Master of Glenkeith

by Jean S. MacLeod

Tessa's delight in her new home at Glenkeith was shattered. The hostility that met her was strange and hurtful; she couldn't begin to guess its cause.But Tessa found she could ignore Hester MacDonald's forbidding ways. And, with every day that passed, there was one member of that family she was more and more anxious to please!

Genres: Harlequin Romance

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Jean Sutherland MacLeod was born in 20 January 1908 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was the daughter of Elizabeth Allen and John MacLeod. Her father, who was a civil engineer, moved with jobs. Her education began at Bearsden Academy, continued in Swansea and ended in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She moved to North Yorkshire, England to marry with Lionel Walton on 1 January 1935, an electricity board executive, who died in 1995. They had a son, David Walton, who died two years before her. She passed away on 11 April 2011 at 103 years.

Jean S. MacLeod started writing stories for the magazine The People's Friend, before sold her first romance novel in 1936. She wrote contemporary romances, most of them were set in her native Scotland, or in exotic places like Spain or Caribbean, places that she normally visited for documented. From 1948 to 1965, she also published under the pseudonym of Catherine Airlie. She published her last novel in 1996, a year after her husband death. She was member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, where she met the mediatic writer Barbara Cartland, who was not too friendly.

Reviews

[Grrrrace]

From 1955, this vintage M&B was slow in the ways you might expect from a 65-year-old romance novel, but moving and enjoyable nonetheless. Macleod’s knowledge and love of her native Scotland shine through this tale of multigenerational bitterness, misunderstanding, and lost love. Lyrical descriptions of southern Italy (briefly) and the Scottish Highlands dominate, but the POVs and dialogue keep the story moving. And it’s quite the angsty read.

The relationships between families of the hero and heroine are fairly complex and span three generations, each with its own set of misunderstandings. As backstory:

- The hero’s grandfather (Dan Meldrum) and the heroine’s grandmother (Janet Fraser) were sweethearts in their youth but fell out and married other people. When the hero’s father was a young man, widowed with a young son (the hero), he traveled to France and, at his father’s request, looked up Janet’s family and fell in love with her daughter Veronique. He brought Veronique back to Scotland as his bride. But his older sister, Hester (who had moved back to Glenkeith, the family’s working estate in the Scottish Highlands, with her infant daughter when her own husband left her) was extremely hostile to the young bride and eventually drove her away. The hero’s father was found dead the day after Veronique’s departure—a possible suicide.

- The hero, Andrew Meldrum, has been raised by his grandfather and his bitter and cold aunt, who has drilled it into him that his father’s (possible) suicide is entirely faithless Veronique’s fault. As a result, his hatred of Veronique is almost as obsessive as his aunt’s.

- A few years after her husband’s death, Veronique met an English artist in Italy and remarried, and their daughter is the heroine Tessa. Tessa grew up hearing about the beauty of the Scottish Highlands where her mother was so briefly a young bride. After her mother’s death, she and her father continued to live in Rome, where he was an unsuccessful artist and odd-jobs-man. While poor, they were happy, and the heroine has grown up surrounded by art and beauty, and is herself a burgeoning painter. After her father’s death, she was taken in by the Italian family that lived next door. But they are also poor and contact the hero’s grandfather to see if he will allow the heroine to come live at Glenkeith (even though she is not a blood relative). The hero’s grandfather, who is in his mid-80s and still nostalgic about his lost love, the heroine’s grandmother, agrees and writes the heroine telling her she would be welcome to come to them.

The story begins with the hero traveling to Italy to bring the heroine back with him. He is reluctant to go because of his bitterness towards Tessa’s mother and because it is almost harvest time and he can ill afford the time away. He arrives in Rome expecting to find a child, so he is surprised to find a young woman. Tessa is effervescent and open hearted and excited to go to Scotland, where she thinks she will be welcomed as part of their family. So his obvious reserve and even dislike come as a shock to her. She’s also disconcerted to find that he will only be in Italy for a couple of days, as she had looked forward to showing him around her adopted homeland. Nonetheless, she does her best to share with him the beauty and culture of Rome and Amalfi, such a delight to her artistic soul.

The hero goes along with her but is almost churlish in his refusal to show that he is moved by Italy. He knows nothing of art, he tells her—he’s a Scots farmer whose education focused on the practical aspects of running a large farming estate. The heroine, who is already attracted to the handsome Highlander, is hurt by his attitude but does her best to not let it show. She has no idea about the bitter events of the past and believes that her mother left AFTER his father’s death. She assumes that his seeming coldness towards herself is just a natural reserve. Once or twice, he does let his guard down and acts warmer and more like the young man he is, on his first trip abroad.

They arrive in Scotland and are met by his cousin Meg. They find out that the grandfather has suffered a stroke. The heroine is permitted to meet him briefly, and he is happy she is there and makes her feel welcome. The hero’s aunt, though, goes out of her way to make Tessa feel unwelcome and an intruder, to her dismay.

Aunt Hester is bitter, cold, and overbearing. She rebuffs all attempts by Tessa to be friendly and helpful. Hester clearly would like to see Meg and Andrew marry (although they are first cousins), which would cement her own position at Glenkeith. Tessa, who really thought she was would find a home and family at Glenkeith, is upset to realize that both Andrew and his aunt resent her presence. But at least the grandfather is happy to have her there and treats her like another granddaughter.

She and the grandfather quickly become close, and she spends a lot of time with him as he convalesces. She is happy to do so, because it makes her feel a useful part of the household and less an intruder. The hero, meanwhile, mostly avoids the heroine as much as he can. And the aunt is a cold witch who lets no opportunity go by to let the heroine know that as far as she is concerned “Veronique’s daughter” is not welcome.

The heroine is charmed by the beautiful Scottish landscape and spends her time walking and painting. She has talent but is modest and realistic about it, saying that she is young and has a lot to learn. One day, she walks miles and a mist comes down, and she is rescued by Nigel, the handsome owner of the neighboring property. Our OM is more urbane (Oxford-educated) than Andrew, and isn’t nearly the workaholic that Andrew is. Nigel is very attracted to “fey” Tessa, and soon is seriously courting her.

But Tessa has eyes only for Andrew, despite his continuing coolness. And it’s clear that Meg is also in love with Andrew, but he seems to have no idea of her feelings and she mostly keeps to the background. Her mother, Hester, keeps meddling though, pushing Meg and Andrew together at every opportunity and making Andrew think that Tessa is deliberately setting out to become Nigel’s Lady of the Manor. Andrew, meantime, is reluctantly attracted to Tessa but his bitterness about the past keeps him from pursuing her, and although he is jealous of Nigel (as shown through his own POVs), he nonetheless keeps Tessa at a cool and hurtful distance. Only a couple of times does he let his softer feelings show--at the Highland Games (where the Queen makes an appearance from nearby Balmoral) and when they dance together at the Highland Ball.

Poor Tessa is in love with the hero and her fleeting happiness, and subsequent despair, at these glimpses of closeness is pretty poignant. Because we get some hero POV, it’s easy to feel sorry for Andrew as well, held captive to a bitterness that has been fed to him throughout his life and confused about his own feelings towards Tessa. Andrew, in his way, is even more unworldly than Tessa, having been forced to take on most of the responsibility of running a large farming estate at a very early age (one character tells Tessa he’s a “man’s man” and hasn’t had much time to spend on the ladies).

Over time, Tessa is accepted by the locals as part of the small village community, but Hester remains really rotten towards her. The grandfather, aware of what’s going on and knowing he hasn’t long to live, asks Tessa to promise not to leave unless Andrew asks her to himself. And he tells Andrew that he wants Tessa to continue to make her home at Glenkeith even after his death. Andrew agrees and warns Hester that she is not to make Tessa feel like she has to leave after the grandfather dies.

Nigel wants to marry Tessa, but although she likes him, she finally tells him that she doesn’t feel that way about him. But he is persistent and thinks he can get her to fall in love with him—unless she is in love with someone else. She admits that she is. He accepts it reluctantly and goes off for a visit to London.

The grandfather dies, and Hester lies and tells Tessa that Andrew wants her to leave. She is not welcome there, Hester says, and her continued presence will only be an embarrassment when Andrew and Meg marry. Tessa decides to leave while Andrew is away on business, and struggles to write him a farewell note. In the end, she says only that she can’t stay and that he’s not to think that she wasn’t happy at Glenkeith—there were moments of great happiness—and she wishes him and Meg every happiness.

Tessa’s afraid that Hester will make sure that her letter never gets to Andrew. So she asks a village friend, Isobel, to deliver it for her. Isobel becomes quite upset and tells her that she is the second person to ask her to deliver a message to a master of Glenkeith—the first was the heroine’s mother. When Isobel was young, her mother and Veronique had become friends. Veronique arrived upset one day and asked Isobel’s mother to deliver a letter to the hero’s father, because Veronique, like the heroine, was being driven away by Hester. Hester resented Veronique for usurping her position as lady of the house and did everything she could to sow dissension between Veronique and the hero’s father. Veronique decided she couldn’t take anymore, so was going away for a while. She wrote the note to explain to her husband why she was leaving, and she was afraid, like the heroine 20+ years later, that Hester would make sure it never got delivered.

Isobel’s mother gave it to her to deliver. But Isobel got distracted (by a young man) on her way to Glenkeith and didn’t bring it that day, and the next day the hero’s father was found dead. Isobel had kept the letter all these years out of guilt. She gives it to the heroine, who reads it. In the letter, Veronique told her husband that she had to leave because she couldn’t take Hester’s treatment of her any longer, and if he wanted their marriage to succeed, he needed to convince Hester to take up residence at the cottage that had been offered to her upon his marriage. Their marriage was being torn apart by his sister’s meddling and half truths, she wrote, and his four-year-old son, the hero, was being taught by Hester to hate his stepmother. So if they were to make their marriage work, he had to address the situation.

The heroine is saddened, and says that Andrew dislikes her because he thinks her mother caused his father’s suicide—something Hester had made sure to tell her previously. Isobel tells her that the inquest showed it was not a suicide—dirt under his nails and scratches on his hands showed that he tried to save himself when he fell. It’s only Hester (and, through her, Andrew) who believe it was suicide.

The heroine puts her mother’s lost letter in with her own letter to Andrew, and writes a codicil to him, saying that she hoped the letter would make him feel easier about his own father’s death and her mother’s role in it. Isobel promises to deliver it for her, without fail this time, and the heroine leaves to catch a train to London, where she plans to find a job and start anew. Her heart is breaking, but she thinks there’s no future for her at Glenkeith, particularly since Hester told her Andrew and Meg were to marry.

Andrew arrives home, and asks Hester where Tessa is when he sees only three places have been set for dinner. Hester tries to tell him that Tessa decided to leave because she, like her mother before her, misses the bright lights, and since Tessa didn’t like to have to work, probably thought that she’d have to help out some now that that old man was dead. Meg, having realized that Andrew and Tessa are in love, finally finds some backbone and tells Andrew that Hester is lying. She tells him that Tessa asked repeatedly to be allowed to help and that Hester has always coldly refused her and made her feel unwelcome. Meg, in love with Andrew herself, knows that she is ruining any chance that he might turn to her if Tessa is gone, but nonetheless tells him that Hester has driven Tessa away.

Andrew leaves to try to stop Tessa from catching her train. Meg, seeing him off, tells him to bring her back (and we’re told that, years later, "suitably" married to Nigel herself, Meg knew at that moment that she never had a chance for Andrew’s love). Andrew has realized that neither the past nor the future will matter if he loses Tessa. Awww.

The train has departed before Andrew reaches the station, and he’s about to leave to try to intercept it in Aberdeen when he sees Tessa coming toward him. She remembered her promise to his grandfather, she tells him—that she wouldn’t leave unless Andrew himself asked her to go. Because he knew, Andrew tells her—his grandfather could see that Andrew was in love with Tessa despite all the obstacles between them. They kiss passionately (the very first kiss between them) and she asks when he got the letters and he doesn’t know anything about them. So Tessa knows that he loves her without even knowing the truth of what happened between their parents.

We get a couple of epilogue paragraphs—Hester leaves the farm and moves to the cottage that has long been offered to her, leaving the happy couple to marry that same day and begin a new life and family together at Glenkeith. We last see them off to Italy for their honeymoon—Andrew’s choice of location. And it’s a most satisfying HEA.

Interesting to see how much—and in some ways, how little—has changed in 65 years of category romance. The writing style surely has—modern readers may find the long sentences, use of exclamation points, and sometimes disconcerting jumps in POV offputting. But the central conflicts are much the same—the effects of past drama on the present; potential OM/OW; emotional barriers to be surmounted or smashed; misunderstandings to be resolved.

I enjoyed this a lot—it was angsty and dramatic, and while there’s no heat in the modern sense, there’s plenty of emotional and sexual (however muted) tension between the MCs. Andrew is a little remote in this story, but it’s somewhat offset by his occasional POV. We also get brief POVs from the potential OM/OW, which give a nice view of the hero and heroine from different eyes.

In all, this is as much a family drama as a romance, but the romances—past and present—drive the story. This is probably the earliest M&B I’ve read, and I actually expected it to be much less readable and more dated than it ended up being. Looking forward to more oldies-but-goodies from this author and to trying out some other truly vintage reads.

[Last Chance Saloon]

The heroine (18) is taken from Italy to live with her dead mother’s former husband’s family by the hero (28) who had been her stepson. The hero doesn’t want the heroine there but his grandfather has asked him to get her to stay at the Scottish farm in the Cairngorms. The hero is pretty foul to her almost all through the book, but is redeemed as we are given his POV and it’s clear that he’s besotted against his will. His first cousin is in love with him (she’s rather nice), and her mother, his aunt, is desperate for the match so she can carry on running the farm. The aunt is the problem as she’s very nasty to the heroine (who has a lovely and lively personality). There is a neighbouring OM who the hero is very jealous of, but does little about (he’s mixed up about hating his stepmother and blames the heroine as she is similar).
It goes on and on, and eventually culminates when page space is running out with a last minute dash and the hero suddenly assuming the heroine loves him (no idea why).
It’s all very Scottish and rather like a slightly depressing version of an Essie Summers book. I liked the grandfather and the heroine. He does and I am not sure she got a good deal.
3 stars.

[Andrea Noren]

Much better than I'd expected. I read many of these books in the late 1960s and early 70s and they were so very formulaic. This one follows the general format of a romance, but has many redeeming features.