bed, then perhaps you can help her. The poor woman was but a child when these tragic events that have shaped both your lives took place—as indeed were you, though I know you do not agree with me on that score. You are in the unique position of being able to help each other. I beg you to try to do so.
As to the rest. Robert Alexander can answer any questions about my proposal for Strone Bridge’s future, which my documentation leaves unanswered. It is not pride—well, only a little!—that leads me to ask you to consider this, but a genuine belief that it will help save your estates and the people who live there. I’d like to think I’ve left something of value behind. I hope it’s obvious how much I have come to love the place and the people.
I leave it to you to manage the termination of our agreement in whatever way you think best. I leave Strone Bridge a much stronger person than the poor wee soul you met at the lawyer’s office all those months ago. I leave it ready to do battle with whatever the future holds, and confident that I can. You have helped me in too many ways to list. I do not regret a second spent with you. With all my heart I wish you happiness, because you’re wrong, Innes, it is something you well and truly deserve.
A.
Innes finished reading the letter, then started all over again, as if a second reading would change the content. He looked up from the breakfast table to discover Mhairi was still there, watching him with such an expression of compassion on her face that he knew there was no point in pretending.
‘Do you know when—or how—she left?’ Innes asked.
‘Eoin took her at first light. She left me a note asking to have the rest of her things sent on.’
‘Where to?’
‘It is a carrier’s address in Edinburgh.’
Innes looked at the housekeeper helplessly. ‘I don’t even know if she’s got any money. She has her allowance, but—I’ll need to— I’ll have to arrange to— She’ll need a place to stay. I...’
‘I think Mrs Drummond’s more than capable of sorting that out for herself, if you don’t mind my saying,’ Mhairi interrupted drily. ‘It seems to me that you’d better concentrate on sorting yourself out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Blanche Caldwell is back at Glen Vadie, did you know?’
Innes tore his eyes away from a third, fruitless reading of Ainsley’s missive. ‘At Glen Vadie? No, I didn’t know. She wrote me a letter, though.’
‘Does Mrs Drummond know?’
‘About the letter?’
‘About Blanche, Innes,’ Mhairi spoke sharply. ‘If that good woman has gone haring back to Edinburgh to leave the way clear for you to pick up where you never should have started with that Caldwell woman...’
‘Dear God, do you think that’s it?’ For a moment, his heart leaped. If that was all it was, he could fetch her back. But for what purpose, and for how long? Innes slumped back miserably in his chair. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he demanded, seeing Mhairi, arms akimbo, was still there. ‘She’s gone, and she’s made it very clear she won’t be coming back, so go and pack her things and leave me in peace.’
* * *
But peace was not something Innes could find over the next few days. On the one hand, he was tracking Ainsley’s journey in his mind, wondering where she was, who she was with, whether she was thinking of him, whether she was missing him as he ached for her. On the other, he was determinedly trying to put her firmly out of his mind and refusing to allow himself to think about what was staring him in the face—or, more accurately, fighting to be heard from his heart.
He did love her. He had, despite all his best efforts, fallen completely in love with her. He loved her in a way he had never loved Blanche, as if she were part of himself. Without her, he felt as if that part was missing. It did not help that every corner of Strone Bridge reminded him of her. It did not help, lying in her bed, the scent of her on the pillow. It did not help, avoiding her favourite view, any more than it helped forcing himself to stare at it. Mhairi’s tight-lipped disapproval didn’t help any more than her misguided attempts to comfort him, or Eoin’s insistence that when he left her on the Isle of Bute, Ainsley had been ‘very well’, whatever that meant. Innes hoped she was very well. It was wrong of him to hope that she was as miserable as he, wrong of him to hope that she missed him as much, ached for him as much, loved him as much.
She had never said the words, but he was standing on the castle terrace looking out at the Kyles of Bute when he realised that she did love him, and it hit him then, how much he was wilfully throwing away. What was wrong with him? Looking up at the tower, he remembered exactly what was wrong with him. Standing in front of Malcolm’s grave a while later confirmed it. Guilt. The demons of the past. Ainsley was right.
Something glinted in the browning grass by the stone. Stooping to pick it up, Innes found a brooch. A simple thing of silver, with a name etched into it. He recognised it, for she had always worn it. So she had been here. He wondered how she’d managed it without his knowing, but it wasn’t much of a puzzle. Mhairi or Eoin, or both.
Finally, Innes allowed himself to consider the advice Ainsley had left him in her letter. Heading back to the Home Farm, he read it again. And again. He found the keys on the desk where Ainsley had left them. The tower key, he still had in his coat pocket. In the Great Hall, all Ainsley’s plans were still there as she had laid them out for him. So much work. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been not to see the love that had gone into it. He felt sick to the back teeth thinking of how ungrateful he’d sounded, how much it must have hurt her to have it all thrown back in her face.
He lit a lamp and picked it up. At the doorway, goosebumps prickled on his arms. Mhairi always said there was no mistaking what she called a presence. It grew cold, she said, as if you’d walked into an icehouse, and you got a sense of it, like a breath of wind over your shoulder. Innes whirled round, but there was nothing there.
The lock turned easily. He climbed the stairs slowly, his feet remembering the twists and turns as if it had been yesterday, and not fourteen years since last he was there. Past the first-floor landing and then the second. The door at the top was closed. Heart pounding, he took a deep breath, pushed it open and stepped inside.
Nothing. Standing on the threshold, lamp held high, he felt absolutely nothing of his brother’s presence. Mouth dry, he made his way over to the window. The view, in the gloaming, was as Ainsley had always said: spectacular. He opened the casement and forced himself to look down. The ground rose up to meet him, dizzying. Innes drew back hurriedly, looking over his shoulder, feeling like an idiot but unable to stop himself.
No Malcolm. Instead, he saw the table, so carefully set out. The scale model that Robert must have made of the castle and its grounds, the tied cottages, the newly landscaped gardens. Setting the lamp down, Innes pulled up a chair, picked up the sheaf of papers covered in Ainsley’s distinctive scrawl and began to read.
Edinburgh, two weeks later
Ainsley put down the book she thought she’d been reading when she realised she’d been turning pages for the past half hour and could remember not a single word. Getting up from the nest of cushions and blankets she’d made for herself on Felicity’s worn but comfortable sofa, she wandered over to the window. Outside, the streets of Edinburgh’s New Town were quiet, for it was the Sunday after Christmas, and the church bells of St Andrew’s and St George’s
