Master of Glenkeith (20 page)

Tessa bit her lip.

“Why do you say that, Meg?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’m—not in love with Nigel, if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t ask you that, but never mind,” Margaret said, tossing the jodhpurs on her bed. “You can draw these in at the waist with a belt.”

“Margaret—”

“Yes?”

“What would you do?” “About Nigel?” Margaret crossed to the window. Her face was very pale, but it was composed. “I’d think twice.”

“You always do, I expect. Not like me—plunging into things because my heart dictates to my head. You never make mistakes, Meg. You’re so solid and reliable you just couldn’t go wrong.”

“We can all make mistakes sometimes,” Margaret answered briefly. “This may be one I am making now.”

“Advising me?” Tessa drew in a small, quivering breath.

“Yes,” she said. “I see what you mean,” but she didn’t really see what Margaret had meant till long afterwards. Andrew had saddled the mare by the time she reached the stables, and although his expression said plainly that he was not in favour of the excursion, he did not ask her not to go.

“Take care of the arm,” he said briefly, but that was all. Nigel walked his horse quietly beside hers, aware that Lucy was a more spirited mount than the pony she had been riding since she came to Glenkeith. Margaret could handle Lucy because she was used to her and because she was far and away the better horsewoman, and Tessa felt nervous from the moment they left the farm behind.

“I never had a chance to ride before I came to Scotland,” she explained to Nigel as they went down into the glen. “Sometimes, as a child, I used to ride one of the little grey donkeys out on the Campagna or on the beach at Sorrento, but we were always too poor for me to learn to ride properly.” She looked up at him with a wistful smile. “Do you know all these things about me, Nigel? Has Andrew told you?”

“I don’t think Andrew knows everything about you,” he said quickly, “and your background before you came here doesn’t come into it. I’m not marrying what you were in Rome, and, as I see it, that laid the foundation for what you are now, Tessy. Andrew’s opinion wouldn’t matter to me, anyway.”

“Doesn’t he—know about women?”

“Not much,” Nigel laughed. “Andrew’s what we call in this country a man’s man.”

“Why do you think he resents me so much?” she asked.

Her voice had caught on the words and her eyes were deep pools of regret as they looked into his.

“Does he resent you?”

“You know he does. He never wanted me to come to Glenkeith.”

“Yet he did bring you,” Nigel pointed out.

“That was because his grandfather said he must. It was not because Andrew wanted me to come, even after he had met me.”

He smiled at the remark.

“Tessy! you’re very naive,” he said. “Did you expect Andrew to fall in love with you at first sight?”

“No. No, he could never have done that!” Her voice trailed away in a whisper. “Why should he?”

“Because you are so very sweet!”

He vaulted from his horse and stretched up to take her from the saddle, making nothing of her protests by swinging her clear and holding her tightly with her feet just off the ground.

“Tessy! Tessy!” He was kissing her with a passion which drove all protest from her, his mouth seeking hers with the utmost finality. “Can’t you understand about this? Don’t you see that we belong together, that my life would never be anything without you? You’re in my blood like fire. Fire and water! The fire that you’ll always kindle without knowing it, and cool, clear water like a mountain stream!” He laughed down into her distressed eyes. “You see, you’ve even succeeded in making a poet out of me! Did you know that Lord Byron walked in these woods and sang his love songs in this glen, perhaps, before he ever saw your sunny Italian skies? He made a tragedy of love, but we could make it something wonderful, Tessy! Look at me, Tess, and tell me that you’ll try!”

If only I could, she thought.

“Oh, Nigel, you deserve me to love you,” she said. “You’re so kind—so very kind!”

He laughed outright at that.

“If ever there was a word calculated to damp a man’s ardour it’s that one,” he declared. “I don’t want you to be grateful and marry me because I have been ‘kind’, Tessy. I want you to say ‘yes’ because you mean it—and not just on the rebound from Glenkeith, either.”

“It wouldn’t be for that reason,” she assured him. “It

wouldn’t be, if I made up my mind.”

“Then, make it up now!” He caught her to him again, holding her so that she could not escape and kissing her more passionately this time. “I’m not pretending that I have led an exemplary life up till now,” he said, “but you could change all that, Tessy. I mean to settle down at Ardnashee and please my mother and breed cattle that may one day come up to the Glenkeith standard. Does that sound dull to you?” he asked, holding her from him a little so that he could see her eyes. “If it does, Tessy, we will change it! The world shall be your oyster, my dear! You can even live in Italy for half the year and draw your little pictures in the sun again.”

Her eyes were moist and she was sorry that she must hurt him, but she could not give him the answer he wanted for that reason alone.

“Don’t offer me any more,” she begged huskily. “For I will not know how to answer you if you do.”

“Shall I tell you what you don’t know?” he said, pressing his lips down against her wind-blown hair. “You are ready to say ‘yes,’ Tessy, but something is holding you back, some shyness, perhaps, which I can overcome if only you will tell me about it.”

How could she tell him? How could she confess to loving Andrew with every fibre of her being? How could she convince him that she would never change?

“If it were as easy as that, Nigel, I would let you help,” she said unsteadily.

“Love’s easy, Tessy, if you’ll only let it be,” he tried to assure her. “All this seems so natural to me.” His arm tightened about her waist. “It’s what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

“Why are we so selfish in our love?” Tessa cried. “Fundamentally selfish. It is always what we want for ourselves that we emphasize most—”

She broke off, seeing the frown beneath his dark brows which told her that he was puzzled by her flight of insight.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have put it that way to you. I have no right to accuse you of selfishness. It is I who am selfish, wanting so much.”

He did not understand, but there was a quality about her now that made her even more desirable to him. In so many ways she was the woman more than the child.

“If you mean that,” he said, “you needn’t keep me waiting for my answer. The answer I want, Tessy.”

“Will you wait, Nigel?” she asked desperately, covering her face with her hands. “Will you give me one more day to decide?”

He took her hands away, holding them tightly as he smiled his assurance into her distressed face.

“Of course I’ll wait,” he said. “But after to-morrow you are not going to find me very patient, my dear.” He remounted her on the mare and they rode slowly up the glen, past the spot where he had left the red roadster beside the burn and on up to the hump-backed bridge above the salmon leap. Whatever happened, Tessa thought, she would always remember Nigel as he had been that day he had come to her rescue and took Daniel and her back to Glenkeith. He had been kind and considerate and helpful, with a gay word for the occasion and a sense of proportion in all things which had made her feel secure. Even if she refused to marry him she knew that he would not let it spoil his life. He would come back to Ardnashee one day and stay there, because roots are stronger things than a passing heartache.

That night Daniel Meldrum died in his sleep.

It was Tessa who found him when she went in with his early morning cup of tea, a privilege of which Hester had not been able to deprive her because the old man had insisted on Tessa being allowed to perform the small service for him whenever she wished.

She thought him asleep at first, but when she drew back the curtains she knew that he was dead.

The faint grey light of the early winter’s day fell across a face from which all the stress of the years had departed and she knew that he had gone peacefully. There was no moment of terror for her. She stood looking at him, alone with what she remembered of him, before she called Andrew.

“He’s gone,” she said simply. “He must have died in his sleep.”

Andrew followed her to his grandfather’s room where she had re-drawn the curtains half-way across the window, and for a moment he did not think to call Hester.

He stood beside the bed, with Tessa kneeling there saying a last silent farewell to her old friend, and felt solid ground slipping away from under his feet.

Instead of being sure of his position at Glenkeith, he was now uncertain and at a loss, and he was too near to events to hope to see the future at all clearly at this moment.

Tessa made her way down to the hall, leaving him alone in the room. She knew that she would have to tell Hester and that her action would be fiercely resented, but she could not draw from the thought of responsibility because a scene was distasteful to her.

Hester met her at the kitchen door.

“I wondered how long you were going to be,” she said in greeting. “The porridge has been ready and waiting to be dished this past half-hour. I wonder that Andrew doesn’t realize he’s already late. Margaret has been out ten minutes.”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. It had become almost a habit with her to apologize to Hester when they met. “I— something has happened. I was coming to tell you. It’s— Mr. Meldrum—”

Hester stared at her in stony silence for a full minute before she spoke.

“My father is dead,” she said. “Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

Tessa was only able to nod her head because, suddenly, the tears were choking in her throat.

When Margaret came in they cried together.

“He was always the same,” Margaret said, “as long as I can remember him. He was always fair and generous and kind, and he had a great and abiding love for Glenkeith. It was his home, but it was something more.”

“I think it was a sort of trust,” Tessa said. “And he felt that he had to pass it on to Andrew.”

“Andrew is going to miss him more than he realizes. We all will,” Margaret mused. “The house will seem— soulless without him.”

Tessa thought that, too, but she did not say so. She was not one of Andrew’s family, as Margaret was.

She tried to busy herself about the house, doing the small chores which she thought that Hester could not grudge her at this time, and by mid-day there was a settled sort of gloom about Glenkeith.

With a ruthless sort of energy Hester had begun to prepare for the funeral, realizing that it would be a large one, with people coming to pay their last respects to her father from far and near. She was determined not to let any breath of criticism touch Glenkeith as far as the catering went. Her efforts would be above reproach, and Andrew must see to the rest.

Tessa went upstairs in the early afternoon with some flowers she had pulled in the garden. They were simple enough: a few pansies left blooming after the first frosts and some bronze chrysanthemums from the bed beneath his window. They were the flowers he had loved most.

“They’re brave soldiers!” he had often said. “Standing out there facing the winter in their burnished coats with their heads held high in spite of the wind!”

The “brave soldiers” would stay in his room to keep him company.

Andrew followed her into the house, meeting his aunt at the foot of the staircase.

“Well, Andrew,” she said, “what are you planning to do about her?”

Andrew’s dark brows drew together in a quick frown.

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” he said.

Hester left him in no doubt.

“About that one up there,” she said, indicating the door of Tessa’s room with a swift lift of her head. “Mooning about and carrying flowers to your grandfather’s bedside as if she had known him all her life! She’s not one of us, Drew, and never could be, and it’s time she was told the truth.”

He looked at her as if he could not credit what she had said, and then his face set in a hard grey mask, like granite.

“You will see that nothing is said to Tessa to make her leave this house,” he said.

It was his first order as the master of Glenkeith, but it did little to intimidate his aunt. Hester MacDonald was not the woman to be easily defeated nor turned aside from a purpose which had been her life’s work. Her thin mouth closed like a trap on the retort she had been about to make, but from that day onwards her determination to have her way strengthened.

She took up the reins with a new vigour, and less than a week after her father’s funeral she told Tessa in no uncertain terms that she was no longer welcome at Glenkeith.

“You don’t expect Andrew to
tell
you to go,” she said. “It isn’t in him. A man couldn’t do that sort of thing when you’ve gone out of your way to let him see how beholden you are to him, but you can’t expect him to keep you indefinitely. There’s no room for you here. There’s nothing for you to do.” She drew in a sharp breath, her teeth pressed closely together. “Nigel Haddow has asked you to marry him,” she said. “Why don’t you go there?”