The Heir’s Chosen Bride

by Marion Lennox

  Hamish discovered he was grinning as he watched them.

  But they weren’t perfect.

  Marcia was perfect.

  What was he about, making comparisons?

  ‘I’ll go over and give Susie a break from childminding so she can have a swim,’ he told Marcia, and she raised her eyebrows in amused query.

  ‘You? Look after a baby?’

  ‘I can change a diaper,’ he said, almost defiantly, and her smile widened.

  ‘If I were you I’d never put that on your curriculum vitae. It’s not the sort of ability that’ll get you a job in our world.’

  Our world. He looked down at her Blackberry. Right.

  ‘Do you want help childminding?’ she asked, and it was time for his brows to hike.

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  She smiled. ‘You’re right. I’m kidding. But if it’s something I need to do for a smooth transition…’

  She’d do whatever it took to build a solid financial future, he thought. Wise woman.

  ‘Go back to your wheeling and dealing,’ he told her. ‘Babysitting’s not an occupation I plan on doing any more in my life, but you’re right. By doing it now I’m making things smoother for Susie.’

  ‘Not for you?’

  ‘Only in that…’ He paused. Only in that it made Susie happier? Only in that it let Susie have one of her last swims in this place? He couldn’t think how to finish his sentence.

  ‘Go do it, Nanny Douglas,’ Marcia told him, deciding to be amused. ‘And be careful when you stand up. I don’t want sand in my keypad.’

  Then it was his turn to sit in the shallows and entertain Rose while Taffy barked and Susie swam. Not that Rose needed to be entertained. She’d happily kick waves for the rest of her life, he thought.

  Were there waves where she was going?

  He didn’t know.

  He couldn’t care.

  Susie disappeared as soon as they got back from the beach, retreating to the bedroom with a couple of vast suitcases she’d retrieved from the box room and a carton of garbage bags. They hardly saw her for the rest of the day.

  ‘I’m so pleased she’s being sensible,’ Marcia told him. ‘There was hardly any need for me to come. I don’t think she’s the least bit interested in you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know, it really is the most beautiful place,’ she said. They’d finished a fairly strained dinner-fish and chips that Hamish had gone into Dolphin Bay to fetch, and a bowl of steamed vegetables for Marcia-and now they were sitting on the balcony, looking out at the bay in the fading light. ‘It seems a shame to sell it straight away.’

  ‘What else would I do with it?’ Hamish said shortly. He’d thought this through. Sure, this was a financial windfall, and realistically he didn’t need the interest that he’d get from its sale. He’d thought that maybe he could leave Susie here as indefinite caretaker but he’d known instinctively that she’d refuse such an offer. It was a dumb idea anyway. It’d leave her in limbo, his indefinite pensioner. She needed to move on. ‘You surely aren’t suggesting we live here?’

  ‘No, but I’ve been thinking that doing some capital improvements before we put it on the market might get us a better price,’ Marcia told him. ‘I’ll need to talk to the assessor tomorrow but… Come and see what I mean.’

  ‘What-?’

  ‘Just come and see. Why no one’s thought of this before this is beyond me.’

  She led the way downstairs out to Susie’s vegetable garden, with Hamish following feeling bemused. Marcia had only been here for twenty-four hours, yet she already seemed proprietorial. She was leading him though his very own castle.

  He shouldn’t mind. He didn’t. It was just…

  It was just that this was Susie’s place, he thought, but that was dumb. But when he emerged to the twilight and saw Susie’s garden he stopped thinking his idea was dumb and decided that it was right. It certainly seemed Susie’s place. Her garden was fabulous.

  He had no illusions as to who’d done the work here. For the last twelve months, as Angus’s health had slowly deteriorated, Susie must have thrown her heart and soul into caring for this place. Her vegetable garden could feed a small army. If this was turned into a hotel the chef would never have to go near a greengrocer.

  But Marcia wasn’t interested in the garden. She was striding purposefully toward the conservatory. She pushed open the doors and flicked the light, then swore as the light didn’t work. It was dusk and the place was still lovely-smelling of ripening oranges and overripe cumquats and the rich loam that Susie had been using to pot seedlings. The lack of light made it seem more beautiful.

  ‘This is what I brought you to see,’ Marcia said, in the same voice she used when she produced a contract that was hugely advantageous to the firm-and to her. ‘It’s fabulous.’

  ‘It is,’ Hamish said, walking forward and touching the same branch of hanging cumquats Susie had touched the first day he’d met her. Was it his imagination or could he sense her here? This place seemed almost an extension of her.

  ‘We need to take the end wall out so we can get machinery in,’ Marcia was saying, and he blinked.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘It’s great. Can’t you see it?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The view from the end wall is right down to the sea. The tourists this place will attract will spend most of their time right here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A swimming pool,’ she said with exaggerated impatience. ‘I thought about it this morning while I was at the beach. The beach is lovely but most tourists don’t want to spend much time there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The sand gets into your Blackberry, for one thing,’ she said, getting even more exasperated. ‘Hamish, when we went to Bermuda last year, did we spend any time at the beach?’

  ‘We were there at a conference.’

  ‘Exactly. We had things to do. There was a beach but did we use it?’

  There had been a beach, Hamish remembered. He thought back to an intense four days of business dealings. He remembered watching the sun rise from his hotel room, watching the view, watching people stroll on the beach…and then fitting in a fast fifteen minutes in the hotel pool before breakfast.

  ‘We’re the clientele we’ll attract,’ Marcia said. ‘People who appreciate what luxury really is. Anyway, I’m thinking we need to heave out every bit of kitsch before we put this place on the market. And I’m also thinking that we should dig a pool into this building. Honestly, Hamish, buyers have no imagination. Did you see the potential of this place as a swimming pool?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you go, then,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I’ll talk it through with the assessor tomorrow but I think you should hold selling off a little longer while we transform this place.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose we could persuade the widow to stay as a transitional caretaker.’

  ‘I suspect we don’t have a hope.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, there’s others. Maybe we need someone a bit more level-headed anyway.’ There was a beep from her belt and she lifted her Blackberry and peered at the lit screen. ‘Charles,’ she said in satisfaction. ‘He has some figures I need. If you’ll excuse me, darling… Walk through to the end and see if I’m right. A swimming pool and a bar with a view to die for. Our tourists wouldn’t have to move. I suspect the pool could double our price.’

  And she was off, leaving him to his thoughts.

  His thoughts…

  He didn’t have any thoughts, he decided. He was a blank. He fingered his cumquat some more and thought it was a great smell. It was a great place.

  A luxury swimming pool? Maybe they’d have a few of these orange trees in tubs round the side…

  ‘You’d really chop down all Angus’s orange trees?’

  Susie’s muted voice was so unexpected that his heart forgot to take a beat. He stilled, trying to think what to say, and she came out of the shadows and stood
right before him. Still in the plain faded shorts and T-shirt he was starting to get to know. Still with bare feet. Her hair was tousled and there was a smudge of dirt on her forehead.

  ‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he managed, when he got his breath back.

  ‘I’ve been planting out seedlings into bigger pots. I was intending to plant them straight into the vegetable garden but now I’m leaving I’ll need to find other homes for them. Am I supposed to apologise?’

  He was still discomfited. ‘You could have told us you were here.’

  ‘I could have come out of the dark and said I heard every word? That’s what I’m doing now. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but what Marcia was saying…it made me feel…’ She paused. ‘But, of course, it’s none of my business.’

  ‘No.’ There was no way to dress this up, he decided, shoving his sense of disquiet aside. If he was going to sell this place he couldn’t be looking over his shoulder all the time, wondering what Susie was thinking.

  ‘Angus was so proud of his oranges,’ she said wistfully, and he braced himself.

  ‘Someone else will be proud of a swimming pool.’

  ‘It sounds like Marcia will be proud.’

  ‘That’s right. Though it’s a business proposition. She’ll be pleased if it means we get a good price for this place.’

  ‘But…’ She paused. ‘If you sell the castle, doesn’t the money go into trust?’

  ‘It does.’ He’d looked into this. It was a complex inheritance, where the castle was a part of the entailed estate to be handed down to the inheriting earl. Generation after generation. It had been made complex by the burning of the original castle, meaning the capital had been moved here. The trustees would allow sale, but the proceeds would return to the trust.

  But he’d earn interest on a very sizeable sum.

  ‘Will you and Marcia have children?’ she asked. ‘To inherit?’

  ‘I…’ How to answer that? He thought about it and decided he didn’t have to. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘It’s just…would your son prefer to inherit a castle or a heap of depreciating money?’

  ‘Hell, Susie…’

  ‘But that’s easy, isn’t it?’ she said sadly. ‘That’s the choice you made and you’ve made it really fast.’

  ‘What would I do with this place if I kept it?’

  ‘You could think laterally,’ she said with sudden asperity. ‘Instead of thinking what’s the best way to make money from this place. You’re not exactly needy.’

  ‘No, but-’

  ‘But you’ll chop down these gorgeous orange trees. Do you know, it’s five hundred miles to the nearest place you can grow oranges from here? The locals here eat Angus’s oranges all winter. We have the best vitamin C intake per capita of any place in the country.’

  ‘Gee,’ he said blankly, and she glared at him in the dusk. He couldn’t see the glare, he thought, but he could feel it.

  ‘You don’t care.’

  ‘Susie, we both need to move on.’

  ‘I am moving on,’ she said with irritation. ‘You’re not moving anywhere, as far as I can see. You’re taking your money and bolting back to your safe hole in Manhattan. What is it with you and money? Why is it so important?’

  ‘Money’s important to everyone.’

  ‘To provide necessities, yes,’ she snapped. ‘Even enough to buy the odd luxury when you feel inclined. But Marcia says what you earn is way out of that league.’

  ‘Marcia has no right-’

  ‘And neither do I.’ She turned her back on him, lifting a branch of cumquats, heavy with fruit. She started plucking the fruit from the loaded branch, making a pile on the bench beside her. ‘OK. I’ll butt out of what’s not my business.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m picking your cumquats,’ she snapped again. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘What for?’ They were hardly edible. He’d tried one yesterday. They looked fabulous, like tiny mandarins, lush and filled with juice, but the first bite had seen him recoil.

  ‘They’re great for marmalade.’

  ‘You can’t cook.’

  ‘I intend to learn,’ she said with dignity. ‘I’m leaving here the day after tomorrow and I’m taking some of Angus’s cumquat marmalade with me.’

  ‘So you’ll learn and do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She was fearless, he thought. A vision of Susie down in the cove was suddenly in his head, a scarred, limping woman, diving full on into the white water and heading for the outer reaches of the cove. Her body strong and sure and determined.

  She’d succeed in her landscaping business, he thought. Clients would be lucky to get her. She was so…

  So…

  He picked a couple cumquats to add to her pile and her body grew stiffer. She had her back to him-he was of no importance to her.

  ‘Thanks, but I can do this myself.’

  ‘You just said you can’t cook marmalade.’

  ‘Neither can you.’

  ‘But I have a connection to the Internet. I bet we could find a recipe.’

  ‘So you’ll find a recipe,’ she said, and then decided maybe she was being a bit grumpy. ‘Thank you. I’ll do them tomorrow.’

  ‘The assessor’s coming tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do it after I’ve talked to him. Or he can talk to me while I stir the marmalade.’

  ‘You need to pack tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m almost packed.’

  ‘You need to swim.’

  That made her pause. She hesitated. ‘I…’

  ‘You do want to swim on your last day?’

  ‘Of course, but-’

  ‘But you also want to make marmalade. So let’s make it now.’

  The stiffness of her back had lessened and she turned cautiously around. ‘Could we?’

  ‘I’d imagine we need lots of sugar and lots of jars.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well, the jars are a given,’ he said. ‘I’d guess we can’t eat more than half a pint of marmalade tonight.’

  ‘I suppose not. We will need jars.’

  ‘And my Aunty Molly used to make jam,’ he added. ‘So I know we need almost as much sugar as fruit.’

  ‘You used to watch your Aunt Molly cook?’

  ‘I did.’ He sounded uncomfortable-he knew he did-and he saw her hesitate as if she’d ask more. She stared at him, searching his face in the dim light, looking for…

  He didn’t know what she was looking for. And, whatever it was, he knew he didn’t want her to find it.

  Or he thought he didn’t want her to find it.

  This conversation was too deep for him. Way too deep. His thoughts were starting to become knotted, and untangling them was impossible. Chop them off and get on with it, he thought, suddenly savage, and he tugged a cumquat branch toward him and started plucking.

  ‘If we’re to finish before midnight, then we start now,’ he said, and she waited-and watched-for a moment longer before deciding to play along.

  ‘Rose didn’t have an afternoon nap so she’s out for the count,’ she said. ‘So’s Taffy. I guess if I go to bed, all I’ll do is dream of uprooted orange trees, so I might as well make marmalade.’

  ‘Susie…’

  ‘I know. There’s nothing either of us can do about it.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m being unfair. It’s a very nice offer to teach me to make marmalade. I accept with pleasure. Do you think Marcia would like to help?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAKING marmalade was a tricky business. It took sugar, cumquats, jars, a recipe, concentration…

  They had everything they needed. Deirdre had obviously decided the pantry stores needed to be filled just like a real castle’s would be in case of siege-and as sugar didn’t seem to have a use-by date and the castle was slightly younger than siege times, they were set.

  They found a hoard of a hundred or so empty jars. Hamish downloaded a recipe from the Internet. They
had a couple buckets of cumquats.

  Which left concentration.

  Concentration was harder.

  Susie had to remove pips from every cumquat. Hamish was standing right beside her, pipping his own cumquats. The castle was totally silent. Taffy and Rose were fast asleep. Marcia was in her room, online to the other side of the world.

  Weren’t you supposed to talk companionably as you cooked? Susie thought. Wasn’t that in the manual?

  He was so big. So male. He was focussed on each individual cumquat pip as if it was his next million-dollar deal.

  He was just…just…

  She was so…

  So what? He didn’t know. She was pipping her cumquats in silence, focussed absolutely on the job in hand. She was holding a cumquat half at arm’s length, squinting at it so she wouldn’t get hit in the eye by juice as she prodded for the pip. Her tongue was out to the side, just a little bit. Intense concentration.

  For marmalade.

  She’d make a good futures broker, he thought. She was up to approximately cumquat number ninety and she hadn’t faltered. Intelligence. Persistence. Great little tongue. Cute nose. Eyes that were so…

  ‘How many more, do you think?’ she asked, and he hauled himself back to cumquat duty with a start.

  ‘I’m thinking we’ve done enough.’

  ‘Right.’ She eyed the rest of the cumquats they’d picked-in a bucket on the floor and as yet unpipped-and shoved them under the bench with her bare toe. Out of sight. Maybe she wouldn’t make such a great futures broker. Maybe she’d make a better criminal lawyer.

  He started to smile but she was waiting, expectant, and he had to haul his thoughts together and turn to the recipe.

  ‘OK. Put the cumquats and sugar together and cook until done.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘No skill at all. I could do this myself.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  She hesitated. ‘No. I wouldn’t know what to do at the end.’

  ‘It says what to do here.’