a moment later with half a loaf of bread, a slab of butter and a thin sliver of unappealing cheese. She looked as though she were about to cry.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, staring at the cheese as though she expected something to creep out of it—which it might well have done. ‘It is all we have. Mrs Grant, our housekeeper, brings food from Kinlochewe on a Tuesday, and she will be with us on the morrow, but until then…’
‘This will do me fine,’ I said heartily, reaching for the rusty old knife I had seen on the dresser. I managed to hack a bit of stale bread off the loaf and smeared some butter on it. After a moment’s hesitation I also decided to risk the cheese. It was strong, but surprisingly tasty, and not, as far as I could see, too rancid.
Ellen sat down on the bench opposite me. She looked the picture of misery. ‘I am sorry!’ she burst out again. ‘I know this is a poor welcome to Glen Clair for you, Catriona. I have so looked forward to meeting you—my own cousin, and so close in age. It will be lovely to have a friend at last, for Papa allows so few people to call.’
She stopped. In the flickering light of the tallow candle she looked like a drooping flower. It was fortunate that Lieutenant Graham was not there to see it, for he would probably have carried her off on the spot, so desperate would he have been to make her smile again.
‘I am very happy to have found you, too,’ I said sincerely. ‘I have no brothers or sisters, and did not even know of my uncle and his family until my father died. I had no home, so—’ I swallowed the lump that had risen unbidden in my throat. ‘It was splendid to hear of Glen Clair and to know that I had someone to take me in.’
Ellen smiled, her blue eyes luminous in the candlelight. ‘Then we shall be the best of friends,’ she said, clasping my hand, ‘and it will be delightful.’
On such sweet sentiment there was an almighty crash at the back door, and a moment later it swung inwards, bouncing off the lintel. Several scraps of plaster fell from the ceiling onto my bread and cheese.
Ellen went white before my eyes. ‘Papa!’
A man was standing in the doorway—or, more accurately, was leaning against the doorpost in the manner of one completely drunk. He had a blunderbuss in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other, and was drinking straight from the bottle, splashing a vast quantity of malt down his stained shirt. He was a big man, powerfully built but run to seed, with thinning grey hair and grey eyes narrowed against the candle flame. How he could possibly have fathered the adorable Ellen was a mystery that I could not fathom.
‘Papa,’ Ellen said again, ‘this is your niece Catriona, come from Applecross.’
Ebeneezer Balfour stared at me from beneath lowered brows. ‘Davie’s girl,’ he slurred. ‘Your father’s dead, and that’s all that brings you to my door.’
I heard Ellen catch her breath at the harshness of his words. ‘Aye, sir,’ I said. ‘That would be right.’
I saw a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. ‘Proud,’ he said, ‘just like your sire.’ He leaned heavily against the wooden table for support and it creaked beneath his weight. ‘We quarrelled,’ he said, slumping down in the big carver chair at the table’s head. ‘Did he tell you that, girl?’
‘He told me nothing, sir,’ I said coldly. I could quite see how that had happened. Uncle Ebeneezer would, I was sure, pick a quarrel with a saint. ‘But I am grateful to have family to take me in,’ I added. ‘Thank you, sir.’
The words seemed to stick in my throat, but I felt I had to force them out. Despite the coldness of Uncle Ebeneezer’s greeting, I did not want it ever said that I was ungrateful to be offered a home at Glen Clair.
‘There’s nothing for you here,’ he said, his eyes hooded. He nodded towards Ellen. ‘Did she tell you? I drink what profits this estate provides.’ He raised the whisky bottle in drunken salute.
‘The smugglers are out,’ Ellen said quickly. ‘Catriona met them on the road.’
Uncle Ebeneezer lowered the bottle again, frowning. ‘I know.’
Ellen started to shred breadcrumbs between her nervous fingers. ‘There were two excise men on their tail. They said that they would call again tomorrow.’
Uncle Ebeneezer gave her a look of contempt. ‘Then you had better distract them, hadn’t you, girl? We want no nose-poker-inners here.’
Unhappy colour flushed Ellen’s cheeks. She did not reply, and a moment later Uncle Ebeneezer took another long slurp of the drink.
‘Ye’ll have had hopes of us, I daresay, Catriona Balfour?’
I looked at Ellen, but she avoided my gaze. Her face looked pinched and cold. “I confess, sir,’ I said, ‘that when I heard I had kinsfolk well-to-do I thought they might help me in my life.’ My tone hardened. ‘But I am no beggar. I look for nothing that is not freely given. I can always return to Applecross and work for my living.’
Ellen looked up, a spark of amazement in her blue eyes. ‘Work?’
‘Aye,’ Uncle Ebeneezer said rudely, ‘’tis what you would have had to do, girl, had your mother not filled your head with foolish notions of gentility and seen that you were good for nothing.’
He reached across me for the bread, tore off a hunk and thrust it into his mouth. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘We want no more mouths to feed here.’
I stood up. In that moment I was so angry that I would have walked all the way back to Applecross there and then had it been in the least possible. Then I caught Ellen’s eye. She was looking at me beseechingly and I remembered what she had said about longing for a friend.
‘I will show you to your chamber,’ she said quickly, grabbing the candle. ‘Excuse us, Papa.’
Uncle Ebeneezer snorted. ‘Chamber! A broom cupboard amongst the rats is the place for Davie’s girl.’
We left him sitting in the dark, gnawing on the remains of the cheese.
‘I am so sorry,’ Ellen whispered, as she dragged me back along the corridor to the foot of the stairs. ‘Papa is always like this when he is in his cups.’
‘What is he like when he is sober?’ I whispered back.
She smiled. ‘Not much better.’ Her face fell. ‘Oh Catriona, you will not leave, will you? Not when I have only just found you.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Please?’
I felt terribly torn. Already I liked Ellen such a lot, and it was clear she was lonely here in the big, crumbling mansion whose future her father was drinking away.
‘I will have to see,’ I said. ‘I cannot stay here if Uncle Ebeneezer does not wish it.’
She let go of my hand and started up the stairs. ‘I suppose not,’ she said. Her tone brightened a little. ‘You said that you could work?’
‘As a teacher or a companion, perhaps,’ I said, trying not to think about what Neil Sinclair had said about my potential. Suddenly I wanted to ask Ellen about Neil—but that was probably a bad idea. He had said she was delightful. Perhaps she thought the same of him.
‘A teacher?’ Ellen said, as though such an idea were somehow miraculous. ‘Only fancy.’
She threw the door open onto a small bedchamber on the first landing. It was clean and bare, empty of all furnishing but for a table with a jug of water and a bowl and a big tester bed that looked as though it were at least a hundred years old.
Ellen was looking anxious. ‘I cleaned it myself,’ she said. ‘The linen is fresh.’
‘It is lovely,’ I lied. I kissed her goodnight. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I am tired.’
Even so, it was a while before I slept. The linen was indeed fresh, but the mattress was damp, and as lumpy as poorly made porridge. Mice scratched in the wall and the old house creaked