Читать книгу A Winter Wedding: Strangers at the Altar / The Warrior's Winter Bride - Marguerite Kaye, Denise Lynn - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Ainsley stared at him in astonishment. ‘Your father’s will sets up a trust that requires you to marry?’

‘No, it establishes a trust to control the family lands that will remain in effect until I marry,’ Innes replied.

‘Lands?’ She only just managed to prevent her jaw dropping. ‘As in—what, a country estate?’

‘A little more than that. I’m not sure what the total acreage is, but there are about twenty tenanted farms as well as the home farm and the castle.’

‘Good heavens, Mr Drummond—a castle! And about twenty farms. Is there a title, too?’

He shook his head. ‘My father was known as the laird of Strone Bridge, but it was just a courtesy.’

Laird. The title conjured up a fierce Highland patriarch. Ainsley eyed the impeccably dressed gentleman opposite her and discovered it was surprisingly easy to imagine him in a plaid, carrying a claymore. Though without the customary beard. She didn’t like beards. ‘And these lands, they are in Argyll, did you say?’

When he nodded Ainsley frowned in puzzlement. ‘Forgive me, Mr Drummond, but did you not tell me you had spent most of your life in England? Surely as the heir to such a substantial property—I know nothing of such things, mind you—but I thought it would have been customary for you to have lived on the estate?’

His countenance hardened. ‘I was not the heir.’

‘Oh?’

She waited, unwilling to prompt him further, for he looked quite forbidding. Innes Drummond took a sip of whisky, grimaced and put the glass back down on the table. ‘Dutch courage,’ he said, with a shadow of her own words and her own grim little smile. ‘I had a brother. Malcolm. He was the heir. It is as you said—he lived on the estate. Lived and breathed it, more like, for he loved the place. Strone Bridge was his world.’

He stared down at his glass, his mouth turned down in sorrow. ‘But it was not your world?’ Ainsley asked gently.

‘It was never meant for me. I was the second son. As far as my father was concerned, that meant second best, and while Malcolm was alive, next to useless, Mrs McBrayne.’

He stared down at his glass, such a bleak look on his face that she leaned over to press his hand. ‘My name is Ainsley.’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard that before.’

‘An old family name,’ she said.

He gave her a very fleeting smile as his fingers curled around hers. ‘Then you must call me Innes,’ he said. ‘Another old family name, though it is not usually that of the laird. One condition I have been spared. My father did not specify that I change my name to Malcolm. Even he must have realised that would have been a step too far. Though, then again, it may simply have been that he thought me as unworthy of the name as the lands.’

He spoke viciously enough to make Ainsley recoil. ‘You sound as though you hate him.’

‘Rather, the boot was on the other foot.’ He said it jeeringly. She wondered what hurt lay behind those words, but Innes was already retreating, patently regretting what he had revealed. ‘We did not see eye to eye,’ he tempered. ‘Some would call him a traditionalist. Everyone had a place in his world. I did not take to the one he allotted me. When I finally decided to forge my own way, we fell out.’

Ainsley could well imagine it. Innes was obviously a man with a very strong will, a modern man and an independent one who clearly thrived in the industrial world. It would be like two stags clashing. She wondered what the circumstances had been that had caused what was obviously a split, but curious as she was, she had no wish to rile him further. ‘Tell me about the trust,’ she said. ‘Why must you marry, and what happens if you do not?’

Innes stared down at his hand, the one she had so abruptly released, his eyes still dark with pain. ‘As to why, that is obvious. The Strone Bridge estate has been passed through the direct line back as far as records exist, and I am the last of the line. He wanted an heir.’

‘But he only specified that you must take a wife? That seems rather odd.’

‘We Drummonds have proved ourselves potent over the generations. My father no doubt assumed that even such an undeserving son as I would not fail in that most basic of tasks,’ Innes said sarcastically.

‘You don’t want children?’

‘I don’t want a wife, and in my book, one must necessarily precede the other.’

This time Ainsley’s curiosity overcame her caution. ‘Why are you so against marriage?’ she asked. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who hates my sex.’

‘You don’t strike me as a woman who hates men, yet you don’t want to get married again.’

‘It is a case of once bitten with me.’

‘While I have no intentions of being bitten for a first time,’ Innes retorted. ‘I don’t need anyone other than myself to order my life, and I certainly don’t want to rely on anyone else to make me happy.’

He spoke with some vehemence. He spoke as if there was bitter experience behind his words. As there was, too, behind hers. ‘Your father’s will has put you in an impossible situation, then,’ Ainsley said.

‘As has yours,’ Innes replied tersely. ‘What happens to your trust if you have no children?’

‘It reverts to me when I am forty and presumably deemed to be saying my prayers.’ She could not keep the bitterness from her voice. She had loved her father, but his unwitting condemnation of her was still difficult to take. ‘I have only to discover a way of avoiding my husband’s creditors and surviving without either a roof over my head or food in my belly for the next ten years in order to inherit, since I have no intentions of marrying again.’

‘Nor any intention of producing a child out of wedlock, I take it? No need to look so shocked,’ Innes said, ‘it was a joke.’

‘A poor one.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She forced a smile. ‘I do not really intend to sell myself down the Cowgate, you know.’

Innes covered her hand. ‘Are your debts really so bad?’

‘There will certainly still be sufficient of them to pay off when I finally do come into my inheritance,’ she said.

His fingers tightened around hers. ‘I wish I could be of some help to you.’

‘You have been, simply by listening,’ Ainsley replied, flustered by the sympathy in his look. She no longer expected sympathy. She had come to believe she did not deserve it. ‘A problem shared and all that,’ she said with a small smile.

‘It’s a damnable situation.’

He seemed much bigger, this close. There was something terribly comforting in those broad shoulders, in the way his hand enveloped hers, in the way he was looking at her, not with pity at all but with understanding. Close-up, his irises were ringed with a very dark blue. She had never seen eyes quite that colour.

Realising her thoughts were once more straying down a most inappropriate path, Ainsley dropped her gaze. ‘If my father had not left my money in trust, my husband would have spent it by now, and I’d have nothing to look forward to in what he clearly thought of as my forty-year-old dotage. The money might have postponed my husband’s demise, but I doubt very much it would have been for more than a few years, and frankly I don’t think I could have borne a few more years married to him.’

‘I confess, at one point I thought you were going to tell me you had killed him yourself,’ Innes said.

Ainsley laughed. ‘I may not be the timid wee mouse he married, but I don’t think I’ve become a monster.’

‘I think you are a wonder.’ She looked up, surprised by the warmth in his tone, and her pulses began to race as he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. There was no mistaking it for one of those polite, social, nothing kisses. His mouth lingered on her skin, his lips warm, his eyes looking deep into hers for long, long seconds. ‘You are a most remarkable woman, Ainsley McBrayne.’

‘Thank you. I— Thank you.’

‘I really do wish there was some way that I could help you, but I know better than to offer you money.’

‘I really do wish there was a way I could accept it, but—well, there we are, I cannot, so there is no point in discussing it. In fact, we have talked far more about me than you. I’m still not clear about what happens to your lands if you remain unmarried. What does this trust entail?’

She was pleased with how she sounded. Not a tremor to betray the quickening of desire his lips had stirred, and she hoped the flush she could feel blooming had not reached her cheeks.

However Innes Drummond felt, and she would have dearly liked to have known, he took his cue from her. ‘A trustee appointed by that lawyer, Ballard, to manage them, and all monies associated with them banked. I can’t touch a penny of it without a wife,’ he replied, ‘and even with a wife, I must also commit to living for a year on Strone Bridge.’

‘Is it a great deal of money?’

Innes shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea, since I’m not even entitled to see the accounts, but the money isn’t the point, I have plenty of my own. I haven’t a clue what state the place is in at all. It could be flourishing, it could have gone to rack and ruin, for all I know.’

‘So the fall out between yourself and your father then, it was...’

‘More like a complete break. I told you, he was an old-fashioned man. Do as I say, or get out of my sight.’

Innes spoke lightly enough, but she was not fooled. ‘How long is it since you were there?’

‘Almost fourteen years. Since Malcolm—since I lost my brother.’ Innes shuddered, but recovered quickly. ‘You’re wondering why I’m so upset about the trust when I’ve spent most of my adult life away from the place,’ he said.

‘I think this has all been much more of a shock than you realise,’ Ainsley answered cautiously.

‘Aye, mayhap you’re right.’ His accent had softened, the Highland lilt much more obvious. ‘I had no inkling the old man was ill, and he’d no time to let me know. Not that I think he would have. Far better for me to be called to heel through that will of his from beyond the grave. I don’t doubt he’s looking down—or maybe up—and laughing at the mess he’s put me in,’ Innes said. ‘He knew just how it would stick in my craw, having to choose between relying on someone else to run what is mine or to take up the reins myself under such conditions. Be damned to him! I must find a way to break this trust. I will not let him issue decrees from beyond the grave.’

He thumped his fist on the table, making his glass and Ainsley jump. ‘I’m beginning to think that your situation is worse than mine after all.’

‘Ach, that’s nonsense, for I at least don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. It’s a sick coincidence, the way the pair of us are being punished by our parents, though,’ Innes said. ‘What will you do?’

‘Oh, I’m beyond worrying right now.’ Ainsley waved her hand in the air dismissively. ‘The question is, what will you do? If only you could find a woman to marry who has no interest in actually being your wife, your problems would be solved.’

She spoke flippantly, more to divert his attention from her own tragic situation than anything, but Innes, who had been in the act of taking another sip of whisky, stopped, the glass halfway to his lips, an arrested look in his eyes. ‘Say that again.’

‘What? That you need to marry...’

‘A woman who has no interest in being my wife,’ he finished for her with a dawning smile. ‘A woman who is in need of a home, and has no fixed plans, who might actually be looking for a respite from her current life for a wee while. You’re right, that’s exactly what I need, and I know exactly the woman.’

‘You do? You cannot possible mean...’

His smile had a wicked light in it. ‘I do,’ Innes said. ‘I mean you.’

Ainsley was staring at him open-mouthed. Innes laughed. ‘Think about it, it’s the ideal solution. In fact, it could almost be said that we are perfectly matched, since you have as little desire for a husband as I have for a wife.’

She blinked at him owlishly. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then I must be, for you cannot possibly be proposing marriage. Apart from the fact that we’ve only just met, I thought I had made it plain that I will never—absolutely never again—surrender my independence.’

‘I’m not asking you to. I’m actually making it easier for you to retain it, because if we get married, I can pay off all those debts that bastard of a husband of yours acquired and then you really will be free.’

‘But I’d be married to you.’

‘In name only.’

‘I owe a small fortune. I couldn’t take it from you just for the price of putting my name on a bit of paper.’

‘You’d have to come with me to Strone Bridge. The clause that specified my spending a year there doesn’t actually include my wife, but all the same, I think you’d have to come with me for a wee while, at least.’

‘That would not be a problem since, as you have already deduced, I’m going to be homeless very shortly, and would appreciate a change of scene, but I simply couldn’t think of accepting such a huge amount of money and give so little in return.’

‘What if you saw it as a wage?’ Innes asked, frowning.

‘For what?’

‘A fee, paid for professional services,’ he said, ‘and a retainer to be paid in addition each year until you are forty, which you could pay me back if you wish, when you eventually inherit, though there is no need.’

‘But I’m not a professional.’ Her eyes widened. ‘You cannot possibly mean— I told you, I was joking about the Cowgate.’

Innes laughed. ‘Not that! I meant a business professional.’ She was now looking utterly bewildered. Innes grinned. ‘The more I think about it, the more I see how perfect it is. No, wait.’ He caught her as she made to get up. ‘I promise you, I’m neither drunk nor mad. Listen.’

Ainsley sat down, folding her arms, a sceptical look on her face. ‘Five minutes.’

He nodded. ‘Think about it as a business proposal,’ he said. ‘First of all, think of the common ground. To begin with, you need to pay off your debts and I am rich enough to be able to do so easily. Second, you are a widow, and I need a wife. Since we are neither of us in the least bit interested, now or ever, in marrying someone else...’

‘How can you be so sure of that?’

‘How can you?’ He waited, but she made no answer, so he gave a satisfied nod. ‘You see? We are of one mind on that. And we are of one mind on another thing, which is our determination to make our own way in life. If you let me pay off your debts, I can give you the freedom to do that, and if you marry me, you’ll be freeing me to make up my own mind on what to do—or not—about my inheritance.’

‘But we’ll be tied to one another.’

‘In name only, Ainsley. Tied by a bit of paper, which is no more than a contract.’

‘Contracts require payment. What professional services can you possibly imagine I can provide?’

‘An objective eye. An unbiased opinion. I need both.’ Innes shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not advice, precisely,’ he said.

‘Because you do not like to take advice, do you?’

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘Another thing you’re not used to, obviously.’ Ainsley smiled. ‘Not mocking, teasing. I’m a little rusty. What is it, then, that involves my giving you my unbiased and objective opinion without advising you?’

‘When you put it like that!’ He was forced to smile. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I’d like you to come to Strone Bridge with me. Not to make my decisions, but to make sure when I do make them, I’m doing so without prejudice.’

‘Is that possible? It’s your birthright, Innes.’

He shook his head vehemently. ‘That’s the point. It’s not. It pains me to admit it, but I don’t know much about it, and I haven’t a clue what I want to do with it. Live there. Sell it. Put in a manager. I don’t know, and I won’t know until I go there, and even when I do—what do you say?’

‘That’s the price? That’s the professional services I’m to render in order to have my life back?’

‘You think it’s too great a cost?’ Innes said, deflated.

Ainsley smiled. Then she laughed. ‘I think it’s a bargain.’

‘You do? You understand, Strone Bridge is like to be—well, very different from Edinburgh.’

‘A change from Edinburgh, a place to take stock, is, as you pointed out, exactly what I need.’

‘I’m not asking you to stay the full year. A few months, until I’ve seen my way clear, that’s all. And though I’m asking you to—to consult with me, that does not mean I’ll necessarily take your advice,’ Innes cautioned.

‘I’m used to that.’ Ainsley’s smile faded momentarily, but then brightened. ‘Though being asked is a step in the right direction, and I will at least have the opportunity of putting my point across.’

Glancing at the decanter of whisky, the level of which had unmistakably fallen by more than a couple of drams, Innes wondered if he was drunk after all. He’d just proposed marriage to a complete stranger. A stranger with a sorry tale, whose courage and strength of mind he admired, but he had met her only a couple of hours ago all the same. Yet it didn’t seem to matter. He was drawn to her, had been drawn to her from that first moment when she’d stormed out of the lawyer’s office, and it wasn’t just the bizarre coincidence of their situations. He liked what he saw of her, and admired what he heard. That he also found her desirable was entirely beside the point. His instincts told him that they’d fare well together, and his instincts were never wrong. ‘So we are agreed?’ Innes asked.

Ainsley tapped her index fingers together, frowning. ‘We’re complete strangers,’ she said, reflecting his own thoughts. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to put on enough of a show to persuade your people that this isn’t a marriage of convenience?’

‘I’m not in the habit of concerning myself with what other people think.’

‘Don’t be daft. You’ll be the—their—laird, Innes. Of course they’ll be concerned.’

She was in the right of it, but he had no intentions of accepting that fact. He was not the laird. The laird was dead, and so, too, was his heir. Innes would not be branded. ‘They must take me—us—as they find us,’ he said. Ainsley was still frowning. ‘Strone Bridge Castle is huge. If it’s having to rub shoulders with me on a daily basis you’re worried about, I assure you, we could go for weeks without seeing each other if we wanted.’

‘That is hardly likely to persuade people we’re living in domestic bliss.’

‘I doubt domestic bliss is a concept that any laird of Strone Bridge is familiar with. My ancestors married for the getting of wealth and the getting of bairns.’

‘Then that puts an end to our discussion.’ Ainsley got to her feet and began to head for the door of the coffee room.

Innes threw down some money on the table and followed her, pulling her into a little alcove in the main reception area of the hotel. ‘I don’t want either of those things from you. I don’t want to be like them,’ he said earnestly. ‘Can’t you see, that’s the point?’

‘This is madness.’

He gave her arm a little shake, forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘Madness would be to do what you’re doing, and that’s walking away from the perfect solution. Stop thinking about what could go wrong, think about what it will put right. Freedom, Ainsley. Think about that.’

Her mouth trembled on the brink of a smile. ‘I confess, it’s a very attractive idea.’

‘So you’ll do it?’

Her smile broadened. The light had come back into her eyes. ‘I feel sure there are a hundred reasons why I should walk very quickly in the other direction.’

‘But you will not?’ He was just close enough for her skirts to brush his trousers, to smell the scent of her soap, of the rain in her hair. She made no attempt to free herself, holding his gaze, that smile just hovering, tempting, challenging. Tension quivered between them. ‘You would regret it if you did,’ Innes said.

‘Do you know, Mr Innes Drummond, I think you may well be right.’

Her voice was soft, there was a tiny shiver in it, and a shiver, too, when he slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms, closing the space between them and lowering his mouth to hers. It was the softest of kisses, the briefest of kisses, but it was a kiss. A very adult kiss, which could easily have become so much more. Lips, tongues, caressed, tasted. Heat flared and they both instinctively recoiled, for it was the kind of heat that could burn.

Ainsley put her hand to her mouth, staring wide-eyed at him. Innes looked, he suspected, every bit as shocked as she. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Are you?’

‘Not really, but I promise that was not in any way part of the bargain I’m proposing.’

She slanted him a look he could not interpret as she disentangled herself from his loose embrace. ‘That was merely the product of too much whisky on top of too much emotional upheaval. It was like a—a valve to release the steam pressure on one of those steam engines you build bridges and tunnels for, nothing more.’

He laughed. He couldn’t help it, because she was right in a way, and she was quite wrong in another, but in every way she was wholly unexpected and a breath of much-needed fresh air. ‘I’m thinking that my return to Strone Bridge is going to be a source of constant emotional upheaval,’ Innes said. ‘We might need to do a lot of kissing.’

‘You’re an engineer,’ Ainsley replied primly, though her eyes were sparkling. ‘I suggest you invent a different kind of safety valve for yourself.’

* * *

‘Ainsley, what a nice surprise.’ Felicity Blair, editor of the Scottish Ladies Companion, greeted her friend with a warm smile, waving her into the shabby chair on the other side of the huge desk that dominated her tiny office. ‘I’ve just been reading Madame Hera’s latest advice. I am not at all sure we can publish this reply, not least because it’s rather long.’

‘Which one is that?’ Ainsley asked.

In response, Felicity picked up a piece of paper from the collection that Ainsley recognised she’d handed in to the office a week ago, and began to read:

‘Dear Anxious Miss,

Simply because you are more mature than the average bride-to-be—and I do not consider two-and-thirty to be so old—does not mean that you are exempt from the trepidation natural to one in your position. You are, when all is said and done, setting sail into unchartered waters. To put it plainly, no matter how well you think you might know your intended, you should be prepared for the state of matrimony to alter him significantly, for he will have secured his prize, and will no longer be required to woo you. This might mean calm, tranquil seas. But it might prove to be a stormy passage.

My advice is to start the way you mean to go on and take charge of the rudder! Give no quarter, Anxious Miss; let your husband see that he cannot set the course of the matrimonial vessel to suit only himself. Do not allow yourself to be subsumed by his nature nor his dictates simply because you have assumed his name. Do not allow your nerves, your maidenly modesty or your sex to intimidate you. Speak up for yourself from the first, and set a precedent that, if not immediately, will, I am sure, eventually earn your husband’s respect.

As to the more intimate matters with which you are concerned. You say your intended has indicated a lack of experience, and you are worried that this might—once again, I will revert to the seafaring metaphor—result in the becalming of the good ship wedlock. First, I would strongly advise you to muster your courage and have a frank chat about the mechanics of your wedding night with a married lady friend, thus eliminating the shock of the complete unknown. Second, I would advise you equally strongly to give your husband no inclination that you come to the wedding night armed with such information, lest he find it emasculating. Third, remember, if he really is as innocent as he claims, he will be as nervous as you. But he is a man, Anxious Miss, and thus a little flattery, some feminine admiration and a pliant female body, will ensure the success of your maiden voyage.

Good luck!

Madame Hera’

Ainsley smiled doubtfully. ‘I admit, the sailing metaphor is rather trite, but if I had not used it, I would have been forced to invent something else equally silly, else you would have deemed it too vulgar to print.’

‘At least you did not surrender to the obvious temptation to talk about dry docks in the context of the wedding night,’ Felicity replied acerbically.

‘No, because such a shocking thing did not occur to me,’ Ainsley replied, laughing. ‘Though to be serious for a moment, it is becoming quite a challenge for Madame Hera to advise without entirely hiding her meaning behind the veil of polite euphemisms. The whole point of the column is to provide practical help.’

Felicity set the letter down. ‘I’ve been pondering that very issue myself. You know how limited the space is for Madame’s column each month, yet we are now receiving enough correspondence to fill the entire magazine.’

‘Aren’t you pleased? I know I am. It is proof that I was absolutely right about the need for such a thing, and you were absolutely right to take the chance to publish it.’

‘Yes, the volume of mail is a true testament to the quality of Madame’s advice but, Ainsley, the problem is we can’t publish most of it, for our readers would consider the subjects far too warm. Even with your shipping metaphor, that reply to Anxious Miss is sailing close to the wind. Oh, good grief, you’ve got me at it now!’ Felicity adjusted the long ink-stained cuffs that protected her blouse. ‘I’m glad you stopped by, because I’ve got an idea I’d like to discuss. You know it will be exactly two years since we launched Madame Hera’s column next month?’

‘Of course I do.’ It had been the first step away from self-pity towards self-sufficiency Ainsley had taken. She remembered it vividly—the thrill of dreaming up the idea after one particularly dispiriting evening with her husband. ‘It’s funny,’ she said to Felicity, ‘at first it was the secret of Madame’s existence that I enjoyed most, knowing I had something all mine that John knew nothing about. But these days, it is the hope that some of Madame Hera’s advice actually helps the women who write to her that I relish. Though of course, one can never really know if one has helped.’

‘You do,’ Felicity said firmly. ‘You know you do, just by providing an ear. Now, as I said, there are a great deal more people asking for Madame’s advice than we can cover in our column, which brings me to my idea. A more personal service.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’ Ainsley wondered, for a startled moment, if her friend had somehow heard of her remark about earning a living in the Cowgate the other day.

Felicity gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Your face! I do not mean anything immoral, never fear. I mean a personal letter service. For a price, of course, for matters of a more sensitive nature, we can offer a personal response from Madame. We’ll split the fee between the journal and yourself, naturally. Depending on how many you can answer in a month I’d say your earnings from the journal could triple at least. What do you say?’

‘I’m getting married,’ Ainsley blurted out.

Felicity’s dark brown eyes opened so wide as to appear quite round. ‘You’re doing what?’

‘I know, it’s a shock, but it’s not what you think. I can explain,’ Ainsley said, wondering now if she could. She’d hardly slept a wink these past few nights wondering if she had been an idiot, and coming here this morning had been a test she’d set herself, for if practical, outspoken, radical Felicity thought it was a good idea...

* * *

Half an hour and what seemed like a hundred questions later, her friend sat back at her desk, rummaging absent-mindedly for the pencil she had, as usual, lost in her heavy chignon of hair. ‘And you’re absolutely sure that this Mr Drummond has no ulterior motives?’

‘As sure as I can be. He’s started the process of paying all of John’s debts.’

‘At least you’d no longer be obliged to call yourself by that man’s name. Does he include the mortgage on Wemyss Place in the debts?’

Ainsley shook her head. ‘Innes wanted to pay it, but as far as I’m concerned, the creditors can have the house. It has nothing but unhappy memories for me. Besides, I have every intention of repaying it all when I inherit my trust fund, and that mortgage would take up nearly all of it.’

‘So, you are going to be a Highland lady. The chatelaine of a real Scottish castle.’ Felicity chuckled. ‘How will you like that, I wonder? You’ve never been out of Edinburgh.’

‘It’s only a temporary thing, until Innes decides what he wants to do with the place.’

‘And how long will that take?’

‘I don’t know. Weeks. Months? No more, though he must remain there for a year. I’m looking forward to the change of scenery. And to feeling useful.’

‘It all sounds too good to be true. Sadly, in my experience, things that are too good to be true almost always are,’ Felicity said drily.

‘Do you think it’s a mistake?’

‘I don’t know. I think you’re half-mad, but you’ve had a raw deal of it these past few years, and I’ve not seen you this animated for a long time. Perhaps getting away from Edinburgh will be good for you.’ Felicity finally located her pencil and pulled it out of her coiffure, along with a handful of bright copper hair. ‘What is he like, this laird? Are you sure he’ll not turn into some sort of savage Highlander who’ll drag you off to his lair and have his wicked way with you the minute you arrive on his lands?’

‘There is no question of him having his wicked way,’ Ainsley said, trying to ignore the vision of Innes in a plaid. The same one she’d had the first day she’d met him. With a claymore. And no beard.

‘You’re blushing,’ Felicity exclaimed. ‘How very interesting. Ainsley McBrayne, I do believe you would not be averse to your Highlander being very wicked indeed.’

‘Stop it! I haven’t the first idea what you mean by wicked, but...’

Felicity laughed. ‘I know you don’t,’ she said, ‘and frankly, it’s been the thing that’s worried me most about this idea of mine for Madame Hera’s personal letter service, but now I think you’ve solved the problem. I suppose you’ve already kissed him? Don’t deny it, that guilty look is a complete giveaway. Did you like it?’

‘Felicity!’

‘Well?’

‘Yes.’ Ainsley laughed. ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Was it a good kiss? The kind of kiss to give you confidence that your Mr Drummond would know what he was doing? The kind of kiss that made you want him to do more than kiss you?’

Ainsley put her hands to her heated cheeks. ‘Yes. If you must know, yes, it was! Goodness, the things you say. We did not— Our marriage is not— That sort of thing is not...’

‘You’re going to be out in the wilds. You’ve already said that you’re attracted to each other. It’s bound to come up, if you’ll forgive the dreadful double entendre. And when it does—provided you take care there are no consequences—then why not?’ Felicity said. ‘Do you want me to be blunt?’

‘What, even more than you’ve been already?’

‘Ainsley, from what you’ve told me—or not told me—about your marriage, it was not physically satisfying.’

‘I can’t talk about it.’

‘No, and you know I won’t push you, but you also know enough, surely, to realise that with the right man, lovemaking can be fun.’

‘Fun?’ Ainsley tried to imagine this, but her own experience, which was ultimately simply embarrassing, at times shameful, made this impossible.

‘Fun,’ Felicity repeated, ‘and pleasurable, too. It should not be an ordeal.’

Which was exactly how it had been, latterly, Ainsley thought, flushing, realising that Felicity had perceived a great deal more than she had ever revealed. ‘Is it fun and pleasurable for you, with your mystery man?’

‘If it were not, I would not be his mistress.’

It was only because she knew her so well that Ainsley noticed the faint withdrawal, the very slight tightening of her lips that betrayed her. Felicity claimed that being a mistress gave her the satisfaction of a lover without curtailing her freedom, but there were times when Ainsley wondered. She suspected the man was married, and loved her friend too much to pain her by asking. They both had their shameful secrets.

Ainsley picked up the latest stack of letters from the desk and began to flick through them. What Felicity said was absolutely true. As Madame Hera’s reputation spread, her post contained ever more intimate queries, and as things stood, Ainsley would be hard-pressed to answer some of them save in the vaguest of terms. She replaced the letters with a sigh. ‘No. Even if Innes was interested...’

‘You know perfectly well that he would be,’ Felicity interjected drily. ‘He’s a man, and, despite the fact that John McBrayne stripped you of every ounce of self-esteem, you’re an attractive woman. What else will you do to while away the dark nights in that godforsaken place?’

‘Regardless,’ Ainsley persisted, ‘it would be quite wrong of me to use Innes merely to acquire the experience that would allow Madame Hera to dispense better advice.’

‘Advice that would make such a difference to all these poor, tormented women,’ Felicity said, patting the pile of letters. ‘Wasn’t that exactly what you set out to do?’

‘Stop it. You cannot make me feel guilty enough to— Just stop it, Felicity. You know, sometimes I think you really are as ruthless an editor as you pretend.’

‘Trust me, I have to be, since I, too, am a mere woman. But we were talking about you, Ainsley. I agree, it would be wrong if you were only lying back and thinking of Scotland for the sake of Madame Hera and her clients. Though I hope you’ve more in mind than lying back and thinking of Scotland.’

‘Felicity!’

‘Fun and pleasure, my dear, require participation,’ her friend said with another of her mischievous smiles. ‘You see, now you are intrigued, and now you can admit it would not only be for Madame Hera, but yourself. Confess, you want him.’

‘Yes. No. I told you, it...’

‘Has no part in your arrangement. I heard you. Methinks you protest just a little too much.’

‘But do you approve?’ Ainsley said anxiously.

Felicity picked up her pencil again and began to twist it into her hair. ‘I approve of anything that will make you happy. When does the ceremony take place?’

‘The banns are being called on Sunday for the first time. The ceremony will be immediately after the last calling, in three weeks. Will you come, Felicity? I’d like to have you by my side.’

‘Will you promise me that if you change your mind before then, you will speak up? And if you are unhappy at this Strone Bridge place, you will come straight back here, regardless of whether you feel your obligations have been met?’

‘I promise.’

Felicity got to her feet. ‘Then I will be your attendant, if that’s what you want.’ She picked up the bundle of letters and held them out. ‘Make a start on these. I will draw up the advertisement, we’ll run it beside Madame’s column for this month and I will send you a note of the terms once I have them agreed. Will you be disclosing your alter ego to the laird?’

‘Absolutely not! Good grief, no, especially not if I am to— He will think...’

Felicity chuckled gleefully. ‘I see I’ve given you food for thought, at the least. I look forward to reading the results—in the form of Madame’s letters, I mean.’ She hugged Ainsley tightly. ‘I wish you luck. You will write to me, once you are there?’

Ainsley sniffed, kissing her friend on the cheek. ‘You’ll get sick of hearing from me.’ She tucked the letters into the folder, which was already stuffed with the bills she was to hand over to Mr Ballard, Innes’s lawyer.

‘Just one thing,’ Felicity called after her. ‘I’ll wager you five pounds that if your Highlander ever discovers that you are Madame Hera, he’ll be far more interested in finding problems for the pair of you to resolve together than taking umbrage.’

‘Since I shall take very good care that he never finds out, you will lose,’ Ainsley said, laughing as she closed the door behind her.