Land of Heart's Desire (23 page)

“There’s just one question, Chris,” he said. “Are you still in love with him?”

“No.” Her reply came without the slightest hesitation, strong and assured in the waiting silence. “I don’t think I ever was. Hamish always had a—sort of fascination for me, a romantic fascination, I suppose it was. He was handsome and gay and devil-may-care, and in some ways he could make you feel a sort of queen. That was his charm, I suppose, but it was all so—so false. He had used it so often that it was just a habit, but I didn’t understand that. Even in my schooldays I thought it would be wonderful to be loved by Hamish—until I discovered how hollow he really was.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her, aware that there was little more she could say. “I had to tell you this,” she confessed miserably, “because of the bridge—because what he did was possibly my fault, too.”

He looked down at her with a sudden, fierce light in his eyes.

“Need, you tell me?” he asked. “All I want to know is that you are not going to marry this man, that I was right when I thought you never would.”

“Finlay!” she gasped. “How could you have known a thing like that?”

“Intuition, primarily, I guess!” He stretched forward, one hand still on the wheel, the other drawing her slowly and purposefully towards him. “Intuition,” he repeated, “and the powerful, reciprocal urge of love.”

Before she could answer, he had bent her head back and kissed her, full and possessively, on the lips, a long, hard, demanding kiss which gave her no room for doubt, a man’s kiss with the salt tang of the sea behind it as the wind swept up from the Rhu Dearg to fold them in its swift embrace.

“Finlay!” Christine whispered at last, trembling close to tears. “I never dreamed this would happen...”

“Why not? Didn’t you know we had to share Croma right from the very first day we met? I knew then,” he added, holding her close when he was forced to give his attention to the wheel. “I knew you were for me just as surely as I knew that all the time that had gone before was wasted time. I was in love once—or thought I was—but I sensed that Carla wasn’t right for me or for the land. She was the brittle product of a town, and so many other things besides. But you were Croma, the island I bought because of a dream.”

“Finlay,” she said, holding his arm tightly about her, “we belong here. We’ll go away sometimes, so that we can come back and see how lovely it is and know with certainty that we want to stay! We’ll build up your dream together.”

“And what a lot of building we still have to do!” he said, kissing her again. “But, first of all, there’s the gap in the causeway.” He slewed the helm round a degree or two so the black head of the Rhu Dearg was directly on their beam and they were facing the ford. “We’ve got to complete it and remake the road to the Port, and after that we’re going to open the mill up there in Erradale and fix our London showing of the tweed and rake in the resultant orders so that more folk will come back to Croma and the island will be young again. Then we can bring our kids up in freedom and love. But first of all,” he added with a brief, one-sided grin, “we’ve got to find a preacher and ask him to marry us! There’s no point in living one on either side of a divided island, is there?”

“None at all!” Christine looked up at him, her eyes shining through happy tears. “But what will everybody say—Joe and the Simpsons and the Albrights—and Jane?”

“Jane and Joe will get married pretty soon, I think,” he said immediately. “They kind of took to each other on sight as soon as Joe got here. He means to stay, I guess. I’ll offer him the management of Ardtornish and you and I will stay at Erradale and look after the mill.”

“Finlay,” she asked with a small, sparkling smile, “did you always want to live at Erradale?”

He looked down at her and grinned.

“I always thought it was the better house!” he admitted, drawing her hand firmly through his arm. “Jane and Joe and Rory will get on all right at Scoraig.”

“You plan everything,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his coat, “just the way you want it!”

His face sobered.

“Not really,” he confessed. “At one time, Chris, I thought I had lost you—for good. When you told me, and Rory confirmed it, that you were going to marry Hamish I felt that the world had folded up under me. There didn’t seem to be much point in Croma or anything else without you. It would have been an island divided in the fullest sense of the words if that had happened.”

Christine drew his head down towards her and kissed him gently on the cheek.

“I must always have loved you,” she said, “even in the beginning when I couldn’t—wouldn’t see eye to eye with you! Perhaps a sense of conflict isn’t such a bad thing, after all. At least one is aware of the other person—vitally aware. You just can’t dismiss them without a second thought!”

“And second thoughts are invariably best,” he assured her. “Come and have a last look at our causeway before we sail past!”

Still held close against him, and with the wind in her face, Christine looked towards the shore. The tide was out and the whole length of the new causeway stood sharply silhouetted against the long stretch of wet white sand, with the faint amber glow of the sunset’s aftermath still showing through between the supporting piers.

“Finlay,” she said, her eyes full of a new wonder which matched the wonder of their love, “I’ve discovered something. Even without the causeway, Croma was never a divided island. It has always been one. The ford was just a—temporary gap!”