he growled and heard Elspeth’s shocked silence. What a statement!
But she regrouped fast. She was good, was Elspeth. ‘I’ve been busy but this has been relatively simple,’ she told him. ‘From what I’ve found there’s nothing to get in the way of having a very good time. No criminal record. Nothing. There’s just one major hiccup in her past.’
And he already knew it. ‘Bankruptcy?’
‘You knew?’
‘I... Yes.’ But how long for? Some things weren’t worth admitting, even to Elspeth. ‘But not the details. Tell me what you have. As much as you have.’
‘Potted history,’ she said. Elspeth had worked for him for years and she knew he’d want facts fast. ‘Jeanie Lochlan was born twenty-nine years ago, on Duncairn. Her father is supposedly a fisherman, but his boat’s been a wreck for years. Her mother sounds like she was a bit of a doormat.’
‘Where did you get this information?’ he demanded, startled. This wasn’t facts and figures.
‘Where does one get all local information?’ He could hear her smiling. ‘The post office is closed today, so I had to use the publican, but he had time for a chat. Jeanie’s mother died when she was sixteen. Her father proceeded to try to drink himself to death and he’s still trying. The local view is that he’ll be pickled and stuck on the bar stool forever.’
So far he knew...well, some of this. He knew she was local. ‘So...’ he said cautiously.
‘When she was seventeen Jeanie got a special dispensation to marry another fisherman, an islander called Rory Craig,’ Elspeth told him. ‘I gather she went out with him from the time her mam died. By all reports it was a solid marriage but no kids. She worked in the family fish shop until Rory drowned when his trawler sank. She was twenty-three.’
And that was more of what he hadn’t known about. The details of the first marriage. He’d suspected...
He’d suspected wrong.
‘I guess she wouldn’t be left all that well-off after that marriage,’ he ventured and got a snort for his pains.
‘Small family fishing business, getting smaller. The trawler sank with no insurance.’
‘How did you get all this?’ he demanded again.
‘Easy,’ Elspeth said blithely. ‘I told the publican I was a reporter from Edinburgh and had heard Lord Alasdair of Duncairn was marrying an islander. He was happy to tell me everything—in fact, I gather the island’s been talking of nothing else for weeks. Anyway, Rory died and then she met your cousin. You must know the rest.’
‘Try me.’
‘You mean you don’t?’
‘Eileen didn’t always tell me...’ In fact, she’d never told Alasdair anything about Alan. There’d been animosity between the boys since childhood and Eileen had walked a fine line in loving both. ‘And Jeanie keeps herself to herself.’
‘Okay. It seems your gorgeous cousin visited the island to visit his gran—probably to ask for money, if the company ledgers are anything to go by. He met Jeanie, he took her off the island and your grandmother paid him to marry her.’
‘I...beg your pardon?’
‘I’m good,’ she said smugly. ‘But this was easy, too. I asked Don.’
Don.
Alasdair had controlled the day-to-day running of the firm for years now, but Don had been his grandparents’ right-hand man since well before Alasdair’s time. The old man still had a massive office, with the privileges that went with it. Alasdair had never been overly fond of him, often wondering what he was paid for, but his place in his grandparents’ affections guaranteed his place in the company, and gossip was what he lived for.
‘So Don says...’ Elspeth started, and Alasdair thought, This is just more gossip, I should stop her—but he didn’t. ‘Don says soon after Alan met Jeanie, he took her to Morocco. Eileen must have been worried because she went to visit—and Alan broke down and told her the mess he was in. He was way over his head, with gambling debts that’d make your eyes water. He’d gone to the castle to try to escape his creditors—that’s when he met Jeanie—and then he’d decided to go back to Morocco and try to gamble his way out of trouble. You can imagine how that worked. But he hadn’t told Jeanie. She still had stars in her eyes—so Eileen decided to sort it.’
‘How did she sort it?’ But he already knew the answer.
‘I’d guess you know.’ Elspeth’s words echoed his thoughts. ‘That was when she pulled that second lot of funds from the company, but she gave it to Alan on the understanding that no more was coming. She was sure Jeanie could save him from himself, and of course Alan made promise after promise he never intended to keep. I’m guessing Eileen felt desperate. You know how she loved your cousin, and she saw Jeanie as the solution. Anyway, after his death Eileen would have helped Jeanie again—Don says she felt so guilty she made herself ill—but Jeanie wouldn’t have any of it. She had herself declared bankrupt. She accepted a minimal wage from Eileen to run the castle, and that’s it. End of story as far as Don knows it.’ She paused. ‘But, Alasdair, is this important? And if it is, why didn’t you ask Don before you married her? Why didn’t you ask her?’
Because I’m stupid.
No, he thought grimly. It wasn’t that. He’d known Alan gambled. He knew the type of people Alan mixed with. If he’d enquired... If he’d known for sure that Jeanie was exactly the same as Alan was, with morals somewhere between a sewer rat and pond scum, he’d never have been able to marry her.
Except he had believed that. He’d tried to suppress it, for the good of the company, for the future of the estate, but at the back of his mind he’d branded her the same as he’d branded Alan.
‘She still married him,’ he found himself muttering. How inappropriate was it to talk like this to his secretary about...his wife? But he was past worrying about appropriateness. He was feeling sick. ‘She must have been a bit like him.’
‘Don said Eileen said she was a sweet young thing who was feeling trapped after her husband died,’ Elspeth said. ‘She was working all hours, for Eileen when your grandmother was on the island but also for the local solicitor, and cleaning in her husband’s family’s fish shop as well. Being paid peanuts. Trying to pay off the debt left after her husband’s trawler sank with no insurance. She was bleak and she was broke. Don thinks Alan simply seduced her off the island. You know how charming Alan was.’
He knew.
He sat at the chair in front of Eileen’s dresser and stared at himself in the mirror. The face that looked back at him was gaunt.
What had he done?
‘But it’s lovely that you’ve married her,’ Elspeth said brightly now. ‘Doesn’t she deserve a happy ending? Don said she made Eileen’s last few months so happy.’
She had, he conceded. He’d been a frequent visitor to the castle as his grandmother neared the end, and every time he’d found Jeanie acting as nursemaid. Reading to her. Massaging her withered hands. Just sitting...
And
