Land of Heart's Desire by Catherine Airlie Read Free Book Online Page A

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