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should be getting back to Glenkeith,” she said without answering his question. “In a little while they will miss me and begin to look for me, and that might upset them.”
    “Do you mean that it might upset Mrs. MacDonald — or Andrew?” he asked.
    A smile broke over Tessa’s face, the wide, friendly smile which revealed the attractively uneven line of her teeth and broke a network of tiny laughter lines at the corners of her eyes.
    “Then you know the Meldrums,” she said.
    “Very well. Or, at least, I know Andrew very well — and Meg.”
    She felt relieved.
    “I’ve come to live at Glenkeith,” she told him. “My mother was Andrew’s stepmother, but that was before I was born—before she married my father. Does that sound complicated?” she asked. “It means that Andrew and I are not really related at all.”
    He looked at her quizzically, puzzled, perhaps, by the strange circumstances which had brought her to Glenkeith, but he said almost instantly:
    “We’re neighbours, more or less. My name’s Nigel Haddow, and we were bound to have met sooner or later.” “Because you live near here?”
    “I live at Ardnashee, over there beyond these trees.” He nodded vaguely into the barrier of mist where the dark outline of a wood could just be seen. “It’s much nearer than Glenkeith and I propose to take you there.”
    She drew back, looking down at her drenched skirt and sodden shoes.
    “Oh, but I couldn’t!” she objected. Mrs. MacDonald would never forgive me for paying calls like this. I couldn’t possibly come, thank you all the same.”
    “And you couldn’t walk all the way back to Glenkeith in that state,” he told her firmly. “You really ought to have some sensible shoes.”
    “Yes, Margaret said so, and I realize that now,” Tessa confessed, looking down at her feet with a rueful smile. “They were all right for Italy,” she said.
    His brows were raised just a fraction as he turned from her towards his mount.
    “Can you ride?” he asked. “It would be much better if you sat up on Bess.”
    “Then you would have to walk!”
    He laughed down at her.
    “I’m not likely to fall into a bog!”
    Before she could so much as protest, he turned and picked her up, setting her in the saddle as if she had been a child. He took up the reins and Bess ambled off at an easy pace while he walked by her side.
    The mare’s soft coat was quite wet with the mist, and Tessa could feel it in a little beaded fringe on the hair above her forehead so that she supposed she looked bedraggled and much in need of assistance, but, truth to tell, she was thoroughly enjoying her adventure now.
    “How am I to know that all you have told me is true?” she demanded, laughing down from her precarious perch.
    “You could quite easily be a Wicked Knight luring me to his baronial stronghold to shut me up in a dungeon for the rest of my life!”
    He laughed outright.
    “Ardnashee may be baronial, but the dungeon would be the last place I would lodge you in!” he told her. “What makes you think that my intentions are not far and away above reproach?”
    He looked up at her with sudden demand in his dark eyes and Tessa was aware that some of the banter had gone out of the situation. She could no longer laugh and fling idle words at him without care. They were known to each other now and in the future they might even become friends.
    “How far is it to Ardnashee?” she asked, leaving his question unanswered.
    “Four miles.”
    “But you said—”
    “It was nearer than Glenkeith. It still is.”
    “I must have walked a very long way,” Tessa mused. “Do you always forget about time when you are looking at the colour of trees and picking flowers to wear in your belt?”
    “I forget about time when I’m happy, and especially when I’m looking for things to paint.”_
    He took up her first confession.
    “You expect to be happy at Glenkeith?”
    A fleeting shadow passed across her face. It was the memory