The Canadian dismounted and came towards her.
“So we meet again?” he observed, taking off the wide-brimmed hat which he had found so inconvenient on the deck of the steamer.
It only accentuated his unsuitability for his present role, Christine thought angrily, annoyed by a sudden unmistakable confusion which sent the colour flying into her cheeks in a hot wave. It might be all very well for the Canadian prairies—necessary, in fact—but here, on Croma, it was an affectation, worn no doubt to single him out from the natives, who had more to do than ride a horse across the moors on a bright August day. Horses were practically unknown on the Islands, anyway, and this one could only have been brought in for its master’s pleasure. It was an obvious thoroughbred, and she tried not to remember how well and how naturally the man had sat in the saddle, as if horse and rider were really one.
“It was not my intention that we should meet,” she told him with icy deliberation, standing squarely in his path to block his way to the house.
“So it would seem.” He looked down at her, half amused, half puzzled by her reception of him, so that the flush deepened in her cheeks. “Why didn’t you tell me that you lived here when we met on the boat?” he asked. “It would have been only, courteous, to say the least of it.”
“At first,” she returned briefly, “I could not imagine that it concerned either of us where the other lived. I had no idea that you had bought the Nicholsons’ home and were hoping to buy mine.”
He looked grave for a moment, the green eyes narrowing.
“I was honest enough about it,” he reminded her. “Or, at least, I thought I was being honest. You did not tell me that you were bound for Croma and I didn’t think to ask. You seemed to me to. belong to the Islands as a whole, not to one particular island.”
“But now you know,” she said, “that I belong on Croma, that, whatever happens, this is my home.”
Her final decision about staying on Croma had been instantaneous. This man had made it a challenge. She could not allow him to defeat her, not when he had already defeated the Nicholsons.
She supposed that he was on his way to visit her grandmother with just that end in view, with his cheque-book in his pocket, no doubt, and it would give her the greatest pleasure in the world to stop him.
“I don’t suppose for one moment that you have come to pay a social call, Mr.—”
“Why not?” he queried. “And the name, by the way, is Sutherland—Finlay Sutherland.” He made her an odd little bow, half mocking, half amused. “I expect you already know that, though. You seem to have gone into my credentials pretty thoroughly since we last met.”
“I know about you,” she agreed, her lips quivering because, in some odd way, he seemed to have gained the upper hand of the situation without a great deal of trouble. She had felt it to be wholly in her favour, but now she was not so sure. “I know that you have offered my grandmother a tempting sum for Erradale,” she rushed on hotly, “but I can save you a journey. We are not going to sell, Mr. Sutherland. We never had any intention of selling. Erradale is our home.”
He said, with faint amusement in his voice:
“You consider me the complete ogre, don’t you? Not even the fact that Erradale was put tentatively on the market is an extenuating circumstance, I gather?”
“No,” she told him bluntly. “Nothing could excuse your new-world brashness, Mr. Sutherland. The fact that my grandmother was—in strained circumstances could only have been known to a very few people locally, so that I can’t even begin to guess how you came to hear about it. But I can give you our answer, and I am trying to do just that.”
She took hold of the great iron gate and would have attempted to close it between them, but it had been so long in disuse that it refused to move. Embedded in the weeds and gravel at the edge of the drive, it had probably not been closed for years. Few callers had ever been barred from Erradale, until now.
Finlay Sutherland smiled as he rested a hand on the reluctant gate.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to force my way in. For your information, though, I hadn’t come up here post-haste, with my cheque-book in my hand.” His smile deepened. “It was something of a social call, as a matter of fact,” he added wryly, “but now I guess I know where we stand.”
Christine felt suddenly nonplussed and almost guilty as she looked back into the green eyes. They held disappointment and a certain desire for retaliation, yet she knew that he considered the incident closed. He continued to look at her for a moment longer before he turned back towards his mount, whose sensitive ears were suddenly pricked at the approach of a stranger.
Someone was coming swiftly towards them from the direction of the house, a tall, fair man in a dark kilt with an air of power and conquest about him which belied the fact that he was the dispossessed laird of Ardtornish.
“Hamish!” Christine cried, and all her relief and surprise were in her voice. “Where have you come from?”
Hamish Nicholson gave her companion the briefest of glances as he took both her trembling hands in his.
“From your ancestral stronghold, Fair Lady!” he answered. “I’ve just come in with the mail to wish you a happy birthday—when it comes!”
Christine did not know how to answer him. The shock of his return, the utter unexpectedness of seeing him there in that moment, made words impossible. She could only stare at him and marvel while her heart beat suffocatingly close against her throat and the old fascination held her in thrall again.
Hamish looked magnificent standing there with the rugged background of the hills behind him and the wind in his hair! It had always been like this, as far back as she could remember, although Hamish had never looked like this nor spoken to her in quite this way before. He had teased her and laughed at her seriousness, but in so many ways he had always been just beyond her reach. The years which separated them in age had done nothing to help her to forget him, but now they did not seem nearly so formidable a barrier as they had done in the past. The gulf between twenty and thirty was not nearly so deep as the chasm which had yawned at her feet when she had been sixteen and he twenty-six, and the past two years had helped her.
Swiftly she wondered if she had begged to go to Paris with the hope in her heart that she might meet Hamish there or even run into him in London when she returned as a more sophisticated product of the world in which he moved. But, strangely enough, here they were meeting on the old, familiar ground, meeting at last on Croma, where they both belonged!
“You must have had a special invitation!” she laughed. “The official ones are not out yet.”
“I believe I invited myself,” he admitted shamelessly, his vivid blue eyes lingering with some surprise on her tawny hair. “I found myself in Edinburgh, on business, and Croma was not so far away.”
Had he come to Edinburgh to sign away his land, finally and irrevocably? She turned, remembering Finlay Sutherland for the first time, aware that Hamish would not know who he was and desperately embarrassed at. the thought of having to introduce them.
The Canadian had gone, however. While she had been swept back into the past, while she had greeted Hamish with every pulse in her body beating madly in response to an old infatuation, the new laird of Ardtornish had mounted his horse and rode away.
“He’s gone!” she exclaimed, and Hamish looked at her with the one-sided smile that was part of his charm and asked:
“Does it matter so much? You see, I have a fairly good idea who he is.”
All her sympathy, all the resentment she felt against the fate which had left him so cruelly dispossessed, welled up to express itself in eager words.
“I’m so sorry, Hamish!” she apologized. “Sorry that this had to happen on your first day on Croma. And I’m glad that I didn’t have to introduce you to Finlay Sutherland.”
He shrugged indifferently.
“You needn’t have worried,” he told her. “I shall have to meet him some time or other. One
can’t live on an island as small as Croma and not come up against—one’s neighbours.”
“Then—you’re going to stay?” Her heartbeats quickened and her grey eyes shone. “Are you, Hamish? Are you really going to stay?”
He smiled at her.
“For the time being,” he agreed, looking about him with an expectant gleam in his eyes. “The sale of Ardtornish has enabled me to pay my debts with a sufficient margin left over for me to indulge a whim or two,” he added.
“You mean the shark fishing?” She looked doubtful until she realized that it was a whim which would keep him by her side, at least for the remainder of the summer. “Archie Campbell still has his boat,” she added eagerly, “although it has been out of action for a while, Rory says.” She paused, thinking about Rory, wondering if the brothers had already met. “Hamish,” she asked, “have you seen Rory?”
“Not yet.” He put his arm about her shoulders in a comradely way as they turned towards the house. “I realize that I am not too popular in that direction just now, but what could I really do about Ardtornish? Come to think of it,” he mused idly, “what would Rory have done if he had been in my place and not just the critical second son?”
The thought that Rory would have fought to the bitter end, fanatically, seemed like treason and Christine pushed it determinedly to the back of her mind, feeling its disloyalty all the more as Hamish turned to smile at her. “Well,” he demanded, “are you ganged against me, too?”
“You know I’m not!” she protested. “How could I be?”
“Easily enough, I should say.” He tightened his arm a fraction, drawing her close. “Most people have taken it upon themselves to criticize me. Even Jane.”
“Jane was passionately fond of Ardtornish,” Christine said slowly. “But she was fond of you, too, Hamish.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Jane has taken it all pretty hard, but she’ll get over it. I met her in Edinburgh a week ago, still looking for a suitable job.”
“Rory said she was taking a secretarial course.”
“I believe so.” He didn’t seem very sure or particularly interested. Perhaps Jane had hurt him too deeply. “She hopes to come north for your birthday party. You see, she is taking her ‘bidding’ for granted, as I have done!”
“You knew that you were quite sure of an official invitation!” Christine smiled, made happy by the very fact that he was walking by her side. “It will be like old times, Hamish. Do you remember when you had your coming-of-age—”
She broke off, appalled by her own thoughtlessness in stressing the fact of his loss in the memory of happier times.
“You were only eleven then,” he grinned at her, helping her over the embarrassment of a difficult moment with accustomed ease. “You hadn’t quite made the grade of grown-up parties, but I do remember Jane and you in white frocks and pigtails sitting on the stairs and eating ice-cream till you were too sick to be presentable!”
She leaned her head back against his arm and the sound of their laughter echoed through the pine-scented air. When they came to the house she was glad that it looked welcoming, with its open door and its air of waiting there for just this moment, so that he might not be too keenly aware of returning to Croma as the dispossessed.
Watching him as he strode through the hall, where he had been a familiar figure long ago, she thought how easily and gracefully he wore the kilt and how effectively he had managed to disguise his heartache over Ardtornish.
In spite of his brave words, however, she knew how bitter he must feel. It was not, perhaps, the same bitterness as Rory’s, but it surely went as deep. After all, Hamish had been brought up from infancy to consider himself the heir, so that this might almost be a deadly blow.
It was not quite the same in her own case, she mused, as she followed him. She had come upon her own inheritance unexpectedly, as the result of war, but already she was beginning to realize what hereditary obligations really meant.
“Have you been to see my grandmother?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I’ve already paid my respects. She wants us to have tea with her, by the way.” He turned as Mrs. Crammond, the housekeeper, came from the direction of the kitchen passage with a laden tray in her hands. “Let me take that for you, Crammy,” he offered. “I feel completely responsible for all the extra weight.”
Agnes Crammond peered shortsightedly before she recognized him.
“I thought I couldn’t be mistaken in the voice,” she said without returning his smile. “So you’re back, Mr. Hamish? How are you, sir?”
“Fairly well, Crammy,” Hamish answered lightly, relieving her of her burden. “One hardly needs to ask about you. You grow—more mellow every day!”
Christine looked at Agnes, whose mouth was still pursed in a hard line, and then she remembered that Agnes didn’t approve of people very easily. She was difficult to please. But surely Hamish was doing his best to please her? She felt angry with the old servant and almost told her so.
“Your grandmother has been waiting her tea for a quarter of an hour,” Agnes informed her severely. “It’s ten minutes past four and the scones are near spoiled.”
“We’ll make it up to her!” Hamish promised confidently. “Besides, she’s probably been waiting for Rory, too.”
“Mr. Rory has come and gone,” Agnes informed him briefly. “He had work to do.”
“Of course.” Hamish smiled, turning to Christine. “I had forgotten that Rory was your new factor. How is he shaping?”
“My grandmother seems quite pleased with him,” Christine said, going forward to open Dame Sarah’s door. “I think she feels glad that he didn’t leave the island.”
“As I did?” His fair brows shot up and he looked down at her quizzically as she paused with her fingers on the handle of the door. “I’ve disappointed everybody, Chris. Everybody except you!”
She felt the colour run up under her skin, flooding her cheeks with unaccountable embarrassment.
“You couldn’t help it,” she excused him, leading the way into her grandmother’s room.
Dame Sarah was seated in her accustomed chair beside the window, and Christine had the odd sensation of the blue eyes fixed on her for a moment yet going beyond her. It was as if her grandmother saw far more than what went on within her own four walls up here in the turret room. It was almost as if she had the uncanny power of looking beyond the present and was curiously disturbed by what she saw.
Hamish dispelled the impression for her immediately, however. The ease with which he charmed people was remarkable. He passed their teacups and told them about London, and he even spoke about Ardtornish when the time came, mentioning its new owner without rancour.
“The fellow has paid his price and we shouldn’t have anything against him, even if he isn’t one of us,” he remarked magnanimously.
“He’s a Canadian and he was born here,” Dame Sarah said unexpectedly. “He’s a Sutherland of Scoraig.”
Christine looked her surprise.
“He told me he was born in Scotland,” she remembered, “but he didn’t go into details. Perhaps it was because he didn’t know I was travelling to Croma.” She looked across the room at Hamish and flushed. “We came over on the same steamer from Oban,” she explained.
“This is all very interesting,” he said. “I gathered that you had just met for the first time out there on the moor road just now.”
Dame Sarah turned in her chair.
“Was he on his way here?” she asked, as if she had been expecting such a call, out of courtesy, perhaps.
“I suppose he was,” Christine was forced to confess, “but I told him not to come.”
“You told him not to come?” her grandmother echoed, aghast. “But, my dear child, why?”
“I thought he was coming to make an offer for Erradale.” Christine got up and crossed to the window, remembering how wrong she had been about that. “I told him he would be wasting his time.”
There was
a moment’s silence until Dame Sarah asked: “And was that why he was coming?”
“He said not.” Christine swallowed hard. “He said it was a social call.”
“And so it would be.” Dame Sarah’s voice remained unchanged. “I had written to him, you see. But no matter! He will come again, I have no doubt.”
Christine’s face was scarlet now.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had written to him?” she demanded. “I have made rather a fool of myself, haven’t I?”
“Not necessarily, my dear. It would depend upon what you actually said,” her grandmother pointed out. “And you can explain to him when you meet him again.”
“I won’t apologize,” Christine flashed, “if that’s what you mean! He could have explained to me! He didn’t say you had asked him to call.”
Dame Sarah shook her head, but there was an understanding smile in her eyes.
“It was no more than a suggestion,” she said. “I thought we might be able to clear up a few difficulties that have arisen over rights of way and that sort of thing if we met and discussed it personally.”
“And he came, post-haste,” Christine suggested, “hoping to talk you into a sale before he had gone!”
Dame Sarah would not argue.
“You have all the hot blood of the MacNeills in you, Christine!” she smiled. “But you will learn, in time.”
Christine turned silently away. It was obvious that her grandmother had no intention of discussing the situation any further in front of their guest. The relationship between Rory and Finlay Sutherland’s agent at Ardtornish had been an uneasy one, but it was possible that Dame Sarah hoped for a different approach from the new laird himself.
Christine sat in a rather frozen silence for the remainder of the tea hour, letting Hamish do all the talking, and when he finally rose to go she followed him from the room.
“The old lady is still in full command!” he remarked briefly as they went down the stairs. “Dame Sarah to the last gasp!”
“And why not?” His remark had disconcerted her, even irritated her. Everyone seemed bent on saying the most outrageous things! “She’s still the head of the family and she makes her own decisions.”
Land of Heart's Desire Page 4
