The Last of the Kintyres (11 page)

Elizabeth turned towards him, her eyes shining. She had not expected anything like this.

“Oh—would you?” she breathed. “Would you really give him that chance?”

“We could try it,” he agreed without a great deal of
enthusias
m
.
“Don’t overrate it,” he warned dryly. “Estate management is a synonym for hard work and wearyingly long hours at times.”

“I don’t
think
Tony would mind that,” she assured him. “The long hours I mean—if he were really interested. I
think
he could be, Hew,” she added swiftly, “if he were given the chance.”

“There would be quite a bit of discipline to enforce,” he warned again. “If he agrees to that the offer is open, and I’ll pay him a reasonable salary. It won’t be much, but it will let him feel independent while he has to stay here.”

He had made no reference to the length of her own stay, but she hardly noticed that. She expected to go as soon as Tony was reasonably settled, in any case.

She had always known it would happen, but her eyes were misty as she looked towards the islands and the sea. How eagerly, how contentedly would she have stayed here for the rest of her life!

At the foot of the hill there was a bank and a steep ditch between them and the road and Hew negotiated them easily, his long legs taking both in their quick, muscular stride.

“Watch me jump in the ditch!” Elizabeth laughed. “Is it clean water?”

“Perfectly clean!” He looked up at her with a smile which erased all the deep lines from his dark face. “All the same, I shall be prepared to catch you. You won’t feel particularly comfortable walking back to Ardlamond once you’ve been in the ditch!”

He held out his arms and she jumped, feeling his hands tight and firm about her waist as he steadied her on her feet. Her heart was pounding heavily—madly—and her fingers had fastened over his sleeves, as if she would grip this moment, never to let it go.

Then, thundering out of nowhere, it seemed, a car came flashing round the bend in the narrow road and plunged towards them.

As Hew pulled her to him and stepped back, Elizabeth was aware of a vivid flash of white bodywork and the screech of hastily-applied brakes as the car bumped up on to the grass on the far side of the road ahead of them and came to a standstill.

Hew’s quickly indrawn breath seemed to shiver through her and she felt his whole body tauten as he recognized the occupants of the car, and then he put her firmly away from him and was walking down the road towards Caroline.

But it wasn’t Caroline that Elizabeth saw in that first moment of shock. It was Tony.

The blood rushed to her cheeks and angry recrimination rose in her heart as her brother opened the car door and got out to follow Caroline along the road.

It was then that she looked at Caroline and saw what fury really meant. The older girl’s eyes were blazing, her face completely colourless, and both her hands were clenched.

“What the devil were you doing?” she demanded in the first flush of her anger. “Fooling about there on the roadside with a couple of dogs all over the place!”

“Calm down, Caroline,” Hew returned with what must have been maddening equanimity, although Elizabeth realized that he was just as angry as Caroline. “We hardly expected you to come hurtling round the bend at fifty miles an hour, you know.”

“Evidently not!” Caroline had cloaked her anger in sarcasm now. “Sorry we interrupted a summer idyll. Where had you been?” she seemed compelled to ask.

“At Whitefarland,” Hew said steadily.

“Oh—!”

She had to take out a cigarette and light it to steady her hands. She had not given Elizabeth a second glance.

Tony came up, saying rather sheepishly:

“Hullo! We didn’t expect you to come charging off the hill like that.”

“Apparently not.”

Hew turned slowly, and suddenly Elizabeth was aware that most of his anger was directed towards her brother. The narrowed eyes which a moment or two ago had looked blue and friendly were now slate-grey and coldly demanding as they met Tony’s half-apologetic gaze.

Her heart began to beat slowly and heavily in her breast. Was Hew’s fury double-edged? Was there jealousy as well as annoyance behind that cold glance?

Elizabeth felt herself chilled by it into a silence which gave Caroline her chance to explain.

“I went up to Oban to collect the car
,
” she said, blowing a perfect smoke-ring into the still air. “So naturally I went on to Ravenscraig to see how Tony was. Poor dear! he was bored to tears, and only too pleased to come back with me!”

In that moment Elizabeth knew that Caroline had gone deliberately to Ravenscraig for Tony. She had been determined to bring him back to Ardlamond for a reason of her own. She did not want Hew to be alone with anyone else for any length of time.

Hew’s anger was still obviously uppermost as he turned away.

“I’d like a-word with you, Tony,” he said, “when you get back to Ardlamond.”

Elizabeth did not quite know what to do. They stood there on the open road for a moment or two longer with a tumult of conflicting emotions in their hearts until Caroline laughed lightly and moved back towards her car.

“I’d offer you a lift,” she suggested, “but you’re almost at Ardlamond now.” She looked deliberately across at Hew. “See you at the Trials,” she added. “You know, of course, that I have been asked to preside with you, to present the cups? The lady of the Castle!” She laughed again, rather bitterly. “La belle Dame sans Merci—remember, Hew?”

He did not answer the bitter little jibe, which seemed to have some connection with the past, recognizable only between themselves.

Tony lingered to say good-bye to Caroline.

“Carol, we’ll be meeting again at the sheep-dog trials,” he said eagerly. “That’s the day after tomorrow.” He made it sound an eternity. “I’ll be looking forward to it tremendously.”

When Caroline had treated them to an airy wave of her hand and driven away, he stood watching the white car until it had disappeared over the brow of the hill in the direction of Dromore.

Hew had already disappeared through the arched doorway in the wall, taking the dogs with him, and brother and sister were alone.

“Tony,” Elizabeth said, “please try to understand about Caroline and Hew. They were engaged to be married four years ago and—and they’re still in love.”

“Who told you that?” Tony demanded. “What a lot of nonsense you talk!” he added quickly, angrily. “Caroline’s not engaged to anyone—not in love with anyone. It’s only a year since her husband died. How could she be?”

She could not explain to him how an old attraction could last, persisting down through the years, nor could she tell him about the photograph which Hew still kept in his bedroom at Whitefarland. It would be like breaking a confidence.

“I wish you hadn’t come back without letting Hew know,” she said instead.

Tony flushed scarlet.

“I say, what is this?” he demanded irritably. “I don’t like being catechized about my actions. I came back because I wanted to come, because I thought I should when I was perfectly all right, apart from a superficial scratch or two.”

“You would have stayed,” Elizabeth ventured, “if Caroline hadn’t turned up.”

“I suppose I would,” he conceded. “So what? Am I to wait for Hew to send for me, like he would for a five-year-old, and take a ticking off because I drove a car a bit too fast and came to grief on an awkward bend?”

“It could have been so very much more serious.” Elizabeth closed her eyes before the picture of what might have happened. “You’ve been lucky this time, Tony, but please,
please
think twice before you do that sort of thing again!”

“All right! All
right]”
he calmed her. “It was an experiment not to be repeated. Which doesn’t mean to say that I’ve got to shun Caroline like the plague from now on.”

“No,” she said. “No, I couldn’t suggest that—”

“And Hew better not either,” Tony said belligerently. “I’m not taking my cue from him where Caroline’s concerned. He probably wants to marry her now for all the money she’s got—”

“No, Tony! No, he wouldn’t do that!”

“How can you be so sure?” They had reached the door in the wall and he halted to let her pass through into the shrubbery ahead of him. “Unless,” he added, “You’re in love with him yourself?”

“That wasn’t—what we were discussing,” Elizabeth said almost inaudibly. “All I know is that Hew wouldn’t do anything underhand. He’d—have to love someone very much before he asked her to marry him.”

“You think so? Well, I’m
not
so sure. Caroline says he’d do anything to secure Ardlamond’s future—anything short of murder, I suppose she meant. There would, too, have to be an heir, wouldn’t there? He can’t go on being the last of the Kintyres. Caroline says he owes that to Ardlamond, too, so I guess he’ll have to marry sooner or later, even though it isn’t Caroline.”

“Please,” Elizabeth begged, “don’t let’s talk about it any more. It—just isn’t our affair.”

“Perhaps not.” He was willing enough to let the matter drop. “I wish he wasn’t quite so remote. If he were more approachable—”

“If you did approach him, Tony, in the right way,” Elizabeth suggested, “you’d find him kind enough. He feels that you might like to take an interest in the management of the estate. You could work here,” she rushed on in case he might refuse out of hand, “and learn how to run things and—and help Hew a lot. He’s willing to pay you a little and teach you all he knows.”

“What’s the catch?” he demanded suspiciously. “There isn’t one,” she answered patiently. “All that Hew is likely to demand is obedience and a sense of obligation to your job.”

“The perfect disciplinarian, in fact. You do as I say, not as I do!”

“Oh, Tony!” she protested, “Do be more sensible. Hew would never demand anything of anyone that he wasn’t prepared to tackle himself. He’s only trying to help us.”

“Us?” he queried. “Where do you come in, Liz? I haven’t really thought about it before,” he confessed apologetically, “but you
are
free to go, aren’t you?” She nodded dumbly, not able to tell him that to be bound to Ardlamond and Hew, as he was bound, would be the greatest happiness she could know. Unlike Tony, she would never want to go away.

“You will try to make something of this offer of Hew’s?” she pleaded as they neared the house. “You will give it a trial?”

He hesitated for only a second.

“I’ll give it a trial,” he promised, smiling suddenly and unexpectedly into her eyes. “It’s going to be odd, having to learn about sheep!”

Over a rather belated lunch Hew gave him a rough idea what would be expected of him.

“You’ll go out with the shepherd and learn how to handle the dogs. Wraith’s easy. She knows the ropes better than Dan himself, but while you’re on the hill with
him
you’ll take your orders from Dan. We’ll be dipping next week, so we’ll be glad of your help over at the pens. You’ll be right in the thick of it,” he added with a smile which Elizabeth considered rather grim. “Three or four days dipping sheep should give you a pretty good idea about whether you’re going to stay the course or not.”

Tony flushed.

“You really do think I’m pretty soft, don’t you?” he challenged.

Hew rose from his chair, pushing it back out of the way to stand beside this reluctant boy who was now, willy-nilly, his ward.

“Whatever comes of it, Tony,” he said quite kindly, “I’m sure you’ll do your best, if it’s only for Elizabeth’s sake.” He gave Elizabeth a brief, sideways look which surprised the hot flush rising in her cheeks. “She’s horribly embarrassed about having to accept my hospitality, you see, and this, I take it, would make a difference.”

His tone had been so dry, his eyes so mocking, that she felt she hated him again, yet how could she hate
him
when every moment of his company had become precious to her?

He stood waiting for Tony at the door.

“Care to come and have a word with old Dan?” he suggested. “You’ll find him quite a character.”

He was making no difference about Caroline, treating the incident on
th
e shore road as if it had never been.

Elizabeth could not forget about Caroline. She could not forget the way Caroline had looked at Hew, the demand in her eyes and the light laughter on her lips as she had challenged him to walk back with her into the past.
La belle Dame sans Merci?
What had that to do with Caroline and Hew?

Minutes later she found herself at the door of the library, her hand uncertainly on the crystal knob. Hew had invited her to make free with his father’s books.

In under ten minutes she had found what she wanted. The thin, leather-bound volume of Keats was in her hand, yet it seemed that she had not the power to open it. It seemed that she dared not.

Carrying it to the window-seat, she knelt in the pale afternoon sunlight, slowly turning the pages until she
came to the poem she had read so long ago.