If Love Be Love Read online

  ‘I shall light the fire for you before I go,’ he said. ‘There are dry peats in a box beside the hearth. Meanwhile, Don, if you go through that door over there you’ll find a scullery. In the cupboard I think you’ll find a small Primus stove which will do for you to boil water on.’

  Don, followed by the enthusiastic Linda, went through the door at the back of the room taking the torch with them. Mr. Mithras knelt before the hearth and cleaned out the old ashes. Then selecting some peats from the pile stacked beside the hearth together with some chopped wood sticks, he began to arrange them in the hearth.

  Nancy looked down at him with something like respect dawning in her mind.

  ‘This is very kind of you,’ she began stiltedly.

  ‘If that’s all you have to say may I suggest that you keep quiet and hand me the matches,’ he remarked coolly, and once again she was aware of the icy barrier of politeness keeping her at bay.

  She handed him the box. Their fingers touched and she withdrew hers quickly.

  ‘You must be a genie,’ cooed Linda as she came back into the room. ‘There’s a Primus and some paraffin oil and some methylated spirits. Don is getting it going and we’ll soon have a cup of tea. You’ll have some tea, won’t you, Mr. Mithras?’

  ‘No, thank you, Linda. As soon as this fire is going I must be on my way.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I was expected for dinner at eight.’

  To Nancy’s surprise his fire was beginning to burn slowly with more smoke than flame.

  ‘Don’t touch it. It will burn,’ he asserted as he shrugged into his leather jacket.’ And when you put more peats on make sure you build them round the glow. Bank it up well before you go to bed and it will stay alight until morning. You’ll be all right now.’

  It was a statement rather than a question and he looked directly at Nancy as he spoke. His glance was no longer lazy and dispassionate but wide open and intent, making him seem an entirely different person—a person who was interested and concerned and who knew she was tired and disenchanted. ‘Don’t be worrying,’ he added softly. ‘Everything will look different in the morning.’

  He turned and walked to the door. Don appeared from the scullery and they all crowded into the small dark hall.

  ‘You haven’t told us your name. We can’t go on calling you Mr. Mithras. It’s ridiculous after all the help you’ve given to us,’ said Don.

  The stranger opened the door and stood for a moment outlined against the starlit sky.

  ‘My name is Logan Maclaine,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Goodnight.’ He was gone and the door was closed before they had time to catch their breath. The car started with a roar and a cough and then whined away into the night.

  ‘Maclaine? That’s the name of the laird, our landlord, the fellow who wanted us to give up our claim to the croft,’ muttered Don as they returned to the kitchen where lamp and fire glowed and flickered, giving the room a cosy welcoming appearance.

  ‘Logan,’ mooned Linda, in the throes of an attack of hero-worship. ‘A beautiful name. It is music in mine ears.’

  ‘Honestly, Linda, he must have thought you were nuts, with your Mr. Mithras and all your soppy questions,’ snapped Don. ‘It’s a wonder he helped us all he did. You’re enough to frighten the most sympathetic person away.’

  ‘It was because he liked me that he helped us,’ retorted Linda spiritedly. ‘It was obvious he didn’t like Nancy. I suppose because she’s a woman ... and remember he said at the fort he liked the religion of Mithras because it excluded women. I suppose,’ she went on dreamily, ‘he’s been badly let down by a woman and he’s since avoided their society. Yes, that’s it. That’s why he looked so sad when I first saw him. What a wonderful idea for a story! I shall start writing it at once. Where did I put my pad and pencil?’

  ‘You left them in our car,’ snapped Nancy, finding that she was annoyed at Linda’s suggestion that Logan Maclaine had not liked her.

  ’Which is a good thing, because you can just set to and help me to make a meal. He can’t possibly be our landlord, Don. He doesn’t look like a farmer for one thing ... and I don’t think he’s old enough to be the laird,’ said Nancy. But to her own ears her arguments sounded completely unconvincing as she tried to stave off a growing suspicion that the dark stranger who had helped them was in fact the man whom Mr. Roberts had described as being a stickler for punctuality and who had already a bad impression of the Allans.

  ‘Then he’s probably K. L. Maclaine’s son,’ returned Don equably. ‘Come to think of it, if he was the laird he wouldn’t have treated us so kindly, if what old Roberts said about him was true. Logan Maclaine,’ he reiterated slowly. ‘It has a familiar sound, and I still have a feeling that I’ve seen him before, in a photograph in a newspaper. Maybe it will come to me soon.’

  It rained in the night. That was when Nancy discovered that the roof leaked. She and Linda had chosen to sleep together in their sleeping bags on the big old-fashioned bed in the room at the top of the stairs. It had been impossible for them to air the beds because they had been too tired to heave the mattresses down the stairs to the fire and they had no other means of airing. After feeling the bedding Nancy had decided that they would come to no harm if they stripped off the blankets and lay on the beds in their sleeping bags.

  Although she was tired she did not sleep at once. She lay curled up, envying Linda who had gone to sleep as soon as she had lain down. At first when she closed her eyes she kept seeing the winding road through the mountains coming towards her. Then she began to think of the coincidence of their meetings with Logan Maclaine. He must be the laird. It all fitted in so neatly. Hadn’t he told Linda that he had driven up from London the day they had met him at Housesteads? Then to-day he had driven from Glasgow. He had been known by Duncan Macrae who had referred to him with respect. He had known about the key above the porch door, about the oil lamp and the Primus stove. And he had known how to light a peat fire. And what was so exasperating, he had known he would not be going out of his way if he conveyed them to the cottage because his own house was a few miles away along the road.

  Nancy ground her teeth with embarrassment. How he must have been laughing at them, at her in particular. But why hadn’t he told them who he was?

  Rain pattered on the roof and the window panes. Raising her head, she looked at the uncurtained window. The stars had gone, obliterated by cloud.

  ‘Everything will look different in the morning,’ Logan Maclaine had said, as if he had guessed she was fed up with the oil lamp and the peat fire. He had been offering comfort in his own way, she supposed, and yet Linda had said he didn’t like her. Was dislike the reason for his insolent attitude towards her? Not that it mattered, because the dislike was returned in full measure. She didn’t care at all for men with heavy-lidded eyes who kept their emotions hidden behind a facade of icy politeness and who didn’t think it necessary to introduce themselves. He was probably sufficiently arrogant to assume that they recognised him. But why should they recognise him? Nancy’s thoughts grew muddled as sleep began to claim her.

  Plop! In a second she was wide awake again, convinced she had felt something wet on her cheek. She waited tensely and it happened again—right on her nose, this time. She reached for the torch which Logan Maclaine had left for their use, clicked it on and shone it at the ceiling. It lit up a brown mark which she recognised as a damp patch. As she stared at it a globule of moisture formed and dripped on to the bed.

  ‘Nancy!’ Don’s hoarse whisper from the direction of the door made her jump. ‘The roof leaks.’

  ‘It leaks in here too. Better move your bed so that you aren’t under the drips. I’m moving closer to Linda.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you that I’ve remembered who he is.’ Don went on as if prepared for a midnight talking session.

  ‘Who ... who is?’ groaned Nancy. ‘Oh, please save it till morning, Don. I’m terribly tired.’

  ‘Logan Maclaine,’ he persisted, ‘He is ... or rather he was .
.. a racing driver. There were two Maclaines who raced—he and his brother. They used to drive in Gland Prix races as well as rallies. Then two years ago the brother was killed. This one pulled out of racing, and everyone said he’d lost his nerve.’ Don yawned noisily. ‘I’m glad I’ve remembered. Couldn’t sleep until I did. Goodnight, Nan.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Everything did look better in the morning. The rain had given way to clear pale blue skies. Across Loch Arg four mountain peaks presented a variety of colours ranging from sandy brown which merged with rose pink through sage green to lavender grey. The water of the loch was still and smooth, reflecting every detail of the mountains and of the dark pines and white cottages which nestled at their feet.

  A little breeze rippled the water and the reflected mountains shivered and blurred. The movement roused Nancy from her reverie. She was standing on the narrow shingle shore below the cottage. Allan croft was situated on the favourable south-west tip of the peninsula. It was protected from the onslaught of wind and sea in bad weather by a long rugged island which ran out from the end of the peninsula across the entrance to the loch.

  Slowly Nancy turned her back on the magnificent views of mountains and sea and walked across the rough spiky grass to the small green gate set in the drystone dyke which ran round the garden of the cottage. The house was neat and unpretentious. It had a plain front door set in a little porch which was built at right angles to the main building. On either side of the porch were plain sash windows. Above, two dormer windows perched on the slate roof. Behind the house stretched the land which formed the croft, four fields stretching upwards towards the low craggy hills. To the right was the byre which had once been the original ‘black house’ or thatched crofter’s house. It was small and squat and hugged the ground.

  It was the garden which amazed and delighted Nancy. She realised that it must have been created by her grandfather. It gave an impression of being entirely natural, but she guessed that every bush and shrub had been planted carefully and had been tended with love. Now it presented a tangle of winter-bleached grass through which crocuses had recently struggled to bloom and where now a drift of wild daffodils nodded their pale heads. A group of rowan trees crowded in one corner of the garden and a shrubbery made of rhododendrons darkened another. Gooseberry bushes, gnarled and spiky, were grouped above a rockery which separated one part of the garden from another. Below the bushes were three grey beehives around which Nancy skirted carefully as she made her way to the front door.

  Even though it was only April the garden was warm and sheltered, and Nancy decided to bring the bedding out and hang it on the clothes line to air. While she hung blankets she noticed another white house similar in style to the Allan house, set on a green knoll to the right. There was no wall around it and no garden. In the field behind it two brown Highland cows grazed and higher up where the fields sloped to grey boulders there were white blobs of sheep and lambs.

  It was quiet, not just the quietness of Sunday but the quietness of a land empty of people. Yet people had once been there—the ruins of the cottages on the crofts beyond the house to the right were evidence of that. And Nancy had the oddest feeling that the spirits of the people who had once lived there lingered amongst the hills and hovered over the limpid sea.

  The throb of a car engine broke the silence. Nancy tensed, but the sound was different from that made by Logan Maclaine’s car. She watched the narrow road where it crossed the burn beside another whitewashed cottage. A blue estate car appeared, turned the corner and stopped in front of the garden gate. A tall angular woman with blue-rinsed grey hair got out of it. She was neatly dressed in a heather-coloured tweed suit.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said in a crisp decidedly English voice. ‘I’m Mary Maclaine. You must be Nancy Allen. When Logan told me why he was late for dinner last night I was quite annoyed to think he had allowed you to come here to sleep on damp beds in an unknown house. I told him he should have invited you to stay at the lodge for the night ... and he gave me one of his stares and said, “If you had met Nancy Allan you would know why I didn’t invite them.” ’

  Nancy was astounded by this speech. Whatever could Logan Maclaine have said about them? He must have given a bad impression of her in particular.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said haughtily.

  Mary Maclaine smiled, a sweet, faintly mischievous smile.

  ‘Did you look at him like that, and speak to him like that?’ she asked. ‘He didn’t invite you to stay at the lodge, so he told me, because you would have refused. So I just had to come and see you—to see the one woman who could refuse Logan. By the way, I’m a cousin by marriage. My husband is Keith Maclaine, cousin to Logan’s father. How do you do.’ She thrust out a hand and shook Nancy’s heartily. ‘Now that I’ve straightened that out I’ll give you the food I’ve brought over. Logan said your car broke down and that you were only able to bring a few things in his car.’

  Rather bewildered by this managing but likeable woman, Nancy was persuaded to accept two dozen eggs, a piece of bacon, a joint of beef and several pints of milk which she was assured had come from the Allans’ own cows.

  ‘They’ve been kept at the Lodge farm since your grandfather died. Logan is bringing them over this morning,’ explained Mary. ‘The hens will have to come in the Land-Rover some other day. No one works on a Sunday, you see. That’s why Logan is bringing the cattle himself. You’ll need this butter too ... and these potatoes and vegetables, I expect.’

  ‘Don and Linda, my brother and sister, have set off for the Lodge to see if anyone knew anything about the cattle and to collect them if possible,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Well, they haven’t got very far, I can tell you that. I saw them exploring the old broch.’

  ‘Oh, how typical of Linda!’ commented Nancy. ‘What is a broch?’

  Mary frowned a little and then said,

  ‘That’s a good question, and it would be better if you asked Logan. He’s very good at history. He once told me, but I can never remember details. All I know is that the people who built them lived in this round building, animals and all. Can’t say I’d have liked it—most insanitary. You know, I’m rather glad you’ve come here.’

  Nancy blinked. It was the first sign of welcome she had received since she had arrived at Lanmore.

  ‘It’s very nice of you to say so. Last night we were beginning to feel as if no one wanted us here.’

  ‘Hmmm, I can imagine. Did Logan try to freeze you? I know he was concerned about your brother coming to live on the croft. He had a feeling that someone from a city would be no earthly use and would let the land deteriorate, and he wants to stop that from happening. You’ll be company for him.’

  Again Nancy blinked. Mary Maclaine’s abrupt statements were somewhat confusing.

  ‘In what way?’ she asked.

  ‘It will be good for him to have young lively people around who need his help when he lives here. When he stays in London it’s a different matter because he has his racing friends there ... and then there’s Anya. But when he’s here he’s alone in that big house, and I think he broods about the accident still. You know about that, of course?’ She shot a bright blue glance in Nancy’s direction and Nancy, who was by now completely swamped by the information which was pouring out of her garrulous visitor, shook her head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. My brother said something about recognising Mr. Maclaine—’

  ‘Call him Logan, dear. Everyone does and it makes it easier for me. Logan is his second name ... his mother’s maiden name. His first name is Kenneth, like his father. Silly notion, calling boys after their fathers—always leads to confusion. His mother is Deirdre Logan ... the poetess, you know. She lives in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. Has been there for years. She and Kenneth didn’t hit it off, so they separated. She let him have the upbringing of the boys, which is just as well, because she hadn’t a maternal instinct in her. Now, what was I going to tell you?’

 
‘About the accident.’

  ‘That’s right. Logan has been mad about cars since he was seventeen. Raced whenever he could ... much to his father’s annoyance. Kenneth thought that Logan, being the eldest, should concentrate on being a good landlord and farmer. It might not have been so bad if Angus, Logan’s brother, hadn’t followed in his footsteps. Strange, isn’t it? Very often brothers do the opposite to each other. But Angus always had to try and go one better than Logan. They were very close friends, as well as being close in age. I always have a feeling that Logan considers himself guilty of Angus’s death.’

  ‘How did the accident happen?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Their cars collided during a race. Angus’s was thrown down an embankment and it burst into flames. Logan tried to free him and was badly burnt. Angus died on the way to hospital. It shocked Kenneth, and he never really recovered. He died last year. I don’t think he ever forgave Logan either.’

  ‘But what was there to forgive?’ exclaimed Nancy.

  ‘Logan lived, but Angus the favourite didn’t. If Logan hadn’t taken up racing Angus would not have raced either. Kenneth was a rather hard man. Angus was his soft spot. Anyway, he died and Logan inherited all Lanmore, one of the biggest farms in the Western Highlands, as well as quite a fortune. He’s a very wealthy man.’

  Again she shot a bright inquisitive glance in Nancy’s direction as if she expected this piece of information to bring forth a comment. But Nancy had never been impressed by wealth and instead she said, thinking of the death of a disappointed old man,

  ‘How sad!’

  ‘Yes. And what was worse, Angus was married ... to Anya. For a while we thought it was going to be Logan and Anya, because Logan met her first. But he always said he would never marry while he was racing, so it was Angus who married Anya. They had six years together and one child. Now I’m wondering if it’s going to be Logan and Anya after all. He’s been going to London quite a lot recently. She’s an actress—Anya Baron. You may have seen her on T.V.’