by Lucy Gillen
Return to Deepwater
By
Lucy Gillen
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
OTHER Harlequin Romances
by
LUCY GILLEN
1533-THE GIRL AT SMUGGLER’S REST
1553-DOCTOR TOBY
1579-WINTER AT CRAY
1004-THAT MAN NEXT DOOR
1627-MY BEAUTIFUL HEATHEN
1649-SWEET KATE
1669-A TIME REMEMBERED
1683-DANGEROUS STRANGER
1711-SUMMER SEASON
1736-THE ENCHANTED RING
1754-THE PRETTY WITCH
1782-PAINTED WINGS
1806-THE PENGELLY JADE
1822-THE RUNAWAY BRIDE
1847-THE CHANGING YEARS
1861-THE STAIRWAY TO ENCHANTMENT
1877-MEANS TO AN END
1895-GLEN OF SIGHS
1908-A TOUCH OF HONEY
1928-GENTLE TYRANT
1930-WEB OF SILVER
1958-ALL THE LONG SUMMER
1979-A HANDFUL OF STARS
1995-THE HUNGRY TIDE
Original hardcover edition published in 1975
by
Mills & Boon Limited
ISBN 0-373-02012-0
Harlequin edition published October 1976
Copyright ©1975 by Lucy Gillen
CHAPTER ONE
Tarin was aware that her uncle was watching her and had been ever since they sat down to their meal. She had been gazing out of the window at the vastness of the open moorland where it swept right down as far as the ragged hedge that surrounded her uncle’s garden. The sight of it was all very familiar and yet somehow different from how she remembered it, and she supposed the contradiction in terms was due to her own maturing. The last time she had seen it through the eyes of a child, now she was a grown woman and it had a different aspect.
She turned her head suddenly and smiled at her uncle seated on the other side of the table, and thought that the same curious contradiction applied to him too. Robert McCourt was her father’s youngest brother and so very much like him that it had startled her several times since her arrival, because she did not remember him being so much like him before.
Tall and good-looking, he had the McCourt head of thick, dark brown hair that Tarin herself had inherited, only his eyes were brown like her father’s, while Tarin had inherited her own deep blue ones from her mother.
She had spent so many happy holidays up here in Scotland, in the little village of Deepwater, with her uncle and Aunt Margaret. After Aunt Margaret died her uncle had become something of a recluse for quite a long time, but in the last year he had once more started to correspond with his brothers and their families. It had been Uncle Robert who mentioned that there was an advert in the local newspaper for a secretary, and jokingly wondered who would want to bury themselves in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands to work for Darrel Bruce.
Not that Robert McCourt really considered living in Scotland as being buried at all, for he had always resolutely refused to leave his native heath for more prosperous fields, and unlike his brothers, including Tarin’s father, he had never felt the need to seek pastures new. He was content and happy in his own environment.
In writing about the advertised job, however, he had reckoned without his niece’s impulsiveness, and knew nothing of her memories. No one could have been more surprised when he learned from his brother that Tarin had actually applied for the post he had so casually mentioned, but he had lost no time in assuring her that she would be more than welcome to stay with him for as long as she cared to. Certainly until she had been to the house for an interview with Darrel Bruce.
No one actually living in the village ever referred to Deepwater as anything else but ‘the house’, and even in the short time she had been back Tarin found herself falling in with local custom. It was a huge rambling place, as she remembered it, that had been in the Bruce family for hundreds of years, passed on from father to son.
During her last visit, ten years before, the old house had been in the hands of Irwin Bruce, and Turin’s recollection of him was somewhat vague, but she had no such difficulty remembering his son Darrel. Now that she was back she found it rather embarrassing to remember the number of times she had sought excuses to be in certain places at just the right time to catch a glimpse of Barrel Bruce and, even in the brief time she had been back, she had several times wondered if she had been foolishly impulsive in coming back.
It was not as if she had ever been on even remotely close terms with himâall her adoration had been from afar, but during the long summer days when she had been on holiday from school, he had seemed like the very essence of romance to her young eyes.
Perhaps if she had suffered some disillusionment at his hands during those days she would not have retained such a glowingly romantic picture of him. As it was whenever she recalled him to mind he appeared as the perfect figure of all a man should be, and it only now began to occur to her that such a paragon could not possibly exist among the everyday male population. In all probability he had changed as much, or more, than she had herself during the passing years.
Usually when she had seen him he had been out riding and he had greeted her politely, though never as warmly as she wished, for she had nursed a youthful crush that had caused her both agony and ecstasy. Once, she recalled, she had returned from a long walk quite lightheaded with delight, and all because, after finding her with a painfully twisted ankle, Darrel Bruce had brought her all the way back from Stonebeck, riding on the saddle in front of him.
She had seen neither Deepwater nor Darrel Bruce for more than ten years now, but she admitted, though only to herself, that it had been the idea of actually working for him that had prompted her to write for the post of secretary, and travel all the way from the south of England for an interview.
The casual reference to it by her uncle had sent her, without mentioning anything about it, to buy a copy of the Scottish paper that contained the advert, although she had some difficulty in obtaining one. For several hours she had mulled over the idea and finally decided that there could be no harm in applying, even if she was wasting her time.
Her parents had been curious as to her reasons, but they had said little, for they never interfered with her plans, and she had told them that she liked the idea of working in Scotland and of seeing her uncle again. Robert had been glad to see her and she had no doubt that she was welcome to stay as long as she liked. Tomorrow was to be the big day, and she felt quite suddenly nervous of meeting her youthful heart-throb again, although she told herself more than once that it was quite probable he wouldn’t even remember her existence.
‘Nothing seems to have changed.’ she said, smiling at her uncle. ‘It all seems so much the same, so ageless and so incredibly bigâeven now I’m grownup!’
‘Now you’re grownup,’ her uncle echoed, and there was a hint of amusement in his expression that made her frown briefly.
She was always being told that she looked a lot less than her years and she did not always take it as a compliment. ‘I’m twenty-four, Uncle Robert,’ she reminded him, and he smiled.
‘And showing no sign of settling down to marriage?’ he said in the accent she always found so attractive and which had all but disappeared from her father’s speech after so long away. ‘A girl as pretty as you are, Tarin, shouldn’t be thinking of nothing but her work. Have you no plans for marrying and settling down, lassie?’
She was reluctant to have the subject of marriage discussed, for it was something that her parents often mentioned, indirectly when she was there and more openly when they thought she was out of earshot. So far she had met no one who came close to her idea of a husbandânot, that is, since the days of her childhood when she had indulged in secret dreams of becoming Darrel Bruce’s bride and living at Deepwater. It was a fancy that now brought a flush of embarrassment to her cheeks when she even thought about it.
‘No one serious?’ her uncle asked, and she shook her head.
‘No one serious, Uncle Robert.’
Robert McCourt frowned for a moment, then leaned across the table and touched her hand lightly, a half-apologetic look on his face. ‘Tarin,’ he said quietly, ‘would you think me vain if I asked you to call me just Robert and dispense with the Uncle?’
Tarin smiled and shook her head. ‘No, of course I don’t,’ she told him. ‘I always call my other uncles by their Christian names. It does make you sound a bit ancient, doesn’t it?’
‘It makes me feel older than I am,’ Robert admitted with a grimace, ‘and that’s not good for my morale.’
‘It’s funny,’ Tarin mused, looking at him with her head to one side, ‘you’ve changed a lot more than Deepwater has. You look a lot younger than when I saw you last.’
His laughter made him appear even more youthful and Tarin was glad to see it, for there had been a long time when he had become so morose and uncommunicative, after Aunt Margaret’s death, that the family had worried about him. It was good to see him laughing again, even if it was at what she said.
‘You’ve grown up in the time, lass,’ he told her. ‘I wasn’t so very old, you know, the last time you were here, but you were only a wee bit of a thing, no more than twelve or so.’
‘Actually I was fourteen,’ Tarin told him with a smile. ‘But I can see what you meanâeveryone looked much older to me then, of course.’
Her uncle looked at her for a minute without speaking, then he gave his attention to the coffee she had made for them, not looking at her when he spoke. ‘And now you’re wanting to work for the Bruce,’ he said quietly.
Tarin had guessed he wouldn’t be very happy about it, but so far he had said nothing, and she had hoped to keep it that way. Robert had never been away from the Highlands in his life, unlike his brothers, and he still held his views, firmly steeped in ancient history. The ancient feud, the tradition that the McCourts and the Bruces never mixed, still mattered to him.
‘It sounds like a good job,’ Tarin said, sounding as matter-of-fact as if she knew nothing about past history. ‘The pay’s very good and I couldn’t resist the temptation to come up here and liveâif I get the job, of course. Darrel Bruce might not consider me suitable for it.’
‘And why would he not?’ her uncle demanded. ‘You’re a good worker, I’ve no doubt of it, and a McCourt’s good enough for a Bruce any day! If he doesn’tâ’
‘Robert!’ Tarin put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I don’t want to rekindle the old feud! There’s really no need for you to get up in arms about it before it happens, or even if it does. I shall apply for the job in the usual way, and if Darrel Bruce doesn’t think I’m suitable for it he’ll no doubt say so and there’ll be no hard feelings.’
‘Indeed there will!’ Robert declared stoutly. ‘Though you’d probably be like Douglas and let it rideâyou’re too much like your father, lassie, he never was a fighter!’
Tarin laughed, not so much at her uncle, but at the idea of his still keeping up the old feud between the Bruces and the McCourts which had gone on, in some form or other, for over two hundred years. ‘Robert!’ she said, shaking her head at him, ‘I won’t have you going out for Darrel Bruce’s blood just because he turns me down for a job! It’s âit’s idiotic after all these years!’
Robert McCourt’s eyes looked bright and indignant and she realised ruefully just how serious it was to him. ‘It’s something you wouldn’t understand,’ he told her quietly. ‘You don’t belong here like I do, Tarin, you’d not see things in the same way.’
‘Then you mustn’t blame me for wanting to work for the Bruce,’ she said, using the local name for the head of the Bruce family. ‘If I get turned down, wellâ’ She shrugged, then looked out of the window again to where the huge bulk of Deepwater was hidden in its surrounding trees, just be-yond the village to which it gave its name. ‘But I’m hoping I won’t be turned down,’ she added softly.
‘They say Barrel Bruce is a hard man,’ her uncle told her, still taking the pessimistic view. ‘Though he seems to be well liked enough in the village. They say he’s hard to please and ready to turn anything to money, though he can’t be in such dire straits, with all the things he’s done there since his lather died.’
It was difficult to be casual about her interest, Tarin recognized, and it was amazing how she still felt a small tingle of excitement at the mere mention of Darrel Bruce. ‘Did he have a hard time after his father died?’ she asked, and her uncle nodded.
‘So I heard,’ he said. ‘Though he seems to have that great place working well for him now, by all accountsâeven if it does mean the whole place being overrun with tourists!’
‘Well, it is a hotel,’ she reminded him with a smile. ‘That’s what his letter said, although the job itself isn’t only concerned with that side of it.’
Her uncle’s eyes narrowed and he looked at her for a moment almost suspiciously. ‘Of course you’d need to correspond with him, wouldn’t you?’ he said, as if the idea had only just occurred to him. ‘Did he remember you?’ he asked, and Tarin shrugged, wishing she knew the answer to that herself.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she said with deceptive carelessness. ‘He didn’t say he did, and alter all this time it’s quite possible he’s forgotten I ever existed!’
‘Aye, wellâ’ Her uncle nodded, as if such a thing’ was quite feasible, and Tarin felt a twinge of disappointment. Some reassurance from him would have been welcome on that point.
‘Anyway, he’d never recognize me now,’ she said, and again her uncle nodded.
‘You’ve grown into a very lovely young woman, Tarin,’ he told her. ‘No one can deny that and they do say the Bruce has a taste for lovely girls.’
‘Not surprising.’ Tarin commented, hoping her voice sounded more offhand to him than it did to herself. ‘I expect we’ve all changed, even Deepwater, now that it’s a hotel.’
‘Not so much a hotel, so I hear,’ her uncle told her, ‘as a kind of country club, or whatever it is they call those places. The tourists stay there more like private guests, though I’ve no doubt they pay well for the privilege of it.’
Tarin looked out again at the concealing trees that surrounded Deepwater and hid the old house from her view. The smile that touched her mouth was because she recognised her uncle’s apparent dislike of the overseas visitors as merely an extension of his feeling for their host.
‘Deepwater’s a lovely old place, from what I remember seeing of it,’ she said. ‘I imagine the visitors think it well worth while paying a bit extra to stay there.’
‘They drive their great cars through the village as if the devil was in the back seat,’ Robert declared, determined not to relinquish his prejudices. ‘The village isn’t the same at all since he turned that place into a business.’
Admitting to being somewhat biased in the opposite direction, Tarin smiled. ‘Anyway, I should think it’s better than simply sitting back and going bankrupt,’ she said, and her uncle looked at her for a moment in silence, evidently recalling something to mind.
‘You were keen on young Bruce when you were here before, were you not?’ he asked then, and Tarin was appalled to find herself blushing, something she had thought herself grown out of It seemed that no matter what vows she made to treat past emotions as mere childish foll
y, she was still vulnerable, and that blush made it-obvious.
‘I remember having a childish crush on him at one time,’ she admitted, and laughed as if such things were well in the past. ‘Don’t forget I was only fourteen the last time I was here and he would be about twenty, I suppose. He cut a very romantic figure in my eyes thenânow I’m older and so is he, I’ll probably hate the sight of him. Especially if he’s the hard man you say he is.’
Her uncle shrugged. ‘Some women find a haul man more attractive, so I’ve heard,’ he told her, and Tarin recognised the truth of that with a brief nod, trying to remember exactly what it was she had so admired in Darrel Bruce before.
He would, she hastily worked out, be about thirty years old by now, and the wonder was that he was not married yet. Presumably he wasn’t, for her uncle had not mentioned it, only that he had a taste for pretty women. Not that she had any thoughts at all on the subject, but briefly her childish fancies took a whirl into the realms of possibility.
‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll hate the sight of him,’ Robert told her with a certain gloomy satisfaction. ‘He’s a good enough man to look at, and he’s not short of opportunities with all those wealthy women always around.’
‘Any one in particular?’ Tarin asked casually, and he shrugged as he helped himself to more coffee.
‘There’s talk in the village that one young woman’s got her eye on him,’ he told her with a dash of coarseness that brought a smile to her lips. ‘Gloria Stein or some such nameâbut whether it’s just a rumour of something more than that, wellâ’
‘Gloria Stein?’ Tarin puzzled over the name for a moment. ‘That name seems to strike a noteâI believe there was a girl called Gloria used to ride with him when I was here last.’
She recalled, though only vaguely, a tall and rather haughty blonde girl who used to ride a lot with Darrel Bruce but had never quite been able to keep up with him, much to Tarin’s satisfaction at the time. Surely if she was still coming to Deepwater after ten years, there must be something serious.