ADAM'S DAUGHTER

Jean S MacLeod

After Adam Denham died, his daughter Susan knew that for the sake of his young widow, her beloved stepmother Evelyn, she would have to accept the take-over of the family business.

But how could she ever accept the man who was taking it over — the arrogant Maxwell Elliott?

CHAPTER ONE

THE small blue car left Catchleuch behind and sped up the winding road to the Bar, a tiny speck in that vast world of rolling hills and cloud-flecked sky making its way surely and eagerly towards the summit. It was a clear day, with the Border stretched out for miles in the sunshine, green and peaceful and kind to the eye, from Catchleuch Shin and Carter Fell to Dindy Gyle and the great Cheviot himself standing in splendid isolation in the east.

Normally Susan Denham would have stopped at this much-loved spot where all the hills seemed to meet, where the road climbed up from England to afford her a first glimpse of her native land, but today was different. Although she could see The Pike and Din Fell clearly enough, with all the dales in between and the singing waters silver-threaded through the trees, her mind was on something else.

The speed at which she set the car towards the west was a sure measure of her disturbed thoughts, and she had covered the distance between Otterburn and the summit in record time. Slim hands on the wheel, she gazed straight ahead, her blue eyes stormy, her lips set in a firm, decisive line. It couldn’t happen, she told herself. It just couldn’t! There had been Denhams at Yairborough for over a hundred years, Denhams producing knitwear since the Industrial Revolution had enlarged the trade from a cottage hand industry to a mechanised one, father and son following one another ever since the Brae mill had been built on the swift-flowing Yair in the middle of the nineteenth century by the first Adam Denham, and the name had been carried on until it had died with her father six months ago.

There was no Adam Denham now, no son to inherit the mill and a famous name. Only me, she thought, and what can I really do?

Sudden tears glistened in her eyes and her vision blurred for a moment, but she wasn’t the kind for tears. She brushed them aside with a determination which suggested that she might be as good as any son. The mill had been paying its way. There was no doubt about that, but suddenly, without its head, without the man who had held its fortunes firmly in his own strong, capable hands, it had seemed to die.

Loyal though she was, she knew that their progress over the past few years had not been swift enough to meet the growing competition on every side, but she imagined that it had only been money that had been lacking. The money necessary for expansion. Her own mind was full of ideas for improvements, but there was Evelyn to consider.

She pulled up when she had crossed the Jed Water and come to the junction of the roads. It would be quicker to go on by Hawick, but she needed the comfort and quiet of the hills. She didn’t want to meet anyone she knew who might commiserate with her or ask her about Denham’s, whose fate lay in the balance.

The side road dipped and climbed from one brow to the next, skirting the open moor until the whole of Teviotdale lay before her on her homeward way. Child of the fells as she was, nothing could dim for her the romance of her native hills. Even when her thoughts were so deeply troubled by the present and the future, part of them still lingered in the past.

Wherever she looked, an ancient castle or a ruined peel tower stood gauntly against the sky, and it wasn’t difficult for her to people that broad landscape with the knights and ladies, the yeomen and the minstrels who had lived there long ago. The feel of it was in her blood, the sorrow and hopelessness of it close to her heart now. She knew all the Border heroes by name: John of Thirlstane; Watt of Harden; Jedwood and the Scotts of the Middle Marsh; Blind Jock Jamieson and Willie Twee die, and Black John of Arkenshaw. It didn’t seem so long ago that the muffled hooves of smugglers' horses had sounded on those narrow roads between the hills, nor strange that a waft of air might bring with it the echo of some dark Knight of Hermitage’s scornful laughter as he galloped his armoured steed into some lone and hidden glen.

Foray and bloodshed had stained the heather all about her and the measured tread of marching feet still echoed down the years. She could almost hear them through the open window as she drove along with the wind whipping a strand of hair across her cheek and her mind busy in the past. Then, as if her gaze had been drawn there against her will, her eyes lifted to the summit of the high crags ahead of her and she saw a man coming from them riding a white horse. The westering sun was full upon him and for a moment something glinted at his saddle girth. It was as if the light had caught the gleam of a lance couched against a palfrey’s side, and she was imaginative enough to see the toss of a plume on a helmeted head as horse and rider drew steadily nearer. So Gilbert of Gailliard might have rode from Minto Hill to the valley of the Eske, the valley that was lost and won ‘for a bonnie white horse’.

Something of the bold Gailliard was in the rider’s ’dark face as he approached, but Susan was too busy admiring his faultless horsemanship to notice every detail. When the deceptive sunlight had been left behind and she came to look at him more closely his dress was quite ordinary—riding-breeches and a yellow turtle-necked pullover, with a silk scarf tucked in at the throat. No lance; no favour in his crest or glove!

Smiling at her own wayward fancy, she slowed the car, giving him time to pass. He was coming at a brisk pace, riding almost breakneck down from the crags.

He’s a fool, she thought, if he doesn’t know the ground. Yet the horse seemed familiar, because she knew about horses. Surely this was Bucksfoot? The Gailliard, indeed!

But she also knew the owner of Bucksfoot, and this wasn’t Fergus Graeme.

Horse and rider came on to jump the low fence on to the road just ahead of her and she pulled up with a screeching of brakes.

“You needn’t have done that,” the man said through the open window. “ I saw you coming.”

“If you did, you should have waited till I got past,” she told him angrily, because the car had slewed across the road and she was almost in the ditch. “These roads are far too narrow to take chances, riding across the heather like—like a moss-trooper on someone else’s horse!”

He eyed her speculatively, his smile a trifle sardonic.

“Don’t tell me you know all about me already,” he protested. “I’ve heard of the moss-telegraph, of course, but I didn’t think I had been here long enough to arouse interest locally.”

They were near enough now for her to put up her hand to fondle the horse’s sensitive nose and Bucksfoot gave a little whinney of delight at her gentle touch.

“You’re riding Bucksfoot,” she countered. “I know him very well.”

“And his master?”

“Yes.”

He was evidently prepared for her further questions, but she was determined not to fall into his trap. The bit about the moss-telegraph had stung and she was aware of feeling faintly ill at ease as he continued to gaze at her with that slightly arrogant smile. He had the faintest hint of an accent, which she couldn’t quite place, and a look of the open air about him which should have pleased her, but his skin had been burned by the rays of a hotter sun than they knew in the dales and his eyes, when the smile had left them, were darkly veiled. He was a man who would keep his own counsel until the time came when he wished his identity to be known, yet she could so easily find out who he was by going to Fetterburn Mains and asking Fergus all about him.

“You’re staying at the Mains, I suppose,” she said, unable to completely leash her curiosity while she waited for him to move away.

He shook his head.

“No. I’ve been over there doing a deal. In horseflesh,” he added when she did not immediately challenge him. “Didn’t you know that Bucksfoot was for sale?”

A deep colour stained her cheeks. She could hardly look at him.

“I had an idea,” she confessed. “Fergus can’t possibly want to part with him,” she added heavily, “but I suppose he had to make the decision.”

“He still has the mare,” the stranger pointed out. “This is the sort of horse I like and my luck was in to be able to buy him at such short notice.”

Resentment flared in her at the thought of the Fetterburn champion going to a stranger.

“You have been lucky,” she told him distantly. “If Fergus hadn’t been so busy on the farm he’d never have parted with Bucksfoot. He takes a lot of exercising and after Colin went abroad Fergus just hadn’t got the time.”

“A pity.” The horse backed restlessly and he pulled him round on a tighter rein. “I see what you mean. A powerful animal like this has to be kept on the go all the time. Did he belong to the younger brother?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him with the faintest challenge in her blue eyes. “He’s not an easy horse to handle. Colin was the best rider this side of Jedburgh.”

“And that’s saying quite a lot,” he mused, still holding the horse in. “But you prefer a car, I fancy?”

“Oh, no,” she contradicted him. “But one can’t ride around on horseback all the time. I work most days— in Yairborough—and today I’ve been to Otterburn on business.”

When he smiled she was instantly sorry that she had volunteered so much information about herself, but he was still in her way, not allowing the horse to have his head, and she couldn’t start the car because Bucksfoot was easily upset by a sudden noise.

“Have you definitely bought him?” she asked for something to say to bridge the gap of silence between them. “Is it final?”

“It is now, after your enthusiastic recommendation.” The dark eyes were laughing at her, yet shrewdly calculating, too. “How far is Yairborough? Gould I ride the rest of the way through the hills?”

“There’s a bridle path,” she agreed, wondering why he was going to Yairborough and not back to Fetterburn. “But you have to know it. It goes up over the side of the Law and into the dale beyond the Feus.”

“This is your country,” he said. “I can tell by the way you talk about it. What do you do in Yairborough?”

The straightforward question took her by surprise.

“I design knitwear,” she found herself answering, “at the local mill.”

“Denham’s?” he asked. “Do you like the job?”

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t,” she told him.

His eyes sharpened, making his face look harder.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re the type who would make a move if you suddenly felt you needed to. How long have you worked at the mill?”

It was Susan’s turn to smile.

“Since I left art school, more or less.”

“Why ‘more or less’ ?”

“I travelled for a year—with my father.”

How much more did he want to know? It was almost as if this information might be essential to him.

“You’re very curious for a stranger,” she told him.

He slackened the rein to give Bucksfoot his head.

“Would that be considered a fault in these parts?” he asked. “I am a stranger, but I’m interested. Who wouldn’t be?” he added as his dark eyes ranged the hills on either side of them. “It’s all here, isn’t it? The glory and the gore; the ruined towers and castles grey, the sound of battles long ago! You can almost see them when you look around—your fearless knights and ladies gay, but they were a vengeful lot, I understand, always feudin’ and fechtin’ and rustling somebody else’s cattle over the Border. Even the monks had a finger in every pie, and wizards and goblin pages were common talk!”

“That was a long time ago,” she defended sharply.

“Do you think so? I don’t.” His eyes came back to study her flushed face. “It’s all only a hairsbreadth away, isn’t it? The depth of a sigh. You can feel it everywhere you go, from Lammermuir to White Hope Edge. These hills are dangerous. They shut you in on the past!”

“And the past has no attraction for you?”

“Very little. I read about it and leave it alone.”

“Yet you can feel it here? You’ve just said so.”

“It would be hard to ignore. The breathless panorama of the ages viewed from the Border fells! But can we afford to ‘stand and stare'?”

“You’d learn to stand, at least for a while, if you lived here,” she told him stonily. “We don’t rush at life as you do in London. I presume you come from London,” she added dryly.

“No. From Dunedin.”

For a moment she thought that he was amusing himself at her expense, using the ancient name for the Scottish capital because he had guessed at her preoccupation with the past, and then, before he could supply the answer, she recognised the source of the accent she had wondered about.

“You’re a New Zealander!”

“Right first time,” he agreed. “A native of the Plains of Canterbury with a strong Scottish affiliation!”

“Is that why you came to Teviotdale?”

“Partly.” His gaze was suddenly remote and sterner than it had been. “My grandparents were Scots on my father’s side, and on my mother’s. You can’t get away from it!”

“But you have struggled?” she observed dryly. “Surely New Zealand is far enough away. After all, it’s on the other side of the world.”

“You’d be surprised how strong the ties still are,” he told her. “Place names are only part of it. We pride ourselves on being Scots, even if we are a couple of generations removed. We farm practically in the same way,” he added as he looked around him.

“But on a larger scale, I expect.” He shrieked money, she decided. “Are you in sheep?”

He nodded.

“After a fashion. I was brought up on a sheep station north of Timaru,” he explained, “but that was a long time ago. I came to England to complete my education. Hence your difficulty about the accent.”

“I knew you weren’t English,” she said. “There was something—different about you.”

He smiled, not answering that as he drew the horse away.

“We’ll meet again, no doubt,” he observed. “I’m going to try the bridle path across the Law.”

“I’d go carefully, if I were you,” she warned. “There are a lot of rough places, to say nothing of a moss or two.”

“Surely Bucksfoot will take care of that.” He turned in the saddle to salute her. “Good afternoon, Miss Denham. I'll take a chance on the quickest way to Yairborough, I think.”

It was several seconds before Susan pressed the starter. How in the world did he know her name? She hadn’t told him who she was; only that she worked at the mill as a designer and that she had been there now for several years. Four, to be exact, ever since she had come to acknowledge the fact that she was the last of the Denhams.

‘I am all the daughters of my father’s house

And all the brothers, too,’

Once, when she had said that to Evelyn, her stepmother had laughed outright.

“It’s no use quoting ‘Twelfth Night’ at me, Susan,” Evelyn had said. “I may never give your father a son. We’ve been married for three years now and there’s still no sign of another Adam Denham on the way.”

“There’s time,” Susan had answered on that occasion, but now all the time had gone. Her father was dead, and Evelyn was in London tying up the loose ends of the business down there. Exports were Evelyn’s interest. She had worked in the London office for six years before she had met and married Adam Denham four years ago. Adam and Eve! They had been ideally happy for these short years granted to them by fate out of a lifetime, and Susan would have been the last person to grudge them such obvious joy.

Now, when it was all over, she missed Evelyn almost as much as she missed her father. They hadn’t met for five months, although they chattered together on the telephone at frequent intervals and each knew what the other was doing.

Perhaps Evelyn didn’t want to come back to Yairborough where she had known so much happiness in the past. Perhaps she couldn’t come back in case her heart was torn asunder by the bitter-sweet longing for a day that was gone now for ever. Brave, kind Evelyn, whom everyone loved!

Thinking about her stepmother, Susan drove the last few miles to Denham House, glad when its sheltering trees came into view and she saw the sun still warm on the mellowed stone of the east wing and the shadows dark beneath the portico. She was always aware of this special warmth when she returned to Denham. It was a welcoming and a respite from the stress of her busy life and, lately, it had afforded her father a great measure of peace in his second marriage. Her own mother, the lovely, feckless Catherine, had left Denham long ago to pursue her career as an interior decorator, and her fame as Kathy Denham had lasted till she died. Susan had been her only child and they had met at intervals in Edinburgh or London, but never, as far back as Susan could remember, here at Denham. The house had always been associated in her mind with her father, and now it was enriched by memories of him and Evelyn and the happiness of the past four years.

A small Scottish mansion of early Georgian times, it had been completed by Robert Adam in the latter part of the sixteenth century and had never been added to since then. The Georgian concept of natural beauty, blended with the skill of the architect, gave it a serenity which had been jealously preserved down through the years, and the deep, honey-coloured stone lent it the warmth which Susan had always recognised. Facing south across a little park, it looked straight to the high peak of the Cheviot, out across the lesser dales and the rolling foothills to the Border itself. Other families had possessed it, but for the past hundred years it had been Denham land, the house where first sons had been born to be christened Adam Denham as a matter of course.

Now all that was at an end. Sadly Susan garaged her car in the old stable block and walked towards the house, but before she reached it she became aware of visitors. A familiar car was parked on the cobbles of the tiny courtyard and Fergus Graeme was standing at the door.

“Locked!” he exclaimed. “That’s new for Denham, isn’t it?”

“I had to go to Otterburn,” she explained, “so I gave Nellie and Tom the day off. I locked up because I wasn’t sure how long I would be, and the new tweeds are in.”

“Surely you didn’t expect to be burgled?” her visitor laughed. “There are no strangers around—no tinkers, anyway!”

“I wouldn’t be worried about the tinkers,” Susan smiled in return. “They’ve been coming to Denham for too long to start pilfering now, but there are strangers around. I met one of them on the moor just now, riding your horse!”

“Oh, that!” Fergus said. “I don’t know whether he wants to buy it or not.”

“He does,” Susan informed him. “He told me so half an hour ago. Weren’t you afraid to trust him with Bucksfoot?”

“I knew he could ride,” Fergus returned a little awkwardly, “and I needed to sell the horse.”

“Not—trouble?” she asked anxiously.

He shook his head.

“No, just lack of time to exercise him properly since Colin decided that farming wasn’t in his line.”

It was what she had suspected, the explanation she had offered ‘the bold moss-trooper’ on the moor road.

“I wonder who he is?” she mused absently. “But I suppose you already know, since he came to buy your best horse.”

He looked round at her as she opened the heavy door to let him into the outer hall.

“Don’t you know?” he asked with a certain reticence. “His name’s Elliott—Maxwell Elliott. I’ve a notion he’s setting up a stable of some sort over at Fetterburn. He asked about another horse, suitable for a young girl.”

“Probably his wife,” Susan suggested. “Where is he going to live?”

“I didn’t ask him,” Fergus said. “I didn’t have to know till he actually bought Bucksfoot.”

“Yet you trusted him?”

He laughed heartily.

“He assured me he could ride and I took a chance. What’s wrong, Sue?” he grinned. “Didn’t you take to him on first sight?”

“He’s a New Zealander!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked fairly.

“Well, do we want people like that to settle in Scotland just because they’ve got a lot of money and can buy up our bloodstock at the drop of a hat?”

“Oh, look here, that’s not at all like you, Sue!” he protested. “What’s gone wrong?”

She fumbled in her handbag, producing a crumpled envelope from which she extracted a letter.

“Read that,” she commanded, tossing it to him across the hearth, “and then you’ll know as much about everything as I do.”

He unfolded the single sheet of writing-paper while she poured him a drink. Perhaps she should have gone straight to the Mains with her distressing news as soon as she had received it, she thought, but it had been too swift and unexpected a blow to share even with Fergus at first. Besides, she had an appointment in Otterburn— a business appointment—and she had prepared to meet it automatically. Denham’s came first.

Fergus read the letter through a second time before he put it back into its envelope and returned it to her. His fresh-complexioned face was grave now, his hazel eyes unsmiling.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Nothing, at present.” She handed him his drink. “I’ll have to wait till Evelyn gets here.”

“Yes,” he said vaguely, thinking about something else. “Sue, if it does come to selling Denham’s you wouldn’t just—take off into the blue, would you? I don’t think you could live happily anywhere else.”

“If the mill has to go I couldn’t live here.”

“Evelyn doesn’t say anything about selling the house,” he pointed out helpfully.

She turned from the windows where she had gone to look out across the terrace to the shadowed parkland.

“You know perfectly well we couldn’t keep the house after we’d sold the mill,” she said steadily enough. “It’s far too big for Evelyn and me, anyway. It’s only a reasonable proposition at present because I’ve been doing part of my work here—arranging the couture shows and that sort of thing. It’s been the ideal background,” she added wistfully, looking up at the richly-embellished ceiling with its delicately-coloured frieze. “The front hall was just right for showing our models, and I know the atmosphere of Denham helped to sell to the trade.” Fergus moved uncomfortably.

“It may not come to a take-over,” he suggested. “It’s all rather vague, isn’t it?”

“Evelyn has always been vague,” Susan returned without rancour. “She was never a good correspondent at the best of times.”

“When did all this happen?” he asked.

Susan brushed the fine hair back from her forehead.

“You read what she said. 'In the past few days’. That could mean, by Evelyn’s reckoning, within the past week or so. There would be feelers put out and that sort of thing, before any definite offer was made.”

“Perhaps she didn’t want to involve you if nothing came of it,” he suggested.

“I am involved now,” Susan said. “I wanted to ask your advice about what I should do,” she added lamely.

He put down his glass and came to stand beside her.

“The best piece of advice I could give you is to get married, Sue," he said in a tone which she was quick to recognise. “To me,” he added.

“You know that isn’t the solution.” She drew a deep breath. “I couldn’t marry you, Fergus, just to escape a decision.”

“Does it have to be your decision?” he queried. “If you were safely at the Mains, it might be easier for Evelyn to sell up here. She’s bound to feel responsible for you as things stand.”

Susan’s eyes widened.

“But she mustn’t!” she protested. “I’m twenty-two years of age. Old enough to look after myself.”

“Are you?” He put a sturdy arm about her shoulders. “Poor Sue! You’ve got a lot to learn!”

“Not about being responsible. Evelyn isn’t so very much older than I am,” Susan pointed out logically. “She could marry again.”

“Do you think she will?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time there was a hesitant note in her voice. “She was very much in love with my father, in spite of the difference in their ages. She’s only twenty-nine, you know. Far too young to feel responsible for a grown-up daughter!”

“You’ve never resented her?”

There was the barest pause before Susan answered.

“No, not really. When they first told me I was piqued, I suppose, because I imagined I was all-in-all to my father. We had been very close all our lives and when my mother died I thought that was it. There was nobody but the two of us to manage Denham’s. But then he met Evelyn in the London office and in some ways she was Denham’s, too. No, I didn’t resent her,” she ended truthfully. “I think, on the whole, I was glad that my father had a second chance of happiness.”

“And they were happy. Anyone could see that.” He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his hacking-jacket. “We’re all very fond of Evelyn. She’s strong-willed but charming, a natural Eve, I guess! It’s something everybody speaks about. She’s been popular from the very beginning.”

“Dad used to tease her and say she had ‘conquered the Borders’ for the first time in their history,” Susan smiled. “She liked that. Popularity, I mean. She’s a natural with people. Much better than I could ever be, even for Denham’s. Evelyn likes people on principle.”

“All the same, she has a good, shrewd eye in her head and an instinct for sincerity,” he pointed out. “Anything the least bit phoney wouldn’t pass muster with Evelyn.”

Susan folded her stepmother’s letter into her handbag. “I wonder if she’s got some other idea for Denham’s,” she said. “You know—that last bit about ‘a great surprise’ for us all. She wouldn’t take time to write about it, but if it was about the house I wonder why she didn’t say so.”

Fergus gave the remark his close attention.

“It’s not much use conjecturing about what she meant,” he decided, at last. “She was fairly explicit about the offer for the mill, I thought.”

“An offer, yes, but if it wasn’t the right offer she wouldn’t consider it.”

Susan was deeply hurt at the suggestion of a take-over bid, although she tried to hide her feelings, even from Fergus, who was her oldest friend. It would have to come, in the end, she supposed, one way or the other— an outright sale or the transfer of shares to a larger and, perhaps, a more progressive firm. Small businesses were being gobbled up by the giants all the time, family business that had no longer the power to fight.

Death could sweep away so much. She was still confused and bewildered by her father’s swift passing in what was really the prime of life, and she believed that this wouldn’t have happened to Denham’s if he had lived. Together they would have found some way to fight back, no doubt with her stepmother’s willing cooperation. Evelyn had been invaluable to them in London, with her sure flair for spotting the coming trend in haute couture, and it had been quite natural that she should have stayed there after Adam Denham’s death, but once or twice Susan had wondered why she had never found the time to come home, even for a weekend.

The memory of her own mother’s desertion of Denham House was still very clear in her mind. Kathy Denham had put her career before her family or any allegiance to the past and she had died so suddenly that they hadn’t even been at her bedside at the end.

“I try not to think of my mother deserting Denham’s,” she said aloud, “and I don’t think Evelyn ever would, but she may think she has to sell for the best of reasons.”

“I suppose it will all be done from London,” Fergus ventured.

“I don’t know.” She moved restlessly towards the door. “I wish I hadn’t got to wait,” she added characteristically. “Every minute is going to seem like eternity now, marking time until Evelyn gets here.”

“It’s only another forty-eight hours,” he reminded her as they emerged into the open air. “Will you go to Edinburgh to meet her?”

Susan nodded.

“Pity you couldn’t come with me,” she said vaguely.

“I wish I could, but you know what it’s like on a farm when you suddenly find yourself short-handed.”

She walked with him to his car.

“Which means that you might not be at the sales tomorrow?” she suggested.

“I’ll look in some time, but I can’t be sure when.” He hesitated before starting up the engine. “Do you still intend to part with Hope’s Star?”

She looked hastily away from his sympathetic gaze.

“What else can I do? I can’t keep two horses eating their heads off while I’m working,” she declared. “At one time it was simple when Evelyn could ride Hope for me, but now—when she seems determined to stay in London—there’s no point in it. Heaven knows, I don’t want to sell my favourite horse !”

Her voice had faltered and he said almost brusquely: “Don’t go alone, Sue. I’ll collect you in the morning.”

“You said you were busy,” she reminded him.

A smile lit his good-natured face.

“ ‘All work and no play makes Fergus a dull boy'!” he laughed. “See you around ten!”

She watched him drive away towards Fetterburn Mains, the large mixed farm which he had inherited from his father three years ago, and something about the assurance with which he handled the big, powerful car reminded her of her encounter on the moor road earlier in the afternoon. The same sort of assurance in the other man had irked her because he had been handling a horse and because he was a stranger. But why? Why? Surely the Border country was wide enough to accommodate a newcomer, whoever he was. But Fergus had said that he meant to set up a stable at Fetterburn somewhere, which meant that they would be neighbours.

She frowned as she wondered which house could be for sale within ten to twenty miles that she didn’t know about, and then she was concentrating on a name. Elliott. Maxwell Elliott? It was the same name Fergus had mentioned in connection with the sale of Bucksfoot, the name of the man she had met so unexpectedly on the moor road. It was a familiar name. There were dozens of Elliotts scattered about the Borders, but it was also the name of a rival mill not ten miles away from Yairborough, a small family business as hard hit as Denham’s by the escalation of mergers and take-over bids.

Could Maxwell Elliott’s appearance in the Borders have anything to do with Elliott’s mill? New blood pouring in from the other side of the world. Elliott’s had been as conservative in their approach to change as Denham’s, as eager to keep the family image intact, and if this was a new breed of Elliotts about to take over they were managing to preserve that image.

Another generation, she thought jealously. Even if the relationship was far removed they were still Elliotts, but what could they really achieve that her father had not attempted during the past few years? The family business seemed to be on its way out. Only a set of circumstances over which they had no control had brought Denham’s first to the verge of defeat. If her father hadn’t died or there had been another Adam Denham to follow in his footsteps—a brother older than she was, perhaps—they might have survived.

I can’t bear to part with Denham’s, she thought. I want time to stand still.

That wasn’t quite true. She had worked for progress with her father and with Evelyn; they had been willing to try anything new, and her own designing had been amazingly successful.

Restlessly she got back into the car and drove towards the mill. It was silent and empty, perched on the banks of the swift-flowing Yair with its main frontage facing the narrow cobbled thoroughfare which had once been the main street. Now the traffic went hurtling past to Selkirk and Jedburgh and Melrose over a fine new bridge in the centre of the little town, leaving Denham’s in a pleasant backwater.

Was that it, Susan wondered, as she stood in the deserted yam store which would be full of life and activity in the morning. Was progress passing them by?

To refute the suggestion she walked slowly between the ranks of the machines, the giant, eight-division frames which her father had installed just before he died. They stretched the full length of the shed, with the top lights gleaming down on their chromium-plated efficiency, and they gave her confidence. They were new and they knitted the fully-fashioned garments which were in universal demand, the pullovers and golfers and jersey-suits she designed with a view to keeping Denham’s in the forefront of the couture trade.

Slowly she passed on to the hand machines in the finishing section where the girls worked, joining the pieces, point by point, in absolute accuracy. It was a happy part of the factory, its eau-de-nil walls decorated from floor to ceiling with the photographs of favourite pop singers where once it had been film stars, and she stood before the gay display of successful youth for a moment wondering why she felt so despondent. Although they came from far and near, the workers had a loyalty to the Yairborough mill which she had never questioned. It was their life as well as hers, and she wanted to fight to keep it.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so easy for her as it was for Elliott’s, but she meant to try.

Old Mungo, the watchman, ambled through from his cubby-hole near the main door. He had worked for Denham’s, man and boy, for sixty years and he hoped to spend the remainder of his life in their service.

“I saw you come in, Miss Susan. Were ye needin’ anything?” he asked.

“No, nothing, Mungo,” she said, but was she really needing reassurance?

“I was brewin’ a wee cup o’ tea. Maybe ye would be drinkin’ a cup afore ye go?” he suggested.

“That’s kind of you, Mungo.” She turned towards the office. “I came for a pattern-string. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

When she returned Mungo’s famous ‘black brew’ was infused ready for her to drink, and she sat on his stool with the cup nursed between her hands as he settled himself on a nearby packing case.

Mungo cleared his throat.

“Would it be true," he asked, “what they’re saying about Denham’s being taken over, Miss Susan?”

“I don’t know, Mungo.” Her voice sounded flat. “It may have to come.”

“Aye,” he said, not looking at her. “There’s a great feeling for change these days, everywhere. Old folk like me will just have tae go, I suppose.”

He had asked a question and her first reaction was one of protest.

“Why should you? You’ve worked at Denham’s all your life.”

“Aye, that is so, but it wouldn’t be Denham’s then, would it? Somebody else would be in charge with a say in the matter, maybe. They might even think a watchman unnecessary, wi' all these newfangled burglar alarms they have nowadays on business premises. No, I would just hae to go, but what I would do wi’ no pension to come except the Old Age, I don’t know. I’ve aye worked—”

She felt guilty, knowing that, as a family concern, they didn’t offer pensions but guaranteed employment in some capacity until the end of a worker’s days. There was nothing she could say to Mungo, no reassuring word.

“There’s Elsie, too,” he went on, sipping his tea without his customary zest. “She was telling me this morning about her old mother, a cripple woman, who has to have this and that to make her life bearable. What would she do without her work in the canteen?”

Susan flushed.

“This is all hearsay, Mungo,” she suggested. “We don’t know we’re going to be taken over. Not yet,” she added beneath her breath.

They finished their tea, still talking about Denham’s and all that had been accomplished in her father’s time.

“You could do the same in the future,” Mungo said with pride. “You could keep Denham’s as it is.”

Susan felt a ridiculous desire to cry on the old man’s shoulder. His loyalty was almost more than she could bear, but when she drove home she was almost confident about the future.

CHAPTER TWO

PROMPTLY at ten o’clock the following morning Fergus Graeme drove up to the front of the house, reversed on the terrace and pulled alongside the horsebox where Susan had already installed the mare. Hope’s Star regarded him from the open top half of the rear door, tossing her head anxiously at his approach.

“All right, old lady!” he said too huskily for his own liking. “It won’t be long now. You’ve got to go, but we’ll see that you get a good home.”

Susan came out, pulling on her gloves.

“I don’t like this one little bit,” she said. “I hate parting with a horse.”

“I know.” He was quietly sympathetic. “I felt the same way about Bucksfoot.”

While he connected the tow-bar she got into the car. “So Maxwell Elliott did buy him?”

“Yes.”

He seemed disinclined to talk about their new neighbour, but Susan was naturally curious.

“Did you find out where he was staying?” she asked. “He’s taken over the Fetterburn mill.”

“I had a hunch!” she sat bolt upright in the seat beside him. “Why?”

"He's an Elliott. That would be a good enough reason,” Fergus suggested. “The old man was almost in his dotage before he agreed to retire.”

“Nathan Elliott must be his grandfather.”

“Or his great-uncle. He didn’t explain the relationship.”

“Is he staying at Fetterburn Carse?”

“For the present. The old man’s moving out, I gather, to Edinburgh.”

“So it’s a complete take-over! How long has he been there?”

“Several weeks.”

They had to drive through Fetterburn to reach Kelso because there was no other way out of the dale, and Susan couldn’t very well avert her gaze from the improvements which had taken place, even in so short a time. The tweed mill had been given a face-lift and the whole small Border town seemed rejuvenated because of it. Elliott’s was Fetterburn, just as Denham’s was the life’s blood of Yairborough, and Elliott’s had been given a vitalising transfusion at the right moment. It had come alive. New life was coursing through its veins. She had only to look at the town to see how true that was, because a community invariably reflected the prosperity of its principal industry.

“I’d give anything,” she said, “to be able to do this for Denham’s.”

“It would take a lot of money or a lot of enthusiasm,” Fergus returned awkwardly.

“I have the enthusiasm!” she declared. “I feel that all I need is time.”

He knew how true that was, but would not tell her so, and he was glad when they had left Fetterburn behind. He didn’t like to see that look on Susan’s face, the suggestion of courage overshadowed by defeat, and he would gladly have saved her from disappointment and, perhaps, heartbreak if he could. So many small concerns were folding up these days that it seemed almost inevitable that Denham’s should go.

They drove the remaining distance to Kelso in an odd sort of silence, the horse-box trundling behind them as an ever-present reminder that they were about to part with a favourite mount. Impulsively Fergus wanted to buy it from her, but he was faced with the same problem as she was of exercising two horses. In their present circumstances, it just couldn’t be done. Colin had been the one for riding the Marches with the younger element, but now that Colin had chosen to emigrate to Canada the position at the Mains had changed, too.

Even on this glorious spring day when, normally, he would have looked about him at the rolling hills and towering crags which were his natural heritage with a countryman’s pride and satisfaction, Fergus Graeme felt depressed. If only Susan had agreed to marry him she could have been spared this sort of thing, he reasoned with a man’s straightforward logic.

Long before they reached it they could see Kelso’s spires and the ruined tower of King David’s Abbey silhouetted against the vividly green backdrop of the distant Lammermuirs. They had come to Kelso so often for the spring and autumn pony sales and the ‘wee Highland’ in July; they had been frozen stiff watching Border ‘sevens’ at Poynder Park in winter before the grand new pavilion had been built; they had attended parties and balls together, and curled and skated at the ice rink, but now it seemed that something warm and intimate about the past was gradually breaking up.

They parked in the Square, running in over the cobbles to find space in front of the hotel. It was all so familiar, Susan thought, with its newly-planted flower-troughs and the window-boxes which would be gay with geraniums and lobelia in full summer, and the friendly blue-faced clock looking down from the dome of the Town Hall. The big gilt weathercock shone in the sun and it wasn’t difficult to imagine the tramp of ancient feet and the clangour on the cobbles as Mary, Queen of Scots rode through on her way to Craigmillar, or Charles Edward Stuart led his rough Highlanders over the Border.

Why was she dwelling so much on the past—the distant past? Susan got out, standing uncertainly to look about her. Kelso was at its smiling best on such a day, green and spacious and beautiful, but already it was crowded with strangers, people gathering from far and near for the horse and pony sales. Suddenly she felt incapable of going out to Springwood Park, and as if he could guess her every thought Fergus made his suggestion.

“Why not let me take Hope’s Star out for you, Sue? You could do your shopping till I get back, and then we might have a spot of lunch at the Cross Keys. What do you say?” he urged when she appeared to hesitate. “You won’t like it, seeing Hope’s Star being led into the ring.”

“I know.” She looked round at him, her eyes very bright. “What would I do without you, Fergus?”

“I hope you won’t,” he said. “I’d like to be able to help all my life, you know that.”

She moved towards the horse-box, not answering him.

“Good-bye, Hope’s Star!” she whispered, turning blindly away.

“One o’clock at the Cross Keys,” Fergus reminded her. “I’d better book a table. It looks as if there’s going to be a crowd.”

She walked off down Bridge Street, past the abbey and the groups of people standing in the sunshine. Most of them were strangers, but here and there she saw a ‘kent face’, people she had known all her life who waved or called a greeting to her across the busy street.

What shopping she had to do was easily disposed of and she found herself wandering across the bridge to look down into the still, clear water of the Tweed where the coarse-fishing enthusiasts were already installed along the banks with their rod-rests and their camp-stools to spend the day in happy abandonment to their favourite sport.

It was still early, but the town was crowded when she turned to the Square. There were horse-boxes everywhere, reminding her far too poignantly of her loss. Because it was a loss. Hope’s Star had always been special, and they had moved so completely as one.

Parking was becoming difficult and she watched idly as someone tried to manoeuvre a large car and trailer into an inadequate space. The horse-box was new, its varnish sparkling in the sun, but the girl who got out to guide the driver was a stranger. She was very tall and very blonde and her skin was tanned to a rich honey-colour which was greatly enhanced by the vivid blue of the tweeds she wore. Susan’s experienced eye told her that the suit was both good and in perfect taste. The colour, too, was exclusive and had obviously come from one of the big couture houses which she knew so well. It was the clear, strong blue of the river flowing beneath the bridge on such a day as this, with the reflection of the sky in it.

It was difficult for her to keep her eyes off the girl’s arresting figure as she waited her opportunity to cross the street. She stood out from the crowd, like a bright star in a blurred firmament, her ash-blonde hair shining like silver-gilt in the sun.

When her companion finally got out of the car Susan wished herself miles away. There could be no mistaking that tall, commanding figure whose eagle glance picked her out immediately, and for no very good reason she was recalling their first encounter when he had swooped down upon her from the Hunter’s Crags, like a hawk who sees his prey from a distance and loses no time in manoeuvre before the attack.

Deliberately she turned in the opposite direction, but not before she had seen the brief, sardonic smile which spread across his dark face as he anticipated her flight His companion turned to glance in Susan’s direction as she moved away.

It was true, then! Maxwell Elliott was firmly installed at Fetterburn, in full possession of the mill. And the tweeds his companion wore might well be a Fetterburn product.

If it was, they were being shown off to the greatest advantage and in the best possible way, personally and confidently in a town that knew about tweed. They were probably going to the sales or had already been there. She remembered Maxwell Elliott saying that he wanted another mount and couldn’t help wondering if the new, highly-varnished horse-box already had an occupant.

Hurrying across the Square again at one o’clock, she noticed that the car was still there and was hardly surprised to see Maxwell Elliott in the foyer of the hotel as she looked about for Fergus. He was alone now, but he made no effort to speak to her, and she was glad when Fergus came and they were escorted to their reserved table in the dining-room.

She could hardly bring herself to ask about Hope’s Star.

“She brought her price,” Fergus said after a lengthy pause.

He seemed to be holding back some further piece of information which he thought might upset her, but for a moment she didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m glad I didn’t go,” she said. “Who bought her, Fergus?”

“Someone you already know,” he said, taking up his menu-card. “Maxwell Elliott.”

Her eyes flew to his flushed face.

“You can’t mean that!” she protested. “Both our horses! Why should he buy Hope’s Star after Bucksfoot?”

“If you mean why did he buy Hope’s Star it was because he wanted another mount,” Fergus said evenly. “He approached me before the actual sale, as a matter ; of fact. He said the mare was just right for his purpose.”

“And the price wouldn’t matter,” Susan finished for him, trying to swallow the sudden lump in her throat. “Oh, why had this to happen? Why do I feel that I dislike him so much?”

Fergus considered the point,

“Possibly because you resent him,” he suggested. “Explain that one, please!”

“You resent what he may be able to do for Elliott’s.” Fergus beckoned to the waiter. “Sue, it’s no good! He’s come over here to take charge of the Fetterburn mill and, sooner or later, we’ll have to accept him as one of the community.”

“Later, as far as I’m concerned! I don’t have to like him,” Susan answered.

They ate their lunch without referring to Hope’s Star or Maxwell Elliott again, but when they passed through the foyer on their way out he was coming in with the tall, fair girl in the blue tweeds. She was clinging to his arm now, chattering to him excitedly, and Susan thought how much younger she looked at closer quarters. Her eyes, which were vividly blue, were shining with obvious delight and it wasn’t difficult to imagine the subject of their conversation. Hope’s Star had a new and enthusiastic owner.

Fergus hesitated, not quite sure whether they should exchange greetings on the strength of their recent transaction at Springwood or not, but Susan pulled him away. The foyer was crowded; it was easy enough to avoid Maxwell Elliott,

On the way back to Yairborough Fergus said:

“I think I ought to come to Edinburgh with you tomorrow.”

Susan hesitated.

“I’d like to say ‘come’, but I know you’re far too busy to take another day off,” she answered, at last. “Thanks for the offer, though. I’m really looking forward to Evelyn coming home,” she added. “I had no idea how much I had missed her these past few months.”

“She must have been very busy in London.”

“I think she wanted time to straighten things out,” Susan suggested thoughtfully. “It must have been a terrible blow to her when Father died, yet she kept on working for Denham’s. That was important to her, I think, and it probably helped. You know, ‘working your despair away’.”

“Talking about work,” he said, “are you going back to the mill?”

“Of course! I only allowed myself half a day.” She was relieved at the prospect of several hours’ engrossing employment to keep her thoughts at bay. “I’ll probably work late, to get as many orders as possible off before the end of the month. I’ll want to have time for Evelyn, too,” she added. “We’ll have so much to talk about.”

“You don’t think she’s coming home to stay, then?”

“I don’t know.” Susan pushed her hair back from her forehead in a characteristic gesture as she considered the point. “I wish she would, though it might be difficult to replace her in the London office. She has everything at her fingertips down there and, after all, she’s had years of experience of the export trade. Quite honestly, Evelyn has carried her fair share of Denham’s. My father always acknowledged that, and so do I.”

“I suppose he left her comfortably off,” Fergus reflected. “Apart from the house, I mean.”

“We share Denham’s,” Susan agreed, “but naturally Evelyn has the controlling share.”

He looked up sharply at that, but didn’t make any comment, and soon they were through Fetterburn and driving in between the ivy-covered gateposts of Denham House.

Fergus unhitched the horse-box while she went into the hall to collect her personal mail. She couldn’t really expect another communication from Evelyn, but the thought was in the back of her mind, all the same, as she sifted through the small pile of advertising pamphlets and samples which invariably came her way.

“There’s nothing,” she said automatically as the housekeeper came through from the kitchen regions to greet her. “Nothing I hadn’t expected.”

“I thought there might have been another letter from Mistress Denham,” Nellie Burgess observed, “but you’ll know her plane time and that will be enough. I expect. Everything’s ready for her,” she went on with an eagerness surprising in anyone so phlegmatic as Nellie. “I’ve given her the sun room, as you said, in case she might feel too upset coming back to so much emptiness in the house. It’s lost I feel myself, sometimes, without your father about the place, and she’s bound to feel it, poor soul! Only here once since he died, she was, and that was right at the beginning, when she came to pack her clothes. It makes a body think, I’m sure. Ay, it makes you think!”

Whatever Nellie had to think about, Susan was sure that Evelyn would be well looked after on her return to Denham House. Nellie had worshipped Evelyn ever since her marriage to Adam Denham, although it was Nellie who had helped to bring Susan up in the years when Adam had struggled on alone. It couldn’t have been easy for him, Susan thought, with a small, wilful daughter to care for and only a housekeeper to share his responsibility in that direction, at least.

After Fergus had gone she drove down to the mill, and the first batch of orders she lifted were from Elliott’s of Fetterburn.

She gazed at the familiar heading on the business writing-paper for several minutes before she dealt with them, thinking about the friendly link between the two firms which any hostility on her part might so easily break. Fetterburn tweed and Denham knitwear had gone hand-in-hand for several years now to produce matching dyes for their yarns in order that their finished products would complement each other, but she searched through her colour charts for the particular blue she had seen that afternoon without result. She had been almost prepared for failure, because colour was her speciality and she had an excellent eye for it. The muted blues and blue-greys and near turquoise of last season had a washed-out look in comparison with that clear, bright, singing blue Maxwell Elliott’s companion had carried so naturally, and she remembered it as clearly as she remembered the girl who had worn it.

When the factory closed at five o’clock she stayed behind for a couple of hours to catch up with her work, but it was difficult to concentrate on samples and new designs in her present restless state of mind. It was almost impossible to divorce her thoughts from her coming meeting with her stepmother, and even on her way to Edinburgh the following morning she found herself thinking about Evelyn to the exclusion of everything else.

Whatever Evelyn decided to do would surely settle their future. She had mentioned selling out ‘at the right moment', and that moment, for Evelyn, might be now.

Whatever her ‘great surprise’ turned out to be, the fate of Denham’s could scarcely be connected with it, unless she intended to marry again. In which case, Evelyn might want to sell immediately, severing her connection with her old life up here on the Border for a new beginning in the south.

The idea was curiously repugnant to Susan at first until she told herself that her stepmother had every right to a second chance of happiness if she could find it, and if she had found it sooner rather than later nobody could really condemn her.

Princes Street seemed busier than usual as she negotiated its magnificent length on her way to the airport. She could have taken the circular route round the city, but the heart of Edinburgh held a great fascination for her and she had given herself plenty of time. It was colder here, at the edge of the North Sea, than it had been when she left Yairborough, and she had no intention of spending longer than was necessary at Turnhouse.

When she got there the London plane was coming in and she hurried through the reception lounge to greet her stepmother.

Characteristically, Evelyn was not alone when she walked in. A tall, good-looking elderly man walked by her side carrying the numerous bits and pieces without which she found herself unable to travel more than a hundred yards, and they were laughing and talking together as if they were old friends.

Her stepmother saw her immediately, but Susan felt as if she had been frozen to the spot. Evelyn’s ‘great surprise’ was obvious, even though the tweed coat she wore swung, tent-like, from her slim shoulders. She was pregnant. Six months pregnant, by anybody’s guess!

Susan continued to gaze at her without believing until the elderly man had unburdened himself of all her belongings, raised his elegant bowler hat, and strode away.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Evelyn said. “My ‘great surprise’?”

Susan bent to kiss her on the cheek.

“Evelyn!” she exclaimed. “You’re a dreadful old fraud, keeping this to yourself for so long!”

“Not so old!” her stepmother countered, returning her kiss. “Just thirty next birthday, and that won’t seem so ancient to you either, in a year or two’s time! As for keeping my secret,” she added more seriously as Susan unburdened her of all the paraphernalia of her travels, “I wanted to tell you about it myself. I didn’t want to write. Pen-to-paper’s such a cold way of passing on important family news, I always think.”

“You ought to have come home,” Susan said, “or at least sent for me. Imagine working all this time!”

“Susan!” Evelyn laughed, “I’m not an invalid, and I flatly refuse to be treated as one. We’ll have to get that put straight before we go any further. I’ve loved working during these past few months—for Denham’s. It was something I felt I had to do, and—it helped.” Her clear grey-green eyes fringed with the long black lashes were suddenly raised to Susan’s. “You understand, don’t you? It helped the time to pass, the awful first months when it didn’t seem possible I had lost him for ever.” Susan took her arm.

“I know,” she said. “It was so cruelly sudden. But, Evelyn—this!” Her voice rose excitedly as they reached the car. “I couldn’t have imagined it in my wildest dreams. It’s wonderful, wonderful news!”

Evelyn smiled her slow, entrancing smile.

“I wanted you to say that, to feel about the baby as I do,” she confessed. “I couldn’t quite believe it at first. It seemed like some sort of miracle.”

“It is—just that,” Susan declared, settling her in the front passenger seat. “A miracle! It’s going to mean so much, knowing that I’m not the last of the Denhams, after all.”

Her stepmother didn’t answer her for a moment. She sat gazing down at her expensive-looking handbag, her eyes thoughtful, her generous mouth slightly compressed, as if she had something more to say which might not go down so well with Susan.

Although she was aware of the silence, Susan was determined not to ask too many questions until they had reached the privacy of their own home.

“Are you warm enough?” she asked. “There’s always a gale blowing out here, but you’ll be fine once you get to Denham. Nellie has everything prepared, and if there’s anything else you need we can pick it up on our way through Edinburgh.”

“Sue!” Evelyn smiled, “you’re determined to spoil me.

“Why not? You’re suddenly very, very important!”

“Wasn’t I—before?” Evelyn was teasing her now. “Surely the thought of the baby hasn’t made so much difference.”

Susan started the engine, looking round at her in frank amazement.

“Of course it has,” she declared. “It means that we can’t sell the mill now, whatever happens.”

Evelyn gazed out across the windy airport.

“I didn’t mean to tell you this quite so soon, Sue,” she said in a flat, almost emotionless voice, “but it’s already under discussion. Almost sold, one might say.”

“Then we can easily withdraw,” Susan decided. “Almost isn’t quite!”

“It’s far more complicated than that, I’m afraid.” Evelyn bit her lip. “This hasn’t just come up out of the blue, as you know. Denham’s has been dragging its feet a little ever since your father died. It isn’t any reflection on your work,” she hastened to add. “It’s just one of these things. Frankly, Sue, we’re not big enough.” Susan’s lips clamped into a hard line; almost as hard as her stepmother’s.

“We will be, one day,” she declared passionately as she steered the car out on to the main road. “Don’t you see, Evelyn, the baby makes all the difference? Your son will inherit Denham’s one day—another Adam! You must have given it some thought.”

“Of course I have,” Evelyn admitted in her husky voice, “but ‘my son’ could so easily turn out to be a daughter, Sue. Even if there was time to consider it, we have to think of that, too.”

Susan moved uneasily.

“Why do you say there’s so little time?” she demanded.

“Because, my dear, it’s unfortunately true.” Evelyn put a gentle, expensively-gloved hand on her arm. “Time doesn’t wait for babies to be born, even important babies like this one.”

“Three months!” Susan scoffed. “That isn’t so long.”

“It’s too long to wait, and certainly we would never get another offer like this one.”

“Evelyn,” Susan said desperately, “I don’t want to sell.”

“Neither do I,” her stepmother agreed. “It’s not the money I’m thinking about,” she added after a pause, “although that would be considerable. It’s the opportunity I’m doubtful about. You see, we either have to sell while Denham’s is in a healthy state or take far less for it in the near future.”

“There must be some other way,” Susan muttered doggedly. “Do you want to go through Edinburgh?”

“We needn’t,” Evelyn said, her eyes suddenly misty. “I’d like to get home as quickly as possible.”

“It would give you a rest after the flight. We could have a cup of tea somewhere.”

Evelyn’s ready smile drove the seriousness from her lovely face.

“Don’t pamper me,” she laughed, “or I won’t want to go away again.”

“You’re not going back to London,” Susan said definitely. “They can quite well do without you down there, under the circumstances.”

“Under the circumstances, I must go back,” Evelyn told her. “Nothing’s settled, Sue. It’s either sell outright or merge with another firm, now that we have the chance.”

“Merge?”

“Yes. Oh, this is too bad,” Evelyn sighed, “plunging you into business worries as soon as we meet.”

“You mustn’t worry,” Susan answered. “Leave that to me.

Evelyn gave a little, secret smile as she watched the road ahead.

“It might prove easy to do from this end,” she said enigmatically, “but we can’t make up our minds in a hurry, as you say.”

“But surely we are in a hurry?” Susan challenged. “You do expect the baby in about three months’ time, don’t you?”

“Less,” Evelyn informed her with a dreamy, maternal look. “In eleven weeks, if he decides to arrive on time.”

“There you are!” Susan exalted. “‘He’, you said. You really do want a son.”

“A boy would be very nice,” Evelyn agreed quietly, “but really, I won’t care too much if it turns out to be another daughter.”

“A girl!” Susan exclaimed. “It can’t be. It just can’t, and that’s final! We need another Adam Denham, Evelyn, more than anything else in the world.”

They drove in silence for over a mile.

“Don’t set your heart on it, Sue,” Evelyn said, as if they had just finished their discussion a moment ago. “About it being a boy,” she added. “Even if it is, twenty years is far too far to look ahead, and too long for us to wait.”

“You mean that you—wouldn’t want to wait?” Susan was incredulous. “You can’t mean that you wouldn’t do this for Denham’s.”

“I would give my life gladly for Denham’s,” Evelyn said, “but this isn’t quite the same. We haven’t got time on our side, Sue. Not that sort of time. The best we could do—the very best—would be to merge, if we got the chance.”

“And who might be going to give us this wonderful opportunity?” Susan demanded acidly. “One of the Big Five, would you say, or some French couturier with money to burn who just fancies a nice little mill into the bargain?”

“Neither.” Evelyn shook her head. “Can we leave it till we get home, Sue? I’ve got the beginnings of a migraine, I’m afraid.”

“What an idiot I am!” Susan was immediate in her concern. “I ought to have more sense than to argue like that. You must be dead beat!”

“I’ve never felt better in my life, apart from the head,” Evelyn declared. “Tell me about the mill.”

“It’s ticking over quite well, as you know.” Susan wanted so desperately to convince her stepmother that all was well with Denham’s, although Evelyn probably knew differently. “We’ve got plenty of export orders coming along and we’re working full shifts. The new frames Dad put in just before he died are paying off now, and we’ve a backlog of orders for the home market, too, mostly from the big Midland stores and the north of England.”

“You’ve forgotten Scotland, surely!” Evelyn reminded her.

“We take Scotland for granted. It’s an established trade north of the Border. We don’t have to press sales.”

“But we do have to keep on our toes.” Evelyn was the businesswoman now. “Nobody can afford to rest on their laurels these days, Sue, although there’s still ample opportunity for the firm with ideas and the desire to expand.”

“You think we’ve been too conservative?” Susan asked, bridling a little at the implied criticism of her father’s methods.

“Adam meant to expand.” Evelyn’s gaze was fixed on the road ahead. “He would have done it in his own time, but I can’t help wondering if that would have been soon enough. He was content up here, Sue, happy in his Border stronghold, but one has to work in London to understand what competition is all about. You have to be ruthless and you have to seize the chances as they come along. But we said we weren’t going to discuss business any more!” she ended on a jocular note.

“What else is there to discuss,” Susan wanted to know, “apart from business and the baby?”

“There’s you.” Evelyn was serious again. “You won’t want to work all your life, Sue, even at Denham’s.”

“At the moment,” Susan said definitely, “I’m more concerned about Denham’s than anything else.”

“What about Fergus Graeme?”

“Oh, Fergus!” Susan paused. “I suppose he’s willing to wait.”

“For how long?” Evelyn asked. “Certainly not for twenty years,” she added when there was no immediate answer from her stepdaughter.

“You know I wouldn’t keep him dangling as long as that,” Susan declared. “Besides, I haven’t asked him to wait.”

“Has he asked you to marry him?”

Susan flushed.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he has.”

“And you turned him down ?”

“Sort of.”

“Was that wise, if you care for him?”

“I like him,” Susan amended. “That’s different, isn’t it?”

“Much different,” her stepmother agreed immediately.

“How can you be sure when you are in love?” Susan demanded.

“You’ll know,” Evelyn said, “when the time comes.”

“That’s no explanation! ”

“It’s the best answer I can give you.”

“You were—very much in love with Dad.”

“Yes.” Evelyn’s lips curved in a wistful smile. “Everybody could see it, I expect, but who wants to hide love? I think I’ll change my mind about that cup of tea,” she added cheerfully. “Could we stop somewhere on the way?”

“How would Peebles do?” Susan suggested. “It’s just as easy to go back that way.”

Wether Law was in the distance and they could see the summit of Dunslair Heights, with Whitehope and Windlestraw in the background, all the green Laws shouldering each other to the south and east between the deeply-hidden dales. When Neidpath Castle came into view Evelyn heaved a contented sigh.

“I’m almost home,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve longed for it!”

“Yet a few miles back you were prattling about your return to London!”

“I may have to go back,” Evelyn said, “but not for too long, I hope. Miss Bates is learning fast, and I could almost leave her in charge down there now.”

It seemed to Susan that Evelyn always pulled up just short of a final statement, as if she couldn’t be sure of the future or of her decision about it, but they were already on the outskirts of Peebles and it was no time for further argument.

When they reached the hydro, they were just in time for tea. The big hotel was already full, but Evelyn was known to the head waiter and they were soon accommodated at a table near the terrace windows. Evelyn could always accomplish that sort of thing with the minimum of effort, and Susan tried to study her impartially as they sat down.

Her stepmother was small and chic, with a delicately-proportioned face and large, grey-green eyes which belied the practical side of her personality, giving her the startled expression of a faun. People had called her appealing and sweet and even beautiful, but she was none of these things alone. She had a shrewd, observant mind, allied to a tough constitution, and she had been trained to assess people in the business world in the hard school of experience. She was also aware of the folly of speaking her mind without restraint or reaching a decision too quickly, but, above all, she had tact.

Charm, Susan called it, as indeed it was, that elusive ‘something’ which lifts a woman above the ordinary and never deserts her during the whole of her lifetime.

Today Evelyn wore red, a deep, subtle cranberry colour which suited her to perfection. The waiter had relieved her of the bulky checked travelling coat and she seemed smaller than ever as she sank into the depths of her comfortable chair. Pregnancy suited her. It gave her a glow which radiated from her unusual eyes to transform her whole face, and Susan envied her the composure of her clasped hands and her whole, relaxed manner as she waited for her tea.

“I’ve so much I want to ask you,” she confessed, “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Let me tell you about London,” Evelyn offered. “You should come up there more often, Sue. You’re young, and you ought to go to parties and trip around the shops.”

“And struggle for buses, or get squeezed to death on the Underground, or rushed off my feet in an effort to get from one place to the next on time? No, thank you!” Susan decided. “London’s not for me. I like it up here, in the quiet of my hills. They’re not so quiet, either,” she went on, “when you come to think about it. There’s always plenty to do, quite apart from work.”

“Horses, and that sort of thing?”

“Not just horses,” Susan laughed. “I’ve sold Hope’s Star, by the way.” She did her best to keep her voice steady. “She went at the Kelso sales. It was foolish trying to keep two horses,” she added flatly.

“Do you know who bought her?” Evelyn asked, her voice full of ready sympathy.

“Yes,” Susan’s tone was abrupt. “He seems to be buying up everything around here, but we don’t have to know him,” she warned. “He bought Bucksfoot from Fergus Graeme, and now he has Hope’s Star,” she added disconsolately. “It must give you a tremendous feeling of power to have so much money, Evelyn.”

“Not necessarily, but it does help. One can have the things one wants in a strictly material sense, of course, but not everything," Evelyn pointed out. “Why did Fergus decide to part with Bucksfoot?”

“For the same reason I had to sell Hope’s Star. Colin has gone to Canada and Fergus is on his own at the Mains.” Susan looked down at her plate. “I’m not complaining,” she added hastily. “We have to begin with economies if we’re going to save Denham’s.”

“What a place this is!” Evelyn remarked without answering that final observation. “Always crowded and always the same! I used to come here with your father when we wanted a short run out in the evening or he decided to play golf.” She drew in a deep breath. “He was very fond of Peebles.”

Susan turned in her chair.

“Did he know?” she asked.

Evelyn poured out their tea.

“About the baby? I think he did, just before he died,” she said. “I wasn’t sure then—not absolutely sure.”

“And he still left his will the way he did?”

“Yes.” Evelyn looked up from the tea cups. “What else could he have done, Sue? He had faith in my judgment, you see.”

The quiet statement had been chosen to end all argument on the subject, Susan realized, at least for the present. Evelyn had been left the controlling interest in Denham’s, which was reasonable enough, and she meant to keep it.

“Tell me about our new neighbour,” she said. “The new owner of Bucksfoot.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” Susan began, realizing even as she made the statement that it wasn’t strictly true, but how was she to tell Evelyn that Elliott’s was likely to survive while they went under? “He’s something of an enigma, I should say, coming all the way from New Zealand to start again here, in Scotland.”

Evelyn glanced up with an odd expression in her eyes.

“When did you first meet him?" she enquired.

“Two days ago, riding over the moor. He was trying out Bucksfoot and he came down from Hunter’s Crags as if he hadn’t a moment to spare. He crossed the road right in front of me and I had to pull up or drive straight into him. Of course/’ Susan added, “he thought it was my place to give way. He had that sort of look about him.”

“You don’t really like him, do you?” Evelyn mused.

“Arrogant men tend to repel me!”

Evelyn smiled.

“But he could ride,” she suggested.

“Yes—I suppose so. Bucksfoot isn’t an easy horse to control, even when you know all his vicious little tricks. Oh—!”

Susan was looking straight across the room and her gasp of surprise was not entirely lost on her stepmother as Evelyn’s gaze followed hers to the tall figure standing in the doorway. He was the sort of man who would attract attention anywhere, and the word Susan had just used lingered in Evelyn’s mind. Arrogant-looking men had always intrigued her, and when he came straight across to their table she smiled on him automatically. Susan was forced to introduce them.

“I’ve just been telling my stepmother that you bought Bucksfoot the other day.” She couldn’t bring herself to mention Hope’s Star. “Evelyn, this is Maxwell Elliott. He’s come to live at Fetterburn Carse.”

Her stepmother gave Maxwell Elliott a steady, probing look as she held out her hand to him.

“Welcome to the Borders,” she said gaily. “I hope you will be very happy at the Carse, Mr. Elliott. It's a lovely old house. Almost as nice as Denham,” she added with a twinkle. “It wouldn’t be fair of me to confess that I liked it equally well, would it?” she challenged.

“Not if your loyalty is in the true Denham tradition,”

he agreed, returning the warmth of her handclasp. “I’ve come up against Border loyalty on more than one occasion recently,” he added deliberately as he glanced in Susan’s direction, “but I may learn to live with it in time.”

“Which means that you intend to stay in Scotland?” Evelyn asked.

“I’ve come to work at Fetterburn,” he said briefly. “I’ve taken over the family business.”

“Won’t you sit down?” Evelyn asked, obviously finding him agreeable. “There isn’t another vacant table, and we’ve just finished. You’d better hold on to this one.”

“Thank you.”

He lowered himself into the vacant chair beside her, long legs stretched out comfortably before him, capable hands clasped loosely between his knees. A man completely without inhibitions. An arrogant man, Susan thought once more.

“How long have you been in Scotland?” Evelyn asked conversationally. “Susan thought you had just arrived.”

“I’ve been to the Carse several times in the past three years,” he explained as the waiter brought an extra cup and saucer and some fresh tea. “But never to stay for any length of time. I was interested in the mill, though, and my great-uncle liked the idea of an Elliott taking over when he was ready to go.”

Which suggested that he hadn’t bought himself into Elliott’s, after all, but had inherited it because Nathan Elliott had remained a bachelor and had no son of his own. Susan bit her lip. Their situations were almost the same, only Elliott’s was destined to survive as a family business while Denham’s would be lost if Evelyn meant to have her way and sell out or merge immediately.

“We never really knew your uncle,” her stepmother was saying as if she wanted to put their relationship on a different footing now. “His health wasn’t too good, I understand.”

“He was always something of a recluse,” Maxwell Elliott admitted. “Elderly bachelors have a reputation for that sort of thing, unfortunately, and the Carse has been neglected, I’m afraid. We hope to remedy that in time, though. My brother is joining me from New Zealand for an extended holiday, and I hope you will meet him.”

He was speaking almost exclusively to Evelyn, aware of her friendliness and the subtle charm which nobody could resist for very long, but Susan felt the strength of his own personality reaching out to her, criticising her, perhaps, for her continuing silence and the very obvious way in which she had made him seem the intruder. Pointedly she glanced at her wrist-watch.

“We really ought to go,” she reminded her stepmother. “Nellie knows how long it takes to get from the airport and she’ll begin to fuss if we’re too late.”

Evelyn looked round for her handbag and gloves.

“My stepdaughter has become a tyrant, Mr. Elliott,” she smiled. “I’m to have no will of my own. Please don’t get up,” she added. “You must finish your tea.”

The waiter brought her coat while Maxwell Elliott retrieved her gloves from underneath her chair.

“I really do need a nursemaid!” Evelyn smiled, holding out her hand again. “You’ll come to Denham House when you are ready, I hope?”

Susan, marching on ahead, didn’t hear his reply, but when she looked round in the car-park he was still with them. He had evidently paid for their tea, too, which annoyed her even more than Evelyn’s friendly approach.

Silently she installed herself in the car, waiting for her stepmother to finish her protracted leavetaking of this man who had the disturbing power of making her appear always in the wrong. Evelyn had done her best to cover up for her on this occasion, but now she was overdoing it, wanting to make friends with Maxwell Elliott for her own sake.

They stood together near his parked car, a big Mercedes as new as his immaculate new tweeds, and Evelyn was probably admiring it out of the comer of her eye, thinking how elegant it looked. Oh, disloyal Evelyn!

Suddenly her stepmother turned and went back towards the hotel.

“She’s forgotten something,” Maxwell Elliott said at Susan’s elbow. “Apparently I couldn’t help.”

Susan looked up at him. The sunlight was full on her face, giving him the advantage.

“Evelyn’s like that,” she said. “Incurably impulsive.”

“I take the point,” he said without smiling, “if you mean that she makes swift friendships. It must be difficult for you to understand, I guess.”

She felt rebuffed, although she would not let him see how easily he had managed to disconcert her.

“I’m not without friends,” she informed him stiffly. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

The sun glinted in her eyes, highlighting the amber flecks in them until they appeared like angry sparks, and it caught the red in her hair, the fiery colour which was neither gold nor bronze but a subtle mixture of the two, suggesting spirit and, possibly, wilfulness to the man who stood watching her.

“You’re far too intense, Susan,” he said with the deliberation she had come to expect in him. “I know how you feel about Hope’s Star, but the mare isn’t lost to you for ever. Far from it. You can come and see tier at the Carse any time you wish.”

She drew in a sharp breath of protest.

“How could I?” she exclaimed, looking beyond him for an instant to the shining new car he had just left. “But you would never understand,” she rushed on to stem the emotion in her voice at the thought of her loss. “Hope’s Star means nothing more to you than another possession—something you could buy!”

Infuriatingly, he seemed more amused than angry.

“Think about it,” he advised. “We’re not going to remain strangers for ever. Not in the circumstances.”

“I won’t come,” she told him. “I’d feel—indebted to you and I couldn’t bear that. I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. I sold Hope’s Star of my own free will and I can stand by a decision once it’s made.”

“That I can admire.” He smiled into her hostile eyes. “What made you sell the mare?”

“I couldn’t afford to keep her,” Susan answered bluntly.

“I see.” He seemed to be making some sort of calculation in that astute brain of his. “Would it help you to know that Hope’s Star is being properly cared for?”

She shot a quick glance in his direction.

“I’d expect it, if you were fond of horses,” she said. “Which I am,” he volunteered. “Does that put your mind at rest?”

“In a way.” She refused to look at him again. “Thanks for the tea. You mustn’t have finished yours. Here comes Evelyn,” she added with some relief.

“Your stepmother is one of the most interesting women I’ve ever met,” he observed while Evelyn was still beyond hearing. “She’s younger than I expected, too.”

“Expected?” Susan repeated. “But you’ve only just met—”

“She’ll tell you about it,” he said with a smile in his eyes as Evelyn joined them.

“Susan,” Evelyn said as they drove away, “I can’t for the life of me understand why you don’t like him.”

“It’s probably instinctive!”

Evelyn glanced quickly in her direction.

What can you possibly mean ?” she asked hesitatingly. “Disliking a person at first sight.”

You were antagonistic because he had bought Fergus s horse, and possibly more so when he bought Hope’s Star,” Evelyn rejoined.

“Who would blame me? He’s so casual about everything—buying our bloodstock and taking over mills! But you got on very well with him, I must say!”

“Susan, don’t let’s be cross. I’ve something to tell you. Can we pull up somewhere?” Evelyn asked.

“Round the next bend, if we must, but I can take another ‘surprise' without landing you in the ditch,” Susan answered.

“This will be a shock to you,” her stepmother told her. “I hadn’t meant to tell you till we got home, but somehow I don’t think it will keep now.”

“Now that you’ve met Maxwell Elliott, do you mean?” Susan was conscious of a cold fear settling round her heart. “What has he to do with it?”

“He made the offer for Denham’s, on behalf of his brother, I think.”

Susan was speechless. She had drawn the car into a convenient layby, but it seemed that a long, dark stretch of road still lay before her.

“I don’t believe it,” she managed at last. “I simply don’t believe it!”

“It’s true.” Evelyn looked distressed. “It was done through our London solicitors and Mr. Frear advised me to consider the offer, but I couldn’t do anything till I had seen you. I didn’t realize that Maxwell Elliott was up here, Susan, or I would have let you know sooner.”

“What difference would it have made?” Susan felt completely stunned. “I still can’t believe it,” she repeated. “It’s much too fantastic.”

“Not really, when you come to think about it,” Evelyn said with more composure. “It’s a sort of mutual merger —the Fetterburn mill and a neighbouring knitwear factory, meant to complement one another. It’s no more than we’ve been doing for years. We’ve been co-operating with Elliott’s for a very long time, matching colours and fabrics to our designs. It won’t be any different now.”

“Except that it will be Elliott’s and not Denham’s.

Evelyn, you’ve got to understand," Susan begged. “We can’t do this. We’d be submerging our identity; we’d be completely swallowed up by these people. We’d be Elliott’s!”

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Evelyn said gently. “It wouldn’t be like that at all. They want to preserve the Denham image, and we’d still be separate names.”

“And you can accept that? You can agree to Maxwell Elliott being the boss?” Susan asked coldly.

“Why not? We are happy enough co-operating in your father’s time.”

“This is different,” Susan insisted. “We’re talking about our birthright, Evelyn—yours and mine and the baby’s. Can’t you see? Don’t you think it’s worth fighting for?”

“There’s no suggestion of a feud,” Evelyn said calmly. “Just the necessity to face a few obvious facts. In a year —perhaps two—we’re not going to be able to meet mounting competition on our own, and this would appear to be our chance. A neighbouring mill willing to finance us on the old footing of close co-operation. What more could we possibly want?”

Susan could think of so much more, but it wasn’t the kind of argument that Evelyn wanted to hear. When she had left London she had almost made up her mind about Denham’s, and now it was obvious that her meeting with Maxwell Elliott had convinced her, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she would be wise to sell out now. She saw it as a glorious opportunity and nothing would deter her. Sentiment had no place in business, Evelyn believed, but she had also liked Maxwell Elliott as a man. From the very first moment of their meeting she had approved of him wholeheartedly, in spite of his arrogant front. Oh, false Evelyn!

“We’ll talk it all over in the morning,” Evelyn said. “You’ll see what I mean when you’ve had time to sleep on the idea, Sue. It has so many advantages for us all. We could stay at Denham House, for one thing.”

“I couldn’t,” Susan declared firmly.

“Why not?” Evelyn’s tone was sharper than she intended.

“I couldn’t work under Maxwell Elliott.”

“You wouldn’t be expected to. He’ll have more than enough on his plate at the Fetterburn mill.”

“But he would still be the boss, the overall manager. We can’t talk our way out of that one!”

“I’m so tired of talking,” Evelyn said with a little sigh. “Don’t let’s quarrel about it, Sue. As I see it, I would be providing for us all—you and me and the baby.”

“You can count me out,” Susan offered.

“No, I won’t do that,” Evelyn declared. “Sometimes you can be very stubborn, Sue. If you knew how much this really meant to me, I think you would try to see my point of view. I do care about Denham’s and I want it to survive, in case my child is a boy, if you like—another Adam Denham. Does it matter if we are part of a merger? None of us need lose our jobs.”

Susan made no reply. She felt defeated, beaten by a set of circumstances over which she had no control. Of course, they must do their best to preserve Denham’s, and if this was Evelyn’s way she must go along with it until everything was finally settled to her stepmother’s satisfaction. Because if Evelyn thought that she was agreeing solely for her benefit and against her own will she would shelve the whole idea and lose out on something she considered to be a profitable deal.

They reached Denham House as the sun was setting, and it had never seemed more beautiful. The gently-flowing Yair almost surrounded it, winding in a vast loop through the quiet parkland, and all the trees were in new bud. The hills in the west, from Dun Rig to White Coomb and Ettrick Penn, were stained with the glory of departing day, silhouetted boldly against the azure sky, with a fret of little clouds resting on their summits, and the golden reflection lay on the face of Denham and in the water at its feet.

Susan’s throat was suddenly tight with emotion.

“We can’t let this go,” she said involuntarily as she helped her stepmother from the car.

“We won’t have to if we accept the Elliotts’ terms,” Evelyn pointed out.

The door was flung open and Nellie stood on the threshold.

“In you go,” Susan urged. “I’ll bring your luggage.”

She lingered as long as she could over the simple task of putting the car away and collecting Evelyn’s belongings from the front doorstep. So many times she had come back to Denham like this—from school in the long vacations; from holidays abroad with her father; from nearby dances and point-to-points, and Denham had always been the same, waiting and welcoming. She couldn’t bear to think about leaving it all behind her. Not just yet.

Evelyn went from room to room, touching this and that, remembering, too. She seemed to have forgotten their conversation on the way from Edinburgh, or had managed to dismiss it from her mind for the time being while she relived the happier past, and Susan had no immediate desire to renew it.

Almost before they had finished the simple meal Nellie had prepared for them, the telephone began to ring and Evelyn was once more in universal demand. People had heard of her return and were eager to drop in to welcome her home. Denham House had come to life again.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR the best part of two weeks Evelyn held court in the sunny drawing-room or out on the terrace when the weather was warm enough. A seemingly endless procession of friends and acquaintances flocked over the stone bridge and up the winding drive to tell her how happy they were about the stupendous news. There really might be another Adam Denham, after all!

Evelyn took everything in her stride, happily contented to be home, it seemed, and not worrying too much about the future. But the future was first and foremost in Susan’s mind. She went to the mill each day, since there were no private showings to be arranged at the house, and while she was busily employed she was almost able to forget about the doom which hung darkly over them.

Everything seemed the same. No further communication was forthcoming from Elliott’s, apparently, and she wondered, half hopefully, if they had changed their minds.

The image of Maxwell Elliott as a ruthless business man began to fade. He hadn’t even considered it worth his while to accept Evelyn’s pressing invitation to come to Denham House, so perhaps he was having second thoughts about the take-over bid. The odd thing was that she didn’t see him around, even on her travels. She might have expected to see him riding across the moor or in Hawick again, with the girl in the blue tweeds.

And what of Hope’s Star? When she thought about the mare she worried about it not being exercised enough, although she was forced to acknowledge that it was now no affair of hers. Hope’s Star had gone to the Carse, possibly to be given to the girl who had been Maxwell Elliott’s companion and was probably his fiancée or even his wife.

They knew so little about him, really, and she shrank from asking Evelyn if there was any further news from London.

When the letter came from the firm of solicitors in Edinburgh it was addressed to her stepmother, and Susan stood by while Evelyn opened it. They were in her father’s study, which was still the business room, and her stepmother sighed as she tossed the typewritten communication across the desk.

“It had to come one of these days, I suppose,” she said. “It’s all there, Sue, if you care to look at it before you go down to the mill.”

Susan, who had never taken any part in the administration side of Denham’s, read the letter with a growing sense of confusion. She ran through it twice before she looked up.

“I suppose it’s clear enough,” she said, “and you do mean to sell out to Elliott’s.”

Evelyn flushed, but she could be determined as well as kind.

“It isn’t a ‘sell-out’, as you put it, Sue. We’ll have adequate shares in the new company with our holdings in Denham’s. Surely you understand that?” she said.

Susan nodded, quite unable to reply for a moment.

“What I can’t understand is the bit about the house,” she said, at last. “They can’t possibly want this, too.”

Evelyn got up to stand beside one of the long windows overlooking the river.

“The fact that you’ve been working and showing here had something to do with it,” she explained. “They felt that the business should be kept intact, every facet of it, and you must admit that we were doing rather well, showing to the trade out here. The atmosphere of a Scottish country house added something, Sue. Make no mistake about that. It was one idea that paid off in a big way. Your idea.”

“Don’t try to placate me,” Susan interrupted harshly. “This is our home. I’ve loved it all my life, but perhaps you can’t understand such a stupid sentiment—”

“Sue, I can, only too well.” Evelyn came to put a gentle hand on her arm. “But the truth is that we can’t afford to keep Denham. Not as a private house, anyway. Its upkeep is enormous, and it’s far too big for our needs, without a man about the place, I suppose I mean.” A swift stab of jealousy pierced through Susan. What did Evelyn mean? Was she already planning to marry again, even quite soon after the baby was born?

“Perhaps you don’t think you owe anything to Denham,” she challenged.

“Sue, you’re so wrong!” Small, intense, lovely, Evelyn stood with her hands clasped before her in an attitude of entreaty which she could not fail to recognise. “I love this house, but what can we do about it? The money we get for the mill will all be invested in the new venture. It will be a simple transfer of shares. We have very little hard cash. Isn’t it far better that Denham House should go with the mill than pass out of our orbit altogether?” Susan stared at her incredulously.

“You don’t mind about someone else being here—utter strangers?” she asked.

“Not if they can keep Denham as it should be kept,” said Adam’s wife, “and I have their promise that the baby can be born here.”

“When?” Susan demanded in utter surprise.

“I’ve seen Maxwell Elliott out and about. In fact,” Evelyn confessed, “I’ve been to the Carse.”

Oh, treacherous Evelyn! Susan felt her throat contract, as if all the breath had been squeezed out of her.

“I didn’t know,” she managed, at last. “You should have told me.”

Anger had died in her, giving way to despair. This was it. The end of argument and pleading had come, and Evelyn meant to agree to the take-over. The contract was almost sealed, signed and delivered.

“You know I can’t object,” she said. “Not when you want this thing so much. You seem to know these people now, better than I do.”

“I haven’t met the elder brother yet,” Evelyn confessed. “He’s coming over towards the end of the month and Max would like everything fixed up by then, if it’s at all possible.”

Max! Susan thought. It had gone as far as that.

“This older brother,” she asked, deliberately ignoring the reference to Maxwell Elliott. “He’s obviously putting up most of the money.”

“His fair share of it,” Evelyn agreed. “They’ve been in sheep for a long while in New Zealand, but he’s in the wool brokerage business now. Quite a man, from what I can gather. A real tycoon!”

She was happy with their bargain. Susan could see that, and now it only remained for them to sign away Denham House and the deal would be complete. She stumbled towards the door.

“He’s doing everything to the letter of the Law, isn’t he?” she observed. “Not coming near while the transfer goes through, but I bet he’ll be on the doorstep just as soon as we’ve signed on the dotted line. The take-over will be complete,” she added bitterly, “and Maxwell Elliott will be the man in possession.”

Before Evelyn could answer, she had gathered up her handbag and gloves and made for the door. She would be late getting to the mill and the thought irked her more than usual. Nellie was on the point of opening the front door.

“I won’t be back for lunch, Nell,” she told her as the door swung wide. “I haven’t time—”

The remainder of her sentence hung in mid-air because Maxwell Elliott was standing on the top step with a trug-load of flowers in his hands.

“I brought these across for your stepmother," he informed her. “I thought you would be at the mill.”

“You’ve caught me out in one of my weaker moments,” Susan said dryly. “I slept in.”

“It can happen to the best of us,” he reflected. “I won’t worry Mrs. Denham if she’s not out of bed yet,” he added. “It’s early to call, but I’m on my way to Edinburgh and I promised her some flowers last time she was at the Carse. The place is overgrown with them.”

Nellie had deserted her, Susan noticed. There was nothing to do but ask him in.

“Evelyn rises with the lark,” she assured him. “You’ll want to see her, I suppose. Please come in.”

She knew how frigid she sounded, but it appeared to be impossible to snub this man. He walked past her into the hall with the utmost assurance, looking about him unashamedly at the lovely interior of the house which he no doubt coveted now, more than ever. The front hall, with its apsidal ends and richly embellished ceiling, generally took the visitor to Denham’s breath away, but he looked beyond it through the half-open double doors to the inner hall.

“I believe you hold your shows in there,” he said. “Your stepmother told me it was unique for that purpose. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I took a brief look?”

Susan was forced to follow him, although she had already indicated how impatient she was to get away. The big, inner hall was her own particular delight, however. She had planned its colouring to complement the double sweep of stairs going up to the first floor and it had been much admired both by her customers and her friends. The walls were mushroom-coloured, the plaster-work picked out in shell pink and ivory and the closely-carpeted flights a deeper shade of cinnamon, while the woodwork remained starkly white. The wrought-iron banisters which carried the hand-rails were decorated in gold and bronze and the model girls came slowly down to parade across the hall before the buyers seated in the deep chairs removed from the drawing-room for the purpose.

It was a setting she loved, and many of her own designs had been thought up in keeping with it.

“This is certainly ideal,” Maxwell Elliott said without demur. “Fm quite sure you’ve got something here. It would be a pity to waste it,” he added as she turned abruptly away.

“If you’re suggesting that I might work for you, Mr. Elliott,” she said harshly, “you’re wasting your time. I shall leave Denham’s as soon as this merger goes through, if you mean it to go through.”

“That was the general idea,” he agreed, studying her closely. “You know, of course, that it’s all but settled? You have only to make up your mind about the house.”

She turned to face him, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him. “Evelyn has made your point for you. You’ll get Denham House, as well as the mill, in the end.”

“Not unless you agree.”

“What has that to do with it? It’s Evelyn’s home.”

“And yours.”

“She wants the baby to be born here. I couldn’t go against her wish in that respect—”

“We needn’t take over the house right away. Mergers take time to get into their stride, you know—even small ones.”

“But you will occupy the house, in the end,” she suggested.

He lit a cigarette, his thin hands shielding the flame so that it sprang to life reflected in his eyes.

“That’s what I want,” he said. “To keep things exactly as they are. Don’t tell me you’ve lost all interest in Denham’s so suddenly,’ he added, watching her closely. “I can’t see why you shouldn’t go on working here just as you’ve always done, and there’s no reason why we should remain at loggerheads over this. Certainly your stepmother doesn’t consider it too bitter a pill to swallow.”

“Evelyn has nothing to lose!”

Suddenly he moved, barring her exit to the outer hall.

“And you have?” he queried. “Perhaps you can tell me what it is, now that you’ve no doubt seen our final terms.”

She looked up at him, aware of his anger and the uncompromising line of his stem mouth as he waited for her reply.

“I’ve made up my mind to agree to your terms,” she told him without flinching, “but nothing you could ever say will make me feel happy about them.”

“I didn’t ask that.” His dark eyes held hers relentlessly. “I wondered what you had to lose, apart from your independence.”

“I would only forfeit my independence if I agreed to work for you, Mr. Elliott,” she told him stiffly, “and I don’t have to do that. If this deal goes through, I intend to find work elsewhere.”

“In opposition to Denham’s?”

“In opposition to Elliott’s, if you like!”

“You appear to have very little loyalty to Denham’s,” he told her ruthlessly. “Your designs have always been popular, I believe—best-sellers, in fact. Does that mean absolutely nothing to you?”

She hesitated, because he had struck at her most vulnerable spot.

“I think it does,” he said before she could answer him. “When this merger goes through we will need more new designs than ever. It’s going to be a challenge—a tremendous incentive for us all. Denham’s and Elliott’s will both have to pull their weight, and you’d be letting the side down to quit at the very beginning.”

So all he really wanted was for her to tide them over until he could replace her without it affecting the new company ‘in the beginning’! That was typical of the man, she supposed. Big Business at its most astute.

“We’ve had one spring showing,” she explained, “and my new designs for the autumn are almost complete. We work so far ahead in the couture world that I couldn’t possibly be inconveniencing you till next spring, at the very earliest. Long before then you would probably have replaced me, in any case. I can’t imagine us working amicably together for very long.”

“The first time we met,” he reminded her, “we spoke about Border feudin’ and fechtin’, and I guess this must be a sample of it, but it shouldn’t have to be war to the knife, Susan, unless you’re determined to fling down the gauntlet every time you see me. I’m not here uninvited,” he added a trifle grimly. “Your stepmother asked me to come.”

Evelyn appeared at the door of the study.

“Max, you angel!” she exclaimed, “I’ve never seen such lovely flowers. I’m absolutely enchanted!”

She meant what she said, Susan thought, as she made her escape. Evelyn was, indeed, enchanted!

The thought of Max Elliott’s visit to Denham pursued her for the remainder of the day, even when a batch of new yam colours came up from the dying shed for her approval. They were lovely shades, soft and muted to tone with the autumn tweeds, and her delight in them was unfeigned, but she couldn’t quite reject the thought that she might never use them. She had told Max Elliott in no uncertain terms that she could never work with him, but this was more than work. It was truly part of her. The noise of the heavy frames and the cheerful singing of the girls on the finishing machines had been woven into the fabric of her life for so long that it would be a kind of dying to go away. Yet how could she possibly stay?

At five o’clock she went home by way of Fetterburn Mains because she hadn’t seen Fergus since Evelyn’s return a fortnight ago and she had always sought the comfort of the Mains when she felt troubled. But Fergus had gone to Berwick for the day and his housekeeper didn’t know when he would return.

Disconsolately she drove back towards Denham House, but as she crossed the hump-backed bridge she saw her stepmother walking along the riverside. Evelyn had come out into the last of the afternoon sunshine for some exercise, but, by Susan’s reckoning, she had already walked too far.

Pulling up on the far side of the bridge, she went down the steep little path among the brambles to join her stepmother.

“Had a good day?” Evelyn asked.

Susan nodded.

“The new colours came in. They’re really beautiful. You’ll love the coral shade. It must have been dreamed up specially for you! And there’s a deep—almost midnight—blue, not dark but full of life,” she explained. “I can’t wait to think up a design for it. There’s a sort of challenge about it—”

She paused, because the word had conjured up too vivid a memory and the thought of Maxwell Elliott was with her again. Then, ringing out sharply on the hard surface of the road, they heard the sound of galloping hooves. They were almost under the canopy of the bridge, ready to ascend the path, when the horse and rider went over, and she saw it was Hope’s Star with the girl who had been with Max Elliott that day in Kelso in the saddle.

She held Evelyn back.

“I don’t want to meet her,” she declared. “Evelyn, I couldn’t!”

Evelyn put a hand on her arm in deepest sympathy.

“You needn’t have sold Hope’s Star, you know,” she said kindly. “Sometimes, Susan, you’re too impetuous.”

“I won’t have time for riding,” Susan said suddenly. “I mean to find a job.”

“What about the job you’re doing now?” Evelyn asked.

“That will go with Denham’s.” Susan envisaged her whole world in jeopardy because of this unfortunate take-over bid. “Someone else will do it just as well, I dare say. Perhaps even better. Designing for Denham’s was something different, though, something I always wanted to do, but it wouldn’t be the same for a stranger.”

“Leave it,” Evelyn advised. “Don’t plunge into anything in a hurry.”

“I am in a hurry,” she said. “I have to get away!” Evelyn allowed her to help her up the last steep incline on to the road, standing squarely in front of her before they got into the car.

“Even if I tell you I need you?” she asked. “I can’t do this by myself, Susan. Wherever you went, I would have to consult you. We have both got a share in Denham’s and, therefore, a responsibility.”

“It would only be drawing out the agony,” she said.

“You would be halving it for me.” Evelyn’s eyes remained steady on hers. “I wish you would stay till the baby is born.”

Susan looked back at Denham.

“You win,” she said. “I’ll stay till it’s all over.”

“I knew you would,” said Evelyn.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE take-over at Denham’s became the talk of the countryside. Coming so quickly on the heels of the changes at the Fetterburn mill, the two were inevitably linked in the minds of most people, and Susan found herself bombarded with eager questions. Did she know the new owners? Who were they? Where were they eventually going to stay? Had they actually come from New Zealand? And why?

“This has put the baby completely in the background!” Evelyn laughed when they discussed the new wave of curiosity which ebbed and flowed around Denham House. “I’m not sorry, as a matter of fact. ‘The future Adam Denham’ was beginning to wear a bit thin as the sole topic of conversation at parties! And talking about parties,” she added thoughtfully, “we’ll have to give one while I can still move around with any semblance of decency. It really will be expected of us.”

Susan, who had finished her breakfast and was ready to set out for the mill, looked round at her in surprise.

“I do believe you’ll be busy celebrating something or other on the very night of the Big Event!” she predicted. “What would this particular party be in aid of, may I ask?”

Evelyn’s green eyes lit up.

“The merger, of course! Everybody’s dying to meet the Elliotts, as you know.”

Susan could hardly believe what she had heard.

“You mean to bring them here? To invite people to meet them at Denham?”

“Why not?” Evelyn buttered herself another slice of toast. “It’s the sort of thing we should do. They’re strangers, even though they’re Elliotts of Fetterburn.”

“I can’t imagine Maxwell Elliott accepting ” Susan returned. “He’s too bent on snapping up property and making money. His wife might, though. She seems a bit lonely, riding around on her own all the time.”

“He hasn’t got a wife,” Evelyn said quietly. “Grisell is his niece.”

“Are we talking about the same person? They didn’t look like uncle and niece to me.”

Evelyn laughed.

“You’re so utterly prejudiced about Max,” she declared. “Grisell is a bit of a problem, I understand, and Max has made himself responsible for her until her father gets here.”

“No mother?”

“No. That may be part of the problem.”

“You find out things so easily, Evelyn !”

“I’m interested in people. I like to have smiling faces all around me!”

Evelyn was very gay these days, sure of her position now at Denham House, at least until her child was born, and Susan couldn’t grudge her this happiness.

Sometimes it seemed that Evelyn’s happiness had been short-lived all her life. Her mother had died when she was five years old and her father had been killed in a train accident two years later. Brought up by doting grandparents, she had known their loving care for a year or two, but at their deaths she became the responsibility of an uncle whose wife was a chronic invalid. And so Evelyn had become a maid-of-all-work in a household where happiness was hardly known. At sixteen she had decided on a secretarial career. Her aunt was in a private nursing-home by this time and her uncle, a dedicated business man, helped her to find her first job.

Once she was on her own Evelyn had put the past behind her and, two jobs later, she had found herself at Denham’s London office, where she had eventually married the boss.

“I must go,” Susan said hurriedly. “I can’t afford to be late.”

“I’m sure Max won’t be standing behind the door waiting for you,” Evelyn smiled.

“I punch the clock,” Susan returned. “I’m not any different from anyone else these days.”

She had always believed in getting to the mill on time. The office opened at eight-thirty and she was generally there with a few minutes to spare. It gave her time to glance at her mail before the others came in or to sort through a batch of patterns which might have been left over from the day before.

Engrossed in her work, she heard the main office door open and close again, but she supposed it to be one of the overseers from the factory floor who often looked in to see if she had arrived. With the pattern-string in her hand she rose to go in search of Aaron Spottiswode, who had been foreman at Denham’s for as long as she could remember.

The door between her own office and the larger, outer one where the typists worked was of reeded glass, and instantly she became aware of a man’s shadow thrown in bold relief against it. She stepped back, her heart beating faster, her lips suddenly dry as she waited for him to come in.

It was foolish, she thought, to be standing there staring at a shadow, but for a moment she felt powerless to take the initiative because she had a good idea who it might be.

Maxwell Elliott was standing in the outer office when she finally opened the door. His back was towards her, but he turned immediately.

“I had no idea you got up as early as this,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “But now I see that I should have expected conscientiousness, at least.”

“If you’ve come to catch the office staff getting off to a bad start I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” she told him coldly. “They begin work at half-past eight and it’s twenty-five past now. They’ll be coming in at any minute.”

He lifted a ruler from one of the typing desks.

“I came to have a word with you,” he said. “About Denham’s and the Carse.”

“I’ll try to help you about Denham’s,” she agreed.

He stood waiting for her to invite him into her office. At least, Susan thought, he had acknowledged the fact that this was her private domain.

“You’d better come in,” she said, opening the door wider. “It’s in a bit of a muddle, I’m afraid. We’re on the last lap of a new collection.”

He looked about him with interest, lifting a batch of patterns here and there to compare them with the matching prints on the table under the overhead window. Susan’s easel was there, too, and she saw him glance at the sketch she was busy with, although he didn’t ask her about it,

“I think we ought to dye our own wool,” he said, coming straight to the point of his visit. “You’ve been fanning out this job long enough, and I understand Lawson’s wouldn’t object. They’re not dependent on our custom, apparently, and would be more or less glad to be rid of it.”

She bit her lip.

“You’ve certainly been busy,” she observed.

“I took a course in management,” he told her briefly. “What do you think about the dyes?”

“It’s your business,” she shrugged.

“Not all of it, Susan.” He stood directly in front of her. “It looks as if we’ll have to work together now and then, for the good of the company, and it would be better if we worked amicably.” His mouth was suddenly hard. “I came here to ask your opinion because I have no intention of worrying Evelyn about those details just now. She ought to have time off to have her baby, and I mean to see that she gets it.”

Susan dismissed his anxiety about her stepmother with a touch of impatience.

“You needn’t worry about Evelyn,” she assured him. “She’s enjoying every minute of her pregnancy, quite apart from keeping her fingers on Denham’s pulse into the bargain.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “I want her to feel happy at Denham House.”

“But one day you’ll buy it over her head?” she suggested. “I know you’ve settled for an option on it at present, but you may want to live there one day.”

He shook his head.

“Not at the moment,” he assured her. “I’m more than content with the Carse.”

“I suppose your brother will live there with you?” she found herself asking.

The smile vanished from his eyes. They were no longer mocking.

“Yes,” he said abruptly. “That has been arranged.”

“What about—your niece?”

“Grisell?” He frowned. “I hope she’ll stay there, too. At the moment she is very restless. She finds the transition from Timaru hard to bear, and she doesn’t exactly take to discipline. Not my brand, anyway.”

She looked at him in the revealing northern light from the window above their heads. His jaw seemed inflexible and his mouth looked harder than ever, yet the girl in the blue tweeds had clung to his arm, laughing. He had also bought her the best hunter in the Borders. Or so Susan believed.

“Your niece could be quite happy here,” she said involuntarily. “It shouldn’t be hard for her to make friends.”

“Will you see to that?” he asked bluntly.

“I couldn’t!” She was instantly on her guard. “I— we might have nothing in common,” she defended her refusal.

“How can you be sure unless you come to the Carse and find out?” he demanded.

“I’ve got very little time.”

“You can’t work twenty-four hours a day,” he argued. “I’ve seen you riding across the moors on occasion.”

“You’re not giving me much choice!” she exclaimed. “It’s—almost an order, isn’t it?”

“Susan, I’ve no intention of giving you orders,” he said. “Your work is essential here at the mill and, for the present, you’re needed at Denham House. You know your way about better than I do. Your designs are invaluable to the company, but you’re probably quite aware of the fact,” he added dryly.

“I’m not the only designer in the business,” she pointed out.

“As far as the company is concerned you’re the one we need,” he said. “Your undivided loyalty has been to Denham’s for years. Why change things now when we hope to go forward instead of sliding back?”

The thinly-veiled criticism sent an angry surge of colour into her cheeks.

“I’ve a fair idea what you mean to do with Denham’s,” she accused him. “We’re in business in a big way now, and the operative word is ‘change’. It’s very much in the air, isn’t it? Change, and all the things that go with it!”

He looked at her closely.

“Can you name these things for me?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re legion!”

“Such as?” he persisted.

“Crazy gimmicks, for one thing, and cheap promotions. I know the way it is,” she declared. “Sweeping changes generally run to a pattern.”

“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.”

“She was probably very fond of New Zealand,” Susan offered.

“She loved it.” Again she detected the shadow of pain in his eyes. “But she’s young, as Max says. She wanted to spread her wings, too.”

“I think we all do,” Susan agreed. “Sometimes I think I should have got away from Denham’s before this, but —but I never did.”

“And you won’t desert us now, I hope?” He was looking straight at her. “We need young blood, Miss Denham. Surely Max has managed to convince you of that, at least?”

“I don’t think—your brother would try to convince anyone or suggest that they were indispensable to him.”

“I was thinking of the firm,” he said. “We’re all essential to future progress, one way or another.” He had one eye on Evelyn. “Your stepmother is a very vivacious little person,” he commented.

“Everyone likes Evelyn,” Susan agreed.

“This is a wonderful old house,” Maxwell Elliott said at her elbow. “It’s a pity their upkeep is so steep.”

He was so completely possessed, so sure of himself and the power of money that she wanted to snub him in some unforgettable way, to ‘cut him down to size’, as Fergus would have put it.

“Perhaps I’m glad you’re not going to live here,” she told him. “I don’t think you would ever understand about Denham.”

“I might surprise you,” he answered, lifting a glass from the tray proffered to him by Tom Spender in his frayed white jacket. “I might even surprise myself.”

“In what way?”

“The time might come when I might want to take a wife, as you say in these parts.”

“I can’t imagine!”

“No, I suppose not” He emptied his glass. “Who is the girl in the atrocious purple dress?”

Susan turned to see Lilias watching them from the far side of the room.

“Another of your employees—Lilias Rutherford. She models our cashmeres. It’s our one big extravagance.”

“I suppose I ought to meet her.”

“She’ll be delighted!”

Lilias was making her way towards them. When she was near enough she directed a straight look at the stranger in their midst, marking him down as her lawful prey.

“I’ve heard all about you,” she informed him in the languid voice she kept for attractive men. “You’re working miracles at Fetterburn, aren’t you?”

Maxwell Elliott laughed.

“Give me time! I’ve only just begun.”

“How long have you been in Scotland ?” she asked. “Several weeks. I’ve toured around a lot.”

“Buying livestock,” Susan put in because she couldn’t forget about Hope’s Star and never would.

“Are you going to farm?” Lilias asked, her eyes glinting up at him in the provocative fashion Susan remembered only too well. “Do tell me about it!”

“My brother’s the farmer, although he’s also a very good business man,” Max told her.

“He’s—older than you are?”

“Yes, he gives the orders!”

“I can’t believe that!” Lilias was flirting with him quite openly now. “You’re not the sort of person who needs to be directed. You’d always know what you wanted. Are you going to manage the mill?”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Susan murmured, “I’d like a word with Fergus.”

She didn’t want to know about Maxwell Elliott’s plans, she assured herself. When he came to take possession of Denham House she would be gone.

What about your promise to Evelyn? The words smote her as if they had been spoken aloud in the noisy room. Evelyn! Evelyn, she thought. She’s the centre of the universe just now!

Her stepmother was certainly the centre of a good deal of admiration at that moment, she was forced to acknowledge. Maternity became her, and she had a kind of radiance about her that put lesser women to scorn. She used her charm without seeming to be aware of it Men would cheerfully have died for Evelyn Denham and women admired her, while several of them were her very true friends.

Yet it was to her stepdaughter she had appealed for help. Oh, wily Evelyn!

Susan smiled into her questioning eyes in passing and knew that her flight from Denham was off. She would stay to the bitter end, for Evelyn’s sake.

The party was going with a swing. It was all that Evelyn had hoped for, and Susan noticed how often Richard Elliott was at her stepmother’s side. Max, on the other hand, seemed to be preoccupied with Lilias, and whatever they had found in common she had certainly succeeded in making him smile.

When she looked for Fergus he was nowhere to be seen, which was an unusual state of affairs. Fergus was generally her attentive shadow at a party, nearly always at her elbow if not exactly at her beck and call. But of course, she had plenty to do to entertain her stepmother’s guests.

It was with an odd sense of shock that she saw him, half an hour later, coming in at the open terrace windows with Maxwell Elliott’s niece. Fergus relieved her of the platter of vol-au-vents she was carrying.

“I’ve been showing Grisell around,” he explained. “She’s crazy about horseflesh and she feels you ought to get together.” He offered the platter to Grisell. “You said you were starving,” he reminded her with a laugh that was very gay for Fergus. “I’ll fetch you some more!”

“Yes, do help yourself,” Susan said a little formally. “The garden has got a bit out of hand at the moment,” she added conversationally, “but it can look lovely, especially in the spring.”

Grisell gave her a long, steady look. She was a very pretty girl, with ash-blonde hair and vividly-blue eyes which she must have inherited from her mother, but she had the Elliott nose and chin. Her mouth, too, was as firmly determined as Max’s, and she looked as if she might like her own way.

“I’ve got your horse,” she said, coming to the point she wanted to make without further ado. “Max says you’re a bit upset about it, and I don’t wonder. Hope’s Star is absolutely super! The thing is, though, that she hasn’t exactly taken to me, and I thought I knew all about horses. Back home in Timaru I was never out of the saddle, but this horse baffles me. Frankly, I think she won’t forget you. Maybe you’ve had her too long to be making changes in her ownership.”

“I had to sell,” Susan told her.

“You could borrow Hope’s Star now and then, when you wanted to,” Grisell suggested eagerly. “It might help to smooth the way for me if she saw you around occasionally.”

“I don’t think I shall have time to come to the Carse or even to go riding very often,” Susan returned.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Grisell appeared to be genuinely disappointed. “I—thought we might be friends.”

It was impossible not to be touched by such a straightforward appeal and Susan felt that she couldn’t meet it with a rebuff, although Grisell probably got her own way far too often. Max had hinted at something of the kind, in fact, but he had also said that his discipline was probably on the harsh side, which she could well understand. Grisell was young and lonely in a strange country, however.

“You’ll soon get to know people,” she said. “We’re a friendly lot up here on the Border and Edinburgh’s lots of fun. I’ll see what I can do about Hope’s Star, but I won’t ride her again. We might go out together, though.”

"Well—thank you!” Grisell smiled. “I loathe being alone, and that’s just what it’s been like, all these weeks with Max. Oh, he’s sold me culture all right, up and down the country, but he’s so dedicated to work I know it’s been a great strain.” She sighed. “I did hope for something bright and cheerful to do. I get so restless, you see, being too long in one place. Daddy calls it Teenageitis, but it’s more than that, I guess. I seem as if I’ve got off on the wrong foot, somehow.”

“What would you like to do?” Susan asked.

Grisell shrugged.

“You tell me,” she suggested. “Once I thought I wanted to be an actress—I still do, in a kind of a way— but my mother died just as I was going to drama school, so it fell through. Daddy needed me beside him, or so Max said. He makes so many decisions,” she added with a frown. “Decisions for all of us, although he pretends to defer to my father because he’s older. Daddy hasn’t been very well lately and Max has taken over, I suppose. We never see eye to eye,” she ended not too convincingly.

Susan felt uncomfortable. She could see Max's tall figure out of the corner of her eyes approaching with Lilias in tow.

“What has my scapegrace niece been telling you?” he asked. “I can’t believe it’s all flattering.”

“I was saying how we never agreed,” Grisell informed him. “It’s perfectly true, isn’t it?”

“Don’t confuse the issue, Grisell, unless you have to,” Max answered. “You’re not my complete responsibility now.”

“No, not when Daddy’s here. All the same, I expect you’ll still manage to put your oar in, somehow.” Suddenly she was laughing. “You wouldn’t think we got on quite well together, in the main,” she remarked. “It’s only when Max decides to play the autocratic guardian that we quarrel.” She slipped her bare arm through his. “That’s true, isn’t it, dear Uncle Max?”

It was obvious that she regarded the slight difference in their ages as of no importance. Ten years wasn’t enough to assure him of supreme authority, Grisell considered.

“True or not,” he said, “I don’t think we should inflict our domestic differences on the company at large.” He turned to Lilias. “You’ve met my niece, I suppose?”

“No,” Lilias said, “we haven’t met, but if I can help Miss Elliott in any way—”

“Oh, do call me Grisell! We don’t stand on ceremony down under, you know,” Grisell smiled, liking Lilias at first sight. “You’re the firm’s model, aren’t you?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve seen your pictures. At one time I even thought of doing that for a living, but Max put me off it. Always Max, you see!” She gave his arm a playful squeeze. “You’re a dreadful ogre and nobody will ever love you if you don’t alter your ways!”

“I’ll have to take my chance on that.” Max had met her mood with surprising insight, knowing that she didn’t mean half she said. “Have you seen your father?”

Grisell glanced across the room to where Richard Elliott was hovering near Evelyn’s chair.

“He’s still in orbit around our lovely hostess,” she said lightly, although her colour deepened as she looked. “She’s a real charmer, isn’t she? Everybody says how much they adore her and I’ll have to follow suit, I guess.”

The remark irked Susan, but Lilias laughed.

“It’s time we went home,” Max said.

It was barely midnight and Grisell put on a pouting face.

“You’re an absolute killjoy!” she declared. “Parties go on in the Borders till daybreak. Fergus has just told me so.”

“Not this sort of party.” Max took her by the elbow to propel her towards the door. “Mrs. Denham must be waiting for us to leave and your father has had a tiring day.”

“He’s been in Edinburgh at a wretched meeting,” Grisell frowned. “How could that be tiring?”

Max tightened his grip on her elbow.

“You’ve no idea,” he said.

His mouth was grim again, Susan noticed, his dark eyes hard as he watched the tall man by Evelyn’s side. Richard Elliott seemed to have wilted a little, although he was still smiling and talking to the group of people around his hostess. Evelyn never seemed to be without that little train of admirers and she looked up as Max approached.

‘You simply can’t be going,” she said. “It’s early yet, and we always have some soup to speed people on their way. Susan will be arranging it in a jiffy. Please stay, at least till midnight!”

Nobody ever refused Evelyn anything. She had that way with her, but as soon as the soup had been handed round, the Elliotts took their leave. They said their goodbyes to Evelyn and then to Susan. Max took her hand.

“Thank you for tonight,” he said. “Did you mean what you said to Grisell?”

Susan looked up at him, her clear eyes steady on his.

“If you mean about helping with Hope’s Star, I never go back on a promise,” she said.

“I’m sure that’s true.” He held her fingers for a moment longer. “Thanks,” he added, “for everything.”

He had no need to thank her, Susan thought, yet it left an odd sort of pleasure in her heart.

Richard Elliott’s grip was not quite so decisive as his brother’s.

“I’ve enjoyed every minute,” he declared in his bluff, good-natured way, “thanks to your stepmother! You have a fine place here, Miss Denham, something to be really proud about, and maybe that’s why I wanted to come all this way from New Zealand. Just to see the Borders and feel part of them for a while.”

“You don’t intend to stay, then?” Susan asked with a sinking feeling in her stomach. An absentee owner would be no use to the mill. “I thought everything was settled.”

He looked at her with a distant expression in his eyes.

“I won’t be going back to New Zealand, if that’s what you’re asking me,” he answered. “No, I guess I’ve burnt all my boats behind me in that respect.” There was something almost wistful in his tone, something she couldn’t understand in a man who was surely fairly certain of his destiny. “I’ve made a lot of money and I can afford a whim or two,” he added.

Susan drew her hand away.

“Is Denham one of your whims?” she asked.

He laughed as he put on his coat.

“Indeed not! I’m leaving Denham to Max,” he declared.

When all their guests had gone Evelyn heaved a little sigh.

“Tired?” Susan asked. “You really ought to be!”

“Tired but happy,” Evelyn amended. “It’s been a lovely, lovely party!”

“Eve,” Susan asked, “do you miss London?”

“Not one bit!” Evelyn turned to the windows, looking out across the moon-blanched terrace to the shadowy parkland beyond. “I’m quite content where I am.”

“I wish it could be for always,” Susan murmured.

“ ‘If wishes were horses—’!”

Susan moved out on to the terrace. She was restless and unhappy these days, waiting to leave her old home.

“All this,” she said with a tremor in her voice which she could not quite control. “It’s part of us, Evelyn— part of you and me, because you loved my father. But we’ve let it go now, and I suppose we’re guilty of some sort of treachery. Or does money mean everything, after all?”

Evelyn came to stand beside her.

“I’ve heard it called the necessary evil on more than one occasion,” she said, “but we can’t do very much without it, can we? At least we have a stake in Denham’s—a share or two. We ought to be content with that”

Susan turned back into the room, lifting the novel she had been reading earlier in the day.

“What are you reading?” her stepmother asked.

“Scott. I never tire of him.”

“You must know his novels backwards, Sue!”

“They are the Borders. He wrote with such clear insight.”

“And such romance!” Evelyn’s eyes sought the distant moonlit fells towards Cheviot. “It’s all so lovely,” she added softly. “So lovely and so heartbreaking.”

“I hate change,” Susan said, “and Maxwell Elliott has started to change things already. He’s sacked Mungo and Elsie Cockburn.”

Evelyn shook her head.

“Not really,” she said. “They’re going to work at the Carse. Mungo is to take charge of the gardens and Elsie will be employed in the house. It’s nearer for her than the mill, so she can get home for a midday meal with her mother.”

Susan’s heart seemed to miss a beat. Evelyn was heaping coals of fire on her head. How ungenerous she had been in her harsh criticism of Max before she had known the truth !

“What can he possibly think of me?” she said as she turned towards the stairs.

CHAPTER FIVE

SPRING passed quickly into summer and the Middle March was full of flowers. Liddesdale and Teviot and the swift-flowing Yarrow reflected the sun, day after day, with never a cloud to trouble the blue sky overhead. It was exceptional weather. The secret forests and the lonely hills of the March lands seemed full of peace, although there was little peace in Susan’s tempestuous heart. She felt as if she were waiting for some sort of axe to fall.

Yet nothing happened for two weeks. Busy at the mill with the autumn designs, she hadn’t found time to visit the Carse, as she had promised, and the Elliotts seemed determined to keep their distance. She had expected Max or Richard Elliott to come to Yairborough, but they seemed in no great hurry to take possession or to exert their authority in any other way.

Fergus, who was busy with his work at the Mains, was also involved in the plans for the Common Riding, where the local horsemen came into their own. The preparatory cantering was already in progress, and none of the original ‘callants’ could have been more keen than the young men competing for the honour of bearing the Hexham Pennant through the streets and byways on the great day. The ‘Comet’ had not yet been elected and the excitement was intense. Tearing across the countryside on their trusty steeds, they were much in evidence from Denham House, and when she worked at home Susan often paused to watch them. Once or twice she imagined that she saw Max Elliott in the procession, but she could not be sure.

Then, one day, coming home from the mill, she saw him riding against another horseman across the moor. The two came thundering down across the heather from the ancient peel tower which stood high on the cliff overlooking the Yair, and there could be no denying who was the better rider. Max crossed the road ahead of her much as he had done that first day of their meeting and Fergus remained several yards behind. Their breaths were coming hard and their horses' flanks were flecked with foam, but surely Max couldn’t hope to compete for the honour of being elected ‘Comet’ for the day?

Fergus looked disgruntled.

“That’s the second time he’s beaten me,” he admitted, leaning down from the saddle as she stopped the car. “I must be losing my skill.”

“You’re probably out of practice,” Susan consoled as Max rode up. “It takes time.”

Max smiled.

“Or experience,” he suggested. ‘You haven’t kept your promise to come to the Carse,” he added.

“No, I’m sorry. I really have been too busy.”

He looked down at her quizzically.

“Is that an excuse,” he asked, “or are you really in need of help?”

“Neither. It’s just that I don’t seem to be able to concentrate hard enough.”

“It could be the weather,” Fergus offered. “You ought to get out more, Sue, but at least you’ll be coming to the Riding. We want weather like this for it, so let’s hope it holds till June.”

Susan looked up at his companion.

“Are you riding?” she asked.

Max shook his head.

“Not this year. I may try it some other time, when I’ve been a resident for a bit longer. The Chase rather appeals to me,” he added with his sardonic smile in full display.

It would, Susan thought, because he was the personification of every dark Border reiver who had ever galloped across the Disputed Lands into the sorrow-laden vale of Yarrow! Only a moment ago he had rode ahead of Fergus over the heather as if they were both on some foray long ago and he the better man, and Fergus seemed dull and awkward in comparison. She felt angry at the younger man’s acquiescence and told him so.

“I thought you wanted to be ‘Comet' this year?” she challenged.

Fergus shrugged.

“Not particularly. I’ll go along with it, though, if they elect me.”

And Max Elliott could beat you to it, if he tried! Susan looked at Max and knew that he had guessed her thoughts.

“Do you mind if I bring Grisell across to the mill?” he asked.

“Why should I? You can bring any visitor you wish,” she told him stiffly.

“She wouldn’t be coming as a visitor.”

“Oh?”

He leaned down from the saddle, caressing his mount’s warm neck with a steady hand.

“I believe she could be interested in your work,” he said.

Susan drew back.

“What does she know about it?"

“Nothing, at present. I’m preparing one or two desirable branch lines in case she does decide to go off the tracks.”

“She ought to be doing something useful,” Susan agreed, “but it would be foolish to force her into a decision, especially about designing. She either has what it takes or she hasn’t. There’s no middle course, even for the boss’s niece.”

He laughed outright.

“I deserved that one, but I believe she has talent, all the same.”

“She told me she wanted to be an actress.”

“Ah, that!” he said, “But it was almost four years ago. I’m hoping she’s got it out of her system by now,”

“She spoke about it to me.”

His eyes sharpened.

“At Denham House?”

“Yes.”

He looked back towards the peel tower.

“We’ll see,” he said.

Two days later he brought Grisell to Yairborough. Susan was in the middle of a particularly difficult photographic session with Lilias and Nicholas Begbie. Nothing had gone right and the last person she wished to see was Max. He stood just inside the studio door, watching as Nicholas posed his model for the final take. It had been difficult before, but this time Lilias was at her best.

“Look this way,” Nicholas urged, and she smiled into Max’s eyes.

“Now this way!” Nicholas hopped across the floor to get another angle. “Perfect! Just perfect,” he enthused. “Now, up at the light. Good! Good! And down again.” His camera was clicking furiously. “Lilias, I love you! You couldn’t have done better!”

He was completely immersed in his art and quite oblivious of his audience, but Lilias was keenly aware of Max and posed successfully for his sake alone.

Susan turned angrily away. Lilias was a nuisance and Max couldn’t possibly be serious about her. But supposing he was?

Well, did it matter so much? She tried to imagine Lilias at Denham, but couldn’t. T might decide to take a wife, as you say in these parts’, Max had told her, meaning that he would one day marry and live at Denham House.

Oh, not Lilias, she thought. Surely not Lilias!

He followed her into the office while Grisell remained a fascinated spectator of the photographic session in the other room.

“Have you made up your mind about Grisell?” he asked.

She faced him across her desk.

“Are you asking me to train her?"

“Yes.”

“What does her father think?”

“He believes that anything Grisell does is perfect, so long as she does it within striking distance of the Carse.”

“I see.”

He was waiting for her decision. She had to make up her mind about Grisell, then and there, and he wanted her to agree to his absurd proposition. This was virtually a dictatorship!

“I can’t promise anything. How could I until I see how she shapes? At the present moment,” she was forced to confess, “my own ideas aren’t so very bright. I seem as if I can’t concentrate. Perhaps it would be better,” she added lamely, “if you did bring in someone else. Some other designer.”

He reached her in one swift stride, turning her to face the light with his hands on her shoulders.

“What is this?” he demanded with the first hint of an accent she had heard in his normally controlled voice. “Why are you trying to undermine Denham’s in this way? It’s your responsibility as well as mine. If you opt out of your job and we have to train someone at short notice we could lose some of our existing markets and, quite frankly, we can’t afford that. Competition is the big word in cashmere these days. You take it from me!”

She didn’t want to take anything from him and certainly not advice, but he had made a small breach in her defences when he had mentioned her responsibility to Denham’s.

“I’m not asking you to do anything difficult,” he declared, picking up a discarded sketch which she had tossed into the waste-paper basket. “Grisell has this sort of talent, I feel sure. Couldn’t you interest her in your job?’’

“Is that an order?”

He fixed her with a straight gaze.

“If you like. I want her to stay here—contentedly, if possible—and not go flying off at a tangent all over the countryside searching for something she’s not likely to find. Back home she led a remote sort of life in some ways, although she went to Wellington to be educated. She was content at Timaru until she began to spread her wings. I took over at that stage, unfortunately,” he added. “Her father was ill.”

“Perhaps she feels homesick,” Susan suggested. “She told me she often felt lonely here. I—meant to do something about it, but I haven’t had much free time. Do you think she would really like to go back to New Zealand?”

“She may go back, one of these days.”

“And you?” The question had slipped past her guard.

“No,” he said. “I won’t go back. I’ve made up my mind to stay in Scotland.”

“Emigration in reverse!”

“You can put it that way. I grew up on the ranch, but Richard insisted on giving me a ‘proper education’, as he called it. For better or worse, I went to a university and studied technology. Wool had always held a great fascination for me.” He picked up a skein of pure cashmere. “You can’t better this, for instance.”

“I thought you might be going to try!”

He looked at her without smiling.

“You don’t like me, do you?” he suggested. “Well, we’ll have to live with that, I guess, since we have to work together. So long as we don’t get in each other’s way, things should turn out well enough for Denham’s.”

Lilias and Grisell came in, laughing.

“We’ve been doing trick photography,” Grisell explained. “Nick is so clever!” She swung round to consider Susan. “Max wants me to work with you, I suppose? He’s been throwing out plenty of hints, but I don’t think I would be much good.”

“You won’t know till you try,” Susan heard herself saying as Lilias went to change.

Grisell didn’t show any excitement about the proposed job.

“Can we give Lilias a lift, Max?” she asked instead. “She’s going our way.”

Nicholas came in and Susan didn’t hear what Max said, but presently they all went out together and she supposed he had agreed to take Lilias with him.

When they had gone she worked with a new, dogged determination to get things done and, almost miraculously, the ideas began to flow. It was late when she finally returned to Denham House and Evelyn called out to her from the sitting-room.

“Max has been here. He says you’re working too hard.”

Susan opened the door a fraction wider.

“You’re making this up, Eve!” she said. “He wouldn’t be the least little bit interested. Not in me! If he was worried, it would be about my designs—about my not being able to cope before the collections.”

“But you can?” Evelyn looked anxious.

“Take a look and tell me, quite honestly, what you think.” Susan tossed her portfolio on to the settee beside her stepmother. “Don’t try to spare my feelings,” she added. “I can take it!”

“Sue, they’re wonderful!” Evelyn enthused after a moment. “They’re—different. This is inspiration, something far better than you’ve ever done. What triggered it off?”

Susan looked out towards the hills.

“I don’t know. How can one ever say about a thing like that? I was working and, suddenly it came. Everything began to fit into a pattern after days and days of gloom!”

“I knew your designs were missing out somewhere,” Evelyn confessed. “What went wrong?”

“I was tired, I suppose. Jaded, perhaps.”

“Have you thought about help? Grisell, for instance,” Evelyn asked.

Susan swung round to face her.

“You’ve been talking to Max!”

“He wants Grisell to do something useful with her life, for her father’s sake,” Evelyn answered quietly.

“I don’t know. I suppose I did promise. Oh, I wish it wasn’t all so complicated,” Susan sighed. “Why has it to be like this?”

Evelyn didn’t attempt to help her. She stood looking anxious, even perplexed, as if she couldn’t understand anyone wanting to refuse Maxwell Elliott anything. Oh, complex, baffling Evelyn!

“I don’t see why I should make myself responsible for Grisell,” Susan began rebelliously. “I don’t even know her very well.”

“Max wouldn’t ask too much of you,” Evelyn said. “He knows Grisell is his responsibility.”

“What about her father?”

Evelyn lowered her head.

“He—may have to go into hospital in the very near future.”

“Oh—I’m sorry!” Susan paused beside the door. “Is it serious?”

“I don’t know, but Max wants Grisell to be here when the time comes.”

“Does she know?”

“Oh, good gracious, no! And please don’t tell her,” Evelyn begged. “Max would never forgive me if he thought I’d broken his confidence.”

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t know,” Susan objected. “She seems to be over-protected, if you ask me.”

“It’s Richard’s wish,” Evelyn told her. “Even Max couldn’t go against that.”

Which was true, Susan thought, even if she didn’t agree with the decision they had made.

Two days later Grisell started at the mill. She was an apt enough pupil, but the long hours they worked seemed trying to her and quite often she sat staring gloomily out of the window instead of matching the colours Susan had given her or copying a design. Yet she did appear to have some sort of creative flair for the work and turned in one or two good ideas.

The weather was against her, of course. Sitting at an office desk was no fun on a bright June day and Susan wondered how long Grisell would stand it.

On the day before the Common Riding they finished the last sketches for the autumn collections and she tidied them into her desk with a sense of relief. Another photographic session had taken up most of the morning, but it was the final one for their new catalogue of coats, which was issued in conjunction with Elliott’s tweeds, so, all in all, she felt reasonably content. Tomorrow would be a holiday and Grisell would be free to do as she pleased. Fergus had included her in his invitation to the Riding ceremony and to the dance afterwards and she was elated. They were to go together, but there was no suggestion that Max might join them.

Lilias looked in to say good-bye.

“All alone?” she asked. “You’re far too conscientious, Sue. I’m off to Edinburgh,” she added. “Where’s Grisell?”

“She went home half an hour ago.” Susan collected her handbag and gloves from the table beside the door. “Are you coming down for the Common Riding tomorrow?” she asked.

Lilias hesitated.

“I think not,” she decided. “I’ve something better to do.”

Susan closed the office door.

“Is Max taking you to the Riding?” Lilias asked, idly examining her fingernails. “He said he wanted to go. He’s mad keen on ancient history!”

“I don’t know what Max is doing,” Susan answered, “but I’m not going with him. Fergus has asked me.”

“Thrill for you!” Lilias mocked. “I see he wasn’t made Comet after all.”

“No, but he will be riding.”

“I don’t think I could possibly bear that dreadful Chase again,” Lilias mused. “Everybody galloping hell-for-leather from Haggisha to St. Leonards just to be first at the Square!”

“It’s tradition,” Susan pointed out, slipping her keys into her pocket. “But it evidently doesn’t appeal to you.”

“Not really,” Lilias yawned. “’Bye for now!”

She hadn’t asked about further employment in the autumn, but perhaps Max had already made her that promise.

Evelyn decided not to go to the Common Riding, although she dearly enjoyed pageantry and loved an outing.

“I’d better not,” she said. “Max asked me, but I thought I should say ‘no' for once! He’ll be calling for you, I suppose?”

“Calling?” Susan repeated. “But I’m not going with Max. He didn’t ask me, and Fergus did!”

Evelyn looked up from the letter she was writing. “Max is going to be rather annoyed,” she said.

“I can’t think why.” Susan bent to kiss her cheek. “Take care, won’t you? And no false alarms till I get back from Hawick!”

The telephone bell rang as she went out, but she left Evelyn to answer it. That was why they stood for two hours in the pouring rain, waiting for Grisell, who didn’t come.

“She’s gone off with someone else,” Fergus said. “Let’s forget her!”

But Susan couldn’t forget. The thought of Grisell persisted, together with the thought of Max. She remembered the phone call just before she had left that morning and wished she hadn’t been so hasty, because it could have been from the Carse.

Since Fergus was riding in the cavalcade which inspected the town’s marches, she stood on her own, wondering what had happened, and then, through the curtain of rain, she saw Max striding across the square towards her, his riding-boots glistening, his shoulders hunched aggressively as he made his way through the maze of television equipment which littered the cobbles.

“Where’s Grisell?” he demanded. “Evelyn said she might be with you.”

“She isn’t,” Susan said. “I’ve been waiting for two hours.”

“You’re soaking wet,” he noticed. “Come into the Cross Keys.”

“If we can get in,” Susan said. “What’s happened?”

He led her across the square to the comparative shelter of the hotel portico, but it was hopeless to try to get past the crowd already gathered there to await the procession.

“I’m sorry to involve you in this,” he began briskly, “but Grisell has to be found. I’ve a hunch she isn’t in Hawick at all. She went off early this morning, leaving a silly little note saying she was browned off sitting in an office all day and she had to try something else. She’s got the chance of a job, apparently, but what it is remains to be seen.”

“And you don’t want her to take it, anyway,” Susan suggested.

“Not at the present moment.”

She saw the muscles working in his cheek and knew how annoyed he was.

“Because of her father?”

He looked down at her.

“Evelyn told you?” His lips set in a harder line. “Grisell must be here when Richard gets back from Edinburgh. I need your help.”

“I’ll do what I can, but—”

“It may mean you missing the parade,” he warned. “That doesn’t matter.” Suddenly, she wanted to help, if not Max, then certainly Richard. “Where do you think she’s gone?”

“Edinburgh, at a rough guess.”

“Did she know her father was there?”

“No. She had a vague idea he’d gone to London, and Richard didn’t enlighten her.”

“I think he should have told her.” They were threading their way between the television cameras grouped round the equestrian statue. “She’s old enough to know about that sort of thing and she’s going to feel shut out if she isn’t taken into your confidence.”

He put a firm hand under her elbow.

“That may be so, but it’s not going to help us in the present emergency,” he decided. “I think she’s gone off with Lilias.”

“Lilias? But they’ve got absolutely nothing in common !”

“So I thought. We could, of course, be wrong. Do you know her address in Edinburgh?”

“I could find it.”

“Which means going back to Yairborough.”

“It wouldn’t take much more than half an hour. I could make a guess at the address, but we would need to know the number of her flat. She shares it with three other girls.”

He led her through the gathering crowd to where he had parked his car.

“I’m sorry about this, Susan,” he apologised. “I’m spoiling your day.”

“I’ve seen the Common Riding every year since I was old enough to stand,” she told him. “It won’t hurt me to miss it for once.”

“What about Graeme?” he asked.

“Fergus? Oh, he’s riding in the Cornet’s procession, so he won’t miss me till after the Chase.”

They had reached his car and he held the door open for her to get in.

"You shouldn’t have waited in the rain,” he said.

“I’m dressed for it.” Susan pulled off her waterproof hat to shake her hair free. “It certainly couldn’t have been a wetter day!”

They drove to Yairborough against the flow of cars pressing towards the town, and Max waited for her while she opened the mill door and found the address they needed.

“Buckingham Terrace, It’s easy enough to find,” she told him when she was in the car again.

“Thank you, Susan.” He let in his clutch. "You’ve been a great help.”

They drove back towards Hawick, but the traffic was heavier now, holding them up.

“We needn’t go right into the town,” she advised. "We’ll be hours getting through, if we do. We could cut off after Braxholm and take the Highchester road. It winds about a lot, but it would be quicker in the end. It joins the main road to Selkirk eventually and goes on through Galashiels.”

He turned for a fraction of a second to look at her.

“Do you mean to come with me?” he asked.

She supposed that was what she had meant to do. He had said that he had need of help, and help meant all the way.

“Yes, if you think I’m going to be any use once we get there,” she answered frankly.

“I think you might be,” he said. “And—thanks, Susan.”

They drove in silence for a while until she had to direct him at Branxholm Bridgend, and once they were back on the trunk road he increased speed until they were held up again at Selkirk. The clouds were breaking up now above the Broomy Law and they sped on towards the capital in intermittent sunshine. All along the Gala Water the fishermen were out, wading thigh-deep in the brown pools, and Hartside and Lammer Law stood out serenely against the clearing sky. It was a day to be going to Edinburgh, Susan thought, if only they had been going on some pleasant errand.

After Falahill, when the great city lay spread out before them with the backcloth of the Firth gleaming silver as far as the eye could see, he waited for her instructions.

“We go in through Liberton and Morningside, because we want to be on the Queensferry Road,” she directed him. “I think every city ought to have an area called Morningside,” she ran on when he didn’t answer her, “where the early sun shines.”

“There’s one in Brisbane,” he said. “Richard’s wife was an Australian. She lived there.”

“Grisell's mother,” Susan mused. “It must have been a terrible shock, losing her so unexpectedly.”

“Miriam was one of the finest women I’ve ever met,” he said. “In some ways she was rather like your stepmother,” he added thoughtfully. “She was amazingly attractive, but fundamentally there was no conceit in her.”

“You admire Evelyn, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

She glanced round at him, aware of an odd feeling of resentment which she could not understand. It wasn’t a new experience to hear a man praising her stepmother unstintedly, as Max had just done in those few brief words and he was quite sincere in his admiration, but in a blinding flash she found herself wondering if that was all. Was it possible—could it be possible— that he was already half in love with Evelyn ?

“We’re almost there,” she announced more stiffly than she realised.

They were crossing the Dean Bridge and she directed him to turn left. Half way along the terrace he stopped the car.

“Can I ask you to do something for me, Susan?” he said. “Would you go in on your own? I think you would do better than I would, and it might be less embarrassing for Grisell.”

“I can’t imagine you losing your temper,” she told him involuntarily. “You would be coldly cruel, I think.”

He smiled at that a trifle grimly.

“You have a poor opinion of me.”

Susan flushed.

“I tend to speak out of turn,” she admitted. “Evelyn’s always pulling me up about it.”

“It’s just struck me that we might have called in at Denham before we left or phoned to let her know what we’re doing,” he said.

“Evelyn won’t worry,” Susan assured him. “She won’t expect me back from the Riding much before midnight and she’ll have gone to bed before then.”

He opened the car door for her.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It might be a good idea if I went in first,” she agreed, amazed at his thoughtfulness where Grisell was concerned. “One girl to another might do the trick, although I don’t know Grisell well enough to feel sure. What am I to say to Lilias?”

His mouth tightened a fraction.

“Concentrate on Grisell,” he said. “I think she may listen to you.”

Susan was completely unsure about her errand. She was doing this for Max and Richard and, possibly, Grisell, but in some queer, unfathomable way she also seemed to be doing it for her stepmother. Evelyn always seemed to be included, she thought.

Looking back once before she reached the massive stone portico over the entrance to the flats, she saw Max get out of the car to pace a few steps in the opposite direction, as if the enforced inactivity of his waiting role irked him intensely, and then she mounted the three stone steps to confront the row of bells on the left-hand side of the black-painted door. Each bell had a nameplate under it or a white professional card slipped into a convenient slot, and the third from the top bore Lilias’s name.

She rang the bell, waiting before the closed outer door until she heard the small click which told her that it had been released from the flat above. Lilias, or someone else, was at home.

Climbing the winding stone staircase, she wondered what would happen if she drew a blank. Max would be angrier than ever and their journey would be fruitless. She also wondered about Lilias. Had she really encouraged Grisell to come here, offering her the chance of some job or other when she knew quite well how furious Max would be? Lilias had made no secret of Max’s attraction for her, but this didn’t seem the right way of capturing his esteem, if that was what she wanted to do. Perhaps, of course, it was one way of getting Max to Edinburgh.

Two inner doors faced her on the first landing, leading, she supposed, to separate flats. The great old houses of Edinburgh were gradually being broken up to accommodate the legion of city workers, and Buckingham Terrace was no exception. The massive mahogany door ahead of her opened and Lilias stood on the threshold. Her start of alarm when she saw who her visitor was was unmistakable.

“May I come in?” Susan asked.

Lilias hesitated.

“It’s most inconvenient,” she began.

“I won’t keep you a minute.”

Lilias shrugged.

“Oh, well, if you must, but I was just going out. I’ve got an appointment,” she added sharply.

The door led directly into a large, well-proportioned room furnished in the modem style with a low divan and some black leather chairs and brilliant rugs on the floor. An electric radiator glowed on the wide marble hearth and other doors opened off in three directions. One of them was slightly ajar and it appeared to be a kitchen. The other two were tightly closed. Lilias didn’t invite her to sit down.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

Susan turned from her quick survey of the room.

“I’ve come about Grisell,” she said. “Do you know where she is?”

Lilias stooped to the low, marble-topped table to extract a cigarette from the ebony box which lay there, lighting it before she spoke, her half-veiled eyes challenging her visitor across the breadth of the room.

“Of course I know,” she said with the faintest hint of insolence in her husky voice. “Why?”

It was difficult to deal frankly with someone like Lilias, but Susan made the attempt.

“You know how unsettled she is,” she began, “and she has only just started at Denham’s. I wish you hadn’t encouraged her to throw it all up quite so soon/’

Lilias frowned.

“My dear Sue, you are taking a lot upon yourself, aren’t you?” she mocked. “Grisell is nineteen years old. She can look after herself.”

“She’s in a strange country,” Susan flashed. “You might have thought of that.”

“Why should I?” asked Lilias. “It was entirely Her own idea to get away.”

“If she hadn’t known that you would back her she wouldn’t have done it!” Susan countered angrily.

Lilias favoured her with a thin smile.

“You’re so entirely sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she sneered. “But we’re not at Yairborough now, you know. I’m not modelling for the boss, at the moment, so do be reasonable.”

“I’m trying to be, but you’re making it rather difficult. If you’ll tell me where I can find Grisell I’ll go,” Susan offered.

Lilias shot a quick glance at one of the closed doors.

“She’s out,” she declared bluntly.

Susan’s colour rose.

“Is that true?” she demanded. “If she’s here, Lilias, you must let me speak to her. Max is outside. He didn’t come in because he didn’t want to make a scene.”

“Max?” Lilias turned on her like a wildcat. “You brought him here, you little cheat! You told him I’d encouraged that silly little creature to run away!”

“Didn’t you?”

Susan was quite calm as she watched Lilias stub out her cigarette in the nearest ash-tray.

“Never mind what I did, Susan Denham,” she said. “What you’ve done won’t help you one little bit, even if you imagined it would. Max has no time for you. He thinks you’d go to any length to pay him out for taking over your mill. He told me so !”

Something hard and constricting seemed to fasten about Susan’s throat.

“I haven’t come to discuss Max,” she managed with an effort. “Only Grisell, so if you’ll tell me where she is—”

Lilias’s laughter cut her short.

“Not so-and-so likely!” she declared. "You can go back to Max and tell him I don’t know. That’s the truth. She came here crying her eyes out about being lonely and hating the job you gave her out of the kindness of your stony little heart. You helped to chase her away from Fetterburn, Susan Denham! It was you who kept her nose to the grindstone and shut her up in an office when what she really wanted was the Great Outdoors, like it was back in Timaru—or wherever! You and Max didn’t give the kid a chance. Between you her future was neatly carved out as you wanted it, for some reason best known to yourselves !”

Some grain of truth, some glimmer of light seen in dark places, kept Susan silent.

“She isn’t here,” Lilias said again. “But I told her she could stay with me if she got the job.”

“What job?”

“Modelling. Same as me,” Lilias said with insolence. “And you think that’s much better than sitting in an office all day?” Susan’s anger was uppermost again. “It’s the same sort of thing, Lilias, and you know it. At least the work Grisell was doing at Denham’s was creative.”

“Your kind of work,” said Lilias. “You can’t see past it. If Grisell goes into free-lance modelling at least she’ll be outside some of the time.”

“I can’t imagine her doing it,” Susan said almost to herself. “I know the routine only too well. But that’s not what we came for. Max wants Grisell to go back to the Carse for another reason—a personal reason. You’ve got to help us, Lilias,” she found herself begging. “Max won’t hold this against you if you help now.”

Lilias turned to the window. It looked out on to the road below, where she could see Max waiting beside his car.

“Tell him I want to see him,” she said. “I object to dealing with an intermediary.”

There could be no harm in Max coming up now, Susan thought, if Grisell wasn’t there.

“I’ll tell him,” she said.

Max frowned when he saw her returning alone.

“No luck?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to call it.” Susan brushed her hair back from her forehead with an impetuous gesture as she looked back at the house. “Grisell is here all right, looking for a job.”

“You saw her?”

“No, only Lilias. Apparently Grisell will come back to the flat if she gets the job.”

“And if not?”

“I don’t know. She may return in any case.”

“She wouldn’t sponge on Lilias.”

“Perhaps Lilias wouldn’t look at it like that.”

“Meaning?”

“She might think she was doing Grisell a favour.”

“Do you think Grisell was unhappy at Denham’s?”

“No, just bored.”

“Bored? But she was only there a week.”

“She wanted to work out of doors. Probably something to do with horses.”

“Who told you all this?” he demanded.

“Lilias.”

“Had you any idea, Susan?”

“No. I might have had a passing doubt at first, but she was handling the designs quite well.”

“And that satisfied you?”

“Yes. Shouldn’t it have done?” They were back to argument again. “She could have been part of the firm, which was what you wanted, I gathered.”

“I wanted Grisell to stay at the Carse, but I also want her to be happy,” he said briefly. “Do you think gadding around with Lilias is going to spell happiness for her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What sort of job has she gone after?”

“Modelling.”

His mouth tightened into a thin line.

“I see,” he said. “And you don’t know where?”

“There’s bound to be several agencies in Edinburgh, but Lilias will tell you if you go up.”

“I haven’t time for this! ” He got out of the car. “But Grisell must be back at the Carse before Richard gets home.”

He stalked off, leaving her with a distinct feeling of inadequacy because she hadn’t been able to help him, after all.

He was with Lilias for more than half an hour.

“That didn’t help very much,” he said when he came back. “It’s one of two agencies. Lilias didn’t seem to be too sure.”

He reversed the car almost violently, driving back along the length of the terrace before she could explain that they could have joined the main road at the other end.

“Melville Crescent,” he said. “Do you know it?”

“Yes. It isn’t very far.”

Grisell was coming down the agency steps as they pulled up at the kerb. There were tears in her eyes.

“Get in,” Max commanded, holding open the back door. “And don’t make a scene.”

“I wasn’t going to. They said my legs were terrible,” Grisell sobbed.

“So you didn’t get the wretched job?” Max said with some relief. “I don’t think your legs are as bad as all that, but nobody’s perfect, are they? Here, mop up, and we’ll find somewhere to eat!” He proffered his handkerchief.

“I’m not coming back with you,” Grisell declared.

“Why not? You haven’t got a job and you can’t sponge on other people. Not Lilias, anyway.” Max was being tactless. “You have to be trained in modelling, just like anything else, I should say. There’s no back way in just because your name’s Elliott, you know.”

“Grisell,” Susan said gently, “do you really want this kind of job?”

“Lilias said it was easy enough, if you could act the part, and I did have deportment at school.” Grisell dried her eyes. “I don’t care,” she said. “I’ll find something else.”

“But not in Edinburgh,” Max said grimly.

They drove on in a tense silence, looking for a parking meter.

“Try George Street,” Susan suggested.

“I want to go back to the flat. I want to see Lilias,” Grisell objected. “Besides, if I did go home with you I would have to collect my grip.”

“So you meant to stay,” Max said. “We’ll eat first, I think,” he added.

“Lilias would be only too pleased to make us some tea,” Grisell began, but he cut her short.

“Susan needs something more substantial than a cup of tea,” he said. “She’s had nothing to eat since breakfast, and you kept her standing in Hawick for two hours in the pouring rain.”

“Oh, Susan, I’m sorry!” Grisell apologised. “I meant to phone you at Denham, but I had to catch a bus.”

“So that’s how you got here,” Max said.

“Yes. I was determined to come.”

Max glanced at his watch.

“It’s almost half-past one. We’d better chance our luck here.” He stopped at the discreetly-screened door of a restaurant. “We can pick up your gear later.”

“I’ll need a wash,” Grisell decided, peering at her tear-stained face in the mirror lined wall of the foyer. “I look ghastly!”

Susan followed her into the powder-room.

“Max treats me like a baby,” Grisell complained. “I’m nineteen, you know.”

“Yes, Lilias told me.” Susan met her resentful gaze through the mirror. “You could come back to the Carse, even if it was only for the remainder of the summer months. Your father needs you.”

Grisell dabbed at her blotched face.

“I wonder why you think so,” she said. “He had no time for anyone but my mother.”

“Grisell, is that quite fair?” Susan turned from the wash-basin to dry her hands. “You know he worships you.”

“He also listens to what Max has to say about me!”

“I don’t think Max would be unfair. He can be stem and strict, I expect,” Susan allowed, “but not unjust.”

“I thought you didn’t like him?”

Susan felt the colour deepening in her cheeks.

“I didn’t, just at first.”

“But now—? Go on! I find this interesting!”

“I don’t think—discussing Max in this way is any help,” Susan answered firmly. “We were talking about the Carse. Come back with us, Grisell, and give the Borders another chance. There really is lots to do there, and I’ll help all I can. We could exercise the horses together, and Fergus would be only too pleased to see us at the Mains now and then.”

Grisell shot her a guarded look from beneath her long, silken lashes.

“At least he would be pleased to see you,” she said. “Are you going to marry him?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter, anyway? I’ve got an awful lot to do at Denham’s before I can think of marrying anyone,” Susan added. “That was why I appreciated your help so much.”

Grisell said carelessly: “Did you really?” but that was all.

“You’ll think about it?” Susan asked.

“Maybe.” Grisell turned to the door. “We’re keeping Max waiting,” she said.

The meal they shared was hardly the height of enjoyment. Max did his best to talk about everything but their return to Fetterburn, but Susan could see his concern as the minutes ticked away. At last, Grisell said : “Oh, all right, I’ll come! But I warn you, I’m not going to be browbeaten into going back to that wretched mill!”

Suddenly Susan had an inspiration.

“Would you work at Denham House?” she asked. “It would be a sort of outdoor job, and you could ride over each morning. You like Evelyn,” she added before Grisell could answer too hastily, “and we’ve always held our shows there. We’ll be having more shows as time goes on, and there are always the displays to organise. I work in the library, but if you took over for a while it would help me enormously.”

Grisell considered the idea in silence for a moment or two.

“What would your stepmother have to say?” she asked eventually.

“She would be delighted,” Susan answered without the slightest hesitation. “Evelyn loves company, and after the baby is born she’ll want to help, too.”

“Supposing she decides to go back to London?”

“I don’t think she will. Denham is really her home,” Susan said without thinking.

Max had kept silent, but she felt that he approved of her suggestion.

“I’d have to think about it,” Grisell said, “but I must say it sounds far more attractive than working at Yairborough.”

Susan decided not to press the point, and Max looked relieved. The main issue had been settled and they were on their way home to the Carse. He went with Grisell to collect her grip from the flat, using the pass-key Lilias had given her and leaving it behind on the table when they came out. Susan thought that this might be the end of Lilias, as far as they were concerned.

Grisell chattered incessantly all the way back to Hawick.

“I’m sorry I missed the fun,” she confessed. “I really did want to see Fergus in the Chase. I wonder if he came in ahead of everybody else. Personally, I think he ought to have been chosen Comet. He rides almost as well as you do, Max. It’s all tremendously exciting, isn’t it,” she ran on, “reliving something which happened so long ago? It was the year after Flodden, wasn’t it, that the original ‘callants’ chased the English raiders back across the Border? Can’t you just imagine it? The havoc of feudal wars, the lonely peel towers ‘in the morning grey' that we can still see on nearly every hill, the ladies in their secret bowers, and the knights in armour riding across those very moors!” They were in sight of Teviot now and she quoted generously:

‘But no kind influence deign they shower

On Teviot’s tide and Branksome’s tower,

Till pride he quelled and love be free !’

The words fell into a deep silence as Max continued to look straight ahead and Susan sat beside him, wondering if he thought how foolish her pride had been. If he thought of her at all! Ever since their first meeting she had associated him with those dark-browed warriors of the past who had come riding into her Border land to pillage and destroy it, but the truth was far removed from her original conception of him. Stem and demanding he might be, but he had come to work for Elliott’s, for an old name and an old heritage, and she had accused him out of false pride and stupid prejudice. He was one of them, whichever way she liked to look at it. He belonged among those ancient fells as surely as she did, and only the brief space of a lost generation separated them. Max and Richard Elliott had come home.

When they reached Hawick most of the townsfolk were still gathered in the square. The weather had brightened to give them a warm, sunny afternoon for the festivities and they were reluctant to return to their homes and end it all.

Not that it would end at the Statue for the younger element. There would be dancing and ‘high jinks’ in the town hall, together with many a private party in the surrounding countryside. Thinking of Denham, Susan said that she ought to go home.

“But you will come back?” Grisell begged. “You promised Fergus to go to the dance. Max,” she demanded, “you must come, too!”

Max said “Perhaps” in an off-hand sort of way, as if he were thinking of something quite different. The film unit was still in the Square, packing up to go, and a little stout man in a green corduroy jacket and russet-coloured slacks pushed past them in a hurry. When he recognised Max, however, he wheeled round in his tracks.

“Just the man I’ve been looking for!” he declared. “I’ve got your letter here somewhere, Mr. Elliott.” He fumbled in the pocket of his jacket. “Somewhere,” he repeated, “but it doesn’t matter. We can talk about it. I hope you’ve changed your mind.”

Max considered him for a moment.

“I think I have,” he said, “but I’d prefer to discuss this with you elsewhere.” He glanced round at Susan. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“Yes, of course. I’m on my way—”

“What’s going on?” Grisell asked.

“Nothing at the moment,” Max said. “I meant to tell you this morning. We’ve been approached by Mr. Armstrong’s company about filming at the Carse. They want to use the peel tower and a stretch of the river somewhere, possibly around Denham.”

Mr. Armstrong was following every word with the keenest interest. He had taken off his hat and the bald dome of his head glistened in the sun, but underneath it were a pair of the shrewdest eyes Susan had ever seen. Steenie Armstrong was no fool. He had once been a popular Scottish comedian, but he had hankered after the opportunity to direct and now he was in the business he had always loved behind the cameras instead of in front of them.

“I’ve had a closer look at the locations we want to use,” he told Max, “and Denham would be ideal for some of the outdoor shots. We need another house, too, apart from the Carse.”

Max glanced in Susan’s direction.

“No,” she said firmly. “Not Denham.”

“But you would have no objection to the film unit working in the grounds?” he asked. “The location they suggest is round the bridge and along the Yair on the bridle path side.”

Suddenly she remembered that he had as much right to decide Denham’s fate as she had, but there was also Evelyn to consider. With the birth of her child imminent Evelyn couldn’t possibly want a film unit swarming all over the place, and she certainly wouldn’t want them in the house.

Steenie Armstrong turned away, smiling, as if the bargain was already made.

“I’ll be at the Cross Keys,” he said to Max as Grisell got back into the car. “If we could have a word before I went back to Edinburgh it would save a lot of time and put you completely in the picture.”

“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” Max promised. “Just give me time to take Miss Denham to her car.”

“You needn’t have bothered,” Susan told him as he propelled her through the dwindling crowd. “I’m only round the corner.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Denham.”

He looked slightly grim as they turned into the side street where she had parked her car. .

“About this film idea?”

“Not only that, but we could start there.”

“You really mean to have these people at the Carse?”

“I don’t see why not. They’re only doing one interior.

Then most of the filming will be done up at the tower, I gather, and along the river.”

“What about Denham?” She stopped short as they reached the car. “You did intend to let them use the house?”

“It’s one of the loveliest interiors I’ve ever seen,” he said without answering the direct question.

“You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed. “All these technicians and actors swarming about the place!”

She turned to face him, resisting him instinctively, it seemed.

“We don’t need cheap gimmicks,” she said witheringly. “Denham’s has meant cashmeres for years. We don’t need a film stunt or two to change our image!”

His mouth hardened.

“This is Scott,” he said. “There will be no stunts attached, I can assure you. They’re doing The Bride of Lammermoor. You know it, of course. To me, it’s the ultimate tragedy—the Scottish Hamlet. Steenie Armstrong will do justice to it, I dare say. Anyway, I’m all for it. It’s another Camelot, and if I could invest some money in it I would.”

“A finger in another pie!”

“Exactly. I told you I was a business man.”

She opened the car door.

“Have you thought about Evelyn ?” she asked.

“A great deal.” His voice had lost its sharpness. “The baby will be here long before they want to use Denham House, and somehow I don’t think Evelyn would throw a spanner in the works even out of a mistaken loyalty to Denham’s.”

“You don’t really believe in loyalty, do you?” she challenged as Fergus turned the corner and came striding along the deserted pavement towards them. “So long as you get your own way.”

“There you may be wrong,” Max said, “but I don’t suppose I would ever be able to convince you. All the same, I’m in your debt, Susan, because of this afternoon,” he added. “I would never have pulled it off without you. Grisell has come home and we’ve got to keep her here, by all the concerted mean in our power. If you’ll have her to work at Denham House I’ll be obliged.”

Fergus had reached the car.

“I’ve been searching for you all over the place, Sue,” he said with a brief nod in the older man’s direction. “Where did you get to? I thought I saw you outside St. Leonards, but the Chase was too hot by then to be sure.”

“I went to Edinburgh,” Susan explained. “On business.”

“Edinburgh?” If she had confessed to a journey to the moon he could not have been more surprised. “On Riding Day?”

“Yes, even so!”

Fergus, flushed and dishevelled after a day’s hard riding, looked the typical gentleman farmer, and he seemed to think that the Common Riding was the most important thing in the world. He was kind, and easygoing and solid and, once long ago, it seemed she had been on the point of marrying him. Now she knew that she could never spend the rest of her life with him, and felt sorry.

“I’ll see you at the dance, I suppose,” she said.

He looked quickly from her flushed face to Max’s stem one, knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was about to lose Susan to a stranger. Fierce resentment of the other man struggled in his heart, but he was forced to answer her conversationally enough.

“I’ll be there. I haven’t missed a dance since I left school!”

Susan drove off, thinking about her tussle with Max. It seemed as if they could never meet without some difference of opinion, without hurting each other, even in a trivial way. She had denounced the idea of the film company occupying Denham House, even for a day or two, simply because it might inconvenience Evelyn, but at the bottom of her heart she knew that she was still guilty of a fierce jealousy, a bitter resentment of these strangers who, because of their wealth, could do so much for Denham’s. She had tried to fight it, but it was stronger than she imagined. This was no blood feud, as Max had pointed out, yet it was much the same. Elliott and Denham had been rivals in the past.

Was that all? She couldn’t shake the memory of Maxwell Elliott out of her mind because the vision of him riding down across the heather from the Hunter’s Crags was still very clear in her mind. That first day he had looked the part of the marauding moss-trooper of old and she had no real reason to change her mind about him now.

Before she had reached Branxholm Fergus had overtaken her.

“Pull up a minute, Sue,” he called from the open window of his car. “I want to speak to you.”

She did as he asked her, pulling in to the side of the road at the next layby.

“What about?” she asked.

He got out, coming to lean on the open window.

“It’ll only take five minutes,” he said.

Susan got out.

“I could do with some fresh air,” she admitted.

“After Edinburgh? Did you go there with Elliott?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I had an idea, when he mentioned he’d been there. What happened?”

She hesitated.

“It’s about Grisell, isn’t it?” he guessed. “Did she take the bit between her teeth and bolt?”

She turned to look at him.

“How did you guess?”

He laughed self-consciously.

“I’d like to say I was astute enough to see it coming,” he said, “but the truth is, she told me.”

“Before she went to Edinburgh? And you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t honestly think it was important,” he confessed. “Kids talk that way—all fed-up-to-here and rebellious—but it doesn’t mean very much.”

“It did to Max!”

“And so it did to you?” He caught her by the arm. “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Sue! Don’t throw yourself at this fellow’s head!”

“Where did you get that idea?” Susan gasped. “I’ve never ‘thrown myself, as you so charmingly put it, at anyone!”

“Don’t I know!” He was immediately contrite. “I’m a clumsy ass when I’m trying to explain what I feel. He’d be no use to you, though.” He slipped his arm about her waist. “I know it as surely as I know anything ! He’s completely ruthless where his own ideas are concerned. I’m not saying he’s not the right man in the right place at the mill,” he added when he felt her stiffen, “but he’s not right for you.”

“Aren’t you jumping all our bums before we come to them?” Susan asked unsteadily. “He hasn’t the least intention of asking me to marry him.” Her voice faltered. “As a matter of fact, we’ve been disagreeing over Denham again.”

He looked somewhat relieved.

“Oh? What about this time?”

“Making a film there.”

“Oh, that! People have been talking about it all day,” he informed her. “It’s going to be quite something, with knights in armour cantering around all over the place and the locals getting bit parts or being taken on for crowd scenes when they do the bridal procession and that sort of thing. The main part will be shot on the coast, I gather, north of Cockburnspath, where they can mock up a good replica of the Wolfs Crag, but it’s quieter down here for the hill scenes.”

“So it’s The Bride of Lammermoor?" Susan mused.

“For my money it’s too tragic a tale, if I remember it rightly,” Fergus said. “All that double-crossing and intrigue in high places and the deadly blood-feuds which separated people in love!”

“Lucy Ashton was far too tame for me,” Susan declared, “but I suppose those were different days. I used to weep hopeless tears over Lucy, but now I know that Mary, Queen of Scots, was the only tragic heroine I really respected.”

“Because she fought to the bitter end?”

“Because she had dignity and courage and the grace for living life to the full, in spite of everything!”

“She almost died of a broken heart.”

“She had cause to be disillusioned with human nature!” Susan exclaimed. “If she’d been like Lucy she would have given in to despair, but even the shadow of the English block couldn’t daunt her. She was born to an unlucky fate and a melancholy fortune, but they couldn’t take away her joy in living. She was Marie, the queen of everybody’s heart, and she died, in the end, like a queen!”

“What are you going to do about the film-makers?” Fergus asked after a pause.

“What can I do if Max Elliott is determined to bring them to Denham?”

“Sue, is it any use struggling?” He held her close, pressing his lips against her cheek. “If he wants to take over at Denham, he will. Someone said, the other day, that they wouldn’t be at all surprised if he married Evelyn in the end.”

“Evelyn?” Susan cried. “You can’t be serious!”

“Why not?” He still held her, searching her distressed eyes for the hint that he had still some chance with her. “They’ve been together often enough, and Evelyn has never made any secret of her emotions. She likes him, Sue. A blind man could see that.”

“Evelyn likes most people,” Susan returned far too sharply. “And Richard Elliott has been at Denham House as often as Max.”

“Granted,” Fergus said, “but he’s so much older.”

“Does that matter? Evelyn and he get on well together.”

“Yet it could be Max she fancies.”

She freed herself with an effort, feeling as if his warm embrace must stifle her.

“This is all nonsense,” she declared, “and you know it. Evelyn can’t think about anything but the baby just now.”

“Perhaps not, but she’s bound to be looking ahead to the future, too, isn’t she?”

“She has a future at Denham—”

“Which is exactly what I have been trying to say!"

“Not as Max’s wife. I didn’t mean that,” Susan protested, “and you know it! If—if it’s anyone at all, it’s Richard,” she added swiftly.

“You may be right, but I don’t think so. Does it matter to you?” he asked bluntly.

“About Evelyn and Max?” She could hardly bring herself to link their names. “It’s so absurd—”

“Which means that you don’t like the idea at all,” he concluded. “You would prefer her to marry Richard Elliott, if she’s going to settle for an Elliott at all?”

“They’ve got a lot in common,” she argued, “and they seem happy together. Besides, they’ve both been married before.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it! Does a widow have to marry a widower?” he asked.

“It’s more suitable, perhaps. They’ve both lost someone dear to them. It’s compensation, in a way,” Susan mused.

“Which means that you don’t much believe in love a second time around ?”

“It’s different,” Susan decided. “If you’ve loved someone once you can never feel quite the same again, I should think.”

“Loved and lost, I suppose you mean?”

“No, just loved a person completely. Evelyn loved my father that way, and I don’t think she’ll marry again without a great deal of thought,” Susan answered.

“Even if it were to secure Denham’s for her son?” Susan got back into her car.

“We all take the ‘son’ bit for granted,” she said. “I really must go,” she added. “I promised to be home early to tell Evelyn all about the Riding.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to do that when you spent the day in Edinburgh,” he remarked.

“No. Life’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“Not to worry!” he grinned back at her. “Worse things happen at sea, they tell me! Can I call for you to take you to the dance ?”

“If you like, but I thought you were taking Grisell?”

“We were all going together, remember?”

They drove off in opposite directions, but in less than a mile Susan pulled up again, her thoughts too confused to let her return to Denham immediately. Instead, she sought the far reaches of the open fells where, long ago, she had come with another heartache. The suddenness of her father’s swift passing had left her shocked and numb for days, but gradually, in the silence of the hills, she had come to accept her loneliness, if not to understand it. Her true companion was no more. Flesh of his flesh, she had missed him more than anyone understood, except, perhaps, Evelyn, but she had been unable to talk about her loss for a very long time.

And now it seemed as if she had another battle to fight up here among those lonely hills, a bitter conflict with herself. Why had she defended so passionately her belief that Evelyn, if she ever married again, would choose Richard Elliott and not his brother? Why was it so difficult for her to utter Evelyn’s name linked with that of Max? Didn’t she know? Didn’t she? She couldn’t bear to think of them together. She wanted Evelyn to marry Richard Elliott because she herself was in love with Max!

When had it happened? Did anyone ever know? She had resented him because of her loyalty to Denham’s and her father’s memory, but she had admired him instinctively. She knew that what he had already done for the mill at Fetterburn was necessary for Denham’s also, but she had been proud and resentful because she had not been able to do it herself, or because it had taken an enterprising stranger to show her the way.

And now Max was a stranger no longer. Perhaps she had known all along that his place was here, an Elliott descended from a long line of Elliotts, whose home was the Border. He had a right to be at Fetterburn and he had chosen that right. As far as she could see, the Elliotts were a closely-knit family and Max had shown that his concern over Grisell was no light matter. Instinctively she had helped him when they had gone to Edinburgh, but that was an isolated incident which had almost been thrust upon her by circumstance. By now he must be convinced of her antagonism and think of her accordingly. He had told her frankly that he would have to live with her dislike while they worked together for Denham’s, and she had made it so obvious—so terribly obvious that she would always resent him, no matter what he did.

Restlessly she got out of the car to walk up over the heather to the base of the high crags where she had first seen Max, the horseman, riding towards her. On a clear day such as this the whole broad dale could be seen in detail, with the great rampart of the fells rising up against the sky and today it seemed as if the whole world was at peace. Yet, not so long ago, the glaring bale-fires blazed from height to height along those gentle hill tops and terror spread at the sound of marching feet. From tower and castle wall the watchman’s cry rang out as wreaths of distant smoke heralded the approach of Tynedale men coming ‘to gather in blackmail'. Banners of white and blue and crimson, shield and helmet and spear waved and glistened in the Border sun as Lord Dacre’s bill-men led the Kendall archers and the foreign mercenaries down from Larriston to plunder the Liddel’s southern shore. She could almost hear the songs of Teutonic feuds sung by the men of the Rhine as they marched under the banner of Conrad of Wolfenstein and the rallying cries of more youthful knights eager to gain their spurs and justify their ladies’ favours in their crests or on their gloves.

Not so long ago, she thought, yet half forgotten now, but could there be a stirring in the blood at times, a fierce resentment of the stranger come to pillage in a more peaceful guise?

That was what she had thought about Max at first, but it was all so foolish now, although she could not tell him so. She was not quite free from pride.

Retracing her steps, she felt the moss soft beneath her tread and the gorse harsh on her ankles as she brushed through it towards the road. She was sensitive and prickly as the gorse by turns and she could do nothing about it! She loved Max, but she could not tell him so. For very pride she could not even let him see that her opinion of him had changed. Her heart might pound when he came too near, but there was no way of scaling the barrier between them which she had erected in the beginning.

She quailed at the thought of living out her days without him, of never knowing what his love might mean, seeing him, perhaps, in love with someone else, as Fergus had hinted.

Evelyn! She couldn’t think of Evelyn in love with Max, although, of his own accord, Max had told her how much he admired her stepmother.

Where did they go from here? Where did they all go? Max in love with Evelyn, perhaps, and she in love with Max, while Fergus looked on, hoping that they would eventually marry. There was Grisell, too; Grisell, the restless girl, half in love with Fergus and half in love with life as she wanted it to be—gay and full and exciting, the kind of life she imagined that Lilias led, day by day!

And Lilias? Was she really content with her odd moments of front-page recognition in the trade journals? Had she wanted bigger things, but settled for what she could get in Edinburgh because the competition was too fierce elsewhere? It was difficult to say, because Lilias was difficult to know.

Then there was Richard Elliott, kind, gentle Richard, who wanted nothing better than his daughter’s ultimate happiness, Richard who had most things in life except the companionship of the mature and gentle woman he had loved and lost on the other side of the world. They had all come together in this gentle dale which had known the fury of conflict and the desolation of defeat, but to what purpose? More conflict? Continuing defeat?

Her eyes blurred at her own inability to find a solution to the problem of Denham’s and the heartache of her love. How could she ever stay here if Max was in love with Evelyn, but how could she run away while Evelyn needed her?

Coming down off the moor, she watched the flight of a bird circling above the ruined peel tower half way between Fetterburn and Yairborough and which Max now owned. He had spoken about renting it out to the film-makers and they had argued about that, too, but really she had no right to question his actions, about Fetterburn, at least. They were in a sort of partnership at Denham’s, but it didn’t seem complete, probably because they didn’t trust one another.

Thrusting in her clutch, she drove the remaining distance to Denham House with a deep sense of frustration in her heart. She could do nothing at the moment. Nothing at all!

Because she would be taking the car out again she pulled up at the front door, which was immediately opened to her. Nellie, pale and agitated, stood on the threshold.

“Thank goodness you’ve come!” she exclaimed. “I was just about at my wits’ end, wondering where you were.”

Susan caught her by the arm.

“Why? Nellie, what’s happened?”

“It’s the mistress.” Nellie’s voice was little more than a gasp. “She’s come to her time sooner than we expected.”

“The baby?”

“The doctor’s up there with her now, and the nurse.” Nellie wrung her hands. “Oh, my! I hope she’s going to be all right, for a nicer lassie I’ve never set eyes on !”

“Why shouldn’t she be all right?” Susan asked with an awful, strangling lump in her throat. “Did the doctor say there was any danger?”

Without waiting for Nellie’s answer she reached the inner hall and fled up the nearest staircase to the door of her stepmother’s room, the room they had prepared for Evelyn so short a time ago. Not her father’s room, because it might bring back bitter-sweet memories for his young widow, but the sunniest room in the house, facing the hills.

Holding her breath, she knocked on the door. Somehow she couldn’t go in without being bidden by Evelyn herself. The doctor came in answer to her summons, but he shook his head.

“Nothing so far,” he said. “It might be a long waiting.”

“Are there—complications?” she asked anxiously.

His good-natured face lit in a smile.

“None at all. Your stepmother has the heart of a lion, allied to an amazing determination. She’ll have her baby with the minimum of fuss, in the end,” he declared. “But you said ‘a long waiting’,” Susan objected.

“Some babies are lazier than others.” He put his arm about her shoulders. “Would you like to go in?”

Susan hesitated.

“She asked to see you as soon as you got back.”

When she went into the room all she could see was the bed and Evelyn lying on it with the nurse bending over her. The woman straightened, passing her as she went out.

“You won’t stay too long, Miss Denham? She has to conserve her energy.”

“No, I won’t stay,” Susan promised.

Evelyn looked up at her with bright, happy eyes. “What a fraud I am, kidding everybody !” she smiled. “I thought I had another week, at least.”

“Oh, Evelyn!” Susan sank down on the chair beside the bed, her knees weak. “I’d make a terribly bad nurse!”

“You haven’t been trained to it. You make a better businesswoman!”

“I’m not much of a businesswoman, either,” Susan sighed, “or so Max seems to think.”

“Max?” Evelyn smiled. “Did he find Grisell?” Her brows drew together in a small, perplexed frown. “She’s a great problem to them both—Max and Richard—but she’ll settle down in time.”

“She’d gone to Edinburgh,” Susan explained, “and I went there to try to find her.”

“With Max?”

“Yes.”

There was a little pause.

“Did she come with you?” Evelyn asked.

“Yes.” Susan took her hand. “Don’t worry about Grisell. Max knows how to deal with her.”

“But not Richard,” Evelyn said. “He’s too closely involved, and—he has so little time.”

A spasm, which Susan took for physical pain, crossed her face.

"You ought to rest,” she said anxiously.

Evelyn held on to her hand for a moment longer, her fingers clinging hard. When she looked up her eyes were very bright.

“You won’t mind too much if it’s a girl?” she begged.

“No, I won’t mind,” Susan replied with truth.

Going slowly back down the staircase, she wondered why it should have mattered so much in the beginning.

As she reached the hall Nellie was coming away from the telephone.

“That was Mr. Elliott,” she said. “Mr. Maxwell Elliott. He was asking to speak to the mistress, but I told him he would have to wait till the baby was born.”

“Yes,” Susan answered dully. “Max will have to wait.”

CHAPTER SIX

ALL through that long night of waiting Susan could only think of Evelyn, her loneliness in the face of birth without the man she had loved by her side, but somehow she felt that Evelyn expected her to take her father’s place, as far as she could. She was the last of the Denhams, and this was a Denham child, a baby arriving quicker than they had expected.

When the light faded and it grew dark she tiptoed to her stepmother’s door, but all seemed quiet and still within the room and she went back to her lonely vigil downstairs, standing at one of the windows overlooking the terrace to gaze out across the deep, still dale.

The stars appeared, pricking through a cloudless sky, bright stars above the gentle shoulders of the hills, with one larger and brighter than all the others. Venus, she thought. The star of love!

Behind her the room grew cold and Nellie came to replenish the fire.

"You’d be better in your bed,” she advised practically. "I’ll call you if there’s any news.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Susan decided. “I’d rather stay where I am.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Nellie pointed out. “Everything was prepared.”

“Yes, I know.”

Nellie sighed.

“Ah, weel, I’ll mak’ ye a cup o’ tea, since you’re fair determined to bide where ye are!”

The tea was a comfort, but it would not speed the time away. The long hours drew on. Susan tried to read, but the printed words made little sense as she heard the doctor come and go again and brisk footsteps echoed on the polished floor of the upstairs corridor, yet no one came to tell her how Evelyn fared. If only she could do something!

Wildly she considered phoning through to the Carse to Max, but what could she say to him? What reason could she give for disturbing him in the middle of the night? But perhaps he, too, was awake, anxiously watching the stars.

When morning came at last, the one bright star above the hills remained long after the others had paled and disappeared, and out of sheer physical exhaustion she slept in her chair beside the fire.

The sun was bright and full in the room when Nellie roused her.

“Oh, Miss Susan, it’s a wee laddie, and the mistress is fine!” she cried, her face shining as brightly as her highly-polished brasses on the hearth. “She’s just fine, and proud,” she added. “As proud as she has every right to be!”

Susan’s eyes filled with tears and a great lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t speak for very joy and thankfulness at Evelyn’s safe delivery, and she knew that this was how her father would have felt if he had lived. A son had been born. Another Adam Denham! Oh, proud, oh, happy Evelyn!

“Can I see her?” she asked, at last.

“Right away!” Nellie opened the door for her.

As Susan went up the stairs the doctor was coming down.

“He’s a bonnie wee lad,” he said with pride. “A true Denham, if ever there was one! Yelled his head off for five minutes without even being smacked !”

“Is that what we do?” Susan smiled. “Shout out before we’re really hurt?”

“He’s like your father,” he said more soberly and without answering her question about Denhams in general.

“I’m glad.” She felt impatient, wanting to see the baby without any further delay. “Will you stay for something to drink, to ‘wet his head’, or whatever it is?”

Men did these things, she supposed, and this should have been her father’s greatest day. A son, she thought. A son at Denham, at last!

“I’ll give you five minutes with your stepmother first,” the doctor said, seeing how eager she was. “And then— yes, I think we might wish young Adam well!”

Susan raced along the upstairs corridor to be met at the door of Evelyn’s room by a smiling nurse.

“Mrs. Denham is waiting to see you,” she said.

If Evelyn had been beautiful before, she was more than beautiful now. Her smile was radiant, her eyes full of a new and growing wonder as she held her son cradled in her arms for Susan to see.

“Such a scrap,” Susan said huskily, “to cause all this fuss!” But she was on her knees beside the bed, touching the tiny hand which seemed to be outstretched towards her as the baby moved in his sleep. “Evelyn,” she said, “you must be very proud.”

“Happy, mostly,” her stepmother answered. “He’s seven pounds ten ounces, Susan. Isn’t that wonderful? Not a ‘scrap' at all! I worried a bit at first,” she ran on to confess. “All mothers do, I expect, but you only have to look at him to see how fit he is. Tough and strong, like a true Borderer!” she added softly.

"He’ll grow up here, at Denham,” Susan predicted happily, and then she thought about Max, who owned Denham now.

“It isn’t important,” Evelyn said, “so long as he grows into a man like your father. He’ll have a share in Denham’s, of course—my share—and he may work with Max, in time/’

Susan wondered if Max had already made her that promise, knowing that, sooner or later, Evelyn would be his wife. But even Max was further away than usual as she looked at the baby in Evelyn’s arms.

“We’ll have such fun,” she said. “The three of us, together!”

Evelyn heaved a little sigh.

“Life can be full and beautiful, Sue,” she decided, “in spite of everything.”

You’ll never be lonely, Susan vowed. I’ll see to that!

When the nurse came to take the baby away she walked with her to the door.

“Would you—let me hold him for a moment?” she asked. “Or is it absolutely against the rules?”

“Why not?” the nurse smiled. “You’re his nearest relative!’

It was so soft a bundle, so warm and sweet-smelling that Susan felt her heart must burst. If only her father had been here! She held the baby close for a moment, her lips moving gently against the shawl.

“Bless you, Adam Denham,” she murmured. “Bless you till you’re a man!”

To her utter surprise, Max was standing in the hall when she went down half an hour later. He was talking to the doctor, but he looked up when she came to the branch of the staircase. Nellie had just let him in and he had a great bunch of flowers in his arms—roses from the gardens of Fetterburn Carse.

Susan gripped the banister-rail. He was here, so soon, so eager to greet the child which Evelyn had borne, and he had come alone, bearing the flowers from the Carse. It meant that he considered he had every right to visit Evelyn first. It meant that he loved her....

The colour faded from her cheeks as her heart cried out in wild protest, but somehow she managed to descend the few remaining stairs to greet him in her stepmother’s name.

“Evelyn is very happy,” she said, “and very well.” When she looked at the delicate pink roses her eyes blurred with tears. “She’ll love your gift, Max. It was most thoughtful of you.”

“It was a shot in the dark,” he confessed. “I dropped in on my way to the mill.”

“Oh?” Her mind was immediately alert. “Is there anything wrong?”

His mouth firmed at the coldness of her tone.

“I wanted to see you,” he said, “about your new designs.”

“Yes, of course.” She had completely forgotten about the forthcoming collection. “But there’s plenty of time, isn’t there?”

“Not if we intend to dye our own yarn,” he reminded her. “But at the moment that can wait. Doctor Telfer says you were about to ‘wet the baby’s head', or some such outlandish custom. May I join in?”

It was for Evelyn’s sake, of course. Oh, happy Evelyn!

Susan led the way into the morning-room where a bright fire was burning and Nellie laid the flowers on the table beside the window.

“You’ll be wantin’ to arrange them yoursel’,” she commented to Susan, “before ye tak’ them up to the mistress.”

Susan poured drinks all round, her hand not quite steady as she gripped the decanter, but anger had no part in her now. Only pain and longing as she lifted the flowers Max had brought for her stepmother. If they were indeed a love-token she could not grudge Evelyn such devotion.

Her hands trembled as she lifted the long-stemmed roses, one by one, to place them in the silver bowl Nellie brought for her. It had been her first trophy, won long ago at a local gymkhana, and her father had prized it almost as much as she had done. And now it was filled with Maxwell Elliott’s roses, brought for her father’s wife on this happy day which he should have shared.

Max seemed taller than ever as he carried the drinks across the room, appearing to dominate even this small, family scene, but her anger against him was dead now. She took her glass of sherry from the silver salver, meeting his querulous gaze with a resolute enough smile.

“To Evelyn !” the doctor said. “And young Adam!”

Max’s eyes were full on hers.

“To young Adam,” he repeated.

Was that to be the bond between them in future? Her father’s son—Evelyn’s child? That, and nothing more?

How could she expect it? She had let him see the worst side of her nature, the harsh, proud side which would not look beyond the past to a future they could all share, a future which had now been forged to the past by this new link, this child who would carry the Denham name into another generation.

The doctor put down his glass.

“That was very nice,” he said, “but I’m a busy man and I must be on my way.” He gave them both an expansive smile. “There’s something eminently satisfying about bringing a new life into the world,” he added, “and this young man was particularly important.”

Susan went with him to the door, and when she returned Max was standing on the hearthrug in front of the fire, looking very much the man in possession, she thought.

“Could we have a word about Grisell?” he asked. “Or are you in a desperate hurry to get to the mill?”

Susan glanced at her watch, and because her truant heart seemed to be beating loud enough for him to hear, she said abruptly :

“I can give you a few minutes, but I’m late as it is—”

He smiled at the curtness of her near dismissal.

“It won’t take long,” he assured her. “All I wanted to say was ‘Thanks for taking her under your wing’.”

“It will be Evelyn’s wing, mostly.” She moved towards the door. ‘They’ll be here together a great deal.”

“I could think of nothing better,” he said, “but you’ll have to keep her in touch with Denham’s. I think she has this talent, Susan, but it can only be developed if she works hard enough. With you,” he added.

“You can’t force anyone to be a good designer,” she countered.

“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” he said. “I know it has to come naturally, and I recognise it as a gift— something one has to be born with—but I’m convinced Grisell has this flair and I want it developed before she rushes off and does something stupid. It would be ideal if she would continue to work at Denham’s, at least for a while,” he added slowly.

“Has her father come back from Edinburgh?” she asked, because Richard Elliott was so closely involved in all this. “She said you were expecting him.”

“He phoned last night, after I got back to the Carse.” Max hesitated. “If it’s at all possible, Susan, I don’t want him to know anything about our little jaunt up there to find Grisell. I don’t think she’ll tell him, by the way.”

’“But you think I might?” she flashed. “To cause trouble.”

His eyes darkened momentarily.

“I didn’t say that!”

“It may have been what you meant, though.” She opened the door for him to go on ahead of her. “But I won’t tell tales out of school if that’s what you want me to promise!”

Suddenly he swung round to confront her in the bright light of day.

“This is something I care about very much,” he said.

“More than you would credit, perhaps. Her father needs her at the Carse and I’ll see that she stays there, by every means in my power short of chaining her to the battlements.”

“I think you would do that, too,” she said, meeting his impatient frown, “if you had to in order to get your own way!”

His smile was instantly amused.

“What an ogre you must take me for!” he said. “Maybe you’ll learn the truth, in time.”

“I’ll do what I can for Grisell,” she promised, her throat suddenly tight, “but surely you can talk to her father about her? He’s bound to know how indulgent he’s been since her mother died and realise that it can’t go on.”

His grey eyes seemed to flash scorn on the idea.

“I don’t want him troubled,” he said in the old, clipped manner which made him seem so arrogant. “I know about Grisell, and so do you. We both feel that she ought to be kept on a tighter rein, but it’s no use explaining to Richard at this late date. He worships her because she’s part of the woman he loved, and so he indulges her every whim, but I can’t tell him how wrong he is. Not now. I’ve got to act on my own and risk Grisell hating me for the rest of her life because I spoiled her chances of doing what she wanted to do at the time.”

“Are you absolutely sure you know best?” she asked as they reached the outer door.

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

It was the first time he hadn’t been completely adamant, she thought as she followed him out to his car.

“About this film business,” he said, turning before he got in behind the wheel. “I’ve half a notion this might be the answer to her staying put for the time being. It might be the answer to some of her restlessness, anyway,” he added. “Like all young girls, she likes to think of herself in a glamorous job, and if she were to get some sort of part in the film, even as an extra, I think it would keep her at the Carse long enough to be genuinely interested in Denham’s in the end. You could do a lot in that respect," he added, “with the collections coming along.”

“You plan everything so carefully,” she told him. “The way you plan your life!”

“I wish I could,” he said, “but at least you’ve promised to help with Grisell.”

“I can’t think what part she could possibly play in The Bride of Lammermoor,” she mused as he let in his clutch, “but that would be for the casting department to decide.”

She stood watching as he drove away, thinking about the novel she had always loved, and suddenly she could see Scott’s story taking shape here at Denham, worked out, step by step, against the backcloth of the fells. But even in her wildest dreams she could never have imagined her own involvement in the tragic story of the Bride.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE vanguard of Midlothian Productions, Inc. arrived at the Carse a week later, causing a buzz of speculation and a flurry of excitement in the dale which outmatched even the Common Riding. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Steeped in the writings of Sir Walter Scott from their earliest schooldays, most of the inhabitants were eager to respond to the invitation put out by the film company to take part in their spectacular production in the capacity of extras in the crowd scenes, but many a worthy citizen of the Border towns nursed a secret desire for even the smallest 'bit’ part. The Lucy Ashtons and the Calebs and the Sir Williams would be lined up to meet triumph or disappointment elsewhere, and the mature actress who would play Lucy Ashton had already been named. It was a part as important to a great tragedienne as Lady Macbeth herself, and Barbara Gresham would play it with the utmost finesse. Edgar of Ravenswood was to be played by a popular young star whose name was to be kept a secret until the actual filming began, but already there was much rumour and counter-rumour to keep the interest of the county alive.

Two weeks after the new Adam Denham arrived he was already taking second place in the popularity stakes around Fetterburn and Yairborough, and Evelyn smiled at the fact as she wheeled him along the terrace for the first time.

Grisell, who had been working at the house for over a week now, appeared from the library with a length of tweed in her hand.

“How’s that for the new dyes?” she demanded. “With any luck, we’re going to have them ready for Sue’s autumn collection. I suppose that means if I work hard enough,” she added with a yawn. “Do you think I’ll ever be any good, Mrs. Denham?”

Evelyn braked the pram to run her white fingers over the soft material.

“This is exactly what we want,” she declared, “and you’ve helped a lot, Grisell, even in the short time you’ve been here.”

“Susan’s such a genius,” Grisell sighed. “I could never hold a candle to her, really.”

“You’re not in competition,” Evelyn pointed out. “You can learn so much from Susan, you know.”

“Max thinks I ought to try,” Grisell said. “He’s mad keen about making a go of this.” She glanced about her at the quiet parkland and the moor beyond it rising steadily to the knees of the fells. “It’s all a bit remote, isn’t it?”

“Not if your interest is here.”

“I don’t think mine is,” Grisell said. “I don’t really know. I want to stay and yet I don’t. What happened to Lilias?”

Evelyn took a full minute to consider the question. “She’s probably doing some small job somewhere, waiting to come back to Denham” she said, at last.

“Do you think she will?” Grisell’s eyes brightened. “She’s such a dazzling person, and she really did think I could succeed in modelling.”

“Grisell,” Evelyn said vigorously, “Lilias wouldn’t give you a second thought if she wanted to go elsewhere to push ahead with her career. I think you realise that, deep in your heart.”

“Supposing I do,” Grisell countered, “she was still kind to me. We had a good friendship.”

“Of course,” Evelyn agreed. “She wanted something out of it.”

Half angrily Grisell swung round to confront her.

"What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

"Lilias thinks mainly of herself, that’s all,” Evelyn said. “I think she will come back, if it’s worth her while.”

A slow colour rose into Grisell’s cheeks.

“You don’t think much of her,” she decided, “but she’s done a lot for Denham’s. She knows Susan doesn’t like her, of course.”

“Susan employs her,” Evelyn said to cut the conversation short. “That’s all there is to it.”

Grisell peeped in at the baby.

“My father says he’s a charmer already, just like his mother!” she observed.

Evelyn smiled.

“Your father was here yesterday and young Adam behaved abominably, as a matter of fact, but he’s seen him in his better moods!” she agreed.

“He comes over here quite a lot, doesn’t he?” Grisell mused, her eyes sharpening a little.

“He finds it peaceful,” Evelyn said.

“He’s coming up now.” Grisell moved to the terrace steps. “Were you expecting him?”

“Not specially.” Evelyn put her hand on the white upholstery of the pram. “But he likes to come and I wouldn’t dream of stopping him.”

“You love everybody,” Grisell said almost gloomily. “I suppose I should envy you!”

Richard Elliott came up the four shallow steps on to the terrace to embrace his daughter.

“She’s up and off to work before I’ve shaved these days!” he remarked proudly. “I hope she isn’t bothering you too much, Evelyn, always being here under your feet.”

“It’s Susan’s feet I’m under most of the time,” Grisell put in. “You must ask her what she thinks.”

Susan came from the library as Richard Elliott was bending over the pram, and when he turned to put his gift of flowers into Evelyn’s hands their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them that was like a beam of light, or a sword-flash. She could not tell which as Evelyn turned and saw her standing there.

“Take time to have a cup of tea with us, Sue,” she begged. “You’re always in such a hurry to get back to the mill!”

They sat on the terrace, in a semi-circle around the pram, and for the first time in many weeks the peace of the distant fells entered into Susan’s heart. It came ‘dropping slow’ to steep the terrace and the parkland in a quiet which could almost be felt, and into it, at last, came Max. He had walked across from the mill by the bridle path beside the river and he brought them news.

“If any of you are mad keen on a part in this film you’d better report to the mill tomorrow morning,” he advised them. “I’ve let Steenie Armstrong have my office for a couple of hours to fix people up.” He glanced at his niece. “You going?” he asked.

Grisell flushed expectantly, half rising in her chair,

“Do you think it’s any use?” she asked.

“You’ll never know till you try,” said Evelyn, and Max nodded.

“What are you two up to, might I ask?” Richard stretched his legs lazily. “Aiding and abetting, I call it!”

“Daddy, you just couldn’t refuse!” Grisell exclaimed. “I only want a very small part.”

“You name it, they’ll provide it!” Richard said a trifle dryly.

“Oh, Daddy! Really, you have no confidence in me,” she pouted.

He turned in his chair to consider her.

“I’ve got confidence in your good sense,” he said slowly.

Max rose to help Nellie with the tea-tray, putting it down beside Evelyn’s chair. When he looked at her he seemed content, but Susan could only think about the look which had passed between Evelyn and his brother a moment or two ago.

Yet the whole scene presented a picture of contentment. The terrace in the warm sunshine of a July day; the river flowing beneath its hump-backed bridge; the trees in full leaf dappling the grass with light and shade; the old, ivy-covered gables and the mined peel tower standing guard above them on the rim of the fells. It was a scene to recapture in memory many times if the future should prove dark and unfriendly for any of them, Susan thought.

She looked at Evelyn, thinking that many of her days would be spent at Denham, if not as Max’s wife at least as his honoured guest, and when she glanced at Richard, she wondered about the fate of the Carse. He looked suddenly thin and worn and very, very tired.

Young Adam stirred in his pram, one pink fist thrust belligerently into the air before he bellowed a hungry challenge to the world at large.

“He heard the rattle of the tea-cups!” Evelyn declared, lifting her son into her arms.

Max followed Susan to the library window.

“Have you made up your mind about the new dyes?” he asked.

She nodded, unable to speak because it seemed that all the peace of the afternoon had suddenly evaporated.

“They’re what you wanted and they’re our own effort,” he added. “It will save Denham’s a great deal of money, in the end.

“Is that all you ever think about?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“No, curiously enough, it isn’t.” His mouth clamped into a firmer line. “I’m thinking about the future, when we may have to expand.” He glanced back to the far end of the terrace where Evelyn was nursing her son. “We’re a growing concern!”

Susan turned to face him.

“You mean young Adam, of course.” Her voice all but faltered. “But you have no responsibility for him, unless—”

“‘Unless—’?” he prompted.

“Unless Evelyn has appealed to you.”

He walked into the library ahead of her.

“There was no need for that,” he said brusquely. “Adam’s future was already assured. You’ve forgotten about your stepmother’s shares in the business and her close interest in the mill. She’s genuine in that respect,” he added. “She really does believe in the future.”

Susan felt curiously ashamed, but the impulse to tell him so was smothered by his next remark.

“Whatever you think about this merger, Susan, I still have Evelyn’s loyalty. She needs the future for young Adam, I admit, but she doesn’t ram my unsuitability down my throat at every opportunity, as you do. That’s why I shall always be grateful to her. There comes a time when a man isn’t sure of himself and Evelyn has helped me through that time. We’ve built up a mutual confidence and that means a lot. Anything she might ask for young Adam is as good as done from my point of view.”

Oh, mercenary Evelyn! Susan bit her lip, hating herself for the thought, but Evelyn was shrewd and it seemed that she had all Max’s love and trust into the bargain.

“I know she trusts you,” she began.

“Which you do not,” he said. “A pity, Susan, since, as I pointed out once before, we have to work together. But not all the time, thank goodness! We can keep a fair division between our interests. You at Denham’s and me at the Fetterburn mill. Elliott’s has its own form of pride, I dare say, though I haven’t discovered what it is, so far. Are you interested in the film-making, by the way?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly and with a deliberation which dismissed any intimacy there might have been between them.

“No,” she answered. "I'm not a very good actress.”

He smiled at that.

“But you will go, to look on, even if you couldn’t act a part to save your life?” he suggested.

“I suppose so. I’m probably as curious as the next person.” She hesitated. “I thought you said they might be doing some interior scenes over here.”

“Not if you object.”

She flushed.

“It doesn’t depend on me. Have you asked Evelyn?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

She felt exasperated.

“Why not?”

“This is your home, too.”

“You’re making me feel dog-in-the-mangerish!”

“It wasn’t my intention.”

“But you still consider me pig-headed and—horribly biased about Denham’s!”

“You have every right to be. I’m proud of Elliott’s, in my own humble way.”

“I’ve no real objection to them using the house, if Evelyn agrees,” she began cautiously. “It was because of the baby, at first.”

“I understand that. But maybe we should leave it, anyway, with all your tweeds and the new designs lying around.”

“The designs are always locked away when they’re not in use,” she told him.

“How is Grisell shaping?” he asked, thumbing through an old catalogue which presented Ellias and last year’s tweeds from every conceivable angle. “Do you think she’ll do?”

"Yes, I’m sure she’s interested now, and, Max, I don’t think this film unit coming here is entirely a bad thing,” she added quickly. “Apart from work, Grisell needs some other interest, something to take up her attention during the settling-in period.”

“Thanks,” he said briefly. “I’ll remember.”

He went back along the terrace to join the others, while she collected her sketches and the catalogues into a portfolio which she locked into her desk. It was so easy to see Max here now, as the owner of Denham, yet she knew that he would never ask Evelyn to vacate her old home until she wanted to go.

Her own dilemma had been thrust into the background of her thoughts for the past two weeks since the baby’s birth, but soon—all too soon—she would have to take it out and examine it again in the light of the future.

Disconsolately she worked through the remainder of the afternoon, listing and checking tweeds and deciding about the new dyes, but the following morning found her in Fetterburn ‘to look on' at the filming, as Max had suggested.

It was Saturday and the mill was closed, but a crowd had gathered in the forecourt of the office block as they had been instructed to do in the Yairborough Advertiser, most of them hoping for a small character part but all of them willing to settle for the less ambitious crowd work if a ‘bit’ should be denied them.

Susan was well enough known to be allowed to go forward out of turn, though she laughingly assured everybody that she had no desire to be an actress, even for a day or two.

Out of the comer of her eye she thought that she saw Lilias, but the crowd had closed in again and she could not be sure. It would be the sort of thing Lilias would do, of course, once she had heard about the film.

Max was standing at the head of the staircase with a man in a blue duffle-coat, and she thought that they looked as if they were standing on the bridge of a destroyer. They both looked outdoor types. Steenie Armstrong came from the office to join them, recognising Susan from their brief meeting in Hawick.

"Now then, Miss Denham,” he said, “have you changed your mind about these interiors we want to do at your home? Max tells me you might be persuaded if I went about it very carefully.”

Susan flushed.

“I must be about the most awkward person Max has ever met,” she answered. “But if my stepmother has no objection to you working at Denham neither have I.”

“Good! Good!” he declared. “You won’t even know we’re there. We’ll do it to suit you, any time. When it’s indoor shooting we’re not dependent on natural light. We’ve got something here, Miss Denham. The answer to Camelot!” He turned to the tall man by Max’s side. “This is our director, Jimmy Hannah,” he introduced them. “You’ll be seeing quite a lot of Jimmy in the next few weeks. There’s a lot of him to see! ” he quipped as the big man in the duffle-coat shook Susan by the hand.

“You sure will!” Hannah agreed. “But we’ll try not to make a nuisance of ourselves, Miss Denham.” He turned back to Max. “By the way, Max, we’ve tried your niece out in the riding scenes and she’s an absolute natural, so we’ve given her the job.”

Whatever the job was, Susan felt glad for Grisell’s sake, but Max merely thanked Hannah with a nod. Perhaps he had made that a condition of renting out the Carse! On second thought, she didn’t think he would do such a thing. Grisell would have to win on her own merit.

There was almost too much excitement during the next few days. Susan had not been mistaken when she had thought she had seen Lilias in the crowd at the mill, and she noticed her tall figure again, several times, in the vicinity of Yairborough, although she didn’t put in an appearance at Denham’s. There was no modelling work for her to do now that the collection was almost ready and she was probably far more interested in the film-makers than she was in cashmeres.

During the week Susan was too busy at the mill to think about the filming going on at the Carse, but at week-ends, when most of the crowd scenes were shot, she gravitated to the open moorland with everyone else. Jimmy Hannah fascinated her, simply because he handled people so skilfully. His manner was in no way ostentatious; he walked around with a battered copy of the script under his arm and a bland smile on his face, but his shrewd blue eyes missed nothing. No detail was too small, no prop too insignificant to escape his attention, and when he did raise his voice his minions came running because they knew that something really serious had gone wrong.

Every available horse in the neighbourhood had been pressed into service for these crowd scenes and the splash of colour they made as they stood, plumed and caparisoned, waiting for the cameras to roll, was truly magnificent.

Grisell, who had plunged into the excitement of it all from the beginning, rode out on Hope’s Star, and Susan was pleased to see how easily she controlled the mare. If Hope’s Star appeared restless at times or irked by the heavy saddlecloths and elaborate bridles of the period, Grisell apparently had her well in hand, soothing her with a gentle touch or a soft word, as Susan would have done.

Lilias had managed a small ‘bit’ part not entirely to her liking, but she persevered with it with an eye to greater things. In her elaborate headgear and long, flowing skirts she looked more arresting than ever, and she gave Susan a slightly condescending smile as she passed.

“I haven’t seen you around much,” she said. “Didn’t you get a part?”

“I didn’t try,” Susan told her as Max came up. “I’m happy enough as one of the crowd.”

They were rehearsing the bridal procession to the little church in the dale where Lucy Ashton was to be married the following day to the Laird of Bucklaw, and the stars were due to arrive at any minute. The ill-fated Bride was played by a young actress who had made her name at Stratford-on-Avon and the crowd had thickened with eager fans waiting for a first glimpse of the celebrities.

Steenie Armstrong, who was playing the part of Caleb Balderstone as well as producing the film, declared that he was almost at his wits’ end.

“You can’t expect people to stay at home at weekends, Steenie,” Max pointed out. “Not when you’re putting on a show like this!” He looked round at the colourful scene, at the gaily caparisoned horses, and the laced cloaks and feathered headgear of their riders, and the extras who would follow on foot in their more humble attire. “It’s a five-star spectacular, and no mistake! I almost wish I had some part in it.”

“I offered you a part,” Steenie reminded him. “You would have made a great Douglas Ashton, although you took umbrage at the idea!”

“The world is full of lost opportunities,” Max smiled. “But I couldn’t act to save my life!”

“What about you, Miss Denham?” Steenie asked. “We need a stand-in for the Bride this afternoon, before Celia Warrington gets here.”

Susan laughed.

“A stand-in, maybe,” she agreed. “What would I have to do?”

“Nothing much,” Steenie assured her, pleased by her response. “You’ll wear the bridal dress and the headgear and save Celia hanging around till we’re ready for the final take.”

“It sounds easy enough,” Susan agreed, “so long as I don’t have to utter!”

“You won’t, unless it’s to complain about the wear and tear on your feet,” Steenie grinned. “You’re just right for size and colouring. Anyway, the Bride has to wear a long hairpiece, so there’s no problem. You don’t have to be able to ride, though I know you can,” he added as he walked off in search of someone or something.

Max, who had remained silent, moved with Susan towards the make-up tent.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

“Why not?” she challenged him with a smile. “It might be good fun, though it wasn’t exactly funny for the poor Bride.”

“No,” he said slowly, “family feuds are never amusing.”

She looked away from his penetrating gaze, aware of the deliberation with which he had brought their old quarrel into the open yet unable to answer him because all she could think of to say was that she loved him.

“I’ll wait for you,” he said at the tent door. “I might even offer my services to Steenie as an extra in the meantime.”

It took longer than Susan realised to array her in the elaborate, bejewelled wedding dress, and when the long, blonde wig was in place she scarcely recognised herself. Was this what Lucy Ashton had really looked like? Her eyes, sparkling with excitement, met her reflection in the looking-glass, but she knew that the doomed Bride of Lammermoor had never looked like this. Lucy was the unhappy victim of a vicious family feud and the man she was going to marry was not the man she loved. And Susan Denham was gazing back at her transformed reflection with the thought of her own love in her heart.

That was why her eyes shone; that was why the substitute Bride of Lammermoor looked far too radiant to play the part.

When she came out into the open the small group round the tent door gasped in admiration.

“She’s beautiful—really beautiful!” someone said. But she was looking for Max and he wasn’t there. Fergus came instead, vaulting down from his horse to clasp her hand.

“My, my!” he teased. “What a little bit of make-up can do!”

“It works wonders, doesn’t it?” Susan tried to say lightly. “Have you seen—anyone you know?”

“I’ve just seen Max. He was dashing off somewhere with Steenie.”

“Oh?” Her voice sounded flat. “You’re in the procession, I suppose?”

“I hope so, after all this hanging around,” Fergus said. “I must have been mad to fall for this lark,” he added, “but Grisell persuaded me.”

“She’s very keen.”

“I don’t think she really wants to act,” Fergus said. “It’s the horses and the excitement she likes.”

“I expect so.”

Susan was still looking for Max, but he seemed to have disappeared completely. She saw Steenie talking to a group of cameramen and the crowd seemed to have grown larger, but Max was nowhere to be seen. Her dresser urged her along.

“Mr. Armstrong wants to start right away.”

“You know what you have to do?” Steenie asked. “Just sit on the horse and look blank. You don’t have to act. You can leave it all to Celia in the final take \ Have you ever rode pillion before?”

“Not since I was at school.” Susan had forgotten the details of the Bride’s procession. “Who’s on the horse?”

“Max,” Steenie said without blinking an eyelid.

Max bent down from his ‘bonnie white steed’.

“Don’t panic,” he advised. “I’m supposed to be your brother!”

She tried to laugh, although her heart-beats were like hammer-blows.

“That ridiculous sword!” she said.

He moved the long scabbard hanging by his side.

“It might have belonged to William Wallace!” he agreed as he swung her up into the saddle behind him.

They had never been so near and she was forced to put an arm about his waist to steady herself as the horse moved off with his double load.

“I hardly recognised you,” Max said with a hint of the old mockery in his voice. “I’m not sure whether or not I like you as the docile Lucy.”

“She wasn’t completely spineless,” Susan reflected. “In the beginning she did fight for what she wanted.”

“Her true love?”

“If you like.” She could feel the warmth of his body through the thin silk of her dress and knew that she had never been so stirred in all her life before. “Poor Lucy!” she sighed.

Max took his place at the head of the procession.

“It’s all so very disjointed,” she mused, trying to maintain some sort of conversation while they waited. “The wedding is almost the end of Lucy's story.”

“They’re filming the castle scenes over on the coast,” he told her. “They’ve a long way to go yet, apparently, and Steenie must get the outdoor shots finished while the weather holds good.”

“What were they doing at the Carse?” she asked.

“Interiors, mostly, but there was a scene or two in the garden.”

“Do you think they’re going to need Denham, after all?”

“Sure to. Evelyn’s looking forward to it.”

His voice was drowned in the shouts of the extras as they filled in behind the horses. ‘Ashton and Bucklaw for ever!’ they intoned under Steenie’s direction, again and again and again. The bridal shots were fired, a discharge of musketoons, pistols and guns which sent the horses plunging right and left so that the scene had to be rehearsed all over again. Their white charger, less prone to nerves than some of the others, reared a little but stood his ground. Susan clung to Max.

“How long does this go on?” she asked huskily.

“Till Steenie is satisfied, I gather.” He half-turned to look at her and the strands of the long, blonde wig blew across his cheek. She drew them back, her fingers brushing his flesh for an instant, feeling it cold and rough until his lips came down against her skin. He had kissed her hand deliberately. “Fair lady!” he murmured in open mockery.

They rode to the church, followed by the long train of bridal attendants and guests, with the menials and house servants bringing up the rear on foot. It was a slow business as Steenie arrested their progress from time to time to get every detail just right before the stars took over.

“Wishing you hadn’t volunteered?” Max asked as Steenie and the camera crew went past for the third or fourth time.

“I’m hoping Evelyn won’t be anxious, wondering why I’ve stayed so long,” Susan answered.

“She’s got company,” Max said. “Richard.”

“Oh—”

“He finds it very pleasant at Denham House.” Max’s voice was suddenly grim. “We can hardly grudge him the next few years.”

She stiffened in the seat behind him.

“You can’t mean—?”

“He’s seriously ill. He came over here, in the first place, to consult a heart specialist in Edinburgh. He meant to stay, I think, but he thought he might have had longer to enjoy his enforced retirement. He had great plans for Elliott’s and the Carse.”

“And now?” Her lips would scarcely frame the question. “What will happen now, Max?”

“We’ll carry on together as if everything was going the way we planned.”

She moistened her dry lips.

“That’s why you were so anxious about Grisell,” she said.

“I’m still worried about her.” When he turned his head she could see how grim his mouth looked. “She mustn’t be allowed to do anything to upset him.”

“No.”

The procession had reached the churchyard gate and Steenie decided to call it a day.

“Thanks, boys and girls!” he called gaily from his grand stand view on the Land-Rover. “You’ve been fine. Just fine!”

Max walked the white horse back to the moor with Susan perched, side-saddle, above him. The light had faded a little, but the milling extras were still a gay kaleidoscope of colour against the heather. The narrow roadway was thronged with vehicles and their progress was necessarily slow, but they made the long row of dressing-tents, at last. Few people recognised them in their borrowed plumes and Max seemed to be enjoying the masquerade. They came upon Lilias, standing at the door of one of the tents. She had taken off her elaborate costume and looked ordinary again in her green tweeds, and she seemed to have been waiting there for a very long time.

Encumbered by her flowing skirts, Susan had to allow Max to help her down from the saddle, and he held her strongly for a moment before he released her and led the horse away.

“What are you trying to do?” Lilias asked fiercely. “Chiselling in like this!”

For the first time Susan noticed how closely the hazel eyes were set in the pale oval of Lilias’s face. Without their elaborate make-up and false lashes, Lilias’s eyes were mean.

“I haven’t taken any part that you might have had,” she tried to explain. “Max and I are only stand-ins.”

“I know that. You’re doing this for a lark, but it isn’t such fun for the rest of us,” Lilias protested. “You could have any part, if Max said so!”

“Max has nothing to do with the casting,” Susan reminded her. “It’s all worked out, Lilias, and if you haven’t got the part you would like it’s neither Max’s fault nor mine. You must speak to Steenie.”

“As if that would do any good!” Lilias gazed at her jealously. “Some people have everything!”

She turned on her heel, marching off into the crowd. “What was all that about?” Fergus asked at Susan’s elbow.

“It was just Lilias in one of her disgruntled moods. Take no notice,” Susan advised.

Grisell came to join them, leading Hope’s Star. “When did Lilias take off?” she asked, caressing the mare’s velvet nose.

“A few minutes ago,” Fergus said. “You can’t possibly want to speak to her. She was in a filthy temper.”

“What about?”

He shrugged.

“Who knows? Lilias is an imponderable. Do you want a lift back to the Carse?”

She shook her head.

“Max is towing Hope’s box for me,” she explained, “and Lilias was supposed to be coming back with us. She’s staying at the Carse.”

They gazed at her in astonishment.

“She wished herself on us,” Grisell said awkwardly. “She said she had nowhere else to go and I told Max we simply had to invite her. After all,” she added somewhat belligerently, “we’re working in the same film!”

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT was almost a week later before Susan saw Max again, but she knew that he had been working hard at the mill in the interval. Neither of them had much time to spare, she supposed, with the autumn collection coming up and the alterations which were taking place at Fetterburn.

When the sample batch of new catalogues arrived from the printers early in the week she ran through them with a mounting sense of pride in achievement. Her designs were more than good, they were inspired, and added to the Elliott range of new tweeds they would be irresistible to the trade.

Taking them back to Denham House for Evelyn’s inspection, she was aware of a new satisfaction in her work, a sense of fulfilment which lifted her spirits and put a bright glow in her eyes as she garaged her car in the stables and turned towards the house.

Almost immediately she was aware that Evelyn had company. Two cars were parked on the gravel in front of the main door and one of them belonged to Max.

As she went up the terrace steps a babble of conversation drifted out to her from the drawing-room, where Evelyn was evidently dispensing afternoon tea.

The small group round the table parted at her approach to reveal her stepmother busy with the teacups, while Nellie hovered with hot water and freshly-buttered scones. Richard Elliott was seated in a chair near his hostess, a contented smile playing about his mouth, and Lilias sat primly on the tapestry-covered stool before the fireplace. It was warm enough today to do without a fire, and Max stood leaning on the tall mantelpiece, his gaze detached, as if his thoughts were far removed from the flow of idle conversation going on around him. There was a slight frown between his brows and a firmness about his lips which she had learned to associate with anger. He did not look at her when she came in.

Susan was surprised to see Lilias and even more surprised that Grisell wasn’t with her. Grisell seemed essential to the family atmosphere at Denham House these days.

“I suppose Grisell is still filming,” she remarked as Evelyn handed her a cup of tea. “I saw them shooting a scene up at the peel as I came along.”

“She’s as keen as mustard about it,” Richard declared, “and I guess the horses are the main attraction for her.” He glanced in Evelyn’s direction. “All the same, I’d rather she stuck to her job here. How d’you think she’s shaping, Sue?”

“Extremely well, as a matter of fact,” Susan told him. “She’s interested, and that’s the main thing.”

She hesitated, wanting to produce the new catalogues for their approval, and then decided to show them first to Max, possibly at Fetterburn, when she sent the tweed samples back to the mill. She could return them personally, she decided impulsively, to discuss them with him on a business footing, since that seemed to be all he wanted.

Grisell appeared at the terrace windows, fresh and glowing from her ride across the moor.

“I did work all morning,” she told Susan. “The new sketches are in the library, if you’ll have a look at them, and I’ve done something with the cashmere, though you might not like it.”

Max rose to go, breaking up what Evelyn now considered to be their happy family circle. Yet she had seemed quite willing to include Lilias.

“You’re always in such a hurry, Max!” she declared, smiling up into his set face. “I thought I had managed to capture you for dinner, too.”

“Not tonight,” he said, letting his hand fall gently on her shoulder. “Thank you, all the same, Evelyn.”

Lilias got up to follow him from the room.

“It’s been a simply super afternoon, Mrs. Denham,” she declared with what seemed to be the utmost sincerity. “Thanks for everything!”

For including her, Susan thought. For making her feel welcome at Denham. But Evelyn didn’t really like Lilias. Oh, obtuse Evelyn!

Grisell strolled with them through the hall and Susan went in search of young Adam, keeping the catalogues to herself.

The following morning at breakfast she showed them to her stepmother.

“They’re heavenly!” Evelyn declared. “All these soft, lovely colours, and you’ve chosen a marvellous name for them!”

“Lammermoor,” Susan mused, gazing out of the window. “I must have been thinking of the Bride!”

She was vaguely happy these days, working for Denham’s, working for Max, she supposed. She glanced at her watch.

“It’s time I was on my way,” she said, gathering up the scattered catalogues. “I’m going across to Fetterburn, to the mill.”

Evelyn smiled.

“Give my love to Max,” she said.

Grisell passed her in the doorway.

“Did you see my sketches?” she asked.

“Yes, we’ll go over them as soon as I get back.” Susan gave her an encouraging smile. “Not filming this morning?”

“I thought I’d better put in half a day at work,” Grisell answered. “The light isn’t very good, as a matter of fact,” she added truthfully.

Susan drove straight to Fetterburn. She had taken the tweed samples home with her the night before and they were in the back of the car. As she gathered them together she felt compelled to glance up to the windows of the office set high in the newly-sanded stone wall of the mill. Max was standing at one of them, looking down at her.

Something about his set face and the almost belligerent stance made her want to turn and run, but she had come with a purpose in mind and she couldn’t retreat now.

Max opened the office door in response to her knock.

“You’ve saved me a journey,” he said. “I was on my way to Yairborough.”

There could be no mistaking his present mood. Anger tinged with a cold hint of regret was in every line of his stern face and his eyes were harder now than she had ever seen them.

While she was still thinking of something to say to him, he crossed to the wide mahogany desk in the centre of the floor and flung something down on its polished surface. Thinking about him in the costume he had worn so effectively when they had last been as close as this, it was as if he had thrown down a gauntlet.

She looked at the challenging piece of paper on the desk, recognising it as a catalogue. Someone else’s catalogue.

“Maybe you can explain that,” Max said, his voice as cold as steel. “They’re your designs, I understand. You’ve certainly hit the jackpot this time!”

Susan remained staring at the catalogue on the desk for a full minute before anything he had said began to make sense, and then only his final words stood out to confront her with their icy logic. They were her designs!

She picked up the catalogue, reading the name of the firm blazoned across the front of it. Ewing and Haverford. It couldn’t be true! She began to turn the pages in an agony of disbelief. There were five coats, all offered in a hundred per cent cashmere, and a dozen knitwear designs which were an exact replica of her own.

“It just isn’t possible!” she breathed.

“That’s what I thought when I first saw them.” Max’s voice was ice-cold.

Susan turned to face him. His eyes were no longer faintly accusing. There was a fierce light in them now and a hint of scorn about his mouth.

"You think I did this deliberately!” she gasped.

He moved away from her, prowling across the floor.

“What am I to think?” he demanded. “You see what it says—‘Exclusive to Ewing and Haverford’. They’re our greatest rivals and they have our designs. Even the cashmeres,” he added stonily.

Exclusive to Ewing and Haverford! Susan couldn’t think beyond that for a moment. The words seemed to be emblazoned ten feet high between them, together with the fact that their rivals had managed to produce their catalogue a month ahead of them. All that this could mean for Denham’s and Elliott’s suddenly struck her with the force of a blow, and as suddenly her mind cleared. Max was accusing her. He believed her guilty of perfidy, of selling out to the highest bidder.

How could he? She worked for Denham’s, she was part of the new set-up, whatever else he thought of her, and so she had to be loyal.

“Give me a minute,” she begged desperately, and it was as if she were asking for a lifeline.

Max stopped his pacing.

“Who are you working for, Susan?” he asked sharply. “This couldn’t be just a coincidence, not by the greatest stretch of the imagination. I know you’ve always resented the take-over, but this could have disastrous repercussions for Denham’s and for Elliott’s. If we can’t put out an autumn catalogue—and, as I see it, we can’t now—we’re going to lag a long way behind everybody else for at least six months, and these are vital months.”

"I'll find out who did this,” Susan said harshly, “if it takes me a lifetime! I know you don’t trust me,” she rushed on, so near to tears that she couldn’t look in his direction. “I know nothing I say or do could ever alter your opinion of me, but I wouldn’t sell my Denham designs to a rival firm. Not in a million years!”

Before he could stop her she had rushed to the door.

“Look here, Susan—” he began, but she had already gone, stumbling down the narrow stone staircase with Ewing and Haverford’s catalogue in her hand and a terrible weight of hopelessness in her heart.

Before she reached Yairborough, however, dismay had been displaced by a dogged determination to find out the truth. One look at the catalogue had been enough to convince her that there was no coincidence, as Max had pointed out. Someone had taken her designs and sold them to the rival firm. But who?

The answer seemed very simple. Only Grisell had access to the sketches for long enough to be able to copy them in such minute detail.

Grisell! She stopped in her tracks to confront the obvious while the blood rushed to her cheeks in a flood of anger. How could Grisell have done such a thing after all she had done for her and after all Max’s toleration?

Her first impulse was to go to Grisell direct, to confront her with the catalogue and demand an explanation, but instead she went to Denham’s. Climbing the stairs to her office on the first floor, she remembered how Max had spoken to her about his niece, his plea for her help and understanding, and Grisell’s own desire to work to please both Max and her father. Grisell really wanted their appreciation and trust, but this was no way to go about it!

Susan was still angry, but she could divide her mind between emotion and the practical necessity of looking to the future. Max had been right about the catalogue; there was nothing they could do about it now. Ewing and Haverford had probably bought the designs in good faith when they were offered to them—although how they had been offered was difficult to say—and there was no point in confronting them with similarities. Their colours were poor in comparison with Elliott’s, but their designs were already on the market.

Flicking over the leaves of her desk calendar, she made a rapid calculation. It was impossible, but she would have to do it. Within three weeks she must have another set of designs off her drawing-board and into production. Their catalogue would be late in reaching the trade, but Denham Exclusives would be on the market before the autumn. A great deal of time and patience and effort had been lost and their present catalogues would have to be scrapped, but that was about all.

Forcing her mind to the task, she worked on through the lunch break, ordering a sandwich and a glass of milk to be sent up from the canteen and saying that she must not be disturbed.

“That goes for everybody,” she insisted. “All comers, whoever they may be!”

Her determination had always been strongest when faced with disaster and it was almost easy for her to work now. She sat with her drawing-board on her knees and a frown of concentration between her brows till Aaron Spottiswode came knocking on the door to ask her how long she was likely to be. It was seven o’clock and he wanted to go home.

“I could have locked up,” she said. “Sorry, Aaron, but I had to concentrate!”

She had taken the foreman into her confidence up to a point, and although he had shaken his head and said that what she was attempting just couldn’t be done, she knew that he would support her in every way he could.

“You’re your father’s daughter, Miss Susan,” he declared. “If ye say you’ll do it, I suppose ye will!”

They locked up and she offered him a lift as far as the council estate, where he lived.

“I shall be in early in the morning,” she told him, “but I’ve got my own key. I don’t want anyone prowling round the office, by the way,” she cautioned. “No one at all!”

Evelyn was frankly anxious by the time she reached Denham House.

“I thought you had gone up to the peel tower to help with the filming and there had been some sort of accident,” she said.

“No.” Susan hesitated, wondering how much she should tell her stepmother. “I worked late.”

“But I thought the collection was finished.”

“We’ve scrapped it.” Susan sat down to her belated meal. “I can’t go into all the details, but I’ve had to begin from scratch again.”

“Oh—no! How could this have happened?” Evelyn protested.

“It didn’t happen naturally.” Susan was still angry. “Someone took my designs and sold them to Ewing and Haverford, for a fairly high price, I should imagine.”

“Oh, Sue!” Evelyn came to put a sympathetic arm about her shoulders. “This is terrible, after all your hard work, too. And your designs were—-different.”

“Some of them were Grisell's ideas,” Susan pointed out bitterly.

“You don’t think that Grisell—?”

“What am I to think?” Susan pushed her soup plate to one side. “She could have done it. She had ample opportunity. But why? Why? She didn’t need the money. If she did this, she did it for some other reason.”

“We’ll have to be sure,” Evelyn said. “Absolutely sure.” Her face was very pale. “This will kill Richard,” she added desperately. “What are we to do?”

“Nothing, in that case,” Susan answered dully. “Max wouldn’t believe me, anyway, if I did try to prove it. He would just think me jealous. Grisell has got my horse and he believes I must bear her an eternal grudge because of Hope’s Star.”

“And do you?” Evelyn asked.

“Of course not! She can ride, and she knows how to handle Hope’s Star.”

That was a compliment, coming from Susan Denham. Evelyn moved towards the windows.

“Don’t do anything about Grisell just now,” she advised. “Let me handle this, Sue. Her father’s in a very poor state of health and any sudden shock—” Her lips quivered. “You understand?”

“Yes.” Suzan gazed at her intently. “I think I understand,” she answered slowly. “Are you going to marry Richard?”

Evelyn turned her back, gazing out across the gentle dale to the mist-crowned fells.

“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s—so little time.”

A lump rose into Susan’s throat.

“Even if it was only a month or two—” she suggested.

“I would settle for that.” Evelyn turned back into the room. “But Richard won’t. He thinks it would be unfair to me.”

“Unfair?” Susan spoke as if she couldn’t understand the word, “If he loves you, why should he think of being ‘fair’?”

Evelyn smiled at the question.

“That’s Richard,” she said.

Susan finished her meal in silence. She could do nothing about Grisell now.

“Don’t work too hard,” Evelyn cautioned when she rose from the table. “Max will find some way out.”

“I can’t leave everything to Max,” Susan objected, “but I won’t tell him about Grisell, if you think it’s going to cause trouble.”

Once, not so long ago, she would have blurted out the truth straight away, she mused, going at it like a bull at a gate to confront him with the fact that his trust had been misplaced and his judgment wasn’t infallible, after all, but not now. Too many people were being hurt in this small community—Evelyn, who was in love with Richard; Grisell half in love with Fergus and she, herself, in love with Max. Hopelessly in love with him! Nothing Evelyn could do would alter things. Richard wouldn’t ask Evelyn to many him out of a sense of ‘fairness’, and Grisell wouldn’t hang around for ever, waiting for Fergus to change his mind. Max might try to keep her in the dale for his brother’s sake, but one day she would go, possibly with Lilias.

Lilias? Susan thought of her ex-employee a great deal during the next few days when her own nose was kept to the grindstone both at the mill and in her ‘leisure’ time at Denham House. Lilias was still in the neighbourhood, acting out her 'bit' part at the Carse and up on the fells at the old peel tower where some of the film exteriors were being shot.

Susan couldn’t take any part in the filming now, not even as a stand-in, and Max, it seemed, had also bowed out He went to London for a week, returning to redouble his efforts at the Fetterburn mill, although their loss, as far as the tweeds were concerned, was not nearly so great as the loss of Susan’s designs.

When it came to modelling her latest brain-children for the new catalogue she shied away from the idea of employing Lilias.

“Try Grisell,” Evelyn advised. “She’s got the right sort of figure.”

They were in the library, where Susan had been working, and she turned sharply at her stepmother’s suggestion.

“Why Grisell ?”

“I think she would like the idea. She’s eager to help in any way she can. She’s worked very hard recently,” Evelyn pointed out.

“A bad conscience, would you say?”

“I don’t know, Sue. Sometimes I can’t fathom that child at all.”

“I can! She’s dead wilful.” Susan laid her sketches aside. “Well, she can’t do anything with this lot. I’ve lived with them, night and day. They’ve never once been out of my sight. The Crown Jewels can have nothing on them!”

“You’ve won through,” Evelyn said. “Max will be delighted.”

“I didn’t do it for Max!”

“No, you did it for Denham’s,” Evelyn agreed, “but it’s much the same thing, and he’ll appreciate it.”

“I don’t need his appreciation! “ Susan’s voice was sharp with hurt. “He still suspects me. He’ll go on believing I sold out to Ewing and Haverford for sheer spite. He despises me now, Evelyn. I know it, and I could go on shedding useless tears over the fact for ever for all Max cares!”

“Don’t misjudge him.” Evelyn rose to go. “He doesn’t apportion blame or anything else without a great deal of thought.”

“But I got off to a bad start with this one, didn’t I?” Susan challenged. “We’ve been against each other from the very beginning. Constantly at war!”

“That might be entirely your fault,” Evelyn stopped to say.

Susan bit her lip.

“Oh, I don’t mean to get in people’s hair,” she exclaimed, “but Max is always so right!”

“He has his failings, like most men,” Evelyn said.

“Can you name me a few I don’t already know?”

“He’s proud, for one thing, and he’s no fool.”

" ‘Till pride be quelled and love be free’,” Susan murmured.

“What did you say?” Evelyn was already half-way through the doorway.

“Oh—nothing! It was only an odd couplet I heard quoted by Grisell when she first came to the Carse.”

“Grisell,” Evelyn murmured, but that was all.

Susan returned to her work. The second lot of designs were good enough, but they seemed to lack the inspiration of her original effort and she hesitated about showing them to Max. All the same, he had to be consulted, and with that in mind she drove the short distance to Fetterburn the following morning. At the foot of the office stairs, however, she lost the small amount of courage with which she had set out and stood trying to think of some other way of letting him see her second effort on the firm’s behalf. She could leave the sketches in the outer office, but she didn’t want to take the risk. Even at such a late hour as this, something else could go wrong.

Footsteps on the terrazzo flooring behind her sent her quickly up the stairs, but it had been Max crossing the entrance hall and he followed her into the office.

“Can I help you, Susan?” he asked briefly.

“Yes. I—came about these.” She thrust the bulky portfolio towards him. “Will you let me have them back as quickly as possible, if you approve?”

He opened the door of his private sanctum.

“I can let you have them now, if you have a minute to spare,” he said.

Miss Jackson, his secretary, had glanced up from her typewriter, conscious of the air of restraint between them, no doubt, and Susan darted towards the inner office to save the lady too much speculation.

“They’re not nearly so good as the original ones,” she said as Max turned over sketch after sketch, “but I’m afraid they’ll have to do.”

He glanced at her from under his dark brows.

“This must have been a mammoth task,” he commented. “They seem to me to be every bit as good as the others. You’ll want Lilias and the photographer down straight away, I suppose?”

“Not Lilias,” Susan decided far too quickly. “I— thought we could keep it in the family,” she added lamely.

He glanced up from the final sketch.

“Why not Lilias?” he asked.

“I don’t really know.” The colour deepened in her cheeks. “I thought she would be far too busy filming.”

“So it wasn’t just prejudice?”

She drew in a deep breath.

“You could believe anything of me, Max, couldn’t you?”

“Anything!” He flicked through the designs again with a twisted smile. “You are, after all, something of a genius. But back to business! Failing Lilias, whom do you suggest?”

“I wondered about Grisell.”

He frowned.

“Has she helped with these designs?” he asked.

“Not very much. They were done in a tremendous hurry,” she pointed out.

“Yes,” He seemed to be considering her proposition. “What about you? Modelling the suits,” he added when she didn’t appear to grasp his meaning. “We could use one of Steenie’s photographers and save time while we’re at it.”

She was forced to laugh.

“Max, you think of everything!”

“It’s my job, as far as the firm’s concerned,” he reminded her. “Do you wish me to speak to Steenie?”

“I suppose so, though if you would rather we had Lilias—”

“We can manage without Lilias, for the present,” he decided.

“It was Evelyn’s idea,” Susan told him as they bent over the sketches again. “To ask Grisell.”

“I can quite imagine!” A smile lifted the corners of his stern mouth. “Evelyn has a finger in every pie!”

“We couldn’t very well do without her,” Susan said.

They worked together for an hour, matching patterns and colours until, in the end, the new catalogue was compiled. She thought that Max might compare it unfavourably with the original one and her cheeks burned at the humiliation of having to accept his censure without being able to tell him the truth, but she still couldn’t be certain of Grisell's guilt and Max wasn’t the sort of person to credit a supposition.

The hour had passed more quickly than she realized. He shot up his cuff to look at his watch.

“Time for lunch,” he said. “I take mine in the canteen with Richard. Will you join us?”

She hesitated.

“I ought to get back to Yairborough—”

He came round from behind his desk.

“If work is so essential, we can talk while we eat,” he suggested.

Richard was already seated at one of the canteen tables when they went in. It was all new to Susan and beautifully planned, she had to admit. As she selected an attractive meal from the self-service counter and laid it out on one of the brightly-patterned trays she was aware of Max’s keen scrutiny, but he went on to choose his own meal without comment.

“We need something like this at Denham’s,” she admitted, glancing round the big, air-conditioned room with its high windows and bright decor. “Was it your idea, Max?”

“No, Richard’s. He’s given to that sort of thing, and I believe Evelyn helped with the colours.” Max took both trays to carry them back to the table. “We could be quite a team,” he mused.

Except for me, Susan thought. Max will never, never accept me now!

“Susan thinks that Denham’s could do with a facelift,” he told his brother when they were settled in their respective chairs. “She likes what you’ve done, Rick, and she’s absolutely right about the mill. We can’t start rebuilding yet awhile, but we could certainly improve the existing facilities for the staff and the workers.” The buildings were Richard’s province and this was something he really cared about. He plunged into plans for future improvements as if he had all the time in the world to see them implemented, as if, indeed, his sentence of death had been completely forgotten, and all of a sudden Susan knew why Max was so keen to keep him happy and free from disillusionment about Grisell.

“I’ll start on Denham’s right away,” he promised. “There’s no time like the present” When he rose to go he bent over the table to pat Susan’s hand. “Thanks for all you’ve done for my girl,” he added. “You’re going to make a designer out of her one of these days!”

“I hope so.” Susan’s eyes were clear and steady on his. “She’s got what it takes, Mr. Elliott.”

“ ‘Richard’, surely?” His eyes crinkled in a smile. “It makes us sound more like one big, happy family. Eh, Max?”

Max did not reply. His gaze followed his brother’s tall, lean figure down the room as Richard Elliott paused at table after table for a cheerful word with his mill workers and there was an expression in his eyes which defied description. Compassion, yes, but so much more. Envy, too, perhaps, because Richard had become universally beloved in so short a time. Beloved by everybody.

CHAPTER NINE

GRISELL came to Denham House two days later. She rode over from the Carse on Hope’s Star and let her loose in the paddock, as if she meant to stay for some time. Perhaps, Susan thought, as she watched from the centre window of the library, Evelyn had invited her to lunch.

It was Saturday afternoon and filming had been curtailed at the tower because of a thin mist of rain which hovered over the fells and was now descending into the dale. Steenie Armstrong, who had agreed to lend them a cameraman, had suggested an afternoon session at the mill, and Susan was preparing to go down there immediately after lunch. She wondered if Grisell had come to seek her advice about the modelling job she had accepted or just to call on Evelyn.

A hesitant tap on the library door convinced her that Grisell wished to see her alone.

“Come in!” she called. “I’m almost through.”

‘‘You work all the time, don’t you?” Grisell fingered a bale of fine cashmere as she stood beside the table. “You haven’t missed me.”

“I have, as a matter of fact,” Susan returned truthfully, “but I realised you were very keen on the filming job, and it certainly is much nicer working out of doors.”

Grisell moved to the window.

“Not today,” she observed. “I suppose you think me unbearably selfish?” There was a tentative note in her voice. “I seem to consider nobody but myself.”

“We all do, in one way or another.” This was awkward ground. “It’s a common failing.”

“I do it all the time,” Grisell declared. “That’s the difference. I don’t really care what happens so long as I get my own way.”

“Is that a statement, or is it something that has just occurred to you, Grisell?”

“It’s what Evelyn thinks.” Grisell looked uneasy. “She didn’t say so in so many words, of course, but she let me see that she believed it.”

“Is it true?”

“It has been true.” Grisell flushed scarlet. “I didn’t care a hang about your designs, did I?”

Susan drew in a deep breath.

“So you did take them?”

“Yes, I gave them to Lilias.”

Susan stared at her in utter confusion.

“To Lilias? What, in heaven’s name, made you do a thing like that?” she demanded.

Grisell shrugged.

“She asked me to get them for her. You know Lilias!”

“Do you?”

Some of the colour faded out of Grisell’s cheeks.

“I think I do—now,” she confessed. “I’ve been an absolute idiot, admiring her so much. I would have done anything she asked, even to defying Max.” She looked contrite. "What I did with your designs was utterly despicable. I realise that.”

“I’m glad you do,” Susan said unsteadily. “The damage is done, of course.”

“Max said you’d compiled another catalogue and some of the original coats were so classic in design that they could be used, after all, because of our exclusive colouring,” Grisell suggested.

"Yes, that’s true enough.” Susan hadn’t been thinking about the damage to their autumn trade as much as the damage to her own standing with Max. "You haven’t told him, of course?”

“No.” Grisell looked suddenly forlorn. “He would never forgive me.”

“I suppose not.”

“How do you feel?”

Susan hesitated.

“It will take me some time to forget about it,” she answered honestly.

“I thought it would,” Grisell sighed. “I’m not much good to anyone, am I?”

“Your father has a good deal of faith in you,” Susan pointed out. “You could make it up to him.”

“Do you mean tell him?”

“No, I suppose not. It would be a terrible shock to him, but you could stay here and work, Grisell. That’s what he wants,” Susan hurried on. “To have you near him and keep you happy.”

“He’s very ill.”

“Yes.”

“They think I don’t know about it, but I do.” Tears filled the wide blue eyes. “That’s why I feel so dreadful —such a fraud! If he married Evelyn I’d be happy.”

“He would still need you,” Susan said. “Both you and Evelyn.”

Grisell didn’t answer. Instead, she walked about the room as Susan tidied up, fingering the fine tweeds and automatically matching their colours to the new yams on the desk, a job which Susan had been hoping to do before she left for the mill in an hour’s time.

Over lunch they spoke mainly about the progress of the film, but Susan noticed Evelyn studying their guest from time to time, as if she were debating some form of action in her fertile mind which might involve Grisell.

The photographic session took longer than they expected. Susan put Grisell in the knitted suits because she was taller and could show them off to greater advantage, but she modelled some of the cardigans herself because Max had asked her to do so. Strange, she thought, how eagerly she wanted to please him now!

In the end they decided to leave the cashmere coats as Lilias had modelled them. As Max had pointed out, the designs were too classic to be condemned as copies by their rivals and the Elliott colours would set them apart.

When the catalogue saw the light of day, therefore, Lilias, Susan and Grisell all appeared in it.

“Lilias looks best,” Grisell mused, and that was true. Lilias was the professional model; Grisell and Susan were only amateurs, yet there was a freshness and frankness about their presentation of the knitwear which shone through and made this catalogue unique.

The film unit had gone off to the coast to take the scenes at Wolf’s Crag, carting most of their props with them, but the interiors at Denham House were still to take, and one final shot on the moor. Some of the glamour and excitement of those past few weeks had departed with Steenie and his ‘gang’ and the dale had returned to its accustomed serenity. No musket-shot or wild bugle note disturbed its calm, and only the odd, lonely horseman rode across the fells.

Max seemed to be avoiding Denham. After their lunch together in the canteen at Elliott’s, Susan did not see him again until the film unit reappeared and Steenie rounded up his extras once more. They shot scenes at the Carse for two days before they came to Denham and the whole place was turned upside down to accommodate cameras, wardrobe assistants, make-up and continuity girls and a host of other people necessary to produce one small scene in the inner hall and staircase.

Steenie buzzed about like an angry bee. Things had gone wrong at the Carse and the weather had been unkind when they had been shooting the scenes on the coast, A thick sea-fret had hung over the cliffs day after day, effective enough for a shot or two of the ancient castle on its rocky promontory but damaging to their schedule when it persisted for over a week, slowing down production and adding to the enormous bill for extras. Steenie, although he was delighted with the interior of Denham House, was also preoccupied with the desire to rush the scenes through and finish the moor sequence while he was at it.

With all the preparations for her son’s christening on her mind, Evelyn did her best to help him. She liked Steenie and was as anxious as everybody else to see the completed film. When she wheeled young Adam out in his pram she took lengthy detours to avoid being within the range of the camera lenses and so spoiling a ‘take’, and when Steenie reached the hair-tearing stage she invited him to tea. Evelyn had a calming effect on everyone these days.

Her son was to be christened on the Sunday morning after the film-makers had left the house, and Steenie did his best to whip up actors and extras to the point of perfection where he could take his final shots on the Saturday afternoon. Richard and Grisell came over from the Carse to watch, and Susan was surprised to see Lilias. She had been given a small part in this final scene, but she seemed wooden and nervous when she went in front of the cameras.

Steenie tore his hair.

“You’re not on a catwalk now, Miss Rutherford!” he kept repeating. “Unbend, and take that silly, false grin off your face! If I could find someone else,” he muttered, glancing in Susan’s direction. “Miss Denham, how about you?”

Susan drew back.

“I wouldn’t be any use,” she protested. “I’m not tall enough, for one thing, and I would have to be wordperfect at this stage—”

“But you know the story back to front,” Steenie reminded her. "You could do it.”

Susan recognised the ugly gleam in Lilias’s eyes.

“Give Miss Rutherford another chance,” she begged. Steenie cast his eyes ceilingwards.

“They’ve had nothing but chances,” he muttered, “and still they look like dummies!”

Max had put in an appearance, standing just inside the double doors leading to the outer hall, and Susan was suddenly glad that she had refused Steenie’s request. How could she have enacted even a minor love scene before his critical gaze? She would have appeared as wooden and unco-operative as Lilias.

It was such a long-drawn-out business waiting for perfection, but Steenie was determined to achieve it even in the smallest scene which might eventually end up on the cutting-room floor. All this concentrated effort for nothing, Susan thought,

“I hope it’s going to be the success the little man deserves,” Richard said, strolling beside her to watch Steenie giving his final instructions to the camera crew. “He certainly works hard at his job, though, for my money, I’d want a better ending to the story than the one he’s got.”

“Poor Lucy, you mean,” Evelyn said as Max came up. “She was a bone of contention, even in Scott’s day, but we have to remember the strict domestic discipline exercised in those days over young people, especially young girls.”

Grisell said with a shrug: “They were far too tame, but I admire the men. Though not silly Lord Ravenswood. He should have galloped down from that crummy old tower of his and made off with Lucy, in spite of her horrible old mother. Like Young Lochinvar!” she added with admiration.

“Lucy Ashton was besieged by circumstances,” Evelyn said slowly. “Edgar of Ravenswood trusted her, and he thought she had let him down. Badly, in fact.”

Max crossed to the fireplace without adding anything to their conversation, and presently he went away, striding down across the sunken garden in the direction of the bridge.

Susan didn’t see him again till the baby was christened. Even the elements seemed to conspire to make it a perfect day. It was warm and sunny, with very little wind and the bees busy in the heather as they set off to walk through the parkland to the village church. In true Scottish tradition, Adam Denham was carried there in the arms of his mother’s closest friend, and Susan’s heart was very full as she took Evelyn’s son from her at the door of the house.

Adam Denham, she thought. Young Adam ! The baby gazed up at her, wrapped in the Shetland christening shawl which could be drawn through the circle of a wedding-ring, the shawl she had worn to her own christening twenty-two years ago.

They went along the riverside by the bridle path and up on to the road where the villagers were waiting for a first glimpse of the new baby and wondering who would be given the conventional ‘christening piece’. Evelyn held out the small parcel with tears in her eyes. She didn’t see whose eager hands grasped it, but she felt that it would be shared.

A few more paces took them to the churchyard gates, where Richard Elliott and his brother were waiting. Grisell was also there.

Surprisingly, Max walked beside Susan towards the church on its raised terrace of virgin rock high above the winding Yair.

“He looks a heavy morsel,” he commented.

Susan’s arms tightened about her half-brother.

“A very precious one,” she said.

The morning service was almost over and they stood in the vestry, waiting to go in. Susan saw Evelyn slip her hand into Richard’s, and he responded swiftly and silently, keeping her fingers imprisoned in his until they filed into the church.

Every pew was full to its utmost capacity. People from each corner of the parish had come to see Adam Denham christened. Susan was aware of Max and then not aware of him as the simple ceremony proceeded to the final blessing. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make His face to shine upon thee and give thee peace.”

Adam Denham! The words ran through the quiet church like the sigh of a breeze or a whisper from a long way off. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee ..."

Evelyn took her child from the minister’s enfolding arms, standing for a moment just where she was, looking: down at him, Then, once more, they were out in the sun, walking slowly between the rows of villagers towards Richard’s waiting car. Susan and Richard shared the back seat with Evelyn, while Max drove and Grisell sat in front with him. She was quieter than usual and noticeably pale.

The small luncheon party which followed at Denham had been chosen by Evelyn to avoid a larger gathering. “Only family”, she had said determinedly. “It’s that sort of day.” But it seemed that the Elliotts were ‘family’, at least as far as Evelyn was concerned, and even Grisell looked pleased by the admission.

Young Adam kept Susan busy. He had a powerful pair of lungs and evidently decided that quiet half-hour in church must be accounted for later. He had also missed his morning outing in the pram, and he let them know about it.

Shortly after two o’clock Max made his excuses, taking Grisell with him in Richard’s car, and Susan took the baby for a walk, leaving Richard and Evelyn alone.

When she returned she half expected them to have news for her, but they were still sitting where she had left them on the terrace, looking contented if not overwhelmingly happy.

One day, she thought, they’ll marry. It can’t be long delayed.

The aftermath of great events is often felt as an odd sort of vacuum, and the days which followed the departure of the film company and Adam Denham’s christening were no exception. Susan worked at the mill from nine until five o’clock, following up the new designs and despatching the revised catalogues to their customers in the knitwear trade and also automatically thinking ahead to the spring.

Yet it was too far ahead to plan with any certainty. Max was an enigma to her, and although she tried to forget about Grisell’s treachery, the younger girl remained a visible thorn in her flesh. It seemed that Grisell was still mainly concerned with her own desires.

Lilias had gone back to Edinburgh with Steenie Armstrong and the film unit, but she was likely to return to Yairborough when the final scene was shot.

The weather turned sour and only Fergus seemed inclined to visit them at Denham House. For the first time in many months he spent an afternoon under their hospitable roof the following Sunday without renewing his proposal of marriage to Susan.

"It’ll soon be the rugger season,” he reflected gloomily. “I don’t think I’ll play this year.”

“What? And disappoint Grisell?” Evelyn was poking fun at him. “She’s quite sure you’re going to look every bit as handsome as Young Lochinvar in your rugger strip!”

Fergus glanced quickly in Susan’s direction.

“Grisell’s too impressionable,” he said without much conviction. “I told her I might not play but we could go to a match or two.”

“She’ll love it,” Susan remarked indifferently, at which he seemed relieved.

“I wish she would get this film thing out of her system/’ he said. “She can’t think of anything just now but doubling for Lucy Ashton in the moor scenes. Have you heard when they’re coming back?”

“Next week,” Evelyn informed him promptly. Evelyn, who knew everything!

“When, exactly?” Susan asked.

“Friday, to get a full day on Saturday. They mean to do the ‘wedding dole’ scenes outside the church—six herrings, a morsel of beef and a sixpence! How’s that for generosity to the needy poor? Steenie wants to get rid of most of his extras before Saturday,” she ran on. “Richard thinks he must be getting budget nerves!”

“That I shall have to see !” Fergus declared. “Irritable, irrational, anxious, perhaps, but never nervous!”

“People don’t always register their emotions openly,” Evelyn reminded him. “Take Max,” she added with some deliberation. “He’s been worried about Elliott’s lately and anxious about other things, too, but he just wouldn’t show it. For Richard’s sake, I expect.”

Susan agreed that Max had every reason to be worried about his niece, if he knew about Grisell, but she could not understand his concern about Elliott’s. It was a thriving business, and surely Denham’s would soon catch up. If he would take her into his confidence more often...

A small, harsh laugh broke from between her lips, making Fergus glance at her in surprise. Evelyn, however, seemed able to read her thoughts.

“We all need each other,” she declared. “Even Max isn’t infallible.”

Fergus rose to go.

“I’ll walk to the stables with you,” Susan offered. Evelyn picked up her mending.

“See you soon, Fergus,” she suggested.

They crossed the hall and went out into a fine smirr of rain which jewelled Susan’s hair with a myriad crystal drops and clung to the downy softness of her cashmere suit. To Fergus, who had already relinquished his fondest dreams, she looked, and still was, wholly desirable.

“You’ve changed your mind,” Susan said when they had reached the stables. ‘‘You’re going to marry Grisell.”

“If she’ll have me.” He kept his hands clenched by his side as he looked at her. “I know I haven’t a chance with you now.”

“No,” Susan said under her breath, “I’ll never change now.”

“I can’t think what you see in him!”

Her startled glance flew to his.

“Max Elliott,” he said.

“There’s nothing—” She clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling. “Nothing between us,” she added.

He looked incredulous as he moved towards his car.

“You wouldn’t think it was just a few months since they first came here,” he said.

“No.”

They stood awkwardly, facing one another.

“I ought to go,” he said at last. “Are you coming up to the peel on Saturday morning?”

“I may do.”

He put out his hand, as if to touch her, and then he draw back.

“I’ll see you there, Susan,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to see the final scene of the film being shot or not. It wasn’t the ending to the Bride’s story—that had been filmed at the Carse long ago—but it was the end of something she had enjoyed. The last act in what had been a happy companionship. She had got on well with Steenie and the camera crews and the script-writers, and the stars had been very pleasant company. The whole romantic interlude had been woven into the pattern of Denham House and the Carse, binding them together, it seemed. Yet probably she would go to see the final act.

It was a bright, clear morning and she rode up to the peel tower early, although not early enough to beat the advance party to their final location on the moor. They had put up at the Hawk and Jesses in the village the night before and everything was ready for the first rehearsal by eight o’clock.

Grisell, in her role of stand-in for Barbara Gresham in the riding scenes, was early on the spot, riding up through the heather on Hope’s Star. It was the kind of horse Steenie needed, sturdy and noble in appearance, with the white mark between the dark, intelligent eyes which had given Hope’s Star her name. Grisell seemed to have little difficulty in handling her now, but the mare put up her head and whinnied when Susan came into view.

“She still loves you,” Grisell said. “Better than she does me!”

“She’s your horse,” Susan answered. “I’ve got to forget about her.”

They stood about, idly waiting for instructions because Susan had been persuaded to take part in the procession.

“It’s terribly irksome,” Grisell declared, looking about for someone. “All this waiting. Have you seen Fergus?”

“Not yet, but he’ll be here.”

“To see you?”

“No, he’s changed his mind about me.”

Grisell glanced at her suspiciously.

“I wish I could believe that,” she said as Steenie came up.

“Now, girls, you know what I want you to do,” he said. “After the scene with the hawks, you’ll ride down from the tower. Keep in a straight line. You’ll see the cameras, and I want you, Grisell, to ride close up and then go between them at a fair gallop. You get me?” he added doubtfully.

“Yes, I understand,” Grisell told him. “Do you want us to ride together?”

“Yes, but Susan will fade out about half-way down. You’ll come to the close-up alone.”

Susan recognised Richard in the small knot of spectators as they rode up to the tower.

“Your father’s over there, Grisell,” she said.

“I wish he wouldn’t come to look on,” Grisell grumbled. “He makes me nervous. The truth is, he thinks Hope’s Star is too much for me.” Her chin tilted. “I’ll prove him wrong this time!”

“Don’t do anything rash,” Susan warned, “though Hope’s docile enough in the ordinary way. Keep her on a tight rein, all the same, when you come up to the cameras.”

“I suppose we’ll have to go over this about a dozen times to get it right,” Grisell mused. “It gets boring after a while.”

“Yet you still want to do it?”

“Oh, it’s fun, in a way!” Grisell urged Hope’s Star to a gallop up the easy incline to the tower. “Imagine how far people rode in those days,” she added, looking towards the distant contours of the fells. “Miles and miles and miles! Mary, Queen of Scots, used to hunt down here with the Earl of Bothwell before she married him. I wonder what he was really like. Fergus says he was a ruffian, for all his grand tides, but Nellie thinks he must have been a 'braw young man’ to attract the Queen. I’ve been to Hermitage,” she added, “but it’s all so different now.”

“You need imagination,” Susan pointed out, “to see it as it used to be, but I think you’ve got plenty of that.”

“Sure!” Grisell smiled. “I can imagine myself in all sorts of roles!”

They waited for their cue, galloping down towards the cameras when Steenie gave them the signal, and Susan rode off at a tangent when she reached the clump of rocks which the assistant director had pointed out as a convenient place for her exit.

“Not too bad,” said Steenie when they reached him. “Now, up you go again and we’ll try once more.” He glanced down towards the road as a car drew up. “The stars are with us! I don’t want to keep them waiting any longer than I can help.”

There was a great deal of confusion on the road, cars reversing and turning in confined spaces, and someone high on the hill beside the ruined peel tower set a hawk free from its confining jesses. It zoomed down in a long curve, hovering for a moment almost directly above them, and then it plummeted to the earth to seize its prey. Hope’s Star reared up on her hind legs as it passed her, neighing wildly, and Grisell, taken completely by surprise, was just that fraction of a second too slow in her effort to control her. She bolted, her hoofs cutting a swathe through the heather as she ran, her frenzied pace increasing as soon as she reached the open moor.

Susan saw Grisell slip sideways in the saddle and heard a swift gasp from the crowd as everybody turned to look. She was first to act. Urging her own horse to a gallop, she set off towards a group of pines at the foot of the steep incline where she felt sure she could intercept Hope’s Star’s precipitous flight. At first the frightened mare had galloped uphill, but soon she would turn and come down and Susan had to be there first. If Grisell’s foot had slipped from the stirrup at the moment of takeoff her life would be in danger. It was as simple as that.

The two horses were almost level when they reached the pines, but suddenly Hope’s Star veered away. Susan wheeled her own mount round to follow, calling softly to the other horse.

“All right, Hope! Nothing’s going to harm you.”

She saw Grisell’s face for a moment, strained and white but somehow determined, as she tugged at the rein, and then the mare seemed to swing violently towards her, crushing her into the wooden fence which encircled the plantation.

The trees appeared to turn upside down, she felt a searing pain in her side, and the sun danced crazily before her eyes. Then, suddenly, it seemed to go out. It was very dark.

Minutes—or hours—passed before she felt herself being lifted and carried downhill. Voices sounded above and around her, but she didn’t recognise any of them. Someone mentioned Grisell’s name.

“Will she die?” she heard herself asking in a weak voice.

Whatever the answer was, it was lost in a great sea of pain as she tried to move. It blurred her senses, leaving her limp, but she could still recognise the steady descent of tramping feet and knew that she was being carried on some kind of improvised stretcher. Before she had reached the roadway, she was unconscious.

CHAPTER TEN

THE sun seemed to be full on her face when she tried to open her eyes.

“Turn that light away,” somebody said, and she thought that it was Evelyn.

Evelyn in a strange house. Because, even before she opened her eyes fully, she knew that this wasn’t her own bed. She was lying in a room she had never seen before, with long windows from floor to ceiling curtained in rose-coloured velvet. The light, which she had taken for the sun, came from a tall lamp set on a table near the bed, and Evelyn and someone else was bending over her.

“She’s coming round,” Grisell whispered. “Oh, Evelyn, do you think—?”

“Sh-sh!” Evelyn interrupted. “Go and get some tea.”

They were left alone, Evelyn and she, in that strange, warm house.

“Where am I ?” she heard herself ask.

Evelyn’s face came between her and the light.

“At the Carse. It was the nearest place to bring you,” she explained.

“Is Grisell all right?”

"Yes.” Her stepmother’s voice was very low. “People like Grisell always land on their feet.”

“And—the horses?”

"You’re not to worry about them,” Evelyn said.

Susan tried to sit up.

“But Hope’s Star—”

Evelyn pressed her firmly back against the pillows.

“She’s lame, that’s all. She’ll mend,” she promised.

Susan closed her eyes, conscious of an overwhelming relief. It seemed a long time before Grisell returned with the tea, but when she did Evelyn rose to go.

“Susan,” Grisell said, “I’m sorry! I caused all this, and so much more. You must hate me.”

“I don’t want to hate you,” Susan told her vaguely, “and I’ve no right to be here, cluttering up Max’s home.”

“You’re a funny girl,” Grisell said. “I’ll never forgive myself for being so careless.”

“Evelyn says the horses are all right.”

“It’s not just the horses.” Grisell stood looking down at her with a rueful air. “It’s about Lilias, too. I was an idiot, and I could have wrecked everything for you and Max.”

Max! This was his home, Susan thought, but where was he?

“I must get back to Denham,” she said urgently.

“Not yet,” Grisell told her. “You have to stay here for the present, on doctor’s orders!”

“How can I when Max comes?”

“You’ll see,” Grisell said.

Painfully Susan sipped the warm tea. Her throat ached and her head felt as if it had been pounded by a sledgehammer. Her whole body seemed to be bruised.

“You must be black and blue all over,” Grisell remarked helpfully, “but thank heavens, there’s no bones broken! I guess you saved my life,” she added with a suspicion of tears in her eyes. “Thank you, anyway, Sue!”

When Susan had finished the tea she took the tray and went out, closing the door behind her. Some time later it opened again and Max came in. He seemed to fill up all the room, as he had appeared to fill the whole horizon that first day of their meeting, high up on the moor road under the Hunter’s Crag. He came straight towards the bed and stood looking down at her.

“You must hate this,” she said in a hollow voice. “Having me here, at the Carse.”

Struggling into a sitting position, she drew the bedclothes tightly under her chin as he bent over her.

“Lie still and don’t be a little fool,” he said, pressing her back against the pillows, as Evelyn had done. “The Carse isn’t going to fall down about my ears because you’re here when I least expected you.”

She gazed at him, wide-eyed, a strange little figure in her borrowed, frilly nightdress which was so unlike the practical person she believed herself to be. In the big, canopied bed she appeared swamped and somehow forlorn, and suddenly Max bent forward and took her in his arms.

“Sue, when will we ever learn?” he said, his lips close against her hair. “We ought to have known from the beginning that we were made for each other, but instead of that we squabbled and rowed like our lusty ancestors of so long ago!”

“I was to blame,” Susan whispered, hardly able to believe that she was here, in his arms, at last. “I couldn’t see beyond my little world of Denham’s and the fact that there wasn’t another Adam to carry on the name.”

“But now there is.” His arms tightened about her. “Evelyn will bring him up at Denham House, with Richard to help her for a little while.”

“It’s never been for long,” Susan sighed. “Poor Evelyn! She’s always been cheated of lasting happiness.”

“She doesn’t look at it in that way,” Max said crisply, his eyes full of admiration for her stepmother. “I’ve always admired Evelyn for the way she meets life with a smile. She’s the most resourceful person I know and I’m more than thankful that she’s willing to take Grisell in hand.”

She stirred in his arms.

“You know about Grisell—about the designs?"

“Evelyn told me part of the story and Grisell came to me with the rest of it. I expect Evelyn had a talk with her,” he smiled. “They get on together, you know, in spite of everything.”

When he had kissed her again, deeply and passionately, she sighed.

“Max,” she said, “I can’t believe all this is really happening—that I’m here, at the Carse, with you !”

“For good,” he added, bending to kiss her once more. “For as long as we live, Susan!”