* * *
‘I meant to do this the other way round,’ Innes said afterwards, lying splayed on the couch, with Ainsley draped languorously on top of him.
She giggled. ‘Is this a new variation in the palace of pleasures you haven’t told me about?’
‘Hussy!’ He grinned. ‘I meant that I planned to tell you what’s been happening since I read your parting letter before declaring myself, but if it’s variations you’re interested in, my wanton wife, then I am sure I can come up with something.’
‘Really? Already?’ Ainsley wriggled against him, her smile teasing. ‘Are you trying to live up to the Drummond reputation for potency?’
Her face fell at her own silly words. Though she tried to hide it, he saw the flash of pain there as she moved away from him. ‘Listen to me a moment,’ Innes said urgently, pulling her right back to where she had been, lying over him. ‘I love you exactly as you are. You need to believe me.’ He touched her face gently. ‘Strone Bridge is our legacy. It’s all the legacy we need, and your love is all I need. I don’t need you to prove it any other way than by being by my side, for better or for worse. I don’t need a bairn, and I don’t want you to go down the track of thinking that, or of thinking that you’ve somehow failed me if it doesn’t happen. I need you to promise me that you believe me.’
A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Innes, you need to understand, I’ve been told by a doctor it’s simply not possible.’
‘And you need to understand that I mean what I say. I want you. That’s all that matters to me. If it turned out I could not have a child, would you walk away?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Well, then, is this not a case of what’s good for the goose being good for the gander?’
‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’
‘Ainsley, I’m serious. I want you to be my wife. My real wife. My forever wife. My only love. I won’t have this become an issue between us. I want us to have a fresh start in everything. I want us to be married. Will you marry me, my darling?’
‘Again?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘Love me, that’s all that it takes, and I promise, I won’t let anything come between us.’
She kissed him softly on the mouth. Then she smiled at him, and Innes thought that maybe it was true what they said, that hearts could melt. He hugged her tightly, then he sat up, pulling her into the crook of his arm, wrapping the blanket around them. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I think I owe you a story. It’s a long one, but I’ll give you the gist of it now.’
He frowned, thinking back on all that had happened over the past two weeks. ‘It wasn’t finding the brooch that made me get in touch with her, or even her letter, but yours,’ he concluded some time later, smiling fleetingly down at Ainsley. ‘Your leaving like that brought to me my senses about how I felt for you. I’d always thought Strone Bridge was haunted by the ghosts of the past, but that was nothing compared to how it felt without you there. I kept expecting to see you at every turn. Especially at that view of the Kyles. Then there was Mhairi. And Eoin. And Robert—my goodness, that man went on and on about you. Everyone, asking me where you’d gone, when you’d be back.’
‘Really?’
He laughed. ‘You’ve no idea how much people have taken you to their hearts. It’s not just me. You’re part of the place, Ainsley.’
She kissed his hand, her eyes shining. ‘It’s part of me, too. I missed it nearly as much as I missed you.’
‘Who’d have thought it?’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘It was when I was away the last time with Eoin I realised I’d come to think of it as home, and to think of you there, too. It scared the living daylights out of me.’
‘That’s when you told me about Malcolm?’
‘Aye, there are no flies on you.’ Innes kissed her again. ‘That letter you left me—you said I deserved to be happy. That was the biggest problem, for I just couldn’t see that I did. But then I was standing there in the tower looking at all the hard work you’d put into those plans, and I realised it wasn’t just about me, but you, too. And Blanche—that point in your letter hit home, too. Was I actually glorying in my guilt, or so used to it that I couldn’t see a way of escaping it? That turret room, I thought it held the bogeyman, but it was just a room with a view. You were right about that. It was there I began to think maybe you could have been right about other things. So I went to see her at Glen Vadie.’
Ainsley scrambled upright. ‘And?’
‘And it turns out things were not quite as I’d imagined,’ Innes said wryly. ‘Blanche ran away because she couldn’t bring herself to marry Malcolm, as I told you. She wrote the letter to him, thinking that it was the right thing to do, to tell him, though she could not find the courage to do so to his face. She didn’t think what it would do to him, because she didn’t really think about what she’d said. That she didn’t love him. That she couldn’t marry him. She didn’t say that she wanted to marry me, because she didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘I know. It’s farcical. Or it would be if it weren’t so tragic. I’m not the only one who’s been tying themselves in knots of guilt for the past fourteen years, nor am I the only one who swore off love, either.’ Innes shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe it. She’s been living in London unmarried all these years, until she met her man Murchison and fell head over heels at the age of thirty-two. So when your letter found her, out of the blue, she was delighted at the chance to finally come clean.’
Ainsley’s jaw dropped. ‘Blanche never wanted to marry you?’
‘I know, love, it’s unbelievable,’ Innes said, grinning.
She slapped him playfully. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do.’ He sobered. ‘She said the same thing as you about Malcolm—that he’d have wanted us both to be happy. He thought, in his tragic, misguided way, that was what he was doing, clearing the way to make us so. It finally clicked with me, after you’d gone, that paying him back by making myself miserable was a stupid thing to do.’
‘And Blanche?’
‘Realised the same thing, not so very long ago, but all she did was confirm what you’d been telling me, Ainsley.’
‘So she’s as lovely on the inside as she is on the outside.’
He laughed. ‘I expect she is, but there is no one as lovely as you for me. I thought I’d just proved that.’
‘I hope you’ll prove it again very soon.’
‘Now, if you like.’
She smiled at him, the smile that sent the blood rushing to his groin, the smile he’d thought he would never see again. He kissed her on those delicious lips that were made for kissing. ‘Now, and always,’ he said, ‘and for ever, too.’
Strone Bridge, New Year’s Eve, 1840
Ainsley’s gown for the first Hogmanay party to be held at Strone Bridge by the new laird and his lady, was of ivory silk. Cut very plainly, both the décolleté and the bodice were her favourite V-shape, showing her waist and her modest cleavage to advantage. The sleeves were short, puffed and trimmed with the same black lace that bordered the hem, and was formed into little flowers at the end of the ruched silk that ran in vertical stripes down the skirt, like waves on the sand.
The party was to be held in the Great Hall. She and Innes had arrived from Edinburgh only the day before,