Land of Heart's Desire (5 page)

“You knew that you were quite sure of an official invitation!” Christine smiled, made happy by the very fact that he was walking by her side. “It will be like old times, Hamish. Do you remember when you had your coming-of-age—”

She broke off, appalled by her own thoughtlessness in stressing the fact of his loss in the memory of happier times.

“You were only eleven then,” he grinned at her, helping her over the embarrassment of a difficult moment with accustomed ease. “You hadn’t quite made the grade of grown-up parties, but I do remember Jane and you in white frocks and pigtails sitting on the stairs and eating ice-cream till you were too sick to be presentable!”

She leaned her head back against his arm and the sound of their laughter echoed through the pine-scented air. When they came to the house she was glad that it looked welcoming, with its open door and its air of waiting there for just this moment, so that he might not be too keenly aware of returning to Croma as the dispossessed.

Watching him as he strode through the hall, where he had been a familiar figure long ago, she thought how easily and gracefully he wore the kilt and how effectively he had managed to disguise his heartache over Ardtornish.

In spite of his brave words, however, she knew how bitter he must feel. It was not, perhaps, the same bitterness as Rory’s, but it surely went as deep. After all, Hamish had been brought up from infancy to consider himself the heir, so that this might almost be a deadly blow.

It was not quite the same in her own case, she mused, as she followed him. She had come upon her own inheritance unexpectedly, as the result of war, but already she was beginning to realize what hereditary obligations really meant.

“Have you been to see my grandmother?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’ve already paid my respects. She wants us to have tea with her, by the way.” He turned as Mrs. Crammond, the housekeeper, came from the direction of the kitchen passage with a laden tray in her hands. “Let me take that for you, Crammy,” he offered. “I feel completely responsible for all the extra weight.”

Agnes Crammond peered shortsightedly before she recognized him.

“I thought I couldn’t be mistaken in the voice,” she said without returning his smile. “So you’re back, Mr. Hamish? How are you, sir?”

“Fairly well, Crammy,” Hamish answered lightly, relieving her of her burden. “One hardly needs to ask about you. You grow—more mellow every day!”

Christine looked at Agnes, whose mouth was still pursed in a hard line, and then she remembered that Agnes didn’t approve of people very easily. She was difficult to please. But surely Hamish was doing his best to please her? She felt angry with the old servant and almost told her so.

“Your grandmother has been waiting her tea for a quarter of an hour,” Agnes informed her severely. “It’s ten minutes past four and the scones are near spoiled.”

“We’ll make it up to her!” Hamish promised confidently. “Besides, she’s probably been waiting for Rory, too.”

“Mr. Rory has come and gone,” Agnes informed him briefly. “He had work to do.”

“Of course.” Hamish smiled, turning to Christine. “I had forgotten that Rory was your new factor. How is he shaping?”

“My grandmother seems quite pleased with him,” Christine said, going forward to open Dame Sarah’s door. “I think she feels glad that he didn’t leave the island.”

“As I did?” His fair brows shot up and he looked down at her quizzically as she paused with her fingers on the handle of the door. “I’ve disappointed everybody, Chris. Everybody except you!”

She felt the colour run up under her skin, flooding her cheeks with unaccountable embarrassment.

“You couldn’t help it,” she excused him, leading the way into her grandmother’s room.

Dame Sarah was seated in her accustomed chair beside the window, and Christine had the odd sensation of the blue eyes fixed on her for a moment yet going beyond her. It was as if her grandmother saw far more than what went on within her own four walls up here in the
turret room
. It was almost as if she had the uncanny power of looking beyond the present and was curiously disturbed by what she saw.

Hamish dispelled the impression for her immediately, however. The ease with which he charmed people was remarkable. He passed their teacups and told them about London, and he even spoke about Ardtornish when the time came, mentioning its new owner without rancour.

“The fellow has paid his price and we shouldn’t have anything against him, even if he isn’t one of us,” he remarked magnanimously.

“He’s a Canadian and he was born here,” Dame Sarah said unexpectedly. “He’s a Sutherland of Scoraig.”

Christine looked her surprise.

“He told me he was born in Scotland,” she remembered, “but he didn’t go into details. Perhaps it was because he didn’t know I was travelling to Croma.” She looked across the room at Hamish and flushed. “We came over on the same steamer from Oban,” she explained.

“This is all very interesting,” he said. “I gathered that you had just met for the first time out there on the moor road just now.”

Dame Sarah turned in her chair.

“Was he on his way here?” she asked, as if she had been expecting such a call, out of courtesy, perhaps.

“I suppose he was,” Christine was forced to confess, “but I told him not to come.”

“You told him not to come?” her grandmother echoed, aghast. “But, my dear child, why?”

“I thought he was coming to make an offer for Erradale.” Christine got up and crossed to the window, remembering how wrong she had been about that. “I told him he would be wasting his time.”

There was a moment’s silence until Dame Sarah asked: “And was that why he was coming?”

“He said not.” Christine swallowed hard. “He said it was a social call.”

“And so it would be.” Dame Sarah’s voice remained unchanged. “I had written to him, you see. But no matter! He will come again, I have no doubt.”

Christine’s face was scarlet now.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had written to him?” she demanded. “I have made rather a fool of myself, haven’t I?”

“Not necessarily, my dear. It would depend upon what you actually said,” her grandmother pointed out. “And you can explain to him when you meet him again.”

“I won’t apologize,” Christine flashed, “if that’s what you mean!
He
could have explained to
me!
He didn’t say you had asked him to call.”

Dame Sarah shook her head, but there was an understanding smile in her eyes.

“It was no more than a suggestion,” she said. “I thought we might be able to clear up a few difficulties that have arisen over rights of way and that sort of thing if we met and discussed it personally.”

“And he came, post-haste,” Christine suggested, “hoping to talk you into a sale before he had gone!”

Dame Sarah would not argue.

“You have all the hot blood of the MacNeills in you, Christine!” she smiled. “But you will learn, in time.”

Christine turned silently away. It was obvious that her grandmother had no intention of discussing the situation any further in front of their guest. The relationship between Rory and Finlay Sutherland’s agent at Ardtornish had been an uneasy one, but it was possible that Dame Sarah hoped for a different approach from the new laird himself.

Christine sat in a rather frozen silence for the remainder of the tea hour, letting Hamish do all the talking, and when he finally rose to go she followed him from the room.

“The old lady is still in full command!” he remarked briefly as they went down the stairs. “Dame Sarah to the last gasp!”

“And why not?” His remark had disconcerted her, even irritated her. Everyone seemed bent on saying the most outrageous things! “She’s still the head of the family and she makes her own decisions.”

He looked amused.

“Then the little flare-up I stumbled on at the end of the drive this afternoon was purely a personal matter,” he suggested, “between you and Sutherland?”

“There was nothing personal about it,” she flashed. “I told him he wouldn’t be able to buy Erradale at any price. That was all.”

In the dim grey light that poured down from the deeply-set windows he turned her to face him, smiling in his charming way.

“Not at any price, Christine!” he said softly, kissing her full on the lips. “But take care, my love! He looks to me a man who might get his own way, sooner or later!”

When he had left her she felt shaken and unsure. The day had held far too much conflict to be dismissed with the lightheartedness of other days, and Hamish’s abrupt kiss had held no more promise than the one he had given her at fifteen beneath the rowan on the edge of the Ardtornish burn. She did not understand why he had come back to Croma. Certainly not to kiss her again nor to set out in Archie Campbell’s boat in search of sharks. Not entirely.

An hour ago she might have been eager enough to hope that Hamish, with all his other loves forgotten, had returned to Croma to find her, but some strange inner sense suggested that this was not quite so. The fact that he had come should have been enough, of course, and she tried to tell herself that it was, but the uncertainty persisted.

She found it impossible to go back
to
the turret room immediately, with Hamish’s light kiss burning on her lips, and two hours stretched between her and their evening meal. The moor seemed to be the answer to her restlessness, but she did not go back along the drive to reach it.

Instead, she took the path that went along the cliff top to the shore, and after a moment she realized that she was going in search of Callum.

For years Callum McKinnis—Callum of the Second Sight—had been her mentor and friend. She had gone to him when she had found it difficult to appeal to her grandmother or when Dame Sarah and she had not been able to see eye to eye, and Callum had given her advice. His wisdom was infinite, his slowly considered judgments infallible.

Apart from all that, there was an excitement about visits to Callum’s cottage in the corrie beside the sea which had never failed to attract her. He had taught her all the songs of the Islands that she knew and recited the old legends to her until she, too, could repeat them by heart. A bond existed between them that could never be broken, forged as it was from mutual understanding and trust and deep love of the things they shared.

Long before she reached the cottage she saw him on the shore, picking his way slowly and carefully between the weed-strewn rocks in his search for the driftwood he burned on his fire when the peats were scarce. From that distance it was difficult to believe that Callum was partially blind. His rapidly fading eyesight did not deter him from leading a full and useful life, though he could not go so far afield now as he once had done. His fishing days on a grand scale were over, but he could still handle a dinghy within the safer limits of Loch Erradale, and he had an unerring way with sheep.

Apart from these things, he lived what some might consider was a lonely and isolated existence. Only Callum—and perhaps Dame Sarah—could have told them how much he still got out of life. The birds and sea creatures were his friends; he fed the kittiwakes and the gulls daily, and even the shy little puffins would stand arrested beside his door while he talked to them.

Christine hailed him from a distance and was glad when she saw his face light up in recognition of her voice.

“Indeed, it is you,
cailleag bheag
!”
he said gently. “I would be knowing your step anywhere!”

She took the bundle of driftwood from his arms, adding it to the pile he had already made on the shore.

“You’ve enough here to light a bonfire, Callum!” she teased, laughing.

“And it’s one that should be lit,” he told her. “Seeing that you will soon be coming of age.”

“They don’t do that for girls!” she laughed, picking up more wood. “We’re not so important.”

“I would not be saying that now,” he contradicted, halting to lean against a rock and draw out his ancient pipe. “You are the last MacNeill—Erradale’s only hope.”

Christine’s face sobered.

“I think my grandmother feels that way about it,” she said. “But she gave me a choice, Callum.”

“So she would,” he answered, nodding. He did not ask what her choice had been. He seemed to know, or at least to take it for granted that she would remain on Croma. “You are very like her,” he said.

“I wish I could think that!” Christine sighed. “I didn’t come back with the intention of staying, Callum,” she went on to confess. “I thought I had other things to do in the world.”

“All things are planned for us,” he returned with slow conviction. “Drawn in the sand—hidden in the wind—spun like a web before our time and tide. We may think that our puny wills can alter them, but it is not so. We have a way to tread, long or short, difficult or easy, which we cannot escape, and if we are wise we will not seek to turn away from it.”

“But here—on Croma—what way can there be for me?” she asked, no longer attempting to hide her indecision from those wise old eyes. “What can I
really
do on the island, Callum?”