Land of Heart's Desire (3 page)

“It is indeed good to see you home again, Miss MacNeill,” he told her in the soft Highland accent which made each word sound like a caress. “The island has been missing you these past three years.”

The island. Not just her grandmother and the household at Erradale, but the island as a whole. The simple, generous people who still lived there and had served the MacNeills for five hundred years!

The warmth of it, the utter magnificence of it, surged into her heart along with the painful acknowledgement that she was not equal to such a homecoming. She had come reluctantly, and she did not mean to stay.

Emotion gripped her by the throat for a moment, shaking her, and then she saw an estate car being driven at considerable speed towards the pier.

She had expected to be met, of course, either
by Magnus
with the old brake or by Duncan Mor, but this was something new. New and unexpected.

The man who stepped from the estate car was known to her, however.

“Rory!” Her voice held the fullness of her surprise as she held out her hand. “I had no idea you were here—back on the island!”

“If you had written more often you would have known. Even if you had answered your grandmother’s letters with more alacrity! She believes in one letter, one reply—in that order—and I’ve been far too busy to write.”

“But—you being here! That’s the surprise.” She had allowed him to take both her hands in his, and he held them longer than convention demanded, his dark eyes searching her face for what he wanted to see. “I thought you had gone—some weeks ago.”

He shook his head and his eyes darkened as he released her and turned towards the brake. Of course, Christine thought remorsefully, she had said the wrong thing. She should have remembered how Rory had always felt about the island, how much the old Nicholson home at Ardtornish had meant to him.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized with deep contrition in her voice. “But I heard that you had all gone—you and Jane and Hamish.”

“You thought, in fact, that the island had been cleared of Nicholsons!” He turned smouldering, resentful eyes to hers. “Well, it hasn’t. Jane is in Edinburgh, but I am still here, and Hamish is still in London. Nothing very much has changed,” he added bitterly, “except the fact that Ardtornish doesn’t belong to us any more.” His dark face flushed angrily. “We have Hamish to thank for that,” he said. “It was his land, his birthright, and he sold it for—for whatever he finds to do in London!”

The hand Christine laid on his arm trembled a little. “I know how you must feel, Rory,” she sympathized, “and I wish more than anything else that it needn’t have happened to you. The island has always been ours—MacNeills and Nicholsons living peacefully, side by side—and it was a shock to me to hear that Ardtornish had been sold. But we can’t blame Hamish,” she added firmly. “There were the debts—death duties and the heavy taxes he couldn’t afford.”

Her cheeks burned as she mentioned Hamish Nicholson’s name. He was ten years her senior, the laird of Ardtornish and the most romantic figure of a man she had ever met. But not the laird of Ardtornish now! That had all gone, the glory and the splendour had been wrested from him by a harsh and unsympathetic fate, and he had remained in London, probably because he was too heartbroken to return.

Yet she remembered him as arrogant and proud, always taking what he wanted without question. She remembered the way in which he had kissed her that first time, years ago, beside the rowan tree overhanging the Ardtornish burn. It was a kiss that had left its mark. She had felt it sear her lips, again and again, in the years between, although she had been little more than fifteen at the time. It had been the summer before Hamish had gone away, and he had only returned at intervals after that.

Now, it seemed, he had gone for good—or that appeared to be what Rory was trying to say.

She looked into her companion’s dark face, thinking how different he and his elder brother were in every way. Even in outward appearance they were unlike, and the sharp contrast seemed to bring Hamish very near. Tall and fair and broad-shouldered, Hamish Nicholson suggested all the haughty grandeur and fearlessness of the sturdy Viking race from which he had sprung, and nature seemed to have expended all her bounty upon him so that there had been little left to offer at Rory’s birth, seven years later.

Small, even undersized in many ways, with dark visage and curiously misshapen hands, it was, only in Rory’s eyes that any beauty lay, and at the present moment even they were made ugly by hate and resentment.

“Hamish could have tried harder,” he said. “He could have given up all these other things for Ardtornish—to keep it, even if it had only been for a year or two. He let it go easily.” He stepped back to let her get into the driver’s seat, but she shook her head. “Some people won’t make sacrifices, though, when they interfere with their way of life,” he added harshly.

“But Ardtornish
was
Hamish’s way of life,” Christine protested. “He had been brought up with the thought of belonging, of being the laird when your father died. He liked coming here—”

“When it suited him,” Rory put in fiercely. “He liked other things more—freedom and excitement and the sort of people he met in London.”

“You’re bitter,” Christine said as he let in his clutch. “Don’t be, Rory! Perhaps—the person who has bought Ardtornish won’t stay for very long. Perhaps he won’t weather the feeling of resentment there’s bound to be now that Hamish has been forced to leave his home.”

Rory glanced at her in a perplexed sort of way, as if he feared that he would never make her understand, but she had been offering him understanding. She had been trying to point out that Hamish was not to blame for what had happened to Ardtornish while at the same time accepting his own personal bitterness as something to be expected and excused. After all, Rory had never left the island except to finish his education on the mainland, and those, she was well aware, had been the most unhappy years of his life. He was passionately attached to Croma; he would have given his life for it if such a sacrifice had been asked of him, and the depths of his resentment stemmed from the fact that Hamish had not asked. He had made his own decision and carried it through, swiftly and ruthlessly, and now Ardtornish was in the hands of a stranger, its future utterly dependent upon a stranger’s whim.

She thought of the man who had shared the journey from Oban with her, driving her thoughts away from any lingering kindness in that direction. If he had not come, if his wealth, of which he had not made any secret, had not been on hand at the right moment, Hamish might not have been tempted to sell Ardtornish quite so easily.

“Tell me about my grandmother, Rory,” she asked, thrusting the memory of the voyage from her. “Is she well enough?”

He shook his head.

“That is another thing,” he told her gloomily. “The old lady is not the same. It doesn’t show because she does her best to hide it, but she’s suffering now most of the time. It’s over two months since she left her room, and I don’t think she’ll ever walk about the shore again.”

Christine drew in a deep breath.

“Why wasn’t I told?” she demanded. “Nobody wrote about this—nobody told me anything. Jane might have written—”

“Jane has been in Edinburgh,” he said, “looking for a job.”

“I see.” She bit her lip, trying to remember how changed everything was and not to go on blundering like this, hurting Rory and perhaps Jane, when they met. “But you knew, Rory. Couldn’t you have written?” she asked.

His lips drew together and he fixed his gaze on the narrow road ahead.

“There was too much to write,” he said. “I’m no hand with a pen, and I didn’t know what you wanted to do.”

“But if you thought I was needed,” she protested, “I should have been told.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “that’s true enough.” He looked round at her swiftly. “Are you home to stay?”

“I don’t know.” Was it possible that she could still remain uncertain, that she could still be determined to spread her wings and fly off in another direction? “It’s difficult,” she tried to point out, “when you have made up your mind about a career, Rory.”

“Painting?” he said with scarcely concealed scorn. “You could do a thing like that anywhere.”

“Not without the necessary markets, Rory. You need somewhere to sell your work.”

“So,” he concluded, “you don’t really mean to stay?”

“I haven’t had time to think.” She was almost angry with him now. “And I have come back. I mean to stay till after I’m twenty-one.”

He did not answer that, driving faster along the road and scattering the straying sheep before him. They looked vaguely surprised as they turned to watch the disappearing car, and Christine remembered then what she wanted to ask Rory.

“Do you want to stay on Croma, Rory? Do you think you could find something to do on the island?”

“I’m your grandmother’s factor,” he said with some pride. “She retired Duncan MacKenzie a month ago. He was sorely crippled, like herself, and could not get about. In any case, he just took on the job as a stopgap after McQueen’s death, and he was glad enough to be resting.”

“I’m glad we’ve got you, Rory!” she told him, not trying to hide her relief. “I’m glad my grandmother has someone like you to help.”

“It kept me on the island,” he said almost gruffly.

“And Jane?” Christine asked.

“Your grandmother has invited her here for a holiday before she finally starts work,” he told her.

“That’s wonderful!” Christine smiled. “We’ll all be together quite soon, then?”

“Yes. Your grandmother wants us all there for your coming-of-age.”

Christine’s smile faded.

“I wish she had had a grandson, Rory,” she said. “I shall never be able to fill her shoes.”

He looked round at her, affronted.

“Why not?” he asked. “You’re her own flesh and blood.”

“It isn’t the same. No one could be quite like my grandmother. She’s a fighter, Rory—a wonderful old woman who has done a man’s job all her life without losing her charm. She has held Erradale together and faced all her personal disappointments and her tragedies with a smile and a new determination to succeed. When my father died,” she went on, “and Dick was killed in Korea she knew what she had to do and accepted it. She had to go on and fight back, and what a grand job she’s made of it!”

“And now she’s old and sick and infirm and needs you,” Rory said slowly. “No career is worth tossing that aside for. It’s your duty.”

She looked round at the thin, dark face, at Rory’s too-large hands clutching the steering wheel, and was aware of an intensity of purpose in him which would attempt to force her to an acceptance of her responsibilities where Erradale was concerned. It made her feel ashamed and rather humble, but she did not answer him, for already they were on the brow of the hill, at the old familiar spot where the first glimpse of Erradale House was to be seen between the trees.

In some ways it was a bleak old place, grey and remote and darkly turreted, standing silhouetted starkly on its jutting headland against the sky. Built on a rock, it was Scottish baronial in style, its stout walls rising steeply from the sea above a narrow curve of pure white sand. It was in no way sheltered, but to the south a deep sea-loch cut into the land, giving it a more gentle aspect from that side, and trees had been planted far into the glen which stretched beyond it. Everywhere else, the dark, grey-blue crags of Scuirival reared their jagged heads, rising one above the other into the clouds.

When they had crossed the hump-backed bridge which had once spanned a moat, Rory brought the estate car to a halt and Christine saw him glance involuntarily at one of the turrets whose narrow lancet windows commanded views on every side.

“Is my grandmother in her room?” she asked, knowing that they were both thinking about Dame Sarah.

“Yes,” he said with a strange sort of finality which beat against her mind to awaken fear in her for the first time. “She’s always up there. She will have seen you arrive.” The great iron-studded door lay wide open, as it always did during the summer months, even when the fine rain swept in from the west, and Christine ran in and up the peculiar short flight of stone steps leading to the hall. They were narrow and hollowed out by the passage of many feet, yet they would last her generation and many more.

In the high, raftered hall the original oak banqueting table stood squarely in its accustomed place, and old flags and broadswords and claymores, relics of battles long ago, hung against the walls.

She felt very small and very inadequate as she mounted the great branching staircase to her grandmother’s room, and all the old allegiances kept tugging at her heart.

Dame Sarah sat in a high-backed chair beside one of the long windows. In her youth she must have been a very beautiful woman, but now she was magnificent. She had a grandeur and dignity about her which Christine knew she would never acquire. Strength and pride and resourcefulness looked out of the direct blue eyes which had lost none of their beauty to age, and if Dame Sarah’s profile had a certain hardness in it her pleasant mouth retrieved it with a smile. Life had been kind to her in many ways, although in others it had demanded sacrifices. At forty years of age she had ceased to be a woman and had become an institution. She
was
Erradale, and some of its granite hardness had entered into her soul. She had striven for it, and demanded and fought for it; she had stepped into her husband’s empty shoes to preserve it for her only son, and when that son had died she had taken up the cudgels again in defence of her grandson, who had been Christine’s twin. Richard MacNeill had been killed flying in a remote war, and now Christine was all that was left. The last of the MacNeills. Her grandmother’s only hope of survival for an ancient house.