With thanks to Rose M,
my new and wonderful neighbour and friend.
Gardening will never be the same again.
MARRY...
There was deathly silence in the magnificent library of the ancient castle of Duncairn. In specially built niches round the walls were the bottles of whisky Jeanie had scraped to afford. Weirdly, that was what she was focusing on. What a waste. How much whisky could she fit in a suitcase?
How many scores of fruitcakes would they make? There was no way she was leaving them behind. For him. For her prospective bridegroom?
What a joke.
She’d been clinging to the hope that she might keep her job. She knew the Lord of Duncairn didn’t like her, but she’d worked hard to give Duncairn Castle the reputation for hospitality it now enjoyed.
It didn’t matter. Her efforts were for nothing. This crazy will meant she was out on her ear.
‘This must be a joke.’ Alasdair McBride, the sixteenth Earl of Duncairn, sounded appalled. It was no wonder. She stood to lose her job. Alasdair stood to lose his...fiefdom?
‘A last will and testament is never a joke.’ Edward McCraig, of the prestigious law firm McCraig, McCraig & McFerry, had made the long journey from Edinburgh to be at today’s funeral for Eileen McBride—Alasdair’s grandmother and Jeanie’s employer. He’d sat behind Jeanie in the Duncairn Kirk and listened to the eulogies with an air of supressed impatience. He wished to catch the last ferry back to the mainland. He was now seated in one of the library’s opulent chairs, reading the old lady’s wishes to her only surviving grandson—and to the live-in help.
He shuffled his papers and pushed his glasses further down his nose, looking at neither of them. Crazy or not, Eileen’s will clearly made him uncomfortable.
Jeanie looked at Alasdair and then looked away. This might be a mess, but it had little to do with her, she decided. She went back to counting whisky bottles. Maybe three suitcases? She only had one, but there were crates in the castle cellars. If she was brave enough to face the dark and the spiders...
Could you sell whisky online?
She glanced back at Alasdair and found his gaze was following hers, along the line of whisky. With an oath—a mixture of fury and shock—he took three glasses from the sideboard and poured.
Soda-sized whiskies.
The lawyer shook his head but Jeanie took hers with gratitude. The will had been a nasty shock. It was excellent whisky and she couldn’t take it all with her.
But it did need to be treated with respect. As the whisky hit home she choked and sank onto one of the magnificent down-filled sofas. A cloud of dog hair rose around her. She really had to do something about Eileen’s dogs.
Or not. This will said they were no longer her problem. She’d have to leave the island. She couldn’t take the dogs and she loved them. This castle might be over-the-top opulent, but she loved it, too. She felt...befuddled.
‘So how do we get around this?’ Clearly the whisky wasn’t having the same effect on Alasdair that it was on her. His glass was almost empty. She looked at him in awe. Actually she’d been looking sideways at Alasdair all afternoon. Well, why not? He might be arrogant, he might have despised her from the first time he’d met her, but he’d always been worth looking at.
Alasdair McBride was thirty-seven years old, and he was what Jeanie’s granny would have described as a man to be reckoned with. Although he didn’t use it, his hereditary title fitted him magnificently, especially today. In honour of his grandmother’s funeral he was wearing full highland regalia, and he looked awesome.
Jeanie always had had a weakness for a man in a kilt, and the Duncairn tartan was gorgeous. Okay, the Earl of Duncairn was gorgeous, she conceded. Six foot two in his stockinged feet, with jet-black hair and the striking bone structure and strength of the warrior race he’d so clearly descended from, Alasdair McBride was a man to make every eye in the room turn to him. The fact that he controlled the massive Duncairn financial empire only added to his aura of power, but he needed no such addition to look what he was—a man in control of his world.
Except...now he wasn’t. His grandmother’s will had just pulled the rug from under his feet.
And hers. Marry? So much for her quiet life as the Duncairn housekeeper.
‘You can’t get around it,’ the lawyer was saying. ‘The will is inviolate.’
‘Do you think...?’ She was testing her voice for the first time since the bombshell had landed. ‘Do you think that Eileen might possibly have been...have been...?’
‘Lady McBride was in full possession of her senses.’ The lawyer cast her a cautious look as if he was expecting her to disintegrate into hysterics. ‘My client understood her will was slightly...unusual...so she took steps to see that it couldn’t be overturned. She arranged a certificate of medical competency, dated the same day she made the will.’
Alasdair drained the rest of his whisky and poured another, then spun to look out of the great bay window looking over the sea.
It was a magnificent window. A few highland cattle grazed peacefully in the late-summer sun, just beyond the ha-ha. Further on, past rock-strewn burns and craggy hills, were the remnants of a vast medieval fortress on the shoreline. Two eagles were soaring effortlessly in the thermals. If he used binoculars, he might even see otters in the burns running into the sea, Jeanie thought. Or deer. Or...
Or her mind was wandering. She put her glass down, glanced at Alasdair’s broad back and felt a twist of real sympathy. Eileen had been good to her already, and in death she owed her nothing. Alasdair’s loss, however, was appalling. She might not like the man, but he hadn’t deserved this.
Oh, Eileen, what were you thinking? she demanded wordlessly of her deceased employer—but there was nothing Jeanie could do.
‘I guess that’s it, then,’ she managed, addressing herself to the lawyer. ‘How long do I have before you want me out?’
‘There’s no rush,’ the lawyer told her. ‘It’ll take a while to get the place ready for sale.’
‘Do you want me to keep trading? I have guests booked until the end of next month.’
‘That would be excellent. We may arrange for you to stay even longer. It’d be best if we could sell it as a going concern.’
‘No!’ The explosion was so fierce it almost rocked the room. Alasdair turned from the window and slammed his glass onto the coffee table so hard it shattered. He didn’t seem to notice.
‘It can’t happen.’ Alasdair’s voice lowered, no longer explosive but cold and hard and sure. ‘My family’s entire history, sold to fund...dogs’ homes?’
‘It’s a worthy cause,’ the lawyer ventured but Alasdair wasn’t listening.
‘This castle is the least of it,’ he snapped. ‘Duncairn is one of the largest financial empires in Europe. Do you know how much our organisation gives to charity each year? Sold, it could give every lost dog in Europe a personal attendant and gold-plated dog bowl for the rest of its life, but then it’s gone. Maintained, we can do good—we are doing good. This will is crazy. I’ll channel every penny of profit into dog care for the next ten years if I must, but to give it away...’
‘I understand it would mean the end of your career—’ the lawyer ventured but he was cut off.
‘It’s not the end of my career.’
If Lord Alasdair had had another glass,