Free The Tender Glory by Jean S. Macleod Page A

chased back on to the moor, no doubt, when the worst of the storm was over.
    She put a bottle of milk in the lobster-pot and set them down on the step. Sterne was deserted.
    On her way home she caught a brief glimpse of Huntley Daviot at the entrance to the glen. He was standing near a parked jeep, talking to another man. When the van came level with them he turned to salute her, but that was all. He looked preoccupied, and the man with him was a stranger. The jeep was parked close to the back entrance to Calders and it looked as if they had walked through the grounds.
    Could he be planning to sell the house? It was an odd hour to be showing a prospective customer over the estate, she mused, and hardly the time of the year to invest in a place like Calders, but the other man could have spent the night at Sterne.
    Driving faster than usual, she was back at Craigie Hill as the postman turned in from the road.
    “I’ll take the letters up, Dan,” she offered to save him the extra walk to the house. “It’s a lovely morning, isn’t it?”
    “As fine as you’ll ever see!” he agreed. “We’ll be in for a spell o’ good weather now.” He handed over the mail. “There’s one from Wick, from the hospital. Will it be to say they’re takin’ your mother in?”
    Alison’s heart lurched.
    “I wonder,” she said, taking the letters from him. “She’s been waiting for word.”
    “The other one’s from Canada.”
    “Yes—yes, I see.” Her heart was pounding now, drumming in her breast like the waves against the headland out there under Sterne. “I’ll take them in.”
    Clutching both envelopes tightly, she drove round the gable end of the house into the yard. They had come together, the two letters her mother had been waiting for. On from the hospital and the other from her son. Kirsty eyed them with frank curiosity.
    “Dan Linklater would be telling you who they were from before he handed them over,” she observed dryly, “and the news will be all through the glen if there’s one from abroad.”
    It was Kirsty’s way of asking.
    “There is one, Kirsty,” Alison told her. “From Canada.”
    “And high time, too!” Kirsty pursed her lips. “What’s he doing in Canada now? Young folk don’t realise how much a letter means when they take it into their heads to put the seas between them and their homes. This will mak’ your mother feel far better about going to Wick, even if he doesn’t say he’s coming back.”
    “I must take it up to her,” Alison said. “Do you think she’ll be awake?”
    “If she isn’t, just you waken her,” Kirsty advised. “That letter’s been far too long in coming.”
    Helen’s bedroom window was open, with a little wind stealing in from the sea. She sat up as soon as Alison crossed from the door.
    “Was that the post?” Her glance went eagerly yet fearfully to the envelopes in her daughter’s hand. “I thought I heard Dan’s bike. He always rings his bell when he comes up the brae.”
    Alison put her letters on the bedcover.
    “I’ll get your glasses,” she offered huskily. “There’s one from Canada.”
    But Helen chose to open the buff envelope first. “It’s from the hospital,” she said simply. “I’m to go in at once. Tomorrow, in fact.”
    Her voice sounded quite steady, but she kept her eyes on the summons she had received for several minutes before she looked
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    “We’ll have to make arrangements,” she said. “Maybe Jim Orbister could come for me.”
    “I’ll see to it.” Alison’s voice was not quite steady. “You’re not to worry about the details.”
    Helen felt for the other envelope with its Montreal postmark.
    “I wonder what he says.” Her fingers shook a little as she slit the envelope. “He doesn’t know about my operation, of course.”
    Alison turned from the bed. For weeks now she had felt that she would never be able to forgive Robin, but at least he had written. She knew that there had only been one or two