Free Prisoner of Love by Jean S. Macleod Page B

been in her brother’s, but instead she saw nothing but pity.
    The shock was her own then. Why should Cathie feel sorry for her? “We had no idea that Julius had married again,” Cathie said quietly, the laughter gone from her face. “Of course, we haven’t seen Morag for quite a time. She went to Skye for a holiday in May and she hasn’t been up to Garvie since.”
    “Morag has been kept very busy these past few weeks,” Laura heard herself saying. “We were married rather quickly in London. I—Julius didn’t think there was any need for a long engagement.”
    She felt awkward, explaining her marriage away to these two strangers, but Cathie MacKellar was quick to help her over the brief embarrassment.
    “Of course not,” she said almost lightly. “They’re not at all fashionable these days, are they?” She shot a quick, challenging look in her brother’s direction which had compassion in it too. “Now that we have met, though,” she added, “I hope you will come to Garvie Lodge. It’s all rather rough and ready, you will find, but we will try to make you feel welcome. You see, there aren’t very many of us living up here. Some people would feel it terribly isolated, but it isn’t, really, if you have friends and lots of interests.”
    “I could imagine that,” Laura said eagerly. “You farm, of course, which gives you a very big interest to be going on with.”
    “You’d be surprised at all the other things we do!” Cathie grinned. “But come and see! Come any day, just whenever you feel you would like to.”
    Zachray was putting the salmon in the game-bag slung across his shoulder.
    “If this fish turns the scale at twenty, you’ll be lucky!” he challenged, turning to his sister. “You’ll have to get your weight arm tested, my gal!”
    “It’s thirty if it’s an ounce!” Cathie argued. “Anyway, we ought really to hand it over to Mrs. Behar. It has been poached out of one of her burns!”
    Laura did not know what to say or how Julius would have handled the situation. This delightful pair were as unconcerned about poaching a salmon as she would have been about picking the little white spears of true heather which she had seen budding on the high moorland half an hour ago before she had watched the kestrel swooping on its prey. They were entirely natural, yet they were in no way lacking in education or poise. This was their country, and at one time there had been no recognized boundary between Garvie Lodge and Dunraven.
    Now, perhaps, things were different. She thought of Julius, wondering how he would react to the incident of the salmon, but she was certainly not going to take it back with her down the glen.
    “There must be plenty in the rivers—burns!” she corrected herself. “ And I’m all alone at Dunraven at present. Alone, that is, except for Mrs. Finlayson.”
    “How is Morag?” Cathie asked, as they walked slowly back along the path with the dogs at their heels.
    The question had eliminated Julius, Laura realized, but perhaps it was only imagination on her part to feel a sense of relief in the atmosphere once she had admitted to being alone.
    “She seems very well, and she is always very busy. This morning we made raspberry jam.”
    “They're Skye raspberries!” Cathie smiled. “Morag brought the canes with her when she first came because Helene was so fond of raspberries. Helene and I were friends, Mrs. Behar,” she added firmly as her brother dropped a pace or two behind. “It seemed the most natural thing.”
    “I’m sure it was,” Laura answered, glad, suddenly, that Helene’s name had been brought into the open at last. “I gather that her death was—rather a tragedy.”
    “It was that and more,” she said, her voice rising little above a whisper so that the man walking behind them could not possibly have heard. “It was an irretrievable loss for many of us. In some ways I feel that I shall never have another friend like Helene.”
    Yet you must