The Heir’s Chosen Bride

by Marion Lennox

  He was a Douglas!

  ‘Tomorrow’s the Dolphin Bay Harvest Thanksgiving fête,’ she told him as he started digging again. ‘We need a laird.’

  ‘Pardon?’ He bent to separate some worms and then dug a couple more spadefuls.

  ‘The laird opens the fête. It’s traditional. No one’s doing it tomorrow because everyone’s still mourning Angus. But not having anyone there will be awful. Maybe we should do it in stages. Maybe we could use you tomorrow as the last of the Douglases.’

  His spade paused in mid air-and then kept digging. ‘You know, I might not be the last of the Douglases,’ he said cautiously. ‘The Douglas clan appear to be quite prolific. In fact, if I give you the phone book you might find almost as many Douglases as Smiths, Greens and Nguyens.’

  ‘No, but as far as I know you’re the only Lord Douglas in this neck of the woods.’

  ‘Which leaves me…where?’

  ‘Opening the fête tomorrow.’

  Another pause in the digging. Another resumption. ‘Which involves what exactly?’

  ‘Saying a few words. Just “I now declare this fête open”. After the bagpipes stop.’

  ‘Bagpipes,’ he said, even more cautiously, and Susie thought the man wasn’t as silly as he looked. Actually, he didn’t look the least bit silly.

  And he’d guessed where she was headed. She could see the suspicion growing and she almost giggled.

  ‘It’s a very nice kilt,’ she said.

  He set down his spade and turned to her in all seriousness.

  ‘Don’t ask it of me, Susie. I have knobbly knees.’

  She did giggle then. ‘I can see them from here. They’re very nice knees.’

  ‘I only show them to other Douglases.’

  ‘Me, you mean.’

  ‘You and my mother.’

  ‘Not…Marcia?’

  ‘Marcia has the sense not to look,’ he told her. ‘I’d never have exposed them to you but you woke unreasonably early. Normally I have huge signs out. CAUTION: EXPOSED KNEES. So that lets me out of fête opening.’

  ‘Then I’m off to pack.’

  ‘Susie, this is a business trip,’ he said, and there was suddenly more than a trace of desperation in his voice. ‘I’m not an earl. I’m not Lord Douglas. In this day and age it doesn’t make any sense. I won’t use the title. I’ll sell the castle and I’ll get back to my ordinary life.’

  ‘You sound afraid,’ she said, and he cast her a look that said she wasn’t far off the mark.

  ‘That’s dumb. Why would I be afraid?’

  ‘It’s not so scary, standing in a kilt and saying a few words.’

  ‘People will expect-’

  ‘They’ll expect nothing,’ she said softly. ‘The people here loved Uncle Angus. He was their laird. You won’t know the story but this castle saved the town. After the war the men depended on the schools of couta to make their living-great long fish you catch by trawling in relatively shallow water. But some disease-worms, actually-hit the couta, and the men didn’t have boats big enough for deep-sea fishing. Everyone was starting to leave. It was either leave or starve. But then along came Angus. He saw this place, fell in love with it and realised the only thing that could keep it going was another industry. So he persuaded the guardians of his family trust-your family trust-to let him rebuild his castle here. The men worked on the castle while they gradually rebuilt the fishing fleet. The people here loved Angus to bits and his death has caused real heartache. You wearing a kilt tomorrow-no, it won’t bring Angus back, but maybe it’ll fill a void that for many may seem unbearable.’

  Emotion, Hamish thought. More emotion. But Susie’s chin was tilted upward. She was defiant rather than lachrymose, throwing him a dare.

  Open a fête…

  It was a dumb, emotional thing to do. It had no foundation in logic and he should run a mile.

  ‘Why are you digging my path?’ she asked.

  ‘I was bored.’

  ‘What are you going to do until this assessor gets here?’

  ‘I’ll go through the castle books.’ I’ll get rid of some kitsch, he thought, but he didn’t say it. Marcia was researching a place where he could hire some decent antiques to make the place look firstclass.

  Maybe Queen Vic could stay…

  Queen Vic was in a plastic gilt frame. She’d been a cheap print and was a bit frayed around the edges. Keeping Queen Vic would be a dumb, emotional decision and he needed to stay tight here.

  ‘The castle books are in the hands of the executors,’ Susie told him. ‘Mr O’Shannasy’s the local solicitor but his office is always closed Fridays. That means you can’t start work until Monday. Which leaves the weekend free for fair opening.’

  ‘I have a path to dig.’

  ‘It’s my path,’ she said, almost belligerently, and then stopped. ‘I mean…’

  No emotion. ‘It’s your path until you leave,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘Which is today unless you open the fête.’

  ‘Why is it so important?’

  ‘I just don’t want the stage to be empty.’

  ‘It’s a sentimental gesture.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I’m a businessman.’

  ‘You can be a businessman again when you leave here. Be Lord Douglas for a bit. It’s your title. Enjoy it.’

  ‘I would have thought lords enjoy themselves by…I don’t know, holding lavish banquets. Driving Lamborghinis.’

  ‘You can have porridge and toast for breakfast. We’ll put marmalade on top of the toast, banana on top of the porridge, and call it a banquet. And I’ll drive you to the fête in Angus’s old Ford. It has four wheels, same as a Lamborghini. What’s your problem?’

  ‘I don’t have a kilt,’ he said, backed against a figurative wall but still fighting.

  ‘No.’ Her face grew thoughtful. ‘And Angus’s would be too small. He was a much shorter man.’ She hesitated. He saw the telltale wash of emotion cross her face and he flinched. But she had hold of herself again. ‘My husband used to come here often before…before he went overseas and we were married. Angus had a kilt made for him from the family tartan. You’re almost the same size.’

  Great. He’d go to a fête wearing the kilt of this woman’s dead husband.

  But she’d read his expression.

  ‘I’m not asking for sympathy here,’ she told him, and there was suddenly anger flooding her voice. ‘You can stop looking as if you’re expecting me to burst into tears and tell you you’re just like my Rory.’

  ‘I never…’

  He had.

  ‘I don’t need you,’ she snapped.

  ‘Of course you don’t need me.’

  ‘It’s just the town…so many of the old people…they’ll come tomorrow, and Angus has only been dead for a few weeks, and they’ll see the empty stage and it’ll stay with them and spoil their fête. If you get up in your kilt and open the thing and wander round for a bit and don’t tell people you’re selling, just say you’re not exactly sure what’s happening, then the locals will have a splendid talking point instead of a focus for grief. The fête was threatening to be dismal. You have it in your power to retrieve things.’

  ‘I don’t want-’

  ‘You want what’s right for the castle,’ she snapped. ‘You want the best monetary outcome. You told me yourself you can get that if I stay on until the assessor comes. So use your head and not your heart, Hamish Douglas. Where’s the sense in refusing?’

  She had a point. But…

  ‘I don’t think I want to,’ he said weakly, and she cast him a look that contained pure triumph. She had him and she knew it.

  ‘I’ll go look out the kilt,’ she told him. ‘You’re skinnier than Rory. We may need to adjust it. And quit the digging. You have more blisters than you need already. Breakfast in half an hour?’

  ‘Er…yes.’

  ‘The first of your many banquets here, my lord,’ she told him. She grinned-and
went to find her lord a kilt.

  ‘He’s like a fish out of water.’

  Actually, he was in water. Hamish was in the shower. His bathroom was right above Susie’s and as she’d dialled her sister’s number he’d started singing. The Pirate King was being given another airing, and a good one. ‘He’s here to make money out of the place,’ she told Kirsty. ‘He’s going to sell. I should hate him but…’ She hesitated. ‘It’s like he’s some big New York financier but there’s someone else underneath.’

  ‘Someone nice?’

  ‘He sings,’ Susie explained, and held the receiver out so Kirsty could hear.

  ‘Um…great,’ Kirsty said, back on the line after a moment’s bemused listening. ‘There’s lots of testosterone in that there baritone. Are you interested?’

  Some questions were dumb. ‘Why would I be interested?’ Susie demanded. ‘Anyway, I’m just ringing to tell you that you can come and take your dog back. I’m quite safe. And he’s agreed to open the fête tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s agreed…’ There was a moment’s stunned silence and then something that sounded like a sniff from the other end of the line. ‘He’s opening the fête? Wearing the Douglas tartan?’

  ‘Wearing the Douglas tartan.’

  ‘Oh, Susie…’

  ‘You won’t weep on him, will you?’ Susie asked, becoming nervous, and Kirsty sniffed again.

  ‘No, but everyone else will.’

  ‘They’d better not. He’ll run.’

  ‘Once he’s opened the fête he can run all he wants,’ Kirsty said directly. ‘That empty stage was going to seem awful. But for the opening to go to another Douglas… It’ll almost seem like a happy ending.’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s not,’ Susie said, suddenly breathless. ‘Or…well, I guess it is an ending and it’s better than it might be. This’ll be something like closure.’

  ‘But he’s really nice?’ Kirsty demanded, and Susie flushed. She was Kirsty’s twin and she knew where her sister’s thoughts were headed, often before Kirsty did. She knew where they were headed now, and she had no wish to go there.

  ‘My daughter is attempting to climb onto the back of your dog,’ she told her sister with what she hoped was dignity. ‘I need to go.’

  And she replaced the receiver on any more conjecture.

  Things were formal at breakfast. Hamish was dressed again as he might dress for a casual stroll down Fifth Avenue. Understated. Expensive. Cool.

  Susie had dressed in shorts and a T-shirt which stayed pristine until she gave Rose her first piece of toast and Rose gave it back. She was therefore decorated with a raspberry streak centre front. Not so cool.

  No matter. There was a small glitch when Hamish refused porridge. Susie thought this was one of the few things she could cook-and what sort of a Douglas was he if he didn’t eat porridge?-but she finally decided magnanimously to overlook it. They ate their toast with only social pleasantries expressed between mouthfuls.

  Hamish appeared not to notice Rosie and Boris doing their best to make him laugh. He didn’t comment on Susie’s raspberry streak. He appeared to have switched into another mode, one where he was polite and courteous but otherwise remote.

  Fine. She could handle this, she decided.

  A non-porridge-eating Douglas.

  They finished eating. Susie wiped off her small daughter. Then, somewhat at a loss, she offered a full tour and her offer was accepted.

  This was good, Susie thought as she led the way through the castle. She carried Rose, Boris following behind as she opened room after room and explained the contents. Formality would get them through the next few days. It was only when Hamish stopped being polite and grinned that her insides started doing funny things.

  ‘This is bedroom number seven…’

  ‘I saw this yesterday,’ Hamish said politely. ‘All by myself.’

  ‘You looked through the bedrooms by yourself?’

  ‘I was choosing one. You told me I could. Any on the first floor.’

  ‘They’re your bedrooms,’ she said, and flushed. ‘Am I boring you?’

  ‘It’s a very nice castle.’

  ‘I’m boring you.’

  ‘What about the beach?’ he asked. The sea was right out every north-facing window, tantalising with its sapphire shimmer.

  ‘There’s a track just over the road,’ she told him. ‘When the place is turned into a hotel you may need to build an inclinator. It’s a bit steep.’

  ‘But the track leads to the beach.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A swimmable beach?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘You’re going to offer to show me?’

  ‘You can find it yourself. You can scarcely miss it. Head north and when it feels wet you’ve reached the sea.’

  ‘Do Boris and Rose like the sea?’

  ‘I… Yes.’ Keep it formal. Keep it formal.

  ‘I’ll go and see it by myself, then, shall I?’

  ‘If you like.’ Keep quiet, dummy.

  ‘It’s safe for swimming?’

  ‘It’s great for swimming.’

  ‘I’ll get changed then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back for lunch.’

  Keep quiet. Keep quiet…

  She couldn’t keep quiet.

  ‘I can’t get down to the beach by myself,’ she said, sense disappearing and desperation taking over.

  This had been the hardest part of living here with Rose. With her weak legs, the track was too steep to negotiate carrying a baby, and to live so close and not have access almost killed her. She could only go to the beach when someone was there to help carry Rose. ‘Not with…’ Say it, she told herself. Say it. ‘I-I have a b-bad leg,’ she stammered.

  He paused. He looked at her.

  Formality took a slight backward step.

  ‘You can’t get down to the beach?’

  ‘Not carrying Rose.’

  ‘But you like the beach?’

  ‘I love the beach. So does Boris and so does Rose. We all love it.’

  ‘So if I carried Rose…’

  To hell with formality. ‘We could all go,’ she said, enthusiasm taking over. ‘I could pack a hamper. We could take an umbrella and a rug for Rose to snooze on when she gets tired.’

  ‘How long are we staying?’ he demanded, startled.

  ‘Hours and hours,’ she said happily. ‘If I’m leaving this place for good in a few days, then I need all the sea I can get. When this place is a luxury hotel it’ll be beyond my reach for the rest of my life.’

  ‘So all I have to do is carry Rose.’

  ‘And the hamper. And the picnic basket and rug. You may have to take two trips.’

  ‘You’re a manipulator.’

  ‘The beach is worth it.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HE CARRIED the hamper, the beach umbrella and the rug down to the beach and left them there. Boris accompanied him, bounding down the track with the air of a dog about to meet canine heaven. When Hamish returned for the next load, Boris bounded up again, panting with expectancy, seeming as anxious as Susie was that his pseudo-mistress wasn’t left behind. Susie was waiting, dressed in a pale lemon sarong, her arms full of Rose and Rose’s necessities.

  ‘Hamish will take us to the sea,’ Susie told Rose, handing her over, and the little girl beamed, leaned over and wrapped her arms around Hamish’s neck.

  He froze. The feel of a baby’s arms felt…weird. Really weird.

  Hamish had never held a baby in his life and he’d expected it-her-to cry or at least hold herself rigid. Instead of which she clung happily to his neck and started crooning, ‘Ee, ee, ee…’

  ‘She hasn’t quite got the hang of S,’ Susie told him, and Rose giggled as if her mother had just made a wonderful joke.

  ‘You’re OK to get down yourself?’ he asked, and Susie’s smile turned to a glower in an instant.

  ‘I’ve got down under worse conditions than this. Some I’ll tell you about it. You take Rose and I’ll follow.’


  So he did, but he carried Rose slowly, not wanting to get too far ahead of Rose’s mother, aware that the climb was a struggle for Susie and she hurt more than she admitted. He thought suddenly that what he really wanted to do was scoop her up in his arms and carry her down, but even if he hadn’t been carrying her child he knew that she’d swipe away any such effort.

  But finally they reached the sand. Boris was off chasing seagulls. The little cove was deserted. Susie lifted Rose from his arms and started undressing her-and Hamish had time to look around him and take stock.

  He’d never seen a beach like this. It was a cove, sheltered from rough seas or winds by two rocky outcrops reaching three or four hundred yards from either side of the beach. The little cove was maybe two or three hundred yards long-no more. The sand was soft, golden and sun-warmed. There were two vast eucalypts somehow emerging from the base of the cliffs to throw dappled shade if you wanted to be in the shade. There were rock pools toward the end of the cove. The waves at one end of the cove were high enough to form low surf, but at the more sheltered end there were no waves at all. Here the water sloped out gently, making the sea a nursery pool to beat the finest nursery pool anyone could ever imagine.

  ‘You see why I cracked and asked for help?’ Susie asked. She was kneeling on the rug, removing Rosie’s nappy and plastering her with sunblock. ‘I can’t bear not to be down here.’

  ‘Why did you have to crack before you asked?’

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t like to ask for help.’

  ‘It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re afraid of me?’

  ‘No. I…’

  ‘What did my cousin do to you?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  She flinched. Carefully she replaced the tube of sunblock in her holdall and then set her naked daughter on the sand. Rose started crawling determinedly toward Boris. Seeing Boris was chasing gulls in circles, here was an occupation that was going to take some time.

  Hamish waited, giving Susie space. Finally she sat back on her heels and gazed out to sea.

  ‘They were both your cousins,’ she whispered. ‘Kenneth and Rory. Kenneth killed Rory so he’d inherit all this-and when he discovered I was pregnant he tried to kill me as well. He hauled me and my twin, Kirsty, onto a boat right here in this cove and tried to drive us onto rocks.’ She shivered but then gave a tentative smile. ‘But we’re tough. No one messes with the McMahon twins.’