Jessica Hart - Newlyweds of Convenience

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.’