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Rachel reminded herself as she tucked the little girl into bed and kissed her goodnight. Melanie must be given time.
    It was arranged that Rachel should eat her evening meal with Alistair and Richard after Melanie was in bed, so she changed the maroon trousers and blue sweater that she had been wearing all day for a dress of pale green and went down to the dining room. Alistair was there, alone. He was wearing a tweed suit and turtle-neck sweater.
    ‘Richard’s not back yet. Don t know what’s kept him. He said he'd be back for dinner,’ he said in his abrupt manner, adding, ‘We don’t dress for dinner when we’re by ourselves, but I’m pleased to see you’re wearing a dress. Pity to cover up a pair of shapely legs with trousers. Sherry, lassie?’
    ‘Please.' Rachel couldn’t help smiling. Alistair Duncan was blunt and direct, you felt you knew where you stood with him.
    ‘Celia wore trousers sometimes. Not always, though. Not always. She knew I liked to see her in a dress. She knew how to dress, too, did Celia.’
    ‘You must miss her,’ Rachel prompted.
    He nodded. ‘Yes. She was a bonny lass.’ He didn’t speak of her further but it was obvious from his tone that he had been fond of his daughter-in-law.
    Over dinner, cooked by one of the women who came in from the clachan, Alistair talked about Rose. His concern for her went far beyond that of an employer towards his employee, he spoke of her as a long-standing and very dear friend.
    The meal was dull and not particularly well cooked, but Alistair didn’t seem to notice and when it was over he excused himself and went to his study. Rachel went up to her sitting room, first looking in at Melanie.
    She was fast asleep, clutching an old teddy, but instead of the relaxed features of a normal healthy child, her face wore a frown and her whole body was tense. Rachel stood looking down at her for a long time. If only she could find a way through the barrier of silence that engulfed Melanie!
    She went thoughtfully to her room and turned on the radio to drown the sound of the rain lashing down. Melanie, it seemed, had never been a talkative child, but it was not until her mother’s death that she had ceased talking altogether. Rachel frowned. She knew so little about Celia, yet everything she had heard pointed to her having been a remarkable woman. What little Alistair had said of her had been with a note of affection, Ben had clearly been more than half in love with her, and Richard had still not got over losing her, hiding his broken heart at times under a veneer of suave cynicism. Yet there was no clue to her actual character; only Rose had given a hint when she said, ‘Richard’s wife hated it here. She missed the social life she had been used to.’ Yet she had given it up to marry Richard and bury herself in the country with him. She must have been very much in love—a feeling Rachel didn’t find it hard to understand.
    At ten o’clock Rachel still had not heard the sound of Richard’s car on the drive. Several times during the evening she looked out of the window, thinking she heard it, but each time she had been mistaken. She told herself that he was probably spending the evening at the farm with Moira after their day in Glasgow, or perhaps they had gone to dinner and the theatre there. None of these alternatives gave her any comfort at all, in fact she found that there was an uncomfortable feeling, not unlike jealousy, gnawing inside her. It’s nothing to do with me what Richard Duncan does, she told herself sternly, nor who he is with. I’m only here to look after his daughter.
    She went to bed. She had never before slept in a four-poster bed and she found it a luxurious feeling. All the same she couldn't sleep and at eleven she went downstairs to make herself a milky drink in the hope that it would help her to sleep.
    She found milk in the fridge and when she had warmed it she put it in a mug taken from a hook on the dresser. She was about to