The Heir’s Chosen Bride

by Marion Lennox

  ‘I’ll ship Ernst and Eric over to you,’ Hamish said at one stage, and if looks could kill, he’d have been dead right then.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. They’d never be at home with me in America. They belong at the foot of the stairs and if you want to shift them…well, that’s your business and I don’t want to know about it.’

  ‘Susie, stay a little longer,’ he urged.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We don’t know about Taffy.’

  ‘We do know about Taffy. Cut it out, Hamish. I’m leaving.’

  She wouldn’t budge.

  At dusk Marcia came to find Hamish. She met him on the way upstairs to change. He’d been bashing through thick bushland in an increasingly hopeless search for Taffy, and he was filthy.

  ‘We need to take Lachlan out to dinner,’ she said. ‘He’s spent the day photographing the castle from every angle-not that you’d have noticed. Honestly, Hamish, your behaviour has been less than civil. He’s staying at the pub tonight. It’d be better if we could put him up here, but I dare say you won’t ask the widow to do that.’

  ‘Do you have to call her the widow?’

  ‘You know who I mean.’

  ‘I won’t ask Susie to have another guest on her last night,’ Hamish snapped, wondering again how he’d never noticed how insensitive Marcia was. ‘It’s bad enough that we’re here. Jake and Kirsty are bringing dinner. Susie needs her family and no one else.’

  ‘Then you and I should at least take him out to dinner. You’re not Susie’s family.’

  He wasn’t. Hamish hesitated. Marcia was right. He should give Lachlan dinner. And…would Susie want him to be around tonight?

  But Kirsty came through the front door then, carrying a casserole.

  ‘Hi,’ she told them. ‘Dinner in thirty minutes?’

  ‘We’re going out to dinner,’ Marcia said, sounding efficient.

  ‘Oh?’ Kirsty raised her eyebrows. ‘You, too?’ she asked Hamish.

  ‘Um…’

  ‘I shouldn’t put pressure on you,’ Kirsty told him. ‘But it would be better if you were here tonight.’

  ‘Why?’ Marcia demanded. ‘Why should Hamish stay?’

  Kirsty looked a bit taken aback at that, as if she hadn’t actually expected an argument.

  ‘To leaven the loaf,’ she said at last. ‘Susie’s miserable. We’ve searched a two-mile radius and Taffy’s nowhere. Taffy was supposed to be the little bit of Dolphin Bay she was taking away with her. Now there’s just Susie and Rose.’

  Not even Ernst and Eric, Hamish thought, leaning back on a suit of armour. Welcoming the sharp dig of a halberd in the small of his back.

  ‘Susie will be better off without a pup,’ Marcia said sharply. ‘The fewer encumbrances, the better.’

  Kirsty looked at her thoughtfully. Appraisingly. Then glanced sideways at Hamish, leaning wearily on his halberd.

  ‘You’re taking the assessor, Lachlan, out to dinner?’ she asked Marcia.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then can I ask that you, Marcia, take Lachlan out to dinner, and you, Hamish, stay here and see if you can cheer Susie up. Wear your kilt or something.’

  ‘I suspect there’s not a lot that’ll cheer Susie up,’ Hamish said.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But we can try.’

  Hamish hesitated.

  Marcia looked at her watch. She tapped her foot. She looked at Hamish and saw indecision. Or maybe…decision. There was one thing that could always be said about Marcia: she was good at sussing which way the wind was blowing. She was excellent at not wearing herself out fighting the inevitable.

  ‘I’ll go, then,’ she said, visibly annoyed. ‘Honestly, Hamish, someone has to keep a business head on their shoulders in this whole debacle.’

  ‘They do,’ he agreed, but he was watching Kirsty, seeing Kirsty’s disapproval, thinking how very like her twin she was. Was Susie vibrating with the same disapproval?

  Probably not, he thought. She’d be in her bedroom, sorting the last things she wanted to take from this place. She’d be thinking of Angus, or of Taffy, or of walking away from her vegetable garden and leaving her wonderful conservatory to be ripped apart. There’d be no room in her distraught mind for disapproval of one dumb would-be earl.

  ‘You’re not spending more time looking for the dog?’ Marcia was demanding, looking at him as if she didn’t know who he was any more. Which, come to think of it, was pretty much exactly how he was feeling about himself. ‘Everyone’s saying it’ll be dead.’

  ‘She’ll be dead,’ Kirsty said softly, and the look she gave Hamish then was slightly doubtful. ‘But we’ll give the grounds one more sweep after dinner.’

  ‘Miracles don’t happen,’ Hamish said flatly, and Kirsty gave him another odd look.

  ‘We’ll see. We certainly have enough pumpkins around here for a spell or two to happen.’ She shook herself, obviously perturbed that she was getting fanciful. ‘OK. I have a full casserole dinner ready to be brought in from the car, provided by the ladies of Dolphin Creek. Any crisis round here, sick baby, lost puppy, can’t solve yesterday’s crossword, you’ll be handed a casserole-so we have, at last count, eleven. Marcia, if you and Lachlan aren’t joining us, we’d better start now. We have a lot of eating to do.’

  It was a very strained meal. They had eleven casseroles. Between them they ate about half of one, and that was with Kirsty and Jake’s twins helping. The two little girls were the only bright company during the meal, but even their chatter was pointed.

  ‘Daddy, why does Aunty Susie have to go back to America?’

  ‘That’s where her home is.’

  ‘But her home is here.’

  ‘This castle belongs to Lord Hamish now,’ Jake told them gently.

  ‘But everyone says Lord Hamish doesn’t want it.’

  ‘Lord Hamish doesn’t have to want it,’ Susie told the girls, with only a hint of a tremor in her voice. ‘It’s just the way things are. It’s his, and I don’t belong here any more.’

  ‘But you’re our Auntie Susie,’ Alice said tremulously, and Penelope agreed.

  ‘We want you to stay. And you haven’t got a puppy to take home now. You’ll be really, really lonely.’

  ‘I’ll have Rose,’ Susie said, her voice strained to breaking point. She rose to fetch the coffeepot from the stove and started to pour. ‘Coffee, Hamish?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘None for me,’ Kirsty told her, and Susie stilled. She’d been facing the stove. Now she turned, very, very slowly, to face her twin.

  ‘You always have coffee after dinner.’

  ‘I… Not now.’ Kirsty seemed all at once uncomfortable and Susie’s face grew even more blank.

  ‘I was right,’ she said, and her voice was devoid of all expression. ‘At the fair. You deflected me with Taffy and I was so preoccupied I let myself be deflected. You’re pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, Susie,’ Kirsty said, her face twisting in distress.

  ‘That’s lovely news,’ Susie managed, and stooped to give her twin a hug. But there was no joy, Hamish thought, watching the tableau in incomprehension. What was going on?

  ‘I so didn’t want you to find out.’

  ‘Until when?’ Susie turned back to her coffee cups.

  ‘I thought…until you were settled back in America.’

  ‘Won’t this make a difference?’ Hamish asked, concerned. They both seemed on the edge of tears, but there were no tears. Just rigid control.

  ‘Sure,’ Kirsty said coldly. ‘Ask Susie to stay because I’m pregnant? How could I do that to her?’

  Easy, Hamish thought, remembering his mother and his aunts. He knew exactly how emotional blackmail was done.

  ‘I won’t ask for the same reason Susie hasn’t asked you not to sell the castle. Not to destroy the greenhouse. I bet she hasn’t, has she?’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘And if I did and you agreed?’ Susie said, suddenly fierce. ‘How do you think th
at’d make me feel for the rest of my life? And if Kirsty thought I was staying now just for the baby…she couldn’t bear it. That’s why she hasn’t told me. I don’t know where you come from, Hamish Douglas, but we don’t do emotional blackmail here.’ She swallowed and turned her back on him, facing her sister again. ‘You’re due when?’

  ‘Not until November. It’s early days yet.’

  ‘If I can, I’ll come back.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘To stay?’ Hamish said cautiously, and got another glare for his pains.

  ‘To visit. Like normal people do.’

  ‘But you guys are twins,’ he said, feeling helpless. ‘You should be together.’

  ‘They’ll be together for the birth,’ Jake said, putting his hand across the table to reach his wife, taking Kirsty’s hand in his and holding it firmly and with love. ‘If I have to sail across the Atlantic single-handed and haul Susie back here in chains, I promise you’ll be together for the birth. I’m covering the expenses and if Susie argues, then she’ll see what brothers-in-law are really made of.’

  ‘Oh, Jake,’ Susie said, choked.

  And Hamish thought, Here at last come the tears. But they didn’t. Susie stared at her sister and her brother-in-law for a long moment-and then went back to her coffee-making.

  With one mug of hot chocolate for the expectant mother.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KIRSTY and Jake and assorted kids left soon after. The arrangement was that they were taking Susie to the airport the next day-Jake had organised medical cover for the town from a locum service so both doctors could leave. They took all the kids home with them to give Susie a clear run with her packing.

  ‘We’ll be here at eight tomorrow to pick you up,’ Kirsty told her twin.

  ‘I’ll be ready,’ Susie promised.

  And Hamish thought once again, Why didn’t she cry? She should be crying.

  She cried at pumpkins. Why didn’t she cry now? Suddenly he thought he wanted her to cry. It’d be OK if she cried, he decided. It was the set, wooden expression on her face that he hated.

  He stood in the hall and waited while she waved them off from the front step, and he was waiting for her as she returned.

  ‘What would you like me to do?’ he asked softly, and she glanced at him with suspicion.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’ll go down to the beach, then,’ he said. ‘Just for a last check.’

  ‘Taffy’s dead.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m not stupid. Ten-week-old puppy in this terrain… I see things how they are, Hamish. Not how I want them to be.’

  ‘You should be able to hope…’

  ‘I gave up on that when I buried Rory,’ she said flatly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do.’

  ‘Can I help you pack?’ He should butt out, he thought. He was adding to her distress just by being here. He felt so damned helpless…

  ‘I would appreciate help in Angus’s room,’ she said, and then looked as if she regretted saying it.

  ‘What needs doing in Angus’s room?’

  ‘It’s just…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve never cleared it out. I mean, it all belongs to you but I thought…his personal stuff…most of it needs to be thrown away but I don’t want Marcia doing it.’ The last few words were said in a rush, fiercely, and he thought she’d burst into tears but she didn’t. She was pale and almost defiant, tilting her chin as though expecting to meet a fight.

  ‘Marcia’s the least sentimental of all of us,’ he said mildly and her chin came forward another inch.

  ‘All the more reason why she shouldn’t be the one who takes care of it.’

  So on a night when she should be doing her own personal packing, when the last vestiges of the search party made vain sweeps of the beach and the hillside looking for Taffy, when Kirsty and Jake cared for the kids so Susie could spend one night alone with her memories, she and Hamish sat on Angus’s bedroom floor and sorted…stuff.

  Stuff.

  Deirdre’s stuff and Angus’s stuff. The old man hadn’t cleared his wife’s things, and everything was still there.

  The clothes were easy. They’d go to the welfare shops. Hamish could be trusted with that so, with the exception of Angus’s kilt and sporran and beret, they were bundled into boxes to be carted away.

  But the kilt and beret and sporran… ‘I don’t know what to do with these,’ Susie whispered, holding up a kilt that was far too small for Hamish.

  Hamish fingered the fabric, watching the graceful fall of the pleats, thinking of the times Angus must have worn this, the number of fêtes he’d opened in this town, the affection in which he’d been held.

  ‘Is there a local museum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A library maybe?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Then why don’t we donate it as a display?’ he suggested. ‘I could donate the cost of a display cabinet. We could put Angus’s and Deirdre’s photos in it, photos that show them as they were, vibrant and having fun, and set this costume up beside it. Do you think the locals would like it?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. Had he said the wrong thing?

  Would she cry?

  She didn’t cry. ‘That’d be wonderful,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Can I leave it with you to see that it’s done?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She nodded, a brisk, businesslike little nod that had him wishing, wishing she’d falter a little, give him room…

  Room to what?

  ‘I’m not marrying Marcia,’ he said into the stillness, and her head jerked up from the papers she was sorting.

  ‘You’re what?’

  He hadn’t even known he was going to say it. He hadn’t even really thought about it.

  Or maybe he had.

  He’d approached marriage to Marcia as he approached business propositions, he thought. The marriage would be advantageous to both of them. But these last few days had been like the switching on of a lightbulb in a dimly lit room. Suddenly he could see colour where before he’d only seen grey.

  Suddenly he’d not only stopped fearing emotion, he was thinking a bit more emotion wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  Like Susie crying so he could hug her better?

  ‘Does Marcia know you’re not marrying her?’ Susie asked. Her head lowered again, and her voice dulled. She was in a grey world of her own right now, he thought, methodically packing stuff into boxes, lifting Angus’s papers, checking them, putting unwanted ones in a pile to be burned. Shifting the detritus of a past life. Absorbed in her own misery.

  ‘I’ll tell her tonight.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you left it until I was gone. She’s going to blame me.’

  ‘Why should she blame you?’

  There was a twisted smile at that. ‘I’m a corrupting influence,’ she said dryly. ‘I make you leave your Blackberry at home when we go to the beach.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, too,’ he said stoutly and then watched her for a bit more as she went back to sorting papers. ‘Susie, do you have to do this? I can do it after you leave.’

  ‘Angus would want me to. I should have done it before this. I just…I couldn’t bear to.’ She hesitated. ‘Will Marcia be upset, do you think?’

  He thought about it. Would Marcia be heartbroken? No. But maybe her pride would be hurt. ‘I think maybe I should have told her before I told you,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘Yeah, she’d hate that. Well, forget you told me. I’ll forget I know.’

  ‘I need you to know,’ he said softly, and it was true.

  Silence. She bent her head over her sheath of documents. A pile of notepaper, pastel blue.

  More silence. Where was he going here? He didn’t know.

  Five minutes ago he’d been engaged to Marcia. He still could be, he thought, confused. What he’d said didn’t have to go out of this room. It wasn’t irrevocable.

  But it was
irrevocable, and the more he thought about it the more irrevocable it seemed. Engaged? He wasn’t engaged to Marcia. Engaged meant entwined, linked, connected. He surely wasn’t entwined, linked, connected to Marcia.

  Tonight he’d watched Kirsty and Jake over the dinner table. He’d seen their eyes meet as they’d shared their distress. And that glance… It had been nothing, but it had meant everything.

  He wanted that sort of communication with the woman he married. He didn’t want to share a beach-towel with a laptop.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he told Susie, softly because he wasn’t sure what his head was doing-where his thoughts were taking him. He needed time to think this through.

  ‘These are personal. I need to sort them.’

  ‘I’ll pack them up and send them to you.’

  ‘No. You pack the clothes.’

  ‘Susie, you need to pack your own gear. The way you’re going you won’t get to bed tonight. It’s not as if you can sleep on the plane. Rose will be a full-time job.’

  ‘That’s not your business,’ she snapped.

  It wasn’t. But, hell, he couldn’t bear to see this.

  ‘There’s nothing so personal-’

  ‘These are letters,’ she cut across his protest, fiercely angry. ‘These are personal letters.’

  ‘Then maybe we shouldn’t read them at all.’

  ‘No.’ Her anger faded a little at that, but the pain seemed to remain. She was kneeling on the floor by Angus’s bedside cabinet, papers spread around her. Still in her shorts and T-shirt, with her hair tangled and wisping round her face-the last thing she’d thought of today had been brushing her hair-she looked absurdly young. How could this slip of a girl be a mother? Hamish wondered. How could she be a landscape gardener by herself? Susie against the world?

  ‘Listen to this,’ she said softly, and he paused in his folding of sweaters and let himself watch her face again. She was holding herself rigidly under control, he thought, so rigidly that at any minute it seemed she might crack.

  ‘Listen to what?’