Читать книгу Underneath The Mistletoe Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Marguerite Kaye - Страница 21

Chapter Twelve

Dear ‘Anna’,

Your letter touched my heart. The love you feel for this man shines like a beacon from the page. I do not doubt that, as you say, you have in him found your soul mate. It therefore pains me all the more to tell you that I can see no way for you to have a future with him that could be anything other than troubled. Were you a woman of fewer principles, if you loved this man less, then I would gladly tell you what you so desperately want to hear, that love can triumph over all. But, my dear, this can only happen when that love is equally given and received, and sadly, in your case, it is not. This widower, you have made clear, loves his three children before all else, and these children have made their unequivocal opposition to his proposed marriage to you abundantly clear over a prolonged period. You have done all you can to win them round. Their opposition has increased rather than decreased over time, and now encompasses their dead mother’s family, too. Frankly, if this man loved you as much as you love him, he would have made a stand by now. He will never put you first. The rights and wrongs of this make no difference, ‘Anna’, because you love him too much to endanger his happiness, and if you truly believed that this was with you at the potential cost of his relationship with his children, you would have acted accordingly. That you have turned to me for advice tells its own story, don’t you think?

It is therefore with profound regret that I am forced to advise you this: you must leave him, for he will never let you go, but nor will he marry you while the situation remains as it is. I hope you will take strength from doing what is right for you. I pray, as I am sure all our readers will, too, that you will find the future happiness that you deserve.

With my very best wishes,

Madame Hera

Ainsley put down her pen and dabbed at her cheeks with her handkerchief. This was one letter that she would not show to Innes. It was now the beginning of December. Having bared his soul, he had retreated like a wounded animal, making it clear that he wanted neither comfort nor further discussion on the subject of Blanche and Malcolm. Or the date of Ainsley’s departure from Strone Bridge, set for the first week in January.

She had been through the wringer of emotions, from shock to horror, from pity to compassion, sorrow and sadness, jealousy, anger, dejection, but she had not once doubted, since that day at Malcolm’s graveside, that she must leave. Reading over Madame Hera’s advice to ‘Anna’, Ainsley was confronted with how fundamentally her own feelings had changed in the face of Innes’s determination not to allow himself to be reconciled to his past. She had not given up hope of contacting Blanche to help with this, but having had no response to her letter, and with only a few weeks left till the end of the year when she must leave Strone Bridge, Ainsley was not optimistic.

In one sense, it made no difference. Like ‘Anna’, she had found her soul mate, but unlike ‘Anna’, Ainsley could now see very clearly that her soul mate was not free to love her as she deserved to be loved, and also unlike ‘Anna’, Ainsley had grown to believe that she would settle for nothing less. It was strange and surprising, too, how much less important her inability to bear children had become. It grieved her deeply, but in a sense, she had been forced to acknowledge, she had been hiding behind it, pretending to herself that it was this that prevented her from declaring her love, telling herself that she was making a noble sacrifice in removing herself from Innes’s life when in fact she must have known that it would have made no difference. He would not love her. He would not allow himself to love her. And Ainsley, having experienced second best, was not about to accept it again.

Lying wide awake and aching with longing at night, she could not decide which was worse: knowing that Innes wanted her so much, or knowing that he did not want her enough. She loved him, but in her time here she had come to love the person she had become, too. She knew he still wanted her, she no longer questioned her own desirability, but she would not use it to push them both into temporarily satisfying a passion that would ultimately make it harder for her to leave.

She longed more than anything to force Innes to see his past more clearly, but she could not, and the woman who could do so remained incommunicado. So Ainsley concentrated on the one thing she could do to help, her plans for the castle, which today she had decided were finally in an advanced enough state for her to share with Innes. Putting Madame Hera’s correspondence to one side, she hurried to her room to check her toilette. Her dress was of taffeta, printed in autumn colours. The bodice was fitted tightly to her waist, and came to a deep point. The fashionable oval neckline was trimmed with shirring of the same material, and the long sleeves, like the bodice, ended in a sharp point.

Though it was early December, the sun had a hint of unseasonable warmth as she made her way to the pier in search of Innes. He was in his shirtsleeves. He had lost weight since coming to Strone Bridge. Days spent in the fields and out here in the bay had sculpted his muscles. He would smell of sweat and the sea and the peaty air, and of himself. There was a spot, just where his ribs met, where she liked to rest her cheek and listen to his heartbeat and where she always imagined she could breathe in the essence of him.

‘Ainsley? Did you want me?’

‘Yes.’ Too late, she heard the longing in her voice. It was no consolation to see it reflected momentarily in his eyes, too. ‘I mean, I was hoping to speak to you,’ she amended hastily. ‘I have something I’d like to discuss with you.’ Innes nodded, pulling his heavy fisherman’s jumper over his shirt. ‘I thought we could go up to the castle,’ she said when he looked at her expectantly. ‘That way we won’t be interrupted.’

The climb back up helped calm her flutter of nerves. She had worked so hard on her plans, but though she had been sure that it would be a pleasant surprise for Innes, it occurred to her belatedly that she had, by keeping her work a secret, contradicted her own hard-won wish to be consulted.

She opened the heavy front door with her keys and led the way through to the Great Hall. ‘Do you remember,’ she asked nervously, ‘that I said the solution to Strone Bridge’s economy would prove to be something other than modernising the crofts? In fact, you came up with the idea yourself, that first day you showed me round this place.’

Innes shook his head, frowning in puzzlement. ‘I’m not sure I’m following you.’

‘Napier did it a few years ago—the Loch Eck tour,’ Ainsley said. ‘I’ve been reading about it. He built the pier for the steamer and arranged the onward connections to places of interest. Do you not remember joking about it—a tea room, a gift shop for the tweed?’

‘Vaguely, but I’m not sure...’

‘And you told me yourself that the railway will run all the way from Glasgow to Greenock soon, so that there will be any number of people able to make the trip.’

‘Excursionists. Is that what you’re talking about?’

‘More than that.’ Ainsley smiled, excitement taking over from her nerves as she led him over to the table where she had laid everything out so carefully. ‘Welcome to Strone Bridge Castle Hotel,’ she said with a flourish.

Innes stared down at the plans, the drawings she and Mr Alexander had pulled together, the sketch she herself had made of the railway poster. He picked up the draft of the guidebook, leafing through it, and then the pages of costings she had so painstakingly worked on. ‘You did all this?’ he asked.

‘I should have told you,’ she said. ‘I know I ought to have consulted you, but I wanted to surprise you.’

‘You have.’ He wandered round the table, picking up papers and putting them down again, the frown deepening on his face. ‘Do you really believe people will pay to stay here?’

‘Innes, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to spend the night here. I know you hate the place, but it’s a real castle, for goodness’ sake, with real turrets, and all these huge big rooms, and lots of pomp and splendour, and the views and— Yes, I really do think there would be any number of people willing to spend the night here. Or several. As you can see, I’ve even considered the possibility of leasing it out for weddings and the like. You can charge different prices, depending on which of the bedchambers people occupy, and more for the ones with ghosts in them.’

He was staring down at the railway poster. She had no idea what he was thinking. ‘I thought that Mhairi would be the perfect candidate to run the place,’ Ainsley continued. ‘I thought it was the sort of restitution that would appeal to you, to have her installed as a chatelaine here.’

Now he did smile, albeit fleetingly. ‘You were right about that. My father would be furious.’

‘More important, there isn’t anyone who could do a better job,’ Ainsley rushed on. ‘And there will be employment for any number of people here. Staff for the hotel, groundsmen. There’s room for about forty or fifty guests at least, I’d say. And then there will be the food that can be provided direct from the crofts, and the tweed to sell, and—and it will mean that people don’t have to emigrate to find a new life, Innes.’ She laced her hands together tightly. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done all this yourself.’

‘Not myself. Robert has been helping, though I’ve sworn him to secrecy, for I did not want anyone else to know before you.’ Still, Innes gave her no clue as to what he was thinking. ‘You’re worried it still won’t be enough,’ Ainsley rushed on. ‘I wondered that myself, and also I was thinking that even fifty well-paying guests would not turn enough profit to justify the renovations for several years—you can see the rough figures—very rough, I’m no expert. So I thought— Well, actually it would be better if I showed you.’

‘Showed me what?’

She led them through the Great Hall out into the atrium and produced the key that opened the hidden door. ‘Wait till you see. I’ve got it all thought out, I...’

‘Where are you going?’ Innes stopped dead in front of the doorway.

‘The tower. The view is magnificent, and it is easier to show you what I’m proposing from there.’

‘You’ve been up there?’ He had his hands dug deep into his pockets. ‘I told you not to go up there.’

He looked angry. ‘It’s perfectly safe, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Ainsley said. ‘I had Mr Alexander look at it, and he said that it was structurally sound. I had him look over all of the castle, and in fact he said...’

‘I’m not interested in Robert’s opinion. I thought I’d made it very clear that this tower was off limits.’

‘No, you didn’t. You said the key was lost, and that it was unsafe, and since neither have proved to be the case—’ She broke off, at a loss to understand his reaction. ‘It’s the cottages,’ she said. ‘The tied cottages that have been empty for several years. I was thinking we could renovate them and let them out to families who cannot afford to holiday in the hotel, and who—’

‘Enough!’

Ainsley flinched at the fury in his voice. ‘What is wrong?’

‘I told you,’ Innes roared. ‘I said to you not to go up there.’

‘You didn’t. You’re being quite unreasonable. You said...’

‘Did you not ask yourself why the place was locked? For God’s sake, did not Mhairi say anything?’

‘Mhairi doesn’t know anything of what I’m doing. No one does, save Mr Alexander. I— It was meant to be a surprise. Is it because I didn’t tell you, Innes? Is that what’s wrong?’

He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes dark, his lips thinned. ‘My brother died by throwing himself from that tower, that’s what’s wrong, and that’s why all your plans must come to nothing.’

Innes turned the key in the lock of the hidden door, then detached it from the rest of the bunch and pocketed it. ‘I’m sorry for all the hard work you’ve put into this, but you’ve wasted your time,’ he said curtly before turning on his heel and walking away without a backward glance.