A Winter Wedding

Strangers at the Altar

Marguerite Kaye

The Warrior’s Winter Bride

Denise Lynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Strangers at the Altar

About the Author

HISTORICAL NOTE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

The Warrior’s Winter Bride

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Copyright

Strangers at the Altar

Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining first-class honours and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Mills & Boon. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.

You can contact Marguerite through her website at: www.margueritekaye.com

HISTORICAL NOTE

Paddle steamers and the railways brought tourism to the west coast of Scotland at around the time when Ainsley and Innes decided to set up their hotel. Though the original and most popular destinations ‘doon the watter’ on the Clyde were Rothesay, Largs and Dunoon, Tighnabruaich (aka Strone Bridge) had its share of excursionists. The engineer David Napier, whose Loch Eck tours inspired Ainsley, built a pier on the Holy Loch in the 1830s, not far from my own home.

Numerous versions of the Rothesay Castle paddle steamer made the journey from Glasgow, Gourock and eventually Wemyss Bay railway terminals to the Isle of Bute. Today, the last sea-going paddle steamer, the Waverley, makes the same journey from Glasgow to Bute and down the beautiful Kyles all the way to Tighnabruaich.

Strone Bridge Castle is actually based on Panmure House, the seat of the Maules near Dundee, which was demolished in 1955. The story which Innes tells Ainsley of the locked gates following the 1715 Jacobite rebellion belongs to Panmure, details and pictures of which are in Ian Gow’s beautiful book Scotland’s Lost Houses. The chapel attached to Strone Bridge Castle, though, is based on the one belonging to Mount Stuart in Rothesay.

Agony Aunts existed, astonishingly, as far back as the seventeenth century, though they reached their peak in the mid-Victorian era—a little after Madame Hera was writing. There are some fantastic examples of their letters in Tanith Carey’s book Never Kiss a Man in a Canoe.

As to the traditions and customs in this book—well, I must admit that I’ve let my imagination loose a wee bit. All the Hogmanay customs are traditional, but the Rescinding ceremony is not. I actually invented it for an earlier book set in Argyll, THE HIGHLANDER’S REDEMPTION, and I liked it so much I thought I’d start a tradition of my own and re-use it.

Chapter One

Dear Madame Hera,

The other day, while taking a walk in the Cowgate district of Edinburgh, I was approached by a young man who gave me some assistance with my umbrella. Since he was very well dressed, seemed most polite, and the rain was coming down in torrents, it seemed churlish of me not to offer to share my shelter. He accepted with some alacrity, but the small circumference of my umbrella forced us into a somewhat compromising intimacy, of which the gentleman was not slow to take advantage. He stole a kiss from me, and I permitted him to take several more while we found respite from the downpour in the close of a nearby tenement. By the time the rain stopped, we were rather better acquainted than we ought to have been.

We parted without exchanging details. Alack, when he left me, the young man took not only my virtue but my umbrella. It was a gift from another gentleman, who is bound to question me most closely when he discovers its loss. I fear he will not understand the peculiar effect the combination of rain, a good-looking young man and a very small umbrella can have on a woman’s willpower. What should I do?

Drookit Miss

Edinburgh—June 1840

‘I am very sorry, Mrs McBrayne, but there is nothing to be done. Both your father’s will and the law are perfectly clear upon the matter. Could not be clearer, in actual fact, though if you insist upon a second opinion, I believe my partner is now free.’

‘You, Mr Thomson, are my second opinion,’ the woman said scornfully. ‘I have no intentions of spending more money I don’t have, thanks to that spendthrift husband of mine and that trust of my father’s, simply to hear what you have already made perfectly plain. The law is written by men for men and administered by men, too. Be damned to the law, Mr Thomson, for it seems to be forcing me to earn my living in a profession even older than your own, down in the Cowgate. I bid you good day.’

‘Mrs McBrayne! Madam, I must beg you...’

The Fury merely tossed her head at the lawyer’s outraged countenance and swept across the narrow reception hall of the office, heading for the door. Innes Drummond, who had just completed a similarly entirely unsatisfactory interview with Thomson’s partner, watched her dramatic exit admiringly. The door slammed behind her with enough force to rattle the pane of glass on which the names Thomson & Ballard were etched. Innes could hear her footsteps descending the rackety stairs that led out into Parliament Square. She was as anxious to quit the place as he was himself. It struck him, as he flung the door behind him with equal and satisfying force, how ironic it was, that they both, he and the incandescent Mrs McBrayne, seemed to be victims of very similar circumstances.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and heaved open the heavy wooden door, only to collide with the person standing on the step. ‘I am terribly sorry,’ Innes said.

‘No, it was my fault.’

She stood aside, and as she did so, he saw tears glistening on her lashes. Mortified, she saw him noticing, and scrubbed at her eyes with her glove, averting her face as she pushed past him.

‘Wait!’ Instinctively knowing she would not, Innes caught her arm. ‘Madam, you are upset.’

She glared at him, shaking herself free of his reflexive grip. ‘I am not upset. Not that it’s any of your business, but I am very far beyond upset. I am...’

‘Furious,’ Innes finished for her with a wry smile. ‘I know how you feel.’

‘I doubt it.’

Her eyes were hazel, wide-spaced and fringed with very long lashes. She was not pretty, definitely not one of those soft, pliant females with rosebud mouths and doe-like gazes, but he was nonetheless drawn to her. She eyed him sceptically, a frown pulling her rather fierce brows together. She was not young either, perhaps in her late twenties, and there was intelligence as well as cynicism in her face. Then there was her mouth. No, not a rosebud, but soft all the same when it ought to be austere, with a hint of humour and more than a hint of sensuality. He noticed that, and with some surprise, noticed that he’d noticed, that his eyes had wandered down, over the slim figure in the drab grey coat, taking a rapid inventory of the limited view and wanting to see more, and that surprised him, too.

‘Innes Drummond.’ He introduced himself because he could think of nothing else to say, and because he didn’t want her to go. Her brows lifted haughtily in response. For some reason, it made her look younger. ‘A fellow victim of the law, of his father and of a trust,’ he added. ‘Though I’m not encumbered with a wife, spendthrift or otherwise.’

‘You were listening in to a private conversation between myself and Mr Thomson.’

‘Ought I to have pretended not to hear? The tone of your voice made that rather difficult.’

She gave a dry little laugh. ‘A tone I feel sure Mr Thomson found most objectionable. Bloody lawyers. Damned law. You see, I can swear as well as shout, though I assure you, I am not usually the type who does either.’

Innes laughed. ‘I really do know how you feel, you know.’

She smiled tightly. ‘You are a man, Mr Drummond. It is simply not possible. Now, if you will excuse me?’

‘Where are you going?’ Once again, he had spoken without thinking, wanting only to detain her. Once again her brows rose, more sharply this time. ‘I only meant that if you had no urgent business— But I spoke out of turn. Perhaps your husband is expecting you?’

‘My husband is dead, Mr Drummond, and though his dying has left me quite without resources, still I cannot be sorry for it.’

‘You don’t mince your words, do you, Mrs McBrayne?’

Though he was rather shocked at this callous remark, Innes spoke flippantly. She did not smile, however, nor take umbrage, but instead paled slightly. ‘I speak my mind. My opinions may be unpalatable, but at least in expressing them, there can be no pretending that I have none.’

Nor, Innes thought, could there be any denying that a wealth of bitter experience lay behind her words. He was intrigued. ‘If you are in no rush, I’d very much like it if you would take a glass of something with me. I promise I don’t mean anything in the least improper,’ he added hurriedly, ‘I merely thought it would be pleasant—cathartic, I don’t know—to let off steam with a kindred spirit—’ Her astonished expression forced him to break off. ‘Forget it. It’s been an awful day, an awful few weeks, but I shouldn’t have asked.’

He made to tip his hat, but once again she surprised him, this time with a faint smile. ‘Never mind weeks, I’ve had an awful few months. No, make that years. The only reason I’ve not taken to drink already is that I suspect I’d take to it rather too well.’

‘I suspect that you do anything well that you set your mind to, Mrs McBrayne. You strike me as a most determined female.’

‘Do I? I am now, though it is by far too late, for no matter how determined I am to get myself out of this mess, in truth I can see no solution.’

‘Save to sell yourself down the Cowgate? I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

She gave him what could only be described as a challenging look. ‘Why, are you afraid I will not make sufficient to earn my keep?’

‘What on earth do you know of such things?’ Innes asked, torn between shock and laughter.

‘Oh, I have my sources. And I have an umbrella,’ she added confusingly.

She spoke primly, but there was devilment in her eyes, and the smile she was biting back was doing strange things to his guts. ‘You are outrageous, Mrs McBrayne,’ Innes said.

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘I have no idea what to make of you, and right at this moment, I don’t really care. You made me laugh, and honestly, after what that lawyer told me, I didn’t think that was possible.’

Her smile softened sympathetically. ‘It sounds like I am not the only one in need of a dram,’ she said. ‘Why not! I’ve nothing at home waiting for me except final demands and most likely a few bailiffs. Buy me a drink, Mr Drummond, and we can compare our woes, though I warn you now that mine will far outweigh yours.’

* * *

Ainsley McBrayne wondered what on earth had come over her. There had been ample time in the short walk from Parliament Square over the North Bridge for her to change her mind, but she had not. Now here she was, in a secluded corner of the coffee room at the Waterloo Hotel, waiting while a complete stranger bribed one of the waiting staff to bring the pair of them something stronger than tea.

She had surrendered her coat at the door, and her bonnet, too, for they were both wet with that soft, mist-like mizzle that was not quite rain, in which Edinburgh specialised. Her hair, which even on the best of days was reluctant to succumb to the curling iron, was today bundled up into a careless chignon at her nape, and no doubt by now straggling equally carelessly out of it. On a good day, she would tell herself it was chestnut in colour, for it was not red enough to rate auburn, and she was fairly certain there was no such thing as mahogany hair. Today, it was brown, plain and simple and the colour of her mood. At least her gown was one of her better ones. Navy blue worked with silver-grey stylised flowers formed into a linking pattern, the full skirts contrasted with the tightly fitted bodice, with its long narrow sleeves and shawl neck. The narrow belt showed off her slender waist; the crossover pleating at the neck was cut just low enough to allow a daring glimpse of bosom. It had been designed to be worn with a demure white blouse, but this morning Ainsley hadn’t been interested in looking demure. This morning she had not, however, intended to take off her coat. Now, she tugged self-consciously at the pleated shawl collar in an effort to pull it a little closer.

She had been angry when she left the lawyer’s office, though she should not have been, but it seemed, despite all, that she’d not managed to lower her expectations quite enough. There had been a tiny modicum of hope left in her heart, and she’d been furious at herself for that. Hence the tears. Stupid tears. If Mr Innes Drummond had not seen those stupid tears, he’d more than likely have gone on his way and she wouldn’t be here. Instead, she’d be at home. Alone. Or in the company of yet another bailiff. And it wasn’t going to be her home for much longer. So she might as well be here. With a complete stranger. About to imbibe strong liquor, just like one of the loose women she’d claimed she would become.

Not that that was so far-fetched either, given the state of things, except one thing she was absolutely sure about was that she had no talents whatsoever for that sort of thing. In fact, she had not even the skill to interest a man if he didn’t have to pay, if her husband was anything to go by.

Ainsley sighed. Second to tears, she hated self-pity. Giving her collar a final twitch, she forced herself to relax. Mr Drummond was still conferring with the waiter, so she took the chance to study him. His hair, which was cut unfashionably short, was glossily black. He was a good-looking man; there was no doubt about it, with a clean-shaven jaw, and none of the side whiskers gentlemen preferred these days. A high forehead spoke of intelligence, and lines fanning out from his eyes and forming a deep groove from nose to mouth spoke of experience. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, perhaps five years older than herself. A confident man, and well dressed in his dark coat and trousers, his linen impeccably white. Judging by appearances, money was not one of his worries. But then, if one could have judged John by appearances, money had not been one of his worries either. Not that her husband had ever been at all worried by money—or the lack of. No, that was not true. Those sullen silences of his spoke volumes. And latterly, so, too, did his habit of simply disappearing when she challenged him.

Ainsley sighed again, irked with herself. She was absolutely sick and tired of thinking about John. Across the room, Mr Drummond, having concluded his business with the waiter, glanced up and smiled at her. His eyes, under heavy dark brows, were a deep, vivid blue. She felt it then, what she had ignored before, a tug of something quite basic. Attraction. It made her stomach do a silly little flutter. It made her pulses skitter and it made her mouth dry, that smile of his, and the complicit look that accompanied it, as if the pair of them were in cahoots. It made her forget her anger at the injustice of her situation, and it reminded her that though she might well be a penniless widow with debts so terrifying they could not be counted, she was also a woman who had not known the touch of a man for a long time. And this man, this Mr Innes Drummond, who was seating himself opposite her, this man, she was pretty certain, would know exactly how to touch her.

‘So, ladies first.’

Colour flooded her face. She stared at him blankly, horrified at the turn her mind had taken, praying that none of those shocking thoughts were visible on her countenance ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your tale of woe, Mrs McBrayne. You tell me yours, and then I’ll tell you mine, and we can decide which of us is worst off.’

He had very long legs. They were stretched out to the side of the table that separated them. Well-made legs. Not at all spindly. And really rather broad shoulders. Well built, that was the phrase she was looking for. Athletic, even. And yes, his face and hands were rather tanned, as if he spent a deal of his life out of doors. ‘What is it you do?’ she asked. ‘I mean—do you—are you a resident here in Edinburgh? Only, you do have an accent, but I cannot place it.’

Instead of taking offence, or pointing out that she had changed the subject, Innes Drummond gave a little shrug. ‘I’m originally from the Highlands, Argyll on the west coast, though I’ve lived in England most of my adult life. I’m an engineer, Mrs McBrayne.’

‘A practical man.’

He smiled. ‘You approve.’

‘I do. It is none of my business, but—yes.’ She smiled back. ‘What do you build?’

‘Railway lines. Tunnels. Canals. Bridges and aqueducts. There is a very high demand for all these things, thanks to the steam locomotive. Though I don’t actually build the things myself, I design them. And even that— Business is very good, Mrs McBrayne. I am afraid I employ a rather large number of men to do most of the real work while I spend too much of my time in the boardroom, though I still like to think of myself as an engineer.’

‘A very successful one, by the sounds of it. I did not think that money could be an issue with you.’

He gave her an enigmatic look before turning his attention to pouring them both a glass of whisky from the decanter that the waiter had deposited. ‘Slàinte!’ he said, touching her glass with his.

‘Slàinte!’ Ainsley took a sip. It was a good malt, peaty and smoky, warming. She took another sip.

‘I take it, then, that money is an issue for you,’ Innes Drummond said.

She nodded. He waited, watching her, turning his glass round and round in his hand. One of the many things she’d learned from her marriage had been how to keep her own counsel—and how to keep her own secrets. Her failures, and the trusting, timid nature that had contributed to them, made her ashamed. She confided in no one, not even Felicity, and Felicity was the best friend she had. But confiding in this stranger, what harm could it do? Whatever had brought him to Edinburgh, he wasn’t likely to be stopping long. If—however—he judged her, she’d be spared the pain of seeing it. Who knew, perhaps articulating her problems might even help her see a path to resolving them.

Catching sight of her wedding band, Ainsley tucked her left hand into the folds of her gown. ‘It is money,’ she said, ‘it comes down to money, and though I tell myself it’s not fair, for I did not spend the money, I know at heart it’s just as much my fault as his.’

* * *

Mrs McBrayne took another sip of whisky. ‘Dutch courage,’ she said, recklessly finishing the amber liquid and replacing the glass on the table before straightening her back and taking an audible breath. Innes wondered what on earth was to come, and wondered if he should stop her confidences, but dismissed this idea immediately. She was steeling herself, which meant she wanted to talk. Besides, he was interested, and it was good to have his mind concentrate on someone else’s woes rather than his own for a while. He took a cautious sip of his own whisky and waited.

‘I will need to go back a bit,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’ When he nodded, she smiled an on-your-head-be-it kind of smile. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I met my husband, John McBrayne, when I was twenty. Nearly a decade ago. He was very much the gentleman, respectable, handsome, presentable, popular.’ She counted her husband’s assets off on her fingers. ‘He was also what they call a charmer, and I was charmed. I met him at the Assembly Rooms. He was the friend of a friend. He seemed to be a man of means. Within six months, he had proposed, and I was delighted. I was happy. I was in love.’ Another smile, only this one was a bitter little twist. ‘John spoke to my father. My father asked me if I was sure, he told me there was no hurry, that if I wanted to change my mind—but I didn’t, and I didn’t think—I thought Papa was just being his usual cautious self, that’s all. He was always polite to John, never said a word against him to me, and— But I’m getting ahead of myself.’

Innes swallowed the rest of his malt. ‘Do you want another?’ he asked, indicating her glass, and when Mrs McBrayne shook her head, resisted the urge to pour one for himself. ‘Go on.’

‘We were happy. I find I have to remind myself of that, but for a year or so we were happy. Then the bills started to go unpaid, and when I asked John, he told me not to worry. But I did, and when I eventually looked into matters properly, I discovered we owed a monstrous amount. My husband was furious when he found out that I knew, he told me it was a temporary situation, he told me—ach, he told me all sorts, and I believed some of it, because I wanted to. I’d never enquired about his income until then, I had assumed my father—but there, you see, I’m putting the blame on others when it was my own fault. I should have asked right at the start. I should have made it my business, but by the time I did, it was too late.’

‘You mean that by that time, your husband’s debts were unmanageable?’

‘I mean it was too late for me to persuade my husband that his debts were not only his business but mine, too,’ Mrs McBrayne responded wryly. ‘I think I will have another, if you don’t mind.’

She was pale despite the whisky, her mouth thinned, her eyes focused inwards. When she sipped her drink, her hand trembled. Noticing that, she placed the glass carefully down. It was a common enough tale, but the way she told it was not at all common. Her feelings ran very deep. Innes was struggling to understand why.

‘I told you you wouldn’t understand,’ she said, taking him aback by seeming to read his thoughts.

He made no attempt to deny it. ‘Explain it, then,’ Innes said.

‘Imagine how you would feel if someone else was given control of your business. Imagine how you’d feel if they could make decisions about it over your head, without consulting you. Decisions that had consequences for you, but that you had no say in. Now imagine that at first you don’t realise this is going on. Then when you do realise, and you challenge this person, they tell you that they’re only doing what is expected of them. Then they tell you that you’ve no right to challenge them. And then they simply turn a cold shoulder. As a businessman, you can do something about it. You can even take action in court, if that person’s been fraudulent. As a wife...’ Mrs McBrayne spread her hands and gave him another of those bitter smiles. ‘As a wife, you can choose to make both your lives a misery with constant nagging, or you can put up and shut up. What you can’t do is change a thing. Not a single damn thing.’

Innes felt slightly sick. Having sworn all those years ago never to marry, he had never actually considered the state of matrimony from any point of view. Mrs McBrayne’s perspective was horrible, and all the more so for the almost cool way she described it. Almost cool—for he was willing to bet that her fist was tightly clenched in the folds of her gown, and there was hurt in those hazel eyes as well as anger. He felt angry on her behalf, though he knew her husband had done nothing that society would condemn. In fact, more likely society would condone, for a man was expected to take care of his wife, and a wife—was it true, that a woman was expected simply to put up and shut up, as Mrs McBrayne so succinctly put it?

Innes put his glass down, and ran an agitated hand through his hair. ‘You’re right, if I were in such a situation— It sounds intolerable.’

‘And yet I bore it,’ she said bitterly. ‘I wonder if things would have been different had I not. I thought of leaving him, but lack of funds made that impractical, and I would not go to my father. Edinburgh might appear to be a large town, but in practice it is not much more than a village. My leaving my husband’s protection would have caused quite a scandal. Besides, I was— I was ashamed.’ She glared at him as she said this. ‘I was under the misapprehension that if I’d behaved differently I could have changed my husband,’ she said. ‘It took me some time to realise that since he would never change, then I must.’

She concluded with a small, satisfied smile that made Innes wonder how, exactly, she had changed and what, exactly, the effect had been on her spendthrift husband, but before he could ask, her smile had faded. She took a sip of whisky. Her hand was quite steady now. ‘I remained with my husband, but matters between us were extremely strained. John devoted himself to myriad schemes he found to lose money, and I—I pursued a new interest of my own which was distracting and made me feel not quite so useless, but ultimately, I was burying my head in the sand. And then my father died, and his will dealt our marriage a death blow.’

‘The trust?’

She nodded. ‘I discovered later that John had asked him for money. Neither of them saw fit to inform me of that fact.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘My own father! I thought he trusted me. I thought— But there, I was wrong. Money is a matter for the man of the house, apparently.’ The fire disappeared from her eyes as quickly as it had come. ‘To cut a long and tedious story short, my father changed his will so that my entire inheritance was put into trust for my first child. He did not specify the sex, so at least I should be grateful for that—not that it makes any difference, since there is no child. When John found out, he...’ Her voice wavered, but she quickly got it back under control. ‘He was furious. He wanted to break the trust. He wanted me to find a way to break the trust, to use the law to go against my own father’s wishes. It was not exactly conducive to marital harmony. Not that there was much of that by then. When I wouldn’t cooperate—well, it seems I didn’t have to, for what was mine was actually my husband’s. Fortunately for my father’s wishes, though not so fortunately for my husband and his creditors, the trust could not be broken. And then my husband died.’

Her voice was hard. Obviously, the love she’d felt for the man she had married was long gone. ‘How?’ Innes asked, wondering fleetingly if she was about to confess to killing him. There was a bit of him that would not have been surprised. A bit of him that would have approved.

‘Pleurisy,’ she replied. ‘They found him dead drunk down in the Cowgate, out cold in a puddle. Heaven knows how long he’d been there or where he’d been before. He had not been home for three days.’

Was that what she’d meant when she implied she knew more than any respectable woman ought, about the women who plied their business in that scurrilous area? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to distract her. Despite the sorry tale she’d told him, she was defiant, and he couldn’t help but admire her for that. ‘I take it then, that your husband left you with nothing?’ Innes said.

‘Nothing but debts. Not even my jointure, for it was to be sourced from investments that are now worthless. There is a mortgage on our house that becomes due in a month, a year after his death, and my father’s trust is so watertight that, as Mr Thomson confirmed this morning, not even my utter ruin can break it. But you know, it’s not even the money that bothers me. It’s the extent to which I have been kept in the dark—allowed myself to be kept in the dark—not just by John, but by my father. It makes me feel about this size.’ Mrs McBrayne held her thumb and index finger about an inch apart. ‘That’s how much of a say they gave me in my own life.’

‘I am sure your father meant only to protect you.’

‘Because I’m nothing but a frail female without a mind of my own?’ she snapped. ‘It made me wonder how many hundreds, thousands more of us poor wee souls there are out there, living life blindfolded.’

‘You make it sound like a conspiracy.’

‘That’s because it feels like one, and not even Madame He...’

‘Madame He?’

‘Never mind.’ Mrs McBrayne shook her head and picked up her glass, swirled the contents, then replaced it without drinking. ‘I beg your pardon. I did not mean to become so emotional. I have made my bed, as they say, and now I must lie on it. Or not, for it is to be sold.’ She smiled tightly. ‘Like all sorry tales, this one comes with a moral. Whatever happens, I shall never again allow anyone to make my decisions for me. For good or ill, my fate will be of my own determination in the future. And now that is quite enough of me. It is your turn.’

He had a hundred questions, but she had folded her hands and her lips together, and was making a great show of listening. Innes was not fooled. Her eyes were overbright, her fingers too tightly clasped. She had taken quite a battering, one way or another. A lesser woman would have cried, or flung herself on some man’s mercy. He could not imagine Mrs McBrayne doing either. He wanted to cheer her. He wanted to tell her she would be fine, absolutely fine. He was very tempted to offer her money, but she would be mortified, to say nothing of the fact that he was pretty certain she’d also see it merely as a transfer of obligation, and he didn’t want her to feel beholden. What he wanted was for her to be free. It wasn’t so much that he felt sorry for her, though he railed at the injustice of it all, but he felt—yes, that was it—an affinity.

‘What have I said to make you smile?’

‘Your situation, Mrs McBrayne, has struck a great many chords.’

‘I do not see how. I don’t know you, but you have told me yourself you’re a self-made man and a success. Men such as you will never brook any interference in your life.’

‘Actually, that’s not true. Unfortunately, I know very well indeed what it’s like to have someone else try to bind you to their rules, to dictate your life without you having a say.’

He was pleased to see that he had surprised her. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Did I not say at the outset that we are both the victims of fathers and trusts?’ Innes replied. ‘It’s a strange coincidence, but I while you were consulting Thomson on the finer points of your father’s will, I was consulting Ballard on the very same thing. I too have been left the victim of a trust fund, only my father’s intention was not to protect me but to call me to heel, and unlike your trust, mine can be broken, though only in a very particular way.’

‘What way, Mr Drummond?’

Innes smiled thinly. ‘Marriage, Mrs McBrayne. An institution that I assure you, I abhor every bit as much as you do yourself.’

Chapter Two

Ainsley stared at him in astonishment. ‘Your father’s will sets up a trust that requires you to marry?’

‘No, it establishes a trust to control the family lands that will remain in effect until I marry,’ Innes replied.

‘Lands?’ She only just managed to prevent her jaw dropping. ‘As in—what, a country estate?’

‘A little more than that. I’m not sure what the total acreage is, but there are about twenty tenanted farms as well as the home farm and the castle.’

‘Good heavens, Mr Drummond—a castle! And about twenty farms. Is there a title, too?’

He shook his head. ‘My father was known as the laird of Strone Bridge, but it was just a courtesy.’

Laird. The title conjured up a fierce Highland patriarch. Ainsley eyed the impeccably dressed gentleman opposite her and discovered it was surprisingly easy to imagine him in a plaid, carrying a claymore. Though without the customary beard. She didn’t like beards. ‘And these lands, they are in Argyll, did you say?’

When he nodded Ainsley frowned in puzzlement. ‘Forgive me, Mr Drummond, but did you not tell me you had spent most of your life in England? Surely as the heir to such a substantial property—I know nothing of such things, mind you—but I thought it would have been customary for you to have lived on the estate?’

His countenance hardened. ‘I was not the heir.’

‘Oh?’

She waited, unwilling to prompt him further, for he looked quite forbidding. Innes Drummond took a sip of whisky, grimaced and put the glass back down on the table. ‘Dutch courage,’ he said, with a shadow of her own words and her own grim little smile. ‘I had a brother. Malcolm. He was the heir. It is as you said—he lived on the estate. Lived and breathed it, more like, for he loved the place. Strone Bridge was his world.’

He stared down at his glass, his mouth turned down in sorrow. ‘But it was not your world?’ Ainsley asked gently.

‘It was never meant for me. I was the second son. As far as my father was concerned, that meant second best, and while Malcolm was alive, next to useless, Mrs McBrayne.’

He stared down at his glass, such a bleak look on his face that she leaned over to press his hand. ‘My name is Ainsley.’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard that before.’

‘An old family name,’ she said.

He gave her a very fleeting smile as his fingers curled around hers. ‘Then you must call me Innes,’ he said. ‘Another old family name, though it is not usually that of the laird. One condition I have been spared. My father did not specify that I change my name to Malcolm. Even he must have realised that would have been a step too far. Though, then again, it may simply have been that he thought me as unworthy of the name as the lands.’

He spoke viciously enough to make Ainsley recoil. ‘You sound as though you hate him.’

‘Rather, the boot was on the other foot.’ He said it jeeringly. She wondered what hurt lay behind those words, but Innes was already retreating, patently regretting what he had revealed. ‘We did not see eye to eye,’ he tempered. ‘Some would call him a traditionalist. Everyone had a place in his world. I did not take to the one he allotted me. When I finally decided to forge my own way, we fell out.’

Ainsley could well imagine it. Innes was obviously a man with a very strong will, a modern man and an independent one who clearly thrived in the industrial world. It would be like two stags clashing. She wondered what the circumstances had been that had caused what was obviously a split, but curious as she was, she had no wish to rile him further. ‘Tell me about the trust,’ she said. ‘Why must you marry, and what happens if you do not?’

Innes stared down at his hand, the one she had so abruptly released, his eyes still dark with pain. ‘As to why, that is obvious. The Strone Bridge estate has been passed through the direct line back as far as records exist, and I am the last of the line. He wanted an heir.’

‘But he only specified that you must take a wife? That seems rather odd.’

‘We Drummonds have proved ourselves potent over the generations. My father no doubt assumed that even such an undeserving son as I would not fail in that most basic of tasks,’ Innes said sarcastically.

‘You don’t want children?’

‘I don’t want a wife, and in my book, one must necessarily precede the other.’

This time Ainsley’s curiosity overcame her caution. ‘Why are you so against marriage?’ she asked. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who hates my sex.’

‘You don’t strike me as a woman who hates men, yet you don’t want to get married again.’

‘It is a case of once bitten with me.’

‘While I have no intentions of being bitten for a first time,’ Innes retorted. ‘I don’t need anyone other than myself to order my life, and I certainly don’t want to rely on anyone else to make me happy.’

He spoke with some vehemence. He spoke as if there was bitter experience behind his words. As there was, too, behind hers. ‘Your father’s will has put you in an impossible situation, then,’ Ainsley said.

‘As has yours,’ Innes replied tersely. ‘What happens to your trust if you have no children?’

‘It reverts to me when I am forty and presumably deemed to be saying my prayers.’ She could not keep the bitterness from her voice. She had loved her father, but his unwitting condemnation of her was still difficult to take. ‘I have only to discover a way of avoiding my husband’s creditors and surviving without either a roof over my head or food in my belly for the next ten years in order to inherit, since I have no intentions of marrying again.’

‘Nor any intention of producing a child out of wedlock, I take it? No need to look so shocked,’ Innes said, ‘it was a joke.’

‘A poor one.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She forced a smile. ‘I do not really intend to sell myself down the Cowgate, you know.’

Innes covered her hand. ‘Are your debts really so bad?’

‘There will certainly still be sufficient of them to pay off when I finally do come into my inheritance,’ she said.

His fingers tightened around hers. ‘I wish I could be of some help to you.’

‘You have been, simply by listening,’ Ainsley replied, flustered by the sympathy in his look. She no longer expected sympathy. She had come to believe she did not deserve it. ‘A problem shared and all that,’ she said with a small smile.

‘It’s a damnable situation.’

He seemed much bigger, this close. There was something terribly comforting in those broad shoulders, in the way his hand enveloped hers, in the way he was looking at her, not with pity at all but with understanding. Close-up, his irises were ringed with a very dark blue. She had never seen eyes quite that colour.

Realising her thoughts were once more straying down a most inappropriate path, Ainsley dropped her gaze. ‘If my father had not left my money in trust, my husband would have spent it by now, and I’d have nothing to look forward to in what he clearly thought of as my forty-year-old dotage. The money might have postponed my husband’s demise, but I doubt very much it would have been for more than a few years, and frankly I don’t think I could have borne a few more years married to him.’

‘I confess, at one point I thought you were going to tell me you had killed him yourself,’ Innes said.

Ainsley laughed. ‘I may not be the timid wee mouse he married, but I don’t think I’ve become a monster.’

‘I think you are a wonder.’ She looked up, surprised by the warmth in his tone, and her pulses began to race as he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. There was no mistaking it for one of those polite, social, nothing kisses. His mouth lingered on her skin, his lips warm, his eyes looking deep into hers for long, long seconds. ‘You are a most remarkable woman, Ainsley McBrayne.’

‘Thank you. I— Thank you.’

‘I really do wish there was some way that I could help you, but I know better than to offer you money.’

‘I really do wish there was a way I could accept it, but—well, there we are, I cannot, so there is no point in discussing it. In fact, we have talked far more about me than you. I’m still not clear about what happens to your lands if you remain unmarried. What does this trust entail?’

She was pleased with how she sounded. Not a tremor to betray the quickening of desire his lips had stirred, and she hoped the flush she could feel blooming had not reached her cheeks.

However Innes Drummond felt, and she would have dearly liked to have known, he took his cue from her. ‘A trustee appointed by that lawyer, Ballard, to manage them, and all monies associated with them banked. I can’t touch a penny of it without a wife,’ he replied, ‘and even with a wife, I must also commit to living for a year on Strone Bridge.’

‘Is it a great deal of money?’

Innes shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea, since I’m not even entitled to see the accounts, but the money isn’t the point, I have plenty of my own. I haven’t a clue what state the place is in at all. It could be flourishing, it could have gone to rack and ruin, for all I know.’

‘So the fall out between yourself and your father then, it was...’

‘More like a complete break. I told you, he was an old-fashioned man. Do as I say, or get out of my sight.’

Innes spoke lightly enough, but she was not fooled. ‘How long is it since you were there?’

‘Almost fourteen years. Since Malcolm—since I lost my brother.’ Innes shuddered, but recovered quickly. ‘You’re wondering why I’m so upset about the trust when I’ve spent most of my adult life away from the place,’ he said.

‘I think this has all been much more of a shock than you realise,’ Ainsley answered cautiously.

‘Aye, mayhap you’re right.’ His accent had softened, the Highland lilt much more obvious. ‘I had no inkling the old man was ill, and he’d no time to let me know. Not that I think he would have. Far better for me to be called to heel through that will of his from beyond the grave. I don’t doubt he’s looking down—or maybe up—and laughing at the mess he’s put me in,’ Innes said. ‘He knew just how it would stick in my craw, having to choose between relying on someone else to run what is mine or to take up the reins myself under such conditions. Be damned to him! I must find a way to break this trust. I will not let him issue decrees from beyond the grave.’

He thumped his fist on the table, making his glass and Ainsley jump. ‘I’m beginning to think that your situation is worse than mine after all.’

‘Ach, that’s nonsense, for I at least don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. It’s a sick coincidence, the way the pair of us are being punished by our parents, though,’ Innes said. ‘What will you do?’

‘Oh, I’m beyond worrying right now.’ Ainsley waved her hand in the air dismissively. ‘The question is, what will you do? If only you could find a woman to marry who has no interest in actually being your wife, your problems would be solved.’

She spoke flippantly, more to divert his attention from her own tragic situation than anything, but Innes, who had been in the act of taking another sip of whisky, stopped, the glass halfway to his lips, an arrested look in his eyes. ‘Say that again.’

‘What? That you need to marry...’

‘A woman who has no interest in being my wife,’ he finished for her with a dawning smile. ‘A woman who is in need of a home, and has no fixed plans, who might actually be looking for a respite from her current life for a wee while. You’re right, that’s exactly what I need, and I know exactly the woman.’

‘You do? You cannot possible mean...’

His smile had a wicked light in it. ‘I do,’ Innes said. ‘I mean you.’

Ainsley was staring at him open-mouthed. Innes laughed. ‘Think about it, it’s the ideal solution. In fact, it could almost be said that we are perfectly matched, since you have as little desire for a husband as I have for a wife.’

She blinked at him owlishly. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then I must be, for you cannot possibly be proposing marriage. Apart from the fact that we’ve only just met, I thought I had made it plain that I will never—absolutely never again—surrender my independence.’

‘I’m not asking you to. I’m actually making it easier for you to retain it, because if we get married, I can pay off all those debts that bastard of a husband of yours acquired and then you really will be free.’

‘But I’d be married to you.’

‘In name only.’

‘I owe a small fortune. I couldn’t take it from you just for the price of putting my name on a bit of paper.’

‘You’d have to come with me to Strone Bridge. The clause that specified my spending a year there doesn’t actually include my wife, but all the same, I think you’d have to come with me for a wee while, at least.’

‘That would not be a problem since, as you have already deduced, I’m going to be homeless very shortly, and would appreciate a change of scene, but I simply couldn’t think of accepting such a huge amount of money and give so little in return.’

‘What if you saw it as a wage?’ Innes asked, frowning.

‘For what?’

‘A fee, paid for professional services,’ he said, ‘and a retainer to be paid in addition each year until you are forty, which you could pay me back if you wish, when you eventually inherit, though there is no need.’

‘But I’m not a professional.’ Her eyes widened. ‘You cannot possibly mean— I told you, I was joking about the Cowgate.’

Innes laughed. ‘Not that! I meant a business professional.’ She was now looking utterly bewildered. Innes grinned. ‘The more I think about it, the more I see how perfect it is. No, wait.’ He caught her as she made to get up. ‘I promise you, I’m neither drunk nor mad. Listen.’

Ainsley sat down, folding her arms, a sceptical look on her face. ‘Five minutes.’

He nodded. ‘Think about it as a business proposal,’ he said. ‘First of all, think of the common ground. To begin with, you need to pay off your debts and I am rich enough to be able to do so easily. Second, you are a widow, and I need a wife. Since we are neither of us in the least bit interested, now or ever, in marrying someone else...’

‘How can you be so sure of that?’

‘How can you?’ He waited, but she made no answer, so he gave a satisfied nod. ‘You see? We are of one mind on that. And we are of one mind on another thing, which is our determination to make our own way in life. If you let me pay off your debts, I can give you the freedom to do that, and if you marry me, you’ll be freeing me to make up my own mind on what to do—or not—about my inheritance.’

‘But we’ll be tied to one another.’

‘In name only, Ainsley. Tied by a bit of paper, which is no more than a contract.’

‘Contracts require payment. What professional services can you possibly imagine I can provide?’

‘An objective eye. An unbiased opinion. I need both.’ Innes shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not advice, precisely,’ he said.

‘Because you do not like to take advice, do you?’

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘Another thing you’re not used to, obviously.’ Ainsley smiled. ‘Not mocking, teasing. I’m a little rusty. What is it, then, that involves my giving you my unbiased and objective opinion without advising you?’

‘When you put it like that!’ He was forced to smile. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I’d like you to come to Strone Bridge with me. Not to make my decisions, but to make sure when I do make them, I’m doing so without prejudice.’

‘Is that possible? It’s your birthright, Innes.’

He shook his head vehemently. ‘That’s the point. It’s not. It pains me to admit it, but I don’t know much about it, and I haven’t a clue what I want to do with it. Live there. Sell it. Put in a manager. I don’t know, and I won’t know until I go there, and even when I do—what do you say?’

‘That’s the price? That’s the professional services I’m to render in order to have my life back?’

‘You think it’s too great a cost?’ Innes said, deflated.

Ainsley smiled. Then she laughed. ‘I think it’s a bargain.’

‘You do? You understand, Strone Bridge is like to be—well, very different from Edinburgh.’

‘A change from Edinburgh, a place to take stock, is, as you pointed out, exactly what I need.’

‘I’m not asking you to stay the full year. A few months, until I’ve seen my way clear, that’s all. And though I’m asking you to—to consult with me, that does not mean I’ll necessarily take your advice,’ Innes cautioned.

‘I’m used to that.’ Ainsley’s smile faded momentarily, but then brightened. ‘Though being asked is a step in the right direction, and I will at least have the opportunity of putting my point across.’

Glancing at the decanter of whisky, the level of which had unmistakably fallen by more than a couple of drams, Innes wondered if he was drunk after all. He’d just proposed marriage to a complete stranger. A stranger with a sorry tale, whose courage and strength of mind he admired, but he had met her only a couple of hours ago all the same. Yet it didn’t seem to matter. He was drawn to her, had been drawn to her from that first moment when she’d stormed out of the lawyer’s office, and it wasn’t just the bizarre coincidence of their situations. He liked what he saw of her, and admired what he heard. That he also found her desirable was entirely beside the point. His instincts told him that they’d fare well together, and his instincts were never wrong. ‘So we are agreed?’ Innes asked.

Ainsley tapped her index fingers together, frowning. ‘We’re complete strangers,’ she said, reflecting his own thoughts. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to put on enough of a show to persuade your people that this isn’t a marriage of convenience?’

‘I’m not in the habit of concerning myself with what other people think.’

‘Don’t be daft. You’ll be the—their—laird, Innes. Of course they’ll be concerned.’

She was in the right of it, but he had no intentions of accepting that fact. He was not the laird. The laird was dead, and so, too, was his heir. Innes would not be branded. ‘They must take me—us—as they find us,’ he said. Ainsley was still frowning. ‘Strone Bridge Castle is huge. If it’s having to rub shoulders with me on a daily basis you’re worried about, I assure you, we could go for weeks without seeing each other if we wanted.’

‘That is hardly likely to persuade people we’re living in domestic bliss.’

‘I doubt domestic bliss is a concept that any laird of Strone Bridge is familiar with. My ancestors married for the getting of wealth and the getting of bairns.’

‘Then that puts an end to our discussion.’ Ainsley got to her feet and began to head for the door of the coffee room.

Innes threw down some money on the table and followed her, pulling her into a little alcove in the main reception area of the hotel. ‘I don’t want either of those things from you. I don’t want to be like them,’ he said earnestly. ‘Can’t you see, that’s the point?’

‘This is madness.’

He gave her arm a little shake, forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘Madness would be to do what you’re doing, and that’s walking away from the perfect solution. Stop thinking about what could go wrong, think about what it will put right. Freedom, Ainsley. Think about that.’

Her mouth trembled on the brink of a smile. ‘I confess, it’s a very attractive idea.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

Her smile broadened. The light had come back into her eyes. ‘I feel sure there are a hundred reasons why I should walk very quickly in the other direction.’

‘But you will not?’ He was just close enough for her skirts to brush his trousers, to smell the scent of her soap, of the rain in her hair. She made no attempt to free herself, holding his gaze, that smile just hovering, tempting, challenging. Tension quivered between them. ‘You would regret it if you did,’ Innes said.

‘Do you know, Mr Innes Drummond, I think you may well be right.’

Her voice was soft, there was a tiny shiver in it, and a shiver, too, when he slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms, closing the space between them and lowering his mouth to hers. It was the softest of kisses, the briefest of kisses, but it was a kiss. A very adult kiss, which could easily have become so much more. Lips, tongues, caressed, tasted. Heat flared and they both instinctively recoiled, for it was the kind of heat that could burn.

Ainsley put her hand to her mouth, staring wide-eyed at him. Innes looked, he suspected, every bit as shocked as she. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Are you?’

‘Not really, but I promise that was not in any way part of the bargain I’m proposing.’

She slanted him a look he could not interpret as she disentangled herself from his loose embrace. ‘That was merely the product of too much whisky on top of too much emotional upheaval. It was like a—a valve to release the steam pressure on one of those steam engines you build bridges and tunnels for, nothing more.’

He laughed. He couldn’t help it, because she was right in a way, and she was quite wrong in another, but in every way she was wholly unexpected and a breath of much-needed fresh air. ‘I’m thinking that my return to Strone Bridge is going to be a source of constant emotional upheaval,’ Innes said. ‘We might need to do a lot of kissing.’

‘You’re an engineer,’ Ainsley replied primly, though her eyes were sparkling. ‘I suggest you invent a different kind of safety valve for yourself.’

* * *

‘Ainsley, what a nice surprise.’ Felicity Blair, editor of the Scottish Ladies Companion, greeted her friend with a warm smile, waving her into the shabby chair on the other side of the huge desk that dominated her tiny office. ‘I’ve just been reading Madame Hera’s latest advice. I am not at all sure we can publish this reply, not least because it’s rather long.’

‘Which one is that?’ Ainsley asked.

In response, Felicity picked up a piece of paper from the collection that Ainsley recognised she’d handed in to the office a week ago, and began to read:

‘Dear Anxious Miss,

Simply because you are more mature than the average bride-to-be—and I do not consider two-and-thirty to be so old—does not mean that you are exempt from the trepidation natural to one in your position. You are, when all is said and done, setting sail into unchartered waters. To put it plainly, no matter how well you think you might know your intended, you should be prepared for the state of matrimony to alter him significantly, for he will have secured his prize, and will no longer be required to woo you. This might mean calm, tranquil seas. But it might prove to be a stormy passage.

My advice is to start the way you mean to go on and take charge of the rudder! Give no quarter, Anxious Miss; let your husband see that he cannot set the course of the matrimonial vessel to suit only himself. Do not allow yourself to be subsumed by his nature nor his dictates simply because you have assumed his name. Do not allow your nerves, your maidenly modesty or your sex to intimidate you. Speak up for yourself from the first, and set a precedent that, if not immediately, will, I am sure, eventually earn your husband’s respect.

As to the more intimate matters with which you are concerned. You say your intended has indicated a lack of experience, and you are worried that this might—once again, I will revert to the seafaring metaphor—result in the becalming of the good ship wedlock. First, I would strongly advise you to muster your courage and have a frank chat about the mechanics of your wedding night with a married lady friend, thus eliminating the shock of the complete unknown. Second, I would advise you equally strongly to give your husband no inclination that you come to the wedding night armed with such information, lest he find it emasculating. Third, remember, if he really is as innocent as he claims, he will be as nervous as you. But he is a man, Anxious Miss, and thus a little flattery, some feminine admiration and a pliant female body, will ensure the success of your maiden voyage.

Good luck!

Madame Hera’

Ainsley smiled doubtfully. ‘I admit, the sailing metaphor is rather trite, but if I had not used it, I would have been forced to invent something else equally silly, else you would have deemed it too vulgar to print.’

‘At least you did not surrender to the obvious temptation to talk about dry docks in the context of the wedding night,’ Felicity replied acerbically.

‘No, because such a shocking thing did not occur to me,’ Ainsley replied, laughing. ‘Though to be serious for a moment, it is becoming quite a challenge for Madame Hera to advise without entirely hiding her meaning behind the veil of polite euphemisms. The whole point of the column is to provide practical help.’

Felicity set the letter down. ‘I’ve been pondering that very issue myself. You know how limited the space is for Madame’s column each month, yet we are now receiving enough correspondence to fill the entire magazine.’

‘Aren’t you pleased? I know I am. It is proof that I was absolutely right about the need for such a thing, and you were absolutely right to take the chance to publish it.’

‘Yes, the volume of mail is a true testament to the quality of Madame’s advice but, Ainsley, the problem is we can’t publish most of it, for our readers would consider the subjects far too warm. Even with your shipping metaphor, that reply to Anxious Miss is sailing close to the wind. Oh, good grief, you’ve got me at it now!’ Felicity adjusted the long ink-stained cuffs that protected her blouse. ‘I’m glad you stopped by, because I’ve got an idea I’d like to discuss. You know it will be exactly two years since we launched Madame Hera’s column next month?’

‘Of course I do.’ It had been the first step away from self-pity towards self-sufficiency Ainsley had taken. She remembered it vividly—the thrill of dreaming up the idea after one particularly dispiriting evening with her husband. ‘It’s funny,’ she said to Felicity, ‘at first it was the secret of Madame’s existence that I enjoyed most, knowing I had something all mine that John knew nothing about. But these days, it is the hope that some of Madame Hera’s advice actually helps the women who write to her that I relish. Though of course, one can never really know if one has helped.’

‘You do,’ Felicity said firmly. ‘You know you do, just by providing an ear. Now, as I said, there are a great deal more people asking for Madame’s advice than we can cover in our column, which brings me to my idea. A more personal service.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ Ainsley wondered, for a startled moment, if her friend had somehow heard of her remark about earning a living in the Cowgate the other day.

Felicity gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Your face! I do not mean anything immoral, never fear. I mean a personal letter service. For a price, of course, for matters of a more sensitive nature, we can offer a personal response from Madame. We’ll split the fee between the journal and yourself, naturally. Depending on how many you can answer in a month I’d say your earnings from the journal could triple at least. What do you say?’

‘I’m getting married,’ Ainsley blurted out.

Felicity’s dark brown eyes opened so wide as to appear quite round. ‘You’re doing what?’

‘I know, it’s a shock, but it’s not what you think. I can explain,’ Ainsley said, wondering now if she could. She’d hardly slept a wink these past few nights wondering if she had been an idiot, and coming here this morning had been a test she’d set herself, for if practical, outspoken, radical Felicity thought it was a good idea...

* * *

Half an hour and what seemed like a hundred questions later, her friend sat back at her desk, rummaging absent-mindedly for the pencil she had, as usual, lost in her heavy chignon of hair. ‘And you’re absolutely sure that this Mr Drummond has no ulterior motives?’

‘As sure as I can be. He’s started the process of paying all of John’s debts.’

‘At least you’d no longer be obliged to call yourself by that man’s name. Does he include the mortgage on Wemyss Place in the debts?’

Ainsley shook her head. ‘Innes wanted to pay it, but as far as I’m concerned, the creditors can have the house. It has nothing but unhappy memories for me. Besides, I have every intention of repaying it all when I inherit my trust fund, and that mortgage would take up nearly all of it.’

‘So, you are going to be a Highland lady. The chatelaine of a real Scottish castle.’ Felicity chuckled. ‘How will you like that, I wonder? You’ve never been out of Edinburgh.’

‘It’s only a temporary thing, until Innes decides what he wants to do with the place.’

‘And how long will that take?’

‘I don’t know. Weeks. Months? No more, though he must remain there for a year. I’m looking forward to the change of scenery. And to feeling useful.’

‘It all sounds too good to be true. Sadly, in my experience, things that are too good to be true almost always are,’ Felicity said drily.

‘Do you think it’s a mistake?’

‘I don’t know. I think you’re half-mad, but you’ve had a raw deal of it these past few years, and I’ve not seen you this animated for a long time. Perhaps getting away from Edinburgh will be good for you.’ Felicity finally located her pencil and pulled it out of her coiffure, along with a handful of bright copper hair. ‘What is he like, this laird? Are you sure he’ll not turn into some sort of savage Highlander who’ll drag you off to his lair and have his wicked way with you the minute you arrive on his lands?’

‘There is no question of him having his wicked way,’ Ainsley said, trying to ignore the vision of Innes in a plaid. The same one she’d had the first day she’d met him. With a claymore. And no beard.

‘You’re blushing,’ Felicity exclaimed. ‘How very interesting. Ainsley McBrayne, I do believe you would not be averse to your Highlander being very wicked indeed.’

‘Stop it! I haven’t the first idea what you mean by wicked, but...’

Felicity laughed. ‘I know you don’t,’ she said, ‘and frankly, it’s been the thing that’s worried me most about this idea of mine for Madame Hera’s personal letter service, but now I think you’ve solved the problem. I suppose you’ve already kissed him? Don’t deny it, that guilty look is a complete giveaway. Did you like it?’

‘Felicity!’

‘Well?’

‘Yes.’ Ainsley laughed. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Was it a good kiss? The kind of kiss to give you confidence that your Mr Drummond would know what he was doing? The kind of kiss that made you want him to do more than kiss you?’

Ainsley put her hands to her heated cheeks. ‘Yes. If you must know, yes, it was! Goodness, the things you say. We did not— Our marriage is not— That sort of thing is not...’

‘You’re going to be out in the wilds. You’ve already said that you’re attracted to each other. It’s bound to come up, if you’ll forgive the dreadful double entendre. And when it does—provided you take care there are no consequences—then why not?’ Felicity said. ‘Do you want me to be blunt?’

‘What, even more than you’ve been already?’

‘Ainsley, from what you’ve told me—or not told me—about your marriage, it was not physically satisfying.’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘No, and you know I won’t push you, but you also know enough, surely, to realise that with the right man, lovemaking can be fun.’

‘Fun?’ Ainsley tried to imagine this, but her own experience, which was ultimately simply embarrassing, at times shameful, made this impossible.

‘Fun,’ Felicity repeated, ‘and pleasurable, too. It should not be an ordeal.’

Which was exactly how it had been, latterly, Ainsley thought, flushing, realising that Felicity had perceived a great deal more than she had ever revealed. ‘Is it fun and pleasurable for you, with your mystery man?’

‘If it were not, I would not be his mistress.’

It was only because she knew her so well that Ainsley noticed the faint withdrawal, the very slight tightening of her lips that betrayed her. Felicity claimed that being a mistress gave her the satisfaction of a lover without curtailing her freedom, but there were times when Ainsley wondered. She suspected the man was married, and loved her friend too much to pain her by asking. They both had their shameful secrets.

Ainsley picked up the latest stack of letters from the desk and began to flick through them. What Felicity said was absolutely true. As Madame Hera’s reputation spread, her post contained ever more intimate queries, and as things stood, Ainsley would be hard-pressed to answer some of them save in the vaguest of terms. She replaced the letters with a sigh. ‘No. Even if Innes was interested...’

‘You know perfectly well that he would be,’ Felicity interjected drily. ‘He’s a man, and, despite the fact that John McBrayne stripped you of every ounce of self-esteem, you’re an attractive woman. What else will you do to while away the dark nights in that godforsaken place?’

‘Regardless,’ Ainsley persisted, ‘it would be quite wrong of me to use Innes merely to acquire the experience that would allow Madame Hera to dispense better advice.’

‘Advice that would make such a difference to all these poor, tormented women,’ Felicity said, patting the pile of letters. ‘Wasn’t that exactly what you set out to do?’

‘Stop it. You cannot make me feel guilty enough to— Just stop it, Felicity. You know, sometimes I think you really are as ruthless an editor as you pretend.’

‘Trust me, I have to be, since I, too, am a mere woman. But we were talking about you, Ainsley. I agree, it would be wrong if you were only lying back and thinking of Scotland for the sake of Madame Hera and her clients. Though I hope you’ve more in mind than lying back and thinking of Scotland.’

‘Felicity!’

‘Fun and pleasure, my dear, require participation,’ her friend said with another of her mischievous smiles. ‘You see, now you are intrigued, and now you can admit it would not only be for Madame Hera, but yourself. Confess, you want him.’

‘Yes. No. I told you, it...’

‘Has no part in your arrangement. I heard you. Methinks you protest just a little too much.’

‘But do you approve?’ Ainsley said anxiously.

Felicity picked up her pencil again and began to twist it into her hair. ‘I approve of anything that will make you happy. When does the ceremony take place?’

‘The banns are being called on Sunday for the first time. The ceremony will be immediately after the last calling, in three weeks. Will you come, Felicity? I’d like to have you by my side.’

‘Will you promise me that if you change your mind before then, you will speak up? And if you are unhappy at this Strone Bridge place, you will come straight back here, regardless of whether you feel your obligations have been met?’

‘I promise.’

Felicity got to her feet. ‘Then I will be your attendant, if that’s what you want.’ She picked up the bundle of letters and held them out. ‘Make a start on these. I will draw up the advertisement, we’ll run it beside Madame’s column for this month and I will send you a note of the terms once I have them agreed. Will you be disclosing your alter ego to the laird?’

‘Absolutely not! Good grief, no, especially not if I am to— He will think...’

Felicity chuckled gleefully. ‘I see I’ve given you food for thought, at the least. I look forward to reading the results—in the form of Madame’s letters, I mean.’ She hugged Ainsley tightly. ‘I wish you luck. You will write to me, once you are there?’

Ainsley sniffed, kissing her friend on the cheek. ‘You’ll get sick of hearing from me.’ She tucked the letters into the folder, which was already stuffed with the bills she was to hand over to Mr Ballard, Innes’s lawyer.

‘Just one thing,’ Felicity called after her. ‘I’ll wager you five pounds that if your Highlander ever discovers that you are Madame Hera, he’ll be far more interested in finding problems for the pair of you to resolve together than taking umbrage.’

‘Since I shall take very good care that he never finds out, you will lose,’ Ainsley said, laughing as she closed the door behind her.

Chapter Three

Dear Madame Hera,

I have been married for three months to a man whose station in life is very superior to my own. Having moved from a small house with only two servants to a very large manor with a butler and a housekeeper, I find myself in a perfect tizzy some mornings, trying to understand who I should be asking to do what. My husband has suggested turning to his mother for advice, but she obviously thinks he has married beneath him and would see my need for guidance as evidence of this. As it is, I am sure the housekeeper is reporting my every failure in the domestic sphere to my mother-in-law. Only last week, when I committed the cardinal sin of asking the second housemaid to bring me a pot of tea, the woman actually chastised me as if I were a child. Apparently, such requests should be relayed through the footman, and I should not desire to take tea outside the usual hours, whatever these might be.

I love my husband, but I am being made to feel like an upstart in my new home, and I dare not tell him for fear he will start to take on his mother’s opinion of me. Is there some sort of school for new wives I can attend? Please advise me, for I am beginning to wonder if my housekeeper would have made a better wife to my husband than I can.

Timid Mouse

Argyll, July 1840

It was cold here on the west coast. Despite the watery sunshine, a stiff breeze had blown up in the bay at Rhubodach. Innes shivered inside his heavy greatcoat. He’d forgotten how much colder it was here, and it would be colder still in the boat. Sitting on a bandbox a few feet away, Ainsley was reading a letter, clutching the folds of her travelling cloak tightly around her and staring out over the Kyles of Bute. These past three weeks there had been so much business to attend to they’d barely had time to exchange more than a few words. Standing before the altar beside him just a few days ago, she had been almost as complete a stranger to him as the day he’d proposed. Yet in a very short while, they’d be on Strone Bridge, playing the part of a happily married couple.

The dread had been taking a slow hold of him. It had settled inside him with the news of his father’s death. It had grown when he learned the terms of his inheritance, then became subdued when Ainsley agreed to marry him, and even suppressed as they made their arrangements and their vows. But on the coach from Edinburgh to Glasgow it had made itself known again. Then on the paddle steamer Rothesay Castle as they sailed from the Broomilaw docks to the Isle of Bute it took root, and by this afternoon’s journey from Rothesay town to the north part of the Isle of Bute where they now stood waiting, it had manifested itself in this horrible sick feeling, in this illogical but incredibly strong desire to turn tail and run, and to keep running, just as he had done fourteen years before.

He was Innes Drummond, self-made man of fortune and some fame in the business he called his own. He was a man who made his living building bridges, engineering solutions to problems, turning the impossible into reality. Yet standing here on the pebbled shores of Rhubodach bay, he felt as if none of this mattered. He was the second son, his father’s runt, the upstart who had no right to be coming back to Strone Bridge to claim a dead man’s property. The memories of his brother he had worked so long to suppress were lurking just across the water to claim him. On Strone Bridge, Malcolm’s absence would make his death impossible to deny. Guilt was that sick feeling eating away at his stomach. Fear was the hard, cold lump growing inside of him. He had no right to be here. He was afraid that when he arrived, he’d be subsumed, that all he thought he was would be peeled ruthlessly back to expose the pretender beneath.

Innes swore under his breath, long and viciously. And in Gaelic. He noticed that too late, and then swore again in the harsher, more familiar language of his construction workers. Picking up a handful of pebbles, he began to launch them one after the other into the water, noting with faint satisfaction that they fell far out.

‘Impressive.’

He hadn’t heard her moving. How long had she been standing there, watching him? ‘The boat is late.’ Innes made a show of shading his eyes to squint out at the Kyles.

‘You must be nervous,’ Ainsley said. ‘I know I would be, returning after such a long period of time. I expect you’ll be wondering how much has changed.’

Her tone was light, almost indifferent. She was studiously avoiding his gaze, looking out at the water, but he was not fooled. She was an astute observer. One of those people who studied faces, who seemed to have the knack of reading the thoughts of complete strangers. ‘Nothing will have changed,’ Innes said with heavy certainty. ‘My father prided himself on maintaining traditions that were hundreds of years old. You’ll feel as if you’ve stepped back into the eighteenth century.’

Her brows lifted in surprise. He could see the wheels turning in her clever brain, but she chose merely to nod, and perversely, though he knew he would not like it, he wanted to know what she was thinking. ‘Go on. Say it.’

‘It is nothing. Only—you are very much a man of the nineteenth century.’

‘You mean you’re not surprised I left such a backward place.’

‘Such a backward place must be crying out for a man like you.’ Ainsley pushed her windswept hair out of her eyes. ‘I meant that I am not surprised you and your father could not see eye to eye.’

She slipped her gloved hand into his, in the folds of his greatcoat. He twined his fingers around hers, glad of the contact. Ainsley Drummond, his wife. A stranger she might be, but he was glad of her presence, and when she smiled up at him like that, the dread contracted just a little. ‘I think that’s the boat,’ she said, pointing.

It was, and he could see already that Eoin was at the helm. With a determined effort, Innes threw off his black mood. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked, sliding his arm around Ainsley to anchor her to his side.

‘You sound like you’re standing under the gallows, if you don’t mind my saying.’

Innes managed a rigid smile. ‘Judgement Day is what it feels like,’ he said wryly, ‘and I suspect it will be a harsh one.’

* * *

Looking out over the bay, Ainsley’s nerves made themselves known in the form of a fluttering stomach as she watched the little boat approaching. Until now, she had lost herself in the bustle of arrangements, the thrill of the journey. Her first time on a paddle steamer, her first time on the west coast and now her first time in a sailing boat was looming. Then would be her arrival at Strone Bridge with the man who was her husband. She worried at the plain gold band on her finger, inside her glove. She still couldn’t quite believe it. It did not feel at all real. She was now Mrs Drummond, wife of the laird of Strone Bridge, this stranger by her side whose dawning black mood had quite thrown her.

Innes didn’t want to be here, though he was now doing a good job of covering it up. There was a lot going on below the surface of that handsome countenance. Secrets? Or was it merely that he had left his past behind and didn’t want to be faced with it again? She could understand that. It was one of the reasons she’d been happy to leave Edinburgh for a while. Perhaps it was resentment, which was more than understandable, for unlike her, the life Innes was leaving behind was one he loved.

As he hefted their luggage down to the edge of the shoreline, Ainsley watched, distracted by the fluidity of his movements, the long stride over the pebbles, the smooth strength in the way he lifted even the heaviest pieces so effortlessly. She recalled Felicity’s joke about him being a wild Highlander, and wondered if he would wear a plaid when he was back at Strone Bridge. He had the legs for it. A prickle of heat low in her belly made her shiver.

‘Feasgar math.’ The bump of the boat against the tiny jetty made her jump.

Ainsley stared blankly at the man. ‘Good day to you, Mrs Drummond,’ he repeated in a softly lilting accent, at odds with the curt nod he gave her before starting to heave the luggage Innes was handing him into the boat.

‘Oh, good day,’ Ainsley replied.

‘This is Eoin Ferguson,’ Innes told her, ‘an old friend of mine. Eoin, this is my wife.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t speak any Gaelic,’ Ainsley said to the boatman.

‘Have the Gaelic,’ he said to her. ‘We don’t say speak it, we say have it.’

‘And there’s no need to worry, almost everyone on Strone Bridge speaks English,’ Innes said, frowning at the man he claimed for a friend, though Ainsley could see no trace of warmth between the two men.

‘I have never been to the Highlands,’ she said with a bright smile.

‘Strone Bridge is not far north of Glasgow as the crow flies,’ Eoin replied. ‘If you’re expecting us all to be wandering around in plaid and waving claymores, you’ll be disappointed. Are you getting in or not?’

‘Oh, right. Yes.’ She could feel herself flushing, mortified as if he had read her earlier thoughts. He made no move to help her. Seeing Innes’s frown deepen, Ainsley gave him a slight shake of the head, clambering awkwardly and with too much show of leg into the boat. Eoin watched impassively, indicating that she sit on the narrow bench at the front of the dinghy, making a point of folding his arms as she then proceeded to clamber over the luggage stacked mid-ship.

She tried not to feel either slighted or crushed, reminding herself she was a stranger, a Sassenach, a lowlander, who spoke—no, had—no Gaelic and knew nothing of their ways. Innes, his mouth drawn into a tight line, had leaped into the boat, and was deftly untying the rope from the jetty as Eoin tended the sail. She watched the pair of them working silently together as they set out into the water, the contrast between the harmony of their movements stark against the undercurrent of tension that ran between them. It spiked as Innes made to take the tiller.

‘The tide is against us, and I know the currents,’ Eoin said, keeping his hand on the polished wood.

‘I know them every bit as well as you.’

‘You used to.’ Eoin made no attempt to hide his enmity, but glared at Innes, his eyes, the same deep blue as Innes’s own, bright with challenge. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Innes’s fists clenched and unclenched. ‘I know exactly how long it’s been.’

A gust of wind took Eoin’s words away. When Innes spoke again, it was in a soft, menacing tone that made the hairs on the back of Ainsley’s neck stand on end. And it was in Gaelic. Eoin flinched and made to hand over the tiller, but Innes shook his head, joining Ainsley in the prow, turning away from her to stare out at the white wake, his face unreadable.

The wind that filled the sail blew in her face, whipping her hair from under her bonnet, making her eyes stream. Innes had not worn a hat today, a wise move, for it would surely have blown into the sea. Though he was, as ever, conservatively dressed, his trousers and coat dark blue, his linen pristine white; compared to Eoin’s rough tweed trews and heavy fisherman’s jumper, Innes looked like a dandy. She had watched the other man noticing this when he docked, but couldn’t decide whether the twitch of his mouth was contempt or envy.

The boat scudded along, the keel bumping over the waves of the outgoing tide. While the paddle steamer had felt—and smelled—rather like a train that ran on water instead of rails, in this dinghy, Ainsley was acutely conscious that only a few planks of wood and some tar separated her from the icy-cold strait. Spray made her lips salty. The sail snapped noisily. She began to feel nauseous, and looking up, catching a cold smile on Eoin’s face as the boat lifted out of the water and then slapped down again, began to suspect that he was making their voyage deliberately rough.

‘You’re from the city, I hear. You’ll not be used to the sea,’ he shouted.

Ainsley gripped the wooden seat with both hands, determined to hold on to the contents of her breakfast. She wished she hadn’t had the eggs. She mustn’t think about the eggs. ‘How did you know that?’ she asked.

‘Himself told Mhairi McIntosh, the housekeeper, in the letter he sent.’

Innes snapped his head round. ‘Well, it wouldn’t have done me any good to write to you.’

Eoin, to Ainsley’s surprise, turned a dull shade of red, and looked away. Innes swallowed whatever else he had been about to say and resumed his staring out at the sea. The undercurrent of emotion that ran between the two men was as strong as the ebb of the tide that was making their entrance into the bay a battle.

* * *

The pier was old and crumbling, extending far out into the bay. The low tide forced them to berth right at the very end of the structure, where Innes threw the rope neatly over a post to make fast. It was only as he put one foot on the first rung of the ladder that Eoin spoke, putting a hand on his shoulder, making him freeze.

‘You’ll find the place much changed.’

‘If you tell me once again that it’s been fourteen years...’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘It’s not that.’ Eoin pulled his hand away, a bleak look in his eyes. ‘You know Mhairi’s got the Home Farm ready for you? The big house—ach, you’ll see for yourself soon enough. Give Angus a shout; I can see he’s there with the cart. I’ll see to the luggage.’

Innes ascended the worn ladder quickly, then turned to help Ainsley. She was eyeing the gap between boat and pier with a trepidation she was trying—and failing—to disguise. Her cheeks were bright with the wind, her hair a tangle. She looked endearing. She was most likely wondering what the hell she’d let herself in for, with the enmity between himself and Eoin almost palpable. He swore under his breath. Whatever was going on in Eoin’s head, there would be time enough to sort it out. Right now, he needed to get poor Ainsley, who might well be his only ally, out of that boat before she fell out of it. ‘Put one foot on the bottom rung and give me your hand,’ he said, leaning down over the end of the pier.

She looked at the seaweed-slimed lower struts of the ladder pier dubiously. ‘I can’t swim.’

Innes went down on his knees and leaned over. ‘I can. If you fall, I promise I’ll dive in right behind you.’

‘And walk up the beach with me in your arms, dripping seawater and seaweed.’

‘Just like a mermaid.’

Ainsley chuckled. ‘More like a sea monster. Not the grand entrance that the laird and his lady are expected to make. It’s as well we’ve no audience.’

‘I told Mhairi—that’s the housekeeper—that we did not want a formal welcome until we were settled. I must admit, I’m surprised she listened, though,’ Innes said, looking about him. Save for Angus, making his lumbering way down the pier, there was not a soul in sight. Perhaps he’d maligned his friend after all. Eoin knew how much he hated the pomp and ceremony of the old ways that his father had gone to such pains to preserve. He looked over Ainsley’s shoulder to thank him, but Eoin was busying himself with the ropes.

Shrugging inwardly, Innes held out his hand to Ainsley, pulling her up without a hitch and catching her in his arms. ‘Welcome to Strone Bridge.’

She smiled weakly, clutching tight to him, her legs trembling on the wooden planking. ‘I’m sorry, I think my legs have turned to jelly.’

‘You don’t mean your heart? I’m not sure what you’ve let yourself in for here, but I am pretty certain things are in a bad way. I’ll understand if you want to go back to Edinburgh.’

‘Your people are expecting you to arrive with a wife. A fine impression it would make if she turned tail before she’d even stepped off the pier—or more accurately, judging by the state of it, stepped through it. Besides, we made a bargain, and I plan to stick to my part of it.’ Ainsley tilted her head up at him, her eyes narrowed, though she was smiling. ‘Are you having cold feet?’

‘Not about you.’ He hadn’t meant it to sound the way it did, like the words of a lover, but it was too late to retract. He pulled her roughly against him, and he kissed her, forgetting all about his resolution to do no such thing. Her lips were freezing. She tasted of salt. The thump of luggage being tossed with no regard for its contents from the boat to the pier made them spring apart.

Ainsley flushed. ‘It is a shame we don’t have more of an audience, for I feel sure that was quite convincing.’

Innes laughed. ‘I won’t pretend that had anything to do with acting the part of your husband. The truth is, you have a very kissable mouth, and I’ve been thinking about kissing you again since the first time all those weeks ago. And before you say it, it’s got nothing to do with my needing an emotional safety valve either, and everything to do with the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I know perfectly well it’s not part of our bargain.’

‘Save that it can do no harm to put on a show, now and then,’ Ainsley said with a teasing smile.

‘Does that mean you’ll only kiss me in public? I know there are men who like that sort of thing, but I confess I prefer to do my lovemaking in private.’

‘Innes! I am sure we can persuade the people of Strone Bridge we are husband and wife without resorting to—to engaging in public marital relations.’

He gave a shout of laughter. ‘Good grief, I hope not. That makes it sound like a meeting of foreign ministers.’

‘It does? Really?’ They began to make their way slowly to the head of the pier.

‘Really,’ Innes said.

‘Oh. What is your opinion on undergoing a husband’s ministrations?’

‘That it sounds as if the husband is to carry out some sort of unsavoury medical procedure. You may as well talk about performing hymeneal duties, which is the sort of mealy-mouthed and utterly uninformative phrase I imagine any number of poor girls hear from their mothers on the eve of their wedding. They probably think they’re going to be sacrificed on the matrimonial altar. Whatever they imagine, you can be damned sure they won’t be looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t agree more. The belief that innocence and ignorance must go hand in hand seems to me quite perverse. I wonder sometimes if there is a conspiracy by society to keep young girls uninformed in order to encourage them into marriages they would not otherwise make.’

The sparkle had returned to her hazel eyes, but it was no longer teasing. Rather, Innes thought, studying her in some surprise, it was martial. ‘Are you speaking from experience?’

‘My mother died when I was twelve, and I had no other female relative close enough to divulge the pertinent facts before my wedding night. It was a—a shock.’

He was appalled, but she was bristling like a porcupine. ‘Perhaps there should be some sort of guidebook. An introduction to married life; or something of that sort.’

He meant it as a joke, but Ainsley seemed much struck. ‘That is an excellent idea.’

‘Though if what you say about the conspiracy is true, then mothers will surely forbid their daughters from reading it.’

‘More likely fathers would.’

Most definitely martial. Intrigued, he could not resist pushing her. ‘Since the shops that would sell such a thing are the kind frequented by men and not women, then your plan is defeated by the outset,’ Innes said.

‘That shows how little you know,’ Ainsley said with a superior smile. ‘Shops are not the only outlet for such information.’

Above them the white clouds had given way to iron-grey. The wind was picking up as the tide turned, making white crests on the water, which was turning the same colour as the sky. While they’d been talking, the luggage had been loaded onto the cart, where Angus was now waiting patiently. Of Eoin there was no sign. Reluctantly, Innes abandoned this intriguing conversation. ‘Whatever else has changed,’ he said, ‘the weather is still as reliably fickle as ever. Come on, let’s get out of this wind before you catch a cold.’

* * *

Ainsley woke with a start and sat up, staring around her at the unfamiliar surroundings. The room was panelled and sparsely furnished. It had the look of a place hastily put together, and it felt as if the fires had not been lit for some time. Shivering as she threw back the covers and stepped onto the bare floorboards, she could feel the cold begin to seep into her bones.

Though it was July, it felt more like April. She made haste with her ablutions. Without the help of a maid, she laced her corsets loosely and tied her hair into a simple knot before pulling a woollen dress from her trunk. The colours, broad stripes of cream and turquoise, made her think of a summer sky that bore no resemblance to the one she could see through the window. The narrow sleeves were long, the tight-fitting bodice made doubly warm with the overlapping kerchief-style collar that came to a point at her waist. Woollen stockings and boots completed her toilette in record time. Reluctantly, she abandoned the idea of wrapping her cloak around her, telling herself that a lesson in hardiness was in order.

The corridor outside was dark and windowless. The fading daylight darkened by the deluge that had erupted as she arrived yesterday had prevented her from gaining any perspective of her new residence. Exhaustion had set in once she had eaten, and Ainsley had retired almost immediately afterwards.

Start the way you mean to go on. Muttering Madame Hera’s own advice like a charm, she stumbled her way towards the door where she had dined last night, cheered by the faint smell of coffee. The room looked much more attractive in the daylight, and the fire, which last evening had smouldered, today was burning brightly. ‘Good morning,’ she said.

Innes was seated at the table, staring moodily at his empty plate, but he stood when she came into the room. His jaw looked raw. Most likely he’d shaved in water as cold as she’d used to wash. Perhaps he simply wasn’t a morning person. Ainsley hovered at the door.

‘Are you staying or going?’ Innes asked, and she gave herself a little shake.

‘Staying,’ she said, seating herself opposite.

‘I didn’t know if you’d want tea or coffee, so I had Mhairi bring both.’

‘Coffee, thank you.’

He sat down and poured her a cup. ‘There’s crowdie and oatcakes, but if you’d prefer a kipper, or some ham or porridge?’

‘No, that will be fine—at least— What is crowdie?’

‘Cheese.’

‘Thank you.’ She took the oatcakes and creamy cheese. ‘This looks delicious.’ Innes poured himself a cup of tea. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked, cringing as she spoke, for she had already noticed his empty plate, and she sounded as if she was making polite conversation over the tinkling of teaspoons in an Edinburgh drawing room.

‘Yes,’ Innes said.

Ainsley bit into an oatcake. The crunch was embarrassingly loud. She took a sip of coffee. It sounded like a slurp. This was ridiculous. ‘Innes, would you prefer...?’

‘Ainsley, if you would prefer...?’

He stopped. She stopped. Then he laughed. ‘I’m not used to having company at breakfast. I don’t know whether you’d prefer to be left in peace, or— What?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not any more accustomed to it than you. It’s silly, I know it’s silly, but it feels strange.’

‘Would you rather I went?’

‘No. Unless you’d rather—’ She broke off, laughing. ‘For goodness’ sake, I’d like you to stay, and I’d like to talk, but not if we’re going to make polite chit-chat for the sake of it.’

Innes grinned. ‘I am more than happy to promise never to make polite chit-chat, though I would like to know if your bedchamber was comfortable—and please, give me the real answer, and not the drawing-room one.’

Ainsley chuckled. ‘One does not mention a lady’s bedchamber in the drawing room.’

‘Actually, that very much depends on the drawing room,’ Innes said, smiling. ‘Let me put it another way then—did you manage to sleep, or were you frozen to death?’

‘I slept, but I confess I dressed very quickly.’

‘I’m sorry about that. It seems that my father had the main part of the castle shut up and took to living in just two or three rooms. This place is sound and dry enough, but it’s been empty awhile, and Mhairi had little notice of our arrival, as you know. She gave you that bedchamber because it was the best of a bad bunch.’

‘She apologised for the fact it was several rooms away from your own,’ Ainsley said, flushing. ‘I got the impression she was worried the effort it would take to walk the distance would put you off. I confess, it did not do my ego much good to think my husband would be so easily deterred.’

‘If I thought I would be welcomed into your bedchamber for a bout of debauchery, not even a chastity belt would deter me,’ Innes said wickedly.

‘’Tis a shame I cannot lay my hands on such an item, else I would be tempted to test your resolve.’

‘Don’t be too sure, there are all sorts of things in the armoury,’ Innes replied. ‘Debauchery and chastity belts—who’d have thought that conversation over the breakfast cups could be so interesting?’

‘I did not introduce the topic of debauchery,’ Ainsley said, spluttering coffee.

‘No, but you did say you didn’t want to make polite chit-chat.’

‘Innes Drummond, you should have considered entering the legal profession, for you can twist an argument better than any lawyer I’ve dealt with—and believe me, I’ve dealt with a few.’

He gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Very well, we will change the topic, though it is your own fault, you know.’

She eyed him warily. ‘I am very sure I should not ask what you mean by that.’

‘Then do not.’

Ainsley took a sip of coffee. Innes folded his mouth primly. She took another sip, trying not to laugh, then finally cast her cup down in the saucer with a clatter. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, you win. Tell me what you meant.’

‘No, for it is not true, it’s not debauchery I think of when I look at that mouth of yours, it’s kissing.’

‘Just kissing.’

‘Not just kissing.’ Innes leaned forward over the table and took her hand. ‘Kissing. There’s a difference.’

He was teasing. Or was it flirting? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think she was the kind of woman that men flirted with. Did she amuse or arouse? Was it possible to combine the two? Ainsley had no idea, but she knew he was not laughing at her. There was complicity in the way he was looking at her, and something in those beguiling blue eyes of his that made her tingle. ‘What difference?’ she asked, knowing she ought not, sure that if she did not she would regret it.

Innes lifted her hand to his mouth, just barely brushing the back of it with his lips. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was just a kiss.’ He turned her hand over. ‘This,’ he said softly, ‘is the difference.’

His lips were warm on her palm. His tongue flicked over the pad of her thumb, giving her the most delicious little shiver. When he enveloped her thumb with his mouth and sucked, she inhaled sharply. ‘You see,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘There is only one problem with those kinds of kisses.’

She knew exactly what he meant. She was experiencing that very problem. ‘More?’ Ainsley said, meaning it as an answer, though it sounded like a request.

‘More,’ Innes said, taking it as a request, pushing back his chair, leaning across the table, doing just as she asked.

* * *

He hadn’t intended to kiss her, but he couldn’t resist, and when she did not either, when she opened her mouth to him and twined her arms around his neck with the most delightful little sigh, his teasing kiss became something deeper. She kissed him back. The tip of her tongue touched his, triggering the rush of blood, the clenching of his muscles, the shiver of arousal. He slid his hand down to her breast under the shawl that formed part of her bodice, only to find himself frustrated by the bones of her corset, by the layers of clothes. A knife clattered to the ground, and they both jumped.

He was hard. He was very glad that the table lay between them. Ainsley’s face was flushed, her lips soft, eyes dark with their kisses. The urge to pull her across the table and ravage that sinful mouth of hers was unbearably tempting. What the devil was wrong with him that he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her! Sitting carefully back down in his chair, Innes thought ruefully that it had been the same right from their first meeting. Why hadn’t he realised it would be a problem? Was it a problem?

‘Mhairi could have come into the room at any moment,’ Ainsley said.

Innes ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Is that why you kissed me?’

She picked up a teaspoon and began to trace a pattern on the table. ‘Actually, you kissed me, though I cannot deny that I kissed you back,’ she said, looking at him fleetingly from under her lashes. ‘I don’t know why, save that I wanted to, and I haven’t wanted to for... And ever since I met you I have and—and so I did.’

‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that, because it’s been exactly the same for me.’ Innes swallowed a mouthful of cold coffee and grimaced. ‘I never was one to toe the line, you know. Maybe it’s because our bargain precludes it that I’m so tempted.’

‘You mean you want to kiss me because it is illicit?’

‘Oh, no, I want to kiss you because you have a mouth that makes me think of kissing. But perhaps it’s so difficult not to because I know it’s not permitted, even though we’re married.’ Innes shook his head and jumped to his feet. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we should check the armoury for a chastity belt.’

‘Maybe we should stop worrying about it, and discussing it and analysing it,’ Ainsley said. ‘We are adults. We are neither of us interested in becoming attached. There is no harm in us having some—some fun.’

‘Fun? You say that as if you are taking a dose of Mr Rush’s patented pills for biliousness.’

‘I am sure that they too are healthful.’

Innes burst out laughing. ‘You say the strangest things. Healthful! It’s the first time I’ve heard it referred to in that way.’

‘You think it’s an inaccurate term to use?’

She was frowning, looking genuinely puzzled, just as she had yesterday, now he thought about it, when she’d mentioned—what was it—marital relations? ‘I think it’s best if we think about something else entirely,’ Innes said. ‘Delightful as this breakfast has been, the day is getting away from us. First things first, we’ll start with a tour of the castle. I warn you, it’s a great barrack of a place and like to be as cold as an icehouse.’

Ainsley got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and fetch a shawl.’

The door closed behind her. Innes gazed out of the window, though the view was almost entirely obscured by an overgrown hedge. It looked as if it had not been cut for a good many years. Like everything he’d seen at Strone Bridge so far, from the jetty to the stables, it was neglected. Eoin had warned him that things had changed. He wondered, if the state of the house and grounds were anything to go by, what had happened to the lands. He was surprised, for though his father had been old-fashioned, archaic even in his practices, he had never been negligent. He was also angry, though guiltily aware he had little right to be so. These were Malcolm’s lands. If Malcolm was here, he would be appalled at the state of them. Yet if Malcolm were here, Innes would not be. If Malcolm was here, he would not have allowed the place to fall into decline, and Innes...

He cursed. He could go round in circles for ever with that logic. He was not looking forward to this tour of the castle. It wasn’t so much the state of disrepair he was now certain he’d find in the rooms, it was the history in those rooms, all his history. He didn’t want anyone to see him coping—or not coping—with that history, and Ainsley was a very astute observer. It had been fourteen years. Surely that was long enough for him to at least put on a show of disaffection. Yet here he was, feeling distinctly edgy and wondering how to explain it away.

The castle was just a building. A heap of stones and wood of dubious aesthetic value. There was no ancient law that said he must live there if he chose to remain on Strone Bridge after a year, which was highly unlikely. No, he would have the Home Farm made more comfortable, because nothing would persuade him to play the laird in the castle, not even for a few weeks.

The vehemence of this thought took Innes so aback he did not notice Ainsley had returned until she spoke his name. ‘Right,’ Innes said, sounding appropriately businesslike. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Chapter Four

The sun shone weakly from a pale blue sky dotted with puffy clouds, the kind a child would paint. Following in Innes’s wake along the narrow path of damp paving slabs, Ainsley could see that the gloom inside the Home Farm’s lower rooms was largely due to the height of the untended hedge. Emerging through an extremely overgrown arch, she came face-to-face with Strone Bridge Castle for the first time.

They were standing at the side of a long sweep of carriageway with what must have been a huge lawn on either side, though at present it was more like the remnants of a hayfield, part long yellowed grass falling over, part fresh green pushing through. The building loomed over them, such an imposing structure she could not imagine how she had missed its hulk yesterday, though the stone was indeed the grey colour the sky had been.

Ainsley walked backwards to gain some perspective. ‘This is the rear of the house,’ Innes said. ‘The drive meets the main overland road, which cuts over to the other side of the peninsula and Loch Fyne, though to call it a road... It’s far easier to travel by boat in this neck of the woods.’

‘We did not come this way yesterday?’

He shook his head. ‘The front of the house faces down to the shore. We came up that way. I’ll show you, we’ll go in by the main entrance, but I wanted you to see the scale of this damned monstrosity first.’

Strone Bridge Castle was indeed enormous, and though it was not precisely charming, Ainsley would not have called it a monstrosity. An imposing construction with a large tower at each corner, and another central turret projecting from the middle of the main building, it was like a castle from a Gothic novel. The sturdy turrets had unexpected ogee roofs, adding a hint of the east into the architectural mix, each roof topped with tall spires and embellished with slit windows. The turrets looked, with their rugged masonry walls and stolid, defensive air, quite at odds with the central part of the building, which was considerably more elegant, mostly Jacobean in style, with four storeys of tall French-style windows, a low Palladian roof ornamented with a stone balustrade and a huge portico that looked as if it had been added on as an afterthought. The overall effect was certainly not of beauty, but it was striking.

‘It looks,’ Ainsley said, studying it with bemusement, ‘as if someone has jumbled up three or four different houses, or taken samples from a book of architectural styles through the ages.’

‘You’re not far off,’ Innes said. ‘The main house was built about 1700. The roof and that central tower were added about fifty or sixty years after that, and my own father put those corner towers up. There’s no rhyme nor reason to it. As I said, it’s a monstrosity.’

‘That’s not what I meant at all. It is like nothing I have ever seen.’

‘One of a kind. That, thank heavens, is certainly true,’ Innes said grimly.

‘You are not fond of it, then?’ Ainsley asked. ‘Though there must be some interesting stories attached to a building so old. And perhaps even a few ghosts.’

He had taken her arm as they made their way over the untended lawn around the building, and now slanted her a curious look. ‘Do you believe in such things?’

‘Honestly, I’ve never considered the question before, but looking at this place, I could easily be persuaded.’

‘There is a tale of one of the lairds who went off to fight in the 1715 Jacobite uprising. He was for the Old Pretender. There’s a set of gates, right at the end of the carriageway, which he had locked, so they say, and made his wife promise never to unlock them until his return.’

‘What happened?’

‘He died in the Battle of Sheriffmuir. His wife had the gates unlocked for his corpse to pass through in its coffin, but—’ Innes broke off, shaking his head. ‘No, there’s enough here already to give you nightmares without adding a walking, wailing, clanking ghost to the mix.’

Ainsley stopped in her tracks, looking up at him in horror. ‘Walking and wailing and clanking?’

He bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘He rattles the chain that should have been kept around the gates. He walks just over there, on the carriageway. He wails for the treachery of his lady wife, who married his enemy less than a year after he was slain.’

She shuddered, looked over to where he was pointing, then looked back at him. ‘Have you actually seen him?’ Innes made a noncommittal noise. Ainsley narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Has anyone ever seen him?’

‘None who have lived to tell the tale,’ he answered sorrowfully.

She punched him on the arm. ‘Then how can the tale be told! You made that up.’

He laughed, rubbing his arm. ‘Not all of it. The first part was true. The laird at the time did fight, he did die at Sheriffmuir and he did have the gates locked.’

‘Are there any real ghosts?’

His laughter faded as he took her arm and urged her on. ‘Plenty, believe me, though none that you will see, I hope.’

His expression was one she recognised. Don’t ask. Not because she wouldn’t like the answers, but because he would not. This was his home, this place that he was mocking and deriding, this place that he called a monstrosity. She wondered, then, if he really meant the bricks and mortar. Yesterday it was obvious that Innes had not wanted to come back to Strone Bridge. It was equally obvious from this morning that he’d not expected the place to be in such a state of disrepair, but now she wondered what else there was to disturb him here. What was at the heart of the quarrel that had so completely estranged him from his father?

How little of Innes she knew. His formative years had been spent here, yet he had left all of it behind without, it seemed, a backward glance, to make a new and very different life for himself. Why? It was all very well to tell herself it was none of her business, but—no, there was no but. It was absolutely none of her business, Ainsley told herself rather unconvincingly. Yet it was strange, and very distractingly intriguing, like the man himself.

‘You were a million miles away. I was only teasing you about the ghosts. I didn’t mean to give you the jitters,’ Innes said, cutting in on her thoughts.

‘You didn’t.’ Ainsley looked around her with slight surprise. They had reached the front of the house, and the prospect was stunning, for it sat on a hill directly above the bay where they had landed yesterday. ‘My goodness, this is absolutely beautiful.’

‘That’s the Kyles of Bute over there, the stretch of water with all the small islands that you sailed yesterday,’ Innes said. ‘And over there, the crescent of sand you can see, that’s Ettrick Bay on Bute, the other side of the island from which we set sail. And that bigger island you can just see in the distance, that’s Arran.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a wonderful prospect. It is exactly the sort of view that one conjures up, all misty-eyed, when one thinks of the Highlands. Like something from one of Mr Walter Scott’s novels.’

‘Aye, well, strictly speaking Eoin was right in what he said yesterday, though. We’re only a wee bit farther north than Glasgow here, and Arran is south.’

‘As the crow flies,’ Ainsley said. ‘It doesn’t matter, it feels like another world, and it really is quite spectacular. There must be a magnificent view from the castle.’ She looked back at the house, where a set of long French-style windows opened out on the first floor to what must have once been a beautiful terrace at the top of a flight of stairs.

‘That’s the drawing room,’ Innes said, following her gaze.

‘How lovely to take tea there on a summer’s day. I can just imagine the ladies of old with their hoops and their wigs,’ she said dreamily.

‘The hoops and wigs are like as not still packed away up in the attics somewhere. My family never throws anything away. Do you really like this place?’

‘It’s entrancing. Do you really not like it?’

Innes shrugged. ‘I can see it’s a lovely view. I’d forgotten.’

Without waiting on her, he turned on his heel and began to walk quickly up the slope towards the central staircase. ‘Like someone determined to swallow their medicine as quickly as they can and get it over with,’ Ainsley muttered, stalking after him.

‘What was that?’

‘This may be a monstrosity to you, Innes, but to someone accustomed to a terraced house in Edinburgh, it’s magical.’

Innes stopped abruptly. ‘Ach, I’m like a beast with a sore head. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’

No, it was most definitely this place. Curious as she was, and with a hundred questions to boot, Ainsley had no desire to see him suffer. ‘We could leave it for today. Or I could look around myself.’

‘No,’ Innes said firmly, ‘it has to be done.’ He took her hand, forcing a smile. ‘Besides, you came here thinking you’d be lady of the manor—you’ve a right to see over your domain. I’m only sorry that it’s bound to be a disappointment.’

‘I did not come here with any such expectations. Aside from the fact that I know absolutely nothing about the management of a place this size, I am perfectly well aware that your people will regard a destitute Edinburgh widow without a hint of anything close to blue in her blood as nothing more than an upstart.’

Innes gave a startled laugh. ‘You’re not seriously worried that people here will look down their noses at you, Ainsley?’

‘A little,’ she confessed, embarrassed. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it until I arrived here yesterday. Then your boatman...’

‘Ach! Blasted Eoin. Listen to me. First, if there’s an upstart here, then it’s me. Second, for better or worse, I’ll be the laird while I’m here, and while you’re here, I will not tolerate anyone looking down their noses at you. Third, the state of your finances are nobody’s business but our own.’ He pulled her closer, pushing a strand of her hair out of her eyes. ‘Finally, though I have no intention of playing the laird and therefore there’s no need for you to play lady of the manor, if I did, and you did, then I think you’d play it very well. And on the off chance you couldn’t quite follow me,’ he added, ‘that was me saying you’ve not a thing to worry about.’

She felt a stupid desire to cry. ‘Thank you, I will try not to let you down.’

‘Wheesht, now,’ he said, kissing her cheek. ‘You’ll do your best, and that’s all I ask. Anyway, it’s not as if you are stepping into a dead person’s shoes. My mother died when I was eight years old.’

‘And your father never remarried?’

Innes gave a crack of laughter. ‘What for, he’d already produced an heir and a spare.’

‘What about your brother. Did he...?’

‘No.’

Another of those ‘do not dare ask’ faces accompanied this stark denial. And Innes would not be married either, were it not for the terms of the old laird’s will. Were the Drummond men all misogynists? Or perhaps there was some sort of dreadful hereditary disease? But Innes seemed perfectly healthy. A curse, then? Now she was being utterly fanciful. It was this place. Ainsley gave herself a little shake. ‘Well, then, let us go and inspect this castle of yours, and see what needs to be done to make it habitable.’

* * *

Everything inside Strone Bridge Castle was done on a grand scale. The formal salons opened out one after the other around the central courtyard with the Great Hall forming the centrepiece, heavy with geometric panelling, topped with rich fretwork ceilings like icing on a cake, or one of those elaborate sugar constructions that decorates the table at a banquet. Massive fireplaces and overmantels rose to merge the two, and everywhere, it seemed to Ainsley, every opportunity had been taken to incorporate heraldic devices and crests. Dragons and lions poked and pawed from pilasters, banisters and pediments. Shields and swords augmented the cornicing, were carved into the marble fireplaces and fanned out above the windows. It was beautiful, in an oppressive and overwhelming way.

The turrets that marked each corner were dank places with treacherous-looking staircases winding their way steeply up, and which Ainsley decided she did not need to climb. ‘They serve no real purpose,’ Innes told her. ‘A whim of my father’s, nothing more.’

* * *

After two hours and only a fraction of the hundred and thirty rooms, she had seen enough for one day. Back in the courtyard, she gazed up at the central tower, which was square and not round, and faced directly out over the Kyles of Bute. Bigger than the others, it seemed to contain proper rooms, judging from the wide windows that took up most of the sea-facing wall on each of the four stories. Ainsley wrestled with the heavy latch, but it would not budge.

‘It’s locked.’ Innes made no attempt to help her. ‘Has been for years. Most likely the key is long gone, for it’s not on here,’ he said, waving the heavy bunch of keys he carried.

Ainsley frowned at the lock, which seemed surprisingly new, and showed no sign of rust, wondering how Innes would know such a thing when he himself had not been here for years. ‘The view from up there must be spectacular,’ she said, looking back up at the battlements.

Innes had already turned away. ‘We’ll take a look at the kitchens.’

‘There must be a door from inside the castle,’ Ainsley said, frowning at the tower in frustration, trying to recall the exact layout of rooms that lay behind it. ‘Is that the dining room? I don’t recall a door, but...’

‘The door isn’t in the dining room.’ Innes was holding open another door. ‘Do you want to see the kitchens? I was hoping to get out to some of the farms this afternoon.’

He sounded impatient. Though this was all new to her, for him it was different. ‘I can come back myself another time,’ Ainsley said, joining him.

‘I don’t want you going up there,’ Innes said sharply. ‘It’s not safe.’

She cast a dubious look at the tower, thinking that it looked, like the rest of the castle, neglected though sound, but Innes was already heading down the narrow corridor, so she picked up her skirts and walked quickly after him.

A few moments later she forgot all about the locked tower, gazing in astonishment at the table that ran almost the full length of the servants’ hall. It looked as if it would sit at least fifty. ‘Good grief, how many staff does it take to keep this place running?’

Innes shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. Even in my youth, most of the rooms were closed up, save for formal occasions, and there were few of those. My father was not the most sociable of men.’

They exited the servants’ hall and entered the main kitchen, which had two bread ovens, a row of charcoal braziers, a stove the size of a hay cart and the biggest fireplace Ainsley had ever seen. Out through another door, they wended their way through the warren of the basement, past linen rooms and still rooms, pantries and empty wine cellars, and then back up a steep flight of stairs to another door that took them out to the kitchen gardens.

Innes turned the lock and turned his back on the castle. ‘As you can see, the place is uninhabitable,’ he said.

He sounded relieved. She couldn’t understand his reaction to it. ‘Is the building itself in such a poor state of repair, is it the cost of restoring it you’re worried about?’

‘It’s sound enough, I reckon. There’s no smell of damp and no sign that the roof is anything but watertight, though I’d need to get one of my surveyors to take a look. But what would be the point?’

‘I have no idea, but—you would surely not wish to let it simply fall into ruin?’

‘I could knock it down and get it over with.’ Innes tucked the weight of keys into his coat pocket with a despondent shrug. ‘I don’t know,’ he said heavily, ‘and I think I’ve more pressing matters to consider, to be honest. Maybe it was a mistake to start with the castle. For now, I think it would be best if you concentrated on the immediate issue of making the Home Farm a bit more comfortable. Speak to Mhairi, she’ll help you. I’ll need to spend some time out on the lands.’

Ainsley watched him walk away, feeling slightly put out. He was right, their living quarters left a lot to be desired, and it made sense for her to sort them out. ‘Whatever that means,’ she muttered. The idea of consulting the rather forbidding Mhairi McIntosh did not appeal to her. Madame Hera had suggested that Timid Mouse appeal to her housekeeper’s softer side. Ainsley was not so sure that Mhairi McIntosh had one.

Besides, that wasn’t the point. She had not come here to set up Innes’s home for him, but to provide him with objective advice. How was she to do that if she was hanging curtains and making up beds while he was out inspecting his lands? Excluding her, in other words, and she had not protested. ‘Same old Ainsley,’ she said to herself in disgust. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’

* * *

Dear Madame Hera,

My husband’s mother gave me a household manual on my wedding day that she wrote herself. It is extremely comprehensive, and at first I was pleased to know the foods my husband prefers, and how he likes them served. However, I must say that right from the start I was a bit worried when I read what his mother calls ‘The Order of the Day’—and there is one for every day. I do try to follow it, but I confess I see no reason why I must do the washing on a Wednesday and polish the silver on a Saturday, any more than I see why we have to have shin of beef every single Tuesday, and kippers only on a Thursday. And as to her recipe for sheep’s-head soup—I will not!

I tried to tell my husband that his mother’s way is not the only way. I have many excellent recipes from my own mother that I am sure he would enjoy. I tried, with all my wifely wiles, to persuade him that I could run the household without following his mother’s manual to the letter. He spurned my wifely wiles, Madame, and now he is threatening to have his mother, who has a perfectly good house of her own, to come and live with us. I love my husband, but I do not love his mother. What should I do?

Desperate Wife

Ainsley pulled a fresh sheet of paper on to the blotting pad. It was tempting to suggest that Desperate Wife invite her own mother to stay, and even more tempting to suggest that she simply swap abodes herself with her husband’s mother, but she doubted Felicity would print either solution. Instead, she would advise Desperate Wife to put her foot down, throw away the manual and claim the hearth and home as her own domain. It was Madame Hera’s standard response to this sort of letter, of which she received a great many. Mothers-in-law, if the readers of the Scottish Ladies Companion were to be believed, were an interfering lot, and their sons seemed to be singularly lacking in gumption.

Claiming this hearth and home as her own had turned out to be relatively easy. Yet looking around the room, which in the past ten days, like the rest of the Home Farm, had been made both warm and comfortable, Ainsley felt little satisfaction. Mhairi McIntosh had proved cooperative but reserved. She had not looked down her nose at Ainsley, nor had she mocked or derided a single one of her suggestions, which had made the task Innes had given her relatively easy, but it was not the challenge she had been looking forward to. She had, in essence, been relegated to the domestic sphere when he had promised her a different role.

Irked with herself, Ainsley tucked Madame Hera’s correspondence into her leather folder and pushed it to one side of the desk, covering it with the latest copy of the Scottish Ladies Companion, which Felicity had sent to her. There could be no doubt that Innes needed help, but he had made no attempt to ask her for it. Though she rationalised that he most likely thought he’d fare better with his tenants alone, as the days passed, she felt more excluded and more uncomfortable with trying to address this fact. She was not unhappy, she was not regretting her decision to come here, but she felt overlooked and rather useless.

Standing on her tiptoes at the window, she could see the sky was an inviting bright blue above the monstrous hedge. Ainsley made her way outside, making for her favourite view out over the Kyles of Bute. Tiny puffs of clouds scudded overhead, like the steam from a train or a paddle steamer. It was a shame that the dilapidated jetty down in the bay was not big enough to allow a steamer to dock, for it would make it a great deal easier to get supplies.

She had to speak to Innes. She had a perfect right to demand that he allow her to do the task he had brought her here for. The fact that he was obviously floundering made it even more important. Yes, it also made him distant and unapproachable, but that was even more reason for her to tackle him. Besides, she couldn’t in all conscience remain here without actually doing what she’d already been paid to do. She owed it to herself to speak to him. She had no option but to speak to him.

Mentally rehearsing various ways of introducing the subject, Ainsley wandered through the castle’s neglected grounds, finding a path she had not taken before, which wended its way above the coastline before heading inwards to a small copse of trees. The chapel was built of the same grey granite as the castle, but it was warmed by the red sandstone that formed the arched windows, four on each side, and the heavy, worn door. It was a delightful church, simple and functional, with a small belfry on each gable end, a stark contrast to the castle it served.

The door was not locked. Inside, it was equally simple and charming, with wooden pews, the ones nearest the altar covered, the altar itself pink marble, a matching font beside it. It was clean swept. The tall candles were only half-burned. Sunlight, filtered through the leaves of the sheltering trees and the thick panes of glass in the arched windows, had warmed the air. Various Drummonds and their families were commemorated in plaques of brass and polished stone set into the walls. Presumably their bones were interred in the crypt under the altar, but Ainsley could find none more recent than nearly a hundred years ago.

Outside, she discovered the graveyard on the far side of the church. Servants, tenants, fishermen, infants. Some of the stones were so worn she could not read the inscription. The most recent of the lairds were segregated from the rest of the graveyard’s inhabitants by a low iron railing.

Ainsley read the short list on the large Celtic cross.

Marjorie Mary Caldwell

1787-1813, spouse of

Malcolm Fraser Drummond

This must be Innes’s mother. Below her, the last name, the lettering much brighter, his father:

Malcolm Fraser Drummond

Laird of Strone Bridge

1782-1840

The laird had married early. His wife must have been very young when she had Innes. Ainsley frowned, trying to work out the dates. Seventeen or eighteen? Even younger when she had her first son. Her frown deepened as she read the lettering on the cross again. Above Marjorie was the previous laird. Nothing between her and Innes’s father. Innes’s brother was not here, and she was certain he was not mentioned in the church. Perhaps he was buried elsewhere? What had Innes said? His brother’s death had been the trigger for the split between Innes and his father, she remembered that.

She could ask him. Taking a seat on the stone bench by the main door, Ainsley knew she would not risk antagonising him. She began to pick at the thick rolls of moss, which were growing on the curved arm of the seat. Theirs was a marriage of convenience. Her role as Innes’s wife was a public one—to appear on his arm at church on Sunday—and not a private one. She had no right to probe into his past, and she would not like it if he questioned her on hers.

Which did not alter the fact that he was preventing her from helping, and he quite patently needed help. She was bored, and she felt not only useless but rather like an outcast. What would Madame Hera say?

Wandering back along the path, with the sky, not surprisingly, now an ominous grey, Ainsley was thankful that Madame Hera had never been consulted on such a complex problem. There were a score of letters Madame Hera still had to answer, including the one to Desperate Wife. Was there an argument to defend the mother-in-law’s precious household manual? Perhaps there were traditions, comforting customs, that Desperate Wife’s husband valued or enjoyed, which he feared would be lost if the manual were ignored? Perhaps these very traditions were helping the husband adjust to his new life. Madame Hera rarely concerned herself with the men at the root of her correspondents’ problems, but it must be supposed that some of them had feelings, too. Perhaps Desperate Wife might have better success with what she called her wifely wiles if she put them to a more positive use, to discover what parts of the dratted manual actually mattered to him? Though of course, there was always a chance it was simply the case that he simply did like to have kippers on a Thursday.

‘I am glad one of us has something to smile about.’ Innes was approaching the front door from the direction of the stables. His leather riding breeches and his long boots were spattered with mud, as were the skirts of his black coat. He had not worn a hat since he’d arrived at Strone Bridge, and his hair was windswept. ‘What is so amusing, assuming it’s not my appearance?’ he asked, waiting for her on the path.

‘Kippers,’ Ainsley replied, smiling. He looked tired. There were shadows under his eyes. She had missed him at breakfast these past few days. ‘You do look a bit as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. A very muddy hedge,’ Ainsley said. ‘I’ll speak to Mhairi when we get in, I’ll have her heat the water so you can have a bath. The chimney has been swept, so it shouldn’t take long.’

Innes followed her down the hallway to the sitting room that doubled as their study. ‘Thank you, that sounds good. Where have you been?’

‘I came across the chapel. I saw your father’s grave.’

He was sifting through the pile of mail that Mhairi had left on the desk and did not look up. ‘Right.’

She wondered, surprised that it had not occurred to her until now, whether Innes himself had seen it. If so, he had made no mention of it. Another thing he would not talk about. ‘I’ll go and speak to Mhairi,’ Ainsley said, irritated, knowing she had no right to be, and even more irritated by that fact.

* * *

When she returned, bearing a tea tray, Innes was sitting at the desk reading a letter, but he put it down as she entered and took the tray from her. ‘I think half the population of Strone Bridge must now be in Canada or America,’ he said. ‘We’ve more empty farms than tenanted ones.’

She handed him a cup of tea. ‘Why is it, do you think?’

‘High rents. Poor maintenance—or more accurately, no maintenance. Better prospects elsewhere.’ Innes sighed heavily.

‘I know nothing about such matters, but even I can see from the weeds growing that some of the fields have not been tilled for years,’ Ainsley said carefully. ‘Is the land too poor?’

‘It’s sure as hell in bad heart now,’ Innes said wretchedly, ‘though whether that’s through neglect or lack of innovation, new methods, whatever they might be. There are cotter families who have lived in the tied cottages for decades who have moved on. I’m sick of hearing the words, “I mentioned it to the laird but nothing happened”. My father’s factor apparently left Strone Bridge not long after I did, and he did not employ another, though no one will tell me why. In fact, no one will tell me anything. They treat me like a stranger.’

‘What about Eoin?’ Ainsley asked tentatively.

‘What about him?’

‘You said he was your friend. Couldn’t you talk to him?’

‘Eoin is as bad as the rest. It doesn’t matter, it’s not your problem.’

Innes picked up another letter. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over. It’s not your problem. Ainsley sat perfectly still. The words were a horrible echo from the past. How many times had she been rebuffed by John with exactly that phrase, until she stopped asking any questions at all?

‘Don’t say that.’

Her tone made Innes look up in surprise. ‘Don’t say what?’

Ainsley stared down at her tea. ‘It is my problem. At least it’s supposed to be. It’s what you brought me here for, to help you.’

‘This place is beyond help. I can see that for myself.’

‘So that’s it? You’ve already decided—what? To sell? To walk away and let it continue to crumble? What?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So you haven’t decided, but you’re not going to ask me because my opinion counts for nothing.’

‘No! Ainsley, what the devil is the matter with you?’

‘What is the matter?’ She jumped to her feet, unable to keep still. ‘You brought me here to help! You have paid me a considerable sum of money, a sum I would not have dreamed of accepting if I thought all I was to do was sit about here and—and fluff cushions.’

‘You’ve done a great deal more than that. I’m sorry if I have seemed unappreciative, but—’

‘I have done nothing more than Mhairi McIntosh could have done. Oh, granted, I married you, and in doing so allowed you to claim this place, which seems to me to have been a completely pointless exercise, if all you’re going to do is say that it’s past help, and walk away.’

‘I didn’t say I was going to do that. Stop haranguing me like a fishwife.’

‘Stop treating me like a child! I have a brain. I have opinions. I know I’m a Sassenach and a commoner to boot, but I’m not a parasite. I may know nothing about farming, but neither do you! Only you’re so blooming well ashamed of the fact, though you’ve no reason to be, because why should you know anything about it when you told me yourself your father did not allow you to know anything, and—and...’

‘Ainsley!’ Innes wrested the teaspoon she was still clutching from her clenched hand and set it down on the tea tray. ‘What on earth has come over you? You’re shaking.’

‘I’m not,’ she said, doing just that. ‘Now you’ve made me lose track of what I was saying.’

‘You were saying that I’m an ignoramus not fit to own the lands.’

‘No, that’s what you think.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘If I could have got by without asking Mhairi for advice on this house, I would have, but I couldn’t, Innes.’

‘Why should you, you know nothing of the place.’

‘Exactly.’ She sniffed again, and drew him a meaningful look. Innes handed her a neatly folded handkerchief. ‘I’m not crying,’ Ainsley said.

‘No.’

She blew her nose. ‘I’ve never known a wetter July. I’ve likely got a cold.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘I hate women who resort to tears to get their way.’

‘I’m not sure it ever works. From what I’ve seen, what usually happens is that she cries, he runs away, and whatever it was gets swept under the carpet until the next time,’ Innes said wryly.

‘You know, for a man who has never been married before, you have an uncanny insight into the workings of matrimony.’

‘I take it I’ve struck a chord?’

It was gently said, but she couldn’t help prickling. ‘Sometimes tears are not a weapon, but merely an expression of emotion,’ Ainsley said, handing him his kerchief. ‘Such as anger.’

‘Stop glowering at me, and stop assuming that all men are tarred with the same brush as the man you married.’

The gentleness had gone from his voice. Ainsley sat, or rather slumped, feeling suddenly deflated. ‘I don’t.’

‘You do, and I’m not like him.’

‘I know. I wouldn’t be here if I thought you were. But you are shutting me out, Innes, and it’s making me feel as if I’m here under false pretences. If you won’t talk to me, why not talk to Eoin? There’s nothing shameful in asking for help.’

Her tea was cold, but she drank it anyway. The silence was uncomfortable, but she could think of no way of breaking it. She finished her tea.

‘I’m not used to consulting anyone,’ Innes said. ‘You knew that.’

‘But it was your idea to have me come along here. An objective eye.’

‘I didn’t realise things would be so bad. As I said, it’s obvious that it’s too late.’

‘So you’re giving up?’

‘No! I’m saving you the effort of getting involved in something that is next to useless.’

‘Giving up, in other words,’ Ainsley said.

His face was quite white. The handle of his teacup snapped. He stared at it, then put it carefully down. ‘I don’t give up,’ he said.

She bit her tongue.

‘I’m not accustomed to— It’s been difficult. Seeing it. Not having answers. That’s been hard.’

Ainsley nodded.

‘They are all judging me.’

She sighed in exasperation. ‘Innes, you’ve been gone a long time. They don’t know you.’

‘I don’t see how you can help.’

‘I won’t know if I can, if you don’t talk to me.’ Ainsley tried a tentative smile. ‘At the very least, I would be on your side.’

‘Aye, that would be something more than I have right now.’ Innes smiled back. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Please do. I have plenty of time on my hands.’

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking at her ruefully. ‘You might want to use some of it to partition this place off into his and her domains. I’m like a bear with a sore head these days, though contrary to what you might think, I quite like having you around. And that’s your cue, in case you missed it, to tell me you feel the same.’

Ainsley laughed. ‘Would I have suggested helping you if I had wanted to avoid you?’

‘True.’

‘Perhaps you should consider having some sort of welcoming party.’

‘Even though I’m not welcome.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry, don’t bite my head off.’

Ainsley frowned, thinking back to the letter she had been reading that morning from Desperate Wife. ‘Sometimes traditions can be a comfort. Sometimes they can even help heal wounds,’ she said, making a mental note to include that phrase in Madame Hera’s reply.

‘Sometimes you sound like one of those self-help manuals, do you know that?’

‘Do I?’

‘“Engaging in marital relations,”’ he quoted, smiling. ‘“Undergoing a husband’s ministrations.” No, don’t get on your high horse, it’s endearing.’

‘It is?’

‘It is. What were you suggesting?’

‘Didn’t you say that there ought to have been a ceremony when we arrived?’ There was a smut of mud on his cheek. She reached up to brush it away.

‘A ceremony. I’m not very keen on ceremonies.’ Innes caught her hand between his and pressed a kiss on to her knuckles.

Was it just a kiss, or a kiss? It felt like more than just a kiss, for it made her heart do a silly little flip. But his mouth did not linger, and surely knuckles could not be—what was the word, stimulating? She wanted to ask him, but that would give too much away, and he might not have been at all stimulated. ‘A celebration, then,’ Ainsley said. ‘Lots of food and drink. Something to mark the changes. You know, out with the old and in with the new.’

‘Mmm.’ He kissed her hand again. ‘I like that,’ he said, smiling at her.

‘Do you?’ She had no idea whether he meant her idea or the kiss.

‘Mmm,’ he said, pulling her towards him and wrapping his arms around her. ‘I like that very much,’ he said. And then he kissed her on the mouth.

It was definitely not just a kiss. He tasted of spring. Of outdoors. A little of sweat. And of something she could not name. Something sinful. Something that made her heat and tense and clench, and made her dig her fingers into the shoulders of his coat and tilt her body against his. And that made him groan, a guttural noise that seemed to vibrate inside her.

One hand roamed up her back, his fingers delving into her hair, the other roamed down to cup her bottom and pull her closer. She could feel the hard ridge of his arousal through his trousers, through her skirts. She touched her tongue to his and felt his shudder, and shuddered with him, pressing her thighs against his, wanting more, wanting to rid herself of the layers of cloth between them, wanting his flesh, and then thinking about her flesh, exposed, thinking about him looking at her. Or looking at her and then turning his head away. Then not wanting to look at her. Like John. And then...

‘Ainsley?’

‘Your bath,’ she said, clutching at the first thing she could think of. ‘Your bath will be ready.’

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No,’ she said, managing a smile, forcing herself to meet his concerned gaze, hating herself for being the cause of that concern, frustrated at having started something she had not the nerve to finish, frustrated at how much she wished she could. ‘No, I just don’t want the water to get cold.’

‘The state I’m in, I think cold is what I need. What happened? Did I do something wrong?’

She flushed. Men were not supposed to ask such questions. Men hated discussing anything intimate. She knew that it was not just John who had been like that, because Madame Hera’s correspondence was full of women saying that their husbands were exactly the same. Why did Innes have to be different!

‘Nothing. I changed my mind,’ Ainsley said, mortified, not only for the lie, but for knowing she was relying on Innes being the kind of man who would always allow a woman to do so. And she was right.

‘A lady’s prerogative,’ he said, making an ironic little bow. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’

Chapter Five

‘Come and sit by the fire.’ Innes handed Ainsley a glass of sherry.

‘I thought it was warm enough to wear this without shivering,’ she answered him with a constrained smile, ‘but now I’m not so sure.’

Her dress was cream patterned with dark blue, with a belt the same colour around her waist. Though it was long-sleeved, the little frill around the décolleté revealed her shoulders, the hollows at her collarbone, the most tantalising hint of the smooth slope of her breasts. She sat opposite him and began to twirl her glass about in her hand, a habit she had, Innes had noticed, when she was trying to work up to saying something uncomfortable.

Her face had that pinched look that leached the life from it. Earlier, he’d suspected that she had pulled away from him because of her memories connected to McBrayne. Lying in the cooling bath water in front of the feeble fire in his bedchamber, Innes had begun to wonder what, exactly, the man had done to her. It was more than the debts, or even the fact that they were incurred without her knowing. He couldn’t understand how she could be kissing him with abandon one minute and then turning to ice the next, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t anything he’d done—or not done. When she forgot herself, she was a different person from the one opposite him now, twisting away nervously at her glass and slanting him timid looks.

Innes threw another log on the fire. ‘I think I’ve solved one problem, at least,’ he said, picking up the magazine that he’d been flicking through while he waited on her. ‘This thing, the Scottish Ladies Companion. There’s a woman who doles out spurious advice to females in here, and she uses that very same phrase of yours.’ He opened the periodical and ruffled through the pages. ‘Aye, here it is. “Make a point of extinguishing the light before engaging in marital relations”—you see, your very phrase—“and your husband will likely not notice your having so unwittingly misled him. Better still, retain your modesty and your nightgown, and your little deceit will never have to be explained.” This Madame Hera is either a virgin or a fool,’ he said scathingly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The lass has been stuffing her corsets with— What was it?’

‘Stockings.’

‘I see you have read it, then.’ Innes shook his head.

‘It was her mother’s idea.’

‘And a damned stupid one. Pitch dark or broad daylight, you can be certain the husband will know the difference. And as for the idea of keeping her nightgown on...’

‘For modesty’s sake. I am sure many women do.’

‘Really? I’ve never come across a single one.’

‘I doubt very much that the women you have—experienced—are—are— I mean— You know what I mean.’

‘The women I’ve experienced, as you put it, have certainly not been married to another man at the time, but nor have they been harlots, if that is what you’re implying.’ She was blushing. She was unduly flustered, considering she was neither a virgin herself, nor as strait-laced as she now sounded. ‘I’m finding you a puzzle,’ Innes said, ‘for the day I met you, I recall you were threatening to join the harlots on the Cowgate.’

‘You know very well I was joking.’ Ainsley set her glass of sherry down. ‘Do you really think Madame Hera’s advice misguided?’

‘Does it matter?’

She bit her lip, then nodded.

Innes picked up the magazine and read the letter again. ‘This woman, she’s not exactly lied to the man she’s betrothed to, but she’s misled him, and it seems to me that Madame Hera is encouraging her to continue to mislead him. It’s that I don’t like. The lass is likely nervous enough about the wedding night without having to worry about subterfuge. Hardly a frame of mind conducive to her enjoying what you would call her husband’s ministrations.’

‘What would you call it?’

Innes grinned. ‘Something that doesn’t sound as if the pleasure is entirely one-sided. There’s a dictionary worth of terms depending on what takes your fancy, but lovemaking will do.’

‘You might think that innocuous enough, but I assure you, the Scottish Ladies Companion will not publish it,’ Ainsley said.

‘You are a subscriber to this magazine, then?’

She shrugged. ‘But—this woman, Innes. Don’t you think her husband will be angry if he discovers her deception? And anger is no more conducive to—to lovemaking than fraud.’

‘In the grand scheme of things, I doubt it. Chances are he’s not any more experienced than she, and like to be just as nervous. I’d say he’s going to be more concerned about his own performance than anything else, something your Madame Hera doesn’t seem to take any account of.’

‘It is a column of advice for women.’

‘And most of the letters in this issue seem to be about men. Anyway, Madame Hera is completely missing the main point.’

‘Which is?’

‘The lass thinks she’s not well enough endowed, and Madame Hera is by implication agreeing by telling her to cover up. If she goes to her wedding night ashamed, thinking she’s not got enough to offer, you can be sure that soon enough her husband will think the same.’

‘So it’s her fault?’ Ainsley said.

‘Don’t be daft. If anyone’s at fault it’s that blasted Madame Hera—and the mother.’ Innes threw the magazine down on the table. ‘I don’t know why we’re wasting our time with this nonsense.’

Ainsley picked the magazine up, her face set. ‘Because I wrote it,’ she said. ‘I’m Madame Hera.’

* * *

Innes laughed. Then, when she continued to look at him without joining in, his laughter stopped abruptly. ‘I’ll be damned. You mean it? You really do write this stuff?’

‘It is not stuff. It is a very well-respected column. I’ll have you know that in the past month, Madame Hera has received no less than fifty letters. In fact, such is the demand for Madame’s advice that the magazine will from next month offer a personal reply service. Felicity has agreed a fee with the board, and I shall receive fifty per cent of it.’

‘Felicity?’

‘Blair. The editor, and my friend.’

‘So all that correspondence you receive, they are letters to this Madame Hera.’ Innes looked quite stunned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because it was none of your business.’ Ainsley flushed. ‘And because I knew you would most likely react exactly as you have. Though I am not ashamed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Madame Hera provides a much-needed service.’

‘So why tell me now?’

Ainsley reached for her sherry and took a large gulp. She had not meant to tell him. She had been so caught up in worrying about how to explain away her earlier behaviour that Madame Hera had been far from her mind, though her advice would have been straightforward. ‘Il faut me chercher’ was one of Madame’s axioms. Men must hunt and women must avoid capture. Kissing, not even just kissing, without the benefit of a wedding band, was quite wrong. And though Ainsley did have the benefit of a wedding band, she was not really married, so it was still wrong. Kissing gave a man all sorts of immoral ideas. Such ideas were, in Madame Hera’s world, the province only of men. That Ainsley herself had had ideas—her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Madame would say to that.

In fact, those very ideas cropped up in several of the letters Felicity had forwarded to her, variously referred to as ‘unnatural desires,’ ‘longing,’ ‘carnal stirrings,’ ‘fever of the blood,’ ‘indecent thoughts’ and even, memorably, ‘an irrepressible need to scratch an itch.’ On the one hand, it was consoling to know that she was not unusual, but on the other, she was utterly defeated when it came to even contemplating a reply. Felicity had been right—Ainsley knew very little of such matters. She’d been right, too, in suggesting that Ainsley would do well to learn. But Felicity had no idea of the hurdles Ainsley would have to overcome in order to do so.

She had concluded that her only option was to return the letters to Felicity until Innes had read out Madame Hera’s letter, and she saw what she had suspected: that her advice wasn’t only skewed but perhaps even hypocritical. Madame Hera existed to liberate women from ignorance, not to reflect Ainsley’s own insecurities.

Her stomach had tied itself in knots in her bedroom earlier as she’d contemplated that kiss. Now she was aware of Innes studying her, waiting patiently for an explanation, and she had never felt more inarticulate in her life. Seeing with some surprise that her sherry glass was empty, Ainsley reached for the decanter and topped it up, taking another fortifying gulp. ‘Felicity said that— Felicity suggested that— She said...’ She took another sip of sherry. ‘Felicity was concerned that I had not the experience to answer some of the more intimate queries made of Madame Hera. I agreed with her, but I thought—I was certain that in all other instances, my advice was sound.’

Ainsley took another sip of sherry. It was really rather good sherry. She took another sip. ‘Then earlier today, when I was mulling over the contents of another letter, I began to wonder if perhaps I had been a little biased. Failing to take account the other side of the problem. A little. And then, when you read that letter out I realised that—that perhaps you were right. To a degree.’

Innes looked as confused by this rambling explanation as she felt. ‘I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand why this led you to confess your secret identity.’

Ainsley tried to sort out the tangle of threads in her head into some sort of logical order. ‘These letters are written by real women with real problems. They are not printed in the journal to titillate, nor to provide some sort of vicarious enjoyment to readers who can congratulate themselves on their own superior, problem-free lives. The letters that are printed are chosen because the problems posed are sadly commonplace.’ She swallowed the remainder of her sherry and topped her glass up once more, grimacing. ‘I didn’t mean Madame Hera to sound like a shrew.’

‘Well, I didn’t mean to sound like a pompous git when I criticised your advice,’ Innes said ruefully. ‘You’ve quite thrown me.’

His honesty disarmed her. That, and the sherry. And that smile of his, which was really just as warming as the sherry. Ainsley took another sip of her drink. ‘Do you really want to know why I told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even if it is embarrassing?’

‘Now I’m intrigued.’

‘Really?’ Ainsley eyed him warily. ‘You’re not angry?’

‘I’m not sure what I am, but I’m definitely not angry.’

‘I wonder if Felicity was right,’ Ainsley said, raising her glass, her mood lightening considerably.

‘Felicity again. I think I would like to meet her.’

‘Then you must find an excuse to invite her here. A party. The welcoming thing. If you deign to listen to my advice. Oh, dear, now I sound like a shrew again.’

‘Not a shrew, but you can be extremely prickly.’

‘Like a hedgehog, you mean?’

‘More like a porcupine. I am rather fond of porcupines.’

‘That is downright perverse.’ Ainsley helped herself to more sherry and topped up Innes’s glass, even though it was virtually untouched. ‘Do you really mean to invite Felicity? She is most keen to meet you.’

‘No doubt she wishes to make sure I am being a good husband.’

‘Well, you couldn’t be worse than the last one, that is for sure,’ Ainsley said. ‘Sorry. Actually, I’m not really.’ She sipped her sherry contemplatively. ‘Anyway, she’s not so much interested in your husbandly qualities, since she knows this is a business arrangement.’ She wriggled back in her chair, because despite the thin calico of her gown, the heat from the fire was making her face flush. ‘Now I suppose you want to know what she is interested in.’

Innes, who had been inspecting the sherry decanter, which seemed to have almost emptied itself, put it rather selfishly down on the table out of her reach. ‘I do,’ he said, ‘but first I’d like to know why you confessed to being Madame Hera. You still haven’t yet told me, in case you’d forgotten.’

‘Aha! That’s where you’re wrong,’ Ainsley exclaimed with a triumphant wave of her hand, ‘because the two things are inexpressibly—no, inex—inextricably linked.’ She picked up her glass, remembered it was empty and placed it very carefully back down again, because the side table had developed a wobble. Then, realising she had slumped unbecomingly back in her chair, she struggled upright, leaning forward confidentially. ‘Those letters. The intimate ones to Madame Hera. They are all about marital—no, lovemaking. And—and the acquisition of womanly wiles. Felicity fears that I do not know enough about such things to be of any value, and I fear she is right. Are you perfectly well? Only your face has gone sort of fuzzy.’

Innes leaned forward. ‘Better?’

Ainsley nodded. ‘Do you know you have a charming smile?’

‘Only because I am charmed by you.’

She giggled. ‘Felicity said I should let you have your wicked way with me, and that you sounded like the kind of man who would not expect me to—to lie back and think of Scotland. And she said that we needed something to while away the long dark nights in this godforsaken place—though I don’t think it is godforsaken, actually—and she said that I needed some lessons in—in fun. And pleasure. Do you have a kilt?’

‘I do. Does Felicity’s idea of fun and pleasure involve dressing up?’

Ainsley giggled. ‘Not Felicity’s idea—that was mine. I think you have a fine pair of legs, Innes Drummond. I would like to see you in Highland dress. But we are straying from the point, you know. Is there any more sherry?’

‘No.’

Ainsley frowned over at the decanter. It seemed to her that it was not completely empty. Then she shrugged. ‘Oh, well. What was I— Oh, yes, what Felicity said. She said that you would be well placed to teach me about womanly wiles and such—though I don’t think she called it that, zactly—exactly—and I don’t know how she knew this, for she has not met you, and all I told her was that you kissed very nicely, which you know you do...’

‘Only because you kiss me so very nicely back.’

‘Really?’ Ainsley smiled beatifically. ‘What a lovely thing to say.’

‘And true, into the bargain.’ Innes took her hand. ‘So this Felicity of yours believes that you need to be inducted into the palace of pleasure.’

‘Palace of pleasure. I like that. Would you mind if Madame Hera borrowed it?’

‘I would be honoured.’

‘What would you say if I told you that Felicity also suggested I use you to assist me in finding answers to some of Madame Hera’s problems?’

‘You mean, provide you with practical experience of the solutions?’

Ainsley nodded sagely. ‘You would be insulted, wouldn’t you? That’s what I told Felicity, that you would be insulted.’

‘Would you be taking part in this experiment merely for the sake of obtaining better advice?’

‘No.’ She stared down at her hands. Despite the tingling, and the fuzziness and the warmth induced by the sherry, this was still proving surprisingly difficult, but she was determined to bring this embarrassing conversation to an end, one way or another. ‘The reason I told you,’ she said, ‘about Madame Hera, I mean. It wasn’t only that you were right about the advice I was dispensing, it was—it was—it was earlier. Me. When you kissed me. It was because I— Felicity says that he took away all my self-respect. John. My husband. Self-respect, that’s what she called it. I don’t know what to call it. I don’t want to talk about it. But when you kissed me, it made me feel— I liked it. I liked it a lot. But then I remembered, you see. Him. What happened. Didn’t happen. And it made me stop liking what you were doing and thinking about then, and him, and it wasn’t that I think you’re the same, you’re so different, and he never, but— Well, that was it. That’s what happened. Are you angry?’

She looked up. His eyes were stormy. ‘No,’ Innes said quickly. ‘I’m not angry with you.’

She nodded several times.

‘You don’t have to say any more, Ainsley.’

‘I want to finish telling you or I might not— I want to.’ She clutched at his hand. ‘I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to feel the way he made me feel. I want to feel what Felicity said, and what you made me feel before I thought about him. And that’s why I told you about Madame Hera,’ she finished in a rush. ‘Because when you kiss me, I want to—and because you know, we’re not really married and it can’t ever mean anything, so it’s sort of safe. You can help me, and then I can be better at helping other women. That’s why I told you. Because I want you, and I really want to be able to— If you do? So now you know.’

‘Now I know,’ Innes said, looking rather stunned.

‘You can say no.’

‘I’m not going to say anything right now. You’ve given me a lot to think about.’

‘And you’re not angry about Madame Hera?’

Innes laughed. ‘Absolutely not. I am more than happy to discuss these intimate problems that Madame Hera has to answer. In fact, if you ever run short of problems then I’m sure I will be able to think up a few for us to discuss.’

‘No!’ Ainsley exclaimed. ‘That’s what Felicity said you would say. Now I owe her five pounds.’

Innes laughed. ‘I am looking forward to meeting Felicity.’

Ainsley yawned, frowning at the clock. ‘It’s past dinner time. I shall go and find Mhairi.’

She got to her feet, swaying, and Innes caught her. ‘I think maybe you’d be better in your bed.’

Ainsley yawned again. ‘I think maybe you’re right.’

‘Thank you for telling me what you did. I’m honoured,’ Innes said. ‘I mean it.’

‘I didn’t want you to think I was a cock tease.’ Ainsley grinned. ‘Proof that I am not always so mealy-mouthed.’

Innes kissed her cheek. ‘What you are is...’

‘A porcupine.’

‘A wee darling.’

She smiled. ‘I like that,’ she murmured. Then she closed her eyes, sank gracefully back onto the chair and passed out.

* * *

‘The laird said that you’d be hungry, seeing as you missed dinner, so I made you some eggs, and I’ve cut you a slice of ham.’ Mhairi laid the plateful down in front of Ainsley.

‘Thank you. It smells delicious,’ Ainsley said, repressing a shudder.

‘Himself had to go out, but he said to tell you he’d be back by mid-morn at the latest. Here, I’ll do that.’ Mhairi took the coffee pot from Ainsley’s shaking hand and poured her a cup. ‘Do you want me to put a hair of the dog in it?’

‘Is it so obvious?’ Lifting the cup in both hands, Ainsley took a grateful sip, shaking her head, flushing. ‘I don’t normally— I hope you don’t think I usually overindulge.’

‘Oh, I’m not one to judge,’ Mhairi said with a toss of her head. ‘Unlike the rest of them.’

Sensing that the housekeeper was offering her an opening, and feeling that she had nothing much to lose, as she sat nursing her hangover, Ainsley smiled at her. ‘Why don’t you join me? It’s about time we got to know each other a bit better. Please,’ she added when the other woman demurred.

Mhairi studied her with pursed lips for a few seconds, then took a seat and poured herself a coffee, adding two lumps of sugar, though no cream. ‘You’re not at all what we expected when we heard Himself had wedded an Edinburgh widow woman,’ she said.

‘What were you expecting?’

‘Someone fancier. You know, more up on her high horse, with more frills to her.’

‘You mean not so plain?’

Mhairi shook her head. ‘I mean not so nice,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘And you’re not plain. Leastwise, you’re not when you’ve some life in that face of yours. If you don’t mind my saying.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ Ainsley said, buttering an oatcake, and deciding to brave a forkful of eggs. ‘Am I a disappointment, then?’

‘No one knows enough about you to judge.’

‘Yet you said that people do judge—or that is what you implied just a minute ago.’

Across from her, the housekeeper folded her arms. Ainsley ate another forkful of eggs and cut into the ham. Mhairi McIntosh was younger than she had thought at first, not much over forty, with a curvaceous figure hidden under her apron and heavy tweed skirt. Though she had a forbidding expression, her features were attractive, with high cheekbones and a mouth that curved sensually when it was not pulled into a grim line. Her eyes were grey and deep-set, and she had the kind of sallow skin that made the hollows beneath them look darkly shadowed. But she was what would be called a handsome woman, nevertheless. She wore no ring.

‘No, I was never married,’ Mhairi said, noticing the direction of Ainsley’s gaze. ‘I’ve worked here at the castle since I was ten years old, starting in the kitchens—the big kitchens—back in Mrs Drummond’s day.’

‘So you’ve known Innes since he was a boy?’

Mhairi nodded.

‘And his brother?’

‘Him, too.’

‘Is it because of him that people judge Innes so harshly? Do they resent the fact that he is here and not Malcolm?’

Mhairi shook her head sadly. ‘Himself should not have stayed away so long.’

‘But surely people understand he had his own life to lead. And it’s not as if— I mean, the state of the lands, the way things have been allowed to deteriorate... That was his father’s fault, it was nothing to do with Innes.’

‘He should not have stayed away,’ Mhairi said implacably.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! It’s not his fault.’ Realising that recriminations were getting her nowhere, Ainsley reined in her temper. ‘He’s here now, and so am I, and what matters is the future of Strone Bridge.’

‘It seems to many of us that Strone Bridge hasn’t much of a future,’ Mhairi said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Himself has obviously decided that this place is not worth wasting his time on.’

‘He hasn’t decided anything. He’s not even been here a month.’

‘And not a single sign has there been that he’s going to be remaining here another. He forbade the formal welcoming at the pier, and there’s been no word of the Rescinding. Not that the castle is in any fit state to be used. And that’s another thing. He’s the laird, and he’s living here at the Home Farm. It’s obvious he has no plans to stay here. He’ll be off as soon as he can decently go, back to building his bridges.’

There was no doubting the belligerence in the woman’s voice now. ‘Innes hasn’t made any decisions about the castle. He’s been spending his time looking at the land, because—’

‘Because he plans to do what all the landlords are doing, break up the crofts and put sheep on them. Does he think we’re daft? Sheep. That’s what he’ll do, that’s what they all do. Get rid of the tenants. Bring in a bailiff. Out with the old, and in with the new. That’s what Himself is doing, and then it will be back to Edinburgh or London or wherever he’s been hiding these last fourteen years, and you with him, and he’ll go back to pretending Strone Bridge doesn’t exist because it’s too hard for him to—’ Mhairi broke off suddenly. ‘Never mind.’

Ainsley stared at her in shock. ‘He has made no mention of sheep, and he has no intentions of going anywhere for at least—for some time,’ she amended, for she did not imagine that Innes would like the terms of his father’s will made public.

A shrug greeted this remark. Ainsley risked pouring the pair of them another cup of coffee. ‘What is this thing you mentioned? A restitution?’

‘Rescinding.’ Mhairi took a sip of her coffee. ‘A forgiving and forgetting. After the burial of the old laird, a feast is held for all to welcome in the new laird. It is a wiping clean of the slate, of debts and grudges and disputes, a sign that they have been buried with the old. But since Himself was not here for the burial...’

‘Can it not be held on another day?’ Ainsley asked.

‘To my knowledge it never has been.’

‘Yes, but if it is held on another day would this Rescinding be invalid?’

Mhairi shook her head slowly. ‘It’s never been done. You’d have to consult the book. The Customs and Ways of the Family Drummond of Strone Bridge,’ she said when Ainsley looked at her enquiringly. ‘It’s in the castle library.’

‘Then I will do so, but do you think it’s a good idea?’ Ainsley persisted.

‘It would mean using the Great Hall. I’d need a lot of help and good bit of supplies, and as to the food...’

‘Yes, yes, we can see to that, but what do you think?’

The housekeeper smiled reluctantly. ‘I think if you can persuade Himself, that it’s an excellent idea.’

* * *

‘A Rescinding?’ Innes frowned. Ainsley had accosted him immediately when he had returned in the early afternoon. He had expected her to be sheepish, or reserved, or even defensive. He had not expected her to launch enthusiastically into some wild plan for a party. ‘I’m not even sure that I know what’s involved,’ he said cautiously.

‘It’s a forgiving and forgetting, Mhairi says. She says that all debts and grudges are buried with the old laird to give the new one a clean start. She says that though it’s customary to have it the day after the funeral, there is no reason why we cannot hold it on another day and combine it with a welcoming feast. She says that the chair that the laird uses for the ceremony is in the Great Hall. And there is a book in the library. The Customs and Ways of the Family Drummond of Strone Bridge, it’s called.’ Ainsley was looking at him anxiously. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think Mhairi has quite a lot to say all of a sudden. I wonder how she knows so much about it, for she cannot have seen one herself.’

‘She has worked in the castle since she was ten years old. I suppose, these past few years while your father was alone here, he must have confided in her.’

‘I can’t imagine my father confiding in anyone,’ Innes said drily. ‘To be honest, I can’t imagine him forgiving or forgetting either, Rescinding or no. He was not a man who liked to be crossed, and he bore a long grudge.’

‘Were you always at outs with him, even before—before your brother died?’

‘Yes.’

Ainsley was watching him. Innes could feel her eyes on him, even though he was studiously looking down at a letter from his chief surveyor. He wondered what else Mhairi had said. She was as closed as a fist, and always had been. It surprised him that Ainsley had managed to have any sort of conversation with her. He pushed the letter to one side. ‘The old ways were the only ways, as far as my father was concerned,’ he said, ‘and for my brother, too.’

‘Sometimes the old ways can be a comfort.’

‘You mean the Rescinding?’

Ainsley nodded.

‘A—what did you call it—healing of wounds?’ He smiled. ‘There can be no denying the need for that.’

‘So you agree, it’s a good idea?’

‘It sounds like a lot of work.’

‘I will handle that. With Mhairi. I am not too proud to ask for help.’

‘Is that a dig at me?’

Ainsley hesitated only fractionally. ‘Yes.’

Innes sighed. ‘If I speak to Eoin, will it make you happy?’

‘It would be a start. A forgiving and forgetting, that’s what the Rescinding is. Perhaps you could do some of that before the ceremony.’

Innes threw his hands up in surrender. ‘Enough. You’ve made your point. I will even write to your Miss Blair and invite her to attend. Unless you’ve changed your mind. Or perhaps forgotten that conversation entirely?’

‘I was half-cut, not stotious!’ Ainsley said stiffly.

‘Ach, I didn’t mean to bite your head off. At least I did, but don’t take it personally. You make too good a case, and I don’t want to hear it.’ Innes got up from the desk and took her hand. He took her hand, pressing it between his own. ‘Forgive me.’

Her fingers twined round his. ‘It is I who should be begging your forgiveness. Last night, I propositioned you. In fact, I practically threw myself at you,’ Ainsley said, flushing. ‘You must not feel awkward at turning me down.’

‘I have no intentions of turning you down, if you are not retracting your offer. I thought I’d made it clear, from almost the first moment I met you, that I find you very desirable.’

‘You do?’

‘I do.’

‘I don’t want to. Retract, I mean.’

‘Are you sure? Yesterday, you turned to ice while I was kissing you.’

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘I think maybe it will. I think, in fact, we should expect it. I wonder what Madame Hera would advise?’

‘As you pointed out last night, Madame Hera would most likely provide quite unwise advice,’ Ainsley said drily.

‘I offended you. I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ she said, quite unconvincingly, and then she laughed. ‘Yes, you did. I was upset.’

‘If I had known that you and she were one and the same person...’

‘I am glad you did not. It was a difficult lesson, but I hope that I have learned from it. I want Madame Hera to be helpful.’ Ainsley opened the thick leather folder on the desk that contained her correspondence. ‘These women are desperate enough to write to a complete stranger for help. They deserve honesty.’ She replaced the folder and wandered over to her favourite chair by the fire, though she did not sit down. ‘When John died, one of the things I promised myself was always to speak my mind, and that’s what Madame Hera has done. I didn’t realise, though, that my opinions were so coloured.’

‘I think that you’re being very hard on yourself, but if it would help, I’d be happy to provide you with a counterpoint when you’re writing your replies.’

‘Would you?’

‘I think I might even enjoy it.’

‘What if we disagree?’

Innes pulled her round to face him, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘Madame Hera has the final say, naturally.’

‘And as to the—the other thing?’

Innes smiled. ‘Your introduction into the palace of pleasures? I was thinking that it would be best if we started first with some theory.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You have textbooks?’

‘Good lord, no. I meant Madame Hera’s correspondence. We could discuss it. I could explain anything you are not sure of. That way, you will be able to start answering some of your letters, and at the same time, you can accustom yourself to—to—before you have to—if you do. You might decide not to.’ Innes stopped, at a loss for words, wondering if what he was suggesting was idiotic, or even repugnant.

But Ainsley smiled at him. ‘You mean that I become accustomed to what to expect?’ she asked.

‘And you can accustom me to what you want, too.’

‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘Save that I must wear a kilt?’

Her cheeks flamed. ‘I had forgotten that.’

‘Do you dream of a wild Highlander?’

‘No. Yes.’

‘What does he do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ainsley’s mouth trembled on the brink of a smile. ‘He—he wants me.’

‘You know I already do.’

‘No, I mean he—he really wants me. He— No, it’s silly.’

‘He finds you irresistible,’ Innes said, charmed and aroused. ‘He wants you so much,’ he whispered into her ear, ‘that he carries you off, right in the middle of the day, and has his wicked way with you on the moor. Or would you prefer a cave?’

‘A cave. In the firelight.’

He was hard. Innes cursed under his breath. He hadn’t meant this to happen. He edged away from her carefully. ‘You are a very apt pupil,’ he said.

‘Oh. I didn’t realise— Is that what that was, a lesson?’

‘It’s all it was meant to be,’ Innes said, ‘but you are a little too good at this. Another minute and I’d be rushing off to find a kilt.’

‘Oh.’

It was a different kind of ‘oh’ this time. She looked at him with the most delightful, pleased little smile on her face, and Innes simply could not resist her. He kissed her, briefly but deeply. ‘I am already looking forward to the next lesson,’ he said.

Chapter Six

A week later, Innes stared down at the Celtic cross, at the bright lettering of the new inscription and the long empty space below that was left to fill. His own name would be next, but after that, it would be a distant cousin, if anyone. He dug his hands into the pockets of his leather breeches and hunched his shoulders against the squally breeze, steeling himself against the wall of emotions that threatened to engulf him. Until now, he’d been able to ignore what had happened, tell himself that this was a temporary thing, that he was not really the laird, that his life was not inextricably tangled up in Strone Bridge. He’d been able to contain and control whatever it was that was building inside him, fence it in with resentment and anger, let the waste and destruction he saw every day tack it down, the hurt and the suffering gnaw at his conscience and prevent him from thinking about the reason he was here at all.

He’d arranged to meet Eoin here, but had arrived early, wanting some time alone. He’d come here telling himself that fourteen years had bred indifference, but he was wrong. It was like one of those seventh waves, building from the swell, scooping up memories and guilt and remorse, hurtling them at him with an implacable force. Innes screwed his eyes so tightly shut he saw stars behind his lids.

‘It was all done properly, if that’s bothering you at all.’ He opened his eyes to find Eoin standing a few feet away. ‘Your father’s funeral. It was all done as he would have wanted it,’ he said. ‘Mhairi made sure of that.’

His father’s housekeeper had been the one to arrange his father’s funeral. Innes refused to feel guilty.

‘She had me play the chief mourner.’ Eoin came a few steps closer. ‘I didn’t want to, but she said someone with Drummond blood had to bear the laird’s standard, and bastard blood from two generations back was better than none.’

It had been a joke between them when they were boys, that bastard blood. Malcolm had traced the line once, working out that Eoin was their half cousin twice removed, or some such thing. Their father had a coat of arms made for Eoin, with the baton sinister prominently displayed. Malcolm had dreamed up a ceremony to hand it over, Innes remembered. The laird had given them all their first taste of whisky. They’d have been ten, maybe eleven. He had forgotten that there were days like those.

‘I didn’t get the letter in time to attend,’ Innes said tersely.

‘Would it have made any difference?’ Eoin demanded, and when Innes said nothing, he shook his head impatiently and turned away. ‘I meant it to be a comfort to you, knowing that all had been done as it ought. I wasn’t casting it up.’

‘Wait.’ Innes covered the short distance between them, grabbing the thick fisherman’s jumper Eoin wore. His friend shrugged him off, but made no further move to go. Blue eyes, the same colour as Innes’s, the same colour as Malcolm’s, the same colour as the dead laird’s, glowered at him. ‘I wrote to you,’ Innes said. ‘After—I wrote to you, and you did not reply.’

‘I live here, Innes, and unlike you, I’ve never wanted to leave. It was not only that I owed a duty to your father as the laird, I respected him. When you left, the way you left, you forced me to choose. What else was I to do?’

‘I was your friend.’

‘You were his son,’ Eoin said, nodding at the Celtic cross. ‘When Malcolm died, it broke his heart.’

‘What do you think it did to me?’ Innes struggled, eyes smarting, the sick feeling that had been lurking inside him since he’d arrived here growing, acrid, clogging his throat. He turned away, fists clenched, taking painful breaths, fighting for control, forcing back the images, the guilt, waiting desperately for the sound of Eoin’s footsteps disappearing, leaving him alone to deal with it, to make it go away.

Eoin didn’t move. When he spoke, his voice was raw, grating. ‘I could hardly look at you the other day. All these years, I’ve told myself it was the right thing to hold my peace. All these years, with the laird letting things go, letting the place wither, I’ve told myself that if that was what he wanted and— No, not just that. I’ve told myself you deserved it. If you did not care enough to look after your heritage...’

Innes had intended this as a reconciliation. It felt as though he was being tried, and found wanting, by the one person here on Strone Bridge he had thought might be on his side. The disappointment was crushing. ‘It was never meant for me,’ he roared. ‘It was never mine.’

His words echoed around the enclosed space, but still Eoin stood his ground, his face grim, his own fists clenched. ‘It is yours now. You’ve known for fourteen years that it would be yours.’

‘And by the looks of it, for fourteen years my father has done his damnedest to run the place into the ground. Don’t tell me I could have stopped him, Eoin. You of all people know he would never listen to me.’

There was silence. The two men glared at each other. Finally, as Innes was about to turn away, Eoin spoke. ‘It’s true,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I did blame you, and it was wrong of me. You’ve every bit as much right to choose your life as the next man, and it’s obvious from the look of you that the life you’ve chosen suits you well. You’re a rich man. A successful one.’

‘Much good my successes will do me here. I know nothing about sheep, and certainly not enough to go clearing my lands to bring them in.’

‘So you’ve heard that rumour, then?’

‘And I’d be happy if you’d deny it for me.’

‘I’ll be delighted to, if it’s the truth.’ Eoin kicked at the ground. ‘They do blame you, as I did. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. Your father never got over Malcolm, and you’re right, it was as if he was deliberately letting the place go to spite you. They think you should have put Strone Bridge first. They think if you’d have come back, you could have stopped him, so the longer you stayed away, and the worse it got, the more they blamed you.’

‘Eoin, he wouldn’t have listened to me. If I’d come back while he was alive I’d have ended up murdering him. Or more likely, he’d have murdered me.’ Innes looked grimly at the cross. ‘You know what he was like. I was the second son. He wanted me to study the law in Edinburgh, for goodness’ sake! I was to be the family lackey.’

Eoin gave a bark of laughter. ‘I’ll admit, that was never on the cards.’

‘No, but you know how hard I tried to do things his way—or more precisely, how hard I tried to make him see things my way. He couldn’t care less about me. All he cared about was shaping my brother for the next laird in his own image, but he would not let me shape myself. I tried, but I was always going to leave. And when Malcolm— When it happened— How can you seriously think that would make me more likely to stay here?’

Eoin shook his head. ‘But you could have come back, at least to visit,’ he said stubbornly. ‘You would have seen how things were going. Gradual it was. I didn’t notice at first. And then— Well, like I said, I thought you deserved it. That was wrong of me. It’s why I’ve been avoiding you. You’re not the only one who feels guilty, Innes. I should have done something. I’m sorry. I should have done something, and now it’s far too late. I truly am sorry.’

He held out his hand. Hesitating only a moment, Innes gripped it. ‘I’m here now,’ he said, ‘and I need your help.’

Eoin nodded, returning the grip equally painfully. They sat together in silence on the stone bench. ‘I did write,’ Innes said eventually. ‘Only once, but I did write to my father.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Eoin said. ‘Mhairi would surely have told me, so she can’t have known, either.’

‘Why should she?’

Eoin looked surprised. ‘She was his wife in all but name.’ He laughed. ‘You did not know?’

‘No— I— No.’ Innes shook his head in astonishment. ‘He left no provision for her in his will.’

‘Oh, he took care of that years ago. There’s an annuity, you’ll probably not have noticed it yet unless you’ve gone through the accounts, and she owns the farm over at Cairndow.’

‘Then what the devil is she doing working for me when she does not have to?’

‘Innes, for someone so far-sighted, you can be awfully blind. She’s looking out for you. She’s about the only one who is. She was ever on your side, you know, it’s the one thing she and the laird had words about, but even she thinks you should have come back. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying that’s how it is.’

‘I’m here now. Why can’t they see that as a step in the right direction?’

‘Maybe because they’re wondering how long it will be before you go again.’ Eoin got to his feet. ‘Think about it from their point of view, Innes. The laird obviously believed he would be the last, else he would not have been so destructive.’

‘He obviously thought I’d come back here simply to rid myself of the place. His will specifies I must remain here a year,’ Innes conceded.

‘The auld bugger obviously hoped being here would change your mind. Will you?’

Innes shook his head. ‘I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do,’ he admitted ruefully, ‘but I don’t want to sell. I’ve spent every day, since I got off that boat of yours, going round the lands, making endless lists of things that need to be done.’

Eoin laughed. ‘People think you’ve been sizing up the assets to sell.’

‘For heaven’s sake, why did no one tell me that?’

‘Why didn’t you say anything yourself, tell people your plans?’

Innes shook his head. ‘Because I don’t know what they are yet.’

‘This is not one of your projects, where you have to have your blueprints and your costs and—I don’t know—your list of materials all sorted out before you make your bid, Innes. Plans change, we all know that, but people would like to hear that they exist. They’d like to know you’re not going to sell the roof over their heads.’ Eoin got to his feet. ‘I’m glad we talked. It’s been eating away at me, the way we were when you arrived.’

This time it was Innes who held out his hand. ‘It is good to see you, Eoin. I’ve not missed this place, but I’ve missed you. I would value your input to what needs done.’

‘You know you have only to ask.’

‘I wouldn’t have, if it were not for Ainsley. She is the one who pushed me into this.’

Eoin smiled. ‘Then I owe her. I look forward to meeting her properly.’

‘You will do soon. She’s planning a Rescinding.’ Innes shook his head. ‘Don’t ask, because I’m not quite sure what it is myself, save that it will involve everyone.’

‘Then I hope you will make sure not to let the water of life run dry. I must go, but we’ll talk again.’

Innes watched his friend walk away. He felt as if his mind had been put through a washtub and then a mangle. Striding along the path that led round the front of the castle, he spotted the ramshackle pier and came to a sudden halt. Here was something he could do, and it was something, moreover, that Strone Bridge urgently needed, for it would allow paddle steamers to dock. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it before. Vastly relieved to be able to focus on a project that was entirely within his control, Innes made his way down to the bay and began a survey of the jetty with the critical eye of the engineer it had cost him and, it seemed, the people of Strone Bridge, so much to become.

* * *

Dear Madame Hera,

I am a twenty-eight-year-old woman, married with two small children and absolutely bored stiff. My husband is a wealthy man and insists that our house is taken care of by servants and our children by a nanny, but this leaves me with nothing to do. I try to count my blessings, but even that occupation has become tedious. One of my friends suggested taking a lover would amply occupy my free afternoons, but lying convincingly is not one of my accomplishments. What shall I do?

Yours sincerely, Mrs A

Ainsley smiled to herself as she read this missive. Many of Madame Hera’s correspondents complained of boredom, though none had suggested this novel answer. ‘Take charge,’ Ainsley wrote, ‘of your children, of your housework, of your life!’ She put the pen down, frowning. Mrs A’s husband was doing exactly what was expected of him. More, in fact, than many could or would. Mrs A’s friends might well even envy her. If Mrs A were to dismiss the nanny, or take over the housework, her husband would most likely be insulted. Or offended.

Ainsley looked at the clock. It was gone two. Innes had left before breakfast this morning, and she had not seen him since. Was he avoiding her? In the days since he had agreed to hold the Rescinding ceremony, he had continued with his visits to various farms and tenants, his poring over documents late into the night. True, she too had been very busy—too busy, in fact, to have any time to devote to anything else, but still, the niggling feeling that she was being pushed to one side would not go away.

With a sigh of frustration, Ainsley pushed Madame Hera’s half-finished letter to one side and picked up the heavy bunch of castle keys from the desk, intending to consult the tome she had now christened the Drummond Self-Help Manual in the library once more, before taking another look at the Great Hall. Outside, as ever, it was blowy. There were several fishing boats in the bay. She paused to drink in her favourite view and spotted a figure down on the pier. Black coat with long skirts birling in the breeze. Long boots. All the Strone Bridge men wore trews and fishing jumpers or short tweed jackets. Tucking the keys into her pocket beside the notebook and pencil she had brought, Ainsley began to pick her way carefully down the steep path.

* * *

The tide was far enough out for Innes to have clambered down underneath the pier when she arrived. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked, peering through one of the planks down at him.

‘I was inspecting the struts,’ he said, looking up at her, ‘but now that you’re here, there’s a much nicer view.’

‘Innes!’ Scandalised, laughing, she clutched her skirts tightly around her.

Laughing, he appeared a few moments later on the beach, climbing up the ancient wooden supports of the pier fluidly. ‘Do you always match your garters to your gown?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘One you needn’t answer if you don’t want to, I’m happy to imagine.’ Innes picked a long strand of seaweed from the skirts of his coat and threw it on to the beach. ‘I’m going to have this thing rebuilt.’

‘Of course you are! I wonder you didn’t think of it before.’

‘Couldn’t see the wood for the trees,’ Innes said wryly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a pencil and a bit of paper with you?’

Ainsley delved into her pocket and pulled out the notebook and pencil. ‘Here, I was on my way to the castle when I saw you.’

‘How are the arrangements progressing?’

She was about to launch into a stream of detail, but stopped herself, giving Innes a dismissive shrug instead. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ she said.

He had been scribbling something in her notebook, but he looked up at the change in her tone. ‘I thought you wanted to take this on—have you changed your mind?’

‘No.’

‘Is it too much? Do you need help?’

‘No, I told you, there’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s not your problem.’

Frowning, Innes stuck her pencil behind his ear. ‘Aye, that was it. It’s not your problem. I remember now, that’s what set you off before.’

‘I don’t know what you’re implying, but...’

‘Actually, it’s what you’re implying, Ainsley,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m not shutting you out deliberately. I thought we were dividing and conquering, not just dividing, for heaven’s sake. Once and for all, I’m not the man you married, so stop judging me as if I am.’

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. ‘I know you’re not.’

‘Then what are you accusing me of?’

‘Nothing.’ She bit her lip. ‘You don’t talk to me. You don’t value my opinion.’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Do you know what I was doing this morning? No, of course you don’t, for I didn’t tell you—and before you berate me for that, I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure he’d come.’

‘Who?’

‘Eoin.’

Her latent anger left her. Ainsley smiled. ‘You’ve spoken to Eoin?’

‘I have. I met him at the chapel.’

‘And?’

Innes laughed nervously. ‘And it was difficult.’

He was clearly uncomfortable. If she did not press him, he would leave it at that. She was pleased, no, more than pleased, that he had taken her advice, though it would most likely result in her further exclusion from matters of the lands. ‘Has Eoin agreed to help you?’ Ainsley asked carefully.

‘He has.’

Innes was staring down at his notes, but she was not fooled. ‘And you’ve made your peace?’ Ainsley persisted.

‘We’ve agreed to disagree.’ Finally, Innes met her gaze. ‘He thinks I should have come back sooner. Though he understands why I left, he doesn’t understand why I stayed away. Though he knows fine that if I’d come back, my father and I would have done nothing but argue, and my father would have carried on down whatever path he’d chosen regardless, still Eoin thinks I should have tried.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Then you would have both been miserable. Besides, you had no cause to think that your father would choose this path of destruction,’ Ainsley said fiercely. ‘You told me yourself, he was a good laird.’

‘Aye, well, it seems you’re the only person to see it my way,’ Innes said despondently.

She put her hand on his arm. ‘You brought me here so you’d have someone on your side.’

‘And I’ve done my damnedest to push you away since we arrived.’ He smiled ruefully down at her. ‘I’m sorry. I did warn you. You need to speak up more.’

She flinched. ‘I know.’

Innes cursed under his breath. ‘That was unfair of me.’ He kissed her fingertips. ‘This marriage business, I’m not very good at it, I’m afraid. I’m too used to being on my own.’

‘That’s one thing you need to remember. You’re not alone. May I see?’ she asked, pointing at the notebook.

Innes had made several small sketches. He began to talk as he showed them to her, of tides, about the advantages of wood over stone, of angles and reinforcing. She nodded and listened, though she understood about a quarter of what he said, content to hear his voice full of enthusiasm, to watch the way he ran the pencil through his hair, reminded of the way Felicity did something very similar.

‘That’s quite enough,’ he said eventually, closing the notebook. ‘You’re probably bored to death.’

‘No. I didn’t follow much of it, but it wasn’t boring.’

Innes laughed, putting his arm around her.

‘Do you think you’ll be ready to announce the new pier after the Rescinding?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps you could show them a drawing. There’s three weeks, would there be time?’

‘I don’t see why not. I could do the preliminary survey myself. It’s what my trade is after all.’

Ainsley beamed up at him. ‘If all the villagers and tenants see what a clever man you are, then perhaps they’ll understand why you had to leave.’

‘Atonement?’

‘No, you’ve nothing to atone for. It is a gift. A symbol of the modern world brought to Strone Bridge by their modern laird.’

Innes laughed. ‘I can just about hear my father turning in his grave from here.’

‘Good.’

He pulled her closer. ‘I saw it this morning at the chapel. The grave I mean, and yes, it was for the first time. I could see you just about chewing your tongue off trying not to ask. Eoin told me about the funeral. It seems I have Mhairi to thank for doing things properly.’

‘We have a lot to thank Mhairi for,’ Ainsley agreed, enjoying the warmth of his body, the view, the salty tang of the air. ‘She’s at one with Eoin and everyone else in thinking that you should have come back here earlier, but now you’re here, she’s of the opinion that you should be given a chance.’

‘That’s big of her. Mhairi was my father’s mistress,’ Innes said.

Ainsley jerked her head up to look at him. ‘Mhairi! Your father’s mistress! Good grief. Are you sure?’

‘Eoin told me.’ Innes shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe it. He thought I knew. It seems everyone else does.’

‘But—did he leave her anything in his will? You have not mentioned...’

‘No. According to Eoin, he’d already made provision. A farm, an annuity. She did not need to stay on at the castle when he died.’

‘But she did, so she must have wanted to. How very—surprising. It’s funny, when I was talking to her over breakfast yesterday morning, I was thinking that she was an attractive woman and wondering why she had not married. There is something about her. Her mouth, I think. It’s very sensual.’

‘I believe I’ve said something similar to you.’ Innes pulled her back towards him, tipping up her face. ‘Infinitely kissable, that is what your mouth is, and if you don’t mind...’

‘I don’t.’

‘Good,’ Innes said, and kissed her.

* * *

They took the path back up to the castle together. While the track used by the cart wound its serpentine way upwards, the footpath was a sheer climb. Out of breath at the top, Ainsley stood with her chest heaving. ‘I don’t suppose your engineering skills can come up with a solution for that,’ she said.

‘I will have my surveyor take a look,’ Innes said. ‘See if it can be widened, maybe change some of the angles so they’re not so sharp. That way we can get bigger vehicles down to collect supplies.’

‘And steamer passengers,’ Ainsley said. ‘Then you can build a tea pavilion up here on the terrace, where the view is best. Although there would be no need to build anything new if you set up a tearoom in that lovely drawing room. Then Mhairi could show the excursionists around the castle for a sixpence. She tells those ghost stories much better than you do, and she has lots more. There was one about a grey lady in the kitchens that gave me goosebumps.’

They began to walk together up to the castle. ‘Mhairi’s mother was the village fey wife when I was wee. A witch, though a good one, of course.’

‘Better and better. She could make up some potions. You could sell them in the teashop. And some of the local tweed, too,’ Ainsley said, handing Innes the keys to the main door, for they were going to inspect the Great Hall together. ‘Before you know it, Strone Bridge will be so famous that the steamers will be fighting to berth at this new pier of yours.’

Innes paused in the act of unlocking the door. ‘You’re not being serious?’

She had forgotten, in her enthusiasm, how he felt about the place. Ainsley’s smile faded. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

‘I think it’s a ridiculous idea. Besides the fact that I have no intentions of wasting my fortune having the place made habitable, it’s a monstrosity—no one in their right mind would pay to see it.’

‘Ridiculous.’ She swallowed the lump that had appeared in her throat.

Innes looked immediately contrite. ‘Don’t take it like that, I didn’t mean— It’s not the idea. It’s the place.’

‘Why do you hate it so much? It’s your home.’

‘No. I could never live here.’ He shuddered. ‘There are more ghosts here than even Mhairi knows of.’

They were in the courtyard. Ainsley followed his gaze to the tower that stood at the centre. A huge bird of prey circled the parapet. She, too, shuddered, not because she thought it an omen, but at the look on Innes’s face. She’d thought she was beginning to understand him, but now she was not so sure. That bleak expression could not merely be attributed to feelings of inadequacy or resentment. There was a reason beyond his quarrel with his father for Innes’s absence from this place for fourteen long years. Ghosts. Who would have thought such a confident, practical man as Innes would believe in them, but he very obviously did. Something in his past haunted him. Something here, in this castle.

Above the tower, the sky was empty now. ‘Come on,’ Ainsley said, slipping her hand into Innes’s arm. ‘Let’s go inside.’

She led him through to the Great Hall, their feet echoing on the stone flags. Innes seemed to have shaken off his black mood, and was now wandering around, sounding panelling, looking up with a worried frown at the high beams. ‘I’ll get Robert, my surveyor, to take a look at this while he’s here. He’ll be able to tell me if there are any structural problems.’

He said it hopefully, no doubt thinking that structural problems would give him the excuse to pull the place down. The castle seemed sound enough to her, no smell of damp, no sign of rot, but she was willing to admit she knew nothing about it.

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Ainsley got on with her own measurements. ‘I think we’ll have to plan to feed about two hundred, including bairns,’ she said. ‘Mhairi is overseeing the work in the kitchens. I reckon we’ll need to light the fires a few days in advance, once the chimneys are swept.’ She scribbled in her notebook, which she had reclaimed from Innes, and began to tick items off from her list. Quickly absorbed in her task, she was struggling to pull the holland covers from what she assumed must be the laird’s chair when Innes came to her aid.

‘Let me,’ he said.

A cloud of dust flew up, making them both choke. ‘Good heavens, it’s like a throne.’

Innes laughed. ‘Now you can get some idea of the esteem in which the lairds of Strone Bridge have held themselves.’

Ainsley sat down on the chair. It was so high her feet didn’t touch the ground. ‘Mhairi would have a fit if she could see me. I’m probably bringing any amount of curses down on myself for daring to occupy the laird’s seat.’

‘I’m the laird now, and I’d be more than happy for you to occupy my seat.’

‘Innes!’ He was smiling down at her in a way that made her heart flutter. ‘I don’t know what you mean by that, but I am sure it is something utterly scurrilous.’

‘Scandalous, not scurrilous.’ He pulled her to her feet and into his arms. ‘Want to find out?’

‘Do you even know yourself?’

He laughed. ‘No, but I am certain of one thing. It starts with a kiss,’ he said, and suited action to words.

The second kiss of the day, and it picked up where the first had left off on the cold pier. Just a kiss at first, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth warm, soft. Then his hands slid down to cup her bottom, pulling her closer, and she twined hers around his neck, reaching up, and his tongue licked into her mouth, and heat flared.

He kissed her. She kissed him back, refusing to let herself think about what she was doing, concentrating her mind on the taste of him, and the smell of him, and the way he felt. The breadth of his shoulders. Her hands smoothing down his coat to the tautness of his buttocks, her fingers curling into him to tug him closer, wanting the shivery thrill of his arousal pressed into her belly.

Hard. Not just there, but all of him, hard muscle, tensed, powerful. She pressed into him, her eyes tight shut, her mouth open to him, her tongue touching his, surrendering to the galloping of her pulses, the flush of heat, the tingle in her breasts. Kissing. Her hands stroking, under the skirts of his coat now, on the leather of his breeches.

His hands were not moving. She wanted them to move. Took a moment to remember the last time, and opened her eyes to whisper to him, ‘It’s fine. I am— I won’t.’

‘Tell me,’ he said then. ‘What am I to do?’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t,’ she mumbled, embarrassed.

He kissed her slowly, deeply. ‘Tell me, Ainsley,’ he said.

She was losing it, the heat, the shivery feeling, but not the desire. John had never asked what she wanted. Despite all the vague advice Madame Hera doled out about connubial bliss and mutual satisfaction, she had neither the experience nor knowledge of either. ‘I don’t know,’ Ainsley said, sounding petulant, feeling frustrated. You do it, was what she wanted to say.

‘You do know,’ Innes insisted.

He kissed her again. He cupped her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. His own were not mocking, not cruel. Dark blue, slumberous. Colour on his cheeks. Passion, not anger or shame, though it was being held in check. She realised why, with a little shock, remembered how she had been the other night. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.

‘Tell me where you feel it when I kiss you,’ he said, putting his hand in hers, kissing her. ‘Tell me where it makes you want me to touch you.’

‘Here,’ she said, putting his hand on her breast.

His hand covered the soft swell. Her nipple hardened. She caught her breath as he squeezed her lightly through the layers of her gown and her corsets. ‘Like this?’ he asked, and she nodded. He kissed her neck, her throat, still stoking, kneading, making her nipple ache for more, then turned his attention to the other breast, and she caught her breath again.

‘You like that?’ Innes said.

His thumb circled her taut nipple. ‘Yes.’

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