Northern Sunset

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

MAGNUS had been right, Catriona reflected, staring helplessly at the mist which crept insidiously across the harbour as she watched. He had warned her this morning, with older-brother concern, that sea-fog had been forecast and that she would be wiser not to leave Falla, but they were low on stores and Christmas wasn’t very far away. The old days when the laird’s house on Falla rang to laughter over the Christmas season might have died with their parents; they might be as poor as the poorest of their crofters, but Catriona refused to let the season pass without at least some attempt to celebrate. Hence the trip to Lerwick.

Magnus had protested that she could never manage their dilapidated old fishing boat alone, but Catriona had laughed. She knew the waters round Falla and the other Shetland isles well enough to sail them in her sleep, even if the huge oil drilling platforms anchored far out to sea were new landmarks. Her normally generously curved lips tightened sharply. Oil—how she hated that word and all it stood for! Her eyes clouded as she thought of Magnus, her once strong and fearless brother, whom she had hero-worshipped all through her teens and who had willingly taken the place of their parents when they had been drowned in a sailing accident.

She searched the sea again. The meagre stores which were all her slender purse would stretch to were already on board. She had felt the sympathy behind the kind enquiries as people asked after Magnus. There had been Petersons on Falla since the first Norse invasion of the islands, and Catriona knew that the surreptitious slipping of little extras in among her shopping sprang not from pity but from a genuine compassion. The people who lived on these islands of the far north had a deep appreciation of the hardships resulting from incapacity of the breadwinner of the family. The seas round the Shetlands were rich in fish, but the waters were treacherous and the winds which continually blew over them resulted in fierce storms.

There was scarcely a family on the Shetlands who did not have some grim story to relate of lives lost and limbs maimed.

It was no use, Catriona acknowledged, she was not going to be able to leave Lerwick tonight. Making sure that the yaol was properly secured, she headed away from the harbour, a small, finely built girl, with silver-blonde hair curling on to her shoulders, an inheritance from those far distant Norse ancestors who had claimed these windswept islands as their own. The inhabitants of the Shetlands might no longer speak the ancient Norn tongue, but in tradition and outlook they were closer to their Scandinavian cousins than their dour Scots neighbours.

Only Catriona’s eyes showed the Celtic blood of her mother, the soft-spoken redhead her father had met in Edinburgh during his university days and married; they were grey, the colour of the seas round Falla, changing with the light from softest grey to deep violet. More than one male had been captivated by Catriona’s delicately moulded beauty during her brief years in London training as a librarian, but when Magnus had had his accident she had ruthlessly cut herself off from that life and returned to their childhood home to be with the brother who needed her so badly.

She paused to stare blindly into a brightly decorated shop window, her eyes misting with tears. It was all very well for Mac to assure her that there was nothing physically wrong with Magnus and that it was a mercy that he had not been killed or seriously injured, but the man who now sat staring into space in the huge, dilapidated house on Falla was not the brother Catriona remembered from her youth, alive and alert, teasing, driving her mad with his older-brother superiority and then flying home from Oman that terrible night when they brought the news that their parents had been drowned off Bressay.

She would never forget his care and understanding then; he had been her rock in the storm of grief which had swept her, his concern total and healing, and now that it was her turn to be his rock she would not desert him.

Mac had warned her that it might be years, if ever, before Magnus recovered. He had brought them both into the world, and Catriona knew he shared her helpless grief for Magnus. They had all been so proud of him when he went to Oxford… There was no point in dwelling on the past, Catriona reminded herself. After his accident Magnus had been offered an office job by his company, but he had refused it, retreating to Falla where he could shut out the rest of the world and forget.

A night in Lerwick was an expense she would rather have avoided, Catriona reflected. Without Magnus’s salary their only source of income was a small pension. Even if she were qualified there was no employment on Falla for a librarian; the crofters fished their living from the sea, and Catriona had learned to close her eyes to the deterioration of their once luxurious home.

She paused outside the hotel she had used on happier occasions—those infrequent visits home from London when Magnus had managed to get leave to coincide with hers. He had been very generous in those days, giving her an allowance as well as paying for her education. Although only seven years separated them he had willingly shouldered the responsibility of providing for her after their parents’ death. Carefully checking the money in her purse, Catriona went inside. Like most of the hotels in Lerwick, it was run as a family concern. The girl behind the reception desk remembered Catriona and greeted her with a smile.

“How’s your brother?” she enquired sympathetically. “But he was lucky, wasn’t he?”

If one considered that lying paralysed on the ground while all around one the world went up in flames, filled with the screams of the dying, then yes, Magnus had been lucky, Catriona acknowledged, but the girl meant well, so she smiled and asked if they had a vacant room.

“I’m sorry, Miss Peterson, but we don’t. You see, a party of oilmen flew in from Aberdeen this afternoon and can’t get out again until the weather lifts.”

Oilmen! Catriona grimaced distastefully over the word. The Shetlanders had learned to live with their intrusion into their lives; to accept their busied coming and going from the mainland to the huge oil terminal at Sullom Voe and the sea-rigs.

“Look,” the receptionist suggested helpfully, “I’ll ask them if they’ll mind doubling up and leaving a room free for you. I’m sure they won’t. They’re out at the moment, but I’ll get someone to shift their things and tell them when they come back.”

She spoke with the assurance of someone inured to climatic conditions which could suddenly imprison travellers against their will, and pored thoughtfully over the register, before pencilling out a name and writing Catriona’s in its place.

She herself had no compunction about depriving the man of his room. And besides, hadn’t Magnus often said that oilmen could sleep anywhere?

She hadn’t bothered to bring a change of clothes, but there was a chemist’s where she could buy a toothbrush and other necessities and she could rinse her undies out to dry overnight. Thanking the girl with a grateful smile, she slipped out once again into the murky afternoon.

It was dark already, but she found her way unerringly to the small chemist’s. He too asked after Magnus, and Catriona supplied him with a noncommittal answer. In her handbag was the prescription Mac had given her for the sleeping tablets Magnus needed to stop him having those terrible nightmares where he relived his accident over and over again. Physically her brother was as he had always been, but mentally he was maimed and crippled, a victim of the paralysing fear inherited from his accident.

Shivering, Catriona stepped out into the street, her vivid imagination picturing the scene; the unending oil-fields and tank farms; the hot desert sands; all so clearly drawn for her in Magnus’s letters home. For as long as Catriona could remember he had wanted to be a geologist, and he had loved his job with United Oil. But to them he was just another employee, expendable and unimportant. Impotent anger flared in her eyes, her hatred of the huge oil conglomerates and everything they stood for overwhelming her. Magnus had once been a part of that world; the world of oil and tough, hard men, but all that had ended in the Middle East on a night of terror and pain when the black sky had turned scarlet with hungry flames and people sitting safely behind desks many thousands of miles away had been too greedy to take precautions to remove their men from the danger of Arab insurrectionists, who had swept the huge oilfield with bombs and machinegun fire, and Magnus, stunned by a vicious blow from a rifle, had had to lie helpless behind the flames until he was rescued.

The mental agony he had endured could never be atoned for, and Catriona’s hatred for the men who had allowed this to happen to her brother had grown over the months of watching him fight against the fear that night had bred deep inside him.

Until it was conquered he refused to return to his work, claiming that he was useless as a geologist while he carried this terrible burden of fear and that he could not trust himself in any situation where men’s lives might be at stake, not to turn and flee like a terrified child.

It was this knowledge of the extent of his fear which tormented him night and day, and which Mac and Catriona were fighting so desperately to overcome, and as her brother lost heart, Catriona’s rage grew. If United Oil had been more caring of its employees and less greedy for its oil Magnus would not be hiding himself away on Falla, blenching at every mention of other oilmen, sickened by the thought that he could no longer include himself among their number. Oilmen were fearless; and it was this myth which Catriona was fighting so valiantly to explode. Everyone knew fear; and she was sure that once Magnus could be brought to accept this he would be well on the way to recovery.

Mac had said that Magnus might recover faster among other people, but her brother flatly refused to leave Falla, sinking into the withdrawn silences which so dismayed Catriona as she remembered how he used to be. What he was suffering from was something akin to shell-shock, or so Mac had told her. Catriona only knew that she would give anything to have her brother restored to his old self. He had not even demurred when Catriona told him that she was giving up her training course in order to be with him—a sure sign that he was not his normal self.

The small hotel foyer was crowded when Catriona got back. A group of men stood by the bar, their presence filling the room; tall, rugged and dressed in worn denims and tough leather jackets, they proclaimed their trade to Catriona without her needing to overhear a word of their conversation. Oilmen! She turned her back on them with bitter eyes. She hated them and everything they stood for. That her hatred was illogical she could not deny, but that did not make it any the less real, and she acknowledged that its existence was due to Magnus’s accident.

One of them, a tall burly redhead, caught her eye as she squeezed past on her way to the reception desk. She gave him a freezing look in response to his openly admiring smile and as she turned her head, saw him address a comment to the man standing beside him facing the bar. The man turned, green eyes raking Catriona assessingly, a helmet pushed back on thick dark hair, his appearance that of a man accustomed to giving rather than receiving orders. Something in his glance made Catriona’s anger quicken; it was not appreciative as his redheaded companion’s had been, but rather dismissive, and Catriona felt herself flushing beneath his cool appraisal. The redhead spoke and his eyebrows rose, and Catriona knew beyond doubt that she was the subject of their conversation. His eyes dwelt for a moment on the soft thrust of her breasts beneath the thick Shetland wool jumper she was wearing and were then averted as he made some response.

What had they been saying about her? Catriona wondered as she reached the reception desk. Since her return to the island she had had nothing to do with the oilmen, but she had heard surprisingly good reports of them from the crofters and knew that several of the local girls had found themselves boyfriends from their ranks. There had been no tentative, shy admiration in the look she had received, though. It had been openly and blatantly sardonic. Long after the man ought to have been forgotten and her dinner had been consumed, Catriona found him lingering intrusively in her thoughts. The noise from the bar was steadily growing in volume; signs that the oilmen were enjoying themselves and obviously intended to continue doing so, and rather than return to the bar Catriona decided to go straight to her room.

The owner of the hotel was behind the reception desk and greeted her like an old friend. She asked for her key and checked the weather forecast for the morning. As she had hoped, it was good.

“You’ll get nothing like this on Falla?” Richard Nicholson murmured, glancing towards the bar.

“No, thank goodness!”

The asperity in Catriona’s voice made him frown.

“They’re no a bad bunch really. Noisy perhaps, but it’s natural that they should want to let off steam after a turn on the rigs. You’ll have been stocking up for Christmas,” he commented when Catriona made no response. “How is Magnus?”

“Getting better,” Catriona replied noncommitally. “Well, I’d best be on my way to bed. I’ve got an early start in the morning.”

They chatted for a few more minutes before Catriona managed to escape when the telephone rang. Her bedroom was a double with one huge bed, some old-fashioned furniture and a washbasin in one corner. She mentally reviewed the long trek to the bathroom and the danger of lurking oilmen and decided to make do with a thorough wash. It was too early to go to bed and she regretted the large package of paperbacks stowed on the boat. She had a newspaper in her handbag and she unearthed it, reading all the local news with a sense of nostalgia. When she was a child a visit to Lerwick had been a much looked forward to treat. Her parents had been comfortable rather than wealthy, but following their death the shares from which her father had received his main income had dropped in value, and it had been just as well that Magnus had been working. They did, of course, receive small rents from the crofters who farmed Falla, but these were tiny; a mere drop in the ocean when compared with the costs of running the Great House.

The noise from downstairs seemed to increase rather than diminish. Locking the door and placing the key on the dressing table, Catriona stripped off and rinsed her undies out before placing them by the hot radiator.

Fortunately the bedroom was pleasantly warm, but by the time she was ready for bed she was beginning to shiver. She could hardly sleep in her jeans and jumper, she decided ruefully, eyeing her damp underclothes as she slid beneath the cotton sheets, and yet she felt decidedly vulnerable lying beneath the covers with nothing on.

Her last thought as sleep claimed her was of her journey home and her sincere hopes that the weather would lift. She could not afford to spend another night in Lerwick.

She awoke with a start, staring round the room for the origins of the sound which had disturbed her sleep, and then froze as she found it; all six foot odd of it, leaning against the closed bedroom door.

“Well, well, what a surprise,” a deep male voice drawled mockingly. “But I think you’ve got the wrong room. Alex is down the hall.”

He moved quickly—so quickly that Catriona barely had time to grasp the bedclothes protectively around her as he bent to yank them back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she gasped furiously, only too aware of his intention as he loomed over her, his fingers tightening on the covers. Her heart jolted painfully as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she saw the unmistakable features of the dark-haired man from the bar, minus his helmet but still wearing his air of casual arrogance. “I’m the one who should be asking you that,” he replied imperturbably. “How did you get in here, and just what the hell do you think you’re doing? If I want a woman I’m perfectly capable of finding myself one.”

Dark colour surged over Catriona’s pale skin as she realised the import of what he was saying. He thought she was actually waiting for him!

“Like I said,” he drawled in hard tones, “Alex is sleeping down the hall. I’ll give you two minutes to get out of my bed and into his, otherwise I call the manager.”

Catriona’s mind whirled, her first stammered words wildly different from the cold snub she had intended to deliver, as she stammered anxiously:

“I can’t… I’m not dressed…”

The look in his eyes made her bite her lip in mortification. Of all the stupid things to say—but there was something about lying here completely naked beneath these sheets, with this sardonic brute of a man standing over her hurling all manner of unwarranted accusations at her, that made her feel decidedly at a disadvantage. What she ought to have done, she decided, simmering with anger, was to call his bluff and demand that he did call the manager. His room indeed! And where had he got the key?

That was answered with his next words.

“I suppose I ought to have been prepared for something like this when they couldn’t find my key and had to use the pass-key, but like I said, little lady, I do my own hunting. Now get dressed and get out of here!”

He stood back from the bed, arms folded over a broad chest which tapered to lean hips and long, well muscled legs, his stance plainly that of a man determined to have his own way.

“You get out!” Catriona demanded breathlessly, suddenly finding her voice, and ignoring the warning look in his eyes with a reckless disregard for danger. “This is my room,” she told him firmly, ignoring the sardonic expression with which he was studying her. “If you don’t believe me, go down and ask at reception. They were fully booked and said that they were going to ask someone to double up.”

“Very plausible,” he scoffed. “How do I know that I can believe you? For all I know you could be some cheap little tart intent on making some easy money.”

Catriona gasped and would have shot upright in protest, if she hadn’t remembered just in time how badly she needed the protection of the bedclothes.

“How dare you!” she seethed. “You come in here, making vile accusations, demanding that I leave, threatening to call the manager. If anyone’s going to call him, it will be me—to have you thrown out!”

“Be my guest,” her persecutor goaded, holding open the door. Catriona glanced wildly from the empty passage to her damp underclothes, well out of reach, and then glared angrily across the room.

“Go away and let me get dressed and then I will.”

“And let you escape scot free to go and play your tricks on someone else?” He shook his head sardonically. “I’ve told you already, you should have picked Alex. He would have been far more amenable.”

Catriona took a deep, steadying breath. Alex presumably was the burly redhead. “And I’ve told you,” she announced through gritted teeth, “you’ve got it all wrong. This is my room. You’re the intruder.”

Tears weren’t far away, and the green eyes narrowed suddenly, his expression changing. “Convince me. If you’re not just a local girl out for a good time, who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“My name is Catriona Peterson. If you don’t believe me ask the owner of the hotel,” Catriona told him, enraged at being forced to undergo this inquisition. “And if it hadn’t been for this sea-mist I’d have been on my way back to Falla by now.”

“Falla?” The sharp enquiry startled her. “You live there?”

When Catriona nodded his expression seemed to change, but he made no further mention of the island, saying dryly instead, “Well, Catriona Peterson, always supposing you’re telling me the truth, how do you suggest we resolve our present dilemma, which is, as I see it, that the two of us are both laying claim to this one bed?”

No apology for his earlier insults, Catriona seethed inwardly. Typical of his breed, though, the big tough guy who could never admit to being wrong.

“No dilemma,” she assured him curtly. “I suggest you go downstairs and check with reception and they’ll tell you who you’re sharing with.”

It was plain that he wasn’t used to being given orders. His eyes gleamed in the dark, and their expression made Catriona shrink back against the bed.

“Oh no,” he said softly. “This is my room, booked in my name, and I don’t intend giving it up to share a bed with Alex.” He moved towards the door as he spoke, closing it firmly and turning the key before coming across to the bed and stripping off his leather jacket.

Appalled, Catriona stared disbelievingly at him.

“You’re not… You’re not sleeping here!” she managed to get out at last, furious with herself for making the words seem more of a question than a statement.

“Why not?” came the cool response. “After all, it is my room, and if I’m going to have to share with one of you, I think I prefer you to Alex. You could, of course, always leave,” he taunted. His fingers were on the buttons of the checked plaid shirt he was wearing, and Catriona stared desperately at the door, bitterly regretting her fastidious refusal to sleep in her underwear. In that at least she would have been able to leave the bed and grab her clothes. Even sleeping downstairs in a chair would be preferable to sharing a bed with this man!

“What’s the matter?” he jeered as she remained immobile.

She wasn’t going to ask him to leave so that she could get dressed—he would probably refuse anyway and take delight in humiliating her by doing so. Her face burned as she dwelt on having to endure him watching her dress.

“If you had the slightest scrap of decency you would leave this room right now,” she announced in freezing accents, trying to read his reaction to her words.

It shocked her with its comprehensive grasp of her feelings. “But then men like me don’t have, do they?” he demanded softly. “At least not in your eyes. What is it with you?”

Catriona moved slightly, the moonlight briefly touching her hair, turning it silver. His eyes followed the movement, widening slightly.

“So it’s you…” he drawled in recognition. “I saw you in the bar….”

“And I saw you,” Catriona whipped back. “And you’re quite right, I don’t like men like you. I detest them, and everything they stand for.” Her lip curled faintly as she forgot her fear. “You’re quite safe with me—I wouldn’t touch you for all the oil in the North Sea!”