so silly.
I was hoping . . . Yes, I was, I suppose. I hoped that this might happen.”
She watched him as he thought about this.
“I’m very fond of you,” he said.
“I know that.”
He lay back again and looked up at the ceiling. “I’ll never forget this. This.”
“And neither shall I. Never.
“That poem?”
She nodded. “That most gravely beautiful of poems. I told you about it before.” She would remember, too, with each memory folded and put away, like much-loved clothing in a drawer.
C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
E
TOM DID NOT SURPRISE ISABEL. She had not imagined that he would be one to sit inside and read, and he was not. Eti-quette required that guests should not be forced to participate in activities that might not be to their taste. The possibility of a walk after breakfast was raised, “but people might want to do something completely different,” Tom said quickly; what that was would be left to them. What, Isabel wondered, was completely different from a walk; only an activity that involved immobility would be completely different, and could immobility be an activity? It was a state, surely. She caught Jamie’s eye over the breakfast table; he was sitting opposite her. The breakfast table, she reflected, was the test: regret, shame, the desire to forget—such were the emotions which might emerge in circumstances like these, but they hadn’t. Things had changed between her and Jamie—of course they had—but there were none of those feelings as they sat at breakfast, only a warm fondness, something close to euphoria, or that is what Isabel felt.
“I’m going to go up the hill,” said Tom, looking out the window at the cloudless sky. “It’s about two hours there and back.”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“And there are great views up at the top,” said Angie. “You look out and you can see all the way down to . . .” She trailed off.
“You might be able to see the Eildons in the distance,” said Jamie, adding, “maybe.”
“You can,” said Tom. “Walter Scott country. And Edinburgh too—a sort of smudge in the distance.”
“Edinburgh is not a smudge,” said Isabel.
Tom smiled, and bowed his head. “Of course not. How rude of me.”
Angie looked at her watch. “I’ll walk tomorrow,” she said. “I want to go into Peebles.”
Tom looked at her. Isabel noticed that he did not seem disappointed, but then a walk was a small thing.
“Isabel?” Tom said. “Are you coming for a walk? Jamie?”
Jamie looked across the table at Isabel. He was answering Tom, but looking at her. “Do you mind if I don’t?” He gave no reason.
“Why not come to Peebles with me?” said Angie quickly. “I need somebody to help me carry heavy things. That is, if you don’t mind . . .”
Jamie smiled. “I don’t. Not at all.”
Tom turned sharply. It seemed that he was going to say something to Angie, but he apparently thought better of it.
Isabel wondered whether he was feeling annoyed about Angie’s shopping sprees; heavy purchases sounded ominous and expensive. Another racehorse? Or a large bronze bust from an antique shop? She imagined Jamie staggering under the weight of a bust of Sir Walter Scott, trailing behind Angie through the streets of Peebles. But then she wondered if it was not resentment of Angie’s shopping, but jealousy of her time and company. She T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N
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had declined to go on a walk with him and had invited Jamie to go to town with her instead, rather quickly, Isabel thought. Any man who saw his fiancee taking such obvious delight in the company of an attractive young man must feel something, she decided; unless, of course, that man was so secure in the loyalty of the fiancee that it would not occur to him that there might be anything but innocent pleasure for her in the company of the younger man.
Joe and Mimi had their own plans. Joe, with unfailing instinct, had located an antiquarian book dealer who lived nearby and had arranged for them to visit him and have lunch at the Peebles Hydro, a vast Edwardian hotel overlooking the mouth of the Tweed Valley. The walk, then, would be done only by Isabel and Tom.
“It’s not compulsory,” said Tom. “You really don’t have to traipse up there with me if you’d prefer to stay down here.”
“I want to,” she said. And she did. Angie might be unre-warding company, but Tom was not; Isabel found him intriguing. And not the least of the interest was this: Why had he become involved with Angie? Not that she could imagine that being a subject of conversation, but light might be shed on his character during the walk, and Isabel had a distinct sense that Tom wanted to talk to her. There was something in the way in which he looked at her which suggested that there were things waiting to be said. And what, she wondered, would these be?
Nothing, she decided. You’re imagining things—again.
Jamie agreed to meet Angie in the hall in fifteen minutes and went upstairs. Isabel went too, a little later, and found Jamie struggling with the zip of a light windcheater.
“It could rain,” he said, looking out of a window towards the 2 0 8
