Read Online The House of the Laird by Susan Barrie - Free Book Online Page B

persuaded her host to desert his post in the middle of the rug before the fireplace and talk to her about his recent travels abroad.
    Out of the corner of her eye Karen could see that he gravitated somewhat unwillingly to the side of the lovely widow—for anyone more deserving of the appellation “lovely” Karen had never seen—and Mrs. Barrington produced a long turquoise holder from her handbag and allowed him to light the cigarette she placed in it. Then Aunt Horatia began to talk to Karen in a friendly, sociable manner, and her opening gambit was very much to the point.
    “And now, my dear,” she said, as if she wa s going to suggest getting to know one another, “you can tell me the truth about yourself and Iain ! ”
    Karen looked at her, faintly horrified, but Aunt Horatia was lying back in her chair and smiling comfortably.
    “Go on, you silly child, and don’t be afraid of me! I’m not easily shocked, I can assure you.”
    And so, in view of the fact that it was plainly not much use dissembling, Karen told her the truth—all the truth that is, apart from the actual falsity of her engagement, which, because she had given her promise to Iain, she did not disclose to his aunt. And at the end of her simple recital Mrs. Montagu-Jackson nodded her head, as if it was all much as she had expected, and observed:
    “Well, that’s all quite understandable but it was quixotic of you both to become engaged—at least, it was quixotic of Iain, but I haven’t quite made up my mind about you yet.”
    Karen felt a tiny, cold feeling stealing about her heart, as if something she had been hugging to herself recently as precious was likely to be snatched away from her altogether. She looked at the elder lady with vaguely troubled eyes.
    “You—you haven’t made up your mind about—me?”
    “No, my dear.” The old eyes were gentle, and the voice had a sympathetic note in it. “You appear to have had quite a lot to put up with in the way of illness, and I’d say at this moment you are far from strong, and Iain can be terribly kind when he feels like it—I know that! But you can’t marry a man because he’d kind, or because he offers you a home.”
    “N-no,” Karen agreed, and wished that this visitation from Iain’s relative had been postponed until she was feeling just a little stronger than she was at present, and therefore more capable of putting up some sort of camouflage.
    “On the other hand, if you’re really sure —”
    There was a pause, and Aunt Horatia glanced for a moment at her nephew’s face as he sat beside his glamorous ex- fiancée on the Chesterfield— “ you could do much, much worse for yourself!”
    Karen said nothing, and Aunt Horry dived into her handbag for her cigarette-case, from which she extracted a fat and faintly greyish-looking cigarette.
    “I have these made specially for me,” she explained, “and they’d be much too strong for a young girl like you—a mixture of Egyptian and Turkish tobaccos—so I’m not going to offer you one.”
    She surrounded herself with a blue haze of smoke which smelled strongly of the interior of some exotic eastern quarter, and at the same time she thoughtfully studied Karen.
    “I’m going to make a suggestion.” she said. “I’ve explained that I’m not easily shocked, and neither am I, but I don’t think it’s quite right for a young thing like you to be living here alone with a bachelor of nearly thirty-five, even though you are thinking of getting married ! ” Her glance at the girl stated plainly that she doubted that, and s he continued: “In my house you can be a guest for as long as you like, and no one can say a thing about you—and Iain can come and see you as often as he wants to! So I suggest you pack up your things, or get Mrs. Burns to pack them up for you, and come back with Fiona and me this afternoon!”
    At first Karen was not quite certain that the older woman was entirely serious, but when she realized that