The Tender Glory by Jean S. Macleod Read Free Book Online

Sterne. You can’t warn me off. It was never considered private property.”
    It took him a second longer to place her.
    “You were at Craigie Hill this morning,” he said.
    “Yes.” Her mouth firmed. “When you came to see Kirsty.”
    The eagle gaze held hers for a moment while he searched her face for some clue to her identity. .
    “I’m Alison Christie,” she told him. “I live at Craigie Hill.”
    He looked surprised, not so much by the revelation of her identity as by her second admission.
    “I thought you were in London taking advantage of your scholarship,” he said indifferently.
    “The Isobel Daviot Scholarship,” she informed him proudly. “But perhaps it doesn’t interest you.”
    “On the contrary,” he said, “I find it more than interesting. Why are you here?”
    He had driven her against the wall. He had more knowledge of the scholarship than she imagined.
    “I came home to nurse my mother.”
    “For how long?”
    She shook her head, looking away, so that he might not see the hurt in her eyes.
    “For as long as she needs me.”
    “And the scholarship?”
    “That will have to go. It was for three years. They’ll be up next spring.” “I take it your mother is seriously ill?”
    “Yes.”
    They stood facing each other, with the locked door of the lighthouse behind them. The light was fading and she thought that some of its greyness lay reflected in his face.
    “It’s dangerous on the cliff,” he warned her. “That’s why I’ve had the fence renewed. The rock isn’t all gneiss. Some of it is soft sandstone, which is subject to erosion. You would be well advised to give the headland a wide berth.”
    “And you?” she queried, thinking of the locked door.
    “I live here,” he said.
    She stared at him incredulously.
    “At Sterne?”
    “Why should it surprise you?” he asked. “I bought it some time ago when the Trust people offered it for sale.”
    “I had no idea.” She couldn’t hide her chagrin. “But what about Calders? I understood you had come back to live there.”
    He surveyed her with glassy distaste in his eyes.
    “You must have been listening to clachan gossip,” he said. “Kirsty could have told you where to deliver my milk.”
    It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she had delivered it at the Lodge, but she had already shown sufficient interest in him and been snubbed for her pains.
    “I’ll leave your milk at the gate,” she informed him stiffly. “I wouldn’t dream of trespassing on your privacy.”
    He laughed outright. It was so unexpected that she turned on her way to the gate to look at him.
    “I’ll have to fix up a box,” he said. “Then we needn’t trouble each other at all. If you left my butter and eggs in the open once a week the hoodie crows would make short work of them even before I was up and about.”
    He felt in his pocket and put a key in the narrow door and she knew herself dismissed.
    “Don’t forget the box,” she said. “It will save me walking up from the gate.”
    He followed her down the grass-grown path, closing the gate firmly behind her.
    “You could, of course, leave everything at the Lodge,” he suggested. “It would save you more than a mile, and I go there every day.”
    The suggestion confused her for a moment, although she was well aware that he visited the Lodge.
    “I have the van,” she said stiffly. “There’s no reason why you should wait for you milk.”
    “Just as you like,” he agreed indifferently. “You may have trouble sometimes, if the weather is bad, and I may not always be around to help.”
    “I’ll have to take my chance on that,” she suggested. “There isn’t much shelter anywhere on the moor and the glen is only half my round.”
    She hurried away, her hands still thrust deep into the pockets of her leather coat, as if to hide their rough unsightliness from his probing gaze. Being a Daviot, he made her too acutely aware of her lost career.
    Jim Orbister was propping up