she was enjoying herself.
It was a bright, blowy day, and the wind chased billowing clouds across the sun so that the hillside was chequered with sunlight and swiftly moving shadows. Mallory had always found the mountains grim and intimidating before, and she had avoided even the lower slopes on her walks with Charlie, but today there was something exhilarating about being so high up, with Torr leading the way and Charlie beside her.
The air was sweet with the smell of heather, and birds called with thin, peeping cries across the hillside. Mallory was almost dizzy with the space and the bright light. There was a kind of energy up there, raw and primitive, and she felt bigger, taller, as if she were expanding with every step upwards.
It was steep walking, and by the time they reached the shoulder of the hill she was hot and puffed, in spite of the wind that had whipped colour into her cheeks, and glad to sit down on a rock for a while. Charlie drank thirstily from the small burn that gurgled busily down the mountainside and flopped, panting, at her feet.
Torr had brought a flask of coffee and some sandwiches, and Mallory ate ravenously. It was only a cheese and chutney sandwich, but right then it was the best thing she had ever tasted.
From her rock she could see Kincaillie, far below, and the sea glittering silver in the sunlight. Beside her, Torr drank his coffee, the wind lifting his hair and his eyes narrowed against the bright light. Mallory looked at his strong, brown hand, curled around the lid of the flask, and the memory of how it had felt against her skin that morning made her feel hollow inside.
He looked somehow right up here in the hills, she decided. There was something insensibly reassuring about his capacity for stillness, about his solidity and his strength and his self-containment. Steve had never been still, she remembered. He’d always been gesticulating or fiddling with a pen or fidgeting. It wasn’t that Torr had less energy than Steve. He was focused rather than flamboyant, his power more contained.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Torr, who had been watching her face without Mallory realising.
She turned her head to look at him. ‘Steve,’ she said after a moment. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.
‘Ah.’ It was Torr’s turn to look at the sea far below. There was a pause. ‘Are you having regrets about last night?’ The words sounded as if they had been forced out of him.
‘No.’ Mallory shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I had a good time last night.’ She hesitated. ‘I think we made the right choice, don’t you?’
‘That rather depends on which choice you mean,’ said Torr.
‘To make the most of our time together,’ she said, puzzled by the ironic undercurrent in his voice. What other choices had they made?
He kept his eyes on the view. ‘You mean before you go back to Ellsborough next year?’
‘Yes.’ Mallory could hear the note of doubt in her own voice. Sitting up here in the clear air, with the hills around her and the sea spread out like a glittering sheet below, her life in Ellsborough seemed very far away.
But of course she still wanted to go back to it. Last night had been wonderful, but that was because it was simply a healthy physical attraction, uncomplicated by love or need. That was how Mallory wanted it to be, anyway. She had been too hurt by Steve to risk her poor battered heart again any time soon.
‘We can enjoy now because we know it’s not for ever,’ she said, uncomfortably aware that she sounded as if she was trying to convince herself more than Torr.
But what else could they do? Anything might seem possible up here, but she couldn’t live up in the hills for ever. It wasn’t realistic to think about a future with Torr. Even if she had been able to face lifetime in Kincaillie’s ruins, how could she ever be really happy when she knew that he was still in love with someone else?
No, it would never work. Much better to stick to a physical attraction that would run its course and leave it at that.
‘We can pretend for a year,’ she told Torr, ‘but we can’t pretend for ever.’
‘Pretend what?’
‘That there won’t always be two people between us. Steve and the woman you love. We can ignore them for a while, but they won’t go away. Can you really imagine a future when you’re happy without her?’
There was a long pause. Torr sighed and upturned his mug to empty the last of his coffee into the heather. ‘No,’ he said eventually, without looking at Mallory. ‘No, I don’t think I can.’
The long walk seemed to have tired Charlie out, and for the next few days he was very quiet. He lost his appetite and was happy just to sleep in the long grass while Mallory carried on digging in the kitchen garden.
‘I hope that walk wasn’t too far for him,’ she fretted to Torr. ‘He’s always been so bouncy that I forget he isn’t a young dog anymore.’
‘Why don’t you get the vet to check him over?’
Mallory made a face. ‘I
Fortunately, the mention of the vet seemed to rejuvenate Charlie miraculously, and the very next day he seemed back to his old self. Mallory took him down to the beach and was reassured to see him bounding into the waves.
‘I think he’s fine,’ she said to Torr that evening, much relieved.
Privately she had wondered if Charlie was jealous that a large part of her attention had shifted to Torr, and she made a point of making an extra fuss of the dog, which made him very happy. When his tail was thumping and his eyes closed in ecstasy as she pulled gently at his ears, it was hard to believe that there was anything wrong with him at all.
The niggling worry about Charlie aside, Mallory was happier than she had been since before Steve left her. They were enjoying a spell of fine, dry weather, and it was impossible for her spirits not to lift when the sky was bright and blue and the air was soft and the sea glittered in the sunlight. The roofers were making progress, and with Dougal’s advice she was beginning to see some results in the garden. Mallory would never have believed that the back-breaking work of clearing and digging and planting could be so satisfying.
And then there was Torr.
Sometimes she felt quite dizzy when she looked at him. He might just be up on the scaffolding, talking to the builders, or filling the kettle, or brushing the dust from his hair at the end of the day, but the sight of him would make her heart flip and send the oxygen in a giddy rush to her brain.
And that was nothing compared to how her body reacted when he pulled off his clothes at night and reached for her with a smile. The very thought of that was enough to dry the breath in Mallory’s throat and set her senses churning and clenching with desire.
She was in lust with her own husband, Mallory acknowledged to herself. Embarrassingly so, in fact.
At least she wasn’t in love with him. That really
So Mallory kept a careful guard on her heart and told herself that she was happy to live day by day.
She was less happy when Torr informed her one evening that Sheena Irvine would be coming down from Inverness to see how the work was progressing.
‘We’d better give her a decent lunch,’ he said.
Mallory pursed her lips. ‘Why can’t she have a sandwich like the rest of us?’
‘Because she’s coming just for a day. It’ll be a long drive for her.’ Torr looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose we
‘I’ll make lunch,’ said Mallory quickly. She didn’t want Sheena staying the night! ‘I’ve got to go into Carraig anyway tomorrow, so I’ll get something there.’
‘Well, see if you can find something a bit more exciting than a sandwich,’ he said.
Why was he so determined to make a fuss of Sheena? Mallory wondered sourly. Remembering how blatantly Sheena had flirted with Torr, she had a good mind just to buy a tin of sardines and some sliced bread. On the other hand, perhaps this was a good opportunity to remind Sheena that Torr already had a perfectly good wife. She might not be able to climb a mountain, but she knew how to entertain. That was one of the reasons Torr had married her, after all.
So Mallory made fresh soup and a lemon tart, and she bought bread and cold meats and cheeses at the shop in
