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“There’s no need for them to run riot,” he declared, “unless you believe that we can’t possibly know about these things because we were born and bred ‘down under’.”

She looked ashamed.

“What did you expect?” he asked. “A boomerang and a pair of faded jeans? You’ll have to think again, if that’s the case,” he added shortly. “We’re quite civilised out there these days, even though we can still drive cattle and herd sheep.”

She had the grace to apologise, although she felt sure that she would never like him.

“I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“No, you’re just upset. I can’t think why.” He looked about him. “You haven’t lost Denham’s.”

She couldn’t tell him that it was all but lost to her, that she would go as soon as Evelyn’s baby was born, and after that they discussed nothing but business. The office girls came in, and when he had met the senior members of the factory staff he drove away.

At ten o’clock the door opened again and Lilias Rutherford walked in. Susan got up from her chair. Lilias was punctual for once. She was their only model and she was due for a photographic session at eleven o’clock.

“Can you slip on the grey-and-white two-piece for a moment?” Susan asked. “The jacket might need some alteration once I’ve seen it on.”

Lilias came to stand beside her desk. She was a tall, leggy girl who had been runner-up in several beauty contests south of the Border but had never quite made it to first place. Now that she was twenty-five and ‘past it', as she so frankly remarked when discussing the big international titles, she had turned to modelling
couture
clothes in the free-lance capacity which she preferred. She lived in Edinburgh, in a flat in Buckingham Terrace, just across the Dean Bridge, and she was always available for Denham’s. She enjoyed coming down to the Border country for the odd day or two, once in a while, and Susan felt that she showed their knitwear to the best advantage. She was also good with coats, which they had branched into recently with Elliott’s.

Admiring her spare, lean grace and fine, expressive hands, Susan felt a moment’s envy, but it passed as soon as Lilias asked:

“What’s the new boss like, by the way? I saw him driving off as I came in just now. He looks as if he might be a lot of fun!”

“If you mean Maxwell Elliott,” Susan returned dryly, “fun is the wrong word to use.”

“You don’t like him?” Lilias feigned surprise. “I thought you adored everybody on principle until you found them out?”

“Maybe I just don’t like being ordered around by strangers,” Susan confessed.

“But he
is
the boss,” Lilias mused as she lit a cigarette. “He’s going to make sweeping changes, I understand. Mungo, for instance, but it really is time that old man was decently retired.”

“Retired?” Susan stared at her.

“Didn’t you know? He’s had his notice. So has old Elsie in the canteen. Elsie went yesterday, as a matter of fact. Mungo will just have to content himself with his cabbage-patch.”

Susan bit her lip. This was more than she had bargained for. Elsie was old, but she was still competent, and Mungo had never known anything other than Denham’s. Rage mounted in her heart at the thought of their dismissal and she knew she had to do something about it. But what? What could she really do now that decisions were taken out of her hands, now that an arrogant stranger was in command?

She decided to go and see Elsie as soon as possible, but in the meantime she must join issue with Maxwell Elliott about Mungo.

“I certainly liked what I saw of Max Elliott,' Lilias continued. “All that superb height and broad shoulders. He’s a New Zealander, isn’t he?”

Susan nodded.

“You seem to know all there is to know about him,” she said.

“I make it my business to keep in touch.” Lilias blew a perfect smoke ring. “Want me to slip into the grey- and-white inspiration now?”

“If you would.”

Susan waited idly until she came back from the little anteroom where she changed.

“Is he married?” Lilias asked, still thinking about Maxwell Elliott.

“No.”

“Bully for you! Or is it?” Lilias’s eyes were suddenly sharp. “I’ve heard about the take-over, of course, and maybe you think that Maxwell Elliott could be the answer as far as you’re concerned.”

Susan tugged the grey knitted skirt into place.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she flashed. “He’s not the marrying kind.”

“All men are ‘the marrying kind’,” Lilias declared in a superior tone. “They all fall for it, sooner or later. What age is he?”

“Twenty-eight—thirty?” Susan shrugged indifferently. “How should I know?”

“You must have made a guess, at least.”

“I’m no good at guessing.”

“But,” Lilias protested,
“an eligible man
!”

“Yes, I suppose he is eligible.”

“But your heart still belongs to Fergus? Good, solid, hard-working Fergus who never puts a foot wrong and never has a thought apart from that farm of his. Your fleecy little baa-lamb!”

“Now you’re just being rude!”

“Sorry,” Lilias apologised, “I didn’t mean to offend. You have got him under your skin, though, haven’t you?”

“Who? Fergus?” Susan’s mouth was full of pins as she adjusted the collar of the grey suit.

“I was thinking about Maxwell Elliott,” Lilias said. “Sometimes, when you hate a person too much in the beginning, Sue, it’s because he’s made a big impression on your subconscious or something.”

“That’s nonsense! Can you turn round till I pin this sleeve?”

“Och, don’t stick the pins into me!” Lilias protested. “Even if I have said the wrong thing. What time is Nicholas due?”

“Eleven o’clock.” Susan could hand over to the photographer then. “Why didn’t you drive down together?”

“I came early.” Lilias was toying with a batch of tweed patterns, not looking at her. “I went to see your stepmother.”

“Evelyn? You’ve heard about the baby, then?”

“Who hasn’t? I think it’s the most wonderful thing,” Lilias declared. “Of course, you’re all hoping for a boy.”

“I don’t think Evelyn really minds, one way or the other.”

“But you do, Susan.” Lilias could be amazingly shrewd at times. “You’d like to be sure that the Denham name never passed out of the company.”

“That’s true,” Susan agreed, “and it isn’t exactly an offence, I hope.”

“Will you leave Denham’s afterwards?”

Susan turned to her easel.

“I don’t know. Yes, I suppose I will,” she amended truthfully.

“Which means you’ll marry poor old Fergus and settle down at the Mains to the humdrum existence of a farmer’s wife.”

“Nothing is humdrum if it’s what you want to do,” Susan declared on her way to the door. “When Nick comes remind him about that faulty plug, will you? We don’t want the electricity to go off because of a short in the office.”

The photographer was unloading his camera and tripod from his red Mini when she crossed the yard, but they rarely stopped to speak. Nicholas Begbie was a shy person, completely wrapped up in his art, and she had always supposed that he liked to be left alone. He did his work conscientiously, producing the results she wanted with the minimum of fuss, and she smiled into his anxious brown eyes above the growth of dark beard as she passed.

“Excuse me, Miss Denham!” Nicholas crossed to her side. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but will you be needing me again in the autumn?”

“Of course! What made you think—”

“I wondered—with the merger and that sort of thing.” She had given him her answer without thinking carefully about the autumn.

“If I’m not here, someone else will be,” she amended awkwardly. “We’ll still need you, Nick.”

“I’m glad.” He looked confused. “You don’t mind me asking?”

“Not a bit.”

At five o’clock Mungo came on duty. He looked depressed.

“I’ve got to go, miss,” he said. “My time’s up at Denham’s. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve never been an idle man. The garden alone won’t keep me busy.”

She said harshly:

“Leave it to me, Mungo. I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise you anything definite—not your job back —but I’ll see.”

Unexpectedly she met Max on her way out.

“I want to speak to you about Mungo,” she said. “You’ve sacked him.”

He looked surprised at her interference.

“It’s time he left the mill and that damp little cubbyhole under the stairs,” he said. “It could be the sole reason for his rheumatism. He’s the outdoor type and should be working with the soil in the fresh air instead of being cooped up here all night long playing at being a watchman.”

“Playing?”

“Well, it’s obsolete nowadays, isn’t it?” he challenged. “I’m installing burglar alarms.”

“I thought so,” she said bitterly. “Human beings don’t count with you, do they? Efficiency in the shape of an electric burglar alarm is much more to your liking. You wouldn’t think of Mungo’s feelings for a moment, once you’d made up your mind.”

He looked ruffled and then amused.

“Don’t worry about Mungo,” he said. “There must be something else he can do.”

When she got back to Denham she felt that she had to tell Evelyn the truth.

“I hope I haven’t cramped your style over the party,” she began. “I had an argument with Maxwell Elliott this morning. He might not come.”

“We must wait and see,” Evelyn said.

“But he was your Lion!”

“We can always pretend that the party was for something else.”

“All the same, you would be disappointed.”

“Yes, I would,” Evelyn agreed.

It wasn’t a big party. Evelyn had made a list of their most intimate friends, inviting them for eight o’clock, when the light was fading and farm work was over for the day.

They stood together waiting at the lounge windows overlooking the terrace, two striking figures in their separate ways. Evelyn, who always looked small and rather defenceless, wore a full hostess gown in soft blue chiffon with her hair bound by a blue ribbon band. She had flat-heeled blue sandals on her feet and a single gold bracelet, the gift of Adam, on her arm. Susan had chosen green because it suited her best. Her beaded evening jacket was a Denham exclusive, and she wore it with a long, emerald green skirt and plain, low-heeled pumps.

When their guests began to arrive she found herself looking for Fergus, although she was also aware of an odd anxiety at the back of her mind.
Would
Maxwell Elliott put in an appearance, in spite of their sparring match of the previous week? She didn’t want Evelyn to be disappointed.

Fergus soon made his way to her side.

“Long time no see!” he grinned. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Working, and organising parties for Evelyn!”

“She looks amazingly well.” He glanced in her stepmother’s direction. “She’s certainly given them all something to talk about. Sue,” he added on a more serious note, “we’re seeing far too little of each other. You never come over to the Mains these days,”

“The last time I came you were out, jaunting off to Berwick for the day,” she reminded him.

“Yes, Mrs. Polworth told me you’d called. Was it anything important?”

“I can’t remember what it was,” she answered truthfully, “so it couldn’t have been important.”

Fergus glanced beyond her.

“This must be Maxwell Elliott,” he said.

Susan turned her head.

‘Yes,” she said, “but—’

“Who is he with?”

‘The girl in pink is his niece, Grisell."

“And the other man?”

“I don’t know. Unless—unless it’s his brother from New Zealand, the real power behind the throne!”

The tall man standing beside Max was like him in build and feature, but his hair was white. He wore it brushed straight back from his forehead and it made a thick cap on the top of his head, like snow on a mountain, Susan thought. He had a rugged sort of face and keenly-penetrating eyes, like Max, but he spoke with a much broader accent.

Susan heard him thanking Evelyn for her invitation, so Max must have phoned Evelyn earlier in the day to ask if he might bring another guest and Evelyn had forgotten to mention the fact.

“Don’t stare so hard, Sue! I know they look distinguished, but it’s bad manners.” Fergus took her arm, leading her towards the door. “Maybe we should join the queue. Everybody appears to be clamouring for an introduction!”

Susan was still gazing at Maxwell Elliott. Of course, he looked distinguished. Who wouldn’t, with that height and in such impeccable evening clothes? New, she supposed, and tailored by Forsyth of Edinburgh, no doubt. He didn’t seem at all disconcerted that a sudden nearhush had fallen on the room and that he was the centre of attraction as he made his introductions to his hostess. Susan saw Evelyn looking round for her.

“Ah, here you are, Sue!” her stepmother exclaimed. “This is Richard Elliott, Max’s brother from New Zealand,” she went on rather breathlessly, “and this is Grisell. Fergus, have you met Grisell?”

Susan found herself standing with Richard Elliott’s big, rough hand clasped round her fingers and his eyes smiling down into hers. They were dark eyes, like his brother’s but they were kinder and far less critical. He wanted to like her. The white hair was quite misleading; he looked years younger at closer range.

“Now we all know each other!” he said, releasing her hand. “I could have picked you out, even in this crowd, Miss Denham, by my brother’s description of you.”

What did that mean ? Susan looked sideways at Max, but he was speaking with Evelyn and perhaps he hadn’t heard his brother’s remark. She let it pass.

“When did you arrive?” she asked.

“Only yesterday.” A shadow passed in the dark eyes. “I had a—spot of business to attend to in Edinburgh before I could come on down here,” he explained. “What do you think of my girl?”

Grisell was talking with Fergus, who had brought her a drink.

“I don’t know her very well.”

“I’m hoping she’s going to settle here.” The dark eyes were frankly troubled now. “Maybe young people don’t like being uprooted, after all.”