seat, without being too obvious about it. ‘Thanks very much. They are rather heavy.’
‘No problem,’ said the man, allowing them to precede him out of the compartment. Isobel did so, pulling Cory along after her, and stepped down on to the platform with a feeling approaching despair.
It was much colder here, she noticed at once. In London, her thin cords and Edward’s old flannel shirt, worn with a thigh-length cardigan, had been enough. Here, the cool breeze invaded the open neckline of her shirt, and whipped strands of streaky brown-blonde hair about her face. She was glad she had confined her hair in one chunky plait for the journey. She had the feeling that anything else would have come adrift.
‘Is someone meeting you?’ the man enquired, as he set her suitcases down beside her, and Isobel turned towards him with a nervous smile.
‘I—no,’ she said, glancing a little bewilderedly about her, alarmed to find that Glasgow was so much busier than she’d imagined. ‘No, I have to change trains,’ she explained, relating Clare’s instructions. ‘We’re going to Fort William, you see. Would you happen to know what platform the train goes from?’
‘Well, I know the train you want, lassie, but I think you’ll find it leaves from Queen Street,’ the man replied with a rueful grimace. ‘That’s about a fifteen-minute walk from here. I think you’ll have to take a cab.’
‘Oh, great!’
Cory uttered the first unsolicited sounds she had made since leaving King’s Cross, and Isobel gave her a warning glare before turning back to their informant. She wasn’t exactly thrilled with the news herself, but she had no intention of showing it.
‘A cab,’ she echoed, nodding, and the man pointed helpfully towards the exit she should take.
‘I’d offer to show you the way myself, but my wife’s waiting for me,’ he added, and it was while Isobel was assuring him that she could manage quite well on her own that she saw, out of the comer of her eye, another man watching them, with a faintly speculative expression on his face.
The platform had virtually cleared now, most of the other passengers having hurried away for buses or cabs, or been greeted by waiting relatives and friends. The few people who were left were, like themselves, stragglers, who were unfamiliar with their surroundings, and were taking a little time to get their bearings.
But the man watching them now was none of these. Indeed, she didn’t think he had disembarked from the train at all. Propped against the wall of the waiting-room, his hair long, and slightly rumpled by the breeze, he looked as if he had been there some time. But his suede jacket, which hung open on broad shoulders, was obviously expensive, and the black shirt and narrow black woollen trousers it exposed did not look like chain-store chic. Low-heeled black boots completed his attire, and Isobel, who was not in the habit of noticing men, or what they wore, felt an uneasy prickling down her spine. Who was he? she wondered. And why was he watching them? She didn’t know anybody in Scotland. Particularly not a man whose lean dark features bore all the harsh beauty of his Celtic forebears.
‘I’m not carrying a load of cases,’ Cory declared rudely, as the man who had helped them off the train walked away, and Isobel turned on her daughter with thinly veiled frustration.
‘We don’t have a load of cases, Cory,’ she retorted through her teeth, and then drew herself up to her full height as the other man—the man who had been watching them—pushed himself away from the wall, and came strolling loosely, but purposefully, towards them.
‘May I be of some assistance?’ he enquired, and Isobel was briefly shocked by the fact that there was not a trace of a Scottish brogue in his voice. She had been so sure he was a Scot, and his lazy drawl disconcerted her.
‘Um—no,’ she replied, refusing to meet his eyes. She had read somewhere that so long as eye-contact wasn’t established a woman had a chance of avoiding an unpleasant encounter. She looked beyond him to where a porter was wheeling a trolley on to the platform, and, grasping Cory’s arm, she said, ‘Go and grab him, will you? He’ll help us with these, and show us where we can get a taxi.’
‘Must I?’
Cory was obviously more interested in what was going on between her mother and the stranger than in summoning the porter. And, judging by the way she was looking up at the man through her lashes, Isobel guessed that in a year or so she would be facing yet another problem with her daughter.
‘Yes, you must——’ she was beginning, when the man spoke again.
‘You are Isobel Jacobson, aren’t you? I heard you call your daughter Cory, so I was pretty sure I was right.’
Isobel swallowed, and this time there was no avoiding those eyes, which she saw, with some amazement, were almost as black as his hair. ‘Who are you?’ she exclaimed, as Cory propped one hand on her hip and adopted what Isobel privately called her provocative pose.
‘Rafe Lindsay,’ he said, his thin lips parting to reveal slightly uneven white teeth. ‘Clare’s brother-in-law. I had to come down to Glasgow on business, so I offered to meet you and drive you back to Invercaldy.’
Clare’s brother-in-law!
Isobel gazed at him, as if she still couldn’t believe it, and his smile broadened into a grin. ‘Do you want to see my driving licence?’ he offered, putting a hand inside his jacket, but Isobel quickly came to her senses. No one else but an associate of Clare’s would have known who she was, and who Cory was. But Clare had said her husband was brother to the Earl of Invercaldy, and this was definitely not the Earl. He was too young, for one thing—probably only a couple of years older than herself—and no member of the aristocracy that she had seen would ever wear his hair so long—it overhung his collar by a good two inches at the back. Well, not in this century anyway, she amended, recalling Bonnie Prince Charlie’s followers’ luxuriant locks. And, come to think of it, Rafe Lindsay did have a look of one of those swarthy Highlanders—if he really was a Scot. A younger brother, perhaps?
But, ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she informed him, rather primly now. And then, causing Cory to give her a disgusted look, ‘You don’t have an accent.’
It was a foolish remark, and he would have been quite at liberty to ignore it, but instead he chose to answer her. ‘Noo? Och, if I’d ha’ known you’d prefer the vernacular, I’d no ha’ tried to hide ma brogue,’ he mocked, with all the broad Scottish vowels she could have wished. Then, summoning the hovering porter with an ease Isobel could only envy, he indicated the luggage. ‘My car’s outside. Shall we go?’
For the first time since they had left London that morning, Cory looked positively cheerful. After exchanging a challenging look with her mother, she slung her canvas holdall over her shoulder, and started after Rafe Lindsay and the porter. Evidently this new development met with her approval, anyway, and Isobel knew she ought to feel grateful for that at least. But, as she followed them, she was aware that her own feelings were decidedly mixed.
‘WHATEVER possessed you to do such a thing?’ The Dowager Countess of Invercaldy gazed at her eldest son with undisguised displeasure. Then, twisting the pearls at her throat with a restless finger, she went on, ‘What kind of an impression is she going to get of the family, if you choose to behave like one of your own workers? Good heavens, Rafe, I don’t know what your father would say if he
