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‘I wasn’t thinking of Rachel,’ Richard was speaking now. ‘No, what you seem to have overlooked, Moira, is the fact that I’m not in love with you. I have no intention of marrying you …' he hesitated '... or anybody else, for that matter. I’m sorry, Moira, if you thought differently, but—well, there it is.’

‘You’re not
still
moping after Celia!’ Moira’s voice was full of scorn. ‘Surely even you couldn’t be so naive? Don’t you realise what she was like? Didn’t you know about her men friends?’ Her voice rose higher and higher. ‘Didn’t you know about her and my brother David?’ Her voice dropped, but only slightly. ‘She went to meet him in Dunglevin the night she was killed. His idea was to have a farewell drink before going to London the next day, but she had different ideas. She’d got a suitcase with her and she was all ready to go with him. She pleaded with him to take her, went down on her knees, David told me afterwards —he said it was quite embarrassing.’ Moira gave an ugly little laugh. ‘Do you realise the implications, Richard?
Your
wife pleaded with my brother to take her away with him. Where did you fall short as a husband, I ask myself, that your wife should do that, knowing that David was only interested in her for one thing...?’

Rachel heard the sting of Richard’s hand across Moira’s cheek and her swift cry of pain.

‘Get out.’ His voice was low with fury. ‘Get out!’

The door slammed and they heard a car rev and drive away. A moment or two later the door opened and closed again more quietly and they heard Richard drive off.

Rachel looked at Ben. His face was ashen. ‘It’s not true! Not Celia. Not my lovely Celia,’ he muttered, his voice almost a whisper.

‘Didn’t you know, Ben? Richard knew.’

He shook his head. ‘I thought it was me she loved. Not that we ever ... I mean, she was always faithful to him ... at least, that’s what I thought. That’s why I admired her so.’ He sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. After a long time he lifted his head. ‘I don’t think I can stay here. Everywhere I go I can see her. It’ll be worse now, knowing what she really was....' He went down the stairs and out of the house. Rachel picked up the tools he had left strewn around and put them away, locked up the cottage and left. It showed the state of Ben’s mind that he had taken the truck, leaving her no option but to walk the three miles back to Kilfinan House.

She didn’t mind. She was glad of the opportunity to sort out her thoughts. With Moira’s revelation everything fell into place. It was understandable that Rose had suspected it was Ben Celia was going to that night,

although Richard had—quite rightly—denied that this was likely. Rachel gave a little moan. Richard. She had even imagined that he might have engineered his wife's death. Poor Richard! Even he had never suspected David McLeod. But it all fitted in. David McLeod, rich in his own right and with the added attraction of the up-and-coming playwright image. From what Rachel had heard of Celia Duncan she would find such a combination irresistible. But David, it would seem, had played Celia at her own game and this time the tables were turned; Celia was the rejected one, probably for the first time in her life. So had it really been an accident on the Dunglevin Road or had she deliberately run her car off the road above the loch? That was something nobody would ever know.

Rachel looked at her watch. It was nearly two o’clock. She wondered how Melanie was enjoying school. She realised with surprise that she had scarcely given the little girl a thought since overhearing Moira’s shattering disclosure. And that was another thing. David McLeod must have been the man Melanie had accompanied her mother to meet, and not Ben, as Rachel had assumed at the time, which would explain the child’s odd behaviour the night the McLeods came to dinner; the way she had clung possessively to Rachel and refused to utter a word. And then her nightmare —‘Don't go! Don’t leave me!’ She had simply been reliving the past. It was all there, if only they had known.

Rachel turned in at the drive and pulled her anorak more closely round her. She had enjoyed the walk, it had given her time to sort out her thoughts, but she was cold now and would be glad of a warming cup of tea before going to meet Melanie at half past three.

Suddenly she heard a motor coming towards her at breakneck speed. It was Ben, riding a motor-bike. She stepped aside in astonishment; she hadn’t known he possessed such a vehicle; she had always seen him driving the truck, or, more occasionally, the Mini. He passed her without seeming to see her, his suitcases hurriedly strapped to the pillion. Poor Ben, she thought. Where would he go? What would he do? She hoped he would find happiness somewhere, but she doubted if she would ever see him again.

She continued up the drive and into the warm kitchen at Kilfinan House. Mrs Munroe had gone home and wouldn’t be back until it was time to cook the evening meal, but she had left everything clean and neat. Rachel took off her anorak and hung it over a chair, then she made herself a pot of tea and sat down by the stove to drink it.

She was sitting there, her hands round the mug as if to draw extra warmth right down into the coldness that was inside her and nothing to do with the chillness of the day, when Richard came in.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked, keeping her voice carefully polite.

‘Thank you.’ He leaned against the rail of the stove and watched her pour the amber liquid into a mug she had taken from a hook on the dresser.

‘What’s got into Ben?’ he asked as she handed it to him. ‘He’s gone off on that old motor-bike of his as if all the devils in hell were after him.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be coming back, either.’ Rachel sat down and picked up her own mug without meeting his eyes.

Richard frowned at her. ‘Have you quarrelled, then?’

‘Good heavens, no! ’ She looked up in surprise. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘What then? My right-hand man—or, at least, my father’s right-hand man, goes roaring off and you say he’s not likely to be coming back. I think I’m owed some explanation as to why.'

Rachel studied the steam rising from her mug for some time without speaking.

‘Ben and I were in the little bedroom at the head of the stairs at Arden Lodge, hanging curtains, when you and Moira came there this morning,’ she said at last. ‘We couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. There was no way we could escape except by coming down the stairs, and that would have been even more embarrassing. I’m sorry, we couldn't help hearing.'

Richard was silent for a very long time, sipping his tea and staring into space. Rachel stole a glance at him. His jaw was set and stern and a small pulse was beating at his temple. She noticed a faint fleck of silver in his dark hair as he bent his head to his mug. She closed her eyes. It was no good, she knew that she would always love this man who had endured so much; an unfaithful wife, a disturbed daughter, the loss of the fishing business he was trying to build to assert his independence; and she admired the way he had taken on the running of his father’s estate, an estate that was so run down that it would take all his skill and ingenuity to save it. There was still an angry scar on his hand to remind him of the day he lost his boat
Celia
, but apart from a stiffness in the fingers which made writing difficult that, at least, was back to normal. She wanted to put out her hand and touch the jagged red line that ran across his palm. Suddenly he looked very lonely and very vulnerable and her heart went out to him.

He put his mug down on the table and looked at her, his eyes puzzled. ‘I can’t understand why overhearing that conversation should have had such an effect on Ben,’ he said.

‘Because—didn’t you know? Ben was in love with Celia—or rather, with what he thought Celia was.’ Richard looked puzzled.

‘In effect, Ben saw Celia as the beautiful princess married to a cold-hearted prince,’ she explained. ‘He saw himself as the humble woodman she fell in love with but was too high-principled to allow anything to come of it. He worshipped her from afar and imagined that she felt the same way about him.’ She paused. ‘You can imagine that the truth came as a blow. His idol was not only toppled from her pedestal but shattered into a thousand pieces.'

‘You’re exaggerating. Nobody could be that naive in this day and age.'

‘Maybe. I don’t know much about Ben’s background, except that he came from some remote island, but I’ve heard the way he spoke of Celia. I’ve seen the reverent way he treated the snapshot he had of her. And I saw his face as he heard what Moira said ..... They say listeners hear no good of themselves, in this case it was even worse for Ben to hear no good of Celia.’

‘So you knew how he felt about Celia?’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve always known.'

He pulled her to her feet and still holding her, put his finger under her chin and made her look up at him. ‘Poor little Rachel,’ he said softly, ‘and you came here to mend a broken heart. It hasn’t been very successful, has it? Out of the frying pan into the fire would hardly be too strong a phrase, would it?’

He gazed at her, his eyes for once full of compassion. It was almost more than she could bear and her eyes filled with tears.

‘We could try to find him.’ He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult, he can’t have gone far. And I’m sure when he’s had time to think, to get over the shock .... ’

She shook her head, unable to trust herself to speak. ‘No,' she managed to get out at last, ‘you don’t understand. It’s not... Ben.'

How much more she would have confessed at that moment if the phone had not shrilled she was never quite sure. With Richard so close and so tenderly concerned it would have been easy—in fact, almost impossible not to put her head on his shoulder and tell him that Ben could go to Mars for all she cared as long as she could stay right there, where she was, encircled in Richard’s arms.

But the phone rang, and Richard after a second’s hesitation, when it seemed to Rachel that he held her just a shade closer, went to answer it.

She sat down weakly and searched for a tissue to blow her nose, trying to compose herself. She had come close to revealing her true feelings to Richard Duncan just then. It mustn’t happen again. He had made it obvious that marriage—even a marriage of convenience to save the Estate—was not for him. It would only embarrass him to find out how she felt about him. The sooner she could leave Glencarrick the better it would be. She got up and picked up the mugs to take them to the sink and wash them up. She was running the water when Richard came back into the room, his face suddenly white and haggard.

‘It’s Melanie,’ he said. ‘She’s run away from school. That was her headmaster. He says they’ve trained binoculars on the mountain and they think it’s her they can see. It looks as if she’s on her way home over the mountain track. She’ll come to no harm as long as she keeps to the track and the mist doesn’t come down.' He looked anxiously out of the window at the grey autumn afternoon. ‘But I must say it doesn’t look too healthy out there. Come on, we must go and fetch her.'

It
didn’t take Richard long to collect together what he needed to go after Melanie. By the time Rachel had donned boots and a thick sweater and anorak he was ready with compass, binoculars, whistle and rope.

‘That mountain track is a short cut to Ardenbeg for people who know exactly what they’re doing in the summer time, and even then it can be very tricky,’ he explained, seeing her surprise at the precautions he was taking. ‘Nobody in their right mind uses it at this time of year, especially late in the afternoon when the weather is threatening to close in as it is.’ He looked at his watch. ‘However, Melanie should be nearly home by now. If she isn’t something must have gone wrong.’ Together they set off on the track to Ardenbeg. It was well-trodden and well-defined at first, almost wide enough for a car, although it was muddy from recent rain, but as they climbed higher it narrowed to a single footpath, which almost disappeared in places.

‘If it’s as bad as this the other side she’ll never have followed it,’ Richard said anxiously, ‘and then goodness knows where she could have wandered to.’

‘How long should it take her?’ Rachel had to run a little to keep pace with his longer stride.

‘Oh, I should say not much more than an hour, at the very most. They missed her at school around three o’clock ... let’s see, allowing for her to have gone half an hour before that ..... ’ he looked at his watch. ‘I should have thought she would have been in sight, at least.’ He raised his binoculars and scanned the side of the mountain. ‘But I can’t see any sign of her. Here, you have a look.’

Rachel took the binoculars. The mountain looked cold and unfriendly, even the sheep huddling in clutches under the shelter of boulders. A wraith-like mist was beginning to curl itself thinly across the rugged contours. Rachel couldn’t help contrasting this with the bright summery scene the first time she had walked the track to Ardenbeg, when Richard had rightly chastised her for her foolishness. She remembered, too, how quickly the whole mountain had been covered by the mist. No wonder Richard was worried!

He began to call, cupping his hands round his mouth. ‘Melanie!’

They listened. There was no answer. In fact, the very silence seemed loud.

‘If she’s missed the track she could be anywhere.’ Richard stopped and looked around. The mist was thickening—not suddenly as it had on the day they climbed to see Eas Mhor, the Great Waterfall, but slowly, insidiously, almost unnoticeably. The air was chill and there was a stillness over everything. For the hundredth time he looked at his watch. ‘We should have picked her up by now. I didn’t think there’d be any problem or I’d have alerted the rescue team.’ He peered through his binoculars again. ‘The fog’s coming in thicker now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Look, Rachel, do you think you can find your way back to the house? It’s quite straightforward as the weather is now, you simply keep your eye on Kilfinan and keep going towards it, you can’t go wrong. When you get there, call out the rescue team—the number’s prominent by the telephone. I’ll go on. Surely, she can’t be far from here, but even a few yards off the track and we could miss her.’ He cupped his hands again, ‘Melanie!’