“Taxi, sir?”
He knew the voice and turned with a suggestion of impatience, telling himself that he would rather have met the devil than Laura Bramshaw at that moment.
“Imagine your walking!” Laura exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been paying a Sunday-afternoon call and they haven’t asked you to tea?”
She opened the door and he sat beside her.
“If you must know, I was asked to tea,” he said.
“But you were too bored to stay? Don’t tell me! I know the sort of situation. Do I ask where you’ve been, or just leave that discreetly in the blue?”
“I’ve been to the Helmsdales’.” He saw no reason to hide the fact, although he felt impatient with Laura. “Does that satisfy you?”
She regarded the road ahead with exaggerated attention, her long, carefully manicured fingers tightening perceptibly on the cream steering wheel.
“On the contrary, it whets my appetite for more! Huntley, it’s too delicious for words—all this local how-d’ye-do about the “Night On The Moors!” Everybody’s talking about it, so you needn’t grind your teeth because I’ve mentioned it! I think it’s priceless, and much too funny for words!”
“So long as it amuses you,” he growled.
“Oh, but it does! Doesn’t it amuse you, too?”
“Not particularly.”
She permitted herself a sidelong glance at his gloomy face and what she saw dispelled some of the laughter from her own.
“You’re not seriously concerned?” she asked, still with attempted lightness. “You just couldn’t be!”
“Couldn’t I?” He was not smiling.
“Good heavens, no! You’re not going to marry her, are you?”
“No.”
The vehemence of his assertion calmed the sudden and amazing panic in her, and she put her foot down on the accelerator and drove the car speedily up the hill. She was unbelievably relieved.
“I’ll get out here, Laura, if you don’t mind,” he said when they had reached the end of the glen road.
“You won’t come to the Mains for tea?”
She knew that he would not, but the fact that he had been so emphatic in his denial of any affection for the Helmsdale girl was compensation for a small disappointment such as not accepting a casual invitation to tea.
“My uncle will be expecting me at Glenavon,” he explained, sorry now that he had snubbed her. “Thanks all the same, Laura. I’ll be seeing you anon!”
He strode away over a track leading through the heather and she sat looking after his tall figure for a long time.
Huntley did not go directly back to Glenavon. He walked diagonally across the moor, tramping down the young bracken on a course of his own, his dark thoughts pursuing him relentlessly. Was he destined to live all his life among people like Laura Bramshaw while people like Christine Helmsdale and her father passed by?
He came to Glenavon at last, long after Jessie Campbell had rung the bell for tea, and he did not apologize for being late.
Ben Treverson looked at him over his shoulder when he came into the room, for old Ben let very little pass him.
“You’ll have had your tea?” he suggested.
“No, I didn’t.”
“What? Did the lass refuse you, then?” Ben’s dark old face sharpened with surprise and he peered at his nephew from under his beetling gray brows. “It’ll be the first time you’ve ever been denied what you wanted,” he added dryly, but not unkindly. Huntley swung around on him.
“Not the first time,” he said tersely. “I could always make it the last, though, and I should have lived long enough by now not to expect too much of life. I was a fool to go to Kinaird this afternoon and ask Christine Helmsdale to marry me. I’m not her kind. She let me see that very effectively, as you’ve guessed, and now it’s about time I cleared out, I think.”
“There’s never much gained by running away,” Ben remarked doggedly, yet he knew that Huntley would go.
CHAPTER THREE
Christine walked slowly back to the house when Huntley Treverson left her, the memory of what had passed between them still flushing her cheeks while her heart beat unevenly at the thought of his amazing proposal of marriage that had not contained one word of love or affection. Now that she had time to consider the whole situation in retrospect, of course, it would have been sheer madness of him to have pretended love or even affection in the circumstances.
Rhona came through from the kitchen as she reached the door and something in Christine’s expression made her pause.
“We saw you speaking to someone in the garden,” she said. “Was it ... Huntley Treverson?”
Christine nodded. She hated to keep anything back from her family, but she could not very well tell Rhona why Huntley had come because it would make the gossip seem worse than ever.
“He’s terribly handsome,” Rhona said almost awkwardly. “Has he come back to Glenavon for good?”
The question set a new train of thought in Christine’s mind, for if Huntley had come back to Lochaber to stay, the gossip would never die down.
“I don’t know. I think his uncle would like him to stay.”
If he did come back to stay at Glenavon I would see him more often, she found herself thinking. Inevitably we would come face to face in the village and we would always remember today. She turned away from the thought, a little shaken by it but quite convinced that she need not let it trouble her.
When Nigel and her father came up the driveway Rhona hurried into the kitchen for the scones and made fresh tea. Over the meal she seemed quite content to let her sister and the two men do the talking.
John Helmsdale retired to his surgery when the meal was over and Christine went to help Nigel with the dispensing for the following morning.
Christine closed the dispensary door and surveyed the rows of bottles on the shelf that ran around three sides of the small annex. It was her job to check supplies and send out orders and remind her father about a broken thermometer or a damaged hypodermic, and her methodical bookkeeping had greatly surprised Nigel Kilbridge when he had first joined Helmsdale’s rambling practice. He remembered those days as a locum tenens when he had started off by rubbing Christine the wrong way because of his carelessness. Absentmindedness, he had sought to call it, but she had speedily disillusioned him and had even suggested that “laziness” might be a more appropriate word.
Well, he mused with a smile as he watched her select the bottle she wanted, she had very quickly shamed him out of all laziness merely by being so desperately keen on her job.
“And now for the aqua—two parts!” She measured in the water, poured the contents into a sterilized bottle, and corked it with an air of satisfaction. “Prescription number one! How many more have we, doctor?” she turned to him to inquire. “The usual quota?”
“Not so many. It’s Sunday, remember!” He came over to stand beside her while she worked, but he did not offer her the other prescriptions he had written out. Instead he continued to study her bright hair and intent face with the eyes of a lover, thinking that there had never been anyone quite like Christine Helmsdale before. “Chris!” he said huskily. “Chris!” and bent and kissed the hair straying in little tendrils against her cheek.
She stood up very straight, turning to face him, her clear eyes steady on his.
“Chris,” he said again, shyness and hesitation disappearing in that supreme moment of his need of her, “will you marry me? I know I should have waited until I had something more definite to offer you—something more worthy—but I’ve asked now. It’s out, Chris. I love you and I want you for my wife. We’ve so much in common,” he went on. “We could be happy together, here in Kinaird. It’s what you want, isn’t it? To stay here in the glen? You’ve often said so, Chris. You can’t have changed your mind.” His voice held the rough note of urgency and she caught at that out of all the whirl of thoughts and emotions that sought to sweep her away with them, submerging her powers of reas
oning. No, she couldn’t have changed! She still wanted to stay in the glen and
Nigel was offering it to her, offering her a way out. He was telling her that he loved her, telling her that he wanted her to become his wife in face of all the gossip he must surely have heard, and so proclaiming his faith in her. She felt touched and curiously shaken by his gesture, yet she knew that she could not accept it and that, far from making it easier for her to remain in Kinaird, he had made it increasingly difficult.
She pressed her hands against the rough tweed of his coat, holding him away.
“It isn’t possible,” she whispered, knowing that so surely now. “We’re not for each other, Nigel. You’ll see that one day ... one day you’ll be as sure as I am now.”
“Why are you so sure?” he demanded in sudden bitterness. “Is it because of Treverson?”
“No!” Her cry of protest was definite and beyond dispute. “I hardly know him!”
“Stranger things have happened,” he muttered grimly. “Before he came I could have sworn I had a fifty-fifty chance with you, but now—”
“Nigel,” she broke in tensely, “try to see that this has nothing to do with Huntley Treverson or anyone else. It hasn’t even anything to do with my own heart. I know you care for me, and I’m sorry ... sorry beyond words to tell you ... but I can’t love you in return. I know there will be someone else for you,” she added humbly. “You’ll forget me in time.”
“I’ll never forget you,” he told her doggedly. “I’ll love you all my life, Chris—every minute of it while I still remain here.”
“I wish I could make you see!” she cried from the bottom of her heart.
“All you can ever make me see is that you are in love with someone else,” he told her. “Until you come to me and tell me that, I’ll still continue to hope, so don’t try to put me off, Chris, for you can’t!”
She could not answer him, for she could not tell him that he should love Rhona and not her.
“We’ve worked together,” he went on unsteadily. “We’ve been good friends, Chris. I thought—all that couldn’t mean nothing to you.”
She continued to look at him in spite of the tears in her eyes, not ashamed of the genuine emotion that had produced them.
“Perhaps it means more than you think, especially just now,” she said unsteadily.
His strong hands tightened their grip on her shoulders.
“You know I don’t care about the gossip that’s going around,” he said roughly. “It’s only maddening to think that we can do so little about it.”
“I could ignore it, Nigel, if it wasn’t for mother and Rhona,” she confessed. “They’ve been hurt by it. They would never admit it, but I know, I have the most loyal family in the world, and I can’t bear to see them hurt by ... by something I may have been able to avoid. It didn’t occur to me that there was anything wrong in seeking shelter like that. Wrong!” she added with fine scorn. “I suppose that’s the word they would use. I’ve always loved the story of the Three Wise Monkeys, but evidently Kinaird hasn’t even heard of them!” she finished bitterly.
“It’s not the whole village, Chris,” he reminded her.
“No, I know it isn’t, but even a small minority can be an uncomfortable thing to live with.” Subconsciously she was repeating Flora Lamington’s words, recognizing truth in them. “If I went away for a while, Nigel, you’d stand by everyone here, wouldn’t you?”
He turned her around to face him.
“Why should you go away?” he demanded hotly. “You’re needed here. Your father needs you, and so do I.”
“It might be the best way—”
“You’d be running away,” he challenged, and saw the painful flush that deepened her cheeks. “All right! I shouldn’t have said that,” he acknowledged. “I know you’re no coward, but what is your reason for wanting to go, Chris ... your true reason? It’s not because I asked you to marry me?”
That was part of her reason, that and Rhona ... to give him a chance to forget her while Rhona remained here beside him...
“I think I want to go,” she said unsteadily. “Perhaps it won’t be for long, but it may make a difference.”
Her voice almost faltered, for to leave her father and Kinaird would be one of the hardest things she had ever done.
“It will really be a holiday in a way,” she continued, trying to force a note of enthusiasm into her voice. “Aunt Flora has been asking me to go to Glasgow for years. I have two cousins there,” she ended heavily.
“Have you mentioned this to your father?”
“Not yet.”
That was going to be the most difficult part, she realized, because she had never hidden anything from her father. But when she told John Helmsdale what she wished to do he made very little protest.
“I’ve always thought you should visit Flora for a while,” he lied magnanimously. “You need a holiday and the change of scene will do you good. We’re apt to get into a rut sometimes, Chris, when we live too long in one place. Glasgow will freshen up your ideas, and a spell in the city will bring you back far more sure of yourself.”
“More sure that I never want to leave Kinaird!”
The cry had been forced from her very heart, but he pretended not to notice because he firmly believed that the transfer to Glasgow and the greater opportunities for new acquaintances would do her good. He did not want to lose her; in fact, he wondered how he would do without her, but her need was greater than his own at the moment.
“You’ll have Iona and Douglas to take you around,” he said. “You played together a lot as children and got on well enough apart from the usual scraps.”
Christine smiled for the first time, remembering the cousins she had always liked so much.
“It might be fun,” she said, “living with them for a while.” Christine thought that it might be pleasant enough in Glasgow for a week or two, but after that she knew that she would begin to long for the glen and a sight of Aonach More, and the high rampart of the Grampians rearing darkly against the eastern sky. She would hear the rush of many waters even above the noise of the city’s traffic and long for the still green beauty of a small lake among the hills. None of these things belonged to city life.
Her father drove her to Fort William a week later.
“Don’t go getting yourself entangled in Glasgow!” he teased, to hide his emotions at this parting. “We don’t want to lose you yet!”
“I don’t think you can get rid of me so easily!” She could not look at him for a moment. “If you need me, dad—”
“I’ll send for you, never fear!”
The guard came along the platform, blowing his whistle. “Passengers take their seats, please!”
Christine and John Helmsdale turned and looked at one another, and then they clung tightly for a moment before Christine boarded the train. No word had been spoken, but they knew beyond words that this parting had not been sought by either of them and that these weeks apart would be a long sojourn for both of them. But at least, Christine thought, looking out at mist-capped Ben Nevis as the train circled the town, dad will be here where we both belong!
CHAPTER FOUR
Christine was met at the station by her aunt, a tall, imposing figure of a woman with blue eyes. She had brought the family car, driving herself from the large, red sandstone villa on the Kilmarnock Road. Merrivale was a fitting memorial to her husband’s career, and Flora Lamington was determined to maintain it, even in widowhood. A strong and vigorous woman even at sixty, she did all the cooking for her family and managed most of the housework with the help of a young maidservant, kept chiefly for effect to clean outdoor brasswork and hand around afternoon tea on the numerous occasions when Flora entertained.
Christine had never liked her aunt, but she did respect her. Aunt Flora had never been associated with love and affection, but she had always been a figure of great dignity and no little awe.
There was no question about her feelings for her cousin
s, however. She had always loved the shy, silent Iona and even the dignity of a profession and a partnership in a flourishing practice could not submerge the humorous small boy in Douglas.
For the first week she was torn between Iona’s tennis parties and Douglas’s desire to show her the paces of the family car when driven without his mother in the backseat. Then things settled down to a more normal routine and she was accepted as part of the household.
Flora, without admitting it, was glad of her help, and quite often took her to meetings during the day. She was an active member of the Highland Society and was working strenuously for funds, and Christine, she decided, could help considerably while she remained in Glasgow. It would be something to fill her time.
With no great love of housework, Christine readily agreed. She was doing her best to forget the almost overwhelming wave of homesickness that had taken possession of her at the end of her first exciting week, and felt that she must plunge into any activity, however small or apparently useless it might seem.
The natives of Argyll branch of the society were having a social evening in the Grosvenor. There would be a dinner followed by a dance, and although she knew that the atmosphere was likely to renew her longing for home, she found herself looking forward to the event almost as much as Iona. Douglas professed manly impatience with such things, but he was going, too, because his mother had already purchased tickets.
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