Free The House of the Laird by Susan Barrie Page B

weeks now had been hers.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Auchenwiel, when they a rrived there, was a surprise to Karen, for it was completely unlike Craigie House. To begin with it was very large and very pretentious, and with its pepper-box towers and high walls looked like a copy of an old French chateau. Which, in point of fact, was exactly what it was, for the late Montagu Jackson, after a visit with his w ife to the South of France, had had it built on the site of a really old building which he had ruthlessly pulled down, and in the full broad light of day, with the Scottish mountains rising behind it, moorland on two sides of it, and a deep glen on the other, it looked a little astonishing.
    But when Karen arrived it was very nearly dark, and the thing that impressed her most about it was its size, and the blaze of light that seemed to be pouring from every window.
    Inside, she was met with an almost overpowering warmth from central heating, vast areas of rich, thick, crimson carpet, suits of armor that looked a little incongruous standing at the bottom of a fan - shaped staircase , and many massiv e portraits h anging on panelled walls. Her room, when she reached it had the impersonal luxury of a hotel bedroom—that is to say, of a five-star hotel. There was a telephone beside the bed, a suite of walnut furniture, a superbly comfortably adjustable chair with a foot-rest, and a little table loaded with magazines beside it; and the enormous built-in cupboards were so capacious that her entire wardrobe, once it had bee n unpacked, was completely lost in them.
    Aunt Horry accompanied her upstairs to her room, and bustled about making sure everything was as she had ordered it to be over the telephone before leaving Craigie House. Then when she looked at Karen she saw that the girl was utterly devoid of color, and plainly almost exhausted after her ascent of the great, sweeping staircase. She ordered her into bed at once.
    “And you can have your dinner brought to you on a tray,” she said. She lightly pinched Karen’s cheek. “I want you to be happy here, and although you ’ re bound to feel strange for a day or two, you’ll very soon get used to us, and Iain isn’t very far away, you know. He’ll be coming over to see us quite often, I expect.”
    Then with a smile which was meant to be encouraging she departed from the room, leaving Karen feeling as if she was spiritually as well as physically limp. Moreover, she felt bereft—bereft and forlorn, and as alone as she had felt when she first came out of hospital, which was absurd when she was surrounded by nothing but luxury and the excellent intentions of a hostess who loved entertaining visitors.
    She was just about to remove her clothes and climb into the truly marvellous-looking bed, with its fine fat pillows and its hem-stitched sheets, when a maid knocked, on her door and announced that she had instructions to run her a bath, and that she was also bringing her dinner up to her later on. The girl was smart and friendly—not, however, dear and familiar like Prout, or Annie, or Mrs. Burns—and she looked at Karen sympathetically before she went on her w ay to the white-tiled bathroom.
    J ust before a hollow booming noise, which Karen recognized was a dinner-gong, rose up from the hall, there came another light tap on her door, and in response to her “Come in” Fiona Barrington entered.
    She changed in to a dinner-gown of superb tawny-gold velvet, and she looked like a golden girl, especially as there was a curious snaky gold necklace about her slender throat, and on her arms gold bracelets which were inset with stones like garnets.
    She was smiling as she came into the room, and she perched herself on the foot of the bed and looked at Karen.
    “Quite comfortable?” she asked. “I must say you certainly look it, but you also look a little bit lost in that bed. There isn’t very much of you, is there?”
    “I’m a bit thin at the moment,” Karen admitted, feeling