once the first few moments of awkwardness were over, they talked together easily. When he put aside the guard he had adopted, he became an amusing companion, telling her about his family—his brothers and sisters, and the struggle his mother had had to support the children after his father was killed.
‘It was one of those quirks of fate,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘He was in the Merchant Navy and went right through the war without even an injury. He was killed in 1952 when the engine of his coaster exploded on a trip from Liverpool to Newcastle.’
‘How awful!’ Abby’s eyes were wide and sympathetic. ‘Your mother must have been frantic. With eight children to support.’ Eight children, she thought incredulously. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have seven brothers and sisters. Would Luke want a large family? she wondered, and trembled at the thought.
‘I was fourteen at the time,’ he recalled now. ‘I have two brothers older than me, but the rest of the family are younger.’
‘All the same, it must be nice for you belonging to a large family,’ she murmured, half enviously, and he smiled ruefully.
‘It’s expensive,’ he conceded with a dry inflection. ‘So many birthdays.’
‘And—and yet you’ve never had a family of your own?’ she probed, amazed at her own temerity.
Luke shrugged. ‘I was married once. But it didn’t work out. We were divorced twelve years ago.’
Abby hadn’t known that. It surprised her. Although as it was twelve years since his divorce, he must have been very young when he got married. Not so easy now to bring a man like him to the altar.
‘What about you?’ he asked, his eyes narrowed and questioning. ‘Do you want to get married?’
Abby bent over the oars to hide her flushed cheeks. ‘I—I suppose so. When—when the right man asks me.’
Luke drew out a case of cheroots and placed one between his teeth. ‘Ardnalui’s not a big place. If the right man hasn’t asked you yet, surely he can’t be here. Or are you waiting, as your mother did, for someone up from Glas—–”
‘No!’
Abby shipped the oars and let the small boat drift with the current, staring out blindly across the loch. She had no intention of marrying a man like her father—a charming man, but weak, drifting as this boat was doing with the current, only struggling for survival when it was too late …
‘So what will you do?’
Luke’s voice was soft as he applied the flame of his lighter to the cheroot, and she turned to look squarely at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered, pushing her hair back from her face with both hands, drawing his eyes to the pointed swell of her breasts surging against the thin nylon material of the windcheater. ‘You tell me.’
FOR several minutes Luke looked at her, and even in her innocence, she knew he was enjoying the experience. Her heart pounded heavily, the blood thundering in her head, and her palms moistened where they rested against the sides of her neck. Then her pulses steadied when he looked away, taking the cheroot out of his mouth and saying in a curiously flat voice: ‘What do you mean?’
She took a couple of quick breaths. ‘Perhaps—perhaps I should leave Ardnalui. Aunt Ella did, and look how successful she’s been. I could go to London. Maybe I could become an actress.’
Luke’s eyes turned back to her, cooler now and more penetrating. ‘I shouldn’t advise it,’ he told her harshly.
‘Why not?’
Luke shifted restlessly, putting the cheroot back between his teeth, reaching forward to take the oars. ‘It’s time we were getting back.’
Abby stared at him frustratedly. ‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’
Luke dipped the oars into the water. ‘What time is lunch?’
She clenched her fists. ‘I shall do it, you know. Whatever you say.’
Luke heaved a sigh, regarded her tense expression for a moment, and then shipped the oars again. ‘All right, all right. If you want it bluntly, I don’t think you stand a chance of doing what Ella has done.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not like her. You need to be a certain sort of person to become a successful actress. You have to be—hard, if you like. Dedicated, ambitious! I don’t think you have that kind of ambition. If you had, you’d have done something about it before now.’
‘What could I have done?’
‘Left Ardnalui, for a start. Pushed yourself into Ella’s life, whether she liked it or not.’
Abby bent her head. ‘I don’t think she would have let me.’
‘How could she have stopped you? You’re sufficiently like her to cause quite a bit of an upset, one way and another.’
‘Do you think so?’ Abby hunched her shoulders. ‘Well, there’s still time.’
Luke regarded her compassionately. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So what am I to do? Look after the Dalrymples’ children until I’m an old maid?’
Luke half smiled. ‘You’ve a long way to go before that happens.’
‘Have I?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I really think it’s time we were going back,’ he said. ‘It must be the air here. I’m feeling decidedly hungry.’
And with that, Abby had to be content. As Luke rowed them back to the shore, she reflected that the morning had proved much more productive than the previous evening, in spite of its doubtful beginnings …
That evening, Abby had a telephone call from Scott Anderson.
Fortunately, Luke and her uncle were out at the time. Daniel McGregor was showing Luke over his church, St Cecilia’s, and Abby had been amusing herself setting out the chess pieces in the study when the phone rang.
Abby lifted the receiver tentatively. She was not wholly convinced that her aunt would not discover where Luke was and try to contact him here, and she had no desire to speak to her—yet. But it was Scott, and Abby sank down weakly into her uncle’s chair, cradling the receiver against her shoulder.
‘Now then, young Abby,’ Scott sounded amused. ‘What have you been getting up to?’
Abby shook her head, realised he couldn’t see her, and said: ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t you?’ Even faraway, the disbelief in Scott’s voice was unmistakable. ‘Did you know I had Luke on the phone again this afternoon? What have you been saying to him?’
Abby
