The Earl's Convenient Wife (Harlequin Romance)

by Marion Lennox

  But Alasdair McBride was not a member of the island’s older folk. Nor was he really an islander.

  It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

  It did. It made her feel...

  Scared.

  ‘It does seem a shame to waste the rug. Do you want a nap before we head back?’ Alasdair was watching her—and the low-life was laughing again. But not laughing out loud. It was more a glint behind his eyes, a telltale quiver of the corners of his mouth, the way his eyes met hers...

  Laughter never seemed too far away. What did this man have to laugh about? she demanded of herself. Didn’t he know life was hard?

  But it wasn’t hard for him. This man was the Earl of Duncairn. He could laugh at what he wanted.

  He could laugh at her if he wanted. She couldn’t afford to respond.

  ‘It’s stopped raining and we’re getting out of here fast,’ she said with acerbity. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there are field glasses trained on this doorway right now. There’s no way I’m having the islanders conjecturing about my supposed love life.’

  ‘They’re conjecturing already,’ he told her. ‘And there’s hardly shame attached. We are married.’

  ‘We’re not married,’ she snapped again. ‘Do you want to see the otters again before we head back?’

  ‘Yes.’ The sun was shining again. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ she told him. ‘But keep twenty paces distant, Alasdair McBride, and no closer or this ring gets tossed in the burn.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ She’d touched him on the raw then; his face had even paled. She relented. Some things were too precious to even joke about.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t. Are you sure you don’t want it back?’

  ‘I don’t want it back,’ he told her. ‘I trust you. And you can trust me, Jeanie, whether it’s at twenty paces or a whole lot closer.’

  * * *

  A whole lot closer? There was the crux of the matter, she decided. He was too gorgeous for his own good.

  Her problem was, she thought as she lay in bed that night and stared up into the darkness...her major problem was that she wouldn’t mind getting a whole lot closer to Alasdair.

  Or just a bit?

  No. At three in the morning her mind was crystal clear and there was no way she could escape honesty. A whole lot closer was what she wanted.

  She was out of her mind. A whole lot closer was exactly what sensible Jeanie would never allow herself to think about.

  Except she was thinking about it. She was lying sleepless in the small hours. Alasdair’s wedding band lay on one finger, his ancestral signet lay on another and she felt...she felt...

  ‘Like a stupid serving maid having ideas above my station,’ she told herself crossly and threw back the covers and went to stare out of the window.

  She could see the sea from her bedroom. The moon was almost full, sending streams of silver across the water, almost into her room. It felt as if she could walk out of the bedroom and keep on walking...

  ‘As maybe you should if you feel like this,’ she told herself. ‘Use some brains.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  Above her, in the vast, imposing bedroom that had been the bedroom of Earls of Duncairn for centuries past, lay the current Earl of Duncairn. The four-poster bed was enormous. His bedroom was enormous. Eileen had giggled when she’d been making decisions about restoring the castle and she’d told Jeanie she wanted a bedroom fit for a lord. Together they’d chosen rich velvet drapes, tapestries, rugs, furnishings...

  To say it was lavish was an understatement. Apart from the servants’ rooms she used and had—with some difficulty—kept free from Eileen’s sumptuous plans, this castle was truly astonishing.

  ‘It’s enough to make its lord feel he can snap his fingers and any servant girl will come running,’ she said out loud and then she caught her breath with where her thoughts were taking her.

  This servant girl wouldn’t mind running—but this servant girl should turn and run as far from this castle as possible.

  ‘I was good today,’ she told herself. ‘I was sensible.

  ‘Excellent,’ she told herself. ‘That’s two days down, three hundred and sixty-three to go.’

  But... There was a voice whispering in the back of her head and it wasn’t a small voice, either. You’re married to him. It wouldn’t hurt.

  ‘Are you out of your mind? Of course it’ll hurt.’ She ran her fingers through her tangled curls and the signet ring caught and hurt. ‘Excellent,’ she told herself. ‘Just keep doing that. Pull your hair whenever you think of being an idiot.

  ‘And he doesn’t want you, anyway.’

  She let her mind drift back to her mind-set when she’d married Rory. She’d still been a kid when she’d married him. He’d been safe, he’d been kind, and when she’d taken her vows she’d felt...as if a new net had been closing over her? He’d protected her from her father, and she’d been grateful, but that hadn’t stopped her lying in bed at night after a wild night watching the telly feeling...was this all there was?

  Which was why, two years after Rory’s death, she’d been ripe for the picking. She had no doubt now that the only reason Alan had been attracted to her was to persuade his grandmother to give him money, but the means he’d used to attract... Excitement, adventure, travel had seemed a wild elixir, a drug impossible to resist, and by the time she’d woken to reality she’d been in so far it had been impossible to extricate herself.

  And now here she was, wanting to...wanting to...

  ‘I want nothing,’ she told herself. ‘For heaven’s sake, Jeanie, grow a little sense. Put your head in a bucket of cold water if you must, but do not walk headlong into another emotional mess.’

  * * *

  ‘Get some sense.’ On the floor above, in a bedroom so vast it made him feel ridiculous, Alasdair was staring at the slivers of moonlight lighting the dark and he was feeling pretty much the same.

  ‘If you sleep with her, how the hell are you going to extricate yourself? You’ll be properly married.

  ‘There’s no thought of sleeping with her.’

  But there was. No matter how much his head told him it was crazy, his body was telling him something else entirely.

  ‘It’s just this stupid honeymoon idea,’ he told himself. ‘I never should have instigated it. Leave her to get back to her work and you get back to yours.’

  Except...how long since she’d had a holiday? Yesterday and today she’d lit up. Clambering up the scree today, lying on the moss-covered rocks, watching the otters, she’d seemed younger, happier...free.

  What had two husbands done to her? What had they done for her?

  Saddled her with debt and regrets, that was what. Hell, she deserved a break.

  ‘But not with me.’ He said it out loud.

  He should call off this honeymoon idea. But no, he couldn’t do that. He’d told her they’d have a week.

  She could have a week, he thought. She could do whatever she wanted, just not with him.

  That’s not a honeymoon.

  ‘Right.’ He was talking into the dark. ‘It’s not and it’s not supposed to be.

  ‘You’ll tell her how?

  ‘Straight out. She’ll be relieved.

  And what was there in that that made his gut twist?

  Honesty. He could at least give her that. She deserved no less.

  She deserved...

  That he think seriously about what he was letting himself in for.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHOULD ONE MAKE a special dinner to celebrate a one-month anniversary?

  The weather had closed in, the sleet was driving from the north and she had no guests booked for the night. Jeanie was staring into the refrigerator, vacillating
between sausages or something fancy. She had beef in the freezer. She had mushrooms for guests’ breakfasts. She had excellent red wine, bought by Eileen and stocked in the castle larder.

  Beef Bourguignon was hardly Scottish, but she could serve the rest of the red wine alongside, and make a lovely mash, and maybe make a good apple pie as well. She had clotted cream...

  ‘And he’ll eat it at his desk as he’s eaten his dinner at his desk every night for the last month.’ She slumped down at the table. The two dogs put their noses on her knee and whined.

  ‘Yeah, the weather’s getting to you, too,’ she told them, but she knew it wasn’t that. She’d grown up with Duncairn weather. She usually enjoyed the gales that blasted the island, donning wellies and mac and walking her legs off, the dogs at her side.

  She’d walked her legs off this afternoon but it hadn’t stopped the feeling of...desolation?

  ‘Which is dumb,’ she told the dogs and gave herself a mental shake. ‘As is making any kind of anniversary dinner when all it means is that we’ve put up with each other for a month.

  ‘And it’s working okay,’ she added after a moment, as if she was reassuring herself.

  It was. Sort of. After the dumb idea of the honeymoon, which had lasted two days before he’d pulled out and she’d agreed with relief, Alasdair had decreed she have one day a week completely off. But not with him.

  Their lives had settled into a pattern. She cared for the castle and the guests. Alasdair worked in his rooms or he headed to Edinburgh for the day. When that happened his chopper would arrive at dawn and bring him back before dusk, so one of his precious nights of freedom wouldn’t be used up.

  He walked but he walked alone. He kept himself to himself and she did the same.

  He’d spent three nights in Hong Kong and it shouldn’t have made any difference, but it did. The castle was empty for his going.

  And now he was back. Today he was spending the entire day here. The weather was too rough for the chopper.

  He was trapped—and that was how she felt, too. She worked on but she was so aware of him overhead. It was as if the entire month had been building. Every sense was tuned...

  ‘And I’m getting stupid in my old age,’ she told the dogs. ‘I’m not a needy woman. I’m not.’ She stared around the kitchen in frustration. She needed more to do. Anything. Fast.

  Then the kitchen door swung open. Alasdair was standing there, in his casual trousers and sweater, his hair ruffled as if he’d raked it and raked it again.

  ‘Jeanie?’

  ‘Mmm?’ Somehow she made herself sound non-committal. Somehow.

  ‘This weather’s driving me nuts.’

  ‘You are on Duncairn.’

  ‘I am,’ he told her. ‘And I’m thinking at the end of eleven months I’ll be back in Edinburgh full-time and what will I have to show for these months? So I’m thinking...Jeanie, would you teach me to cook something other than spaghetti or risotto?’

  * * *

  If Duncairn had split in two and drifted in different directions in the sea, she couldn’t have been more astonished.

  ‘Cook,’ she said blankly and he gave her a lopsided smile.

  ‘If you would.’

  ‘Why?’

  Why? The question hung in the air between them. It needed an answer and Alasdair was searching for one.

  The fact that Jeanie was in the kitchen wasn’t enough—though it was certainly a factor.

  For the past month he’d put his head down and worked. Duncairn Enterprises took all his time and more. There seemed to be some sort of financial leak at head office. It was worrying, but over the past few weeks he’d almost welcomed it, sorting painstakingly through the remaining financial web his grandmother had controlled, rejecting the inclination to do anything else.

  This afternoon he’d thought, Why? He could call in outside auditors to do what he’d been doing. He wasn’t happy about letting outsiders look at possible financial problems of his grandmother’s making, but then his grandmother was past caring, and Jeanie was downstairs.

  So why not go downstairs and join her? It had been an insistent niggle and this afternoon it had become a roar. Because he didn’t want to get emotionally involved? He’d spent a month telling himself to form any sort of relationship would be courting catastrophe. If it didn’t work out and she walked, it would be a disaster. He knew the way forward was to move with caution.

  But for the past month he’d lived in the same house with Jeanie. He’d watched the dogs fly to meet her every time she left the house. He’d watched from his windows whenever she took them out, striding out across the pasture, stopping to speak to the cattle, the dogs wild with excitement at her side.

  He’d listened to her sing as she did the housework. He’d heard her laugh with the guests, or empathise with them about bad roads or lost suitcases or general travel fatigue.

  He’d eaten while he worked, separate from the other guests, working through a pile of papers a foot high, and he’d been aware of the aromas coming from the kitchen. He’d watched the dogs fly back and forth...

  And this afternoon he’d cracked. He stood at the kitchen door and felt mildly foolish but hell, he was here, he’d said it and he was seeing this through.

  And she’d asked why.

  ‘I’m fed up with playing Lord of the castle,’ he told her and she looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘You can hardly knock back the title. It’s what you are.’

  ‘While you play servant.’

  ‘That’s what I am.’

  ‘No.’ It was an explosion that had the dogs starting out from under the table. Abbot even ventured a feeble bark.

  ‘Your grandmother employed me to housekeep for the castle,’ Jeanie said mildly. ‘That’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years. I have one more year to go.’

  ‘You were Alan’s wife. You deserve—’

  ‘I deserve nothing for marrying Alan.’

  ‘My grandmother thought you did.’ Why was he getting into this conversation? He surely hadn’t intended to.

  ‘Your grandmother was kind and sentimental and bossy. She felt sorry for me, end of story. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on...’

  ‘Cooking. What do you intend to cook?’

  ‘You’re the only guest in the house tonight. What would you like me to cook?’

  ‘I’m not a guest.’

  ‘No, but in my mind that’s how I’m seeing you. It keeps me sane. Now...requests? Sausages? Beef Bourguignon? Anything else that strikes your fancy?’

  She was wearing a pink, frilly apron over her jeans and windcheater. It was tied with a big bow at the back, almost defiantly, as if she knew the bow was corny but she liked it anyway. She really was impossibly cute, he thought. Jeanie Lochlan, Domestic Goddess. Jeanie McBride...

  His wife.

  ‘Singing hinnies,’ he told her. ‘And I want to make them.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Do you know how to make them?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re asking me, an islander born and bred, if I know how to make singing hinnies?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Of course you do.’

  ‘My granny’s singing hinnies were famous.’

  ‘Is the recipe a family secret?’

  ‘Possibly.’ She eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Though some might say you’re family now.’

  And what was there in that to give him hope? He almost took the apron Jeanie took from the pantry and offered him. But it was pink, too. Did she expect him to wear a bow as well?

  ‘You’ll get batter on your lovely sweater.’

  ‘I have more.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ she retorted and he looked at her—just looked.

  ‘Oops,’ she said and o
ut peeped one of her gorgeous smiles. ‘Servant giving master lip. Servant needs to learn to shut up.’

  ‘Jeanie?’

  ‘Yes...sir?’

  ‘Teach me to cook,’ he demanded and she saluted and her smile widened. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘What you’re told, My Lord,’ she retorted. ‘Nothing else.’

  * * *

  He made singing hinnies and ‘awesome’ was too small a word for it. There was no explaining it. Either he was a natural-born cook or...

  Or Jeanie was the world’s best teacher. She certainly was good. She stood and instructed as he rubbed the butter into flour, as he made the perfect batter, as he heated the griddle on the stove, greased it with lard and finally popped his hinnie on to cook. It hissed and spluttered and rose. He flipped it over and it was done. Perfection! He placed it on a plate in the range’s warming drawer and went on to make another, feeling about ten feet tall.

  Closing a million-dollar deal against a business rival had never felt this good.

  And then, when the last hinnie was on the plate, Jeanie put a teapot, mugs and butter and jam on a plate.

  ‘My sitting room or yours?’ she asked and that was a statement to give a man hope as well. He’d never been in Jeanie’s tiny apartment. He’d seen it on the plans, a bedroom with a small living space specifically designed for a housekeeper. To be invited... Boundaries were certainly being shifted.

  The castle was magnificent, lavish, amazing. Jeanie’s apartment...wasn’t. He stepped through the door and blinked. Gone were the opulent colours, drapes, rugs, furnishings of the ancient and historical treasure that was Duncairn Castle. This was just...home.

  The dogs bounded in before him and nosedived to the hearth. The fire was crackling, emitting a gentle heat. The room was faded, homey, full of books and magazines and odds and sods: seashells in chipped bowls, photos in unmatched frames, ceramic dogs and the odd shepherdess—what was it with ceramic shepherdesses?—an old cuckoo clock, squashy furniture... All discards, he thought, from the rest of the castle, removed as Eileen had spent a fortune on redecorating.