Recovering, he said quietly, ‘I’m so sorry. Did I startle you?’
‘No. Yes. I mean—’ Abby was floundering. She couldn’t very well admit the truth and so she prevaricated. ‘It’s a lonely road.’
‘Yes, it is rather, but please be assured I mean you no harm.’ He paused. ‘Would you allow me to accompany you? For protection, I mean, if you are a little nervous? I have no intention of— What I mean to say is that you are perfectly safe with me.’ He could hear himself stumbling for the right words and knew he’d gone red in the face but he felt all at sea. It was the first time in his life a young woman had affected him thus and he felt acutely embarrassed. Normally he was totally at ease with the opposite sex. And the feeling that he knew her was stronger. Her clothes were those of a working-class woman and yet her voice didn’t carry much of an accent; it was mellow and pleasing to the ear, as if she had had elocution lessons.
Nicholas was right here. Part of the high-school curriculum to prepare their young ladies for the outside world had included the art of distinct pronuniciation and articulation, and the twice-weekly lessons had gradually transformed the way Abby and her classmates spoke, mostly without them being particularly aware of it.
Pulling himself together, he said formally, ‘Nicholas Jefferson-Price, at your service.’
His discomposure had given Abby time to collect herself. ‘I know who you are,’ she said, a slight smile touching her lips. ‘We have met before. Twice before, actually. The first time you almost ran me down with your horse, and the second you made amends by rescuing me from what I perceived as certain death but was certainly a perilous situation.’
Her voice had a soft huskiness to it; he could listen to her all day. ‘The child caught in the brambles at the Cut,’ he said, his voice high with surprise. ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. You’ve grown.’ As soon as the words left his mouth he thought how stupid they sounded. ‘What I mean is, you’re not a child any longer.’ That was worse.
Abby laughed, she couldn’t help it. He didn’t seem like the man she remembered who had been so in control. This Nicholas Jefferson-Price was much more human, nicer. ‘I know what you mean and it was nine years ago. I’m eighteen now. I wouldn’t have expected you to recognize me.’
She was being kind but she must think him an absolute fool; he was an absolute fool.
His obvious embarrassment was doing Abby’s poise the world of good. The laughter in her face reflected in her voice, she said, ‘I think I can safely put this back in my hat now,’ as she stuck the hatpin back whence it had come.
‘Good grief.’ He stared at her. ‘Would you have used it?’
‘Most certainly. If I’d had to.’
‘Thank goodness you at least recognized me!’
He was smiling now and it struck her he was really very good-looking with his jet-black hair and deep-brown eyes, but there was something else, a kind of maleness was the only way she could describe it, that made her heart beat faster. Glad he couldn’t read her thoughts, she said, ‘I should be getting home,’ as she began to walk once more, and it seemed natural he should fall into step beside her. ‘You’re not riding today,’ she said after a moment or two.
‘No.’ He looked down at her as they walked. A wisp of her glorious hair had escaped from under the hat and he had the almost overpowering desire to feel it beneath his fingers. ‘To be honest I shouldn’t have ridden yesterday either, the snow is too deep in places. I took Jet out and he ended up with a sprained foreleg. I should have known but I’m only back from the hospital for a few days so I wanted to make the most of it, I suppose.’
‘The hospital?’ She turned her head up to him. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No, no, I’m a doctor. Well, a junior doctor, as our esteemed consultant reminds his minions of all too often. He’s the autocratic type.’
Her face lit up, causing him to catch his breath. ‘I’m going to be a nurse.’
‘You are?’
‘I leave for the Hemingway hospital in Galashiels in the New Year to start my training.’
‘That’s great.’ He sounded as though he meant it which was wonderful after all the negativity she had encountered. ‘What made you decide on nursing?’
She had been asked this question more than once since she had made her decision known, and always there had been a note of censure in the asker’s voice. But not this time, and it checked her from giving the short, non-committal reply of the past. But if she told the truth, if she revealed the real reason, it would open up a whole can of worms. Her grandfather had sworn Robin and her to secrecy about the circumstances in which they had arrived at the farm, and she had never talked about it to anyone. And, much as she didn’t want to lay bare what the laird’s son might well regard as a shameful heritage, she found she didn’t want to prevaricate either. Which was strange, odd, she told herself. He was nothing to her so it shouldn’t matter one way or the other, should it? Quietly, her head down now, she said, ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve got nothing but time,’ he said just as quietly, ignoring the fact that he was already late and his mother would raise merry hell when he got in. The dinner party they were dragging him to tonight was at the home of his mother’s closest friend, and he knew full well both women were angling for a match between him and the daughter of the family. Felicity Hutton’s three brothers had been his childhood playmates, and when Felicity had been born ten years after the youngest brother much had been made of her by her doting mother. In spite of this Felicity had grown into an agreeable young woman with a quick wit and a pretty face, but he had no more wish to marry her than she him. At his mother’s insistence he had come home for a day or two in the summer to attend Felicity’s eighteenth birthday ball, and on that occasion she had laughed with him at their mothers’ matchmaking designs and confided she had her eye on someone else who would be deemed unsuitable by her parents if they discovered her intentions. Her beau was abroad making his fortune, she’d whispered, and he would come back and claim her for his own once he could afford to keep her in the manner that her family would expect. Apparently she had offered to elope with him but the young man wouldn’t hear of it, which Nicholas thought was in his favour.
Abby didn’t speak for some moments, and when she did he had to lower his head so soft was her voice. ‘It started with my father— No, that’s wrong. It started with my mother running away with my father, I suppose, and then him going off to war. We lived in Sunderland then . . .’
As she went on with her story, Nicholas found himself listening with bated breath. She had been a brave, gutsy little thing as a child, but he hadn’t realized how gutsy all those years ago although even then there had been something different about her. He had thought about the beautiful little blonde girl he had hauled out of the Cut a few times in the months after the event but then university had taken him away from the area. And he had been glad to go, often making excuses in the holidays to disappear off somewhere with one or another of his chums rather than return home.
‘And you say your family and the folk round here think nursing is a somewhat disreputable occupation?’ he said when she finished speaking. He had been touched to the heart of him about her father and mother but sensed she would not wish to talk further about that. ‘I could tell them it is not.’
‘I think my grandfather feels I am wasting my education.’
He was surprised she had attended the high school until she was eighteen years of age. Not that he didn’t think she was bright enough, she certainly was. Even as a small child there had been something quite exceptional about Miss Abigail Kirby. But even among his own class education for daughters was considered far less important than for sons.
‘And the tutors at the high school didn’t help in that regard either. They wanted me to become a schoolmistress like them. One teacher even said to my grandfather that she was very disappointed I was choosing not to use my mind in the future.’ She glanced at him. ‘I put her right
about that after he told me what she’d said.’
From the tone of her voice Nicholas felt sorry for the hapless schoolmistress.
‘And you? What made you go into the medical profession when—’ Abby stopped abruptly. She had been about to say, ‘When you are the laird’s son,’ but was worried that might sound rude.
It seemed Nicholas had read her mind, though. ‘When I don’t need to work but could spend my time hunting, fishing and shooting, and in other gentlemanly pursuits?’ he said wryly.
‘I’m sorry.’ She felt awful. He had been so nice when she had told him about her father and mother; if he had been shocked and scandalized he hadn’t shown it and his manner to her had not altered. And now she had offended him.
‘Don’t be.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a valid question and one my mother among others has asked more than once.’ His tone had hardened when he spoke of his mother. ‘The truth of it is I would go stark, staring mad living the life expected of the laird’s son and heir. My father was hoping I’d follow him and make the army my career for a few years until I took over the estate. Go in as an officer, of course, and lord it over the common throng.’ He paused. ‘Now it’s me who’s sorry. I don’t mean to sound sour but I have no intention of following in my father’s footsteps in any regard.’
‘Do they know that? Your parents?’
‘They’re beginning to.’ Hence the reason for his walk this afternoon. The atmosphere in the house was unbearable. His mother flitted about with trembling lips and a wan face, and his father was even more unpleasant than usual. ‘Ungrateful little cur,’ his father had called him in their last row the night before, and when he reminded his father that he was a man of twenty-seven and had his own life to live, his father had been scathing. If he insisted on playing at doctors for a while he had no objection, his father had said scornfully, but the estate must always come first. At some point he would inherit and he needed to be fully conversant with what was entailed in running the estate and the myriad business dealings connected with it.
‘But don’t you want to become the laird eventually?’
‘No, I sure as hell don’t,’ Nicholas said emphatically before immediately apologizing. ‘Forgive me. But no, no, I don’t want that. I’m well aware my father is deeply resented and disliked and with good reason. I am not a fool – I know how people are treated by him. He’s a thoroughly objectionable man.’
‘You don’t like him?’ Abby couldn’t hide the fact that she found this shocking. Whatever the laird was like, Nicholas was his son after all. ‘Your own father?’
The sun was beginning to set and a dusky pink glow was colouring the silver-white winter sky, bathing their path in a softer, more mellow light. They had been walking slowly, Nicholas measuring his pace to hers, but now he stopped and drew her to face him before letting go of her arms. He found he wanted her to understand how it was. He didn’t want her to think badly of him, which was crazy, ridiculous in fact, because until this afternoon he hadn’t known she existed. Oh, he had known about the child, of course, and he remembered her as a brave and unusually beautiful little thing, but this woman in front of him . . .
Swallowing hard, he said, ‘You think me harsh, don’t you, and I don’t blame you. From infancy we are taught to respect and love our parents, but what if that is impossible? My father is incapable of normal human affection, you see. Once in a while every generation throws up an individual such as him. Some are merely oddities, men or women who choose to live solitary lives or become recluses. Others have a more sinister bent and become monsters, committing the sort of crimes that are beyond ordinary people’s comprehension. And then there is my father’s kind.’
Abby stared at him. She was conscious of thinking that this Christmas Eve had taken the strangest turn. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined she and the laird’s son would be talking like this, or that she would have told him what had brought her and Robin to the Borders.
‘My father is totally self-centred,’ Nicholas went on. ‘He believes absolutely in his God-given right to rule his subjects as he sees fit – he has no compassion, no tenderness, none of the human virtues that one would expect of a husband and father. Living with such an individual is . . . soul-destroying. When I was growing up the slightest resistance on my part to his decrees brought forth a rage that was terrifying to a small boy. Mistakes were treated in the same way as disobedience. I was his son and heir – he expected a mirror image of himself in every way. I’m afraid I was, and am, a severe disappointment.’
He smiled, but there was no humour in his eyes.
‘I suppose, in a way, the desire to become a doctor and help people was a direct result of my rebellion against everything my father stands for. Certainly the psychiatrists would say so. But it’s not only that. I’m good at it.’
His smile this time was real.
‘That sounds arrogant, doesn’t it, but it’s true. I intend to become the best surgeon it is possible for me to be and I won’t let anything or anyone stand in the way of that.’
So there was a little of his father in him. And then Abby checked herself. No, that was unkind. It wasn’t the same at all.
They started walking again by unspoken mutual consent and now Nicholas began to tell her stories about hospital life: funny, self-deprecating stories on the whole that made her laugh out loud. By the time they came to the beginning of the track that led to the farm she was aware she didn’t want the interlude to end. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much since— Well, there was no since, she admitted silently. She had never enjoyed being with someone so much. He wasn’t at all like she’d imagined and there was something about him, something that made her stomach flutter and her heart race and brought the blood singing through her veins.
It was this last thought that brought her to a halt as he turned with her into the track. ‘I . . . I’d better go on alone,’ she said awkwardly, suddenly remembering who he was. He had been so natural and unaffected that she’d forgotten he was the gentry. If she was seen talking and laughing with the laird’s son there would be gossip of the worst kind.
Nicholas looked at her, his deep-brown eyes narrowing. He had a fair idea of what she was thinking but he couldn’t let her go without asking to see her again. He knew there were a whole host of reasons why he shouldn’t, not least this wretched business of class and what his father would say if he discovered he was walking out with a farm girl. But then he wasn’t walking out with her, he reasoned in the next moment. They were simply friends. No, not even that. Acquaintances, who had their interest in medicine and hospital life between them. And after Christmas he would be returning to the hospital and she was off to start her training in Galashiels. Without thinking further, he said, ‘Could . . . could we meet again and talk some more before I go back to London?’
‘Your hospital is in London?’ Abby was both disappointed and relieved it was so far away; disappointed because there would be no chance of running into him again once she left for Galashiels, and relieved for the same reason.
Nicholas nodded. ‘I leave the day after Boxing Day.’
It would be stupid to risk her reputation and she would have to meet him secretly which would mean lying to her grandfather and Robin as to where she was going. It was impossible.
She nodded. ‘All right.’
‘You will?’ His face lit up.
And it was in that moment that Abby knew she had fallen in love. As quickly and as irrevocably as that.
Chapter Twelve
When Abby turned the corner of the track and the farm cottages came into view, she saw her grandfather in the doorway of their house and he waved to her. As she got nearer, he called, ‘You’re late, lass. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t get home before the snow started again.’
‘I stayed to help with the clearing-up.’ That wasn’t a lie, Abby reassured herself.
‘Where’s Tessa and the bairns?’
‘The bairns are poorly so she couldn’t help a
s planned.’
‘That’s a shame. A trek like that never seems so long if you’ve got someone to talk to.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ That wasn’t a lie either, not really.
As she reached her grandfather he looked at her keenly. ‘You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Anything happened?’
‘No, of course not.’ That was a lie. Guilt prompted her to continue, ‘It’s a bracing walk. It puts colour in your cheeks, I suppose.’
‘Aye. Well, maybe your brother should have gone into Morebattle then. He’s as miserable as sin.’
The guilt she was feeling was further compounded by the knowledge that in the last little while she hadn’t given a thought to Robin. ‘I’ll talk to him. Is he in the house?’
‘He’s in the far barn with that ewe that’s been ailing.’
As she walked to the barn the snow began in earnest, big fat flakes that fell on the frozen ground and immediately settled, hiding any icy patches beneath it. Pushing open the door she saw Robin had already lit a paraffin lantern above the pen where the sick sheep lay deep in straw, and although he glanced up as she entered he immediately turned away again.
She didn’t prevaricate as she joined him where he was sitting on a straw bale, plumping down beside him as she said, ‘I’m sorry for going for you earlier and I don’t want to fall out about this.’ When he didn’t respond she put her hand on one of his. ‘Really, Robin. I’m sorry.’
She thought he was still going to ignore her, but after a moment or two he said thickly, ‘I know you think you know what’s best for me, Abby, but you don’t. Not over this. Rachel is the one for me and she feels the same, and not just because she wants to leave home.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
He shook his head before looking at her. ‘I love her, Abby. I’ll always love her. And aye, I want her out of that place where she’s part punchbag and part unpaid help. The life they lead her you wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t treat a dog that way.’
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