Free Semi-Detached Marriage by Sally Wentworth

that even now Simon was clinging to a
last-ditch hope that she would see the house and be willing to live there.
    He wasn't the type to give up easily, of
course, she'd always known that, and for him to have to accept defeat would be
very hard, especially as he wanted this job, wanted it badly. This weekend, if
it had done nothing else, had shown her that. And because she loved him and
didn't want to hurt him, she was reluctant for the time to come when she would
have to say that last, definite no.
    At last she couldn't procrastinate any longer
and turned to him. 'I'm ready.'
    He folded the paper neatly and stood up, looking
her over sardonically. 'You're quite sure you haven't forgotten anything?'
    Cassie flushed, knowing the barb was
deserved, but said steadily, 'No, I don't think so.'
    'Let's go, then.'
    He took her arm and led her down to the foyer
where the chauffeur was waiting. He had been waiting some time and apologised
because the car had got cold, which made Cassie feel rotten. They drove out of
Kinray and skirted the long perimeter of the construction site, the house being
to the south of the oil terminal.
    The morning was cold and frosty but very
dear, and as they drove the sun carne out, turning the frozen puddles at the
side of the road into eye-dazzling mirrors. Once past the construction site,
they turned off the new wide highway that had been specially built to supply
it, on to a much narrower road only wide enough for cars to pass at special
places every quarter of a mile or so where the road had been widened. The road
wound through a kind of pass between the hills, hills that were dark grey and
inhospitable, the white of snow nestling in the deeper fissures of rock where
the sun didn't penetrate. There was very little flora on the hills, just the
dry brown sticks of heather plants, their flowers long faded.
    As they rounded the shoulder of a hill, the
car descended into a valley, and to her surprise Cassie saw that there were
trees there, mostly firs and evergreens, growing in an area sheltered from the
wind. The road ran through them and then turned in between stone pillars
leading up to a house. The road didn't go past the entrance, it led only to the
house. They came out of the trees and Cassie saw the sea on her right, with a
long open sweep of land leading down to it, bordered on both sides by the
gentle slopes of the hills. She was sitting on the right-hand side of the car
so had a perfect view as they drove along, and she didn't even turn to see the
house until the car drew up outside and the chauffeur got out to open the door
for them.
    The house was the type that you either fell
in love with immediately or couldn't stand at any price. It was built of the
same grey stone as the hills, mellowed by time and its harshness softened by
the rich greenness of ivy, and had a front door set into a sort of rounded turret
to one side. It was old, probably eighteenth or early nineteenth century, and
three-storied, with the top storey windows set into small gables in the roof.
The original windows in the rest of the house were also small, probably to let
in less of the sea winds, but some on the ground floor had been enlarged at
some time and there were also patio doors set into a corresponding turret at
the other side of the house, leading into a garden. Not so much a garden in the
English sense with neat flower beds, lawns and shrubberies, but a long expanse
of rough grass hedged on each side by wilderness-like areas of spindly trees
and rhododendron bushes, but with the view to the sea left open and
uninterrupted so that the smell of it came clear to Cassie's nostrils on the
light breeze.
    A woman had come to the door at the sound of
the car and for a moment Cassie thought she was going to have the embarrassing
experience of meeting the woman whose husband Simon had been asked to replace.
But it was soon made clear that the woman was only the maid.
    'Mr and Mrs. Richards are at the kirk,' she
informed them in