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“The first time we met,” he reminded her, “we spoke about Border feudin’ and fechtin’, and I guess this must be a sample of it, but it shouldn’t have to be war to the knife, Susan, unless you’re determined to fling down the gauntlet every time you see me. I’m not here uninvited,” he added a trifle grimly. “Your stepmother asked me to come.”

Evelyn appeared at the door of the study.

“Max, you angel!” she exclaimed, “I’ve never seen such lovely flowers. I’m absolutely enchanted!”

She meant what she said, Susan thought, as she made her escape. Evelyn was, indeed, enchanted!

The thought of Max Elliott’s visit to Denham pursued her for the remainder of the day, even when a batch of new yam colours came up from the dying shed for her approval. They were lovely shades, soft and muted to tone with the autumn tweeds, and her delight in them was unfeigned, but she couldn’t quite reject the thought that she might never use them. She had told Max Elliott in no uncertain terms that she could never work with him, but this was more than work. It was truly part of her. The noise of the heavy frames and the cheerful singing of the girls on the finishing machines had been woven into the fabric of her life for so long that it would be a kind of dying to go away. Yet how could she possibly stay?

At five o’clock she went home by way of Fetterburn Mains because she hadn’t seen Fergus since Evelyn’s return a fortnight ago and she had always sought the comfort of the Mains when she felt troubled. But Fergus had gone to Berwick for the day and his housekeeper didn’t know when he would return.

Disconsolately she drove back towards Denham House, but as she crossed the hump-backed bridge she saw her stepmother walking along the riverside. Evelyn had come out into the last of the afternoon sunshine for some exercise, but, by Susan’s reckoning, she had already walked too far.

Pulling up on the far side of the bridge, she went down the steep little path among the brambles to join her stepmother.

“Had a good day?” Evelyn asked.

Susan nodded.

“The new colours came in. They’re really beautiful. You’ll love the coral shade. It must have been dreamed up specially for you! And there’s a deep—almost midnight—blue, not dark but full of life,” she explained. “I can’t wait to think up a design for it. There’s a sort of challenge about it—”

She paused, because the word had conjured up too vivid a memory and the thought of Maxwell Elliott was with her again. Then, ringing out sharply on the hard surface of the road, they heard the sound of galloping hooves. They were almost under the canopy of the bridge, ready to ascend the path, when the horse and rider went over, and she saw it was Hope’s Star with the girl who had been with Max Elliott that day in Kelso in the saddle.

She held Evelyn back.

“I don’t want to meet her,” she declared. “Evelyn, I couldn’t!”

Evelyn put a hand on her arm in deepest sympathy.

“You needn’t have sold Hope’s Star, you know,” she said kindly. “Sometimes, Susan, you’re too impetuous.”

“I won’t have time for riding,” Susan said suddenly. “I mean to find a job.”

“What about the job you’re doing now?” Evelyn asked.

“That will go with Denham’s.” Susan envisaged her whole world in jeopardy because of this unfortunate take-over bid. “Someone else will do it just as well, I dare say. Perhaps even better. Designing for Denham’s was something different, though, something I always wanted to do, but it wouldn’t be the same for a stranger.”

“Leave it,” Evelyn advised. “Don’t plunge into anything in a hurry.”

“I am in a hurry,” she said. “I have to get away!” Evelyn allowed her to help her up the last steep incline on to the road, standing squarely in front of her before they got into the car.

“Even if I tell you I need you?” she asked. “I can’t do this by myself, Susan. Wherever you went, I would have to consult you. We have both got a share in Denham’s and, therefore, a responsibility.”

“It would only be drawing out the agony,” she said.

“You would be halving it for me.” Evelyn’s eyes remained steady on hers. “I wish you would stay till the baby is born.”

Susan looked back at Denham.

“You win,” she said. “I’ll stay till it’s all over.”

“I knew you would,” said Evelyn.

THE take-over at Denham’s became the talk of the countryside. Coming so quickly on the heels of the changes at the Fetterburn mill, the two were inevitably linked in the minds of most people, and Susan found herself bombarded with eager questions. Did she know the new owners? Who were they? Where were they eventually going to stay? Had they actually come from New Zealand? And why?

“This has put the baby completely in the background!” Evelyn laughed when they discussed the new wave of curiosity which ebbed and flowed around Denham House. “I’m not sorry, as a matter of fact. ‘The future Adam Denham’ was beginning to wear a bit thin as the sole topic of conversation at parties! And talking about parties,” she added thoughtfully, “we’ll have to give one while I can still move around with any semblance of decency. It really will be expected of us.”

Susan, who had finished her breakfast and was ready to set out for the mill, looked round at her in surprise.

“I do believe you’ll be busy celebrating something or other on the very night of the Big Event!” she predicted. “What would this particular party be in aid of, may I ask?”

Evelyn’s green eyes lit up.

“The merger, of course! Everybody’s dying to meet the Elliotts, as you know.”

Susan could hardly believe what she had heard.

“You mean to bring them here? To invite people to meet them at Denham?”

“Why not?” Evelyn buttered herself another slice of toast. “It’s the sort of thing we should do. They’re strangers, even though they’re Elliotts of Fetterburn.”

“I can’t imagine Maxwell Elliott accepting ” Susan returned. “He’s too bent on snapping up property and making money. His wife might, though. She seems a bit lonely, riding around on her own all the time.”

“He hasn’t got a wife,” Evelyn said quietly. “Grisell is his niece.”

“Are we talking about the same person? They didn’t look like uncle and niece to me.”

Evelyn laughed.

“You’re so utterly prejudiced about Max,” she declared. “Grisell is a bit of a problem, I understand, and Max has made himself responsible for her until her father gets here.”

“No mother?”

“No. That may be part of the problem.”

“You find out things so easily, Evelyn !”

“I’m interested in people. I like to have smiling faces all around me!”

Evelyn was very gay these days, sure of her position now at Denham House, at least until her child was born, and Susan couldn’t grudge her this happiness.

Sometimes it seemed that Evelyn’s happiness had been short-lived all her life. Her mother had died when she was five years old and her father had been killed in a train accident two years later. Brought up by doting grandparents, she had known their loving care for a year or two, but at their deaths she became the responsibility of an uncle whose wife was a chronic invalid. And so Evelyn had become a maid-of-all-work in a household where happiness was hardly known. At sixteen she had decided on a secretarial career. Her aunt was in a private nursing-home by this time and her uncle, a dedicated business man, helped her to find her first job.

Once she was on her own Evelyn had put the past behind her and, two jobs later, she had found herself at Denham’s London office, where she had eventually married the boss.

“I must go,” Susan said hurriedly. “I can’t afford to be late.”

“I’m sure Max won’t be standing behind the door waiting for you,” Evelyn smiled.

“I punch the clock,” Susan returned. “I’m not any different from anyone else these days.”

She had always believed in getting to the mill on time. The office opened at eight-thirty and she was generally there with a few minutes to spare. It gave her time to glance at her mail before the others came in or to sort through a batch of patterns which might have been left over from the day before.

Engrossed in her work, she heard the main office door open and close again, but she supposed it to be one of the overseers from the factory floor who often looked in to see if she had arrived. With the pattern-string in her hand she rose to go in search of Aaron Spottiswode, who had been foreman at Denham’s for as long as she could remember.

The door between her own office and the larger, outer one where the typists worked was of reeded glass, and instantly she became aware of a man’s shadow thrown in bold relief against it. She stepped back, her heart beating faster, her lips suddenly dry as she waited for him to come in.

It was foolish, she thought, to be standing there staring at a shadow, but for a moment she felt powerless to take the initiative because she had a good idea who it might be.

Maxwell Elliott was standing in the outer office when she finally opened the door. His back was towards her, but he turned immediately.

“I had no idea you got up as early as this,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “But now I see that I should have expected conscientiousness, at least.”

“If you’ve come to catch the office staff getting off to a bad start I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” she told him coldly. “They begin work at half-past eight and it’s twenty-five past now. They’ll be coming in at any minute.”

He lifted a ruler from one of the typing desks.

“I came to have a word with you,” he said. “About Denham’s and the Carse.”

“I’ll try to help you about Denham’s,” she agreed.

He stood waiting for her to invite him into her office. At least, Susan thought, he had acknowledged the fact that this was her private domain.

“You’d better come in,” she said, opening the door wider. “It’s in a bit of a muddle, I’m afraid. We’re on the last lap of a new collection.”

He looked about him with interest, lifting a batch of patterns here and there to compare them with the matching prints on the table under the overhead window. Susan’s easel was there, too, and she saw him glance at the sketch she was busy with, although he didn’t ask her about it,

“I think we ought to dye our own wool,” he said, coming straight to the point of his visit. “You’ve been fanning out this job long enough, and I understand Lawson’s wouldn’t object. They’re not dependent on our custom, apparently, and would be more or less glad to be rid of it.”

She bit her lip.

“You’ve certainly been busy,” she observed.

“I took a course in management,” he told her briefly. “What do you think about the dyes?”

“It’s your business,” she shrugged.

“Not all of it, Susan.” He stood directly in front of her. “It looks as if we’ll have to work together now and then, for the good of the company, and it would be better if we worked amicably.” His mouth was suddenly hard. “I came here to ask your opinion because I have no intention of worrying Evelyn about those details just now. She ought to have time off to have her baby, and I mean to see that she gets it.”

Susan dismissed his anxiety about her stepmother with a touch of impatience.

“You needn’t worry about Evelyn,” she assured him. “She’s enjoying every minute of her pregnancy, quite apart from keeping her fingers on Denham’s pulse into the bargain.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “I want her to feel happy at Denham House.”

“But one day you’ll buy it over her head?” she suggested. “I know you’ve settled for an option on it at present, but you may want to live there one day.”

He shook his head.

“Not at the moment,” he assured her. “I’m more than content with the Carse.”

“I suppose your brother will live there with you?” she found herself asking.

The smile vanished from his eyes. They were no longer mocking.

“Yes,” he said abruptly. “That has been arranged.”

“What about—your niece?”

“Grisell?” He frowned. “I hope she’ll stay there, too. At the moment she is very restless. She finds the transition from Timaru hard to bear, and she doesn’t exactly take to discipline. Not my brand, anyway.”

She looked at him in the revealing northern light from the window above their heads. His jaw seemed inflexible and his mouth looked harder than ever, yet the girl in the blue tweeds had clung to his arm, laughing. He had also bought her the best hunter in the Borders. Or so Susan believed.

“Your niece could be quite happy here,” she said involuntarily. “It shouldn’t be hard for her to make friends.”

“Will you see to that?” he asked bluntly.

“I couldn’t!” She was instantly on her guard. “I— we might have nothing in common,” she defended her refusal.

“How can you be sure unless you come to the Carse and find out?” he demanded.

“I’ve got very little time.”

“You can’t work twenty-four hours a day,” he argued. “I’ve seen you riding across the moors on occasion.”

“You’re not giving me much choice!” she exclaimed. “It’s—almost an order, isn’t it?”

“Susan, I’ve no intention of giving you orders,” he said. “Your work is essential here at the mill and, for the present, you’re needed at Denham House. You know your way about better than I do. Your designs are invaluable to the company, but you’re probably quite aware of the fact,” he added dryly.

“I’m not the only designer in the business,” she pointed out.

“As far as the company is concerned you’re the one we need,” he said. “Your undivided loyalty has been to Denham’s for years. Why change things now when we hope to go forward instead of sliding back?”

The thinly-veiled criticism sent an angry surge of colour into her cheeks.

“I’ve a fair idea what you mean to do with Denham’s,” she accused him. “We’re in business in a big way now, and the operative word is ‘change’. It’s very much in the air, isn’t it? Change, and all the things that go with it!”

He looked at her closely.

“Can you name these things for me?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re legion!”

“Such as?” he persisted.

“Crazy gimmicks, for one thing, and cheap promotions. I know the way it is,” she declared. “Sweeping changes generally run to a pattern.”