The piping swept them into another reel, and another, until Elizabeth confessed herself exhausted. She had been dancing with Stephen and he drew her towards the library door.
“Come and have a cool drink away from the fire,” he suggested.
Hew had not danced with her. Indeed, she had not noticed him dancing at all. Once or twice she had seen his tall, kilted figure silhouetted between her and the glow from the fire, but he had not even turned in her direction.
Stephen led her through the hall, where he found her a long, cooling drink.
“Let’s look for somewhere to sit out of the milling throng,” he suggested. “Will you need a wrap if we go outside?”
“No, I’m quite warm.”
Elizabeth followed him through an ante-room which had a door leading to a small sunken garden on the west side of the house, and here a number of cane chairs had been set out, together with a low garden table where they could set down their drinks.
The place was deserted and Stephen heaved a sigh of relief.
“I feel that I need to draw breath,” he confessed.
“Me, too!” Elizabeth said. “Although it is fun!”
They sipped their drinks, falling into a companionable silence, letting the little whispers of the night come close. Far beneath them the loch lay like a sheet of glass, and farther still they could just catch the gleam of the sea.
Then, quite suddenly, they were no longer alone. Someone—a man and a woman—had come into the empty ante-room and were standing beside the open doors.
“Hew, my dear,” Caroline’s unmistakeable voice cut across the silence, “nothing has changed!” She appeared to be continuing an argument which had started as they had left the library. “We’re still in love with one another. Why should we wait? You said just now that you’ve forgiven me for what I did to you. You said you were prepared to forget the past. Why can’t we announce our engagement tonight?”
Elizabeth’s hands clutched the arms of her chair as Hew took a split second to answer Caroline’s impassioned plea.
“I’ve told you, Carol—that’s impossible,” he said in a taut, hard voice which left very little room for doubt and practically none for persuasion.
And Caroline did not argue. Not again. She seemed to have reached some sort of breaking point where her anger and sense of defeat rose uppermost.
“Nothing is impossible!” she cried. “It’s only your foolish pride that’s keeping us apart, Hew! You won’t accept me now because of my wretched money. That’s what you’ve been trying to say, isn’t it? But you will marry. You must marry—in time. It will be expected of you. You’re the laird. That matters, I suppose!”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I intend to marry.”
There was a terrible, lengthy pause, in which Elizabeth could feel herself trembling where she sat in the shadows beside Stephen. Then Caroline flung away from Hew, her voice coming, hoarse with passion, out into the night.
“You can’t mean this! You can’t mean it, Hew knowing you love me—knowing that you will never be able to forget me as long as you live—you’ll make a marriage of convenience because of Ardlamond—because you need to provide an heir! But it won’t succeed! I’ll always be there—always in your heart, because I was there first!”
There was a swish of a stiffened skirt, and Caroline had gone. Elizabeth got up from her chair, the sound of Caroline’s departure cutting across her mind like a lash. Hew was still there, standing beside the door with his back to the garden, utterly unaware that Caroline and he had been overheard, but at any moment now he might come out and discover her and Stephen.
“Stephen,” she whispered, her lips quite dry, “please, please let us get away.”
Hew forestalled them, however. A second after Caroline had left him he threw his half-smoked cigarette out into the garden and followed her through the inner door back to the hall.
Elizabeth watched the stub form a little parabola of light before it reached the grey paving stones at their feet. Instinctively she shivered.
“Cold?” Stephen asked almost casually, as if they had not just been reluctant audience to all the fury of a woman’s scorned love. “Let’s go and get warm at the fire.”
The kindness of his quiet voice all but unnerved her, and somehow she felt that he understood. She did not mind Stephen knowing; she knew that he would keep her unspoken confidence and that he would probably do his best to forget this revealing moment in a sunken garden when she had looked at him with all her love for Hew Kintyre mirrored in her despairing eyes.
They found Hew standing a little way back from the revellers round the barbecue. His tall figure was mostly in shadow, so that they could not see his face very clearly.
“How long does Caroline mean to keep this up?” Stephen asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s Sunday morning, and it’s not going to go down at all well with the locals if we’re seen coming away from an ‘orgy’ at the Castle in the wee sma’ hours of the Sabbath!”
“I was thinking about that,” Hew agreed. “Perhaps we ought to make the first move.” He looked at Elizabeth and then swiftly away again. “Unless you want to stay?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I think we ought to go home.”
The final word had slipped out quite naturally, yet she had no right to call Ardlamond home. That would be reserved for someone else, for Caroline, perhaps, when she had persuaded him that money made very little difference when pride had been forgotten.
“I’ll collect the others,” Stephen offered. “Someone will have to run Shona and the boys back to Ravenscraig. The Colonel wouldn’t stay to the barbecue.”
“I’ll do that,” Hew offered with a suggestion of relief in his voice. “If you would drop Elizabeth and Tony at Ardlamond on your way?”
“Surely,” Stephen said. “I’d be glad to.” Automatically Elizabeth said good night to Caroline, thanking her conventionally for an enjoyable evening, and as automatically she served the hot chocolate and biscuits when they had returned to Ardlamond without Hew.
She knew that he would not hurry back. There was so much on his mind to settle that she was not surprised when the dawn broke over the silent house and he had not returned.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DURING the weeks which followed Caroline’s party Elizabeth saw a great deal of Stephen Friend and next to nothing of Hew.
He had plunged into work in connection with the estate and he was also preparing to sell the farm on the hill.
She knew that he had seen as little of Caroline, but that was no real consolation.
Caroline came twice to Ardlamond, obviously at a loss to account for his silence, and on each occasion, as if as an afterthought, she asked for Tony.
“He’s at Whitefarland, helping Hew with the sheep,” Elizabeth informed her with some satisfaction the second time she put the same question.
Caroline’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Does that mean Hew isn’t going to sell?” she asked.
“No, I think he will have to sell.” Elizabeth did not want to discuss Hew with Caroline. “I don’t think the situation has changed at all.”
Caroline drew out a cigarette, lighting it slowly and deliberately.
“You wouldn’t be averse to your brother settling down at Whitefarland, would you, Elizabeth?” she asked between the first puffs of smoke.
“I’d think it was a wonderful idea!” Elizabeth’s eyes lit up, and then she said regretfully: “But quite impossible. Tony hasn’t the sort of money that would buy a place like Whitefarland.”
“No?” Caroline was quite obviously considering something which displeased her. “But he could run it for Hew—once he had the necessary experience.”
“It takes years to train a shepherd,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Hew couldn’t afford to wait that long.”
“He could get help from the bank, but I don’t think he will do that. He’s so confoundedly proud.” Caroline cast away the half-finished cigarette. “
Of course,” she added, as if the possibility hadn’t been in the forefront of her mind all the time, “there’s Tony’s attitude to consider, too, isn’t there? He might not feel that he wants to stay here for the rest of his life.”
“He has to stay at Ardlamond for the next eighteen months,” Elizabeth answered a trifle impatiently. “Hew has decided that.”
“But Tony hasn’t agreed to it,” observed Caroline, “and Hew might be persuaded otherwise. This isn’t the seventeenth century, after all. If Tony didn’t want to stay I don’t think even Hew could compel him to.” She gave Elizabeth a vague little smile, her pencilled eyebrows ever so slightly raised in interrogation. “Do you?”
Elizabeth was angry again. Caroline always had this effect on her.
“I’ve got to see that Tony does what he is told as far as it lies in my power,” she answered frigidly.
“But will you be here all that length of time?” Caroline demanded incredulously. “After all, eighteen months is more than a holiday. You can’t possibly want to stay till Hew has to ask you to go.”
Elizabeth flushed scarlet, but almost as quickly the colour ebbed out of her cheeks again, leaving her white and shaken by the thought that all this might have been discussed between Hew and Caroline. The memory of that overheard conversation at the barbecue flooded back too, turning her blood to ice.
“He won’t have to ask me,” she said proudly.
Caroline selected another cigarette with infinite care.
“It would be a terrible embarrassment to him,” she suggested placidly.
How I hate you Elizabeth thought, standing there with your cool smile, telling me to go, perhaps even planning in some diabolical way of your own that Tony will go too, that he will break Hew’s faith in him by some foolish, selfish action, and that will be the end!
Calmly enough she said:
“I have no intention of embarrassing anyone, Caroline. Hew needs me here at present. He has said so.”
“Because of Tony?” Caroline was adept at putting her finger on the truth. “That might make you feel better, but I’m quite sure Hew can handle even this sort of trying situation by himself. He doesn’t need help. He is the most self-sufficient person I know and— he values his privacy.”
“I don’t think we have been invading his privacy too much,” Elizabeth countered angrily. “I’ve hardly seen him for the past three weeks—”
Caroline’s eyebrows shot up again.
“That ought to prove something,” she reflected. “Could it be that he is deliberately staying away from Ardlamond, where he really ought to be?”
“It could be.” Elizabeth felt the words choking in her throat, but she would not let Caroline see that she was beaten. “But I don’t think so. You see, he isn’t at Whitefarland all the time.”
Caroline turned towards her car, which she had parked a little way down the drive.
“When Whitefarland is sold he will want to be here every day,” she said deliberately. “And he “will want his home to himself. He intends to marry, you know.”
“I—expect that,” Elizabeth said huskily.
“Do you?” Caroline turned with a slightly insolent smile. “Then surely you don’t expect to stay here when it happens?” she demanded.
“No.” Elizabeth’s voice was no more than a whisper. “No, I won’t expect to stay—”
When she was left alone she wondered if Hew and Caroline had resolved their differences. Was everything forgiven and forgotten between them and Caroline’s wealth accepted as something they could overlook?
She could not quite reconcile that with the fact that Whitefarland was still up for sale. The very first thing Hew would have done would have been to withdraw the farm’s name from the factor’s notice-board in Oban, and she felt, too, that he would have told her of such a reprieve.
He came home that evening with Tony, earlier than she had expected either of them, and almost instantly she detected a strange sort of finality about the look in his eyes.
“Well,” he said, “that’s that. We’ve brought down the last of the ewes. They’re in the long pasture behind the shrubbery at the moment. I hope they won’t disturb you during the night,” he added, since her bedroom was on that side of the house.
Elizabeth wanted to rush to him, to tell him how sorry she was that this had to be, but the need for comfort seemed to have no part in his make-up. He looked stern and cold, as if he could not share his feelings with anyone, even with Tony, who had worked long, hard hours on the hill with him without a murmur, surprising himself as much as he had surprised Elizabeth.
When Hew had left them to shut himself into the business room with the estate books, Tony said:
“I’m almost sorry that’s over, Liz.” He crossed to the window which looked out to the hill, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his trousers, his brows drawn in a half-perplexed frown. “Sheep aren’t the dumb, stupid things people imagine them to be, y’know,” he added confidentially. “They understand quite a lot. You should have seen them trying to avoid going into the dipping pens!” He whirled round to face her, a reminiscent smile lighting his eyes and spreading over his entire face. “Hew’s tremendously strong! He can catch a ewe and turn her into the trough without any effort at all.” He grinned broadly. “You should have seen the mess I made of it! The wretched animal kicked up her heels and before I could even think I was up to the eyebrows in sheep-dip! Hew laughed his head off!”
“I’d like to have seen that,” Elizabeth smiled.
“What? Hew laughing or me completely demaggoted?”
“Both, I think!” She put an affectionate arm about his thin shoulders.
“Are you going to like it here, Tony?” she asked hopefully.
“I’m a terribly new broom at present,” he said, “but I expect I might be some use in time. I think I could work quite well with the dogs after a while. They’re absolutely terrific on the hill, Liz! It’s like the Trials, but on a much larger scale, and they know every move. You can very rarely fault a good collie.”
A tremendous sense of thankfulness swept over Elizabeth, a vast, encircling warmth which embraced herself, and Tony, and Hew and everything at Ardlamond. Chiefly the credit went to Hew for the interest he had taken in her brother, but Tony, too, had played his part. He had tried, and in making the effort he had gained a new interest and a confidence which would serve him well in the future.
And Caroline couldn’t be allowed to interfere. Elizabeth was adamant about that point, at least, although she was not quite sure what she could really do. And if Hew meant to marry Caroline...
“Caroline was here this afternoon,” she told him when he joined them in the library for supper.
“What did she want?”
Aware of Tony listening intently, Elizabeth could only say:
“She didn’t leave a message. I think she expected to find you here.”
“She would know that we were at Whitefarland,” Hew said almost stiffly.
She could not tell from his expression what he was thinking, and while Tony was in the room with them she knew that he would not speak his mind. She could, she supposed, give him the opportunity later, when Tony had gone to bed.
“Are we going to take the sheep off Lingay?” Tony asked when he had finished the mug of hot chocolate which he had carried with him to the window-seat overlooking the loch.
“I think we can safely leave them for a day or two yet,” Hew decided. “They’re due to be sold,” he added, drawing heavily on his pipe, as if he were still wrestling with a weighty problem. “The grass over there is the best we have at this time of the year, but it will soon be time to evacuate Lingay.” Suddenly he smiled, the dark look vanishing from his brow. “Don’t worry!” he promised. “I won’t do the job without you, Tony. You could very well do it on your own, in fact,” he added, “with Dan’s help.”
“D’you think I could?” Tony was eager. “It means taking the launch, doesn’t it?”
&nbs
p; Hew nodded.
“We’ll tackle it before the end of the month,” he decided. Suddenly he turned and looked straight at Elizabeth. “Did Stephen phone you about the weekend?” he asked abruptly.
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Did he promise to? He may have called when I was out. I walked over to Dromore this morning,” she explained.
“Mrs. Malcolm would have taken a message. She rarely forgets that sort of thing.” He paused before he added deliberately: “I’m rather surprised.”
“Why?”
“I thought he would have invited you to the Club’s closing regatta. He made a point of mentioning it some time ago.”
“Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t be here all this time.” It had come out into the open at last, almost naturally. “Perhaps he thought I would have returned to London long ago.”
He knocked out the contents of his pipe on the blackened stone of the fireplace.
“Is that what you wanted?” he asked.
“No!” Her denial had been swift and almost pleading in its intensity. “It’s—only that I don’t want to stay here if I’m going to be in the way.”
Tony moved uneasily, but Hew did not seem to notice him.
“I’m sorry if I have suggested anything of the kind, he said. “My manner is sometimes not all it should be, but you must excuse that,” he told her. “I have a great many other things to think about.”
“Yes, I know. I only wanted to make—quite sure.”
He stood looking down at her for several seconds before he said:
“And now that you are assured, do you want me to phone Stephen about Saturday?”
“Not unless you want to go.”
He looked surprised.
“I suppose I ought to turn up at the close of the season,” he agreed, “and Tony has worked hard enough these past three weeks to justify a break.”
“Then—we can all go?”
The Last of the Kintyres Page 13
