Free Prisoner of Love by Jean S. Macleod Page A

Rauiri blocking your way!”
    “I think they were just as surprised to see me as I was to see them,” Laura smiled. “One doesn’t expect company so far up on the moor. As a matter of fact,” she added, “I was rather afraid a little way back. A colossal bird came streaking down out of nowhere, and for a moment I imagined it was going to attack me, but it shot off with something else!”
    “It would most likely to be a kestrel—or a hoodie crow!” He smiled, looking at her with frank curiosity in his eyes. “Where are you from?” The direct question could only be met with an answering candor on Laura’s part.
    “Dunraven.” She glanced back down the glen. “I’ve come quite a considerable way.”
    “Dunraven?” he repeated. “You mean the lodge, of course.”
    Laura shook her head.
    “No, I’ve walked all the way up from the shore. Perhaps I should introduce myself,” she added. “I’m Laura Behar. We are here on our honeymoon, but my husband has had to return to London on business.”
    He stood looking at her, as if her explanation had left him bereft of words. It certainly seemed to have left him without his former friendliness.
    “I see,” he said, at last. “I don’t suppose it will mean anything to you to tell you that I am Zachray MacKellar.”
    “I’m afraid not,” Laura answered regretfully. “I know so little about you.”
    “No,” he said, I dare say your husband forgot to mention that you had comparatively near neighbors at Garvie Lodge.”
    Laura flushed, aware of a strong current of animosity flowing beneath the words. She had liked Zachray MacKellar on sight, had felt that he might be someone to be trusted, but if there was some sort of enmity between him and Julius they could not hope to be friends.
    “Mrs. Finlayson mentioned that you lived quite near,” she told him, trying to keep her voice from sounding too stiff. “She worked for you at one time, I believe.”
    “She nursed my mother until she died.” His mouth when she looked at him was a grim, straight line, but he did not add the information that Morag had also nursed Helene. “We were all very fond of Morag, but we could not afford to keep her. My sister, Cathie, manages the house—when she is indoors at all!” he added with a return of the quick smile that completely transformed his face. “I left her fishing the upper reaches of the burn when I came up here with the dogs,” he added. “Why not come down and meet her?”
    Laura hesitated, and while she did so the decision was taken out of her hands. A shrill halloo echoed up from among the scattered birches along the burnside and a girl appeared in the grip of a salmon. Or so it appeared. She was a very small girl, short and dark, like her brother, with long flowing hair swept back from her face that Laura suspected should have been pinned neatly into a bun at the nape of her neck. But everything about Cathie MacKellar suggested a freedom only to be found on her native moors, and the salmon was clasped in her arms.
    “It’s a forty-pounder, or my name’s not Murdo MacFee!” she cried before she became aware that her brother was not alone. “I gaffed the old devil by myself, too, seeing that you weren’t within hailing distance! Oh! ”
    She broke off short and stared, as if the last person she would have expected to see anywhere on the moors was a girl Of her own age in faultlessly tailored tweeds with a town cut about them and her hands encased in hogskin gloves.
    “Oh,” she repeated a trifle lamely, “I didn’t see you.”
    “Apparently not,” her brother said, and then suddenly they were all laughing. Cathie had dropped the salmon on the rough grass at her feet to rub the scales from her hand so that they could be introduced.
    “This is—Mrs. Behar, Cathie,” Zachray MacKellar said. “She has walked up from Dunraven.”
    Automatically Laura found herself watching for the same look of shocked surprise in Cathie MacKellar’s eyes that had