The Last of the Kintyres (14 page)

“Let’s go,” Stephen said. “Have you girls got warm coats? There’s a September nip in the air.”

“We’re dancing inside, so it won’t really matter” Hew said.

They set out
in the two cars, but this time Elizabeth travelled in the shooting-brake with Stephen and the two boys, while Imogen and Tony and Shona went with Hew in the Daimler.

Dromore Castle stood in a green clearing at the foot of the narrow glen. It was not very big, but like all Scottish baronial castles it had a most romantic look, with its twin turrets reflected in the silvery water of the sea loch and guardian mountains looking down on it on the other three sides.

Tonight it was floodlit, a
modern
gesture which Elizabeth considered Caroline could very well have done without. The garish beam of the electric flood lamps singled out the two ancient stone towers, throwing them into bold relief against the darkening sky, and suddenly, as they approached, a bonfire crackled into life.

“That would have been enough,” Stephen said, echoing her thought as they watched the flickering orange glow playing along the ancient battlements. “The floods are too theatrical. They’re out of keeping in a lovely old place like Dromore, and they’re swamped by the lulls.” It was true enough, and every other detail of Caroline’s party arrangements was over-accentuated too. The suggestion of unlimited wealth was not far to seek, and it was distasteful, like a bait set to capture Hew. Caroline knew that he was desperately in need of what she had to give, and she seemed determined to let him see what money could do. Quite apart from their former loving, there was the suggestion in everything she said and did that she was more than essential to him and to the future of Ardlamond.

She had gathered about a hundred guests at the Castle, a cross-section of the community who were already enjoying themselves in full-measure by the time the Ardlamond D
aiml
er drew up in the cobble-stoned courtyard, with Stephen’s brake following close behind.

As if she had been watching for them, Caroline came quickly from the open doorway between the towers, tall and fair and splendid in a swinging black skirt gaily patterned with white Mexican hats and a scarlet blouse cut low across the shoulders to reveal her flawless neck and arms. The little theatrical touch of costume made everything complete. Caroline could afford her whims.

“Welcome to Dromore!” she greeted them. “Everything’s going with a swing—thanks to you, Hew,” she added, taking his arm in a proprietorial way. “When the barbecue just refused to work I almost had a fit! I had visions of everything going flat, but now it’s all perfect. Come and have a look!”

She led the way round the end of one of the towers to a sheltered spot in the old courtyard where the brick framework for the grill had been built and where most of her guests were congregated. Whole chickens had been skewered and lay ready beside the spit, and mounds of sausages and steaks were piled on trays just inside the open french windows of the library.

The room was brilliantly lit and radiogram music poured out into the quiet, star-filled night.

“This is completely barbaric!” Stephen reflected, looking about him. “It originated in Haiti, I believe, but now our nice, civilized world has adopted it as the very latest thing! I wonder how far we really have to go back or how deeply we have to dig to reach the primitive in us?”

His eyes were on Caroline walking with her panther
-
stride beside Hew.

“Not very far,” Shona answered. “That’s probably why this sort of thing catches on so easily—fire, primitive cooking, dancing, music!” She smiled a little ruefully. “But I’m getting old, I expect,” she added, “when it doesn’t appeal to me any more!”

“Caroline makes the most of everything,” Stephen said.

Mrs. Hayler was certainly an enthusiastic hostess, but she was also without a host, and quite deliberately she pressed Hew into the role.

“You’ll have to come back into the general swim some day,” she told him. “People expect it of you. You’re the laird now.”

Elizabeth found herself swept up in the general gaiety. In some ways it was a strange atmosphere for a Scottish glen, yet in others it struck back to the old primitive ways of living which had belonged here at Dromore centuries ago. When the drums and guitars had been laid aside, the bagpipe came into its own. The piper had wandered out a little way on to the hillside and his music came, as it should do, from a distance, all its haunting beauty and heart-stirring quality reaching them out of the darkness, with the echo of it flung back among the pines.

Inevitably they formed into groups to dance a reel, and when that was over they gathered round the grill in the leaping orange light of the fire, holding out the long iron spits over the flames.

Couples came and went, talking, eating, laughing. The gay spirit of youth and adventure trod everywhere, and Elizabeth saw Tony more than once with Imogen and was happy in consequence. If only he would be sensible, she thought, and realize that Imogen was worth a thousand Carolines!

The pip
ing
swept them into another reel, and another, until Elizabeth confessed herself exhausted. She had been dancing with Stephen and he drew her towards the library door.

“Come and have a cool drink away from the fire,
”
he suggested.

Hew had not danced with her. Indeed, she had not noticed him dancing at all. Once or twice she had seen his tall, kilted figure silhouetted between her and the glow from the fire, but he had not even turned in her direction.

Stephen led her through the hall, where he found her a long, cooling drink.

“Let’s look for somewhere to sit out of the milling throng,” he suggested. “Will you need a wrap if we go outside?”

“No, I’m quite warm.”

Elizabeth followed him through an ante-room which had a door leading to a small sunken garden on the west side of the house, and here a number of cane chairs had been set out, together with a low garden table where they could set down their drinks.

The place was deserted and Stephen heaved a sigh of relief.

“I feel that I need to draw breath,” he confessed.

“Me, too!” Elizabeth said. “Although it is fun!”

They sipped their drinks, falling into a companionable silence, letting the little whispers of the night come close. Far beneath them the loch lay like a sheet of glass, and farther still they could just catch the gleam of the sea.

Then, quite suddenly, they were no longer alone. Someone—a man and a woman—had come into the empty ante-room and were standing beside the open doors.

“Hew, my dear,” Caroline’s unmistakeable voice cut across the silence, “nothing has changed!” She appeared to be continuing an argument which had started as they had left the library. “We’re still in love with one another. Why should we wait? You said just now that you’ve forgiven me for what I did to you. You said you were prepared to forget the past. Why can’t we announce our engagement tonight?”

Elizabeth’s hands clutched the arms of her chair as Hew took a split second to answer Caroline’s impassioned plea.

“I’ve told you, Carol—that’s impossible,” he said in a taut, hard voice which left very little room for doubt and practically none for persuasion.

And Caroline did not argue. Not again. She seemed to have reached some sort of breaking point where her anger and sense of defeat rose uppermost.

“Nothing is impossible!” she cried. “It’s only your foolish pride that’s keeping us apart, Hew! You won’t accept me now because of my wretched money. That’s what you’ve been trying to say, isn’t it? But you will
marry. You must marry—in time. It will be expected of you. You’re the laird. That matters, I suppose!”

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I intend to marry.”

There was a terrible, lengthy pause, in which Elizabeth could feel herself trembling where she sat in the shadows beside Stephen. Then Caroline flung away from Hew, her voice coming, hoarse with passion, out into the night.

“You can’t mean this! You can’t mean it, Hew knowing you love me—knowing that you will never be able to forget me as long as you live—you’ll make a marriage of convenience because of Ardlamond—because you need to provide an heir! But it won’t succeed! I’ll always be there—always in your heart, because I was there first!”

There was a swish of a stiffened skirt, and Caroline had gone. Elizabeth got up from her chair, the sound of Caroline’s departure cutting across her mind like a lash. Hew was still there, standing beside the door with his back to the garden, utterly unaware that Caroline and he had been overheard, but at any moment now he might come out and discover her and Stephen.

“Stephen,” she whispered, her lips quite dry, “please, please let us get away.”

Hew forestalled them, however. A second after Caroline had left him he threw his half-smoked cigarette out into the garden and followed her through the inner door back to the hall.

Elizabeth watched the stub form a little parabola of light before it reached the grey paving stones at their feet. Instinctively she shivered.

“Cold?” Stephen asked almost casually, as if they had not just been reluctant
audience to all the fury of a woman’s scorned love. “Let’s go and get warm at the
fire.”

The kindness of his quiet voice all but unnerved her, and somehow she felt that he understood. She did not mind Stephen knowing; she knew that he would keep her unspoken confidence and that he would probably do his best to forget this revealing moment in a sunken garden when she had looked at him with all her love for Hew Kintyre mirrored in her despairing eyes.

They found Hew standing a little way back from the revellers round the barbecue. His tall figure was mostly in shadow, so that they could not see his face very clearly.

“How long does Caroline mean to keep this up?” Stephen asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s Sunday morning, and it’s not going to go down at all well with the locals if we’re seen coming away from an ‘orgy’ at the Castle in the wee sma’ hours of the Sabbath!”

“I was thinking about that,” Hew agreed. “Perhaps we ought to make the first move.” He looked at Elizabeth and then swiftly away again. “Unless you want to stay?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I think we ought to go home.”

The final word had slipped out quite naturally, yet she had no right to call Ardlamond home. That would be reserved for someone else, for Caroline, perhaps, when she had persuaded him that money made very little difference when pride had been forgotten.

“I’ll collect the others,” Stephen offered. “Someone will have to run Shona and the boys back to Ravenscraig. The Colonel wouldn’t stay to the barbecue.”

“I’ll do that,” Hew offered with a suggestion of relief in his voice. “If you would drop Elizabeth and Tony at Ardlamond on your way?”

“Surely,” Stephen said. “I’d be glad to.” Automatically Elizabeth said good night to Caroline, thanking her conventionally for an enjoyable evening, and as automatically she served the hot chocolate and biscuits when they had returned to Ardlamond without Hew.

She knew that he would not hurry back. There was so much on his mind to settle that she was not surprised when the dawn broke over the silent house and he had not returned.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DURING the weeks which followed Caroline’s party Elizabeth saw a great deal of Stephen Friend and next to nothing of Hew.

He had plunged into work in connection with the estate and he was also preparing to sell the farm on the hill.

She knew that he had seen as little of Caroline, but that was no real consolation.

Caroline came twice to Ardlamond, obviously at a loss to account for his silence, and on each occasion, as if as an afterthought, she asked for Tony.

“He’s at Whitefarland, helping Hew with the sheep,” Elizabeth informed her with some satisfaction the second time she put the same question.

Caroline’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Does that mean Hew isn’t going to sell?” she asked.

“No, I
think
he will have to sell.” Elizabeth did not want to discuss Hew with Caroline. “I don’t think the situation has changed at all.”

Caroline drew out a cigarette, lighting it slowly and deliberately.

“
You
wouldn’t be averse to your brother settling down at Whitefarland, would you, Elizabeth?” she asked between the first puffs of smoke.

“I’d think it was a wonderful idea!” Elizabeth’s eyes lit up, and then she said regretfully: “But quite impossible. Tony hasn’t the sort of money that would buy a place like Whitefarland.”

“No?” Caroline was quite obviously considering something which displeased her. “But he could run it for Hew—once he had the necessary experience.”

“It takes years to train a shepherd,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Hew couldn’t afford to wait that long.”

“He could get help from the bank, but I don’t think he will do that. He’s so confoundedly proud.” Caroline cast away the half-finished cigarette. “Of
c
ourse,” she added, as if the possibility hadn’t been in the forefront of her mind all the time, “there’s Tony’s attitude to consider, too, isn’t there? He might not feel that he wants to stay here for the rest of his life.”

“He has to stay at Ardlamond for the next eighteen months,” Elizabeth answered a trifle impatiently. “Hew has decided that.”

“But Tony hasn’t agreed to it,” observed Caroline, “and Hew might be persuaded otherwise. This isn’t the seventeenth century, after all. If Tony didn’t want to stay I don’t think even Hew could compel him to.” She gave Elizabeth a vague little smile, her pencilled eyebrows ever so slightly raised in interrogation. “Do you?”

Elizabeth was angry again. Caroline always had this effect on her.

“I’ve got to see that Tony does what he is told as far as it lies in my power,” she answered frigidly.

“But will you be here all that length of time?” Caroline demanded incredulously. “After all, eighteen months is more than a holiday. You can’t possibly want to stay till Hew has to
ask
you to go.”

Elizabeth flushed scarlet, but almost as quickly the colour ebbed out of her cheeks again, leaving her white and shaken by the thought that all this might have been discussed between Hew and Caroline. The memory of that overheard conversation at the barbecue flooded back too, turning her blood to ice.

“He won’t have to ask me,” she said proudly.

Caroline selected another cigarette with
infini
te care.

“It would be a terrible embarrassment to him,” she suggested placidly.

How I hate you Elizabeth thought, standing there with your cool smile, telling me to go, perhaps even planning in some diabolical way of your own that Tony will go too, that he will break Hew’s faith in him by some foolish, selfish action, and that will be the end!