“He would”—contemptuously.
“He didn’t go so far as to claim his acquaintance, but he says he’s Kilmuir of Kilsay. He added that he knew his wife intimately—spoke of her as ‘Kitty Kilmuir.’ ”
“And I bet if she came here she wouldn’t know him. What a sweep the man is!”
The two moved away, and the voices faded.
His wife. . . . Kitty Kilmuir.
Wondering why she had assumed that Nicholas John Kilmuir was unmarried, halting curiously between relief and dismay, Susan started to her feet. . . .
Then she sank down again and stared at the floor.
Her impulse had been to find Kilmuir at once and tell him the truth. Not all of it, of course, but enough to make him her friend—a present help in her trouble. But Susan Crail was no fool. Life was a stern creditor. If she invoked the sympathy of the man she loved, touched his strong hand, called up the kindness of his steady brown eyes—these things would have to be paid for in blood and tears. As it was, even if Labotte vanished, she would still have to try to forget. . . . Nicholas Kilmuir. There was a scourge waiting. Was it worth her while, for the sake of a little relief, deliberately to load the cords? Wasn’t it better to——
“No,” said Susan suddenly. “It isn’t better. What is better is to take what you can get. I can’t take him, because somebody else has done that. But I can be with him and see him and hear his blessed voice. Damn what the future holds. The present’s the thing.”
She rose and stepped out of the shadow—almost into the arms of ‘the Duke of Culloden’ and Labotte.