by Ashe Barker
“So far so good.” The medic checks the monitors and appears satisfied. “Won’t be long now.”
She’s right. It isn’t. Less than half an hour later, Allannah opens her eyes again. They are the same dark-brown colour as her son’s. It’s obvious where he gets his looks from.
“Welcome back, Mum,” he murmurs, then he leans over to kiss her cheek. “You gave us quite a scare.”
I’m not convinced we’re out of the woods yet, but this is definitely a good sign. I stay out of the way as Declan, Miranda, and Rebecca crowd round the bed, but he soon beckons me forward.
“Mum, I want you to meet Ellie.” He takes my hand. “Ellie came with me from London.”
Allannah regards me with a solemn, steady gaze. Is that the faintest hint of a smile? Difficult to know, behind the mask. Clearly exhausted, she lowers her eyelids, and her breathing deepens.
“She’s sleeping,” says Rebecca. “You should all do the same. I can call you if anything happens or if there’s any news.
Declan shakes his head. “Hathersmuir is an hour’s drive away. I prefer to be nearby.”
“We could try the Travelodge next door,” suggests Miranda. “It’s two minutes’ walk from the hospital entrance.”
Declan still appears doubtful, but Miranda’s idea makes sense and, blinking, we troop out into the daylight. My two companions look haggard after a night spent at a hospital bedside, and I doubt I’m any better. We make our way to the budget hotel next door and present ourselves at reception.
The room Declan and I are allotted is okay, plain but functional. The bed looks heavenly. Declan is texting as I dump my clothes on the floor. I assume he’s updating Fraze on his mother’s condition. I make use of the hotel toiletries to take a quick shower, then I fall into bed, naked and still damp. A few minutes later, Declan crawls in behind me.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you, too, Sir.”
Chapter Ten
I wake up alone. The room is silent, Declan has already left.
There’s a note on the dressing table.
Gone back to the ward. You were asleep, didn’t want to wake you. I settled the hotel bill, come over when you’re ready.
I check my phone. Ten past four. I feel much more human after a few hours’ sleep, though I’m not sure how much rest Declan actually had. I text him.
Just woke up. How is she?
Conscious. Talking.
I offer up a silent thank you to anyone who might be listening. That’s fabulous. Is Fraze there yet?
No. Due about 5.
OK. See you in half an hour or so.
It actually takes me closer to forty-five minutes to make a cup of tea using the facilities in the room, comb the tangles from my hair after I went to bed with it wet, and shake the wrinkles from my jeans and sweatshirt. Our overnight bags are still in Wilson’s boot, so I don’t have a change of clothes to hand. When I’m ready, I leave the hotel and make my way back to the hospital.
I arrive at the door to intensive care at the same time as Fraze. He’s in business clothes and drags his luggage with him in a small suitcase on wheels so I know he’s come here straight from the airport. He dumps his case on the tiled floor and envelopes me in a hug, followed by a deep kiss on the lips.
“You two should get a room.”
We split apart and turn to Miranda, who has arrived bearing two cups of coffee, presumably for her and Declan. She looks at me, clearly puzzled. “I thought you and Dec…?”
“I am. I mean, we are…”
“It’s a slightly complicated arrangement, but it suits all three of us just fine.” Fraze relieves his sister of one of the mugs of steaming latte. “Thanks for this.”
I had sort of imagined that Miranda had an idea of how things worked between the three of us, certainly she gave that impression at the wedding, but perhaps I was mistaken. In any case, she is clearly not satisfied with her brother’s somewhat sparse explanation, but her priorities are elsewhere for now. She presses the buzzer to request entry to the ward, and we all go in.
Rebecca is hovering beside Allannah’s bed making more notes on her clipboard and turns to greet us. “She’s improved a lot more since this morning. The doctor thinks we can make plans to move her to another ward soon.”
One glance at the patient and I know the nurse is right. Allannah is asleep, but her complexion is less ashen, that awful, deathly wax-like pallor has gone. The oxygen mask still covers her mouth and nose, but several of the blinking, beeping machines have been removed. The bay now looks more like a sickbed and less like the control room for a lunar expedition.
I glance up and down the ward. “Where’s Declan?”
“Mrs Stone’s son? I’m not sure,” replies the nurse. “He was here. They were chatting earlier…”
“Probably taking a leak.” Fraze pulls up a seat for his sister, then one for me. “He’ll be back soon.”
We exchange pleasantries and words of optimism with each other and with Rebecca, but as Allannah shows no sign of waking up the conversation is soon exhausted. After perhaps twenty minutes and no reappearance by Declan, Fraze offers to go and find him.
“Maybe he’s in the café,” suggests Miranda.
I doubt that. I’ve been nipping off the ward to text him every two minutes since we arrived here, and he’s not answering. If he was just grabbing a sneaky espresso he’d say so. Still, it’s as good a place as any to start, so Fraze heads off. He’s been gone a couple of minutes when Miranda’s phone beeps.
“Sorry, no mobiles in the Unit,” admonishes Rebecca.
“I know. I forgot to turn it off. I’ll just…” Miranda is already scurrying toward the exit. She returns a couple of minutes later with Fraze. Both appear perplexed.
“Did you find him?” I get to my feet. “What is it? What’s happened?”
Miranda answers. “The text was from Stuart. He stayed at home with the boys. He says Dec just showed up at Hathersmuir and he’s in a hell of a state.”
“What? Why? His mother’s doing well. He knows that, doesn’t he?” I look to Rebecca for confirmation.
She simply nods. “I would have thought so. They were talking…”
“He wasn’t upset,” interrupts Miranda, “at least not in that way. According to Stuart, he was boiling mad.”
“What? Angry, you mean?” I’m baffled. In the months since Edinburgh, I’ve never seen Declan irritable, let alone mad. He’s one of the calmest people I know.
“What did he talk to his mother about?” Miranda frowns, clearly as nonplussed as I am.
Rebecca shrugs. “I couldn’t say, sorry. All I know is he left perhaps half an hour before you arrived. Mrs Stone was exhausted and she’s been asleep since, as you know.”
I check my phone again despite Rebecca’s disapproving scowl. “I’ve been texting him, but he doesn’t answer. I suppose he could have been driving…”
“Driving what?” asks Fraze. “You two flew up here, didn’t you? He’ll have taken a taxi.”
“So he could answer his phone, then.”
“Probably. Right, I’m going back to the house to talk to him and find out what’s wrong. Miranda, would you mind staying here, with Allannah? I know she’s out of danger now, but someone should—”
“Of course,” agrees his sister, readily. “I’ll let you know if there’s any change.”
“Thanks.” He turns to me. “Ellie, are you coming?”
Too right I am. I slip my hand into Fraze’s, and we all but break into a run as we leave the ward.
I have a bad feeling about this.
Fraze flags down a passing taxi in the car park, and we bundle into the rear seat. He gives the driver the address, and we settle in.
“How was your trip? I didn’t think to ask you before.”
“Fine. I’d just about finished what I needed to do when you texted yesterday.”
“But still, you just dropped everything to get back here.”
He doesn’t answer at once, appears to be thinking, remembering. “My mother wasn’t well for years and she died when I was twelve. It was all very harrowing, and Allannah sort of stepped in. She’s been like a mother to me and to Miranda. So, yes, I dropped everything. Business is important, but family comes first. And friendship.”
“Declan would have needed you. I mean, if his mother hadn’t…”
Fraze nods. “He was there for me when I needed someone. They both were. And he would have needed you, too. Thank you for coming with him.”
I smile, though my presence doesn’t seem to have made much difference.
We’re about ten minutes from Hathermuir, and despite the circumstances of my visit, I can’t help but gaze in wonder at the scenery. The Highlands are truly stunning, a majestic landscape of purples and yellows and autumnal browns. Shaggy Highland cattle chew on the coarse grass as they contemplate the world going by, clouds scud across the craggy hilltops, and sparkling streams cascade down the steep slopes. Fraze might say he prefers the city, but if I’d grown up here I could never have left it. Picking up on my wonder, he points to a small loch in the distance.
“Fantastic trout fishing there. Would you like to try it?”
“I’ve never done any fishing.”
“Well, this is the perfect place to start. Best salmon and trout in the world, or so my sister keeps telling me.”
I suspect he privately agrees.
His phone rings in his suit jacket pocket, and he pulls it out. “Speak of the devil. It’s Miranda.” He accepts the call. “Hey. Any news?”
A few seconds pass. He listens in silence, his expression grim. “Shit, she really picks her moments. Why did she tell him?” More silence, then, “For fuck’s sake…. Did he really not know? Not even an inkling?” He listens to Miranda again, then sighs. “Sounds like he took it badly. Yes, we’re almost there. I’ll keep you posted.”
I wait until he pockets his phone again. “What happened? Was it something about his mother? What did she say?”
He meets my frightened gaze. “From what Miranda can gather, it seems Allannah’s near-death experience prompted her to tell Declan about his father. I can only imagine she still thought she might not pull through and wanted to do it while she still could.”
“His father? I don’t…”
“Allannah never married. It was always just the two of them, though because they lived with us perhaps that wasn’t so obvious, at least not to Dec. He never spoke about his father. And I guess his mother didn’t, either. Until now.”
“And from what you just said, I take it he didn’t like what he heard.”
He closes his eyes and leans back against the headrest. “I can’t believe he really didn’t know. I suppose that could explain the tantrum, though, the notion that something so big, so massive, was kept from him.”
It’s almost as though Fraze is no longer talking to me. His words are for himself, his own private expression of wonder.
An idea occurs to me. I grasp his hand. “Fraze, do you know who Declan’s father is?”
He meets my gaze and nods. “Who his father was. He was my father, too. Dec’s my half-brother.”
Holy Shit! I let out a low whistle. Bloody hell, with bells on.
“Are you sure?” I whisper, though I know he is.
“Oh yes.” Fraze gazes out of the car window into the middle distance. “I’ve known for years. Miranda, too.”
“But Declan was in the dark? How could that be? Did no one…?”
“Can you believe we just never talked about it. I think I first began to realise when I was about ten. Even though Dec was, on the face of it, just the son of one of our employees, he always got all the same things I did. A pony, a state-of-the-art bike, skiing in Switzerland, scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. He broke his arm once playing football, and my father paid for him to be cared for at a private clinic. He made no distinction between us. Ever. I finally knew for sure when my father insisted that Dec was to come to St. Hugh’s with me. Not that I minded, Dec was my best friend, and I would never have wanted to leave him behind. But none of it made sense otherwise.”
“Why didn’t your father just be open about it? It sounds as though he wasn’t one to shirk his responsibilities.”
“He wasn’t. He loved Declan, just like he loved me and Miranda. Everyone could see it, anyone could have joined up the dots. We did.”
“But Declan didn’t.”
“Seems not. When my mother was alive it would have been awkward, to say the least, if it was all brought out into the open, so I always understood why they kept it quiet at first. Then later, Miranda and I sort of took the view that it was Allannah’s secret and no one else’s business.”
“Did they have an affair, then? Declan’s mum and your father?”
“At one time, obviously. But I never saw anything to suggest that relationship continued or was ever resumed. Allannah was treated just like an employee—a trusted employee and very close to the family, but no more than that. I don’t know the full story because I never asked.”
“I can’t believe you never spoke to him about it. That it never came up.”
“I know, but I didn’t. I honestly don’t know how I would have raised the subject with Dec, even if I’d wanted to. But why bother? I just sort of shrugged, accepted it, and left well enough alone.”
“I can see now why you were always so close.”
He nods. “Friends. Brothers. No wonder we both fell for the same woman.”
“Lucky you got used to sharing.”
Fraze gives a wry chuckle. “Let’s hope that extends from submissives to fathers, then. Ah, here we are…”
The car slows down, then turns left to pass through a massive wrought iron gate. The driveway seems to go on forever, but at last we round a slight bend, and the main house comes into view. I gasp. I knew the ancestral home of a duke would be impressive, but not on this scale. Hathersmuir is simply awesome. A huge, Gothic façade towers over us as the taxi glides to a halt at the foot of the steps leading to the elegant front entrance. The main portion looks to be four storeys high, with only slightly smaller wings extending from the west and the east walls. Turrets on the roofline hint at a past when the house would have been fortified, a safe refuge for the laird and his followers.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe. “How old is it?
“The east and west wings were built in the eighteenth century, but the central part dates back to the fifteenth. It would have been much smaller then, though, and a lot of it was destroyed by a fire in the early seventeen hundreds. It was rebuilt to become what you see today.”
“How long has it belonged to your family?”
Fraze tosses three twenty-pound notes to the driver, then offers me his hand to help me out of the car. “I’m the seventh duke. The first one was granted the title and the estate in seventeen ninety-three, and it’s been ours since then.”
As the car pulls away, one half of the huge door opens to reveal a middle-aged woman clad in a tartan skirt made of purple plaid, and a buttoned up green cardigan. She regards us from the top of the steps, her hands folded, and wearing an expression best described as haughty.
“Mrs McBride. I trust you’re keeping well.” Fraze ascends the stairs to greet her, and I trail after him.
“Your Grace.” She inclines her head in a polite bow. “How nice to see you. Mr Ferguson is in the morning room.”
“She means Stuart. You’ll remember him, from the wedding?”
“Of course. Yes.”
“Thank you, Mrs McBride.” Fraze extends his hand to me. “This is Ellie Scott, a close friend of mine and Declan’s. Speaking of which, where is he?”
“I believe Mr Stone went for a walk in the grounds, sir.”
“Right. We’ll talk to Stuart, then I’ll go and find him.”
He starts to tow me past the housekeeper and through the open door. I barely have time to take in the expansive hallway, polished wood furnit
ure, and ornately carved staircase as he tugs me across the gleaming tiled floor.
“Bring us some tea, would you, Mrs McBride? And perhaps some shortbread if you have any.”
“At once, Your Grace.” She sweeps off to do as he asks.
I’m still getting over ‘Your Grace’ when Fraze flings open a door about halfway along the hall and marches inside. Stuart is seated at a small table by the French window but he stands up to greet us, a beaming smile on his face.
The men shake hands. Stuart greets me, too, then turns to Fraze again. “Miranda said you were on your way.”
Fraze’s expression is grim. “So, what happened?”
“Declan arrived in a taxi, thumped on the door to be let in, then stormed past Mrs McBride and me without a word and headed upstairs. When I went after him, he told me to fuck off and offered to toss me over the banister if I didn’t get out of his way. There was a lot of door slamming, and as far as I know he went to his apartment. I was busy with the boys so I didn’t check. Then, a few minutes later, he slammed back downstairs again and went out. I assume he’s still on the estate, though, as no vehicles have gone.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Only what I’ve told you. He didn’t seem to be in a mood for talking.”
“Where are the boys now?”
“Dougall took them fishing. Seemed best to get them out of the way…”
Stuart must catch my puzzled expression because he pauses to explain. “Dougall is our ghillie. It’s a sort of game keeper. You don’t seem to have them in England.”
Fraze scrapes his hand across his eyes. “I suppose I’d better go and find him.”
“Let him calm down a bit first,” suggests Stuart. “Might get more sense out of him, then.”
“I doubt it, somehow.” Even so, Fraze sinks into a plush, red sofa. “Christ, he could be anywhere. There’s over ten thousand acres out there…”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I say. “He’s here.”
As they’ve been talking, I’ve been gazing out of the French windows. I spot a familiar figure emerge from a stand of trees perhaps half a mile from the house, and Declan is now striding towards us.