Each month we will be featuring a guest writer and this month's contribution is from Christine Marion Fraser's now out of print book Rhanna.A keen reader and storyteller, Christine started writing at the age of five, and got the idea for Rhanna, her first novel, while on Holiday in the Hebrides. The eight volumes of the Rhanna series were all best sellers. She also wrote the successful King series and has started a new Kinvara series. The Rhanna series are now out of print so we wanted to share some of the first chapter of the first book.

The peat fire flickered in the hearth and the pale halo of light from the oil lamp cast long shadows on the camped ceiling of the room. A young woman lay in the big brass bed. Her face was pale, with beads of perspiration glistening on her forehead. Outside the warm shell of the big farmhouse a low moaning wind found its echo inside the cosy room as a soft groan broke from the lips of the young woman.

'Ach,.there Dow, mo ghaoil,' soothed Biddy MeMillan, bathing the fevered brow for the umpteenth time, and smoothing damp strands of red-gold hair from the pointed little face.

Wiry greying hair escaped Biddy's ancient felt hat. She felt tired and old, and her thirty years as midwife on Rhanna had stamped on her countenance the tenderness and toughness that went band in hand with her calling. She sighed and turned to the young doctor at the foot of the bed.

'What do you think, Lachian? There's no more strength in the lass. She was never fit to carry a bairn, never mind give birth!'

Dr Lachlan McLachlan shook his head, a dark curl falling over a forehead that was also soaked in sweat. He sighed wearily. 'I don't know, Biddy. She's not got the strength to push the bairn into the world. It looks like a forceps delivery. I didn't want it that way but if the infant isn't out soon it won't survive - the fetal heart is getting fainter by the minute. Go and fetch Mirabelle, we'll need all the help we can. Tell her to bring more hot water and some sheets. There's going to be much bleeding.'

Mirabelle, plump and homely, was in the kitchen. In anticipation of the doctor's needs she was boiling gallons of water on the range and clouds of steam rose from kettles and pans. She turned when Biddy came in and her round pink face was anxious.

'Well, how is the lass?' she asked curtly. 'I hope it won't be much longer for all our sakes. Fergus has been like a demon, with ants in his breeks since the start o' the pains. He won't keep from under my feet, asking endless questions about the time a bairn takes to be born. I could skelp his lugs so I could!'

Biddy ignored the sharp tones, knowing they were born of worry. Mirabelle had kept house at Laigmhor for twenty-six years but the title of housekeeper was a mere formality. She was the heart of the big rambling farmhouse. Without her, Fergus McKenzie and his younger brother Alick would have known a very different life. Since the premature death of their mother, Mirabelle had mothered them and cared for them. Hers was an ample heart out of which love flowed like a stream. It had flowed out to Helen, the girl who now lay upstairs in childbirth. Helen had come to Laigmhor three years before, a surprise to everyone. Fergus McKenzie had gone north on farming business and when he returned he brought Helen whom he had met and married in the short space of two months. Rhanna was amazed that strong-willed Fergus, who never did anything on impulse, should have behaved so untypically, and Malcolm McKenzie, Fergus's father, was angry and disappointed because he'd had hopes of a sturdy local lass becoming the mistress of Laigmhor.

Helen was eighteen years old, so small and slim that it seemed impossible that she could make a farmer's wife. But time proved everyone wrong. Her exuberance for life, coupled with her strength of character, oiled the cogs of Laigmhor so that life there ran more smoothly than ever before. She brought sunshine into the old house and even Malcolm, who had retained an air of dour, but silence for a time, eventually blossomed under her warm influence. She made him feel important arid wanted, his cantankerous moods gave way to a new zest for life, and if the house was without her cheerful presence for any length of time he complained restlessly till she returned.

You can find more articles in the archive under Guest Writer's Corner