TABLE OF CONTENTS

       COVER

       TITLE PAGE

       ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       ENDPAGE

       COPYRIGHT

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘LASSIE, are you sure?’ Mrs McGregor, her ample form wrapped securely in a flowered pinny, paused in her task of kneading dough, and stared at the slight figure on the other side of the big kitchen table.

      ‘Quite sure,’ Catriona Muir said, with a firmness she was far from feeling. ‘I—I simply must get away. The Mackintoshes want vacant possession as soon as possible, and now the house is sold, I feel as if I don't belong there anyway.'

      ‘Don't belong?’ Mrs McGregor attacked the dough with renewed vigour. ‘Away with you! In your own aunt's house where you were brought up as a bairn?'

      ‘The Mackintoshes own it now,’ Catriona reminded her with a pang. It still hurt to think of it. The big grey house standing back from the road had been home as long as she could remember. Ever since, in fact, the parents who were just vague pictures in her mind had been killed in a car crash and Auntie Jessie, her father's unmarried sister and Catriona's only living relative, had descended on her and carried her back to the tiny village of Torvaig on the west coast of Scotland.

      Now, eighteen years later, Aunt Jessie too was dead, and Muir House—surely, as she herself had ruefully said, the most unsuccessful guest-house in Scotland—had been sold to a Glasgow couple.

      ‘Aye, they own it,’ Mrs McGregor retorted. ‘But for how long?’ She dropped the dough back into its bowl. ‘If a fine woman like Jessie Muir couldn'a make the place pay, then it's no likely that painted besom and her man will do any better. This is the wrong place for summer boarders, my dear, and that's the truth of it. We're too far away from Fort William and the Islands and the things folk come to see. It's a family house, that. It's crying out for bairns and laughter, and it'll no take kindly to that one and her—improvements.’ Mrs McGregor invested the last word with incredible scorn. ‘A discothèque in the basement! Have you ever heard such nonsense?'

      Catriona smiled unhappily. ‘I think she's being a little unrealistic.'

      ‘And so are you.’ Mrs McGregor folded her arms and gazed at Catriona sternly. ‘Chasing off to England after some laddie that's never given you a thought all year.'

      Catriona flushed and her green eyes grew stormy.

      ‘That's not true,’ she protested. ‘Jeremy didn't come this spring, I know, but he has written to me.'

      ‘Not for several months he hasn't,’ retorted Mrs McGregor with all the calm assurance of the sister of the village postmistress. ‘And don't jut that Muir chin at me, my lass. There's no one in this village with anything but your good at heart, and they'd all tell you what I'm telling you now. A few moonlight kisses by the sea-loch don't make a marriage.'

      She nodded emphatically at Catriona, whose cheeks were flaming.

      ‘Och, we've all been through it, lassie,’ she went on kindly. ‘First love's a grand thing, but it doesn't last. When it's real love, you'll know, just as I knew with Mr McGregor.'

      Catriona looking at the round plump face with its coronet of wispy grey hair and visualising the balding taciturn Mr McGregor had to repress a desire to giggle, in spite of her annoyance. What did Mrs McGregor know of the sweet and tender secret she and Jeremy had shared in that magical few weeks the previous year when he had come to Torvaig on a walking tour and stayed and stayed until his time was up, and he had to return to university?

      Thinking of Jeremy with his crisp dark hair and laughing blue eyes brought a tightening to her throat and a mistiness to her eyes. They had shared so much. They had walked, sailed and swum during those golden days that seemed as if they would last for ever.

      One night they had attended a ceilidh in a neighbouring village. Catriona, who played the guitar and sang folk songs in English and Gaelic, had been one of the star turns, and later as they drove home in the back of Angus Duncan's van along the narrow single track road with the clumps of grass growing in the centre which was Torvaig's only means of access with the outside world, Jeremy had drawn her close.

      ‘I never knew you could sing like that,’ he whispered, his lips against her ear.

      Catriona, more used to her aunt's affectionate bluntness and the villagers’ forthrightness, had blushed.

      ‘Oh, it's nothing,’ she said awkwardly.

      ‘Nothing!’ Jeremy cast his eyes to heaven. ‘My love, in London you'd be a hit. You've got real talent, and you don't even know it. The record companies are always crying out for something new, and those songs you sang in that outlandish language …'

      ‘The Gaelic is not outlandish!’ Catriona flared. ‘And I wish I could speak it properly instead of just being able to sing a few songs in it.'

      ‘Okay, okay,’ Jeremy said placatingly. ‘But it does sound strange when you're not used to it. I think that with the proper backing and promotion you could be Scotland's answer to Nana Mouskouri.'

      ‘I'd be more flattered if I knew who she was,’ Catriona said, resting her head sleepily on his