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On the way back, Judith heard a motor-boat approaching down the Sound, and she ran down the slope towards the slipway.

The dinghy was too slim and smart for the
Gazelle.
Then she saw Stuart and a smaller figure crouched in the boat.

Barbara had also heard the boat and raced down to the shore by the time Stuart landed, with a grimy, crestfallen Robbie.

“Where was he?” asked Judith.

“In a hay hut up in the hills. Quite a few miles away.”

Barbara had flung her arms around the sturdy figure, but he remained sullen and apparently unrepentant.

“I’ve already telephoned Andy,” Stuart told Judith. “So he’ll be on his way back soon.”

Stuart walked with the rest of the party up to the house, but Robbie had not even spoken.

“Barbara, you and Judith go indoors. I’ve something to say to Robbie.”

Reluctantly, the two girls went into the house, pacifying Susan, who had come running down the path.

“You don’t think Stuart would dare to thrash Robbie, do you?” Barbara asked apprehensively. “That’s Andy’s right, but not Stuart’s.”

Judith shook her head. She thought it was typical of Stuart that he had marched Robbie off so that they could talk man to man, without women present.

Suddenly Robbie came flying indoors, his face all smiles.

“I’m sorry, Mum!” he exclaimed. “I ought not to have gone off like that. I won’t do it again.”

“Oh, Robbie!” Barbara gathered him in her arms. “I should have told you. I should have known you were grown up enough to take it.”

“Stuart says I can come to Garranmure for holiday's, if I want to,” Robbie said eagerly. “Oh, Mum, I’m hungry!”

Judith had already set about collecting food for him, and for once nobody insisted on sending him to wash his hands and face.

Judith accompanied Stuart down to the slipway, leaving Barbara reunited with her children.

“What magic did you work?” she asked.

“Only told him that he’s too young to decide his career now. School first, then if he still wants to farm, perhaps Andy will let him go to agricultural college. By that time he’ll know if he wants to work on the land or sell shoes or sealing-wax.”

“Thank you, Stuart.”

They passed the new inn, and she realised that now she would never see the completed “Bride of Kylsaig.”

“Before you finally leave us,” he said, “you ought to come once to our little Switzerland. Snow conditions are very good at Glencoe and in the Cairngorms, and we are all very mechanised now, with chair-lifts and all mod. cons. I’m taking my mother and some guests next weekend. Will you come?”

Delight welled up in her. “Oh, I’d like that very much. I don’t know how to ski, but I’d enjoy watching others.” During the week, Neil came in one evening, accompanied by the faithful Jess.

“Farewells are in the air,” he observed. “I’ve sold out my place.” He looked across at Judith. “But perhaps when we’ve all settled ourselves in London or elsewhere in the south, we’ll be able to meet again.”

Judith took no part in the conversation until Neil disclosed that he had sold to Graham Mundon.

“Actually, Mundon’s price was lower than I could have haggled for with another buyer, but—”

“But you would rather give your farm away than sell it to Stuart,” put in Judith quietly.

“Graham has modem ideas. Kylsaig needs developing if it’s going to survive at all,” retorted Neil.

“What about the foreshore rights?” asked Andy. “They didn’t belong to you, did they?”

Neil half smiled. “No. That’s what brings the price down, of course, when our feudal lord of the isles owns most of the shore.”

“So that’s why Graham’s offer on our place fell through,” exclaimed Barbara. “Oh, what a shame!”

“He didn’t really want it, except as a speculation,” answered Andy. “His only object was to buy the land and sell it at a profit. That’s what he probably intends to do with yours, Neil. He can’t develop if he doesn’t own the foreshore.”

Judith’s eyes sparkled. “That’s what Stuart meant when he said there were snags that Graham didn’t bargain for.”

“Well, if you want to see Kylsaig turned into a museum piece,” Neil retorted, “Stuart’s going the right way about it.”

When Neil was on the point of leaving after supper, he seized a moment alone with Judith. “I know you think I’ve sold out to Graham to spite Stuart—and you’re correct! He’s vested me in everything else. I know now that I never had a chance with you, Judith, once you went for a sail round the islands with the laird.”

She gasped, but this was not the time to reveal her own weakness. “Let’s keep it friendly, Neil, for the short time we’re still on the island,” she said firmly.

At Dalkeith’s Judith inspected the sportswear department, but the assistant there, an enthusiastic skier, offered to lend ski-pants and anorak. “It would not be worth your while to buy the outfit for one week-end,” she said.

True, thought Judith. Farewells were in the air, as Neil said, and this would be the final goodbye. In the ups and downs of the last few weeks, she had almost forgotten her original intention of spending a day or so in the snow regions, but she had never imagined that Stuart would be driving her to the small Highland village, in company with his mother and two friends.

The hotel was as packed as in August, and in the crowded bar, Scottish accents mingled with Austrian, Swiss and Norwegian. Sparkling sunshine next morning sent everyone into an excited bustle to climb to the snow as fast as possible. Along the new road from Glenmore to the bottom of Coirre Cas from which the chair-lift started, a steady stream of cars bowled along, most of them with skis lashed to the roofs.

On the upper slopes, dozens of competent skiers, wearing an astonishing variety of Norwegian sweaters, Austrian hats, flower-patterned anoraks and skin-tight ski-pants in brilliant colours, came plunging down or practised Christiana turns. She watched the novices floundering to the shouted commands of Continental instructors. Then she asked herself, Why am I leaving it all? Why must I let Barbara take me on a string back to a life I don’t care for? Perhaps it was no more than exhilaration caused by clear mountain air, or the sight of the valleys lying below like a coloured map. But at last she knew, after all the shilly-shallying, that here was her true home.

She would never again be happy in the glittering, bustling cities. She wanted walks by the shores of quiet, lonely lochs, the May and June flame of rhododendron, the misty autumn in heather-covered hills. Surely, even if Stuart was not for her, then she might find true happiness in this more satisfying life.

In the restaurant at the foot of the chair-lift, Stuart’s mother beckoned to her.

“Isn’t it, all fun?” Mrs. Copeland greeted her. “I’m not expert, and it’s years since I’ve done any skiing.”

“I’m going to learn,” Judith said decisively. “I’ve made up my mind to stay in Scotland, so I might as well make use of its snow.”

Then across the room she saw Mairi with three young men. Of course! She might have known that Stuart would be meeting Mairi up here. Judith had not seen the young schoolteacher many times since before Christmas. Mairi had been on holiday in Edinburgh part of the time, and when the two girls met, they talked politely about the weather.

But now Mairi looked radiant, and not only because she was enjoying herself in the mountains; there was an inner beauty about her, which Judith realised flowered so often when women were loved.

She joined Mrs. Copeland, and Judith tried to watch unobtrusively what relationship existed between Mairi and her future mother-in-law.

After a few remarks exchanged between the three, Judith said sympathetically, “I was sorry to hear about the school, Mairi. Is it definite?”

Mairi smiled and stirred her coffee. “Oh, that’s all settled. Stuart told the education committee to come over to Kylsaig in the ferry-boat during a storm and find out for themselves what they were promising the children. Still, I would be leaving the school anyway, at the end of the summer.” She flushed slightly and raised her head towards Mrs. Copeland. “I am being married. So there’ll be a new teacher there.”

The news hit Judith like a dagger.

“Oh, honey, that’s nice!” Mrs. Copeland exclaimed.

It was an odd remark, thought Judith. One would have thought Stuart himself might have told his mother the approximate date of his marriage.

“Congratulations!” Judith managed to say.

Main’s glance travelled towards the three young men standing at the bar. One, a tall fellow with blue eyes and fierce red hair, smiled at her and raised his glass.

“That’s Lawrence,” she said to Judith. '

Mrs. Copeland rose to talk to other friends. “Lawrence?” echoed Judith.

“Yes. The man I’m engaged to. I met him when I was staying at my sister’s in Edinburgh in the summer. Wasn’t it lucky for me, that strike? D’you remember? I couldn’t go on the holiday, I’d planned—and I met Lawrence.” She relapsed into a dreamy state. “He’s nearly finished his training as a doctor.”

“But I thought you were marrying—”

“Neil?” Mairi laughed. “I was a fool, wasn’t I? Hankering after him all that time. I can tell you now—when I found he was attracted to you, I hated you. But perhaps I have to thank you now for saving me. If you hadn’t come to Kylsaig, Neil might have married me, because he knew that was what I wanted—then we’d have been unhappy. Oh, I can’t tell you how happy I am!”

Judith felt that the restaurant and all its occupants were reeling around her in a mad whirl. So Fiona, with her bright beauty, far away in London, had won after all.

Mairi beckoned Lawrence across. Judith acknowledged the introduction, mumbled a few good wishes, then excused herself and stumbled outside.

Stuart came towards her, but she hardly felt in the right mood to talk to him. So this was his way of saying farewell, too.
Give the Sassenach a memory of Bonnie Scotland in the snow!

Yet, with a courage born of sheer desperation, she would not give in and unmake that final decision. “Which is the best ski-school?” she asked. “I’d like to learn.” The laird of Garranmure would have to put up with the chance of meeting her in future winters.

“Where are you going to practise?” he grinned. “On Hampstead Heath?”

“No. Here. I’m not going with Barbara and the others. I’ll ask Dalkeith’s for my job back and live in Cruban.”

His eyes shone before his mouth smiled. “You could just as easily live at Garranmure,” he said softly. “Then you wouldn’t need your job at Dalkeith’s.”

She looked up at him. “Garranmure?”

“If you marry the man, you can also live in his house.”

Momentarily, she closed her eyes. A dream, she thought, brought on by snow intoxication, yet when his hand grasped her arm almost roughly, she knew there was no illusion.

“Well, Judith? I’m a patient man, but you’ve kept me waiting a long time for my Bride of Kylsaig.”

“But—there’s Fiona,” she stammered.

“Oh, yes, Fiona’s my pretty little watchdog. She goes around telling every girl that she intends to marry me herself. To warn them off—in case it’s the wrong one.”

“Am I the wrong one for you, Stuart?”

“No. But am I the right man for you?”

She sighed and literally fell into his arms. “Darling,” he whispered, “I love you so much that I want you to be sure that you can live my kind of life. I know that under all that glamorous sophistication, your sister really loves her husband and she tries to go his way, but it hasn’t worked. I couldn’t bear it to fail with us.”

“I won’t let it fail! I promise!”

“Sometimes I thought you’d slip through my fingers and finish up with Neil. Letting Graham get you a job so that you could stay near Neil.”

“How d’you know I didn’t take the job to stay as long as possible with Garranmure over the water? And what about you—kissing Mairi, that night when you named the inn?”

He laughed. “Poor Mairi. She was telling me all the trouble you made for her over Neil—and then about her school being threatened with closing. All I did was dry her eyes.”

“And
kiss her!”

“I hope you were madly jealous I”

“I was,” she confessed.

He tightened his grasp and kissed her. “Come along indoors. It’s too cold out here.”

Lavender shadows lay across the snowfields and the red ball of the sun quenched itself behind a mountain shoulder.

Cocooned in a warm, exciting delirium, Judith remembered only a few vague details of the rest of that weekend. Stuart’s mother kissing her and saying . . . “Darling, you will have a Scottish wedding, won’t you, from Garranmure? So much more colourful with the men in their tartans . . .”

Stuart taking her home to Garranmure and presenting her to his grandmother. Stuart talking at odd moments of his plans for Kylsaig’s future—rebuilding some of the ruined crofts, clearing the old boatyard and making a haven for small yachts and pleasure boats, starting up the lobster-sheds again.

“You could help a lot, Judith, by encouraging weaving. We’ll run the looms at a loss at first, but that doesn’t matter if we can keep the island tenanted and happy.”

He took her back to Kylsaig in his small dinghy, helped her on to the slipway and pulled her towards the sheltered wall of the inn. “Look, here’s your Christmas present.” He drew a case out of his pocket.

“But you gave me—”

“No. I’ve been saving this for you.”

On a bed of white velvet lay a delicate silver brooch set with pearls, in the shape of a spray of heather.

“They’re Scottish pearls from the Tay,” he told her. “A pearl fisherman in Perth is doing his best to make a necklace for you. Every Garranmure gives his bride Tay pearls.”

“Oh, this is beautiful!” she whispered softly, cradling the brooch in her hands.

He pinned the brooch to her coat and then held her in his arms and kissed her, ardently and satisfyingly. “Design your wedding dress soon,” he murmured.

She clung to him. “I love Kylsaig, but I want to be on the mainland with you at the same time.”

“When Barbara and Andy leave, you’ll come to us, and Granna will look after you,” he said firmly.