SIR ARCHIBALD HANBURY had spent too long in City boardrooms to allow his square, blunt-featured, good-humoured face to reflect his feelings, but as he finished carving the haunch of venison and took his place at the head of the long table, his heart sank.
Oh, my darling, my best beloved! he appealed silently to his wife Gwendolyn, stately and serene at the other end of the shining expanse of mahogany, What have I done to deserve this?
But Gwennie was beyond eye-contact, talking to her own neighbours, as remote as if she was on another planet. He could hardly blame her for allocating him the most recent arrivals among his female guests as his dinner companions, but as his practised eye surveyed the two young women between whom he was inescapably planted, he felt isolated and depressed by the thought of the conversational spadework ahead.
On his right sat his son Nicky’s addition to the guest-list, though whether she rated as girlfriend, guru, or simply business colleague he had yet to find out. A thoroughly modern miss, or more likely ms, thought Sir Archie despondently: skinny, dark, intense, with an uncompromisingly cropped head and, unless he was very much mistaken, an outsize chip on her shoulder.
Still, he mustn’t complain. If entertaining this particular visitor was the price he had to pay for Nicky’s return to the fold, he would put the best face he could on it. There had been times in the past three years when he feared that his efforts to interest Nicky in what should eventually become his inheritance had merely served to alienate him. This long-sought rapprochement was a delicate plant, and must be protected from the slightest chill.
Prospects for conversation looked only slightly easier on his left. Maya Forrester, widow of his stepson Alec, was another unknown quantity, born and bred to a different kind of life. She was twenty-four years old, stunningly attractive, daughter of a Tennessee judge and a history professor, and black as your hat.
Shouldn’t say that, he chided himself. Shouldn’t even think it. A good horse is never a bad colour. But why, oh why couldn’t Alec have married a country-loving tweeds-and-pearls English girl, instead of leaving this exotic flower as part-owner of Glen Buie?
Being a fair man, he wouldn’t dream of holding Maya responsible for Alec’s death, but there was no doubt in his mind that marrying her had been the mistake that precipitated the tragedy. Head over ears in love, Alec had thrown up his steady job in a merchant bank, and ploughed a ridiculous sum of money into a deep-sea fishing venture.
We’ll fly over next summer, Mum, when the boat is laid up, he had written to Gwennie. I want to take Maya to the hill, and show her Glen Buie. She’ll love it, I know...
Alec had never been a great communicator, and the long silence that followed had scarcely worried them. It had been Judge Paulson, Maya’s father, who eventually telephoned, his deep voice choking, to tell them the Jenny B had been lost with all hands.
This was no time to rake up such memories. Sir Archie shook them off, turning his attention determinedly to the girl on his right. Now, what the hell what her name? He had been so taken aback when Nicky arrived with her in tow that he had failed to listen properly when she was introduced.
He tried to sneak a look at her place-card, but it was half hidden by a plate. All he could see was LEY, and that struck no chord. There was something odd about the condition of her plate, too. Meat and gravy had been scraped off and deposited on her side plate, leaving only a brownish smear among the main-course vegetables.
I might have guessed, he thought.
‘Is that enough for you, my dear?’ he asked kindly. ‘I can ring for some cheese, if you like, or an egg?’
‘I wouldn’t put you to the trouble.’
‘No trouble, my dear. Can’t have you starving.’ He pressed the bell with his foot, feeling her bristle at the two ‘My dears’ and searching his mind for the missing name. One of those odd, unisex affairs: a place he knew quite well. Henley? Berkeley?
‘Some cheese for Miss … er …’ he mumbled to Duncan Grant, gardener-cum-butler, attentive at his elbow.
‘My name is Beverley,’ said the girl sharply, ‘and I said I didn’t want any cheese.’
‘Oh! Sorry. Just as you like. Thank you, Duncan. No cheese.’
‘Verra guid, Sir Archibald.’ Duncan cat-footed away.
‘Nicky should have told us you are vegetarian,’ said Sir Archie, hoping he sounded friendly, not patronising – heaven forbid!
‘I’m not.’
‘Er ... then why?’
‘Your cook told me what you were going to eat tonight.’
‘Venison?’ He looked at his plate and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, it isn’t high. And you don’t get your ears cropped for eating it, nowadays.’
‘How can you joke about it?’ she demanded fiercely.
‘Joke? My dear girl …’ He caught the note of patronage, smothered it, started again. ‘I’m not joking, far from it. Feeding this household is a serious business. We have to live off the land as far as we can. No supermarket, no delicatessen, only the boat three times a week to bring the grocery order.’
‘How can you be so cruel? Killing beautiful wild creatures for sport?’
‘It would be a damned sight more cruel if we didn’t,’ he said bluntly, disliking her, yet determined to be fair. She didn’t understand how a deer-forest was managed – how could she, unless Nicky had explained? She probably expected it to be some kind of wildlife park, complete with notices explaining the ecology of the region and warnings about slippery bridges.
‘If we didn’t keep numbers down to a sustainable level and shoot out the surplus beasts, the place would soon be overrun with deer and half of them would starve. No natural predators, you see. No wolves, coyotes, hyenas, wild dogs.’
‘So you play God?’
‘We manage very poor resources in the most humane way we can.’
‘How can you say that?’ she exclaimed angrily.
‘It happens to be true.’
Beverley made a disgusted sound and began to cut up her vegetables, then laid the knife on the side of the plate, transferring the fork to her right hand. ‘Why can’t you let the poor creatures live their lives as Nature intended?’
‘Nature never intended deer to live on a barren mountaintop.’ His tone was dry. ‘They’re woodland animals. They need shelter, leaves to browse, decent grazing. Do you know that if you take a 15-stone stag from here and release him in his proper environment, somewhere like Thetford Chase, for instance, his progeny may grow to weigh thirty stone? It’s only through miracles of adaptation that deer can survive here, in the last wild corners we humans have left for them.’
‘There’s lots of grass along the river,’ she said defensively.
Sir Archie shook his head. ‘Precious little feeding value in that stuff. Besides, the deer don’t come down to the river at this time of year. Too many midges. Too many damned people walking along the river path.’
‘Are you implying that I shouldn’t have gone there?’ she snapped.
God! She was quick on the draw, he thought. ‘No, no,’ he said wearily. ‘The deer are on the high tops in this weather. Stick to the paths and you won’t bother them. You’ll be safe enough.’
Her eyebrows drew together. ‘Safe? Isn’t it safe off the paths?’
‘Not really. Not when deer are being culled. A rifle bullet can travel over two miles – if it doesn’t hit something, that is.’
There was a pause while she digested this, then she said in a combative tone, ‘There’s no law of trespass in Scotland. Ramblers have the right to go where they please.’
‘True enough, but all the same they stick to the paths if they know what’s good for them. We put up warning notices during the cull, as a precaution against accidents.’
‘Have there been accidents?’
Under the table, his fingers tapped wood secretly. ‘No shooting accidents, thank God. One can’t be too careful.’
‘But other kinds?’
‘Oh, nothing serious. Broken legs, people getting lost, fishermen wading in too deep... that kind of thing.’ Again his fingers sought wood. ‘It’s not a dangerous place, exactly, but it is untamed. That’s what I like about it. You have to keep your wits about you and recognise the power of natural forces. Wind, cold, water, precipices. You have to remember that if you get into difficulties, there may not be anyone around to help you.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘I still think it’s cruel,’ she said.
Sir Archie sighed. Useless to ask how she would dispose of hundreds of surplus beasts, or feed the ones who survived the long, bitter winter in these remote glens. Useless to speak of blood-stinking abattoirs, or half-stunned turkeys struggling on conveyor-belts. Her mind was closed. She didn’t want to see things as they were, but how she would like them to be.
He chewed steadily at his meat, reluctant to admit that her accusatory stare was spoiling his pleasure in it. She was good-looking, in a sharp, hawkish way, but her very glance offered a challenge born of...what? Insecurity? Fear? A genuine disgust at the spectacle of the rich at play? If the last, why the hell had Nicky brought her here? He must have known she’d hate it.
‘Have you known Nicholas long?’ he asked, carefully neutral.
‘Two years, I suppose. A friend brought him to one of our meetings.’
‘A political meeting?’
‘No.’ She looked down the table to where Nicky was talking animatedly to his solid, grey-chignoned aunt, Marjorie Forbes. ‘I run a charity called Home from Home. You won’t have heard of it.’
Statement, not question. In her book, bloated capitalists like him knew nothing about charity work. If he mentioned his firm’s vast annual donations, she wouldn’t believe him, and in any case his mental alarm bells were already ringing. Trust Nicky to have got himself mixed up with a dodgy charity.
‘Interesting. What exactly do you do?’ he asked, though he could make a fair guess.
She said glibly, as if she had answered the question a hundred times, ‘We act as a safety net for people who don’t qualify for help from official social services. People with emotional or financial crises, who have no one to turn to.’
‘Teenagers on the loose? Battered wives?’
‘We try not to categorise. We assess each case on its merits. We offer victims a roof over their heads, counselling, support until they can pull their lives together.’
‘It sounds expensive.’ He wished she would talk instead of lecturing.
‘We do a great deal of fund-raising. Nicky is our Financial Director.’
‘My God!’ he said, startled. ‘I hope someone checks his figures.’
She frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Two re-sits of GCSE Maths, you know.’
‘Oh, there’s a girl to take care of all of that,’ she said dismissively. ‘Nicky just advises us on who to approach.’
That boy is every kind of fool, thought his father in silent fury. Duns my friends, no doubt. God, what a mess! An explanation for her presence here at Glen Buie struck him with a jolt. No, he thought. I’m damned if I will. Even if I have to sell, she’s not getting her hands on this place and filling it with down-and-outs.
Duncan was making his rounds, offering second helpings. Sir Archie rubbed his jaw, planning the week ahead. His difficulty nowadays was finding friends who were still fit enough for a week’s intensive exercise. It had been easy enough when they were all in their forties, but desk-bound lawyers and bankers and captains of industry developed aches and creaks in their fifties, and their wives – if they still had them – were mostly struggling against fat or arthritis, menopause or hysterectomy, none of which helped on the hill.
Over recent years, he had relied more and more on his stepson’s friends to provide youthful stamina and muscle-power, as well as high spirits; but now Alec was dead, and the people his own son hung out with were not interested in stalking deer.
There was no ducking the fact that it was a tough sport. However carefully he stage-managed, it was impossible to guarantee an easy day. Even on the low ground which he privately termed ‘the Liberian Ambassador’s beat,’ it could take three hours’ walking to come up with a shootable beast, and the irony was that the more inferior stags he culled, the more difficult it became to find one that he didn’t consider too good to shoot.
He had begun the policy of conserving beasts with outstanding antlers, instead of shooting them for trophies, as Continental sportsmen did. A quarter of a century later, you often had a long climb to find a mature stag with fewer than eight points. That was why Everard Cooper, the sleek-haired paper-manufacturing fat-cat booming away fruitily two places to his left, was so keen to get his hands on Glen Buie. As his expense-account paunch indicated, he spent much of his time and energy buttering up foreign bigwigs, and would jump at the chance of being able to offer them deer-stalking on a famous forest. Merely imagining what he would do to the place made Sir Archie shudder.
Certainly the solid, spacious, mock-Gothic Victorian lodge would get a new roof, which would be no bad thing, but modern baths and showers would oust the 7-foot cast-iron monsters in which guests loved to soak out the day’s exertions, and very likely bidets would further vulgarise the bathing arrangements. An up-to-date fitted kitchen, full of machines and gadgets, would replace the stone-flagged cavern with its Belfast sinks and huge, scrubbed table at which Mary Grant, the cook, wove her culinary spells.
That would be for starters. When it came to the sporting side – the side that really mattered – Sir Archie could all too easily predict Everard Cooper’s pattern of behaviour. No true businessman could happily contemplate pouring money indefinitely into a bottomless hole. Once Glen Buie belonged to him, phrases like ‘eating its head off,’ and ‘not earning its keep,’ would crop up in Everard’s conversation. Next would come references to ‘the bottom line,’ ‘breaking even,’ and the dreaded ‘rationalisation.’
From that point, it was but a short step to the ‘Sporting Lets’ columns, which would unleash the international fraternity of what Sir Archie called the four-letter men – Frogs, Huns, Wops, Yanks, and very probably Nips as well – on to Glen Buie. The sort of trophy-hunters who shot polar bears from helicopters and gazelle from sand-bikes.
Sir Archie shuddered. The deer-forest which he and his father had cherished would be plundered and despoiled. And then when his enthusiasm waned or his legs packed up, Everard would probably sell out to some giant leisure group. Chalets would mushroom in the glen. Hikers in fluorescent anoraks would drop coke-cans and plastic bags in the heather, and by sheer human pressure drive out the deer. Black rain will fall, and the deer will leave the hills. Four hundred years ago, the Braham Seer had foretold the destruction of the Highlands, and in the first years of the twenty-first century his prophecy seemed likely to be fulfilled. Black snow was common nowadays, when pollution-laden clouds dropped their acid burden.
If he sold Glen Buie to Everard Cooper, he would contribute his own mite to the destruction.
There must be some other way.
Beverley had turned to her other side. It was time he did his duty and talked to his stepson’s young widow, though too much shooting without ear defenders had damaged his left ear, and he was gloomily certain he wouldn’t catch a quarter of what she said.
To his relief, he saw that Everard Cooper was giving her a crash-course in Highland social history, to which she was listening with no open signs of boredom. Rapidly the monologue, delivered fortissimo, touched upon crofting, the Clearances, and arrived at the Victorian passion for deer-stalking, which had led to the building of Glen Buie Lodge.
‘The original house was at Strathtorran – still is, of course, but in a very delapidated condition,’ boomed Cooper. ‘The McNeils are an old family, but most of them had the sense to keep their noses out of politics, so the earldom of Strathtorran survived, along with most of their land, until very recently. Then the Auld Laird, as they still call him – Torquil Strathtorran’s father – got into deep water in the 1950s, and sold this house and more than half the deer-forest to Archie and your late father-in-law, Hamish Forrester, fifty-fifty. The old house is just across the river. Wonderful view. I walked over to look at it last Sunday.’
Did you just? thought Sir Archie, pouring cream over his treacle tart in defiance of Gwenny’s censorious eye. Dreaming of adding Strathtorran to your spoils, I shouldn’t wonder.
‘Been empty for years,’ Everard went on, ‘but now young Torquil has gone and turned the outbuildings and barn into a hostel. Awful idea, but he needs the money. Unless you can get a job at the fish-farm or with the Forestry Commission, there’s precious little hope of finding work here, despite all the millions we taxpayers pour into the Scottish economy.’ He raised his voice still more. ‘How do you feel about it, Archie? A lot of Outward Bounders on your doorstep, eh?’
‘Oh, we rub along,’ said Sir Archie, deliberately neutral. ‘No one can deny that coming here has done Torquil Strathtorran a power of good physically. Remember how seedy he was as a boy?’
‘Ah, but has it done you a power of good?’
Sir Archie shrugged. ‘No harm, anyway. He’s keen to get the place in order – works like a...’ He caught the word ‘black’ and hastily substituted, ‘galley slave, and looks very well on it.’
‘What about his brother? Ian – or is it Euan? Roughish diamond, I gather.’
‘Oh, well, we all have our crosses. Ghastly tragedy to lose his wife like that. Lovely girl, too. A real cracker.’
‘But hardly the sort of work-horse needed up here,’ put in Lady Priscilla Cooper, Everard’s wife, listening from across the table. ‘I never thought Eliza McNeil looked at home in oilskins.’
‘Thoroughbred between the shafts,’ Everard agreed, and on Sir Archie’s right Beverley caught Nicky’s eye and gave an impatient little snort.
Leaning towards Everard, Sir Archie said softly, ‘How did young Benjamin get on today? You were with him, weren’t you? I saw his stag in the larder: a good beast.’ Rather too good, in fact. A handsome ten-pointer, the sort he preferred to see alive on the hill.
When Everard said nothing, Sir Archie called down the table to Benjamin Forbes, his teenage nephew. ‘How was your stalk, Ben? I see you got a stag.’
‘Wasn’t it splendid?’ broke in Marjorie Forbes, before her younger son could open his mouth. ‘Fergus said it was a frightfully difficult crawl, right in the open.’
‘Mum!’ Benjamin looked agonised.
Why is the old bitch yapping so hard? Sir Archie wondered. Something must have gone wrong and she’s trying to cover up. I should have sent the boy with Sandy McNichol. Fergus is too much of a chancer – but then Marje would have insisted on going with them. She can keep up with steady old Sandy. Nothing more likely to upset a boy’s first stalk than having his mother breathing down his neck. I must find out what happened. The shot looked all right – perhaps a trifle too far back...
Pointedly he addressed himself to his nephew. ‘Was it a long shot, Ben?’
‘Not – not really, Uncle Archie. About a hundred yards. Only we were on such a steep slope, looking down. Almost straight down. I’m – I’m awfully sorry I made such a hash of it.’
‘My dear boy, I don’t call that a hash. You shot him clean enough; just a fraction too far back.’
‘But it was the wrong stag.’ Now Benjamin had got the confession off his chest, words poured out of him, his half-broken voice rising and falling in jerky sentences as he tried to justify his mistake. ‘It was so different from shooting at the target. I hadn’t realised. The light was tricky. The mist kept closing in, then melting away. Half the time I wasn’t even sure the stags were there. There were four of them, but I could only see three. I thought I was looking at the one Fergus meant. He kept saying, “Are you seeing him?” and I said, “Yes”, because I – I –’
‘I know just what you mean,’ said his uncle seriously. ‘They move about, and the cloud comes and goes, and it’s damned difficult to tell t’other from which.’
Ben took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. ‘We scrambled down through the rocks until we were a hundred yards above them on the ridge behind Tulloch Mhor. Where the burn flows in two directions, you know? The cloud was down, and we had to wait until it lifted, and just when we started moving closer, a whole party of hinds came round the shoulder of the hill.’
Most of the table had fallen silent to listen.
‘They stopped and stamped and glared at us, but they hadn’t got our wind. They kept moving on. The stags all jumped up, and Fergus said, “Quick, take him now!” but I wasn’t in a good position. They were looking up, and the one I was aiming at was half hidden. Fergus said, “Go on, shoot, or they’ll be off,” but my stag still wasn’t clear. Then he moved a couple of steps forward and I shot him, and – and Fergus said it was the wrong one.’
What Fergus had actually said as the ten-pointer crumpled into the peat hag, was ‘God, boy! Ye’ve killed one o’ Sandy’s young feeders. Now the fat will be in the fire,’ and Ben had felt ready to die of shame. It was done, and nothing could undo it. The wrong stag! How could he have made such a mistake?
All the way home, he had been rehearsing how he could tell his uncle. He was bound to hear of it sooner or later. On the hill, everything had been so different, so difficult. This morning, when he shot at the target and hit that circled spot every time, it had been easy. There was no rush. You wriggled into a firm position flat on your stomach, legs spread, wrist on someone’s rolled coat, and all you had to do was line up the cross-hairs of the telescopic sight, hold your breath, and squeeze the trigger. Easy as falling off a log.
But on the hill, his heart had been hammering from the scramble through the rocks, and the strap of his binoculars kept getting caught under him. His hands had been stiff with cold, and the sight misted up when he tried to look through it. The stags were not neatly broadside on, as the pockmarked target was; nor was there a nice little circle to tell you where to aim.
Worst of all, instead of firing from his familiar prone position, Fergus had made him prop his back against a rock and shoot downhill between his own feet. It had felt awful – insecure and wobbly. For one ghastly moment, as the echoes thundered around the rocks, he thought he had missed completely. Perhaps it would have been better if he had.
Then the stag had given a great bound and stood swaying, looking vaguely round at the empty hill where his companions had vanished. He had put his head back, until the antlers lay along his neck, and crumpled among the rocks.
His uncle was staring at him. Ben wondered how many of the doubts and fears he had felt there on the hill it would be politic to express, and decided he had said enough.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.
‘Never mind, old boy, easily done. Can’t be helped.’ I must have a word with Fergus, thought Sir Archie. Tell him to be more careful, particularly with beginners. No sense in making a fuss now and putting the boy off stalking altogether. At least he had kept his nerve and shot accurately, even if he had killed the wrong stag.
Beverley’s face was stiff with disapproval. ‘It’s disgusting. It shouldn’t be allowed.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s obviously a substitute for sex. Initiating boys into the customs of the tribe. Proving you’re a man.’
Sir Archie considered this charge. There was a grain of truth in it, particularly the initiation aspect. As his own powers declined, nothing gave him more pleasure than seeing a youngster take to stalking with his own enthusiasm. Everard Cooper’s son, Lucas, for instance: now that had been a turn-up for the books. Thickset and heavy-featured, with brutally shaven hair and a gold earring, young Lucas had looked unpromising material. You would have said his natural habitat was a street corner. His own father could hardly bear to be in the same room with him.
Yet he had taken to stalking like a duck to water. On the one occasion when Sir Archie had gone with him to the hill, he had been astounded by the change in Lucas – his keenness to learn, the way he got on with the stalkers, his instinctive understanding of wind conditions and how they would influence the deer.
Some of his own friends, who had been coming to stay at Glen Buie for years, had never learned to do more than follow the professional stalker and obey his instructions. Others, like Lucas, could have gone out on their own, once they knew the ground.
Over their lunchtime piece, looking down on the network of shining lochs and hills blending out towards the Western Isles, Lucas had haltingly confided his longing to be a gamekeeper, and his father’s angry opposition. Sir Archie had promised to put in a word for him, but the last he had heard, Lucas was serving in the Marines.
Initiation to the tribe? Maybe. But surely stalking was not a substitute for sex? Not for him, at any rate. With guilty pleasure he remembered this very afternoon with luscious little Cynthia Page, trophy-wife of his old friend and one-time brother officer Joss Page, on the sunny bank of the pool known as Miss Hazelrigg’s Catch. Standing behind her, thigh-deep in water, while she played a salmon, he had slipped his hands under her quilted waistcoat and layers of wool and silk until his fingers cupped her full breasts.
‘Archie, you brute! Stop it! You’ll make me lose my fish!’ She had wriggled ecstatically, firm and sleek-bodied as a puppy.
‘Keep your rod point up!’
‘Stop it! No, really, I mean it. Archie! You filthy old man!’
Her reel had screamed as the fish fled downstream. While she struggled to bring it to the bank, he had aroused her to such a frenzy of passion that the moment he had it safe in the net, she had flung down her rod and begun to tear off waders and breeks. They had made love on the little beach, getting very wet in the process.
Fishing offered excellent opportunities for sex during the drowsy afternoons when the fish lay deep and torpid, and now that dear Gwennie’s interest had become so patchy, why turn down sporting invitations?
Sex while stalking was another matter entirely. Difficult, he would have said, if not downright dangerous. You might die of exposure. Even if you were left for an hour in a peat-hag with a willing woman, the cold and the clothes were against you. Easier for Scots, of course, but only an idiot took off his boots on the hill. The thought of copulation wearing Hogg of Fife’s stubborn brogues made him smile. Besides, who could tell when the advance party might not crawl silently back and catch you at it?
‘Speaking from a purely personal viewpoint,’ he said judiciously to Beverley, ‘I can’t see stalking as a substitute for sex. No way.’
‘Well, you can’t deny that it’s cruel.’
‘Oh, I do!’ he said with vigour. ‘I deny it absolutely. It’s far less cruel than so-called humane killing in an abattoir. Take Ben’s stag today. He wouldn’t have had any idea what hit him, or that it was going to. No anticipation. No stress, no fear, no pain. One minute he was chewing the cud, surrounded by his mates. The next – bingo! Stone dead. What’s cruel about that?’
‘It’s barbaric.’
‘Let me suggest an experiment,’ he said, with heroic disregard of self. ‘I may stalk tomorrow. Why not come with us? You can judge for yourself whether or not it involves any cruelty.’
‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Afraid to put theory to the test?’
Beverley said angrily, ‘I couldn’t bear to watch anything so horrible.’
‘Come on, my dear,’ he goaded. ‘Try anything once.’ Except incest and Morris dancing, he added with an inward smile, and for a moment thought she was going to accept the challenge.
Then she said edgily, ‘I have no intention of lending my support to a cruel and despicable activity.’
‘I’m not asking for your support. You’re entitled to your opinion, but it ought to be an informed opinion, not just prejudice. Come as an observer. Watch what happens from start to finish, then form your own judgement. Isn’t that fair?’
Maya had turned to listen. A tinge of pink flared in Beverley’s cheeks, but she said, ‘No, thanks. I didn’t come here to murder animals.’
He wanted to ask why she had come, but bit it back. Pudding plates had been cleared, and cheese was making its rounds. Everard trimmed a cigar and, as usual at this stage of the meal, people glanced expectantly towards their host.
Sir Archie tapped his tumbler and, as silence fell, he said, ‘Well, it’s been a good day all round. A fine first stag: well done, Ben. First of many, I hope. Also a nasty little switch shot by Joss. Better off the hill.’
‘What about my fish?’ Cynthia flashed him a look from under her eyelashes. ‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’
‘Oh, that was the most remarkable catch of the week,’ he said, grinning. ‘I insist that you take it home to remember us by.’
‘That’s very decent of you, old man,’ said Joss, always on the scrounge for a free meal. ‘Sure you don’t need it to feed the troops?’
‘No, no. Yours by right of conquest, eh, Cynthie? I don’t have to tell you how sorry we are to lose you tomorrow.’ He paused, cleared his throat, began afresh. ‘Right, now. Plans for the rest of the week. Twelve stags to get, if we can, to keep up our numbers while the weather lasts. Tomorrow’s first rifle is Ashy, right?’
He smiled at his god-daughter, Astrid Macleod, Lady Priscilla’s daughter from her first marriage, and his spirits rose as always at the sight of her: tall, blonde, athletic, with long flaxen plaits wound into a crown to give her the look of a Norse goddess. Now that would have been a match to gladden his heart. He wondered what had gone wrong between her and Nicky, and thought the reason was probably sitting beside him.
Ashy smiled back, her teeth very white and even. ‘Lovely!’
‘You go with Sandy to the Black Corrie tomorrow. All right?’
‘Very all right.’
‘Everard will take the second rifle –’
‘Hang on, old boy,’ said Cooper quickly. ‘I meant to tell you before dinner that I’d like a day off, if it’s all the same to you. I’ve got the devil of a blister after yesterday’s death-march, and I can’t say I’m happy about my rifle. I want to take it down to the target again. It was firing all over the place yesterday.’
Ashy looked down to hide a smile, but Sir Archie said seriously, ‘In that case, of course you must sort it out before you use it again. Let’s see...’ He looked round the table. ‘Johnny? I gather you’re driving your mother over to the McPhails?’
John Forbes, Marjorie’s elder son, looked up keenly. He was a rangy, craggy-featured young man with a thatch of dark hair and an air of can-do enthusiasm which contrasted sharply with his cousin Nicky’s languid manner. ‘Oh, we can do that another day, can’t we, Mum?’
‘No, we can’t,’ said Marjorie firmly. ‘Sadie’s expecting us for lunch, and I want to see her arboretum before the gales ruin the leaves. I’m sorry, but that’s the plan, and we will stick to it.’
John looked sulky. Sir Archie said quickly, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be happy to take the second rifle myself. All right, my love’ – as Gwennie began to protest – ‘we’ll take it steadily, I promise.’
Though his tone was light, she recognised the order. He had made her swear to keep the doctor’s verdict to herself. ‘Just till I have things sorted out,’ he had said, and she knew he meant, ‘Until I’ve made up my mind what to do about Glen Buie.’ As soon as his heart trouble became generally known, all the people who depended on the deer-forest for their livelihoods would begin to fret about the future, and the less time they had to do that, the better. He wanted to present them with a fait accompli, but first he had to decide his own course of action, and not even Gwennie could help him do that.
He turned directly to his son. ‘I leave it to you to entertain your guest, Nicholas. I’ve tried and failed to persuade her to come stalking, so it’s up to you to find something she’ll enjoy.’
Nicky, who had been folding his place-card into ever smaller triangles while the sporting arrangements were made, looked up as if startled to find himself the centre of attention. He was thin, fair, and narrow-shouldered, with a mop of blond hair curling over his collar, and looked younger than his twenty-three years. His guileless blue eyes had an anxious, defensive look as he glanced across the table at Beverley.
‘Oh! Well, we’ll... we’ll...’ he mumbled, and briskly Beverley took charge.
‘Nicky will show me around the place,’ she said firmly and added with a challenging look at Sir Archie. ‘He’ll see I don’t wander into any danger.’
‘Fine,’ he said blandly, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘That’s all fixed, then. Oh, just one more thing, Nicky. Mary asked if she could have a word with you after dinner. She wants you to get her a nice young roebuck for the larder. She says the new plantation is fairly crawling with them.’
‘OK, Pa. Don’t worry, I’ll see to that.’
With inward amusement Sir Archie registered Beverley’s look of shocked disgust, and thought she couldn’t know Nicky very well after all. His gaze roved the table. ‘All right, then? Everyone happy? Priscilla?’
Her long horse-face broke into a smile. ‘I’m going on a tweed-hunt with Gwennie. There’s a new shop on the road between Tounie and Fort Charles, and people tell me they’ve got wonderful handwoven stuff.’
Sir Archie shuddered. ‘Chacun à son goût.’ He turned to Maya. ‘Would it amuse you to go with them?’
‘I’d rather go hunt deer with you,’ she said, and his heart sank a little.
‘You think you’d enjoy it? We may have a long walk.’
‘Sure. I’ve hunted quail with Alec. I won’t hold you up.’
Sir Archie well remembered his own experience of shooting quail in Texas. The big Land Cruiser with its trunk full of food and cold drinks, negro boys to hold the pointers, the flat, dry, easy walking...
‘You’ll find this a bit different,’ he warned.
‘I know that,’ said Maya easily. ‘Alec told me it’s a whole different ball game.’
On her own head be it, then. At least he would be there to see that she came to no harm, and once would probably be enough for her.
‘According to the forecast, it’s going to be wet. Have you got boots and a waterproof jacket?’
‘Oh, sure. I brought the whole outfit – kammo vest, foul-weather gear, gloves. Alec told me it can get real cold up in those mountains.’
Why should it make him flinch every time she mentioned Alec? Sir Archie forced a smile. ‘I’ll ask Mary to put you up something to eat, then, and we’ll leave here sharp at nine.’