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“But you have struggled?” she observed dryly. “Surely New Zealand is far enough away. After all, it’s on the other side of the world.”

“You’d be surprised how strong the ties still are,” he told her. “Place names are only part of it. We pride ourselves on being Scots, even if we are a couple of generations removed. We farm practically in the same way,” he added as he looked around him.

“But on a larger scale, I expect.” He shrieked money, she decided. “Are you in sheep?”

He nodded.

“After a fashion. I was brought up on a sheep station north of Timaru,” he explained, “but that was a long time ago. I came to England to complete my education. Hence your difficulty about the accent.”

“I knew you weren’t English,” she said. “There was something—different about you.”

He smiled, not answering that as he drew the horse away.

“We’ll meet again, no doubt,” he observed. “I’m going to try the bridle path across the Law.”

“I’d go carefully, if I were you,” she warned. “There are a lot of rough places, to say nothing of a moss or two.”

“Surely Bucksfoot will take care of that.” He turned in the saddle to salute her. “Good afternoon, Miss Denham. I'll take a chance on the quickest way to Yairborough, I think.”

It was several seconds before Susan pressed the starter. How in the world did he know her name? She hadn’t told him who she was; only that she worked at the mill as a designer and that she had been there now for several years. Four, to be exact, ever since she had come to acknowledge the fact that she was the last of the Denhams.

‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house

And all the brothers, too,’

Once, when she had said that to Evelyn, her stepmother had laughed outright.

“It’s no use quoting ‘Twelfth Night’ at me, Susan,” Evelyn had said. “I may never give your father a son. We’ve been married for three years now and there’s still no sign of another Adam Denham on the way.”

“There’s time,” Susan had answered on that occasion, but now all the time had gone. Her father was dead, and Evelyn was in London tying up the loose ends of the business down there. Exports were Evelyn’s interest. She had worked in the London office for six years before she had met and married Adam Denham four years ago. Adam and Eve! They had been ideally happy for these short years granted to them by fate out of a lifetime, and Susan would have been the last person to grudge them such obvious joy.

Now, when it was all over, she missed Evelyn almost as much as she missed her father. They hadn’t met for five months, although they chattered together on the telephone at frequent intervals and each knew what the other was doing.

Perhaps Evelyn didn’t want to come back
to Yair
borough where she had known so much happiness in
the
past. Perhaps she couldn’t come back in case her heart was torn asunder by the bitter-sweet longing for a day that was gone now for ever. Brave, kind Evelyn, whom everyone loved!

Thinking about her stepmother, Susan drove the last few miles to Denham House, glad when its sheltering trees came into view and she saw the sun still warm on the mellowed stone of the east wing and the shadows dark beneath the portico. She was always aware of this special warmth when she returned to Denham. It was a welcoming and a respite from the stress of her busy life and, lately, it had afforded her father a great measure of peace in his second marriage. Her own mother, the lovely, feckless Catherine, had left Denham long ago to pursue her career as an interior decorator, and her fame as Kathy Denham had lasted till she died. Susan had been her only child and they had met at intervals in Edinburgh or London, but never, as far back as Susan could remember, here at Denham. The house had always been associated in her mind with her father, and now it was enriched by memories of him and Evelyn and the happiness of the past four years.

A small Scottish mansion of early Georgian times, it had been completed by Robert Adam in the latter part of the sixteenth century and had never been added to since then. The Georgian concept of natural beauty, blended with the skill of the architect, gave it a serenity which had been jealously preserved down through the years, and the deep, honey-coloured stone lent it the warmth which Susan had always recognised. Facing south across a little park, it looked straight to the high peak of the Cheviot, out across the lesser dales and the rolling foothills to the Border itself. Other families had possessed it, but for the past hundred years it had been Denham land, the house where first sons had been born to be christened Adam Denham as a matter of course.

Now all that was at an end. Sadly Susan garaged her car in the old stable block and walked towards the house, but before she reached it she became aware of visitors. A familiar car was parked on the cobbles of the tiny courtyard and Fergus Graeme was standing at the door.

“Locked!” he exclaimed. “That’s new for Denham, isn’t it?”

“I had to go to Otterburn,” she explained, “so I gave Nellie and Tom the day off. I locked up because I wasn’t sure how long I would be, and the new tweeds are in.”

“Surely you didn’t expect to be burgled?” her visitor laughed. “There are no strangers around—no tinkers, anyway!”

“I wouldn’t be worried about the tinkers,” Susan smiled in return. “They’ve been coming to Denham for too long to start pilfering now, but there are strangers around. I met one of them on the moor just now, riding your horse!”

“Oh, that!” Fergus said. “I don’t know whether he wants to buy it or not.”

“He does,” Susan informed him. “He told me so half an hour ago. Weren’t you afraid to trust him with Bucksfoot?”

“I knew he could ride,” Fergus returned a little awkwardly, “and I needed to sell the horse.”

“Not—trouble?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head.

“No, just lack of time to exercise him properly since Colin decided that farming wasn’t in his line.”

It was what she had suspected, the explanation she had offered ‘the bold moss-trooper’ on the moor road.

“I wonder who he is?” she mused absently. “But I suppose you already know, since he came to buy your best horse.”

He looked round at her as she opened the heavy
door
to let him into the outer hall.

“Don’t you know?” he asked with a certain reticence. “His name’s Elliott—Maxwell Elliott. I’ve a notion he’s setting up a stable of some sort over at Fetterburn. He asked about another horse, suitable for a young girl.”

“Probably his wife,” Susan suggested. “Where is he going to live?”

“I didn’t ask him,” Fergus said. “I didn’t have to know till he actually bought Bucksfoot.”

“Yet you trusted him?”

He laughed heartily.

“He assured me he could ride and I took a chance. What’s wrong, Sue?” he grinned. “Didn’t you take to him on first sight?”

“He’s a New Zealander!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked fairly.

“Well, do we want people like that to settle in Scotland just because they’ve got a lot of money and can buy up our bloodstock at the drop of a hat?”

“Oh, look here, that’s not at all like you, Sue!” he protested. “What’s gone wrong?”

She fumbled in her handbag, producing a crumpled envelope from which she extracted a letter.

“Read that,” she commanded, tossing it to him across the hearth, “and then you’ll know as much about everything as I do.”

He unfolded the single sheet of writing-paper while she poured him a drink. Perhaps she should have gone straight to the Mains with her distressing news as soon as she had received it, she thought, but it had been too swift and unexpected a blow to share even with Fergus at first. Besides, she had an appointment in Otterburn— a business appointment—and she had prepared to meet it automatically. Denham’s came first.

Fergus read the letter through a second time before he put it back into its envelope and returned it to her. His fresh-complexioned face was grave now, his hazel eyes unsmiling.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Nothing, at present.” She handed him his drink. “I’ll have to wait till Evelyn gets here.”

“Yes,” he said vaguely, thinking about something else. “Sue, if it does come to selling Denham’s you wouldn’t just—take off into the blue, would you? I don’t think you could live happily anywhere else.”

“If the mill has to go I couldn’t live here.”

“Evelyn doesn’t say anything about selling the house,” he pointed out helpfully.

She turned from the windows where she had gone to look out across the terrace to the shadowed parkland.

“You know perfectly well we couldn’t keep the house after we’d sold the mill,” she said steadily enough. “It’s far too big for Evelyn and me, anyway. It’s only a reasonable proposition at present because I’ve been doing part of my work here—arranging the couture shows and that sort of thing. It’s been the ideal background,” she added wistfully, looking up at the richly-embellished ceiling with its delicately-coloured frieze. “The front hall was just right for showing our models, and I know the atmosphere of Denham helped to sell to the trade.” Fergus moved uncomfortably.

“It may not come to a take-over,” he suggested. “It’s all rather vague, isn’t it?”

“Evelyn has always been vague,” Susan returned without rancour. “She was never a good correspondent at the best of times.”

“When did all this happen?” he asked.

Susan brushed the fine hair back from her forehead.

“You read what she said. 'In the past few days’. That could mean, by Evelyn’s reckoning, within the past week or so. There would be feelers put out and that sort of thing, before any definite offer was made.”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to involve you if nothing came of it,” he suggested.

“I am involved now,” Susan said. “I wanted to ask your advice about what I should do,” she added lamely.

He put down his glass and came to stand beside her.

“The best piece of advice I could give you is to get married, Sue," he said in a tone which she was quick to recognise. “To me,” he added.

“You know that isn’t the solution.” She drew a deep breath. “I couldn’t marry you, Fergus, just to escape a decision.”

“Does it have to be your decision?” he queried. “If you were safely at the Mains, it might be easier for Evelyn to sell up here. She’s bound to feel responsible for you as things stand.”

Susan’s eyes widened.

“But she mustn’t!” she protested. “I’m twenty-two years of age. Old enough to look after myself.”

“Are you?” He put a sturdy arm about her shoulders. “Poor Sue! You’ve got a lot to learn!”

“Not about being responsible. Evelyn isn’t so very much older than I am,” Susan pointed out logically. “She could marry again.”

“Do you think she will?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time there was a hesitant note in her voice. “She was very much in love with my father, in spite of the difference in their ages. She’s only twenty-nine, you know. Far too young to feel responsible for a grown-up daughter!”

“You’ve never resented her?”

There was the barest pause before Susan answered.

“No, not really. When they first told me I was piqued, I suppose, because I imagined I was all-in-all to my father. We had been very close all our lives and when my mother died I thought that was it. There was nobody but the two of us to manage Denham’s. But then he met Evelyn in the London office and in some ways she was Denham’s, too. No, I didn’t resent her,” she ended truthfully. “I think, on the whole, I was glad that my father had a second chance of happiness.”

“And they were happy. Anyone could see that.” He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his hacking-jacket. “We’re all very fond of Evelyn. She’s strong-willed but charming, a natural Eve, I guess! It’s something everybody speaks about. She’s been popular from the very beginning.”

“Dad used to tease her and say she had ‘conquered the Borders’ for the first time in their history,” Susan smiled. “She liked that. Popularity, I mean. She’s a natural with people. Much better than I could ever be, even for Denham’s. Evelyn likes people on principle.”

“All the same, she has a good, shrewd eye in her head and an instinct for sincerity,” he pointed out. “Anything the least bit phoney wouldn’t pass muster with Evelyn.”

Susan folded her stepmother’s letter into her handbag. “I wonder if she’s got some other idea for Denham’s,” she said. “You know—that last bit about ‘a great surprise’ for us all. She wouldn’t take time to write about it, but if it was about the house I wonder why she didn’t say so.”

Fergus gave the remark his close attention.

“It’s not much use conjecturing about what she meant,” he decided, at last. “She was fairly explicit about the offer for the mill, I thought.”

“An offer, yes, but if it wasn’t the right offer she wouldn’t consider it.”

Susan was deeply hurt at the suggestion of a take-over bid, although she tried to hide her feelings, even from Fergus, who was her oldest friend. It would have to come, in the end, she supposed, one way or the other— an outright sale or the transfer of shares to a larger and, perhaps, a more progressive firm. Small businesses were being gobbled up by the giants all the time, family business that had no longer the power to fight.

Death could sweep away so much. She was still confused and bewildered by her father’s swift passing in what was really the prime of life, and she believed that this wouldn’t have happened to Denham’s if he had lived. Together they would have found some way to fight back, no doubt with her stepmother’s willing cooperation. Evelyn had been invaluable to them in London, with her sure flair for spotting the coming trend in
haute couture
, and it had been quite natural that she should have stayed there after Adam Denham’s death, but once or twice Susan had wondered why she had never found the time to come home, even for a weekend.

The memory of her own mother’s desertion of Denham House was still very clear in her mind. Kathy Denham had put her career before her family or any allegiance to the past and she had died so suddenly that they hadn’t even been at her bedside at the end.