Worthy of what? she reminded herself. One night does not make a future. And you don’t want that, remember?
But it was hard to remember just what she did want as Kit put a steadying arm around her and led her forward. ‘Maddison, this is my little sister, Bridget. Bridge, this is Maddison.’
‘It’s nice to meet you at last.’ Bridget held out her hand. ‘We’ve spoken on the phone so often I feel that I know you already but it’s much nicer face-to-face. We’ll have to have a real gossip straight away and you can tell me all about what a tyrant Kit is and fill me in on all his secrets.’ She threw a speaking glance at her brother. ‘There’s tea and scones waiting in the drawing room. And no, you can’t escape. Behave.’
‘We should have dawdled more on the way.’ Kit squeezed Maddison’s shoulder. ‘Ready? Some trials involve dragons and daring rescues, others golden apples and races. My mother conducts trial by small talk. It’s deadly, it’s terrifying but it’s possible to survive.’
Bridget elbowed him. ‘Don’t scare her, idiot. It’s not that bad,’ she added to Maddison. ‘At least the scones are good.’
When Maddison visited her college friends’ homes, finding a valid reason to be free from her fictional family over Christmas or Thanksgiving, she rarely saw their parents. She’d arrive at some spacious, interior-decorated-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life mansion, be whisked off to an en-suite room bigger than any apartment she’d ever lived in and then spend the next few days in the kind of pampered bubble the set she chose to run with considered normal. Food was pulled without consideration from cavernous fridges, or prepared by smiling, silent maids. Parents rushed in with platitudes and compliments before rushing back out again to the club, to work, to a party or a personal-training session. Maddison knew how to smile, compliment prettily and make the right kind of impression to be invited back.
But scones and a small-talk-stroke-interrogation in a house older than an entire state was another thing entirely. She leaned a little more heavily against Kit as they approached the front door. The big house might lack a moat but stepping over the threshold felt as final as watching the drawbridge close up behind her.
Bridget led them into a huge hallway dominated by closed, heavy wooden doors interspersed with portraits of stern-looking men in kilts surveying the landscape and even sterner-looking ladies in a variety of intricate hairstyles. Nearly every portrait featured some kind of massive dog and a gloomy-looking sea. A wide staircase started halfway down the hall, sweeping imperiously up towards the next floor with a dramatic curve, the carved wooden bannister shining like a freshly foraged chestnut. She swallowed as her eyes passed over tarnished gilt mirrors and ancient-looking vases.
‘This is all very formal.’ Kit squeezed Maddison’s shoulder. ‘Bridge must be trying to make an impression on you. Usually we come in through the back.’
‘I didn’t think Maddison would want to pick her way through thirty pairs of mismatched wellies, twenty broken fishing rods, enough waterproofs to clothe an army and the dogs’ toys,’ Bridget said. She flashed a shy smile at Maddison. ‘But Kit’s right, the front door is usually just for guests. It takes far too long to open it, for one thing, and there’s nowhere to dump your coat, for another.’
Maddison couldn’t imagine wanting to dump her coat. The air was as chilly as a top New York law firm’s offices, only this wasn’t status-boosting air conditioning, it was all too natural. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Very...’ She looked up at the nearest portrait for inspiration. The sitter was scowling, his grey, pigtailed wig low on his brow, his sword angled menacingly. ‘Very old.’
‘The bannister is good for sliding on,’ Kit said. ‘And when the parents went out we used to practise curling on these tiles. There’s no heating at all in the hallway so in winter they get pretty icy.’
Maddison had no clue what he was talking about so she just smiled. But she knew one thing for sure. She couldn’t get carried away here, couldn’t change her game plan, couldn’t hope that whatever had sparked into life yesterday was real. She would never belong in a place like this; there were limits to even her self-deception. So she might as well relax and enjoy it for what it was. A fun interlude before she went home to New York and decided what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
The problem was that her original prize wasn’t looking quite as golden as it used to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want security; she did. She still needed it just as she needed air and water. She still wanted children who teased each other the way Kit and Bridget were, children who were raised with the kind of love that Kit seemed to take for granted and with the same opportunities. She just wanted a little bit more.
She wanted the full package. Security, love and respect. And by raising the stakes she might have just doomed her entire quest to failure.
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WAS SOMETHING incredibly seductive about watching a woman getting dressed for a big occasion. The concentration on her face as she twisted her hair up just so, the way she slid the small point of an earring into her lobe, the purse of her mouth as she painted it an even deeper red.
The way she rolled on her underwear, a subtle mixture of practicality and romance, a little like its wearer. The black silky bra designed to show off her shoulders in the thinly strapped dress, the wispy knickers Kit had to drag his eyes away from because they really, really didn’t have time. Yet.
Maddison was wearing the same dress she had worn to the opera, a simple knee-length black dress with a white strip around her waist, echoed by a wider band at the bottom of the dress. The invitation had specified Black Tie and Kit knew that the other female guests would be going all out. Maddison, with her knot of red-gold hair and the pearls in her ears, would probably be the simplest-dressed woman in the room—and the most beautiful, he realized with a twist of his stomach.
His mother had put them in one of the suites, two bedrooms and a shared bathroom, a sign she was unsure of their romantic status. Kit shared her uncertainty—common sense told him to walk away quickly while it was still possible to extricate himself with grace, but his body told him something very different.
Right now his body was winning.
Which had the advantage of both distracting him from the forthcoming wedding and lessening the pain of Euan’s absence. So he would let his body win—for now.
‘You’re looking thoughtful.’ Maddison moved towards him, her gait slower, sexier in her high heels, and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me get that for you.’ And with practised ease she adjusted his bow tie. ‘Very dapper. Are you worrying about tonight?’
‘Not really. I was just admiring how you managed my mother earlier. It was like watching two fencers spar.’ His mother’s patented brand of tea and interrogation usually either froze her opponents into stunned silence or cracked them open until they had spilled every secret. Not many managed to parry and block with the same deft touch Maddison had shown.
‘I had quite a lot of fun. She’s a formidable opponent. I had no idea what to call her, though—Mrs Buchanan? The housekeeper says My Lady but I’m not sure I could say that and keep a straight face. I’d feel like a housemaid in Downton.’
‘I’m sorry, I should have warned you how absurdly formal it can be here. My father is the Viscount of Kilcanon and my mother is Lady of Kilcanon but in speech you say Lord and Lady Buchanan. Locally, though, they are mostly known as the Laird and Lady. I know,’ he said apologetically as her forehead creased in puzzlement. ‘It’s all a little feudal.’
‘Aren’t Laird and Lord the same thing?’
‘No, not really. Angus, the lucky groom...’ Kit cast a look at the clock on the wall, relieved to see they still had an hour before they had to leave ‘...he’s the local laird in Kameskill because he’s the biggest landowner, but it’s an honorary title. If he sold the estate the title would pass with it. If we
sold this estate then Dad still stays a viscount.’
‘So wait, do you have a cool title? Do I get to call you Sir?’
Kit sighed. He hated this part. ‘Both Bridge and I are Honourables, but neither of us use it,’ he admitted. ‘And now Euan’s gone I’m Master of Kilcanon.’
‘Master? How very dominant of you.’
He matched her grin. ‘Remind me to show you later...’
‘Chicken...’ she said softly and his blood began to pound at the challenge.
‘Unfortunately we have been summoned to a pre-wedding drink with my family, but wait until we return and I’ll show you who is master.’
‘I can hardly wait...’ She sashayed before him but stepped aside as she reached the door so that Kit could go first.
He touched her shoulder. ‘Worried about the dogs? I can get Morag to lock them away.’ One of the family pets had wandered into the drawing room when they were having tea and Maddison had paled significantly and made no move towards it, retreating a little when it had stalked nearer her.
‘No.’ But she didn’t sound at all convincing. ‘Honestly, I’m fine. It’s just they are really big.’
‘Another thing I should have warned you about. I forget not everyone has grown up with dogs the size of small ponies.’
‘Small ponies? Are you kidding? I think they would outrank a medium pony and maybe even a large one.’ She was smiling but there was a look of trepidation in her eyes and he decided he’d better keep the dogs away from her. They were very sweet tempered but fifty kilograms of dog could be intimidating to even the most ardent of dog lovers. ‘Still,’ she said, with that same game smile on her face, ‘I guess a smaller dog would get lost in a house this size.’
‘There’s still a corgi or two somewhere in the west wing and a dachshund stuck in the tower,’ he agreed straight-faced and was rewarded with a moment of puzzlement before she glared at him and stalked out of the room.
As was customary, drinks were in the library and, sure enough, when Kit ushered Maddison into the book-lined room two of the family’s prized deerhounds were flaked out on a tattered old red rug in front of the fire. One of them raised a lazy head in their direction and Maddison tensed, her arm rigid under his hand, before the dog flopped back down, too tired from its day to properly investigate the newcomer.
Maddison swallowed. ‘I feel even more Downton than ever,’ she said, and Kit tried to see the familiar room through her eyes: the oak panels, the huge leaded windows, the tall bookcases, which needed a ladder to reach the top shelves, the leather chesterfield and the old walnut bureau where his father conducted his business just as his grandfather had before him and so on back into the mists of time.
‘It’s all too dusty to be truly Downton,’ Kit whispered. ‘No butler either, just Morag, and she never bobs a curtsey and is always gone by six.’
‘Kit.’ His attention was called away by his father’s curt tones. Lord Buchanan was standing by the fireplace, a glass of single malt in one hand. Looking at him was like looking into a portrait in the attic, Kit in thirty years’ time. Not that Kit often looked straight at his father. How could he when he was responsible for so much loss? For the lines creasing his father’s forehead and the shadows in his mother’s eyes?
He ushered Maddison forward. She, he noted, was still keeping a wary eye on the dogs. ‘Dad, good to see you. This is Maddison Carter, my very able assistant, who very kindly agreed to accompany me this weekend. Maddison, my father.’
His father nodded briefly at Maddison but didn’t speak and Kit was grateful when Bridget pulled her over to the sofa she was sitting on, thrusting a glass of champagne into his hand as she did so. Conversations with his father were rarely comfortable and he’d rather not have a witness.
This was the problem with bringing anyone home. They saw too much.
Lord Buchanan stiffened as he glanced at the champagne Kit was holding, swirling his own whisky as if in challenge. ‘It’s good to see you still know the way home, son.’
It was going to be like that, was it? He wasn’t going to rise, he wasn’t... ‘Luckily there’s always satnav.’ Okay, he was going to rise a little.
His father didn’t respond to the jibe. ‘Whatever it takes.’
Kit looked over at Maddison. She seemed comfortable enough sitting between Bridget and his mother. As he’d expected his mother was dressed traditionally in a long blue dress, a sash of the family tartan over her shoulder fastened with a sapphire brooch. Bridget was less traditional and tartan free, but still in a floor-length dress in a sparkly material. Maddison didn’t seem bothered though; she had that same self-possessed look on her face that she usually wore in the office.
Maddison looked up and caught his eye and for one all-too-brief moment they were the only people in the room. Kit’s heart hitched, missing a beat. What would it be like under different circumstances, bringing a girl like Maddison home to meet the family?
His father followed his gaze over and looked at Maddison speculatively before transferring his gaze to his son. His lip curled. ‘What are you wearing? A kilt not good enough for you any more?’
Kit tore his eyes away from Maddison and looked down at his neatly tailored tuxedo, shrugging. The last time he’d worn his kilt had been at Euan’s funeral; he’d managed to avoid any formal occasion in Scotland since then, wearing a black tuxedo when necessary in London.
‘I wore the kilt to Eleanor’s last wedding.’ He saw his mother look up at that and remorse stabbed him at his bitter words. ‘I just couldn’t,’ he added in a more conciliatory tone.
But it wasn’t enough. His father shook his head. ‘You get more Londonified by the day. You’re needed here. It’s time you shouldered your responsibilities and...’
And so it started, just as it did every time he spoke to his father. Every conversation they had had since the funeral. The same words, the same tone, the same message. He was needed here. He was responsible for this mess and he damn well better clean it up.
Didn’t he know it? And that was why he couldn’t be the son his father wanted. How could he come here and just take Euan’s place as if he deserved it? Step into his dead brother’s shoes?
‘I have shouldered them. I can just as easily watch you ignore every suggestion I make from London.’
His father fixed him with a glare from eyes so familiar it was like looking in a mirror. ‘You’ll be responsible for this place one day and God knows I’ll make sure you know how to run it.’
Admit it, you wish I had died instead. Kit took a deep breath, swallowing the bitter words back. ‘Did you look at diversifying the cloth making and selling directly to the public like I suggested? How about setting up our own distillery? Doing up the holiday cottages?’ His father remained silent and Kit threw his hands in the air. ‘I did business plans for all those projects, found the right people. If you’re not interested...’
His father interrupted, red in the face. ‘You just want to change things. You have no interest in the traditions of the place.’
Kit was suddenly tired. ‘I do. And that’s why I want to make sure Kilcanon can remain sustainable.’
‘Sustainable...’ His father gesticulated and as he did so he let go of his glass. It fell in horrifying slow motion, whisky flying from it in a sweet-smelling amber shower, until the one-hundred-year-old crystal bounced off the sharp edge of the marble hearth, shattering into hundreds of tiny, razor-like shards. Everyone shouted out, the women jumping to their feet, Kit and his father taking an instinctive step back and both dogs bounding up from their fireside bed in a panicked tangle of howls and whines.
‘Iain!’
‘Damn fool, look what you made me do.’
‘I’ll get a cloth and a dustpan...’ Bridge, of course, sidling out of the room as fast as she could; unusually for a Buchanan, she hated confrontation.
‘Dad, have you cut yourself?’
‘Oh, Iain, really. The car will be here in twenty minutes. Come with me. I’ll fix you up. I told you to control your temper. No wonder Kit never comes home and I’m sure Maddison will never want to come here again. What must she be thinking?’ His mother’s voice faded away as she steered his father out of the room and up the stairs.
Kit turned to Maddison, an apology ready on his lips, but it remained unuttered. She wasn’t looking at him; all her attention was on one of the dogs, still whimpering by the fire. He touched her arm to reassure her but it wasn’t fear he saw on her face, it was concern.
‘The dog...’ she half whispered. ‘I think it’s hurt.’
Sure enough, although Heather had retreated to the doorway, her tail and ears down but otherwise unhurt, Thistle had barely moved from the old red rug that had been the dogs’ library bed for as long as Kit could remember.
‘Thistle?’ Heedless of the glass still scattered everywhere, Kit dropped to his knees beside the dog, still sitting whining by the fire, one paw held at a drooping angle. Thistle’s ears trembled and his tail gave a pathetic thump, his huge dark eyes staring pleadingly at Kit. ‘Are you hurt, old boy?’ He extended a gentle hand towards the paw but Thistle moved it back, his ears flattening as he let out a low growl. ‘Come on,’ Kit said coaxingly but the next growl was a little louder.
Heather, still at the door, began to pace, her tail still drooping. Kit glanced up at Maddison. This must be her worst nightmare. She was wary enough of the huge dogs as it was—one doing a lion impression and the other growling like a bear was unlikely to reassure her. ‘Now I understand the point of corgis. A little easier to wrestle into submission! I don’t want to hurt him further but I do need to see that paw.’
She was pale, her lips almost colourless, and there was a faint tremor in her fingers, but she made an attempt at a smile and crouched beside him. ‘I think one of us needs to reassure him while the other examines his paw.’
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