The pleasure he’d felt in his momentary victory evaporated. “I’m sorry, hen. I didna mean to hurt ye.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“Because it’s not right the man should lie to you. You deserve better—you and Chrissy.”
“And you’re going to give us that?” challenged Alison, her belligerence returning.
“I—”
“If you ever have more to offer than stable muck, Callum MacGillivray,” she scoffed at him, “you’re very welcome to let me know. But in the meantime, you can bloody well keep out of my business.”
She’d seen Hazel turn away at the last minute and go back to her room in the barn, and she couldn’t help but speculate as to the cause. It looked as if things between Donald and Hazel were not going well, but the satisfaction this occasioned Louise was overshadowed by her worry over John.
He had disappeared, as soon as the others had gone, on another of his manufactured errands. This time it was to pick up some necessary dinner ingredient from the gro-
cer in Grantown—an ingredient Louise suspected he had deliberately forgotten when doing yesterday’s marketing.
And not only did John make excuses to be away from the house, he also vanished without explanation at odd hours of the night and early morning. He must be seeing someone. There was no other explanation. But who?
The stem of a recalcitrant rose snapped in her fingers.
Swearing, Louise felt the jab of pain behind her eyes that signaled the onset of a stress headache. Her lungs felt compressed, as if she were trying to breathe underwater.
She must get out of the house or she would suffocate.
Crushing the broken rose into her apron pocket, she ran out the scullery door and across the lawn, sinking to her knees in front of the perennial border. She took great gulps of air and focused her gaze on the pink bells of the foxgloves before her until she felt calmer. Plants were something you could depend on, she’d found, unlike people. If anyone had taught her that, it had been Hazel.
Louise glanced at the barn into which Hazel had run with the urgency of one desperate for solitude. What did she know of this woman who had once been her friend?
She thought back to their first year at boarding school, both new girls, both suffering from personal upheavals.
Hazel had been a dark, bright bloom among a field of bland anemic blondness, her soft Scots voice an exotic contrast to the other girls’ flat English vowels.
While Louise suffered from the trauma of her parents’
divorce, Hazel had been entirely displaced, her history and connections severed as cleanly as an amputation.
Hazel had survived by taking on camouflage, becoming more English than the English, her accent fading year by year.
But as Hazel became more popular, she had not abandoned Louise. And as Louise’s mother drifted into far-
flung affairs, alighting less and less often on English soil, Hazel had taken her friend home with her on holidays.
Home to Newcastle, to the dark and formal suburban house that seemed less a home than boarding school, to parents as gray as Newcastle skies. Shadow people, Louise had thought them, transplants that had not taken root in alien soil.
The girls had remained friends past school-leaving, Hazel studying psychology at university, Louise working at an insurance company. Then one day Hazel had rung, inviting Louise to come with her to Scotland, just as she must have rung this new friend, Gemma. But Louise had had to wait until her August holiday, and by then, Hazel had met Donald Brodie.
In spite of the fact that the two of them were so obviously a couple, Donald had extended the umbrella of his charm over Louise as well, and the three of them had become inseparable.
When Louise’s holiday finished, she had resigned her job in London by post. She and Hazel worked together catering for shooting parties, and when business dwin-dled with the end of the season, the girls had found jobs in an estate tea shop. It had seemed as if they might go on forever, the three of them.
And then Donald had asked Hazel to marry him, and within a day, Hazel had vanished from their lives.
a-tete with Donald already, in Heather’s opinion, back at Benvulin.
Not that she was protecting Donald’s pursuit of her
cousin, Hazel, by any means—it was his courting Gemma round the distillery that got up Heather’s nose.
Crossing the wide expanse of the Spey at Boat of Garten, she soon reached her bungalow. She pushed the automatic opener that caused the heavy wooden gates to swing open, then closed them again as she stopped the car in the drive. Thick hedges of arborvitae surrounded the front of the house, and in back the garden ran down to a small, reedy loch. The house, a snug structure of white stucco with natural wood trim and a deep, overhanging tile roof, was her refuge.
Her job was demanding, requiring constant interaction with both the distillery staff and the public. When she entertained professionally she used the distillery premises, or local restaurants; in her private dalliances, she saw only men who were willing to share
Turning her key in the lock, she felt the usual rush of pleasure as she stepped into the house. A tiled entrance led to an open-plan kitchen and a sitting room, fitted and upholstered in white. The contemporary furnishings were unmarred by paintings or knickknacks. A few large potted plants drew the eye to the glass wall at the back of the sitting room that framed the view of garden and loch.
Heather went straight to the kitchen and put the kettle on. After the rich lunch and the whisky at Benvulin, a cup of tea would clear her head. She needed to think.
How odd it had felt to see Hazel again. It had been what—ten years? Since her aunt’s funeral in Newcastle, that had been the last time. Hazel had come with her newly acquired husband, Tim Cavendish, and he’d served as an effective buffer between the cousins.
The kettle clicked off at the boil, and after brewing a
cup of green tea, Heather took it into the sitting room.
She sank into her favorite chair and curled her legs beneath her, gazing out at the loch as she tried to recall Tim Cavendish’s face. He’d been a bit quiet and studious-looking, a far cry from Donald Brodie’s large exuber-ance, as if Hazel had been deliberately going against type. But if Hazel had been so determined to erase Donald Brodie from her life, why had she come back after all these years?
Of course, Heather could understand Donald’s allure—she’d not been entirely immune—but she’d been too fiercely ambitious to allow herself to fall in love with him.
The real question Heather had to consider, however, was what Hazel’s return meant to Benvulin. If Hazel decided to stay, could she be won over to Heather’s view of the distillery’s future? Benvulin was still a limited company, with Donald holding the majority of shares, but if Heather could convince him to sell to Pascal’s French group, it would give her more control. Should she try to win Hazel over, make an ally of her?
No. She set her cup down with a thump. She’d worked too hard for this to depend on anyone else, and the last thing she wanted was to be beholden to her cousin. It would be much better for everyone concerned if Hazel could be convinced to go back to London, and Heather was prepared to make that happen—whatever it took.
“I’ve some things to attend to at the distillery,” he called through his open window. “There’s only a skeleton crew on the weekend. But I will be back for drinks, and
to taste the fruit of our efforts,” he added with a salute as he pulled away.
