Read Online Master of Glenkeith by Jean S. Macleod - Free Book Online

Andrew, not as a means of rescue but as the implement of censure.
    It was early yet, of course, and he might not have returned to Glenkeith, but she did not feel that she could tide over this adventure without his knowing about it.
    Then, out of the stillness, came a sound she had least expected, the muffled beat of a horse’s hoofs as it picked its way across hard ground just ahead of her. She could only judge the distance by the sound, but she ran towards it thankfully, and suddenly a horse and rider loomed out of the grey pall ahead of her.
    The horse saw her and reared immediately, startled by her unexpected presence, and a man’s voice exclaimed impatiently;
    “What the devil—! Steady, Bess! Steady, old girl! It’s nothing to climb into the air about!”
    Horse and rider became one, and Tessa found herself looking up at a tall, dark man with a thin, eagle- featured face who was gazing at her now with a faint mockery in his eyes. Under the straight dark brows they looked almost black, but the flicker of amusement in them gave her confidence.
    “Don’t tell me!” he said. “Bess has been frightened by a nymph or a kelpie! ”
    Tessa looked at him and her anxiety melted in an answering smile.
    “If I knew what a kelpie was I could set about reassuring Bess,” she said.
    “Since you’re doubtful on that point you can’t be a good Scotswoman,” he told her, smoothing the mare’s satin neck with a firm, gloved hand. “I was suspicious about that when I first saw you.”
    “About me not being a Scot? My grandmother was,” Tessa declared. “Does that make it any better?”
    “A little. Didn’t your grandmother warn you not to go wandering on strange moorland with a mist coming down?”
    “I didn’t see the mist till it was too late.”
    “What were you looking at instead?”
    She flushed.
    “Everything else. The rowans and the colour of the bracken and the birch trees down in the wood.”
    “You’re quite sure you don’t live in the woods?” He dismounted, throwing the rein over his arm. “Where do you live, if it isn’t too great a secret?”
    “At Glenkeith.”
    She saw the surprise in his eyes and the dark brows went up, accentuating it.
    “Glenkeith?” he repeated. “Since when?”
    “Just over a week ago. My mother used to live there.”
    He said: “You’ve come a long way from Glenkeith. Did you know?”
    “I suppose I must have done. Several kilometres, I expect.”
    He looked at her more closely.
    “So you’re not even English?”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “You don’t measure your distance in miles!”
    “All the same,” Tessa said with a small toss of her head, proving him wrong, “I am!”
    He laughed into her challenging eyes.
    “This is something!” he said. “You live at Glenkeith and you’re English, but you measure distances in kilometres and you have the faintest—just the barest ghost—of an accent. Not French. I would recognize that, but you’ve spoken some other language, something warmer than English, I think, for many years.”
    “You sound like Sherlock Holmes!”
    “Believe me, I’m not! I’m labouring under difficulties trying to think who you can possibly be.”
    “Perhaps I should leave you believing that I’m a kelpie, but I don’t think I can do that, even though it would be fun to disappear into the mist and keep you guessing!”
    “Do you think I’m the sort of person who should be kept in the dark?”
    She considered him frankly. He was much too handsome, in a dark, virile way which suggested that much of his time might be spent out of doors, in the saddle, no doubt, where he looked superb. The well-cut riding breeches and hacking jacket might almost be a uniform with him, and he was as tall as Andrew if not quite so well set up.
    It did not seem strange to her that she should measure this chance acquaintance by Andrew’s standard. Andrew was the only Scotsman she knew and he had seemed typical of his race.
    “I think I