The Heir’s Chosen Bride

by Marion Lennox

  The dingo stuck his nose into Hamish’s face and slurped.

  ‘Gee,’ Hamish managed. ‘Thanks…darl.’

  ‘Just stand behind the baby,’ Honey urged. ‘So we can get you all in the shot.’

  They did, bemused.

  ‘Put your arm round her,’ Albert urged.

  ‘It’s all I can do to hold the dingo,’ Hamish muttered. Boris was wiggling like the crazy mutt he was. Ecstatic.

  ‘I’ll hold the back half,’ Susie said and did that, catching Boris’s legs.

  The dog was now upside down, his front end held by Hamish and his back half held by Susie.

  ‘Now cuddle your wife,’ Albert said,

  ‘She’s not-’

  ‘Cuddle me, darl,’ Susie said sweetly. ‘You know you want to.’

  He cuddled her. He stood on the sun-warmed beach, with a dog in his arms, with Rose curled up asleep at his feet, with a woman pressed against him and with his arm around her, and he smiled at the camera as if he meant it.

  It was like an out-of-body experience, he thought. If Marcia could see him now she’d think he must have an identical twin. This was nothing like he was. The self-contained Hamish Douglas was a world away. He should be in his office now, with his hair slicked down, wearing a suit and tie, in charge of his world.

  Instead…

  Susie was leaning against him. She was still cool to the touch after her swim. He’d been getting hot on the beach and the cool of her body against his was great.

  Not just the cool. The smell of her. The feel of her…

  She curved right where she ought to curve. His arm held her close and she used her free arm to tug him even closer. The feel of her fingers on his hip, the strength of her tugging him close…

  Whew.

  He smiled at the camera but it was all he could do to manage it.

  He needed to go home, he thought. He needed to put this place on the market and get out of here.

  Why was he terrified?

  A vision of his mother came back, his mother late at night, coming into his room, putting her head on his bed and sobbing her heart out.

  ‘I never should have loved. If I’d known it’d hurt like this, I never, never would have loved him. Oh, God, Hamish, the pain…’

  He withdrew. His arm dropped and Susie felt it and moved aside in an instant. It had been play-acting, he knew. She hadn’t meant to hold him, to curve against him as if she belonged.

  ‘Where shall we send the pictures?’ Honey asked, aware as they moved apart that the photo session was definitely over. There was something in their body language that told her there was no way she’d get them back together again. ‘Do you have a permanent address? Somewhere we can send a letter?’

  Susie gazed at her blankly.

  ‘These people think we’re dole bludgers, sleeping in the back of a clapped-out ute,’ Hamish said, and managed a grin at his mastery of the language. And the knowledge that went with it. Ute-short for utility vehicle-a pick-up truck. And dole bludger? He’d heard the term on the plane. They’d been flying over the coast and the man in the seat beside him had waved to the beach below.

  ‘There’s a major social security problem in Australia,’ he’d told Hamish. ‘The weather’s so good and the surf’s so good there’s an army of kids who refuse to work. They go on social security-the dole-and spend their life surfing. Go up and down the coast looking for good surf, sleeping in the back of utes. Bloody dole bludgers’ll be the ruination of this country.’

  And it was too much for Susie. He saw the mischief lurking in her eyes and the laughter threatening to explode, and he opened his mouth to stop her but it was too late.

  ‘We’re no dole bludgers,’ she told them, in a tone of offended virtue. ‘And in truth we’re not husband and wife. I’ll have you know that this…’ she pointed to Hamish as she’d point to some mummified Egyptian remains ‘…is Lord Hamish Douglas, Earl of Loganaich. His address, of course, is Loganaich Castle, Dolphin Bay. And me… I’m the castle relic. And gardener and dogsbody besides.’ She motioned to Rose at her feet. ‘There’s always a baby in these sorts of situations,’ she told them. ‘But it’s probably wiser not to ask any more questions.’

  ‘You realise they’ll still think we’re dole bludgers,’ Hamish said, when he could get a grip on his laughter and was attempting to get a grip on reality. The couple were putt-putting back out of the cove, with Albert pausing to take one more shot before they rounded the headland and disappeared from view.

  ‘Yeah, we’re high on dope. I’ll probably get a visit from Social Security.’ Susie chuckled. ‘I should have told them I was an Arabian princess. We would have just as much chance at belief.’

  ‘But we’ve made their morning,’ Hamish said. The tension he felt as he’d held Susie was dissipating, changing to something different. Shared pleasure in the pure ridiculousness of the moment. Laughter. It was a laughter he hadn’t felt before. He felt…free. ‘They’ve got more local colour than they bargained for.’

  ‘What’s the bet they go into the post office when they go back?’

  ‘The post office?’

  ‘Harriet’s the postmistress and she has a huge sign out the front advertising information. Collecting and imparting information is a passion. If they go in and say they’ve met a crazy beach bum who calls himself a lord, they’ll get told exactly what’s what and they’ll be back here for more pictures.’

  ‘We’ll retire behind our castle walls and pull up the drawbridge.’

  ‘If only it were that easy,’ Susie said, and the laughter slipped a little. ‘I… Maybe we should go up now. I want to get some paving done this afternoon.’

  ‘I need to do some cataloguing.’

  ‘Cataloguing?’

  ‘Marcia says I should make lists of contents.’

  ‘Sure.’ She eyed him with more than a little disquiet. ‘What will you do with Ernst and Eric?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Suits of armour.’

  ‘Um…’ He’d seen them. Of course he’d seen them. One could hardly miss them. ‘I might give them to a welfare shop,’ he ventured. ‘If I can find a welfare shop that’ll take them.’

  ‘I’ll buy them.’

  ‘Why on earth,’ he said cautiously, ‘would you want two imitation suits of armour that stand eight feet high and are enough to scare the socks off anyone who comes near?’

  ‘When I go home I won’t have Boris,’ she said with dignity. ‘I need Eric and Ernst. Besides, they’re excellent conversationalists. We’ve reached consensus on most important political points but the ramifications of the Kyoto agreement in developing countries still needs some fine tuning.’

  He stared at her.

  Then he burst out laughing.

  She looked affronted. ‘You can’t think the ramifications of such an agreement are a laughing matter?’

  ‘No,’ he said at once, wiping the grin off his face. ‘They’re very serious indeed. Only last week I was telling my potted palm-’

  ‘There’s no need to mock.’

  ‘I’m not mocking. But Ernst and Eric are yours,’ he told her. ‘Absolutely. Who am I to separate a woman from her political sparring partners? How are you going to get them home?’

  ‘I guess they won’t let me take them on the plane?’

  ‘You could see if you could get them diplomatic passports. I could make a few phone calls. Eric and Ernst, born in China and holding views that are decidedly left-wing…or I assume they’re left-wing?’

  ‘It’s dangerous to assume anything about Ernst and Eric,’ she said in a voice that was none too steady.

  ‘I won’t. I’ll approach the situation with diplomatic caution. But we’ll do our best, Susie Douglas. When you leave for America I’d very much like to see Ernst on one side of you on the plane and Eric on the other.’

  ‘Eric is a vegetarian,’ she said with such promptness that he blinked. ‘And Ernst hates sitting over a wing.’

  He choked. She
was standing in front of him, all earnestness, the sun glinting on her gorgeous hair, the laughter in her eyes conflicting with the prim schoolteacher voice and he felt…he felt…

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he managed. ‘But meanwhile I think we should pack up for the day. I think I’ve had a bit too much sun.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THEY were formal for the rest of the day. Formal to the point of avoiding each other. Hamish did a bit of cataloguing but there wasn’t much point cataloguing imitation chandeliers. Susie did a bit of packing but her heart wasn’t in that either.

  They met briefly for dinner. ‘Soup and toast,’ Susie decreed, and Hamish didn’t argue. He ate his soup and toast, and then later, when Susie had gone to bed, he ate more toast. Tomorrow he’d have to go on a forage into town and find some decent food, he decided. Then he remembered the next day was the day of the fête and he felt so faint-hearted that he stopped feeling hungry and went back to bed and stared at the ceiling for a while.

  He was right out of his comfort zone. Jodie had told him this was a holiday. Weren’t holidays meant to make you feel rested?

  The sounds of the sea were wafting in his open window but the rest of the world was silent. After the buzzing background hum of Manhattan this seemed like another world. It was so silent it sounded…noisy? The absence of traffic sounds was like white noise.

  He lay and listened and decided he was homesick for Manhattan. For his black and grey penthouse, his austere bathroom without kings or queens watching from gilt frames, for his traffic noise…

  For Marcia? Of course for Marcia.

  Who was he kidding? He wasn’t homesick. He didn’t know what he was. Finally he drifted into sleep where Marcia and Jodie and Susie all jostled for position. Marcia was silently, scornfully watching. Jodie was standing with hands on hips, daring him to be different. Susie was laughing.

  But while he watched, Susie’s laughter turned to tears and he woke in a cold sweat.

  And Susie was no longer in his dream. She was standing in the open doorway and she was neither laughing or crying.

  She was holding a kilt.

  ‘Behold your valet, my lord,’ she told him. ‘Your kilt and all your other various appendages await your noble personage.’

  He sat up fast. Then he remembered he wasn’t wearing pyjamas. He grabbed his sheet-and he blinked at the apparition in the doorway.

  Susie was dressed in tartan.

  She wasn’t wearing a kilt. She was wearing royal blue Capri pants, stretching neatly around every delicious curve, and a gorgeous little top, in the same tartan as the kilt she was holding out for him to wear. Her hair was tied up in some complex knot on top, and it was caught up in a tartan ribbon.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.

  ‘The tartan…’

  ‘You might be the head of the clan but I’m a Douglas, too.’

  This woman was his family, he thought, dazed.

  Move on. Family was a scary thought. His eyes fell to the kilt she was holding out.

  ‘I’m not wearing that.’

  ‘You promised,’ she said with something akin to forcefulness. ‘You can’t back out now, your Lordship. I’ve promised as well.’

  ‘You’ve promised?’

  ‘Well, you promised first. You said you would, and now I’ve telephoned the organisers and they’ve told everyone you’re coming. They’ve trucked in the Barram pipe band with an extra piper this year, ’cos last time the piper had a wee bit too much whisky on the bus on the way here and didn’t perform to expectation. So there’s two pipers to pipe you on stage, your Lordship, and a whole pipe band besides, and the Brownies are doing a guard of honour especially.’

  ‘The Brownies?’ To say he was hornswoggled was an understatement. ‘What on earth are Brownies?’

  ‘Scary little brown persons,’ she said. ‘You must have heard of them. They sell cookies and do bob-a-job, only now it’s two dollars and you have to sign forms in triplicate saying they can’t hurt themselves when they shine your shoes.’

  ‘I’m lost,’ he complained, and she grinned.

  ‘Fine. Stay that way. Ask no questions, just smile and wave like the Queen Mum. You want me to help you to dress?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Only offering. I thought you might have trouble with your sporran.’

  ‘An earl,’ he said with cautious dignity, ‘especially the ninth Earl of Loganaich of the mighty clan Douglas, can surely manage his own sporran.’

  ‘Tricky things, sporrans.’

  ‘Not to us earls.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she said cheerfully. She walked across and dumped a kilt, what looked like a small mountain of spare tartan fabric, tassles and toggles, a purse of some description and a beret with a feather on his bedside chair. Boris followed behind, looking interested.

  ‘There you go, your Lordship,’ she said happily. ‘Everything you need to look shipshape. Come on, Boris.’

  ‘Boris can help,’ he said graciously, and her grin widened.

  ‘I’ll leave you with your valet, then, shall I, my lord? Porridge in the kitchen in thirty minutes?’

  ‘Toast.’

  ‘If you’re wearing a sporran you need porridge.’

  ‘Toast,’ he said in something akin to desperation. ‘As the leader of your clan I demand toast.’

  She chuckled. ‘Ooh, I love a forceful man…in a kilt.’

  ‘Susie…’

  She got her features back under control with difficulty. She was back to a grin only. ‘Your wish is my command,’ she said. ‘Sir.’ He got a sharp salute, clicked heels and she was gone, leaving him alone with his valet.

  ‘Boris…’ he said cautiously, eyeing his pile of tartan as if it might bite. ‘What do you think a sporran might be?’

  It took him a while. It took him close to an hour, really, but if he was going to do this thing he might as well do it right. By the time he had every pleat in place, every toggle where it was supposed to be toggling, and the feather in his cap at just the right angle he felt like he’d done a full day’s work. He gazed in the mirror and thought he had done a good day’s work. He looked unbelievable.

  Boris was sitting watching with the patience of all good valets, and when Hamish finally adjusted his cap and looked at the final result the dog gave a deep low woof, as if in appreciation.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ Hamish told the dog. ‘I wish Jodie could see me now.’

  And Marcia?

  Marcia couldn’t help but be impressed with this, he thought, but it was Jodie he thought of. Jodie would look at him and whistle, and giggle.

  Like Susie giggled. Susie and Jodie…

  Two unlikely women in his life. Jodie was no longer part of what he did. She was making choir stalls with her Nick. Ridiculous. How could she make any money doing that?

  And Susie… In a couple of weeks Susie would be a memory as well and he’d be left with Marcia.

  Which was the way he wanted it.

  ‘Porridge!’ The yell from below stairs startled him out of his reverie. ‘On the table. Now.’

  He crossed to the landing. Took a deep breath. Swelled his chest.

  ‘Toast!’ he yelled back. ‘Woman!’

  She emerged from the kitchen and gazed upward. And froze. Her eyes took in his appearance, from the tip of his shoes, his long socks with their tassles, up to the feather…

  He felt like blushing.

  ‘Wow,’ she said at last on a long note of awed discovery. ‘Oh, Hamish, wow. They’re going to love you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All the ladies of Dolphin Bay,’ she said simply. ‘Me, too. What a hunk. Do you have everything in the right place?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said, still trying not to blush.

  ‘And you’ve got the appropriate attire underneath?’

  ‘Don’t even go there.’ He stepped back from the balustrade-fast-and she chuckled.

  ‘No matter. I’ve never seen such an impressive Scott
ish hero-and I’ve seen Braveheart.’

  ‘I’d imagine that those guys might be a bit handier with their weaponry than I am,’ he said, still cautious. ‘I’m all froth and no substance.’

  ‘You certainly look like substance. Porridge now, sir. Double helping if you like.’

  ‘Susie…’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I thought I made myself clear. Toast.’

  ‘There’s a bit of a problem,’ she confessed. ‘If I’d seen your knees before this, I might have concentrated a bit more. Very good at focussing the mind, those knees.’

  This was ridiculous. He wanted his kilt lowered.

  ‘So what’s happened to my toast?’ he managed.

  ‘I burnt two lots,’ she confessed. ‘I was thinking about Angus. And Priscilla.’

  ‘Priscilla?’

  ‘Angus’s pumpkin. She’s going to win today. Biggest pumpkin on show. I ended up with only one slice of bread left and Rose wanted that for toast fingers in her egg.’ She took a deep breath and fixed him with a look that told him he was going to get a lecture, right now.

  ‘Hamish, you might tell me you belong in New York-you might tell me you’re not really an earl-but anyone seeing those knees knows for sure that you’ve found your home right here. You’re the ninth Earl of Loganaich and you just need to forget all those silly ideas of being anyone else, including a toast eater, and learn to like porridge. Now, enough argument. I have a team of men arriving in ten minutes to help load Priscilla onto the trailer. So-what do they say? Save your breath to cool your porridge-my lord.’ She smiled sweetly up at him. ‘Come and get it while it’s hot.’

  It was like an out-of-body experience.

  Firstly there was the fairground itself. It was nestled between two hills, with the harbour and the town on one side and bushland on the other. One could stroll around the fairground, walk a short distance to the shops or to the boats, retreat into the bush-as a few young couples showed every sign of doing even this early on-or if it all got too hot one could disappear to the beach for a quick swim.

  Susie pulled her little car into the parking lot and Hamish gazed around, stunned. It was a fantastic, colourful mix of everything. Everyone. Grizzled farmers, kids with fairy floss, old ladies in wheelchairs. Gorgeous young things kitted to the nines in full dressage gear ready for the equestrian events. Kids in bathing costumes, obviously torn between beach and fair. A clown on stilts lurching from car to car and using the bonnets of the cars to steady himself.