The Tartan Touch

by Isobel Chace

  THE TARTAN TOUCH

  by

  Isobel Chace

  From being the prim daughter of the Manse, within a few days Kirsty found herself amazingly on the other side of the world, in the Australian Outback, as the wife ‘in name only’ of Andrew Fraser.

  It was going to be difficult enough to adjust, even before she realized that her husband was in love with another woman...

  CHAPTER ONE

  The mist lay heavily on the hills, making the grass and the heather wet and slippery beneath my feet. It was cold too, despite the time of year, for it was now the middle of summer, a Scottish summer such as one remembers in one’s dreams, with the scent of the heather assailing one’s nostrils and the long watery views, lit by pale sunshine and turning the hills blue in the distance. This was the land where I had been born, the only land I knew. That day it lay in thrall to the mist and I could brush the drops of water from my coat with my hand, although it was not technically raining.

  That was the day that my father died. Bruce MacTaggart, whose name had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him, had left the world not in violence, like the old Scottish heroes of whom he was so proud, but quietly in his bed, after a long and depressing illness.

  My father, always frail in health, had been the minister up at the manse ever since he had been ordained. My mother had lived there for only a year. What had brought her to marry my father, I had never understood! That she had been unhappy, I had known ever since I could remember. There were those who said she had had too much life in her to be content with the narrow life that my father imposed on all who shared his meagre bread. There were others who said he had married her as an act of charity, charity which she at least had heartily regretted. You had to be truly miserable to seek release in death, or so I thought. She was no suicide, not in the legal sense, but she had fretted herself into the grave and not even the baby she had left behind had changed her mind. My father did not speak of her, but there were others amongst his sparse congregation who did so and, despite their gloomy faces and their strict ideas, I had never heard a word spoken against her.

  It was otherwise with my father. He had been tall and very thin, with balding, sandy hair. A man of principle, he had described himself, but others called him hard and whispered that he was without understanding for any man. His congregation had slowly faded away, attracted by the bright lights of the city and driven by the sharp spur of local poverty. They had no time to stop and listen to his hour-long sermons berating them for their sins and he showed no signs of even noticing their going.

  There was a time when I had felt sorry for him, but my pity had dried up in my heart into a small knot of despair. It seemed to me that I knew no one and that I was never going to. Even my schooling had been supplied by my father, a mixture of the battles of old between the clans and the terrible English, tales of treachery and valour, and long sessions spent committing whole chapters of the Bible to memory. It was hardly the preparation for a job of work in the modern world, but then my father would scarcely have thought of that!

  I ran the last few hundred yards to the manse despite the sober character of the day. Why not? I asked myself. There was no one there to see me, and at twenty-four mourning doesn’t come easily when it spells release from two years’ constant attendance in a sickroom.

  But I was wrong. There was someone to see me. He was standing at the door of the manse and he turned at the sound of my footsteps. His face had been burned and creased in the sun and I thought his grey eyes as bleak as the mist about us.

  “Can I help you?” I asked him politely.

  He stood there, looking at me. “I called to see the minister,” he said. There was something strange in his speech, something that struck a false note to my ears, “Then you came too late,” I told him.

  “On whose say-so?” he asked. It wasn’t just his accent I disliked, I thought, it was the inflexible note in his voice that showed his own purposes were the only things that mattered to him.

  “On Kirsty MacTaggart’s!” I said.

  His grey eyes didn’t change at all. He looked down at a paper he was holding in his hand. “MacTaggart. That’s the name of the minister here?”

  “It was,” I agreed coldly.

  He raised his eyebrows, apparently not liking me any more than I was liking him.

  “I thought perhaps you were his wife?”

  I scowled at him. “No,” I said briefly.

  He consulted his paper again. It was already wet with the mist. “It doesn’t matter. Do you live here? Then let’s get inside out of this rain!”

  “This isn’t rain!” I told him scornfully. “It’s nothing more than a bit of cloud trailing over the high ground. When it clears—”

  “It does clear sometimes, does it?” he remarked dryly. “You comfort me!”

  I was disconcerted. Comfort was not what I wanted to bring him. “Come away inside,” I growled. I pushed the door open and went before him into the hall. It was a cheerless room at best, but now it seemed particularly dark and unwilling to receive us.

  “My parents used to wax lyrical about Scotland,” the unwanted man said in deep disgust. “And look at it!”

  “And what’s wrong with it?” I flashed at him.

  He cast a speaking look around the uncomfortable house I had always called home, but he said nothing.

  “If the minister has gone away, and I can’t say that I blame him, who holds the records of the church round here?”

  “They’re in the study,” I said reluctantly.

  “Then this is still the manse?” he questioned me.

  “The minister—minister died this morning,” I told him. I had meant it to sound matter-of-fact, even unconcerned; instead my voice broke and a little of the misery I was feeling crept into my words.

  “Your father?” he asked without a trace of sympathy.

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “Too bad,” he said, not unkindly.

  My temper rose. “What did you want to see in the records?” I asked him severely.

  “My family came from around here,” he said. “My cousin married a local girl about eighteen years ago. He died recently and I haven’t been able to find any record of the wedding—”

  “I expect his widow has a copy of the marriage lines,” I said helpfully. “Most women keep them.”

  “His widow says now that no marriage took place,” he said flatly, his speech as clipped as ever.

  “Well, she ought to know!” I said blithely.

  His grey eyes met mine. “That is hardly your business!”

  I was astonished. “Is it yours?” I retorted.

  “Too right it is!” He sounded so grim that I led him into the study without a further word.

  “If you’d tell me the name?” I began nervously.

  “Fraser,” he rapped out. “Donald Fraser. His wife’s name is Margaret, Margaret Cameron.”

  I went through the records as quickly as I could, sitting on my father’s chair and using my father’s desk to rest the heavy volumes on.

  “Here,” he said, “give me one to be getting on with!”

  My father had not allowed these books ever to leave his own hands. “You should have applied to the Records Office,” I said dourly. “It would have been more correct.”

  “I thought MacTaggart might have remembered marrying them,” he grunted.

  “I still don’t see why it’s so important!” I sighed.

  He scarcely looked up. “It matters to the daughter of the marriage,” he said.

  I was silent. I hadn’t realised that there was any issue to the marriage, but then I hadn’t given it any thought.

  “Does she live with her mother?” I asked with unconsci
ous envy.

  “She lives with me.”

  I cast my eyes down another page of names that were nearly all the same few because they were the names of the families round about.

  “Donald Fraser,” I mused.

  “You have it?”

  I shook my head. “He married a Margaret Fraser.”

  The stranger frowned fiercely. “Are you sure? Where was he from?”

  I giggled. “Next door,” I said.

  He snatched the volume from me. “This is a serious business to me, Miss MacTaggart—”

  “And if you tear those records there’ll be the devil to pay!” I shot back at him.

  He didn’t apologise. I picked up the volume that related to the year before and, in the way that things sometimes turn out, my eye fell immediately on the name of Donald Fraser again. This one had come from Perth, not the Perth that I knew about, but Perth, Australia! And he had married a Margaret Cameron.

  “I have it here,” I said in a voice breathless with excitement. Australia! How far away and remote it seemed!

  The man stood perfectly still, “Are you sure?” he asked at last.

  “Ay, I have it here. Donald Fraser from Perth, Australia, and Margaret Cameron from the other side of the glen,” I looked up, pleased with my success, but still the man didn’t move.

  “Let me see it for myself,” he said abruptly.

  I turned the book so that he could see it, pointing to the entry. It was written in my father’s neat, cramped script and signed with his familiar signature.

  “It was nineteen years ago,” I said. “There were more weddings, and christenings, and—and burials here in those days.”

  “So it would seem,” he said. “May I take a copy of this?”

  “I don’t know. What would you want to do with it?”

  He shrugged. “Take it to a solicitor, I suppose,” he said. He grunted. “It’s certainly the proof I’ve been looking for. This makes Mary quite as much Donald’s as Margaret’s.”

  I looked down my nose at my fingers. “Does Mary like being no better than property?” I asked him.

  “It depends whose property she is! The Frasers are known to be careful of their possessions, whereas Margaret has a habit of shedding her responsibilities whenever they show the slightest sign of getting in her way. To be Margaret’s exclusive care is not a fate I want for Mary.”

  I would have liked to have asked him if it was any business of his, but the stony look in his eyes prevented me.

  “She is her mother,” I said in stifled tones.

  “A grossly overrated relationship!”

  I glared at him. “Indeed?”

  “Where is your mother?” he asked bitterly. “Shouldn’t she be here if her husband—”

  I sat up straight, my back like a poker. “My mother has been in her grave nigh on twenty-three years, Mr.—” I broke off, suddenly aware that I didn’t know his name. “Fraser,” he supplied gravely. “Andrew Fraser.”

  “Mr. Fraser,” I went on grandly. “But were she here—”

  “I apologise, Miss MacTaggart. I should not have jumped to conclusions.”

  He was far from being forgiven. “I may look to you like a wee bit of a girl with no knowledge of the world, but I’ll have you know that I’m twenty-four years old!” I informed him crossly.

  “And who is helping you make the arrangements for your father’s funeral?” he said, just as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  “I went to tell the nearest minister this morning.” My voice felt creaky as I felt obliged to go on. “He’s a young man, you ken, and no favourite of my father’s, but he’s better than none and he’s handy.”

  Mr. Fraser looked at me thoughtfully. “Didn’t it occur to him that you are alone here?”

  I coloured fiercely, “And what use would he be to me here?”

  “He could have kept you company.”

  I was deeply shocked. “I’ll have you know that I’m a respectable maid! Besides,” I added, ruining my effect, “it’ll be enough for him to say the words in the morning, without having him here a moment longer!”

  “How far away does he live?” Mr. Fraser asked abruptly.

  “If you go by the burn, it’s not more than seven miles,” I answered.

  “I’ll take you there in the car. How far is it by road?”

  “It’s more than ten miles,” I gasped. “But I’ll not go with you! This has been my home all my life. I’m not a-feart to stay the night here by myself.”

  Mr. Fraser looked no more than impatient. At another time I would have been amused to see him made uncomfortable by the misfortune of another. He so plainly resented anything that interfered with his own affairs.

  I whisked a tear away from the corner of my eye, hoping he had not noticed. “If you have everything you’re wanting, Mr. Fraser, I’ll have to ask you to go now. I have a number of things to be seeing to. I need to write to the Church Commissioners for a start!”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Will you have to leave here?” he demanded.

  I nodded my head. “They’ll not send another minister here, but the house will be sold.”

  “And what will you do?”

  The colour swept up into my face. “That is my concern,” I rebuked him.

  “Right-oh, Miss MacTaggart,” he drawled. “I’ll give you a receipt for the records and bring them back to you in the morning.”

  “I’ll not be free until lunch,” I told him, “so I’ll probably not see you. You can leave the book in the hall.”

  “Oh, I’ll be seeing you, Miss MacTaggart,” he said. “You can bet on it!”

  “I do not gamble, Mr. Fraser,” I said with dignity.

  His eyes swept over my face. “I’ll see you in the morning, Miss MacTaggart. I have a suggestion to make to you.”

  “Don’t expect me to thank you, Mr. Fraser!” I warned him.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  It was dreary when he had gone. One can be brave enough in company, but when there is no one but yourself to convince, to pretend one is brave and knowing, with hardly a care in the world, wears thin and languishes in the face of the ghosts of the only life one has known. I thought that I could hear my father’s voice calling me up the stairs, as I had a thousand times before, but, of course, it was only my imagination.

  It was a long night and not one which I should like to repeat.

  When morning came, those that remained of my father’s congregation came up to the manse and carried my father down to his church. The minister came late, but he read the service as well as he could, agreeing to everything that my father had wanted. When it was done, he couldn’t be away quick enough, and it was left to the local crofters to fill in the grave that my father now shared with my mother.

  I turned to leave the graveyard, a trifle annoyed with myself, for I thought that my mind should be on higher things, whereas I was shamed to find it kept straying to wonder if Andrew Fraser had kept his word. I was crosser still to find him waiting at the entrance to the graveyard, just as if he had been there all the time.

  “Did you bring back the book?” I asked him sourly.

  “Sure. Did you win your bet?”

  I gave him a look that would have chastened anyone less sure of himself than Andrew Fraser. “I told you before that I do not gamble!”

  “Right,” he agreed. “You did.”

  “Then I’ll thank you not to cast aspersions on my character!” I said in high dudgeon.

  “There are worse things than a small bet with oneself,” he suggested mockingly.

  “That is beside the point,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he agreed pacifically.

  He was an impossible man, I thought. Anyone else would have been properly respectful in the presence of death instead of talking of sinful things to the chief mourner.

  “If you have nothing more fitting to say to me—” I began, glad of the opportunity to chastise him with my tongue.

  “Be careful, K
irsty MacTaggart, I might take you at your word!”

  I didn’t understand what he meant. What good could he do me? I reasoned. He was a stranger and one I couldn’t find it within me to like.

  “Thank you for returning the book, Mr. Fraser,” I said coldly. “I’m sure you must be very busy with your cousin’s business. I’d not want to keep you!”

  “It’s on Donald’s business that I’m here,” he answered. “Shall we go back to the manse and have some tea?”

  I was torn in two. I was dying for a cup of tea, for I had had nothing yet that day, but neither could I be rid of him quickly enough. He was a hard man, without sympathy for the widow or orphan, and I had little to do with bad men, even while I could recognise them from my father’s constant preaching on the subject.

  I compromised by saying nothing but falling in with his stride as he walked towards the manse. He walked well, as though he were accustomed to using his feet, and I had to concentrate to keep up with him, for his step was longer than mine as he was more than six feet tall and I a mere five feet two inches.

  I put him in the parlour. It was a room we never used normally. It was full of the stuffed heads of animals that my father’s predecessor had hung on the wall all of fifty years before. Their glass eyes stared sightlessly at any intruder with inhospitable indifference. Mr. Fraser blenched visibly.

  “What’s the kitchen like?” he asked.

  I was embarrassed and showed it. “If you will make yourself comfortable, I’ll bring the tea,” I said with dignity.

  “Not on your life!” he retorted.

  We beat a retreat to the kitchen with me leading the way, scarlet in the face, a colour which clashed with the sandy hair I had inherited from my father. The kitchen, I thought, was too intimate a place to entertain a stranger.

  Mr. Fraser sat down on one of the scrubbed wooden chairs and watched me as I raked up the ashes in the stove and set the kettle to boil.

  “I could make some scones,” I said doubtfully. “If you’re hungry, that is?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  I wished I hadn’t made the offer when I put the ingredients out on the table, very much aware of his eyes watching everything I did. My hands trembled somewhat as I cut the dough into lumps and placed them on a baking tin. I wasn’t used to an audience when I cooked.