Mother of the Bride

MOTHER OF THE

BRIDE

Caroline Anderson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘MAISIE.’

Just the one word, but it curled around her, invading every part of her, swamping her with its gruff warmth. Her heart went into overdrive, her breath stalling at the unaccustomed and yet, oh, so familiar sound of his voice. And then fear kicked in.

‘Rob, what is it? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened—yet,’ he said quietly. ‘I just wanted to warn you, Alec’s going to ask Jenni to marry him this evening, and he wanted my blessing. I thought you should know.’

So the time had come. Maisie’s heart sank. For the last three years, ever since her baby had started dating the gentle, humorous Alec Cooper with his smouldering eyes and teasing sense of fun, she’d been waiting for this moment, and now it was here. Her legs felt like jelly, her heart was pounding, her mouth was dry, and she wanted to scream, ‘No! She’s too young! Don’t let her, she’s not ready …’

‘Maisie?’

‘I’m OK,’ she said, sitting down abruptly on the edge of the bed. The bed in which she’d given Rob her virginity over twenty-one years ago.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sort of. Thank you for warning me, although it would have been nice if Alec had done it,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said, his voice sympathetic. ‘I suggested he should, but he was afraid you’d try and warn Jenni off.’

‘Rob, I’m her mother!’

‘Exactly. And you have … ‘

‘Issues?’ she offered into the silence, and he gave a quiet huff of laughter that clawed at her insides.

‘You could put it that way. I told him you’d be upset, but he was very reluctant in case you tried to speak to Jenni, to talk her out of it, because he’s been planning it for ages, apparently, and he was desperate for it to be a surprise.’

‘Rob, he should have spoken to me, too. I’m the one who’s brought her up. Or doesn’t my blessing count?’

His sigh was soft. ‘Maisie, don’t be like that. I asked him to talk to you, he said he’d think about it, but obviously he didn’t feel he could, or he hasn’t been able to get you. He asked me not to tell you until he had time to ask Jenni, and he’s doing that now, as we speak, so I couldn’t tell you any sooner. I gave him my word. You have to respect that.’

Of course she did. She just felt out of the loop, as usual, at the bottom of the heap when it came to knowing anything, and it hurt. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she lied, but he cut in gently.

‘It does—and I’m really sorry. If it helps, he only asked me about four hours ago. And my mother doesn’t know.’

A small crumb of comfort, but surprisingly perceptive of him to know she’d needed it.

She closed her eyes and gave a tiny, shaky little laugh. ‘Rob, they’re so young.’

‘They’ll be fine. I’m sure Jenni’ll ring you the moment they’re back. It might be nice if you act surprised.’

She swallowed. ‘Sure—and, Rob … Thank you for warning me.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said, his voice low and gruff, and she felt the familiar shiver down her spine.

How could he still do that to her, after all these years? She should have got over him by now. She said goodbye and replaced the phone in the cradle, and sat staring at the wall blankly. It really was going to happen. Jenni and Alec were getting married, and even though she’d known it was coming, she was still reeling with shock.

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she told herself, and, getting up, she went back over to her wardrobe and carried on the weeding process she’d been engaged in when Rob had called.

She pulled out a hanger and stared at it blankly. Good grief, how ever long had she had these trousers? Far too long, she hadn’t worn them for years. She dumped them on the growing pile, found a few other things and then realised she’d put her favourite dress on the pile by accident.

She wasn’t with it at all, she was miles away, in Scotland, with Jenni, praying that common sense would prevail and she’d tell Alec they should wait. Hoping it would work for them. Worried that it wouldn’t, that like their marriage, Jenni’s would prove too frail to stand the test of time.

They’ll be fine.

Would they? She didn’t know, but Rob’s deep, warm voice echoed in her ears, and if she let herself, she could almost believe it. But not quite, because he’d said the same thing to her over twenty-one years ago, when he’d asked her to marry him.

‘We’ll be fine, Maisie. You’ll see. It’ll be all right.’

But it hadn’t been. It hadn’t been all right at all, in the end, even though the beginning had been blissful. Stormy, sometimes, but they’d always, always made up after a row, and sometimes she wondered if they’d had fights just for the hell of it, so they could make up afterwards. She laughed at the memory, but her smile faded and she felt her eyes fill.

She’d married him not only because she loved him, but also because she’d been eighteen, scared, pregnant, and her family wanted nothing to do with her. Her options had been severely restricted, and she’d thought he loved her as much as she’d loved him, but she’d been wrong. She must have been. If he’d loved her, he’d have come after her, but he hadn’t, so she’d concluded sadly that he’d only married her out of duty, when they’d hardly known each other— certainly not well enough to weather the birth of Jenni while he was away at sea and she was alone in Scotland with his less-than-enthralled parents.

It wasn’t really surprising that it hadn’t worked, under the circumstances. They’d been children, out of their depth in the welter of emotions they’d encountered, coping with a situation that would have challenged anyone. And when she couldn’t bear it any more up there without him, when she’d left Scotland and come back down here to Cambridge, he’d done nothing about it, to her horror and distress. There had just been a terrible, deafening silence.

He hadn’t come to her when he’d had his next shore leave, as she’d expected, hadn’t tried to find out what was wrong, but had said nothing, done nothing for six whole months except send money to her account. She’d taken it because she’d had no choice, and she’d written to him begging him to come to her, to talk to her—anything, but there’d been no reply, and then at last there had been a letter asking for access to Jenni in their divorce settlement—a divorce that hadn’t even been on her agenda until he’d broached the subject. Shocked, devastated, she’d agreed to everything he’d asked, and the only contact they’d had since then had been over Jenni.

She’d hardly seen him in all this time— scarcely at all since Jenni had grown old enough to spend time with him alone without needing her, and certainly not at all in the last five years. They hardly even spoke on the phone any more. There was no need. If there was anything relating to Jenni, it was discussed with her directly, which was why his call today out of the blue had been so shocking.

She couldn’t remember the last conversation they’d had that had lasted more than a very few seconds, but she guessed they’d be having to talk to each other now, and the thought brought all her confused and tumbled emotions about him racing to the surface. Emotions she’d never dealt with, just closed off behind a wall of ice in her heart before they destroyed her.

She still loved him, she realised. She’d die loving him, but it was a one-sided, unrequited love that had never stood a chance. And she was far too old to be so foolish.

The phone rang again, and for a moment she stared at it, her heart pounding, knowing who it was, knowing what she was about to hear, but stalling anyway because until she heard it, it might not be true …

‘Mummy?’

‘Hello, darling. How are you?’

‘Amazing! You’ll never guess what—are you sitting down?’

She wasn’t, but she did. Rapidly. ‘OK. Fire away, what’s happened?’ she said, trying to sound fascinated and intrigued and enthusiastic instead of just filled with a sense of doom. She’d seen the look in Jenni’s eyes, and Alec reminded her so much of Rob as he had been—young, eager, in love—

‘Alec’s asked me to marry him!’

She squeezed her eyes shut briefly and sucked in a breath. Hard. Her lungs were jammed up tight, her heart was in the way and she wanted to cry.

She didn’t. She opened her eyes, forced a smile and said, ‘Oh, my goodness—so what did you say?’ As if she didn’t know what the answer would have been.

Jenni laughed, her happiness radiating unmis- takeably down the phone line. My baby. My precious, precious baby.

‘Yes, of course! What on earth did you expect me to say? Mummy, I love him! You’re supposed to be pleased for me! You are pleased for me, aren’t you?’

There was a note of uncertainty, of pleading, and Maisie sat up straighter and forced some life into her voice. ‘Oh, darling, of course I am—if it’s what you really want.’

‘You know it’s what I want. I love him, and I want to be with him forever.’

‘Then congratulations,’ she said softly. And then, pretending she didn’t already know, she added, ‘I wonder what your father will say?’

‘Oh, he’s really happy for us.’

‘That’s good.’ Her voice sounded hollow, echoing in her ears, but Jenni laughed again, unaware of Maisie’s inner turmoil.

‘Alec asked him first, apparently. They’re really close, and he wanted his blessing—it’s so like him. He really wanted to do it right, and I had absolutely no idea. It was amazing. He took me up to the ruin and got down on one knee— and I just burst into tears. I think he was a bit shocked.’

‘I’m sure he wasn’t, he knows you better than that. So, when are you talking about? Next year? The year after?’

‘As soon as I graduate—we thought maybe the third Saturday in June, if the church is free?’

‘But, Jenni, that’s only a few weeks!’ she said, her mind whirling. Surely not—please, no, that would be too ironic if Jenni, too.

‘Ten and a half—but that’s fine. We want to get it over before the really busy summer season, and the weather will be best then. If we wait until autumn the weather up here could be cold and wet and awful.’

‘Up there?’ she said, the timescale forgotten, blanked out by this last bombshell.

‘Well—yes, of course up here, Mum! It’s where I live now, where everyone is, except you. We’re all here.’

Jenni was right, of course, and she should have seen it coming. They all did live up there, light years away in the wild and rugged West Highlands. Everyone except her. Jenni’s fiancé Alec, his family, Jenni’s uni friends in Glasgow, Alec’s friends—and Jenni’s father.

Robert Mackenzie, Laird of Ardnashiel, king of his castle—literally. And she’d been nothing, a nobody; in the words of the taunting kindergarten rhyme, the dirty rascal, the girl who’d got herself knocked up with the heir’s baby and then, little more than a year after their wedding, had walked away. Why had he let her go without a murmur, without coming after her, without trying to fix what was surely not that broken? She didn’t know. She might never know.

And now her darling daughter—their daughter—was getting married, in the very church where she and Rob had made their vows over twenty years ago. Vows that had proved as insubstantial as cobwebs …

She shuddered and sucked in a breath, the silence on the phone hanging in the air like the blade on a guillotine.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, darling. Sorry. Of course you’re having it there,’ she agreed, squashing the regret that she wouldn’t be married here, in Cambridge, from the home where she’d grown up. But that was unrealistic, and she was sensible enough to recognise that now. ‘Where else, when you’ve got such a lovely setting? But—only ten and a half weeks?’ she said, her voice perilously close to a squeak of dismay as she thought of the reasons that might exist for their haste. ‘Don’t you need longer to plan it?’ she hedged.

The lovely ripple of her daughter’s laughter made Maisie want to cry again. ‘Oh, it’s all planned! We’re having the wedding here in the church, of course, and the hotel in the village can do the catering. They’ve got a brilliant restaurant, so the food will be great. And we’ll have a marquee on the lawn and if it rains there’s plenty of room inside, and we can have a ceilidh in the ballroom— it’ll be wonderful! But you have to come now, because I need a dress and I’ve only got a week and a bit before I have to go back to uni, and you have to help me choose it. And we have to look for something for you, too—you’ll need something really lovely, and I want to be there when you choose it. I need you, Mum. Say you’ll come.’

Her voice had dropped, sounding suddenly hesitant, and Maisie knew she had no choice. Wanted no choice. This was her baby, her only child, and she was getting married, whether Maisie liked it or not.

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she said, squashing down her apprehension and concentrating on being positive. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘Great. I can’t wait, it’s going to be such fun! Look, I have to go, we’ve got to tell Alec’s parents before they go to bed, but I’ll hand you over to Dad. He wants to talk to you.’

Oh, lord. Not now. Please, not now, not again. She needed to crawl under the covers and have a really good howl, and the last thing she needed to do was make small talk with the man who still held her heart in the palm of his hand.

‘She wants me to come up,’ she told him, sticking firmly to business.

‘Yes. It needs to be soon, so I hope you aren’t too busy. When are you free?’

Never. Not to go there, to the chilly, forbidding castle, with his mother still there despising her and him indifferent to her feelings, doing what was right instead of what mattered and riding roughshod over her heart. Except apparently he wasn’t indifferent to her feelings any more. Maybe he’d grown up. Twenty years could do that to you.

‘It’s not too bad for the next couple of weeks. I interviewed someone today for a feature that I have to write up, and I’m doing a wedding tomorrow—’

‘Can’t you hand it over to someone?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Not this one.’

‘Why not? Surely some other photographer.’

She sucked in a breath, stunned that he could dismiss her so easily, implying that any photographer could do the job as well, as if it was just a case of pressing the right button at the right time. So much for him not being indifferent to her feelings!

‘I don’t think you quite understand the process,’ she said drily, hanging onto her temper. ‘Quite apart from the fact that they want me,not some other photographer,’ she told him, ‘you have to understand that brides are very emotional and there’s no way I’d let her down at this point. I gave them my word—to quote you. And you have to respect that.’

There was a heartbeat of silence, then a quiet sigh. ‘All right. So you have to do the wedding. What time will you be through?’

‘Five? Maybe six, at the latest. It’s in Cambridge, so it’s local.’

‘So—if you get the seven-fifteen from Cambridge to King’s Cross tomorrow night, you can pick up the Deerstalker from Euston that gets to Fort William at ten the next morning. Will that be OK?’

The overnight sleeper? It would cost an arm and a leg—but she’d do it, for Jenni. ‘Yes, I’ll book it.’

‘I’ve done it. I’m doing it on line now. I’ll have the tickets waiting for you at the station to collect, and I’ll pick you up in Fort William the day after tomorrow. And, Maisie?’ he added, his voice dropping.

‘Yes?’

‘I know this is going to be difficult for you. It’ll be difficult for me, too, but we have to do this for Jenni.’

‘Of course we do,’ she said wearily. ‘And it’ll be fine. I just wish I felt they were doing the right thing.’

‘It is the right thing. It’ll be all right, Maisie. You’ll see.’

Those words again, echoing back at her over the years, reminding her of just how frail a thing love could be under pressure. She hoped he was right—heavens, how she hoped it, but she wouldn’t bank on it. They were so young, so eager, so unaware of all the pain.

‘I’ll see you at ten on Thursday,’ she said, and switched the phone off.

Thursday morning. Only—she glanced at her watch—thirty-six hours away. No time at all to shore up her defences and get her armour plating up and running.

She’d need days—

Ridiculous. She hadn’t done it in twenty years, what made her think a few more days could make any difference?

She got off the bed—the very bed where he’d loved her so tenderly, so sweetly, so patiently. So skilfully. She stroked the quilt smooth, her mind back in the long-ago days when love had been sweet and laughter had been the order of the day.

She’d been about to start her degree here at the local college—not as prestigious as one of the Cambridge University colleges, of course, but it offered a good degree in journalism—and she had needed accommodation. Cheap accommodation. And Rob, who had just graduated with flying colours from one of the Cambridge colleges, had been looking for someone to share his house. He was off to serve in the Royal Navy, a six-year commission, and he needed a care taker, all running expenses paid in return for maintaining the house in good condition in his absence.

Only one proviso—she had to live in it alone and share it with him occasionally when he was on shore leave, but that suited her fine, because it was the only way she could afford it and it meant she could get away from home, from a repressive father who didn’t think she needed to go away to college.

So she’d arranged to view it, and they’d gone out for a drink to discuss the fine detail. Well, that had been the excuse. In fact, they’d just wanted to spend time together, and over the next few days they’d fallen headlong in love. Just a week after they’d met, she’d ended up here in this room, in this bed, giving him her heart.

He still had it. He always would.

She sighed and turned her back on the bed. She wanted nothing more than to crawl under the quilt and cry her eyes out, but she had a feature to write up before tomorrow, clothes to pack for her trip, a wedding to prepare for—and besides, she was all done crying over Robert Mackenzie. She’d worn that particular T-shirt out long ago, and she wasn’t going there again.

‘How do you think she took it?’

Badly. Especially when he’d implied that another photographer could step into her shoes at a moment’s notice. He’d have to do better than that, Rob thought ruefully.

He smiled at his daughter—his beautiful, clever, radiantly happy daughter—and lied. ‘She’s fine,’ he told her. ‘I’ve booked her train ticket, and I’ll pick her up—’

‘Let me—please? Give me time with her, so I can talk her down a little. She’ll be nervous.’

Nervous? Would she? Quite possibly, he conceded. ‘She might not be very thrilled about it, but she’s got nothing to be nervous about,’ he said, trying to reassure their daughter.

But Jenni looked at him, wise beyond her years, and shook her head. ‘Of course she has. She hated it here. She hasn’t been here for twenty years and she’ll be unsure of her welcome.’

‘But—that’s silly! She’s your mother! Of course she’s welcome,’ he said, but then he thought about it, about the defensive tone of her voice, about how much she’d seemed to hate it here, and he sighed softly.

‘I’ll still pick her up. Even more reason. I can talk to her.’

Jenni chewed her lip. ‘Dad—she won’t want to talk to you. She goes out of her way to be out if you’re coming to the house, she won’t even look at you—what if she refuses to get in the car?’

‘She won’t refuse,’ he said, wishing he was as certain as he sounded. ‘She’s not that fond of walking.’

Jenni gave a splutter of laughter and came over and hugged him, slapping him on the chest simultaneously. ‘That was mean. You be kind to her or she’ll end up in the hotel in the village, I know she will.’

‘I’ll be kind to her, Jenni,’ he promised, serious now. ‘I was always kind to her.’

‘Were you? She’s never really said anything very much about you, just that it didn’t work out.’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said, carefully keeping his voice neutral. ‘But don’t worry. We can do this. It’ll be fine, Jenni.’

‘Are you sure? You’ll probably fight like hell. I don’t think you know her. She seems like a pussy-cat, but she can be pretty feisty, you know.’

He laughed, but her words echoed in his head. Feisty? Oh, yes, she’d been feisty, but that wasn’t how he remembered her. He remembered her after their fights—sweet, tender, passionate— until the end. Then she’d just been withdrawn and uncommunicative, as if all the spark had gone out of her, and he hadn’t known how to get through to her. Jenni was right. He really didn’t know her, the woman who’d been his wife, who’d taken his heart and broken it into little pieces.

‘I’m sure we can be adult about it,’ he said, not at all convinced but hoping it was true.

Jenni tipped her head on one side. ‘Why did neither of you ever get married again? I mean, I know why you didn’t stay married to each other, it’s not rocket science, but why didn’t you marry anyone else? It’s not as if you’re hideous, either of you, and you’re both so nice.’

He shrugged, not intending to drag his wounds out into the open for his daughter to pick the scabs off. ‘Never got round to it, I suppose,’ he said casually. ‘First I was in the navy, and then I was juggling establishing my business in London and being a father to you, and then my own father died and I had to move up here and take over the estate. And it’s hard to meet anyone when you’re up here in the backwaters, especially if you work in an almost exclusively male environment. Bear in mind that the majority of women who come to the estate are partners of men who come for the sport. They aren’t looking for a husband.’

‘Are you sure? Maybe they want to switch husbands? And anyway, that’s rubbish. It’s never hard to meet people when you’re rich, it’s just hard to meet the right people,’ she said drily, and he could tell from her tone that there was a wealth of hurt there. She’d encountered some gold- diggers at uni, men who’d only been interested in her for her inheritance, she’d told him, but Alec, fiercely protective, had been there for her through thick and thin, and he knew the young man loved his daughter from the bottom of his kind and generous heart.

If only they’d been so lucky, him and Maisie. If only they’d found a love like that. It might not be rocket science, but it was a mystery to him why they hadn’t got on. It had been so good at first, so special. Nothing had ever felt like it since, and that, of course, was why he’d never married again. Because to be married to anyone other than his Maisie would have been a travesty, a betrayal of everything he stood for.

He swallowed and stepped back, gently disentangling himself from Jenni’s embrace, and headed for the door. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I’ve got a million things to do. I’ll see you for dinner.’

He went out, whistling the dogs, and headed down to the water. He needed a walk, a good, long stretch along the beach and then up over the headland, the point that gave Ardnashiel its prefix. There had been a hut there once, evidently, a shiel, which long ago had given way to the original castle, and he climbed the hill towards the ruins, needing the peace, the solitude that he would find there.

It was his retreat, the place he went to soothe his soul, the harsh wind and savage sea the only things wild enough to match the turmoil in his heart, but today they could do nothing to wipe out the memories of his love, here in this place, where he’d brought her so many times. And now, for the first time, she was coming back, not to him, but to the castle.