He didn’t want anything to mess this up. Nothing at all.
He stood up. The boxes. He still hadn’t had a chance to go through Angus’s boxes. He had to do it now. Time was running out. He might have access to these things now, but in a matter of days he would have to walk away from Annick Castle and leave everything behind. He had to use the opportunity to find out what he could now.
He pulled a shirt over his head and some trousers on. He would do it now while Laurie slept. There was no point disturbing his sleeping Cinderella.
* * *
Her eyes flickered open and for a second she was startled. For the last few days she’d woken in a room with a peaceful yellow colour scheme. The pale themes of blue unsettled her. Her reactions were instantaneous. She pulled the sheet over her naked body and flipped over onto her back.
Nothing. No one.
Callan wasn’t there.
She was instantly caught by the pain in her chest. The expanse of the bed seemed huge. The dip where he should be lying seemed like a giant chasm. Where was he? Was he embarrassed? Was he ashamed of what had happened last night? Why wasn’t he still lying here next to her?
Her beautiful pale pink chiffon dress was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Robin would have a fit. Her gold glitter sandals were strewn across the floor, obviously left exactly where they’d fallen. She cringed as she looked around the rest of the room. Even though this was obviously Callan’s room, there was no visible sign of him.
It made her stomach churn. She pulled the sheet around her like a toga as she stood up and her eyes swept the room. There was nothing else for her to wear except the clothes she’d discarded last night. And who knew where her underwear was?
She rummaged around the floor eventually finding her bra and pants and pulling them on. Her Liesl dress was a crumpled wreck. It seemed to echo exactly how she felt. Talk about doing the next-day walk of shame.
Thankfully the corridor was empty. She fled down the staircase as quickly as possible and slammed her door closed behind her.
Her half-empty rucksack lay on the floor. Going home. After the announcement today she would be going home.
Her eyes filled with tears. Everything last night with Callan had been perfect. But deep down both of them had known they were saying goodbye.
How could there be a happy ever after for them? What on earth did she expect to happen?
She pulled out some clothes. A pair of Capri pants and a slightly wrinkled shirt that she’d already worn. If she’d thought about it a bit more she could have asked Marion where she could launder her clothes. But there was no point now. No point because she wasn’t staying.
There was something pushed under the doorway. She’d completely missed it. She tore the envelope open. Was it from Callan?
Of course it wasn’t. He’d left her sleeping alone in his room; why would he push a note under her door? It was from Robin. Asking her to write the name of the person she suspected as the murderer and return it to him before eleven that morning.
That was easy. She grabbed a pen and scribbled the name. She didn’t even have to think about it.
Part of her wanted to hide away in her room. Her room. It wasn’t her room. It was part of the castle. After today she would probably never see this place again and it was about time she accepted that.
She’d probably never see Callan again. But that thought made her legs buckle and left her sitting on the window seat looking out at the crashing sea.
The rain was battering down outside. It was the first day of bad weather she’d experienced here and all of a sudden she felt very sorry for the bygone smugglers. It must be terrifying down at the caves in weather like this. She could feel the wind whistle through the panes of glass. The temperature was distinctly lower. Or maybe it was just her mood.
It was time to step away from Annick Castle and Callan McGregor. It was time to go back to London and sort her life out.
One thing hadn’t changed. She didn’t want to be a lawyer any more and she needed to take steps to make a change. She could do that. She could do that now.
Annick Castle had changed her. It had given her some perspective on life. Meeting some of her unknown relatives had been enlightening.
She would have preferred it if some of them had remained unknown. But there was a few she had felt some kind of affinity towards. She would love to go and visit her auntie Mary in Ireland some time. She would love to show her some more pictures of her father so she could see the family resemblance between the two of them.
As for Angus McLean? She’d grown tired of wondering why he’d abandoned his children. She’d grown tired of wondering why he’d been able to show love to some unknown child, then split his heart in two with the contents of his will.
She’d grown tired of it all.
* * *
There was a thin layer of dust over the boxes. No one had touched them in years.
He’d found them in the back of a cupboard in Angus’s room, hidden amongst shoes and old smoking jackets. He’d been curious at first, wondering if they would reveal something about Angus’s unacknowledged children.
But they were something else entirely.
Medical files. And lots of them.
It took Callan a few minutes to work out what he was looking at. At first they seemed totally random. Patients allocated numbers instead of names. They were ancient—some more than seventy years old. And the initial sense of unease he’d felt at looking at someone’s medical files rapidly diminished.
The files all seemed to have one thing in common. A big red stamp with deceased across the front.
But there was more than that. All of these people seemed to have died within a very short period of time. A window of six months back in the 1940s just after the Second World War had ended.
It took him a little longer to work out entirely what they were telling him.
Angus’s father had owned a pharmaceutical company. These were all records of drug trials. Nowadays clinical drug trials were scrutinised, monitored and regulated beyond all recognition. Seventy-five years ago—not so much.
And whatever drug these people had been trialling seemed to have had an extreme adverse effect. All the patients taking it had died within six months.
All except one. Patient X115. Otherwise known as Angus McLean.
It was a horrible moment of realisation. Scribbled notes were all over the file that was obviously Angus’s.
Scribbled notes that revealed that as one drug trial patient after another died, Angus McLean had fully expected to die himself within a few months.
He’d had no idea what was wrong with the medication, but all the other patients—twenty of them—had died within a short space of time.
Callan leaned back against the desk. He’d been sitting on the floor, the files scattered all around him. People had been paid a fee all those years ago to take part in drug trials. Things weren’t so carefully monitored. And although the medical files were full of things he didn’t understand, there were a few things that he did understand.
According to the post-mortem results most of the patients had died of some kind of accelerated blood disorder. Angus McLean had thought he was living on borrowed time. He’d fully expected to die along with the rest of the group.
Except he hadn’t. He’d outlived them all by almost seventy years.
Was this the reason? The reason why he hadn’t had contact with his children, but had instead made some kind of financial recompense?
From the dates he could see, at least three of his children had been born during wartime. Communications were limited. It wasn’t like today where a ping of an email signified the arrival of a message from halfway round the globe. He’d moved around a lot during, and directly after, the war. It was entirely possible that Angus hadn’t found
out about some of his children until after the war—right around the time he’d just taken part in the disastrous drug trial.
Callan’s head was spinning. He couldn’t really draw any conclusions from this. He was guessing.
But Angus had been a gentle-natured man. Callan didn’t really want to believe he’d deliberately left his children without a father. But how would Angus have coped, forming a relationship with these children, whilst he was living in fear he would die at any moment? Leave them to suffer the bereavement of losing their dad? Maybe, if Angus had died quickly, it would have been better not to meet them. And although he didn’t agree with it, he could maybe understand it a little better.
* * *
But Angus would never have left his children unsupported. That did seem like something he would do. Provide for them. And if this was the only explanation Callan could find, then he’d take it.
Maybe he’d thought leaving them Annick Castle would make up for the fact they hadn’t had a father figure in their lives. How had he felt as one year after another had passed? Had he realised he’d managed to run the gauntlet that the others in the drug trial had failed?
Callan leaned forward. There was a collection of black-and-white photos at the bottom of the box. Some of women. Some of children. One, a picture of Angus with his arm around a woman.
This was it. This was the only sign that Angus McLean actually had family. No letters. No gushy cards. No sentimental keepsakes.
Callan felt a rush of unease at the similarities between himself and Angus.
If someone searched his personal belongings what would they find? No pictures or memorabilia about his father. No trace of the man at all. One slightly crumpled picture of his mother, along with an album of family snaps of him as a baby or a young boy accompanied by an unknown arm holding him, or a set of unidentified legs.
He opened the lid of the other box, fully expecting to find similar contents. But this was different. This held a leather-bound photo album.
He opened the first page. It was some old pictures of Angus as a young boy with his mother and father. Family snaps had obviously been few and far between then.
He flipped the pages. Angus as he was growing up. In school uniform. In hunting gear. In his army uniform. In a dinner suit.
And then there was Callan. As a small child sitting at the kitchen table that still existed, laughing heartily with Angus laughing next to him. Callan had no recollection of the picture ever being taken, but that tiny snapshot in time struck him like a bullet through his heart.
He flicked again. Him and Angus on every page. Fishing. Horse-riding. Sitting in the grounds. Digging the gardens with Bert. Standing on the cannons in the castle grounds. Sailing across the swan pond in the most rickety paddle boat that ever existed. It had subsequently sunk to the bottom of the pond never to be seen again.
Callan standing at the castle doors holding some kind of certificate in his hands. He had a vague recollection of it being his exam results that gained him his place at university. All little moments in time.
He’d been feeling annoyed. He’d been feeling spurned by the fact Angus wouldn’t sell him Annick Castle. Deep down he’d been hurt that Angus hadn’t considered him in his will.
But here it was. Captured for posterity. Exactly what Angus had left him.
A life.
A safe haven.
Love.
The things he’d needed to shape him and become his own man.
A tear dripped down his face.
Now he understood.
He’d always known how much he’d owed Angus. But here was something to cherish and keep. To help him remember that memories were more precious than material things. None of Angus’s children had shared any of these moments with him.
The gift that Angus had left him was the most precious of all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE GONG SOUNDED dead on eleven. Laurie had never heard the gong used before. She’d noticed it standing in the entrance hall and wondered what it had ever been used for. It was almost like the start of one of those movies, except Robin wasn’t dressed in a loincloth.
Everyone was gathering in the drawing room. It seemed to be the room where Angus’s relatives had spent most of their time.
The rain was battering the windows with a ferocity she’d never seen. It seemed fitting on a day like this. It was almost as if the weather could read how she was feeling.
She filed in and took a seat. Frank, the family lawyer, was standing in the corner of the room. He looked as if he wanted to be sick. Robin stood next to him along with the guy John who had been playing the butler, and the girl who’d been murdered on Friday night.
There was the sound of hurried footsteps outside. Callan appeared with Marion and Bert by his side. It was only fitting. They should all hear who would own Annick Castle together.
Her eyes fixed on the floor. After Callan had abandoned her in the bedroom she didn’t even want to look him in the eye. She certainly didn’t want to have a conversation with him in front of anyone else. Whatever she had to say to Callan she could say in private before she left.
But Callan seemed to have entirely different thoughts.
He crossed the room in a matter of seconds, sitting on the chaise longue next to her. ‘Laurie, I’m sorry. I had to go and look through Angus’s papers this morning. You won’t believe what I’ve found.’
What? Her head whipped up. She couldn’t help but frown. ‘But you left this morning.’ She shook her head. ‘I woke up and you were gone.’ She couldn’t hide the confusion in her voice. And she didn’t care what he’d found.
He smiled, obviously unaware of the turmoil she’d felt. ‘You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you. I meant to come back and bring you breakfast in bed, but once I started going through Angus’s boxes I just lost all track of time.’
There was no time to reply. No time to try and think clearly. Frank cleared his throat loudly. ‘Thank you for gathering here this morning. In accordance with Angus McLean’s will, today we will reveal who has inherited Annick Castle. Once the announcement is made, we will make suitable arrangements for a DNA test to be carried out to confirm the family connection. Once this has been confirmed, the process of passing on Annick Castle will take a few weeks.’
Frank looked around the room. He was clutching cards in his hands—the cards where everyone had written who they thought had carried out the murder.
He was obviously feeling the strain. The colour in his face was rising, probably in line with his blood pressure. He gave a nervous smile. ‘It turns out that only one person correctly identified the murderer. There was provision in the will if more than one person had guessed correctly, but that won’t be necessary now.’
Heads were glancing around the room. Everyone wondering who had been right. ‘So, who was the murderer?’ Craig snapped, the tension obviously getting too much for him.
Frank nodded. ‘The murderer was John. The butler did it,’ he said simply.
There were gasps around the room, along with several expletives.
‘That’s not fair!’
‘I hardly spoke to him.’
‘He was only ever in the background.’
‘I never even had a conversation with him!’
Robin was instantly on the defensive. ‘We conducted everything with absolute precision. The clues were all there if you looked for them.’
Laurie was frozen. Her throat dried in an instant. She couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t hear because the thudding in her ears was getting louder and louder. Sweat. She’d never experienced sweat like it. Appearing instantly all over her body, running down the length of her back and collecting between the cups of her bra. She was freezing. She felt as if someone had just plucked up her body and dropped her in the raging sea ou
tside.
People were still ranting. Callan was just frozen in the chair beside her, holding his breath while he waited for the announcement.
The announcement that would mean any chance they had of having any kind of relationship would disappear in an instant.
Frank’s grey eyes locked on hers. ‘Congratulations, Laurie. Pending a DNA test, Annick Castle is yours.’
The room erupted.
‘It’s a fix!’
‘She’s obviously in league with Frank—you lawyers stick together.’
‘She’s hardly even been here!’
‘She’s in cahoots with that man—Callan. The rest of us never really stood a chance!’
She felt numb. There was good reason she didn’t like some of her relatives. Her vibes about most of them hadn’t been wrong. Any tiny flicker of doubts she’d had about the personality traits of some her relatives were now being revealed in 3D multicolour. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The air was coming in, but she couldn’t get it back out.
From the corner of her eye she saw her auntie Mary give her a little smile and blow her a kiss. She was sitting on the other side of the room and her elderly bones couldn’t possibly navigate the melee between them.
It was the first sign of hope. The first glimmer of a good-luck wish.
She was scared to look sideways. She was scared to look at Callan. Part of her wished he’d jumped up to defend her once the rabble had started. But he hadn’t—he’d been silent.
Frank was trying to push his way through the crowd. At this point it looked as if he might be trampled by the objectors.
She stood up and turned to face Callan.
He hadn’t moved. He looked shell-shocked. The smile on his face earlier had vanished. His green eyes lifted and met hers.
She could read everything on his face and in his eyes. He’d been taking steps forward. He’d been trying to move past the fact that Annick Castle would be inherited by someone else. And he’d been getting there. In tiny baby steps.
The Heir of the Castle (Harlequin Romance) Page 14