She walked along the counter and said something to the man at the short-order grill, then disappeared into the kitchen where, apparently, the telephone lay.
Katherine finished her coffee and placed enough change on the counter to cover the cost plus a generous tip to compensate the woman for her telephoning as well as for her counter service.
By then, the waitress had returned. “Found him,” she said. “He says he'll be delighted to take you up there.”
“Wonderful!” Katherine said, thinking about the treacherous road she would have had to try again if Mike Harrison had not been available or willing.
“He says to give him fifteen minutes to get his Land Rover and be here.”
The time passed quickly as she waited in the cafe for Harrison, mostly because the waitress was a talker — and a good one, relating one anecdote about Harrison, the town, the Roxburgh-Bolands, after another. She was the kind of woman who laughed a great deal and who would have looked out of place without an apron around her waist, a grandmotherly type whose gossip was never malicious. Katherine knew that, whenever she had a day off and wanted to get a bite to eat outside of Owlsden, she would come back here for the conversation as much as for the food.
At a quarter of seven, with darkness full upon the land now and the snow falling just as fiercely as ever, Michael Harrison arrived at the cafe, his hair laced with snow, his face pinched into a bright red heartiness by the brisk fingers of the wind. He was a tall, rugged-looking, handsome man, only a couple of years older than Katherine. His face was cut in Roman lines, with a high, broad forehead, well-set blue eyes, a straight, thin nose, firm lips and a chin cut square and strong. His shoulders were wide, his carriage that of a man who knows how to handle himself in any situation.
He crossed the cafe and actually did a modified, courtly bow to her, something she had never expected to find here in the wilds. His smile was positively dazzling. “You're our new resident?”
“Katherine Sellers,” she said.
“I'm Mike Harrison, and I'm pleased to meet you.”
“Me too,” she said. She had swiveled away from the counter on her stool, but she had not risen. He was such a gentleman and made her feel — even after that brief exchange — like such a lady that she felt she ought to abide by more ancient traditions of manner and remain in her seat.
“I didn't know Lydia was hiring a new secretary.”
“Companion, actually,” Katherine said.
“I told her how much she'll like working for Mrs. Boland,” the waitress said. “Couldn't find a kinder lady.”
Katherine noted that, as the waitress spoke, a strange look passed across Mike Harrison's face, held more behind his eyes than in them, concealed but still partly evident. It was a look of irritation at what the waitress had said and, perhaps, an expression of qualification or disagreement with her sentiments about the Roxburgh-Bolands. It was the first sour note, no matter how small, she had discovered in the heretofore sweet apple of the family name, and she wondered exactly what it meant.
“Well,” Mike Harrison said, “shall we be on our way now?”
“Whatever you say,” Katherine said, standing arid buttoning her coat. “We'll have to stop at my car and pick up my bags before going to Owlsden.”
“Fine,” he said. “There's a storage compartment in the Rover that's big enough to move a household.”
“Now you take care of her,” the waitress warned him. “Don't you give her one of those insane roller-coaster rides like you give everyone else.”
Harrison grinned.
“You hear me?” the woman asked.
“Sure enough, Bertha. I will treat our Miss Sellers as if she were a carton of eggs.”
“See that you do, or you better not come back in here while I have a frying pan handy.”
Harrison laughed, took Katherine's arm and escorted her from the restaurant.
The wind struck hard against her flushed face. The temperature hovered just above zero and, with the chill factor of the wind figured in, must have been a subjective twenty degrees below.
“There she sits,” Harrison said.
He pointed across the street to a large, sturdily-built vehicle that looked like a cross between an armored car and a jeep. It was parked by the grass circle in the center of the square. The snow that had sifted over it in the few minutes he had been in the restaurant, had obscured the windscreen and softened the brute lines somewhat. Still, it was obvious that no amount of snow could stop this workhorse altogether, for it looked almost like power personified, a machine of pure force.
“What do you think?” he asked, obviously proud of the Rover.
“I'm no longer worried about reaching Owlsden,” she said. The wind snatched her words from her mouth and carried them away, but not fast enough to keep him from hearing her. He smiled and nodded. “Does it have a heater?” she asked.
“All the luxuries,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her across the slippery street. He put her in the passenger's side and went around to get behind the wheel.
The engine started the first time he tried it, a noisy, roaring behemoth of an engine.
“Not as quiet as a Cadillac, perhaps, but able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
She laughed and settled back, relieved to be in Mike Harrison's hands.
He drove into the street, circled the park and started out of town in the direction of the narrow road that lead up to Owlsden, his hands tight on the wheel, his driving experienced and sure.
“Not even a little skid,” she said.
“Wait until we start up the mountain!”
“Remember what Bertha said.”
“Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not going to give you a heart-stopping thrill ride. In this weather, I don't need to.”
Then, for a moment, there was an awkward silence, since all the banal conversation about the weather and the Land Rover had already been exhausted and neither knew the other well enough to know what to talk about next. He broke the silence after a minute had passed. “I wouldn't think a young, attractive girl like yourself would choose to move into a place like Roxburgh.”
“That's where the job is,” she said, lightly.
“There are other jobs, surely, in places with more lights, more glamour and more things to do.”
“Solitude appeals to me,” she said. “At least I think it does.”
“You'll have a great opportunity to learn whether or not it does if you live long in Roxburgh!”
“And the job sounds interesting,” she said. “Everyone seems to like Lydia Boland.”
Again, she saw a subtle reaction pass through his features: a tightening of the jawline, a squinting about the eyes. She wished she knew him well enough to solicit his obviously different opinion of the Bolands.
“Everyone does,” he said. “Everyone likes them.” But she was still certain that he did not like them very much at all.
“Your car?” he asked a moment later as they came within sight of the roadside picnic area where she had parked the Ford.
“Yes,” she said.
He pulled the Land Rover up next to it. “If you'll give me your keys and tell me where the suitcases are, you won't have to get out of the Rover again.”
“I'm putting you to a lot of trouble,” she said.
“Nonsense.”
“But I am.”
He grinned. “Then I'll get even when we go up the mountain.” He pointed ahead at the narrow, snow-laden roadway which looked, suddenly, twice as steep and harrowing as it had earlier when she'd attempted to climb it in the Ford.
He took her keys and got out, closed the door and clomped over to the Ford, opened the trunk and lifted out two cases which he brought back. A rear door of the Rover opened to admit the cases and, in a moment, the last two as well. He slammed it shut, locked it, got in behind the wheel again and gave her the keys.