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to take a wife and I’m after thinking you could suit me very well. If you have such a mind also that way you will maybe leave a message in my room where no one else will see it so we will maybe arrange a time to speak over the matter. Your friend, Ruari MacDonald .
    PS I must tell you I am to be away back to my home by Wednesday first so as to be there ready for the cattle sale .’
    Feeling completely winded by the shock of receiving such a letter, she read it six or seven times before she was able to allow herself to grasp that it contained a proposal of marriage. The first proposal she’d received in her thirty-eight years! As comprehension focused itself in her mind she had a desire to laugh wildly. ‘The Dear!’ she ejaculated under her breath. ‘The Dear, Dear!’ she repeated. She poured herself another cup of tea and her hand was so unsteady she slopped some into the saucer. Hastily she substituted a clean saucer before picking up the letter and reading it again, her head shaking with incredulity. What nonsense indeed! What sort of joke was this to play on her? But if it was nonsense her mind could not detach itself from musing, lightly, over his proposal. The revelation that she now knew the reason Ruari MacDonald had come alone to the city and why he had chosen to install himself at ISLAY rather than an establishment frequented by his kinsmen startled but did not wholly surprise her. He had come with the intention of seeking a wife and he’d wanted to lose no time about it! It was not unthinkable. She’d heard her Granny say there was occasionally a shortage of marriageable women on some of the more remote islands and that men would sometimes ‘suffer painfully from yearnings’. She’d thought then that ‘yearnings’ was a stomach ulcer or rheumatism, which seemed to be a prevalent illness in the Islands, but whatever had prompted Ruari McDonald’s desire to seek a wife, Kirsty realised it was a very daring thing for him to have done. And certainly it had been very wise of him to try to conceal his intention from kinsmen. Young as she’d been at the time she could even now recall the merciless teasing a bachelor neighbour had endured when there’d been a rumour that he was so anxious to seek a wife he had gone to the length of putting an advertisement in a newspaper. How would shy Ruari MacDonald have reacted to similar waggery? she wondered.
    But she was still of the opinion that to have chosen herself as a possible wife was nonsense. Whatever could have put it into the head of such a timid, gentle man that she would make a suitable wife for him? A woman he hadn’t set eyes on until a week previously. A woman he’d barely exchanged more than a few words with. It was almost improper to think of such a thing. Just nonsense her thoughts reiterated, and persisted in reiterating throughout that day and the whole of the following day and, careful as she was to avoid exchanging even surreptitious glances with him when she was in attendance in the dining room, the scornful phrase continued to assert itself.
    And yet, because of the changed circumstances at ISLAY she urged herself to consider his proposal, no matter how ludicrous it at first seemed and as she considered it she was conscious of a small tingle of excitement which she was reluctant to recognise. She remembered Mrs Ross asking her one day if she’d ever been tempted to get married or, more bluntly, if she’d ever had a fancy for being penetrated by a man?
    When Kirsty had indignantly denied any such temptations the old lady had complimented her. ‘You’re a wise lass, Kirsty. See and stay that way. The more a man has his way with a woman the sooner he’ll tire of her.’ She’d tried then to coax Mrs Ross into telling her of her own experience of marriage but the old lady had brushed off her curiosity with cynical abruptness. She wished now that it was possible