.”
    “Apparently I don’t. Especially since some woman seems to be crazy about him. Tell me honestly, Davey, have you any idea who she would be?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “Oh. All right. I’ll find out. The silly little scrap. Then would you tell me what the household at Heriot Hills is. I know so little about Paul’s family, really. He has never talked much about it. But then we’ve scarcely had time. I only knew him for those few days when he was in England on leave.”
    “I suggest you wait until you get there, Miss Paget, and see for yourself.”
    His words were spoken in the same light indifferent tone, but suddenly, for no comprehensible reason, Julia’s nervousness, the uncertainty she had felt while waiting in the gloomy hotel, had come back. Her intense excitement, like a potent drink, had worn off, and she felt small, alone, and very cold. This man would tell her nothing, and all the time the wet shining road was taking her nearer to the house that contained a man whose face had changed so that she might not recognise it. And not recognising it, she might find that she was no longer in love.
    He had noticed her shivering.
    “Are you cold? You’d better put my coat on.”
    “I’m all right.”
    “Nonsense. It will get colder all the time. We’re getting near the snowline. Like to get out and have a look?”
    He stopped the car, and unwillingly she climbed out. The moon was rising, and low hills lay in a long series of black humps against a white background that was not sky but the snow line of the Alps. A chilling wind that seemed to taste of snow and ice blew against her face. Tussocks rustled on the hillside with an incomparably lonely sound. There was the occasional high quavering bleat of a lamb, a lost and eerie sound.
    With an almost desperate effort Julia thought of her wedding dress, packed carefully in the bag in the back of the car. But now its snowy folds seemed to her like those mountain peaks, pure and infinitely cold. Her shivering became uncontrollable.
    “I hate it!” she muttered. “It’s primeval.” The wind tossed the words from her mouth, and she didn’t think he heard them. In a moment she was glad. It was betraying her nervousness, and that she never did. She was proud. She accepted adventure.
    She felt a coat being flung round her shoulders.
    “Put that on,” Davey Macauley said crisply. She clutched at it and scrambled back into the lighted car. In that moment he, and the warmth of the coat, were the only things she had in that lonely spot. She looked at him as he followed her in, seeing him for the first time, the dark hair slicked down, the ears that stuck out like a schoolboy’s, the flat mouth drawn down at the corners, the slanted eyebrows and long thin nose. He caught her glance. For a moment the sardonic almost contemptuous humour shone in his eyes. Then he switched off the dashboard light. “Come along then, Queen of Sheba.”
    For the rest of that long journey up and down hills, round horseshoe curves, past the