Master of Glenkeith

by Jean S. MacLeod

  His brows were raised just a fraction as he turned from her towards his mount.

  “Can you ride?” he asked. “It would be much better if you sat up on Bess.”

  “Then you would have to walk!”

  He laughed down at her.

  “I’m not likely to fall into a bog!”

  Before she could so much as protest, he turned and picked her up, setting her in the saddle as if she had been a child. He took up the reins and Bess ambled off at an easy pace while he walked by her side.

  The mare’s soft coat was quite wet with the mist, and Tessa could feel it in a little beaded fringe on the hair above her forehead so that she supposed she looked bedraggled and much in need of assistance, but, truth to tell, she was thoroughly enjoying her adventure now.

  “How am I to know that all you have told me is true?” she demanded, laughing down from her precarious perch.

  “You could quite easily be a Wicked Knight luring me to his baronial stronghold to shut me up in a dungeon for the rest of my life!”

  He laughed outright.

  “Ardnashee may be baronial, but the dungeon would be the last place I would lodge you in!” he told her. “What makes you think that my intentions are not far and away above reproach?”

  He looked up at her with sudden demand in his dark eyes and Tessa was aware that some of the banter had gone out of the situation. She could no longer laugh and fling idle words at him without care. They were known to each other now and in the future they might even become friends.

  “How far is it to Ardnashee?” she asked, leaving his question unanswered.

  “Four miles.”

  “But you said—”

  “It was nearer than Glenkeith. It still is.”

  “I must have walked a very long way,” Tessa mused. “Do you always forget about time when you are looking at the colour of trees and picking flowers to wear in your belt?”

  “I forget about time when I’m happy, and especially when I’m looking for things to paint.”_

  He took up her first confession.

  “You expect to be happy at Glenkeith?”

  A fleeting shadow passed across her face. It was the memory of Hester, but she could not very well tell a stranger that Hester MacDonald was not going to make her welcome at Glenkeith.

  “I think you can be happy anywhere if you try hard enough,” she said.

  He swept her what might have been a mocking bow. “The Voice of Youth! How youthful are you? And I don’t even know your name!”

  “My name is Tessa—Tessa Halliday, and I’m eighteen. I’ve lived in Italy all my life and I loved it there, but now that I’ve come to live in Scotland I know that I shall love it, too.”

  “I’m going to do my best to help!” he said, and they laughed, their voices ringing out hollowly against the grey barrier of the mist.

  “Hullo, there!”

  The voice came back to them like an echo of their own, but Tessa knew that it had been sterner, with no laughter backing it. It was another second or two, however, before a man’s tall, blurred figure materialized out of the gloom, striding purposefully towards them. It looked ominous, for a moment, looming formidably through the soft grey wall of mist, but she recognized Andrew without difficulty.

  He stared up at her sitting in the saddle above him, as if he had been prepared for anything but the present situation.

  “How in heaven’s name did you get here?” he demanded harshly. “We missed you at Glenkeith an hour ago and I’ve been searching for you ever since.”

  He had not tried to cover up the anger in his voice, and she felt like a small child who had been guilty of some foolish indiscretion which had gone far beyond the bonds of ordinary naughtiness.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” she apologized. “I lost my way, but now I see that I had no right to come so far.”

  He stood rigidly in the path, blocking the horse’s way,

  but for a moment Tessa had forgotten all about Nigel Haddow.

  “I ought to have known that you would be all right, I suppose,” Andrew said. “You can take care of yourself.”

  The words had been meant to hurt. He felt that he had been made to look a fool since she had obviously met Nigel Haddow before this and had probably come out to some rendezvous with him on the moor. He was conscious of having avoided Tessa for days and of laughing the idea to scorn when it presented itself to him, demanding why he should wish to avoid her at all. She was the necessary evil at Glenkeith and he knew, didn’t he, what manner of creature she must be? For years—all his life—the mirror of her mother’s faithlessness had been held up before his agonized eyes and through it he had seen his father’s memory tarnished in the eyes of his fellow-men.

  Nigel Haddow stretched up to lift Tessa from the saddle.

  “Andrew probably has the brake with him,” he said. “Better go back to Glenkeith and get dry. You can come to Ardnashee another day.”

  Tessa found herself standing on the narrow path trembling between sudden anger and remorse. She was sorry to have brought Andrew out on to the moor when quite possibly he had other things to do, but he need not have spoken to her as if she had been an irresponsible child. If he had suspected that he would be wasting his time he need not have come in search of her.

  The two men were exchanging trivialities on their way down to the road where Andrew had parked the estate car.

  “It will be slow going,” Nigel said, looking about him at the thickening mist. “Are you sure you won’t come up to Ardnashee and wait to see if it is going to lift?”

  “It will get worse with the darkness,” Andrew returned almost brusquely. “I’d rather push on, thanks all the same.” He walked on a few paces in silence. “We’ve managed to keep this from the old man so far,” he explained, “but he’ll begin to ask questions if we don’t show up before seven, and he’s not in a fit state to be worried.”

  “No.” Nigel halted the mare beside the brake. “We don’t see much of you these days, Drew,” he mentioned. “Working too hard, I expect. You’ll come over for a day’s shooting, though, won’t you?”

  “There’s a good deal to do at Glenkeith,” Andrew said. “But I’ll see if I can manage the shoot.”

  Nigel vaulted lightly into the saddle, gathering the reins into one hand as he saluted Tessa.

  “When the mist clears, ask Meg to bring you to Ardnashee,” he said. “You will find quite a lot there to remind you of Italy! ”

  He pulled the mare’s head round, riding off into the mist, and Tessa got in beside the silent Andrew, who drove off without another word.

  “Would it help if I said that I didn’t go to meet Nigel Haddow?” she asked desperately when they had travelled at a snail’s pace for a quarter of an hour. “I didn’t do this deliberately.”

  He took a full minute to reply, and, glancing at him covertly, she saw a small pulse hammering swiftly at the side of his cheek.

  “It wouldn’t make the slightest difference,” he said. “You are not, and never could be, answerable to me for your actions.”

  The words struck at her like a knife thrust, finding that deeply-sensitive core of reserve which had always lain in her heart, making it vulnerable, leaving her open to hurt as easily as she was prone to laughter, and this time she knew that the blow had been dealt deliberately. There was something between her and Andrew—something that concerned Glenkeith—that could never be revoked.

  I won’t care, she thought. I won’t! But she knew that she did care. She cared desperately because she had come to Glenkeith wanting to be loved and twice in the few short days she had been there she had found herself rebuffed.

  CHAPTER V

  FOR the next few days Tessa spent all her time with Daniel Meldrum, and it was not long before he was carried from his bed to sit in a long chair beside the window. Although he had lost the power of his legs, he seemed to have won a strange new contentment out of life since Tessa’s arrival at Glenkeith, and they were wonderfully hap
py together.

  It was always like that, Tessa thought, when you knew that someone liked you. It was easy to be happy and natural and helpful. It was only when you felt yourself distrusted and unwelcome that foolishness went hand-in-hand with your actions, laying a trap for your unwary feet.

  She did so many stupid things when she knew that Hester was watching in that critical, almost spiteful way she had. Not actually wayward things, although more than once there had been a suggestion of rebellion in her heart at the thought of an injustice, but foolish, impulsive things that could so easily be misconstrued by someone who just would not try to understand. Like the time she had lain in the hayloft watching a brace of partridges eating the hearts out of a row of Hester’s prized winter broccoli without scaring them off because the cock bird’s plumage had been all the colours of the rainbow as he had strutted about in the sun!

  Daniel Meldrum had heard the noise as Hester had let the dogs loose, but Tessa had known a fierce sort of joy as she had listened to the lifting beat of wings as the terrified birds had risen into the air and disappeared over the juniper hedge to safety.

  Daniel’s eyes had twinkled when she had told him the story afterwards, although he had explained how destructive all game could be in search of food. It was not often that they came as far as the garden, he explained, unless they were feeding their young or the weather had been hard. They were very much aware of the dogs, but this might have been an adventurous pair.

  “I was as quiet as a mouse!” Tessa said soberly. “I

  wanted to go on looking at them for as long as I could.”

  “You could have seen one hanging up at the back of the kitchen door!” he told her.

  She shivered, and her expression changed.

  “I don’t like to see them dead,” she said.

  “Then you won’t want to go shooting at Ardnashee,” he suggested.

  “I haven’t had a ‘bidding’ yet!” she smiled. “Isn’t that the right word?”

  “Not too bad for a beginner! But you’ll be going to Ardnashee, all the same. The Haddows wouldn’t leave you out.”

  “Will Andrew go?” Tessa asked, coming to stand beside his chair and looking out over his head to where the black cattle grazed along the river bank.

  It was easy to mark the course of the river now as it flowed down to join the waiting Dee. The trees along its banks—hawthorn and birch and rowan—were dusted with all the colours of autumn. Gold and silver on the spinning birch leaves, deepest russet and amber on the thorn, while the glory of the rowan had to be seen to be believed.

  O rowan tree, O rowan tree

  Thou’lt aye be dear to me ... .

  Once her mother had sung that and she knew now what she had meant, but she thought that there had been tears in her mother’ s voice, too.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Andrew lately,” Daniel Meldrum said. “He’s been working too hard. It’s time he took things easier and learned how to play, too. He’s a good shot and he’s always been keen enough to go to Ardnashee in the past.”

  “I’d rather go to paint,” Tessa said. “If I got a bidding to the shoot I could go up on to the moors at Ardnashee. I know one isn’t supposed to go otherwise when it’s the stalking season.”

  “Andrew will be there to keep an eye on you,” the old man told her with a satisfaction which he did not try to disguise. “A man should never let work shut out all the light of day for him—or a woman either!” He smiled down at her as she bent to pick up the book he had dropped. “What are you going to do to-day?” he asked.

  Still without any definite task about the house, Tessa felt that she was not pulling her weight at Glenkeith, although she had done a good deal of the nursing duties necessary before Daniel Meldrum had been allowed out of bed. She had brought up his meals and read to him, and often she had just sat quietly listening while he talked.

  That had been the most wonderful part. Andrew’s grandfather was a born story-teller and all his stories were about Scotland. When he was a boy, he had recalled, the red deer were so thick about Glenkeith that they became bold and came down close to the fences, even in the summer, although they would ran at a word, and once he had reared a young buck and it had followed him about like a dog till its antlers had grown too big for it to come in at the door. Then, in the night, it had gone, obeying some wild instinct inbred in it, although he had been very much afraid that it would not have survived outside the herd. Deer were strange things, he explained. They moved in herds and a lone male would be instantly suspect and invariably challenged. He thought that his half-tame little buck could not possibly have lived for very long.

  Tessa felt sorry for the lonely little deer and sat for a long time wondering about it.

  “What like is the weather?” Daniel asked when Andrew came in for his usual morning report on the invalid.

  “Fine and warm.” Andrew avoided looking in Tessa’s direction whenever he could. “I wish you were able to get out to see for yourself.”

  “Maybe I could if I would use that contraption old Coutts sent over here the other day,” Daniel agreed unexpectedly.

  “Oh, will you? Please, will you?” Tessa jumped to her feet, her cheeks flushed, her eyes eager. She had been begging him to try the wheel-chair for the past two days, but a strange, stubborn sort of pride had made him refuse. “Dr. Coutts said it would do you the world of good to get

  out if the weather was fine.”

  “And it would do you good, too!” He smiled at her fondly. “You’ve been cooped up here since you came, nursing me, but I must say you do it very well! Where were you thinking to take me?”

  Tessa looked across at Andrew for inspiration, surprising an expression in his eyes which made her feel suddenly vulnerable again. He did not seem quite able to adjust his mind to the thought of the trust and friendship which existed between her and his grandfather after so short an acquaintance and she felt hurt he should underestimate her integrity in such a way.

  “The road along the burnside is easy enough,” he said almost indifferently. “It’s flat and not too bad a surface, and there won’t be any traffic to worry about.”

  “I—don’t suppose you could come, too?”

  She didn’t know why she had asked and she knew before he answered that he would refuse, but it was Saturday, and surely he didn't work on the farm every day of the week!

  “I’m going in to Ballater after lunch,” he said. “Meg has some shopping to do and I can order the cattle cake we need while I’m there.”

  “Why don’t you all go?” Daniel asked, but Tessa was quick to refuse this time.

  “No,” she objected firmly, “I’m taking you out!” Margaret and Andrew had obviously planned their own trip to Ballater, as they probably had done many times in the past before she had come to Glenkeith, and there was no reason why she should feel forlorn and deserted because they had failed to include her on this occasion. It might even be that Margaret was in love with Andrew— or he with her.

  The possibility had been lingering at the back of Tessa’s mind for a long time, but she had never allowed it to come fully into the light of day until now, and even now she had no way of telling whether her supposition was right or wrong. Neither Margaret nor Andrew was the type to wear their heart on their sleeve, she concluded.

  Their north-country reserve was something she had never encountered before, but she had come to respect it and, in some ways, to understand it. The warmth and sunshine of the land of her own birth tended to loosen the tongue and set the lighter emotions free, but up here the tempo of life was different, atuned to a slower rhythm and coloured by a certain grim necessity, a stern determination of purpose which, in years gone by, had wrested a meagre living from the soil and battled with the elements to obtain the means of keeping body and soul together.

  If Andrew was now reaping the benefit of that struggle, the inbred strength of character was still there. He came of a dour, fighting race whose emotions had been leashed
by necessity, but underneath the granite-like exterior the flame of a fierce pride still burned. It had taken his ancestors to Culloden and the Covenanters to the stake. Whenever there was a cause to defend or an injustice to right or a determination firmly implanted in the individual breast, the way was clear and straight ahead.

  If Andrew had already made up his mind about his way in life, Tessa realized, nothing would deflect him from his purpose. And if he had made up his mind to marry Margaret, that, too, would come about in time.

  She glanced out of the window, thinking that some of the golden quality had disappeared from the sunlit fields, but Andrew and his grandfather were waiting and she followed Andrew to the door.

  “You do think it’s all right?” she questioned. “I wouldn’t like to think that I had influenced him to go out against his will.”

  He looked down at her with a strange smile in his eyes. “I hardly think you could do that with a Meldrum,” he said briefly. “They make up their minds for themselves and stand by the consequences.”

  “But what consequences could there be?”

  “None that I can see. Otherwise, I would not permit you to take him out. I don’t think you should attempt to go on to the moor,” he added. “It’s uphill most of the way after you leave the glen and my grandfather will be a

  heavy man to push.”

  “I’m not really so frail as I look,” Tessa protested. “Sometimes I had to work quite hard in Rome. We never had any money to employ servants. That’s why I wish I could do more here,” she added impulsively. “I could work in the house, Andrew—save Margaret a bit—let her get out with you more.”

  He turned to look at her, puzzled, it seemed, by what she had said, and finally dismissing it by a rather abrupt reference to Hester.

  “My aunt takes to do with the house. I have no jurisdiction in that quarter. She has always been mistress at Glenkeith.”

  And will continue to be till you find yourself a wife, Tessa thought.

  The wheel-chair had been abandoned in the hall when Daniel Meldrum had refused point-blank to use it, and Hester came out of the kitchen when she heard it being moved towards the stairs that afternoon.