Moreton's Kingdom by Jean S. Macleod

would have been rejected if she had appealed to Morag for help because, like Emma, Morag would be firmly on Charles’s side, but she felt that she could have asked Emma’s mother for understanding. Perhaps Mrs. Falkland had known Coralie quite well in the past and liked her.
    Charles opened the back door of the Rover for her to get in, reserving the front passenger seat for Sandy.
    ‘Hop in!’ he said. ‘I suppose you want to steer.’
    Sandy raised adoring eyes to his.
    ‘Can the bear sit beside me?’ he asked.
    ‘Where else?’ Charles said his goodbyes, looking directly at Emma. ‘We’ll see you at Glassary soon, I hope?’
    ‘Whenever I can get away.’ She put a hand over his. ‘Goodbye, Chay!’
    They travelled for the best part of an hour, going deeper and deeper into the mountain fastness, with giant bens crowding the skyline and flashes of bright water shining through forest trees. Charles handed over a road atlas.
    ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know where you’re going,’ he said. ‘We’re travelling east, but we’ll go south again in a couple of miles.’
    Katherine pored over the road map, her head bent to conceal the expression in her eyes. She could not fathom this man’s disposition, at one moment severe, the next warm and understanding, especially when he looked at the child. It had been the same when he had looked at Emma and, to a lesser extent, her mother. There was understanding, but there was something more. Had a long and abiding friendship turned eventually into love?
    It was something she could only speculate about, not something she wanted to understand, she told herself defiantly.
    Soon they were turning into a hidden glen, following a silver thread of water until they were finally at their destination. Katherine held her breath when she first saw Glassary, thinking that a more remote place could hardly be imagined. Remote and beautiful. She gazed at the surrounding peaks closing in the dark stretch of loch water and the turreted house set above it on a grey crag. The ultimate fortress, she thought with sudden alarm, a grim citadel which looked as if it might contain an ancient dungeon surrounded by an impregnable wall.
    In the bright light of day, however, it smiled at their approach, and Sandy at least was happy to be there.
    ‘Can I go to see Fudge?’ he asked excitedly, forgetting Emma’s gift of the bear.
    Charles smiled.
    ‘All in good time,’ he agreed. ‘We’ve been fattening him up for you!’
    The blue eyes regarded him lovingly.
    ‘Did he miss me awf’lly?’ Sandy wanted to know.
    ‘Ponies and little boys generally miss each other!’
    Again the face of understanding, Katherine thought. Charles really did love the child and therein lay the ultimate tragedy. However much they pulled apart, Coralie and her former husband had this much in common; Sandy was their only child, the little boy they must have loved in the beginning with all their hearts, one accusing the other with merciless intent because they both wanted him whatever the consequences. Because they loved him they would tear themselves apart all in the cause of love.
    Studying the dark face of the man behind the wheel, she tried to see more than determination in the steely eyes and protruding jaw, but what she saw still disconcerted her. Then, as the morning sunshine still dazzled her eyes, she looked beyond him to the shadows cast by the surrounding mountains on the grey, turreted house above the loch.
    ‘Why have you left my car so far behind?’ she demanded as they approached it along a narrow spur of rock which stretched like an arm into the water. ‘Surely there’s a suitable garage nearer this—this fortress?’
    Charles smiled at the words she had chosen as he drove steadily towards his home.
    ‘I left it at Killin because there’s really no great hurry,’ he said evenly. ‘I mean to keep you in “this fortress”, as you call it, until I can convince myself that you’re no