Master of Glenkeith by Jean S. Macleod

by what she had said, and finally dismissing it by a rather abrupt reference to Hester.
    “My aunt takes to do with the house. I have no jurisdiction in that quarter. She has always been mistress at Glenkeith.”
    And will continue to be till you find yourself a wife, Tessa thought.
    The wheel-chair had been abandoned in the hall when Daniel Meldrum had refused point-blank to use it, and Hester came out of the kitchen when she heard it being moved towards the stairs that afternoon.
    “What’s this?” she demanded. “Are you taking the thing back to the doctor?”
    “Grandfather is going to use it,” Andrew explained. “Tessa has managed to persuade him to go out.”
    Harsh and tight-lipped, Hester regarded Tessa in the shaft of sunlight slanting in through the staircase window.
    “She has great charm,” she observed scathingly. “Watch you don’t find yourself caught by it, too, Andrew.”
    Tessa drew back as if she had been struck by the cruelly unexpected jibe. The bitter words had been a challenge, driven from the older woman by an emotion which had been beyond her control for the moment. Jealousy, perhaps, the desire to present Tessa in an unfavourable light as the enchantress who might entice a man to folly even against his better judgment, the fair siren waiting among the rocks to lure him to his willing doom.
    It had been obvious to Tessa for some time that Hester MacDonald desired nothing more passionately than to see her only daughter mistress at Glenkeith, and the fact that Margaret would be marrying her first cousin in order to attain the coveted position did not seem to matter. Margaret’s feelings would scarcely be taken into consideration once Hester had made her plans, and Tessa had an idea that these plans had been completed long ago, long before she had ever come to Glenkeith, long before she had ever been heard of, in fact.
    Perhaps it was only natural that Hester should wish to safeguard her daughter’s future when she looked back into her own past, but the fact remained that she would also be safeguarding her own position at Glenkeith.
    Tessa hated herself for thinking about such things. She wished to live in peace with everyone at Glenkeith, if Hester would only let her.
    “I’ll help you with the chair,” she said to Andrew, her voice sounding small and subdued in the awkward silence.
    “I’ll manage it,” he said, “if you can go and find one of the men to help once we’ve got my grandfather into it. You’ll find Tawse working up at the north byres, or Sandy Fleming should be somewhere about. Either of them will do.”
    She could not tell what he had thought about Hester’s remark and she was glad to make her escape into the yard.
    Andrew carried the old man down the wide staircase with Fleming’s help. The stock-man was a small, thickset man of bull-like strength with a thatch of red hair springing up untidily all over his head when he removed his cap to come into the house, and he seemed uncomfortably in awe of Hester, although he took his orders solely from Andrew or his grandfather.
    Hester stood waiting for them at the foot of the stairs, running a critical eye over her father with the same tight look on her face which she had presented to Andrew ten minutes before.
    “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said curtly. “This isn’t Italy.”
    She had barely looked in Tessa’s direction, but all the venom which lay behind her remark had been directed towards this girl whom her aged father had welcomed to Glenkeith “in his dotage,” as she had put it on more than one occasion, and Tessa was aware of a mounting tension as she followed the chair to the front door.
    “Don’t fash yourself too much about us, Hester,” Daniel said. “I’m wrapped up like a trussed turkey and Tessa never seems to feel the cold. We’re only going for a turn along the burnside to have a look at the cattle. We’ll be back in time for tea.”
    He was in fine spirit to-day, Tessa