Alien Wife

Luke was perplexed. ‘Daniel McGregor is your uncle?’

‘My adopted uncle,’ she amended quietly. ‘My parents are—dead. Uncle Daniel made himself responsible for me.’ She paused. ‘Aunt Ella didn’t tell you, did she?’ Luke shook his head, and she went on: ‘I’m not really surprised. A film star with a sex image doesn’t want a twenty-year-old niece hanging around, does she?’

Luke supported himself against the bonnet of the car. ‘I didn’t even know Ella had a sister.’

Abby shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Oh, well …’ She smiled again. ‘I must say, you’re not what I expected either. Uncle Daniel told me you were coming, but I expected someone old—forty-five or fifty, at least.’

‘Thank you.’ Luke half smiled. ‘I am nearing forty, and strange as it may seem to you, I don’t consider that old!’

She laughed, revealing even white teeth. ‘Well, you don’t look it,’ she conceded lightly. ‘Are you staying long?’

‘Two—maybe three days.’

‘Is that all? Uncle Daniel will be disappointed. He expected you to stay a week, at least.’

Luke straightened. ‘We’ll see.’

She put her foot on the bottom step. ‘Are you coming in?’

‘Actually, I was going to walk down to the loch,’ he replied, although that idea was not so attractive as it had been.

‘Shall I come with you?’ she suggested. ‘I can point out our famous landmarks.’

‘All right.’

Luke was willing, although he wondered that she didn’t feel the cold in her thin sweater. She walked easily beside him, matching her steps to his long strides, exchanging a smile of shared enjoyment.

‘Do you live in London, Mr Jordan?’ she asked, as they climbed over a low wooden fence and crunched across the shingle to the water’s edge.

Luke nodded. ‘Have you been there?’

Abby shook her head. ‘I’ve only been away from Ardnalui once, and that was on a holiday to Madrid. My grandparents used to live there, but they’re dead now, too.’

Luke was amazed. ‘So you’re half Spanish?’

‘Mmm.’ She laughed softly. ‘Not so like Aunt Ella after all.’

‘But how did your parents meet?’

‘My father was working in a hotel in Glasgow. He used to come up here for holidays.’

‘I see.’ But Luke was curious. She was very young to be an orphan. ‘Did your parents have an accident?’

A flicker of pain crossed her face and he realised how tactless he had been. ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘Don’t answer that. I had no right to ask. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘That’s all right.’ She had herself in control again. ‘No, they didn’t die together, if that’s what you mean. My father—went away with another woman. It broke my mother’s heart. Later, when she learned he had died, she just didn’t want to go on living.’

From anyone else, the words might have sounded over-dramatic, but she spoke quietly, without emphasis, relating the events as they had happened.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. ‘It must be very painful for you to talk about it.’

‘It used to be. But it’s five years since my mother died. I’ve got over the worst.’

‘And now you—live with Daniel McGregor?’

She nodded. ‘He’s been like a second father to me.’

Luke wondered how much of this Scott Anderson had known. He must have known Ella had a sister, of course, yet he had never mentioned it. Why? And even when he had arranged for Luke to stay at the presbytery, he had not said a word about its other occupant. Scott and Ella only tolerated one another, Luke knew that, but had it some other deeper significance that the conflict of artistic temperaments Luke had imagined?

‘Do you see that mountain across the loch—the one that’s almost obscured by the mist? That’s our most famous landmark—Ben Lui. And the one beside it, the smaller peak—that’s Ben Ifor.’

Realising that Abby was speaking again, Luke tried to pick up the threads of her conversation. But it was difficult when his mind was filled with questions he was reluctant to voice, and presently she shivered, and suggested they walked back.

On their way up to the house, he said: ‘What do you do all day? There can’t be much work for a girl like you here.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ she smiled. ‘I work at the inn.’

‘The inn!’ Luke was surprised.

‘Why?’ she teased him. ‘You’re not teetotal, are you?’

‘No, but …’

Luke made a helpless gesture, and she chuckled. ‘But you don’t think it’s a suitable occupation for someone who lives in the presbytery, is that it?’

‘I suppose so,’ he agreed ruefully.

She shook her head. ‘You don’t have to concern yourself. I’m not the local barmaid. I look after the Dalrymples’ three children. The Dalrymples keep the inn,’ she explained.

Luke nodded. ‘I see.’

The wind was beginning to rise as they entered the house, and Abby hunched her shoulders expressively. Mrs Tully was in the hall, and she viewed the girl with impatience.

‘You’ll be having pneumonia, miss,’ she announced, with a sharp familiarity. ‘Away upstairs and take a bath before supper.’

The girl took her scolding with an affectionate grimace, and Mrs Tully shook her head at Luke as she ran upstairs. ‘I never thought,’ she exclaimed. ‘Perhaps you would have liked a bath, sir.’

‘A shave will do,’ remarked Luke easily. ‘Er—Father McGregor said I might use his phone …’

‘Yes, sir. The study’s free now. Father Daniel has gone over to the church.’

‘Thank you.’

When Scott came through, his voice was faint and barely distinguishable, and it was impossible for Luke to speak as forcefully as he would have liked.

‘I’ve met the girl,’ he said without preamble. ‘I gather that was why you sent me up here.’

‘Now why should you think that?’