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‘Moira is very beautiful,’ she remarked alter a few moments.

‘Mm? Yes, I suppose she is quite attractive.’ He spoke absently.

Rachel stared at him. It was clear that he was completely oblivious of the fact that Moira McLeod was in love with him. What a wonderful person Celia, his wife, must have been if even now, two years after her death, he still had eyes for no other woman. But watch his dark head bent over the desk Rachel could well believe it might be so. He looked the kind of man who would not love lightly, but his love, once given, would be complete and would demand nothing less in return.

An involuntary sigh escaped her and he looked up.

‘You’ve been very patient,’ he said. ‘I’ve finished now, so we’ll be on our way.’ As he spoke he smiled, a smile that transformed his habitually stern features. Suddenly it was not difficult to see why Moira McLeod was in love with him.

Rachel followed him to the car and they drove off.

‘Ben tells me you’ve worked with ...' he hesitated, ‘... difficult children.’ His eyes were firmly on the road ahead as he spoke.

‘That’s right. Until ... recently I was teaching in a school for maladjusted children.'

‘Melanie’s not maladjusted,’ he said quickly. ‘She was perfectly all right until two years ago; a quiet child, but normal enough. She's only been like this since—since her mother died.'

He spoke those last words roughly and Rachel noticed that his knuckles showed white on the steering wheel.

‘It was a shattering experience for her. And for you,’ she couldn’t help adding.

His reply, if he made one, was drowned in the sound of his horn as he honked at a silly sheep that trotted across the path of the car and he didn’t speak again until he stopped the car outside Kilfinan Cottage.

‘I wonder....' He turned the engine off and shifted in his seat to look at her, his dark eyes troubled, ‘Maybe if
you
talked to Melanie. Maybe, in time ....' He passed his hand across his forehead. ‘Miss Botham, the speech therapist, doesn’t seem to be having any success at all.’ Rachel frowned. ‘I’ve so little time here. I’m only here for a holiday, you know. I have to go home in a few weeks.’

He nodded briskly. ‘Yes, of course. I was forgetting.' He leaned across and opened her door for her and as he did so she could smell the tang of the sea clinging to him. ‘School, of course, is the answer. She should be sent away to school.’

‘If you did that she might feel that you were rejecting her altogether,' Rachel said thoughtfully. She smiled. ‘She's obviously very attached to Ben, I’ve seen her with him several times .....'

Richard started up the car. ‘As you say, you're only here for a holiday. Melanie’s not your problem, so there’s no need for you to worry about her.’ His mood seemed to have changed abruptly and he was impatient to be off.

Rachel got out of the car. ‘That’s not what I meant at all and you know it,’ she said. ‘If I can help with Melanie I will, but it would be a mistake to gain her confidence and then go away and leave her.’

‘Yes, of course, you’re right.’ Richard drove off, leaving Rachel to gaze after him. She felt so sorry for him; even with so many people around he was a solitary figure, and she wished there was some way she could help, but however hard she tried, whenever she was with him she always seemed to end up saying or doing the wrong thing. Was she simply tactless, or was it just that he heartily disliked her?

‘You’re very quiet tonight, my girl.’ Aunt Rose was sitting on one side of the fire in the cosy cottage kitchen, crocheting busily, while Rachel sat on the other, a book in her hand, gazing into the fire, which, although the day had been warm, was cheerful and bright. Rachel looked up; her thoughts had been far away on her conversation with Richard earlier. ‘Mind,’ Rose went on, ‘I believe your holiday is doing you good. You’re certainly beginning to look healthier—in fact, I believe you’re putting on weight.'

‘Oh, Auntie, I hope not,’ Rachel laughed. ‘That would mean I’d have to cut down on your delicious baking, and I’d hate that.’

Aunt Rose smiled. ‘It’s good to hear you laugh. There was barely a smile on your face when you first came. You like it here?’

‘I love it. But who wouldn’t? It’s all so incredibly beautiful.’

‘She
didn’t.’

Rachel looked up, startled at the vehemence in her aunt’s tone.

‘Who do you mean?’

Why, Richard’s wife, of course. She hated it.’ Aunt Rose’s crochet hook seemed to fly even faster as she spoke. ‘Said she found it boring. Missed the social life she’d been used to. She should never have ... but never mind.’ She looked up at Rachel and smiled. ‘Tell me about the family, my girl. It’s so long since I saw your father.’

Although she was puzzled at the older woman’s outburst Rachel took the hint and didn’t question her further. ‘You could come back with me to see them; I know Dad would love to see you,’ she suggested. ‘And I’m sure you could do with a holiday. Sometimes you don’t look at all well. Are you working too hard, Auntie? Or worrying too much over Melanie?’

Aunt Rose nodded. ‘It’s true, I do worry over the child, she’s been through so much.’

‘She misses her mother?’

‘She spends far too much time running wild over the Estate. She's becoming like a wild creature, like the roe deer that you glimpse in the woods.’

‘Ben seems to understand her. She loves to be with him, it seems.’

‘Ben is the last person she should trust.'

‘Whatever do you mean, Auntie?’ Rachel asked in surprise.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ Rose gathered up her crocheting and busied herself with the supper.

Rachel didn’t question her further. It was obvious from her manner that her aunt had already said more than she had intended. But she was puzzled.

The next day Rachel went up to the Big House, as Rose called it, with her aunt, and Rose proudly showed her over it. All the rooms were cared for in strict rotation, even the parts that were seldom used. One wing was like a small stately home, furnished with priceless antiques and pictures. The wing that the family lived in, however, had deep comfortable armchairs, colour
television and stereo equipment. To Rachel it was like stepping from one world into another. Kilfinan House and its occupants was clearly all Rose lived for, and she told Rachel how she had been nanny to Richard as a small boy, living-in at the house. It was not until Richard had married that she had been given her own cottage at the end of the drive.

‘Alistair would like me to come back here, now that Celia’s dead,’ she said, ‘but I must say I like having my own front door; I should have done it years ago, but we just didn’t think. Anyway, it makes no difference to the way I run the house.’

‘Whose idea was it that you should move to the cottage, then?’ Rachel asked.

‘Celia’s, of course.’

Rachel was rapidly gaining the impression that however highly esteemed Celia had been by everyone else, Aunt Rose had definitely not fallen under her spell.

Pondering this, she left her aunt immersed in account books and slipped away to the garage to have a look at the Mini that Richard had suggested putting at her disposal—if he had remembered his offer.

Obviously he had. Ben was there, his head under the bonnet, tinkering with the engine. He straightened up when she greeted him and wiped his hands on an oily rag.

‘She seems to be in good order,’ he said, his teeth showing even and white in his tanned face as he smiled at her. ‘I was just going to take her for a test run and then she’s all yours.’ He slammed down the bonnet and got in behind the wheel. ‘Coming?'

She didn’t need asking twice.

‘Nobody’s driven this car much,’ said Ben, running through the gears. ‘It was bought to replace Celia’s car, which was a complete write-off.’ He jammed on the brakes viciously. ‘I don’t know why they bothered. Celia’s no longer here to drive it; Richard’s got his own car and when Alistair wants a car he usually takes the truck.’

‘What exactly happened to Celia?’ Rachel couldn’t resist the question. ‘I know she had an accident, but .....'

‘Her car ran off the road—why, heaven knows. She was a good driver and she knew the road to Dunglevin like the back of her hand. True, it was fairly late at night, but all the same, it should never have happened.’ He spoke savagely and Rachel could see the speedometer creeping up and up. It was quite plain that Ben had held Celia Duncan in high esteem.

‘What was she like? Celia, I mean?’

He relaxed and the needle began to drop to a reasonable speed. ‘I think she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,’ he said softly.

‘Is Melanie like her mother?’

‘A little. Of course, she’s dark, like her father. Celia was fair; flaxen, almost.’ He fell silent and didn’t speak again until they were driving down the narrow main street at Ardenbeg. Then he said, ‘Have you seen the magnificent view from the Dunglevin road?’

She shook her head. ‘The last time I was on that road was in a blinding rainstorm.’

‘I’ll take you up and show you, then. It’s worth seeing.’ He drove through Ardenbeg and began climbing the narrow road cut along the side of the mountain. There was just room for two cars to pass, but it was a perilously close thing. And below, far below, the loch sparkled in the morning, sunlight. For about two miles the road climbed, sometimes steeply, sometimes more gently, until, high above the loch and the little town of Ardenbeg, the road widened out on to a natural plateau big enough for about half a dozen cars to park.

Ben parked the Mini and they both got out and went to lean on the railings that fenced in three sides of the area. Away into the distance towards the mouth of the Clyde stretched the loch, dotted with islands, some green and wooded, some quite barren. Here and there tiny boats bobbed on the waves.

‘Look down there,’ said Ben, pointing to a spot directly below where they were standing. There, almost hidden by the trees and bushes that grew on the lower slopes of the mountain, was another, larger island and there were several boats moored in its shelter. Beside the island, on a finger of land jutting out from the mainland, stood a tiny lighthouse.

‘The lighthouse is derelict now,' Ben said, ‘but it’s a favourite spot for picnickers.’

'How on earth do you reach it?’ As far as Rachel could see the spot was quite isolated.

‘Three ways. By the low coast road from Ardenbeg; by boat; or, if you’re really intrepid, by that path.’ He pointed to a narrow track disappearing into the undergrowth down the mountainside on the other side of the fence. ‘Look, there’s a stile to reach it by.’

‘It’s an awful long way down,’ Rachel said with a shudder.

‘It is that.’ Ben laid his arm carelessly across her shoulders. ‘I’ll take you down there one day. But not today.’ He glanced at his watch, ‘We must be getting back. I’m not on holiday even if you are. There’s work waiting for me to do.’ He held open the driver's door. Come on, now, you drive and I’ll admire the view. You’ll find she handles fairly easily.’

Rachel drove back to Glencarrick without any difficulty, but she was conscious all the time of Ben’s arm, laid lightly across the back of her seat, his hand brushing her shoulder. This disturbed her, although she
didn’t know why. She didn’t understand Ben, but she was becoming increasingly convinced that what he had felt for Richard’s wife had been more than simply admiration. Could he have been in love with her? The more Rachel learned about the dead Celia the more of an enigma she became.

Rachel
found the Mini useful for exploring the countryside around Ardenbeg and Glencarrick. It was all very beautiful and she could feel its relaxing and therapeutic effect on her. No longer did she feel that familiar clutch of cold panic when she thought of the years stretching ahead of her without Keith. She was beginning to feel that life was still worth living in spite of everything that had happened to her. Yet she didn’t feel ready to return home and pick up the threads of her former life. She had become intrigued by the people she had met at Kilfinan House—by poor mixed-up little Melanie, who there was not. time to help because it would be cruel to gain her confidence and then leave her; by Ben; what could Aunt Rose have against him? He was so good-natured and likeable—how convenient it would be to fall in love with him and live happily ever after. Rachel smiled. This was simply not possible, Ben was not her type, pleasant company though he was. Anyway, Rachel was becoming increasingly certain that Celia had been the love of his life. Celia. There was an enigma. And the more Rachel discovered about Richard’s wife the more confused she became. Aunt Rose had indicated that she had been unhappy at Kilfinan House, with some disapproval, Rachel couldn’t help feeling. Yet Celia had stayed there. Perhaps no sacrifice had been too great for Celia to make for her husband. As for Richard, it was plain he had never recovered from his wife’s untimely death. But when he did Moira McLeod would be there, waiting.

All this was going through her mind as she dressed for the Midsummer Ball. She had found out from Richard that it was to be held at the Caladh Hotel at Ardenbeg and she was thankful she had brought a suitable dress with her, although she hadn’t expected to need it in such a remote part of Scotland.

The dress was of a soft, silky material in deep coral. Sleeveless, the skirt fell away from the closely-fitting bodice in soft folds, and the high mandarin collar was edged with silver to match her evening bag. It was a simple design, but with her blonde hair loose and shining and a hint of a sparkle of anticipation in her eyes Rachel couldn’t help but be pleased with the reflection in her mirror. She went downstairs to wait for Richard, who was going to pick her up before calling at the McLeods’ farm for Moira and her brother David, Rachel’s partner for the evening.

‘You’re looking bonny, my girl,’ said Aunt Rose when she saw her. She got up out of her chair and came over to her niece and kissed her. ‘Enjoy yourself, now. You cannot live in the past, remember,’ she said softly. Then as if embarrassed by her show of emotion she gave Rachel’s gossamer evening shawl an impatient twitch and said sharply, ‘You’ll catch your death with only that flimsy thing. The nights can be cold in these parts, you know.’