Kitabı oku: «Daisychain Summer», sayfa 2

His face slablike, he rose to his feet, walking across the room and out of the house and she knew better than to try to stop him. To leave in a rage with a flinging open and a banging shut of doors would have seemed more normal. Things done in temper, in the shock of the moment, she could understand, and forgive. But to walk calmly out with never a word, closing doors gently and quietly behind him, sent apprehension coursing through her.

It was then she was grateful for the discipline of her nursing years and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to take his beer mug and hurl it against the wall.

She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin. She would not weep on her wedding anniversary; not for anything would she!

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘So sorry, Tom …’

He did not return until it was dark; long after she had lit the lamps and given Daisy her evening feed.

She sat beside the hearth, rocking the chair back and forth, worrying, waiting, and he came as quietly and suddenly as he left, his face pale, still, yet with contrition in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said, his voice rough with remorse. ‘It was none of it your fault. You did what you had to do – what was best for all concerned. It was just that it was too much to take – him, having touched you.’

‘Where have you been?’ She rose slowly to her feet, wanting him to take her in his arms and not stand in the doorway, putting the length of the room between them.

‘Walking. Just walking. I must have covered the entire boundary of the estate. And I was thinking, Alice; thinking how much I hate that man. I was even hoping to meet him around the next corner, because I wanted to kill him; beat the life out of him …’

‘It was all my fault.’ Tears trembled on Alice’s whispered words. ‘I could think of nothing else but to tell you. I didn’t want you to think wrong of me for seeming to forget you so soon after I’d heard you’d been killed; didn’t want you to think I could love any man but you, much less get a child with him. And I didn’t want you to think I was so unfeeling that I could desert a child to come to you. I knew all the time I ought to have loved him, but I couldn’t, even though he was born Sutton fair, and not dark, like – like him. I couldn’t have borne it if Drew had fathered himself.’

‘So the little lad is fair?’

‘He is, thanks be. To my way of thinking, he looked like his grandfather – his real grandfather, Mr Edward Sutton – but Julia could only see Andrew in him, because that was what she wanted to see, and Lady Helen swore he’d come in Sir John’s likeness. But no one could say, or even think, that he looked like Elliot Sutton. It was the one good thing in all the sad and sorry mess.’

‘Then I’m glad about that. No child deserves to be saddled with such a father.’

‘His father was Giles Sutton and never for a minute forget it, Tom. Am I forgiven?’

He smiled, unspeaking, and opened wide his arms as he’d done when they were courting, and she ran to him as though she were seventeen again, clasping her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest.

‘I love you, Tom – let’s never speak of it again?’

‘Not ever, bonny lass. But I’ll never forgive that man for what he did. I swore, out there, that if I could ever do him harm, I would – will – if ever I get the chance. I killed finer Germans than him …’

‘Then it’s a good thing you’re never likely to set eyes on him again. Y’know, Tom, I used, in my dreamings, to think of you and me living in Brattocks Wood in Keeper’s Cottage, and Julia and Andrew not far away and Reuben nicely settled in his almshouse. I’d think of it when things got bad, in France.

‘But Julia’s husband was killed and I thought I’d lost you, yet it was meant to be, my darling. Fate landed you and me here, miles and miles away, and I’m glad. Up there, I’d be scared half out of my mind that you and him would meet.’

‘Happen you are right.’ He unclasped her clinging arms, standing a little away from her, cupping her face in his hands.

‘I love you, my Alice. I never stopped loving you, even when I thought I’d lost you. The past is over and done with, I promise it is.’

‘Happy anniversary, Tom.’

Yet even as they kissed passionately, kissed as if there was to be no tomorrow, she knew he would never completely forget; that his hatred for Elliot Sutton would fester inside him and that if ever he could do him harm, he would.

Without so much as the batting of an eyelid.

2

Helen, Lady Sutton closed the door behind her, then let go a gasp of annoyance.

‘The fool! The smug, unfeeling fool! I am so angry!’

‘Oh, dear.’ Julia MacMalcolm kissed her mother’s flushed cheek. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me what happened at the meeting to make you so very cross.’

‘That vicar! I don’t know how I kept hold of my temper!’

‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s only a locum. He’ll be gone when Luke Parkin is fit again.’

‘But Luke won’t get well and we all know it, Julia. Six months, at the most,’ she whispered bitterly.

All the men she could once rely on, lean upon – all dead, her husband, her sons, her son-in-law; bluff, brusque Judge Mounteagle and soon, Luke Parkin. That ugly war – how dare they call it the Great War – had taken so many young men and now the older ones, weakened by four years of too much responsibility and too little consideration and overburdened with the worry of it, were themselves falling victims to its aftermath.

‘Sssh. Just tell me?’

‘We-e-ll, it was the usual parish meeting – or should have been. I knew they’d be talking about the war memorial; I was happy about that.’ She had promised any piece of land the parish saw fit to choose so the war dead of Holdenby should be remembered. ‘But to suggest a German field gun should stand beside it!’

‘A what!’ Julia flushed scarlet. ‘Whose damn-fool idea was that?’

‘Our temporary vicar’s! He said that any city or town – Holdenby, even – could claim a German gun as spoils of war and wouldn’t it be a splendid thought to have one here and site it beside the war memorial? So I said that upon further consideration, I wasn’t at all sure that I could offer that piece of land – leastways, not if an enemy gun was to stand on it. Indeed, I said, if anyone was thoughtless enough to bring one here, I would hope to see the wretched thing rolled down the hill and into the river! That’s what I said!’

‘And then you swep’ out! Good for you, mother! How could he even think such a thing?’

‘How indeed, when not one household in Holdenby came through that war without loss. The last thing they want to see is a German gun. Julia – did we really win? It makes me wonder when I see heroes with no work to go to; men with a leg or an arm missing, begging on street corners. Half our youth never to come home again and oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to remind you.’

‘You didn’t, because I don’t need reminding. And I’m glad you put him in his place. If Luke retires, I hope that vicar doesn’t get ideas about getting the living for himself. When the time comes for a new parish priest, I think it should be Nathan. I’d like to have him here. He’ll be back from the African mission, soon – and who better?’

‘I agree, and since Rowangarth will have some say in the matter, perhaps we can help him. Nathan saw service as an army chaplain – he’d be a popular choice, hereabouts. But this is not the time to talk of such things. We must hope for a miracle for Luke. And meantime –’

‘No German field gun,’ Julia supplied.

‘Not on any piece of Rowangarth land!’ And since Rowangarth owned every square yard of Holdenby village and much, much more besides, it seemed that Helen Sutton would have her way.

‘I shall miss you when you go to Hampshire for the christening.’ Deftly, she changed the subject.

‘You’re sure you’ll be all right, mother? Drew can be rather a handful, now.’

‘Of course I can manage. I’ve been looking forward to having him all to myself. And isn’t it wonderful that Alice has a little girl of her own?’

Dear Alice. She at least was happy. It was to her, Helen acknowledged, they owed the beautiful boy who would one day inherit Rowangarth. So sad that Giles never lived to see his son.

‘I reared the three of you with no trouble at all. One small boy won’t put me out in the slightest.’

‘But we three had a nanny – and a nursery maid!’

‘So you did, but nannies are going out of fashion and there’ll be Miss Clitherow to help me – if I need help.’

‘Yes, and Cook and Tilda and Mary’ – all of whom spoiled Drew dreadfully.

‘A growing child cannot have too much love and affection. Children are treated differently, now,’ Helen smiled, calm again, for just to think of her grandson gave her such feelings of love and gratitude that any anger was short-lived.

‘I’d thought to leave a day earlier – stay the night with Aunt Sutton, whilst she’s at Montpelier Mews.’

‘A good idea.’ Her sister-in-law, Helen frowned, spent so little time in England, now. ‘How long since anyone saw her?’

‘Oh, ages.’ Since not long after Andrew was killed, Julia recalled. ‘She couldn’t wait to get back to France, once the war was over. We can have a nice long chat – catch up with the news, then I’ll go on to Hampshire. It will mean being away for five days – you’re sure you can manage?’

‘Of course.’ She loved him dearly, the grandson who was walking sturdily, now, and had cut most of his teeth with scarcely a disturbed night. Drew, who made her young again. ‘Think of it, Julia. He’ll be two, at Christmas.’

‘Mm.’ The months had rushed past. Soon, there would be the second anniversary of Andrew’s death to be lived through and that of Giles who died the day his son – Alice’s son – was born.

‘Julia?’ Her mother’s voice came to her softly through her rememberings.

‘Sorry. Just thinking …’

‘Aah.’ Her daughter was often just thinking. Sometimes she was far away, eyes troubled; other times there would be a small smile on her lips and she would be a girl again, impatient to come of age, marry her young doctor. There hadn’t been a war, then, nor even thoughts of one. Her elder son, Helen pondered, had been in India and Giles with his nose in a book, always, and nothing more to worry her than the next dinner party she would give. Lovely, gentle times. Days of roaring fires and hot muffins for winter tea and sun-warmed summer days and the scent of flowers at dusk and the certainty that nothing need change.

But then the war had come and nothing could be the same again. Only Rowangarth endured.

‘And talking about Alice – and we must talk about it, sooner or later – do you think you might mention it to her – and Tom, of course – whilst you are there?’

‘That people should be told she was married again, you mean?’

‘Well, it is all of eighteen months since she left Rowangarth; people will want to know what is happening.’

‘But it isn’t anything to do with people – not really, mother, though I agree with you. I’ll have a word with her. After all, she’s done nothing wrong. She had every right to remarry.’

‘I accept that – and Tom was her first love.’

‘Her only love.’ Her once and for ever love. ‘None of us ever pretended she cared in the same way for Giles – those of us who knew the real truth of it – about their marrying, so soon after Tom was killed, I mean …’

The real truth of it? Not even her mother knew that, nor ever could. There were things never to be told – even to Drew.

‘I know, my dear. I have always accepted the circumstances of Drew’s conceiving and been grateful to Alice for leaving him with us. I’d longed so for a grandson, you know; for a boy, for Rowangarth.’

‘And you got him,’ Julia smiled. ‘And what’s more, you can’t wait to have him all to yourself, can you?’ Best drop the subject of Drew’s getting. For his sake alone, it must remain a closed book. ‘Do you suppose he’ll miss me?’

‘I’ll do my best to see that he doesn’t. And you deserve a break, Julia. Just think how much news there’ll be to catch up on; it seems such a long time since Alice left us. And I’m sure she’ll let you share her little girl, if your maternal instincts get the better of you.’

Her maternal instincts, Julia brooded. Drew had been hers from the moment of his birth. She it had been who fought for him when Alice lay desperately ill and unable to feed him. That fatherless babe had given her something to live for after Andrew’s killing. She was Drew’s mother, now.

‘You must take a lock of his hair, for Alice,’ Helen smiled. One of his fair, baby curls, now cut off. Drew had remained in his long baby clothes until he walked, though Julia hadn’t entirely agreed with keeping little boys in nursery frocks, she acknowledged, and allowing their hair to grow untrimmed so that many were hard put to know if the child was a girl or a boy. But it had been the custom when her sons were toddlers and she had wished it for Drew, though now he was a real little boy, her hair cut short and wearing his first breeches. ‘Well – if you think it won’t upset her too much. That child is the image of his father when he was little, you know.’

‘Take one of his curls? No – she won’t be upset.’

Not in the way you mean, mother. Alice won’t go all emotional and want to take him from us when she sees a lock of his hair. She never wanted him, couldn’t love him – but you didn’t know that, dearest. And never say Drew is the image of his father, because he isn’t – and please God he never will be.

Only she and Nathan knew, and perhaps Tom, now. And Giles had known; had married Alice knowing she carried another man’s child, then claimed it to be born a Sutton – a Rowangarth Sutton, and Rowangarth’s heir. Little Drew. Two years old, at Christmas.

‘Alice says I’m to take tweeds and tough shoes.’ Julia, too, was adept at subject-changing. ‘They live right out in the country – it’s quite a walk, I believe, into the village to post a letter. And it’s Reuben’s birthday in September,’ just three days after Andrew’s, ‘so she wants me to bring his present back with me.’

‘Dear old Reuben. He misses Alice for all there’s a letter from her every week. That’s why people should know Alice and Tom are married, now. Reuben isn’t getting any younger. There might come a day when Alice is needed here.’

‘But she can return to Rowangarth any time she likes. She’s done nothing wrong!’

‘Of course she hasn’t – but there’s Tom …’

‘A deserter, who could be put in prison for it, if people knew? Is that what you mean? But who is going to tell on him? Not you, mother; not me! I agree with what he did and so would Giles, if he were alive. Tom was a soldier who was pushed too far! He was reported killed in action – the authorities think him dead – so all we need say is that he wasn’t killed at all but taken prisoner and the Red Cross was never told about it. He wouldn’t be the first man to come back from the dead! I see no reason why the pair of them shouldn’t walk through Holdenby, heads high!’

‘Julia, child – hush your anger! You’ll never be rid of that Whitecliffe temper! Small wonder the old lady was so taken with you. And I agree with you about Tom Dwerry-house; there is nothing I would like more than to see them both back here, even though it can’t ever be.’

‘And why not, pray?’

‘We-e-ell, if they were to come back to Keeper’s Cottage – and we all thought that when Reuben retired, Tom would live there, with Alice – if they came back, just what would their position be? Alice is Drew’s mother; Drew – Sir Andrew – will one day inherit, so he would be Tom’s employer …’

‘Mother, how you do run on!’ Julia laughed. ‘I don’t think Tom and Alice will ever come back here. From what I read in her letters, she’s well suited in Hampshire. But I would like her to be able to visit us, from time to time. Tom would understand her need to see Reuben. And remember, she is still Drew’s legal guardian.’

‘Exactly – and that’s one reason I want it to be known she isn’t Alice Sutton any longer. I would like her to come home to Rowangarth whenever she has a mind to. She was my son’s wife, albeit for less than a year, and I cared – care – for her, deeply. And she’ll never take Drew away from us, I know it.’

‘She won’t. Not ever. I know it too, dearest. So what are we worrying about? I’ll have a talk with Alice and Tom – see what they think. We’ll be able to work something out and had you thought, there might soon be a pardon for deserters, so Tom wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of and never, ever, anything to be ashamed of. He fought in the trenches which is more than Elliot ever did!’

‘Julia! Why ever must you bring him into it? And why, since we are talking about your cousin –’

‘My nasty, over-indulged, awful cousin!’

‘Talking about Elliot,’ Helen went on, calmly, ‘why do you always get so prickly when his name is mentioned and make excuses not to meet him?’

‘Because I detest him, mother. No, I hate him. I dislike his womanizing and his arrogance and I won’t ever forgive his mother for arranging two safe postings for him when he joined the Army. She bought them, for him!’

‘You mustn’t say that of your Aunt Clemmy!’

‘Not even when it’s true?’ Julia jumped to her feet and stood, arms akimbo, at the window, staring out across the lawns and the wild garden to Brattocks Wood. ‘And I hate him because he’s alive – because he hardly got his boots dirty in that war, yet Robert and Giles and Andrew will only be names, soon, on a war memorial!’

And she hated him, too, for what he had done to Alice, and the fact that they could never be sure that one day he might not say, ‘Giles’s son? Are you sure …?’ That was the reason she hated him so much, though she could never speak of it. Giles was Drew’s father as far as her mother was concerned, and if she ever learned the truth of their deception, her heart would break.

‘Oh, darling – forgive me?’ Julia hurried to her mother’s side, falling to her knees, laying her head on her lap as she had done since childhood. ‘And try to understand my bitterness?’

‘I do.’ Helen dropped a kiss on her daughter’s head. ‘I know what it is like to lose the man you love, always remember that, will you, when you think the world is against you.

‘And go upstairs, why don’t you, and take a peep at Drew, then come with me for a walk around the garden, before the light goes. This is such a beautiful evening. Let’s walk quietly, and count our blessings?’

‘Let’s. I won’t be a minute.’ Blessing-counting. It always worked for her mother, Julia thought sadly as she opened the nursery door. Why, then, did it do nothing for her? Why could she never accept Andrew’s death nor cease to want him until her body throbbed and ached from it? And why, no matter what her common sense told her to the contrary, did she still fear the harm Elliot Sutton could do?

‘Alice – I do so long to see you,’ she whispered as she tucked in the cot blankets. ‘You can’t know how I have missed you; how much I would give to have you back here.’

But Alice would never return to Rowangarth.

Clementina Sutton began her scheming the moment she learned about the people next door, in Cheyne Walk. She had been anxious, during the war, about the house standing empty next to hers, worrying that the Army would commandeer it as a billet for soldiers or, worse, that it would be filled with refugees, foreign refugees, thus lowering the area in general and the value of her own property in particular.

She had bought the London house for mixed reasons, though mainly to use for entertaining during the social season when mothers, desperate for good marriages for their daughters, paraded them at dances and parties, at race meetings and concerts like hawkers setting out their stalls.

It was at one of these events she had hoped her eldest son Elliot would meet a suitable young lady and if she came with a title, it wouldn’t matter how poor she was; Clemmy Sutton had money enough to support her. Nor would it matter if she were plain as a pikestaff, so long as she came from a line of good breeders and had the stamina to produce two sons at least. And if that were not all, the favoured young lady would have the ability – and the sense, if she knew what was good for her – to turn a blind eye to her husband’s excursions into infidelity for it was certain that no one woman, no matter how beautiful and bed-worthy, would satisfy her Elliot. Clementina had come to expect it and even to forgive him for it, because it wasn’t his fault he was born so handsome and so attractive to the opposite sex.

Mind, it had to be acknowledged that Elliot always seemed to attract the worst kind of woman; sometimes married ones but most often women that she, his mother, would refuse to touch with the end of a long stick. Ladies of easy virtue. Whores! Why did they attract him so when he could have had all the pleasuring he wanted free, and in his own bed, if only he’d had the sense to marry!

Of course, with the coming of the war, young women had been quick to throw off their chaperons with alacrity and delight; had raised their hemlines, spoken to young men to whom they had not been introduced and smoked and drank cocktails in public. And they had taken to uniforms with high delight, driving ambulances, being lady typists in the Women’s Army Corps – even nursing as her niece Julia had done; gone to France an’ all to do it, risking life and limb for her stupidity.

Well, now that was over, and young women would be falling over themselves to get their hooks into a husband and husbands not so easy to catch, either. Stood to reason, didn’t it, with many millions of men killed and thank God her own three sons had come through it unscathed, though Nathan had ended up in the thick of it with the soldiers in the trenches and him not caring one jot for his mother’s feelings.

But now she could forget the war and its inconveniences, for she had embarked on the task of seeing her eldest son safely wed – and before another year ran, if she had anything to do with it!

‘I think,’ she said to her husband, ‘that I might have acted a little hastily, putting up that fence …’

‘Fence?’ Edward Sutton lowered the evening paper he was reading.

‘At Cheyne Walk.’

‘Aah. To keep out the gypsies next door?’

‘Not gypsies, Edward.’ She squirmed at her own foolishness. ‘There was a man – a giant of a fellow …’ He had lived in the basement area, emerging from it from time to time to yell at dogs or glower at any passer-by who was foolish enough to linger outside. A thick black beard he’d had and terrified Molly more and more with every sighting. ‘I got it wrong; Molly got it wrong. The dark fellow was a Cossack it would seem, and Cossacks were loyal to a man to their Czar. I should have known better than to listen to her, but what can one expect from a woman of her class?’

‘Or for three shillings and sixpence a week,’ he added, raising his newspaper again.

‘She gets a pint of milk a day and old clothes! And all she does is caretake an empty house …’

‘So am I to take it that the fence will be removed – or at least lowered a couple of feet? Are the new tenants next door all at once acceptable?’

‘I don’t know. One hears such stories. That is why I shall go to London and see for myself; see if they are socially acceptable, that is.’ She might even leave her card, though card-leaving did not have the same social power it once had. Standards had been lowered since the war ended, she sighed. Things would never be the same. The working man had fought a war and thought he was as good as his master, now! ‘Shall you come with me?’

‘I think not.’ Edward Sutton disliked London. Even this house he lived in – Clemmy’s great, ornate, completely vulgar house – was to be preferred to noisy, smoky, overcrowded London. ‘I’m sure you can manage without me.’

‘Of course.’ She hadn’t for a moment imagined he would want to leave Pendenys. ‘But if you don’t come, I shall need someone with me. I shall take a couple of servants.’

‘Take whom you wish, Clemmy.’

She usually did. She considered it cheaper to buy train tickets for them than pay out good money to keep permanent servants there – apart from what they ate and stole in her absence.

‘Yes.’ She intended to. After all, it was she who paid their wages, not her husband.

‘When will you go?’

‘Tomorrow, Edward, I think. I shall take a cook, a housemaid and a footman.’ Sufficient to impress the people next door if they were what she supposed them to be. She would have taken her butler, pompous and arrogant though she thought him, had she imagined for a moment he would agree to go with her. But the Cheyne Walk house was far beneath the man’s dignity. For one thing, its cellars were completely empty of wine and for another, it did not provide him with his own sitting-room and a man in his position, he stressed, whenever London threatened, was entitled to his privacy. A snob, Clementina brooded, who looked down his nose at her; at Mrs Clementina Sutton whose hand fed him. She only put up with him because as butlers went he knew what he was about and she got his expertise cheaply on account of his liking for red wine. They understood each other, she and that butler!

‘I said I would take –’

‘Yes, my dear. Do as you wish. Take Elliot, too.’ Elliot had been on his best behaviour these few weeks past. Soon, his instincts would surface and better they surfaced in London – and under the eye of his mother!

‘You can’t bear to be alone in the house with him, can you?’ she countered tartly. ‘Can’t speak a civil word to your own son …’

‘Clemmy – let us not quarrel over Elliot?’ he sighed. ‘Leave him here at Pendenys, if that’s what you wish.’

She did not reply. Her mind was back at Cheyne Walk and the people next door. Refugees, of course, but what refugees! Not destitute, if what she had heard was to be believed, and real aristocrats, possessed of a title! A daughter, too, and unmarried; strictly chaperoned by the fierce Cossack whenever she ventured out.

She purred inside her, just to think of it. To have what she had been searching for landed next door to her was past belief. Such luck – even if they were Russians. She wouldn’t mind betting they’d got out of St Petersburg with a small fortune sewn into their corsets and the benefit of a London bank account set up long before the shooting of the Czar. Oh, my word, but it was worth looking into. Well worth looking into!

Tom Dwerryhouse checked his pocket watch with the station clock and found they agreed. He was in time. He had sent the pony along at a brisk pace, determined that Julia MacMalcolm should not arrive before him and take the station taxi.

He needed time alone with her to explain the way it had been; thank her for what she had done for him. But mostly he wanted to tell her that he knew about young Drew and that Rowangarth’s secret was safe with him. It was why he had taken time off work and harnessed up the pony and trap provided by his employer for the use of the estate workers – them being so cut off from civilization. The pony and cart could be used by any employee at any time, provided due notice was given to the groom who looked after Ralph Hillier’s hunters.

He had, Tom considered, done very well for himself, all things taken into account. A decent employer, a good house, now that Alice had licked it into shape; a suit of clothes every second year and boots and leggings, an’ all. And by far the most important, he had Alice and Daisy.

Why, then, should Miss Julia’s coming disturb him? Not entirely on account of her being gentry and him being working class nor because he was an army deserter, either, though he wasn’t proud of it nor ever quite free of the fear that one day the Army would arrive to cart him off.

He set his jaw tightly, shaking such thoughts from his head because they were not the cause of his misgivings. The truth of it, he was bound to admit, was that she was coming from Rowangarth; from the place where he and Alice met and where they had expected to end their days. Keeper’s Cottage on the Rowangarth estate had a woodman in it now because these days there was no need of a gamekeeper there; not until young Drew – Sir Andrew – was old enough to handle a shotgun, that was.

Yet that was still not all and if he were honest, he would admit it. Miss Julia would be bringing the north country with her and Tom Dwerryhouse was a son of the north and no matter how well suited he was with the way his life had turned out nor how contented Alice was with her new little bairn and her own hearth, one thing could never be denied. Northern roots did not easily transplant into southern soil. He was surprised Mr Hillier had seen fit to do it, him being a northerner, an’ all. But maybe it was all right for the likes of someone who owned another house in Westmorland and who could take off whenever the fancy took him. Windrush Hall, on the edges of the New Forest, was where it was convenient for Ralph Hillier to live, being close to a port and near enough to London where most of his business deals took place. But whenever his early years tugged on the thread of memory, he need only order his motor to be driven round to the front entrance and he could be away and back to his roots.

It was different for Tom Dwerryhouse who could never return to Rowangarth. For one thing, most folk thereabouts thought him dead, killed in the last year of the war; and to go back there would be to carry hate inside him for a man he might meet at any time. Elliot Sutton lived only a cock-stride from Rowangarth and for Alice’s sake – and for young Sir Andrew’s, too – it were best the two of them should never meet.