The Heir's Chosen Bride
She needed to get these worms out of the mud or they’d be cactus.
‘I’m just taking you to the compost,’ she told them, in her best worm-reassuring tone. ‘The compost is worm heaven. Ooh, you’re a nice fat one…’
A hand landed on her shoulder.
She was wearing headphones and had heard nothing. She yelped, hauled her headphones off, staggered to her feet and backed away. Fast.
A stranger was watching her with an expression of bemusement.
He might be bemused but so was she. The stranger looked like he’d just strolled off the deck of a cruising yacht. An expensive yacht. He was elegantly casual, wearing cream chinos and a white polo top with a discreet logo on the breast. He was too far away now to tell what the logo was, but she bet it was some expensive country club. A fawn loafer jacket slung elegantly over one shoulder.
He was wearing cream suede shoes.
Cream shoes. Here.
She looked past the clothes with an effort—and there was surely something to see beside the clothes. The stranger was tall, lean and athletic. Deep black hair. Good skin, good smile…
Great smile.
She’d left the outer gate open. There was a small black sedan parked in the forecourt, with a hire-car company insignia on the side. She’d been so intent on her worms that he’d crept up on her unawares.
He could have been an axe murderer, she thought, a little bit breathless. She should have locked the gate.
But…maybe she was expecting him? This had to be who she thought he was. The new earl.
Maybe she should have organised some sort of guard of honour. A twelve-gun salute.
‘You’re the gardener?’ he asked, and she tried to wipe mud away with more mud as she smiled back. She was all the welcome committee there was, so she ought to try her best.
A spade salute?
‘I am the gardener,’ she agreed. ‘Plus the rest. General dogsbody and bottle-washer for Loganaich Castle. What can I do for you?’
But his gaze had been caught. Solidly distracted. He was staring at a huge golden ball to the side of the garden. A vast ball of bright orange, about two yards wide.
‘What is that?’ he said faintly.
She beamed. ‘A pumpkin. Her name’s Priscilla. Isn’t she the best?’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘You’d better. She’s a Dills Atlantic Giant. We decided on replacing Queensland Blues this year—we spent ages on the Internet finding the really huge suckers—and went for Dills instead. Of course, they’re not quite as good to eat. Actually, they’re cattle feed, but who’s worrying?’
‘Not me,’ he said faintly.
‘The only problem is we need a team of bodybuilders to move her. Our main competitor has moved to Dills as well, but he doesn’t have the expertise. We’ll walk away with the award for Dolphin Bay’s biggest pumpkin this year, no worries.’
‘No worries,’ he repeated, dazed.
‘That’s Australian for “no problem”,’ she explained kindly. ‘Or you could say, “She’ll be right, mate.”’
This conversation was going nowhere. He tried to get a grip. ‘Is anyone home? In there?’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the castle.
‘I’m home. Me and Rose.’
‘Rose?’
‘My daughter. Are you—’
‘I’m Hamish Douglas. I’m looking for a Susie Douglas.’
‘Oh.’
He really was the new earl.
There was a moment’s charged silence. She wasn’t what he’d expected, she thought, but, then, he wasn’t what she’d expected either.
She’d thought he’d look like Rory.
He didn’t look like any of the Douglases she’d met, she decided. He was leaner, finer boned, finer…tuned? He was a Porsche compared to Rory’s Land Rover, she decided, limping across to greet him properly. She still had residual stiffness from the accident in which Rory had been killed, and it was worse when she’d been kneeling.
But the pain was nothing to what it had been, and she smiled as she held out her hand in greeting. Then, as she looked at his face and realised there was a problem, her smile broadened. She wiped her hands on the seat of her overalls and tried again.
‘Susie Douglas would be me,’ she told him, gripping his reluctant hand and shaking. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ he said, and looked at his hand.
‘It’s almost clean,’ she told him, letting a trace of indignation enter her voice as she realised what he was looking at. ‘And it’s good, clean dirt. Only a trace wormy.’
‘Wormy?’
‘Earthworms,’ she said, exasperated. This wasn’t looking good in terms of long-term relationship. In terms of long-term caring for this garden. ‘Worms that make pumpkins grow as big as Priscilla here. Not the kind that go straight to your liver and grow till they come out your eyeballs.’
‘Um…fine.’ He was starting to sound confounded.
‘I’m transferring them to the compost,’ she told him, deciding she’d best be patient. ‘I’m laying concrete pavers to the conservatory, and how awful would it be to be an earthworm encased in concrete? Do you want to see the conservatory?’
‘Um…sure.’
‘I might as well show you while we’re out here,’ she told him. ‘You’ve inherited all this pile, and the conservatory’s brilliant. It was falling into disrepair when I arrived, but I’ve built it up. It’s almost like the old orangeries they have in grand English houses.’
‘You’re American,’ he said on a note of discovery. ‘But you’re…’
‘I’m the castle relic,’ she told him. ‘Hang on a minute. I need to check something.’
She limped across to the closest window, hoisted herself up and peered through to where Rose snoozed in her cot.
‘Nope. Still fine.’
‘What’s fine?’ he asked, more and more bemused.
‘Rose. My daughter.’ She gestured to the headphones now lying abandoned in the mud. ‘You thought I was listening to hip-hop while I worked? I was listening to the sounds of my daughter sleeping. Much more reassuring.’ She turning and starting to walk toward the conservatory. ‘Relics are what they used to call us in the old days,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They’re the women left behind when their lords died.’
‘And your lord was…’
‘Rory,’ she told him. ‘Your cousin. He was Scottish-Australian but he met me in the States.’
‘I don’t know anything about my cousins.’ She was limping toward a glass-panelled building on the north side of the house, moving so fast he had to lengthen his stride to keep up with her.
‘You don’t know anything about the family?’
‘I didn’t know anyone existed until I got the lawyer’s letter.’
‘Saying you were an earl.’ She chuckled. ‘How cool. It’s like Cinderella. You should have been destitute, living in a garret.’ She glanced over her shoulder, eyeing him appraisingly. ‘But they tell me you’re some sort of financier in Manhattan. I guess you weren’t in any garret.’
‘It was a pretty upmarket garret,’ he admitted. They reached the conservatory doors, and she swung them wide so he could appreciate the vista. ‘Wow!’
‘It is wow,’ she said, approving.
It certainly was. The conservatory was as big as three or four huge living rooms and it was almost thirty feet high. It looked almost a cathedral, he thought, dazed. The beams were vast and blackened with glass panels set between. Hundreds of glass panels.
‘The beams came from St Mary’s Cathedral just south of Sydney,’ Susie told him. ‘St Mary’s burned down just after the war when Angus was building this place. He couldn’t resist. He had all the usable timbers trucked here. For the last few years he didn’t have enough energy to keep it up, but since I’ve been here I’ve been restoring it. I love it.’
He knew she did. He could hear it in her voice.
She didn’t look like any relic he’d met before.
Susie was wearing men’s overalls, liberally dirt-stained. She was shortish, slim, with an open, friendly face. She had clear, brown enquiring eyes, and her auburn curls were caught back in a ponytail that threatened to unravel at any minute. A long white scar ran across her forehead—hardly noticeable except that it accentuated the lines of strain around her eyes. She was still young but her face had seen…life?
Her husband had been murdered, he remembered. That’s what the lawyers had told him. Back in New York it had seemed a fantastic tale but suddenly it was real. Bleakly real.
‘Do you know about the family?’ she asked, as if she’d guessed his thoughts and knew he needed an explanation.
‘Very little,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to hear more. Angus was the last earl. He died childless. Your husband, Rory, was his eldest nephew, and he and the second nephew, Kenneth, are both dead. I’m the youngest nephew. I never knew Angus, I certainly didn’t know about the title, and I’m still trying to figure things out. Am I right so far?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Angus and my father and another brother—Rory and Kenneth’s father—left Scotland just after the war?’
‘Apparently the family castle was a dark and gloomy pile on the west coast of Scotland,’ she told him. ‘The castle was hit by an incendiary bomb during the war and it burned to the ground. As far as I can gather, no one grieved very much. The boys had been brought up in an atmosphere that was almost poisonous. Angus inherited everything, the others nothing, and the estate was entailed in such a way that he couldn’t do anything about it. After the fire they decided to leave. Angus said your father was the first to go. He boarded a boat to America and Angus never heard from him again.’
‘And Angus and…what was the other brother called—David?’
‘Angus was in the air force and he was injured toward the end of the war. While he was recuperating he met Deirdre. She was a nurse and her family had been killed in the London Blitz, so when he was discharged they decided to make their home in Australia. David followed.’ She hesitated. ‘The relationship was hard, and the resentment followed through to the sons.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘A situation where the eldest son gets everything and others get nothing is asking for trouble.’ She walked forward and lifted a ripening cumquat into her hands. She touched it gently and then let it go again, releasing it so it swung on its branch like a beautiful mobile. There were hundreds of cumquats, Hamish thought, still dazzled by the beauty of the place.
Did one eat cumquats? He’d only ever seen them as decorator items in the foyers of five-star hotels.
‘Angus rebuilt his castle here,’ she said. ‘It was a mad thing to do, but it gave the men of this town a job when things were desperate. Maybe it wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. He and Deirdre didn’t have children but David had two. Rory and Kenneth. I married Rory.’
‘They told me that Kenneth murdered Rory,’ he said flatly. It had to be talked about, he decided, so why not now?
She pushed her cumquat so it swung again and something in her face tightened, but she didn’t falter from answering. ‘There was such hate,’ she said softly. ‘Angus said his brothers hated him from the start, and Kenneth obviously felt the same about Rory. Rory travelled to the States to get away from it. He met me and he didn’t even tell me about the family fortune. But, of course, it was still entailed. Rory was still going to inherit and Kenneth wanted it. Enough…enough to kill. Then, when he was…found out…he killed himself.’
‘Which is where I come in,’ he said softly, trying to deflect the anguish she couldn’t disguise.
She took a deep breath. ‘Which is where you come in,’ she said and turned to face him. ‘Welcome to Loganaich Castle, my lord,’ she said simply. ‘I hope you’ll deal with your inheritance with Angus’s dignity. And I hope the hate stops now.’
‘I hope you’ll help me.’
‘I’m going home,’ she told him. ‘I’ve had enough of…of whatever is here. It’s your inheritance. Rory and Angus have left me enough money to keep me more than comfortable. I’m leaving you to it.’
CHAPTER TWO
THIS was where he took over, Hamish thought. This was where he said, Thank you very much, can I have the keys?
The whole thing was preposterous. He should never have let Jodie insinuate her crazy ideas into his mind.
The thought of being left alone with his very own castle was almost scary.
‘Let’s not do anything hasty,’ he told Susie. ‘I’ll get a bed for the night in town, and we’ll sit down and work things out in the morning.’
‘You’re not staying here?’ she asked, startled.
‘This has been your home,’ he said. ‘I’m not kicking you out.’
‘We do have fourteen bedrooms.’
He hesitated. ‘How do you know I’m not like Kenneth?’
She met his gaze and held. ‘You’re not like Kenneth. I can see.’ She bit her lip and turned back to concentrate on her cumquat. ‘Bitterness leaves its mark.’
‘It’s not fair that I inherit—’
‘Angus and Rory between them left me all I need, thank you very much,’ she said, and there was now a trace of anger in her voice. ‘No one owes me anything. I’m not due for anything, and I don’t care about fairness or unfairness in terms of inheritance. Thinking like that has to stop. I have a profession and I’ll return to it. To kill for money…’
‘But if your baby had been a boy he would have inherited,’ he said softly. ‘It’s unjust.’
‘You think that bothers me?’
‘I’m sure it doesn’t.’
‘Fine,’ she said flatly. ‘So that’s settled. You needn’t worry. The escutcheon is firmly fixed in the male line, so there’s no point in me stabbing you in the middle of the night or putting arsenic in your porridge.’
‘Toast,’ he said. ‘I don’t eat porridge.’
She blinked. This conversation was crazy.
But maybe that was the way to go. She’d had enough of being serious. ‘You don’t eat porridge?’ she demanded, mock horrified. ‘What sort of a laird are you?’
‘I’m not a laird.’
‘Oh, yes, you are,’ she said, starting to smile. ‘Or you probably are. Fancy clothes or not, you have definite laird potential.’
‘I thought I was an earl?’
‘You’re that, too,’ she told him. ‘And of course you’ll stay that as long as you live. But being laird is a much bigger responsibility.’
‘I don’t even know what a laird is.’
‘The term’s not used so much any more,’ she said. ‘It means a landed proprietor. But it’s more than that. It’s one who holds the dignity of an estate. Angus was absolutely a laird. I’m not sure what sort of laird Rory would have made. Kenneth would never have been one. But you, Hamish Douglas? Will you make a laird?’
‘That sounds like a challenge,’ he said, and she jutted her chin a little and met his look head on.
‘Maybe it is.’
He hesitated, not sure where to take this. Not at all sure that she wasn’t just a little crazy herself. ‘Maybe I’d best stay in town,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back in the morning to organise things.’
‘There’s not much to organise,’ she told him. ‘But you need to stay here. There’s only the Black Stump pub, and Thursday is darts night. There’s no sleep to be had in the Black Stump before three in the morning. Anyway, if anyone moves out it should be me. It’s your home now. Not mine.’
‘But you will stay,’ he said urgently. ‘I need to learn about the place.’
‘What do you intend to do with it?’
There was only one answer to that. ‘Sell.’
Her face stilled. ‘Can you do that?’
‘I’ve checked.’ Actually, Marcia had checked. ‘If I put the money into trust, then, yes.’ The capital needed to stay intact but the interest alone—plus the rent rolls from the land in Scotland—would keep him wealthy even without his own money.
‘You don’t need me to help you sell it,’ she snapped, and then bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry. I know selling seems sensible but…but…’
She took a deep breath, and suddenly her voice was laced with emotion—and pain. ‘I’ll stay tonight. Tomorrow I’ll pack and go stay with my sister until I can arrange a flight home.’
‘Susie, there’s no need—’
‘There is a need,’ she said, and suddenly her voice sounded almost desperate.
‘But why?’
‘Because I keep falling in love,’ she snapped, the desperation intensifying. ‘I fell so far into love with Rory that his death broke my heart. I fell for Angus. And now I’ve fallen for your stupid castle, for your dumb suits of armour—they’re called Eric and Ernst, by the way, and they like people chatting to them—for your stupid compost system, which is second to none in the entire history of the western world—I’ve even fallen for your worms. I keep breaking my heart and I’m not going to do it any more. I’m going home to the States and I’m going back to landscape gardening and Rose and I are going to live happily ever after. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish my work. Bring your gear in. You can have any bedroom you like upstairs. The whole top floor is yours. Rose and I are downstairs. But I need to do some fast digging before Rose wakes from her nap. Dinner’s at seven and there’s plenty to spare. I’ll see you in the kitchen.’
And without another word she brushed past him, out of the conservatory and back into the brilliant autumn sunshine. She grabbed her spade she’d left leaning against the fence and headed off the way they’d come. Her back was stiff and set—her spade was over her shoulder like a soldier carrying a gun—she looked the picture of determination.
But he wasn’t fooled.
He’d seen the glimmer of unshed tears as she’d turned away—and as she reached the garden gate she started, stiffly, to run.
‘Kirsty, he’s here. The new owner.’
Susie had been crying. Kirsty could hear it in her voice, and her heart stilled.
‘Sweetheart, is he horrid? Is he another Kenneth? I’ll be right there.’
‘I don’t need you to come.’ There was an audible sniff.
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘He’s going to sell.’
Susie’s sister paused. She’d known this would happen. It was inevitable. But somehow…somehow she’d hoped…
Susie had come so far. Dreadfully injured in the engineered car crash which had killed her husband, Susie had drifted into a depression so deep it had been almost crippling. But with this place, with her love for the old earl, with her love for the wonderful castle garden and her enchantment with her baby daughter, she’d been hauled back from the brink. For the last few months she’d been back to the old Susie, laughing, bossy, full of plans…
Angus’s death had been expected, a peaceful end to a long and happy life, but Kirsty knew that her twin hadn’t accepted it yet. Hadn’t moved on.
Kirsty was a doctor, and she’d seen this before. Loving and caring for someone to the end, watching them fade but never really coming to terms with the reality that the end meant the end.
‘So…’ she said at last, cautiously, and Susie hiccuped back a sob.
‘I’m going home. Back to the States. Tomorrow.’
‘Um… I suspect you won’t be able to get travel papers for Rose by tomorrow.’
‘I have a passport for her already. There are only a couple of last-minute documents I need to organise. Can I come and stay with you and Jake until then?’
‘Sure,’ Kirsty said uneasily, mentally organising her house to accommodate guests. They were extending the back of the house to make a bigger bedroom for the twins—and for the new little one she hadn’t quite got round to telling her sister about—but they’d squash in somehow. ‘But why? What’s he like?’
‘He’s gorgeous.’
Silence.
‘I…see.’ Kirsty turned thoughtful. ‘So why do you want to come and stay at our house? Don’t you trust yourself?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ Susie snapped. ‘It’s just… He’s not like Rory and he’s not like Angus and I can’t bear him to be here. Just—owning everything. He doesn’t even know about compost. I said we had the best compost system in the world and he looked at me like I was talking Swahili.’
‘Normal, in fact.’
‘He’s not normal. He wears cream suede shoes.’
‘Right.’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Kirsty Cameron.’
‘When have I ever laughed at you?’
‘All the time. Can I come and stay?’
‘Not tonight. Tomorrow I’ll air one of the new rooms and see if I can get the paint fumes out. You can surely bear to stay with him one night. Or…would you like me to come and stay with you?’
‘No. I mean…well, he offered to stay at the pub so he must be safe enough. I said he could stay.’
‘Would you like to borrow Boris?’
‘Fat lot of good Boris would be as a guard dog.’
‘He’s looked after us before,’ Kirsty said with dignity. OK, Boris was a lanky, misbred, over-boisterous dog, but he’d proved a godsend in the past.
Faint laughter returned to her sister’s voice at that. ‘He did. He’s wonderful. But I’m fine. I’ll feed Lord Hamish Douglas and give him a bed tonight and then I’ll leave him to his own devices.’ The smile died from her words. ‘Oh, but, Kirsty, to see him sell the castle…I don’t see how I can bear it.’
The castle was stunning.
While Susie finished her gardening Hamish took the opportunity to explore. And he was stunned.
It was an amazing, over-the-top mixture of grandeur and kitsch. The old earl hadn’t stinted when it came to building a castle as a castle ought to be built—to last five hundred years or more. But into his grand building he’d put furnishings that were anything but grand. Hamish had an Aunt Molly who’d love this stuff. He thought of Molly as he winced at the truly horrible plastic chandeliers hung along the passageways, at the plastic plants in plastic urns, at the cheap gilt Louis XIV tables and chairs, and at the settees with bright gold crocodile legs. It was so awful it was brilliant.
Then he opened the bathroom door and Queen Victoria gazed down at him in blatant disapproval from behind an aspidistra. He burst out laughing but he closed the door fast. A man couldn’t do what a man had to do under that gaze. He’d have to find another bathroom or head to the pub.
More exploring.
He found another bathroom, this one fitted with a chandelier so large it almost edged out the door. The portrait here was of Henry the Eighth. OK. He could live with Henry. He found five empty bedrooms and chose one with a vast four-poster bed and a view of the ocean that took his breath away.
He decided staying here was possible.
Susie was still digging in the garden below. He watched her for a minute—and went back to thinking. Staying here was fraught with difficulties.
What had she said? She’d fallen in love with a castle, a compost bin, the worms she was digging out of the mud right now.
She’d cried.
The set look of her shoulders said she might still be crying.
He didn’t do tears.
The smile he’d had on his face since he’d met Queen Victoria faded. He put Susie’s emotion carefully away from him.
He sorted his gear, hanging shirts neatly, jackets neatly, lining up shoes. He had enough clothes to last him a week. Otherwise he’d have to find a laundry.
Marcia called him a control freak. Marcia was right.
Almost involuntarily, he crossed to the window again. Susie was digging with almost ferocious intensity, taking out her pain on the mud. He saw her pause and wipe her overalled arm across her eyes.
She was crying.
He should stay at the pub. Darts or not.
That was dumb. Fleeing emotion? What sort of laird did that make him?
He owned this pile. He was Lord Hamish Douglas. Ridiculous! If his mother knew what was happening she’d cry, too, he thought, and then winced.
Too many tears!
For the first part of his life tears had been all he’d known. When he’d been three his father had suicided. That was his first memory. Too many women, too many tears, endless sobbing…
The tears hadn’t stopped. His mother had held her husband’s death to her heart—over his head—for the rest of her life. She held it still.
Her voice came back to him in all its pathos.
‘Wash your knees, Hamish. Your father would hate it if he saw his son with grubby knees. Oh, I can’t bear it that he can’t be here to see.’