For it was working. He spent his days immersed in doing what he’d been doing ever since his grandfather had taken him into the company’s headquarters. That had always been his way of blocking out...life? He’d hated his parents’ life, the life he’d been born to. His engagement to Celia had been an unmitigated disaster. When he’d realised how much she’d taken from him and how stupid he’d been, he’d backed into his world of business and he loved it. The cut and thrust of the financial world, where he knew the odds, where he held the cards, where he knew when to play and when to walk away... It was where he wanted to be.
The financial leaks he was dealing with now were troubling but intriguing. They were taking most of his attention, but gloriously, unexpectedly, Jeanie was fitting into the edges. She didn’t intrude. She kept to herself but when he wanted her she was there. His perfect woman...
And then Elspeth dropped her bombshell.
* * *
If Jeanie Lochlan was Alasdair’s perfect wife, Elspeth was his perfect secretary. She was the one person in his business world he trusted absolutely, and when she rang one afternoon and asked could she see him, the answer had to be ‘of course’. The chopper was in Edinburgh. ‘It’ll be quicker if I come to you,’ she told him. ‘I need to talk face-to-face.’
The vague worries he’d been confronting for the past few weeks coalesced into a knot of trouble.
‘I’ll talk when I get there. There are too many ears in this place.’ She disconnected and he stared at nothing.
The dogs were waiting for their walk and Jeanie was waiting with them. He joined her and he walked but his mind was all over the place.
‘Is something wrong?’ Jeanie asked as they reached the clifftops and he realised he hadn’t spoken since they’d left the castle.
‘I... No. My secretary’s flying in at two. If needs be, can we put her up for the night?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s your castle,’ she said gently, but he was no longer listening. He was playing scenarios out in his mind. Something was badly wrong. He knew it.
‘Can I help?’ she asked and he shook his head again and managed a smile.
‘That’d be like me offering to fix your burned scones.’
‘You can share my burned scones,’ she told him, but she said it so lightly he hardly heard and his mind was off on tangents again.
She said little more. They returned to the house. She headed for the kitchen and closed the door behind her. He hesitated and then followed her.
‘Jeanie, I might not be down to play host this evening.’
‘We can cope without you,’ she said, giving him a bright smile. ‘The dogs and I put on a glorious welcome all by ourselves.’
‘You lack the kilt.’
‘We lack the title, too,’ she said and her smile became a little more relaxed. ‘The punters want to see the Earl of Duncairn, but they’ll have to cope with portraits today. Isn’t that the chopper landing?’
It was. He nodded and headed out to see it land.
He’d been right to be worried. Elspeth was distressed. As soon as he met her he could see the rigidity in her face, the fact that this was bad. He led her inside.
‘Can I get you some tea? Jeanie could make us—’
‘I don’t want your wife bothered. Does she know about the business?’
‘No.’
‘Then let’s leave it like that. The less people who know about this, the better. Alasdair, it’s Don.’
‘Don?’ His grandmother’s friend? ‘What on earth...?’
‘You know your grandparents gave him total trust? Last month you asked for the accounts to be audited, for everything your grandmother oversaw to be checked to make sure there weren’t any gaps that hadn’t been filled. The accounts that went through your grandmother’s office were the only ones not subject to company scrutiny. Now it seems...’ She took a deep breath. ‘It seems you were right in your suspicions. You’ve been wondering for years how the Antica Corporation seem to be second-guessing us. They haven’t been guessing. There’s been an income stream from them flowing straight to Don’s bank account.’
‘Straight...’
‘Well, not straight.’ Elspeth handed over a folder. ‘He couldn’t do that, because the tax people would have caught him, so he’s been streaming cash through the company accounts. Until Eileen’s death the order’s always been to leave Don’s affairs to Don—maybe it was a measure of your grandparents’ trust in him. So Don’s financial dealings with the company have been audited for the first time ever. He’s hidden it incredibly carefully. They’ve had to probe and probe, but finally it’s exposed, and it’s a hornet’s nest. There’s talk of insider trading—Don’s been buying shares of companies we’ve dealings with and he’s been buying them with money coming from Eileen’s charity funds. There’s so much... This has ramifications as far as the eye can see. The auditors want to call in the police. They need to talk to you but I thought it best I talk to you first.’
* * *
She watched them leave.
‘I’ll be back in a couple of days,’ Alasdair said curtly, his face blank.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s nothing to concern you. Apologise to the guests.’
Fine, she told herself. Life went on. She didn’t need him.
She greeted the guests. She took the dogs for another walk. She made dinner for herself and had to force herself to eat, but the look on his face stayed with her. And with it came other doubts.
It’s nothing to concern you.
She’d thought she had a marriage.
No, she conceded as the night wore on to the small hours and sleep wouldn’t come. Until this afternoon she’d tried to pretend she had a marriage but as he’d left, with his face still impassive, revealing nothing of the turmoil she guessed was underneath, she’d felt...
Ill.
‘Unless he comes back and tells me about it...’ she whispered to the dogs, but she knew he wouldn’t.
Because reality was finally sinking in.
They didn’t have a marriage at all.
* * *
What followed was messy, nasty, heartbreaking. At least Eileen wasn’t alive to see it, Alasdair thought. He wouldn’t press charges—how could he? It’d make the company seem lax, and as well as that...it’d show the world he’d trusted.
Do not trust.
‘Thank God I have Jeanie,’ he told himself as the auditors unravelled the web of financial deceit and he saw the full extent of the betrayal of his grandparents’ trust. ‘Thank God I can go back to Jeanie. I can trust her. Separation of worlds is the only way to go. If I keep our lives separate, it’ll work. It’s the only way it can.’
* * *
He was away for two days. He returned late in the afternoon, the chopper flying in low from the east, setting him down and taking off almost as soon as he’d cleared the blades.
Jeanie was working in the kitchen. She saw the chopper land through the window. She let the dogs out and watched them race hysterically towards him. She watched him set down his bulging briefcase so he could greet them—and she thought maybe she should be doing the same.
The little wife, welcoming her husband home after his foray into the big, bad world.
He’d gone away looking as if he’d been slugged with a shock that was almost unbearable. He hadn’t phoned. He’d told her nothing.
She wiped her hands slowly on the dishcloth and went to the door to greet him.
He looked exhausted. He looked...bleak. She wanted to put her arms around him and hug—but he was still in his business suit. His face said he still belonged to that other world.
And then he saw her waiting, and his face changed.
She saw it. He�
��d left here shocked and disoriented. Something bad had happened—she didn’t have to be Einstein to figure that out. He’d been immersed in whatever it was for two days, and now he was home.
Now she watched him slough off whatever had made him look as if he’d come back from a war and turn into Alasdair. Into the man who took her to his bed.
His face creased into the smile she knew and loved. He reached her in three long strides, he had her in his arms and he swung her round and round as if she were a featherweight rather than a slightly too-curvy housekeeper who liked her own cooking.
His face radiated pleasure, and when finally he stopped swinging he set her down, cupped her face and kissed her.
A girl could drown in that kiss.
Not. She would not. For somewhere in the back of her head there was a place where passion couldn’t reach. And it was ringing alarm bells that she’d heard before.
Once upon a time she’d fancied she was in love with Rory. He’d been the answer to her prayers, she’d been joyous when he’d asked her to marry him, but a tiny part of her had voiced doubts.
Do you want to spend the rest of your life cleaning his fish and watching football on the telly?
She’d ignored the voice. And then with Alan... That same little voice as she’d left the island with him, as she’d headed off to the world she’d dreamed of, the same voice had been whispering...
What does a man like this want with a girl like me? This doesn’t make sense. Why is Eileen looking like she’s worried?
And now that same dratted voice was no longer whispering. It was shouting.
He’s in trouble and he’s not telling me. I’m just the little wife, not to be worrying her head about such things. I’m just the cook and bottle washer, and a warm body in his bed.
‘Alasdair,’ she managed. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing that need concern you. Give me thirty minutes. I need to make a couple of calls and I’ll be with you.’
‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’
He must have heard the strain in her voice. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing that need concern you.’
‘Jeanie—’
‘Go and get changed,’ she told him, feeling suddenly weary beyond belief. ‘I’ll see you when you’re ready.’
* * *
The calls stretched to an hour. He hadn’t meant them to, but if Don’s fraud wasn’t to hit the front pages of the financial papers, there were people he had to placate. He’d used an outside auditor and outside audit firms had their own leaks. Rumours were swirling and they had to be settled.
The legal problems were another matter. They were still a minefield to be faced.
When finally he reached the kitchen he was beyond exhaustion. Jeanie was waiting. He smiled at seeing her, hoping like hell she wouldn’t ask what was wrong again, immeasurably thankful for her presence.
She was making shortbread, pressing dough into wooden moulds with thistles carved into them, then tapping the shaped dough out onto trays. He sank into a chair and watched. She let him be for a while. Three moulds. Four.
‘Do you enjoy making them?’ It was a bit of an inane question but he was feeling inane right now.
‘I’m good at it.’ She looked down at the perfect circles. ‘It’s supposed to be what a good Scottish housewife does.’
That was a jarring note. ‘You’d rather be doing something else?’
‘Learning to fly,’ she said, unexpectedly. She gestured to the window where, in the distance, he could see the eagles soaring in the thermals. ‘Like those guys. But each to his own. They fly. I make shortbread. Alasdair, I need to ask you again. What’s wrong?’
‘Just a problem at headquarters.’
‘A big problem.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Maybe.’ His tone said no more questions.
She looked at him for a long moment and then filled a couple more moulds. The shortbread shapes looked beautiful, perfect circles with a thistle etched on top. He hardly noticed.
It was enough that she was here. That was all he wanted, Jeanie, a safe haven where he could bury the outside world.
He glanced outside at the eagles and thought he was very glad she wasn’t out there flying. He wanted her here.
A good Scottish housewife?
‘Alasdair, let me in,’ she said and his thoughts focused. The almost animal instinct to relax, to let himself be...just disappeared.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’ She took a deep breath and steadied. ‘Something’s happened, something bad. I could read Elspeth’s face. I could see your shock. You left looking like death. I’ve heard nothing from you for two days and you return looking like you’ve been through the wringer. You say it’s nothing to concern me. You have me worried.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘You lie in my arms every night and I shouldn’t worry for you?’
He didn’t want this conversation. He was too tired. ‘Jeanie, you’re separate. You’re here, you’re part of this place and that’s all that matters. I can’t believe what we’ve managed to forge. If you knew how much I’ve been aching to come back to you...’
‘You’re back and you’re hurting.’ Her tone was neutral. ‘But you don’t want to tell me why?’
‘You’re not part of that world.’
‘And you don’t want me to know about it?’
‘I don’t want to have to trust...’
And as soon as he said it, he knew he’d killed something. He saw it in her face. He might just as well have slapped her.
If he hadn’t been so tired, he would have phrased it better, thought of some way round it, thought of how he could deflect it. But the words had been said, and they seemed to hang over his head, like a sword, about to come crashing down.
‘You don’t trust,’ she said, softly now, as if she, too, feared the sword.
‘I do. I can.’
‘You mean you can trust me with the parts of your world you allow me to share. The part that likes hinnies and shortbread and walking the dogs and holding me at night. But there are parts you won’t entrust to me.’
‘No. I...’
‘Are they state secrets? Stuff that’d bring down countries, stuff worth so much secret agents might torture me to make me confess?’
He managed a smile. ‘Hardly. Jeanie—’
‘Then what?’ She ran a hand through her curls, leaving a wash of flour she didn’t notice. ‘What’s so important?’
‘It’s just that our worlds are different.’ He was too tired to explain. He couldn’t get it right. ‘I don’t interfere with your life—’
‘As I see it, you’ve interfered a lot.’ Her voice was calm, but the shuttered look was down. ‘You married me to save your inheritance. You’re walking in and out of my world as you like, but it’s all one-way.’
‘You don’t want to be part of my world.’
‘Part of your business world?’
‘Right. It has nothing to do with you.’
‘And if it did...I’d likely betray something? Do you really think that?’
‘No.’ It was he who was raking his hair now. He was so tired he couldn’t get this right, but he had to. What to say?
And in desperation he said it. ‘Jeanie, I’ve fallen in love with you.’ The words were out and they didn’t sound so bad. In fact, they sounded okay. Good, even. This house, this woman, this home... ‘This is everything I want,’ he told her. ‘And I don’t want to mess with that.’
He’d just told a woman he loved her. It was big. It was momentous—but Jeanie was staring at him as if he’d offered poison. ‘So...sharing might mess with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘Maybe. All I know is that I lo
ve what we have here. Can you not just accept that?’
‘I already have accepted it.’ But her voice was dead. Whatever response he’d been hoping for, he knew it wasn’t this.
‘You mean you love me?’
‘No. Or maybe. But it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter.’ She was looking stricken. She took two steps back from the table as if she needed to put distance between them. ‘I mean I’ve been married before, Alasdair. Married, but not married. Married on just the terms you’re offering.’
And that got him. ‘How can you compare me to Alan?’
‘Or Rory?’ she added. ‘I’m not comparing men. I’m comparing marriages. They’ve been three very different...disasters but the same each time. They say some people go on repeating the same mistake for the rest of their lives. It’s time I stopped.’
‘Jeanie...’
‘Rory was older than me,’ she said, still in that cold, dead voice. He wanted to go to her but the look on her face was a shield all by itself. ‘He was like my big brother. When my mam died, I was gutted but Rory stood up for me. He stood up to my bully of a father. He made me feel safe and when he married me I thought I was the luckiest woman on the island. The problem was, that’s who I was. The little woman, to be protected. I never shared Rory’s world. I was a tiny part of it. I was the woman who kept the home fires burning, who cleaned and cooked and worked for his parents, but when he wanted to talk he went out with the boys. I never knew anything that troubled him. I was his wife and I knew my place.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Think you’re like that? No? And then there was Alan.’ She was talking fast now, her hands up as if to prevent him interrupting. Or taking her in his arms? Her hands said do neither. ‘Alan blew me away with his fun, his exuberance, the way he embraced...everything. I was still young and I was stupid and I’d been bogged down by grief at Rory’s death for so long that I fell for him like a ton of bricks. And when he asked me to marry him I was dazzled. But Alan, too, had his secrets. The biggest one was that he was up to his neck in debt. He was desperate for his grandmother to bail him out and he thought by marrying someone she was fond of he’d get her to agree. She did, but at what cost? I was trapped again, a tiny part of a life I couldn’t share.’
The Earl's Convenient Wife (Harlequin Romance) Page 15
