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Huntley Daviot and their first meeting had scarcely helped to endear him to her. He had seemed faintly amused by their encounter, although she had sensed a remoteness about him which set him apart. Certainly he hadn’t come to Craigie Hill to pay a social call. If Kirsty persuaded him to bend his dark, arrogant head so that he could pass under their lintel she could keep him in the kitchen!
    Half angrily she mounted the stairs to scrub the marks of honest toil from her shining brow, wondering if that was why he had smiled.
    He had gone when she came down again, her red hair smoothly brushed, her green eyes calm.
    “That would be why they wanted the extra milk at the Lodge this morning,” Kirsty decided. “The Searles would be expecting him. He’s taken some butter and a dozen eggs. I’ve told him we can let him have a dozen till we run short, then he’ll have to be rationed, like the rest o’ folk. You can deliver them with the milk on a Saturday.”
    For no accountable reason Alison flushed.
    “I can’t see why he shouldn’t come for them himself,” she remarked. “I heard a car drive away just now.”
    “He’s a busy man.” Kirsty gave her an odd, speculative smile. “And we’ve always delivered our butter and eggs with the milk. It’s one journey,” she added laconically to settle all argument.
    Alison wondered about Calders as she prepared their meal, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her mother about the occupants of the big house because she felt that Calders and Robin were too closely connected in Helen’s mind. Her son had made friends with the Daviots to his cost, Helen had admitted, although that had been all.
    The meal finished and the table cleared, they sat over the fire for a while until Helen reached for her knitting.
    “Off you go and get some fresh air into your lungs,” she suggested. “I’ve this bed-jacket to finish and it’s an intricate pattern. I need to give it all my attention.”
    She lifted the delicately worked garment, spreading it out for her daughter’s inspection, her eyes lingering on the red-gold hair she had brushed and tended so lovingly for over twenty years. Alison’s return to Craigie Hill meant a great deal to her, yet she could never have demanded such a sacrifice from her. The fact that she had come of her own accord filled Helen’s heart with tenderness and a measure of peace. One day they would talk of Alison’s interrupted career and discuss the future, but not now.
    “Off you go,” she repeated. “We’ll soon be losing the light.”
    Although there was no lack of fresh air at Craigie Hill, Alison had wanted to explore farther along the headland ever since her return. The rocks and pinnacles round Sterne Point had always fascinated her and the old, disused lighthouse had been the focal point of many a youthful adventure.
    Thinking of Robin in these days, her heart softened a little towards him. He had been the gay companion of her youth, the older, hero-figure of her girlhood. Wondering what had changed him, she found herself breasting the headland with a storm of confusion in her heart. So much had happened in her absence, so much of the past that had been tender and sincere had disappeared for ever. Jim Orbister had hinted as much and her mother had all but confirmed it. Calders and Craigie Hill had been linked by disaster, inexplicably drawn together by circumstances which had coloured all their lives.
    She looked towards the big, deserted house half hidden behind its screen of trees, wondering what Huntley Daviot did there. Her mother had said that he had taken over the home farm on his father’s death, together with the supervision of the estate, but there was an efficient manager at the farm who knew all there was to know about sheep. Huntley could have lived a comfortable life anywhere, pursuing his every whim, yet he had chosen to return two years ago to take up his inheritance and now he was home again. His flying career had been