Free Moreton's Kingdom by Jean S. Macleod

you won’t hear it in your room. The walls are very thick.’
    Like the walls at Glassary, she thought; prison walls, shutting out sound.
    ‘How far is Glassary?’ she asked.
    ‘Less than thirty miles. There’s no need for you to feel lost. I’ll find you a map in the morning,’ he offered.
    ‘It sounds remote,’ she suggested.
    ‘Not too remote. It’s a sizeable house with a village settlement at the head of the glen.’
    ‘Your own particular kingdom!’ she observed dryly.
    ‘More or less.’ He looked satisfied with the suggestion. ‘I take a certain pride in it, though part of my time I have to work elsewhere.’
    ‘In London, for instance?’
    ‘Edinburgh is nearer home. I’m an accountant, but Glassary has always been my first love, quite apart from being a splendid investment. I run sheep in the glen and breed cattle to please myself.’
    ‘And that’s why you want Sandy so much,’ she concluded. ‘You need the satisfaction of knowing Glassary will always bear your name, that you have an heir to inherit all you’ve built.’
    ‘I don’t think I’ve looked so far into the future,’ he said, opening the door for her.
    The hall was rapidly filling with big, tough-looking men, most of them in hand-knitted Aran sweaters and rubber boots up to their knees, looking as if they had just come off the hill. A few had made a concession to convention by donning shirts and a tie, but most of them were heavily bearded and didn’t seem to think them necessary. They were quiet men, ready to relax after a long day in the open, and they regarded her with surprise.
    Charles was quite well known to them, but they treated him with obvious respect, although they used his Christian name.
    ‘Your friends?’ Katherine suggested.
    ‘I’m glad to say.’ He walked with her to the stairs. ‘We need that sort of contact up here, and you know about friendship, I think.’
    It was an oblique reference to why she was in her present situation, she realised, remembering how he had asked what she was prepared to give to her own friendship. ‘Are you an obliging friend, Kate?’ he had asked when they had first met, and perhaps that was what he was thinking about now.
    ‘Goodnight,’ she said. ‘I hope someone will waken me in the morning.’
    ‘In case I go off with Sandy without letting you know?’ he queried with a sardonic smile. ‘I have no intention of doing that. Sleep well, Kate!’
    He had used her Christian name with a new kind of caution, but she knew that he could not be offering an olive branch. He was still suspicious of her actions in taking Sandy from London, still angry and possibly seeking revenge.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    In the morning she rose early enough, but someone was up before her. She opened her window to a clatter of pails in the paved area below and the sound of hens clucking as they gathered round the back door. The air she breathed in was cool and sweet, coming straight from the hills with a hint of pine in it, and she saw the trees marching in their neat ranks up to the skyline, clothing the once barren moorland with lush green and the paler fronds of larch.
    It was a magic world to discover after a restless night in which she had dreamed of pursuing Sandy and Coralie to the edge of a cliff where she inevitably lost them.
    Shivering a little, she washed in ice-cold spring water which had come straight off the hill without the benefit of passing through an inadequate heating system, thinking that it was obviously too early in the day to expect the luxury of hot water and that it didn’t matter, anyway. It was no more than seven o’clock.
    As she dressed she listened for the sound of movement in the adjoining rooms, but the walls were thick, as Charles had observed. Yet small children were often noisy when they first woke up in the joyous anticipation of a new day, and she wondered if Sandy had really been spirited away to Glassary in spite of Charles Moreton’s promise.
    Finishing her