The Tartan Touch Read Free Page A

giddy even as I sat still on my chair.
    “Au-Australia?” I repeated.
    “It’s a bit farther than London,” he added.
    For an instant I thought that he knew, but of course he couldn’t . My dreams were my own, and no interfering stranger was going to read my mind.
    “Why should I go to Australia?” I objected, frowning.
    “Why not?” he countered.
    “Because I couldn’t leave Scotland! I’d be homesick before I got as far as Gretna Green!”
    “Then you’d be homesick in London,” he pointed out with maddening logic.
    “I might be,” I admitted carefully.
    “So you might as well be homesick in Australia,” he thrust home.
    “I’d not like Australia.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because you think of a bit of mist as rain!” I retorted.
    “So would you if you lived in the Murchison! We reckon rain there in a hundred points to an inch, did you know that?”
    “I couldn’t go to Australia on my own,” I said flatly.
    Mr. Fraser poured himself out some more tea, without asking me. He certainly made himself very much at home!
    “You wouldn’t be on your own,” he said. “I’d better begin at the beginning, My cousin Donald—”
    “Donald Fraser from Perth, Australia,” I couldn’t resist putting in.
    Mr. Fraser nodded impatiently. “He made me his daughter’s guardian just before he died. Margaret countered by claiming that she had sole care of the child because they had never been legally married, but I have proof now that she is lying. The only objection now is that the courts will not allow her to live on Mirrabooka unless there is some female to keep her company—”
    “Mirrabooka?” I asked blankly,
    “ That’s the name of my sheep station,” he said. For the first time a glint of a smile crossed his face. “It’s the Aboriginal word for the Southern Cross.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “I had thought of sending Mary away to school,” he went on. “But she’s had enough of being sent here and there at her mother’s whim. What she needs is a settled home and a settled background.”
    “I think her mother’s right,” I said stubbornly. “Why should she be left with you on a sheep station?” I pictured it a bit like one of the lonely crofts that I knew and pitied the girl.
    “She’s bound to say that,” he agreed. “A bachelor’s household, full of roustabouts and migrant workers. That’s where you come in!”
    “I?” I breathed.
    “You’d provide the female influence that would knock the bottom out of Margaret’s best argument.”
    “I couldn’t do that ! ” I exclaimed.
    “Why not? You’re a female, aren’t you?”
    “That’s why!” I said, very prim and red in the face. He gave me an exasperated look . “Then you’d better marry me ! ” he said.
    “I’ll not listen to another word!” I told him baldly. “It’s—it’s indelicate—”
    “Look,” he said evenly, “Mary is seventeen now. In a few years she’ll be twenty-one and then we could sort ourselves out and see what you want to do. In four years you could train for any job you wanted and I’d see you right . Is that asking so much, Kirsty MacTaggart?”
    I was silent. He was unkind, I thought. I had served my father all these years and I had earned my freedom, and yet what could I do? Was four years’ servitude all that I could look forward to? I’d be twenty-eight and my life half done before I began to live at all.
    “I couldn’t marry a man I don’t know,” I whispered, the shame of my situation scorching the very marrow in my bones.
    “It wouldn’t be a marriage, except as far as Margaret is concerned,” he explained patiently.
    “I don’t understand,” I said blankly.
    “I mean that there is no love between us and no need to pretend that there is. I’m asking you to live on Mirrabooka and to look after my ward, no more than that. The wedding ceremony will protect us both from unpleasant gossip and give you some status as my wife. What happens when my ward comes of age