Twenty minutes later he was glad he’d made that decision. The couple that looked after the house were overjoyed to see him.
‘For you know, m’lord, your mama has held everything together until you got back, but I know she’s ready to come here,’ Mrs Black said earnestly. ‘She’s often said the day can’t come soon enough when you manage your own household and she lives here instead. Cosier and more homely.’
‘She said that?’ Fraser asked in a surprised voice. It wasn’t the impression she’d given him.
Mrs Black coloured. ‘Oh, milord, I hope I wasn’t speaking out of turn. But she did mention you were ready to settle down and she and your siblings wouldn’t want to encroach on your wife’s territories.’
Really? How bloody dare she? Fraser was ready to explode, except it wasn’t Mrs Black’s fault. Oh he knew how his mama would say such a thing. Anything to further her goal, whatever that may be. In this case, he assumed, in the hope of pushing him towards a bride.
I have one, maybe. Which is for me to discover and her not to, yet.
‘Ah, well she’s a bit ahead of me I’m afraid,’ Fraser said in as pleasant a tone as he could manage. ‘I’ve not found a bride let alone announced my marriage yet, nor have any intention of doing so, therefore there is nothing to worry about for a while. I’ll get her to decide on how she wants the house furnished, and advise her she is welcome to move as soon as she likes—be I alone or not. Meanwhile, let me know if there is anything you need. Your comfort is as important as hers. Without you the house would grind to a halt.’
Mrs Black blushed and beamed as she stuttered a disclaimer. Fraser kept a pleasant smile on his face until all the necessary platitudes had been exchanged and then he thankfully made his farewells.
Bloody, interfering, annoying, meddlesome… Fraser seethed as he rode back up the pass towards Kintrain Castle. His mother should be pleased she had guests, or she might well have found herself out on her ear. To how many other people had she spread scurrilous and totally untrue gossip?
Well—untrue as far as he’d intimated to her.
Fraser checked his horse. He hadn’t seen Brogan Gillies—the laird from up the glen and probably his closest friend—since he got back from Barbados. Blow his mama and her guests; he needed to meet his friend. He’d go and talk to Brogan and get the local gossip. He turned Misneachail in the direction of Ballancrain, Brogan’s estate.
‘Honestly? I’ve heard very little,’ Brogan said as pleasantries in the typical way of males—a thump on the back and a few derogatory remarks—were exchanged. ‘I got the news you were due home when we were at the kirk one Sunday, and before I’d had a chance to find out when, your mama said you were away on estate business. I didn’t even know you were back.’
‘The day before yesterday.’ Fraser took a long swig of ale. ‘Just in time to be poleaxed by the news of impending visitors.’
‘Really? Who’s that then?’ Brogan asked in a disinterested voice. ‘That’s not generally know in the glen.’
‘The Duchess of Welland and her daughters.’
‘Ah.’ Brogan laughed. ‘As in daughters plural? Which one is earmarked for you?’
Fraser nodded. ‘Plural definitely. Morven and Murren. Which one is earmarked for me? I have a niggling suspicion it might have been the younger if I hadn’t intervened.’
Brogan’s eyes widened and he whistled. ‘Not the Morven you spent all that summer with?’
‘The very one.’
‘And you think she’d intended the other one for you?’ Brogan grinned and shook his head. ‘No, never. Anyone with half a brain could tell you and Lady Morven were made for each other. What happened, about all that?’
Fraser bit back the surge of anger and hurt that swept through him. ‘Barbados happened.’
Brogan blinked and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. The heavy, warm weight comforted Fraser like no words could have. ‘I thought you realised once she’d gone you should have asked her to stay?’
Fraser shrugged. ‘Yes, well she never answered my letters.’
‘Ah.’ Brogan seemed lost for words for a moment. ‘That’s just not right.’
‘Right or not it happened. So off I went and here I am. Eight years later about to once again meet the one woman who could have broken my heart.’
‘Could? Only could?’
‘Yes well, that’s a closed subject,’ Fraser said in a flat tone. ‘But hell, Bro, what a bloody coil.’
Having spent an hour or so with Brogan was the best thing he could have done, Fraser realised as he once more headed for home. He’d missed having a close friend to talk to, someone to mull over problems and put the world to rights with. Brogan and he had spent many a night with a dram or two exchanging ideas and generally egging on, or restraining each other from excess when need be. Now hopefully their friendship could be resumed. After all, no one knew as much about each other as they did.
When he’d told Brogan how Morven had ignored his heartfelt pleas in his letter—tell me I’m not mistaken, tell me I was a fool to let you go, tell me you want me as much as I want you—Brogan had snorted and looked bewildered. ‘That’s not like the lass you knew,’ he’d said emphatically. ‘You’ll need to ask her why.’
Easier said than done, but at least he felt comforted in knowing Brogan was there to talk to. And talk they had. Brogan was in a similar situation to Fraser in that he needed to wed, but for him, there wasn’t the problem of a maybe wife.
Fraser’s head still swam when he thought of all the ramifications involved in that scenario. One thing that bothered him as much as anything else was the awful thought that they might be married in Scotland, and she unaware. If she went ahead and got married in England, where it might or might not be legal, she could commit bigamy and not know it. She’s mine. That thought popped into his mind and lodged there. The more he let himself dwell on it the more determined he became.
Never mind law, Tam Curtin or a day of folly. Fraser let that one thought linger.
She is mine.
‘And of course as you are the elder I thought you’d like this suite,’ Lady Napier burbled to Morven. She flung open shutters and the door, which lead into a pretty enclosed garden with a stepping-stone path that meandered from the terrace and across the lawn to a rose-clad wall several yards away. The gate in the corner was of heavy wooden panels and the latch and snick looked as old as the castle itself. Presumably it didn’t open, or if it did was not a security threat.
Grow up; this is the nineteenth century not the seventeenth.
‘Oh how pretty,’ Morven exclaimed without having to choose her words. ‘It’s a piece of heaven.’ But, I’d wager my next month’s pin money you were not originally going to house me here.
‘I thought you would like it,’ Lady Napier said complacently. ‘Traditionally, it has always been the eldest daughter of the family’s quarters. Otherwise…’ She coloured slightly and coughed.
‘Otherwise?’ Morven prompted.
‘Pardon…oh otherwise I’m sure one of the children would have demanded it. My two younger girls and their brother. They will be sad to miss you, but this journey to my parents was long overdue. They are old, you understand. My parents not the children.’
Now why didn’t Morven think any of that was what Senga had originally intended to say? She knew how old the children were. However, as she couldn’t force the older woman