Free Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher Page B

footsteps along the upper passage. Not the quick, rubber-heeled tread of a professional nurse, but heavy, masculine footsteps. Sandy Reekie, I decided, upstairs to fill the log baskets for the invalid’s fire. I waited.
    The footsteps started downstairs. Reached the half-landing and stopped. He was silhouetted against the light of the stair window. Not Sandy Reekie, whom I remembered as wiry and stooped, but a tall man, dressed in a kilt and a thick sweater.
    “Who is it?” he asked, and then he saw me, my face tilted up to his. Our eyes met. There was a long silence. Then, for the third time that day, someone said my name. “Lavinia.”
    And I simply replied, “Rory.”
    He came on down the stairs, his hand trailing on the banister. He crossed the hall and took my hand.
    “I don’t believe it,” he said, and then he kissed my cheek.
    “I don’t believe it, either. Everybody tells me you’re in New York.”
    “I flew over a couple of nights ago. I’ve been here a day.”
    “How is your grandmother?”
    “She’s dying.” But he didn’t say it the way Stella Fellows had said it. He made it sound rather peaceful and nice, as though he were telling me that Mrs. Farquhar was nearly asleep.
    I said, “I came to see her.”
    “Where from? Where have you come from?”
    “Relkirk. I’m working there, nursing for a month. I got a day off. I thought I’d come to Lachlan. My mother told me Mrs. Farquhar had been ill, but I thought perhaps she would be getting better.”
    “There are two nurses with her, around the clock. But the day nurse wanted to go and do some shopping in Relkirk, so I lent her the car and said I’d watch out for my grandmother.” He paused, hesitating, and then said, “There’s a fire on in the sitting-room. Let’s go there. It’ll be more cheerful. Besides, you’re wet through.”
    It was more cheerful. He put logs onto the fire and the flames crackled up. I pulled off my wet anorak and warmed my swollen, scarlet hands at the blaze. He said, “Tell me about you all,” so I told him, and by the time I had finished with all the family news, I was truly warm again, and the clock on the mantel-piece struck four, so he left me by the fire and went off to put the kettle on for a cup of tea. I sat by the fire, very cosy and happy, and waited for him. When he returned, with a tray and cups and a teapot and the heel of a gingerbread he had found in a tin, I said, “And what about you? I’ve told you all about our family. Now you’ve got to tell me about you.”
    “Not much to tell, really. Worked with my father for a bit, and then when he died, I went out and joined the American office. I was in San Francisco when my grandmother became so ill. That was why I’ve been so long in getting back.”
    “You had a letter from the minister.”
    I was pouring tea. He sat in an armchair and watched me, grinning. “Lachlan grape-vine never gets anything wrong. Who told you that?”
    “Mrs. McLaren in the shop, and then Mrs. Fellows.”
    “That woman! She’s been more trouble than she’s worth. Endlessly telephoning and rubbing the nurses up the wrong way, organizing everybody, telling the Reekies what they ought to be doing. A nightmare.”
    “She told me that Mrs. Farquhar was lying like a log and there was no point in coming to see her.”
    “That’s just because she hasn’t been allowed near the house, and she’s furiously jealous if anybody else is.”
    “I’m sure she means well. At least that’s what my mother always used to say about her. Go on about America.”
    “Well, anyway, I had a letter from the minister. But I didn’t get it until I returned to New York. I had a couple of days’ work to get through, and then I lit out and came home. I’ve only got two or three days’ leave and then I’ve got to get back again. I’ll hate going, but I have to. I feel torn in half, with my loyalties pulled in two totally different directions. That’s the worst of being the only,