Newlyweds of Convenience

CHAPTER THREE

‘I GAVE Charlie a couple of biscuits, is that right?’ said Torr.

‘Er…yes…thanks.’

Mallory had to pull the duvet down over her mouth so that he could hear her.

‘And I said goodnight, told him to have a nice sleep, and that we’d see him in the morning, the way you always do.’

Forgetting her embarrassment in surprise, Mallory pulled herself up to stare at him. ‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘It’s your night-time ritual.’ Torr sat down on the edge of the bed, making it dip and creak, and pulled off his boots. ‘I’ve heard you talking to Charlie in the kitchen.’

He had been eavesdropping on her one-sided conversations with the dog all this time, and she had never known it! Mallory didn’t know whether to feel foolish or astounded that he had bothered to listen. ‘I suppose you think I’m a sentimental idiot?’

‘No,’ he said, yanking his thick Guernsey sweater over his head. ‘I like the way you give him so much attention.’

It’s more than you give me. The unspoken words seemed to echo round the room, as a brushed cotton shirt followed the sweater, and Mallory found her eyes resting on his broad, bare back before she remembered to yank her gaze away and huddle back down under the duvet. She wasn’t supposed to be gawping at the sight of husband undressing.

She just hoped that he wasn’t planning to sleep naked. She didn’t know how she would cope with that. But, no, when she peeped another glance, he was wearing high-tech thermal gear that looked as if it were top of the range for climbers. She should have realised that his experience on the hills would mean that he was much better prepared for the cold than she was. Walking Charlie required boots and a good waterproof jacket, but that was as far as her outdoor equipment went.

‘Thank you for taking him out,’ she said belatedly.

‘No problem. I like dogs.’

A silence loomed, and Mallory rushed to fill it. ‘Have you ever thought about having one?’ she asked, cringing a little at how breathless she sounded. If she carried on like this, Torr would guess how nervous she was.

‘I had a dog called Basher when I was a boy,’ Torr told her as he got to his feet and crossed over to the light switch. ‘He was the best dog you could ever have. I could never replace him.’

‘I feel like that about Charlie.’

The room was plunged into blackness as Torr switched off the light, and the sound of the wind and the rain seemed to intensify in the dark. Mallory shivered and forced her mind back to dogs.

Torr was feeling his way back to the bed. ‘I never thought of you as a dog person,’ she said, in the same thin, high voice.

‘I could say the same of you.’

Annoyingly, Torr sounded exactly as normal. He pulled back the blankets on his side of the bed. ‘I’ve always thought Charlie is an odd sort of dog for you to have.’

Bedsprings creaked and the mattress dipped alarmingly under his weight, so that Mallory had to grab onto her side of bed to stop herself rolling towards him.

‘What do you mean, odd?’ she asked edgily, to take her mind off the fact that Torr was calmly getting into bed beside her.

‘I suppose I was thinking about that old adage that dogs look like their owners-or is it the other way round?’ He felt around for a pillow, and shifted his shoulders to make himself comfortable. ‘I would have expected you to be a cat person, or if you were going to have a dog that it would be a pedigree, something elegant and a little aloof-like a saluki, perhaps. Charlie is a nice dog,’ he said, ‘but he doesn’t fit with your image at all.’

‘What is my image?’ Mallory asked with a touch of irritation.

Torr thought about it. ‘Elegant,’ he said. ‘Stylish…sophisticated. Not like Charlie, in fact.’

‘That’s just the way I dress, not the way I am,’ she said sharply. ‘Why do you care whether Charlie fits with my image or not anyway?’

‘I don’t,’ said Torr, infuriatingly calm. ‘I was just trying to make conversation. I thought it might distract you from the fact that we were sharing a bed.’

It had, but now that he’d mentioned it his closeness was all too noticeable. They weren’t quite touching, but only because Mallory was clutching the edge of the mattress, and she was still burningly conscious of his warm solid form next to her. It reminded her all too vividly of their wedding night, when she had lain frozen with horror as Torr turned to her and the enormity of the mistake she had made hit her for the first time.

There was silence for a while. Mallory lay tensely, not wanting to move in case she brushed against him, but her foot was itching, and her legs felt cramped, so she moved them very carefully, hoping that Torr wouldn’t notice. Perhaps he had fallen asleep?

‘I hope you’re not going to twitch all night.’ His voice came out of the darkness and she started.

‘I’m not twitching! I’m just trying to get comfortable.’

‘I thought you were tired?’

‘I was, but I think I’ve got past it, and now I feel all wound up again.’ Mallory sighed and shifted restlessly. ‘Everything’s so strange. This weird place, the storm…you.’

‘I’m not strange,’ Torr pointed out. ‘I’m your husband.’

‘It’s strange being in bed with you.’

It was Torr’s turn to sigh. ‘You can relax,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m not about to try and seduce you. I’ve already told you that I won’t lay a finger on you-unless you ask, of course,’ he added.

The mockery in his voice stung Mallory. ‘I can’t imagine that happening!’ she snapped.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Be hung up on Steve. He’s not worth it, but if you want to waste your life pining for a man who treated you the way he did, that’s your choice. I think you’re a fool, but I’m not going to waste my breath persuading you to change your mind. It’s up to you, Mallory. If you ever decide that you want a proper marriage, let me know, but until then we’ll carry on as we are. I’m not going to force you. I don’t even want you, knowing that you feel the way you do about Steve, so you’re quite safe from me.’

‘I know,’ she muttered, wishing he didn’t make her feel as if she were being stupid.

‘Good. Now, it’s been a long day and I’m tired even if you’re not, so let’s try and get some sleep.’ Torr turned onto his side, and the bedsprings protested as he made himself comfortable. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

Clinging grimly to the edge of the mattress, Mallory willed herself to sleep, or, if not that, to keep still, but it was hard. Since Torr had climbed calmly into bed beside her an adrenalin rush of awareness and self-consciousness had kept her warm, but now that he had disposed of her nervousness so astringently, cold began to seep in through the layers of blankets. No matter how tightly she hugged the duvet around her neck, the draught through the window sent icy fingers creeping into the bed.

Outside, the wind howled while the rain was lashing the glass of the rickety old window in time-honoured fashion. The blackness was extraordinary. At home, there was always the glow of streetlamps, and a faint orange haze hung over the city, no matter how dark the night. She was used to the sounds of the street-heels on a pavement, laughter and arguments, cars, distant sirens. It was never completely quiet, just as it was never completely dark.

But here…It was hardly quiet, with the storm battering at the castle, but the blackness was total. Mallory wished that she had suggested Charlie sleep in the room too. He tended to snort and snuffle in his sleep, and sometimes he could be a bit whiffy, but at least she would have known that he was there.

There was Torr, of course. If only she knew him better. If only they were friends she could cuddle into him and confess that she was cold and lonely and scared. But that would only make him think that she was even more pathetic than he clearly already did.

An exasperated sigh came out of the darkness. ‘For God’s sake, Mallory, stop fidgeting!’

‘I’m cold,’ she said sullenly.

With a muttered exclamation, Torr turned over and with one brisk movement pulled Mallory into the curve of his body.

‘What are you doing?’ she protested breathlessly, taken unawares.

‘I’m trying to get some sleep,’ he said, his crisp voice at variance with his warm, relaxed body, ‘and I’m clearly not going to get any with you either shivering with cold or vibrating away like a tuning fork because you feel tense.’

‘Obviously I was right to feel tense,’ muttered Mallory, making a token effort to wriggle against the firmness of his grip, until she realised that she was effectively snuggling closer to him. ‘I thought you weren’t going to lay a finger on me?’

‘I meant for the purposes of seduction.’ Torr adjusted his arm so that it fitted comfortably under her neck. His other arm lay over her waist, holding her into him. ‘In case you were wondering, this is not seduction. This is strategy in the interests of a good night’s sleep. We’re going to roll together some time on this mattress, so we might as well get it over with. We can’t spend all night hanging onto the edge of the bed.’

That was precisely what Mallory had been planning, but it didn’t seem like such a good idea now that she was getting warm. Her heart was thudding still, but there was a strange comfort, too, in the hard, solid body behind her, the powerful arm over her. She could feel Torr’s chest rising and falling steadily, and his breath stirred her hair. The storm seemed muted now, the cold less menacing, and the exhaustion which tension had kept at bay rolled over her once more.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea.’ She managed a last protest, but it sounded feeble even to her own ears.

‘Maybe it isn’t, but we’ll worry about that in the morning,’ said Torr. His voice was deep, and very close to her ear, and an inexplicable frisson snaked its way down Mallory’s spine. ‘In the meantime,’ he went on, in distinctly unloverlike tones, ‘will you please shut up and go to sleep?’

Mallory opened her eyes to find herself blinking at a grimy wall. Blearily, she rolled over, but the view was no better on her back. An equally dirty ceiling and a naked lightbulb dangling from a frayed cord.

Kincaillie. Memories from the night before seeped back as she pulled herself up onto the pillows and pushed the dark, tangled hair away from her face. Driving endlessly through the dark. The wind shrieking like a banshee. Stumbling along that nightmarish passage.

Torr pulling off his shirt to reveal a broad, smooth back.

Mallory’s mind stumbled at the memory and a tiny frown creased between her brows. Why remember that out of all the trauma of the night before?

The bitter cold…She could hardly forget that either, she thought, hurrying on mentally, or the terrifying feeling that the storm was about to burst through the window into the suffocating blackness. It was a wonder she had managed to sleep at all.

And then, of course, she remembered Torr’s hands pulling her brusquely towards him, the feel of his body, hard and warm and insensibly reassuring against her, and for no reason Mallory felt her cheeks grow hot. Well, she had been tired, and more than a little frightened, and there had been no point in being cold. It wasn’t as if she had snuggled into him of her own accord, was it? Torr had made it very clear that not even a smidgeon of affection had been involved.

So that was all right, then.

Wondering why she was even thinking about it, Mallory reached an arm out from beneath the duvet to retrieve her watch, and grimaced at the temperature and the time. It was late, and still very cold. Pushing back the blankets and swinging her legs out of bed took a huge effort of will, and she shivered anew as she scrabbled through her case in search of a fleece and an extra pair of socks. Not exactly a glamorous look, but it would have to do until she had had a bath.

The smell of freshly made coffee met her as she padded through to the kitchen, the flagstones chill even through two pairs of socks, and she sniffed appreciatively. It reminded her of her favourite Italian delicatessen, where she met her friends for coffee…or used to meet, she remembered bleakly. There were no friendly little places to drop in for coffee around Kincaillie, and no friends to meet.

If anything, the kitchen was more depressing in daylight than it had been the night before. It was dank and dirty and dilapidated, and the pile of boxes they had unpacked from the car the night before only added to the chaos of the scene. Mallory sighed.

The kitchen door stood open, and she went over to shut it before realising that it was just as cold inside as out, so it wasn’t as if a lot of heat was being lost. Registering for the first time that the rain had stopped, Mallory stood in the doorway, hugging her arms together, and looked at her new home for the first time.

The door opened onto a walled kitchen garden, as tangled and unkempt as everything else at Kincaillie. Beyond the far wall she could see what looked like a small wood, huddled into the hollow of a forbidding hillside that reared up above them, its flanks covered with scree and heather and its top ridged with corries where snow still lay in cold white streaks. The wind had dropped to a brisk, gusty breeze that sent clouds scudding across the sky, and the air was fresh and cold and tangy with the smell of the sea.

Torr stood on a brick path, holding a mug of coffee and watching Charlie, who was snuffling joyously around the big, messy garden, so much more interesting to him than the immaculate courtyard garden he’d been restricted to in the city. Sensing her presence, though, he looked up and barked a welcome, before bounding over to her, his tail wagging furiously.

His delight was impossible to resist, and Mallory couldn’t help laughing as she bent to receive his rapturous greeting. He squirmed with delight at her attention, and, still smiling, she looked up to see that Torr had turned and was watching them both with an expression that made her heart stutter. The next instant, though, it was gone so completely that Mallory wondered if she had imagined it.

‘Good morning,’ she said, unaccountably shy as she straightened. It wasn’t even as if they had done anything to feel shy or embarrassed about, but the memory of lying close to him, feeling him breathing, seemed suddenly startling in the cool morning air.

‘Good morning.’ Torr came over to join them on the paved area by the door. ‘I see you managed to get some sleep, then?’

‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Mallory stiltedly. She had been so deeply asleep that she hadn’t even stirred when he’d disentangled himself from her, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. ‘Have you been up long?’

‘Not really.’ Torr seemed almost as awkward as she felt. ‘I made some coffee, and then Charlie was keen to come out.’

‘He seems to be having a good time, anyway,’ she said, as Charlie bustled off in search of more smells.

‘Yes.’

A ridiculously constrained silence fell.

‘The water should be hot enough for a bath if you want one,’ said Torr after a moment. ‘I put the immersion heater on.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’ Mallory was torn between longing for a bath and dread at the thought of all the cleaning she would have to do first. The memory of that bathroom made her shudder. ‘Er…will you keep an eye on Charlie if I go and do that now?’

‘If you want, but he hardly needs watching. There are no busy roads for him to escape onto here. You don’t need to worry about him now.’

‘No,’ said Mallory, reflecting that proximity to a busy road had also meant that they were close to central heating, immaculate plumbing, a functioning oven and all the other conveniences of modern living that had passed Kincaillie by. ‘I suppose not.’

In his dark blue sweater and jeans, Torr was apparently oblivious to the cold, and said that he would stay outside with his coffee while Mallory went in to tackle the bathroom. Helping herself to a fortifying mug of coffee, she found some rubber gloves and some bleach. Torr had suggested bringing some cleaning equipment, and now she could see why. If the bathroom had seemed disgusting last night, what was it going to look like in the cold light of day?

Bracing herself, she carried the coffee down to the bathroom, took a deep breath and opened the door. And stopped dead.

The floor had been roughly swept and the bath cleared of the debris she remembered from the night before. It was still stained, and cracked with age, but it had been cleaned and rinsed, and a cloth hung neatly over the taps. Torr must have dealt with it while she was sleeping.

Mallory looked down at it thoughtfully for some moments, and then turned to inspect the basin. Like the loo, it had had a cursory clean. Not enough to make it sparkling, for sure, but at least the bathroom was usable.

Turning on the hot tap, she held her hand under it until she was sure it was going to run hot, hardly daring to believe that she would get her much longed-for bath after all. She filled the tub almost to the top, and when she lowered herself into water as hot as she could bear, she let out a long sigh of relief. The walls might still be grimy, the view through the window unremittingly bleak, but at least she was warm again. For the next few minutes that was all that mattered.

By the time she eventually made it back to the kitchen, Mallory was feeling much more herself. She had washed her hair and dried it until it fell dark and smooth and shiny to her shoulders, and was wearing black trousers and her favourite pale blue cashmere jumper.

Torr was on his knees in front of the big range, his face screwed up with effort as he reached one arm deep inside, but he looked round when Mallory came in. Something flashed in his eyes, and was quickly shuttered. ‘Better?’ he asked.

‘Much.’ Mallory hesitated. ‘Thank you for cleaning the bathroom,’ she said. ‘I was expecting to have to do that myself.’

He hunched a shoulder, as if embarrassed. ‘I thought you might want a bath this morning,’ he said gruffly. ‘The conditions here are worse than I remembered.’

It wasn’t exactly an apology for the state of things, but Mallory sensed that he was offering an olive branch of sorts.

‘I thought I’d make some more coffee,’ she said, picking up the kettle. ‘Do you want some?’

‘Thanks.’ Torr got to his feet, brushing the dust from his hands, and showed her how to light the gas ring before resuming his awkward position practically lying half in and half out of the range.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked him as she retrieved the coffee from the provisions box.

‘Getting this range going,’ he said rather indistinctly. ‘It should provide a good heat, and we’ll be able to cook on it.’

He might be able to, but Mallory couldn’t begin to imagine how she would begin to even boil an egg on it. She had never yearned to make jams and chutney in a farmhouse kitchen; the latest technology, preferably black and gleaming or cool stainless steel, was much more her style.

She watched him, unwillingly impressed by his competence. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘I grew up in the country,’ he told her, grunting with effort. ‘We had a range in the kitchen. It wasn’t as old as this, but I’m assuming the principle is the same. Ah, that’s it!’ he said with satisfaction, and withdrew his arm once more.

That was something else Mallory hadn’t known about him before. ‘I didn’t have you down as a country boy,’ she said. ‘Did you live in Scotland?’

‘No.’ Torr brushed ashes from his hands. ‘My father came to work in England as a young man and never moved back. But, like a lot of expatriate Scots, the longer he was away the more Scottish he became. He was always very insistent about my Scottish heritage.’ His mouth quirked at one corner. ‘He even named me after a loch, which I thought was taking things a bit far. You can imagine how much stick I got about being called Torridon McIver at my very English school!’

Mallory had a sudden vivid image of a boy with dark hair and dark blue eyes and a beaky, combative face. He would have squared up to his tormentors, that was for sure. It was a strange feeling to imagine him as a young boy, just as it was disconcerting to realise just how different he looked in his faded jeans and his bulky jumper. The man washing his hands at the sink was barely recognisable as the stony-faced businessman in an immaculate suit who had effectively blackmailed her into marriage.

‘I’ll show you round after this,’ he said, as they had some bread and jam with coffee for breakfast. ‘Kincaillie’s your home now, so you might as well get to know it.’

How could this be home? Mallory wondered as she followed Torr along interminable passageways. Charlie trotted interestedly behind them, his claws clicking on the bare floors. They went up and down an extraordinary variety of staircases-some narrow, some grand, some stone and spiralling, some broad and wooden-and in and out of endless rooms. Not all were as dramatic as the great hall, but they were equally cheerless.

The damage wrought by a leaking roof and years of neglect and abandon was depressingly obvious, and Mallory was baffled by the warmth in Torr’s voice as he ran a hand over a piece of stonework, or pointed out a view from one of the windows, almost as if he didn’t see the damp and the dirt and the dust and the debris. She might grimace at patches of mould or rusty streaks, but he seemed able to picture the rooms as they had once been, when Kincaillie was a living, working house rather than a crumbling ruin.

Some of the rooms still had occasional pieces of furniture, shrouded in dust sheets, and they came across the odd stag’s head, stuffed and rotting on the wall, but otherwise the place was eerily bare.

‘What happened to the rest of the stuff?’ Mallory asked, peering underneath a dust sheet to find a massive table with great carved legs that looked as if it had been simply too heavy to move.

‘When my great-uncle finally went into a home, his son had all the pictures, silver and the best pieces of furniture put into storage. I’ll bring them back, but not until I’ve done some repairs.’

‘Some repairs?’ Mallory dropped the sheet and straightened to stare at him. ‘Torr, this place is practically a ruin!’ She waved an arm at the crumbling grandeur around them. ‘It would take for ever to restore all this.’

Torr shrugged. ‘One thing I’ve got now is time.’

‘But have you got the money? It’ll cost a fortune just to tackle a fraction of what needs to be done.’

‘I know that,’ he said, unperturbed. ‘I made a lot of money from selling my businesses, but I’ve no intention of spending unnecessarily. There’s inheritance tax to be taken into account, and I’ve made a number of investments for the future, so I haven’t got unlimited funds to do up Kincaillie. That’s why I’m planning to do as much as possible myself.’

She gaped at him. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Of course I’m serious,’ he said a little irritably. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘But…how will you know what to do?’

Torr shrugged. ‘Construction was my business,’ he reminded her.

Mallory was having trouble reconciling the idea of the sharp-suited businessman he had always seemed to be doing heavy building work. She was also uncomfortably aware that he would have another quarter of a million pounds to spend on Kincaillie if he hadn’t settled all her debts.

‘I always thought of you in an office, wheeling and dealing,’ she said.

‘I didn’t spend much time on site latterly, that’s true,’ he said, ‘but I started out doing my own properties, developing them and selling them on. I’m looking forward to working with my hands again.’

He looked assessingly around the room, as if working out how he would tackle it. ‘I can’t do everything, of course. The roof is the biggest expense, but it’s critical to get the place weatherproof as soon as possible, so I’ve got contractors coming to replace the whole roof in a couple of weeks. I’ll get other contractors in for the rewiring and damp-proofing too, as they’re both big jobs, but the joinery, the plastering and all the rest I can do myself.’

‘I think it’s madness,’ said Mallory frankly. ‘Even if you had limitless funds to get someone else to do all the work it would be a crazy project, but to consider doing it yourself…’ She shook her head, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task he had set himself. ‘It’s more than crazy,’ she told him. ‘It’s irresponsible.’

‘In what way?’ Torr’s voice, which had warmed as he showed her round, was frosted with ice once more.

‘It’s a huge risk, and you know it!’

‘I like risks.’

His calm confidence riled Mallory. There was something arrogant about a man like Torr who refused to accept his own limitations. ‘And what am I supposed to do while you’re wasting your life on this crazy scheme?’

‘Help?’ he suggested sardonically.

The air was simmering with a familiar hostility, as if the unspoken truce of the previous night had evaporated, leached away by the echoing stone walls. Torr’s dark blue eyes were cool once more, but Mallory met them squarely, her own bright with defiance.

‘Doing what?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t know anything about building. I can do you a fabulous decorative scheme, but it would be a very long time before you’ll be in a position to think about colour scheme, even if you got in a whole fleet of builders.’

Torr was unimpressed. ‘There’s lots of basic work to be done. You don’t need to be trained to clear a room of rubbish, and you could always learn how to plaster and tile. There’s the garden to be cleared, too. I think you’ll find there’s plenty you could do if you put your mind to it.’

‘I didn’t realise that I was expected to do hard labour as part of our deal!’ Mallory said snippily, before she could help herself.

There was a dangerously white look around Torr’s mouth, and he was clearly having difficulty keeping his temper in check. ‘Our deal,’ he said icily, ‘was marriage. You’re my wife, and all I expect from you is that you share in this project. It’s something we should be able to do together.’

‘It’s not something we discussed together though, is it? You decided to come all on your own, even though you knew this was the last place I’d want to be.’

‘And you chose to come with me,’ said Torr, his voice as hard as his expression.

‘You know why-’ Mallory began defensively, but he interrupted her with a dismissive gesture of his hand.

‘The reasons don’t matter. You made a choice, Mallory,’ he said. ‘Now live with it.’

Live with it. Mallory hunched her shoulders and turned up the collar of her jacket as she set off to take Charlie for a walk, leaving Torr to start cleaning the kitchen so they could unpack.

After that unpleasant exchange they had cut short the tour. There was still a rabbit warren of attic rooms to explore, but Mallory had seen enough. She wasn’t surprised the previous Laird had chosen to emigrate to New Zealand. No one in their right mind would want to make home here, she thought. Kincaillie was a dump, a crumbling, rotting pile of old stones.

And she was going to have to live with it.

Mallory dug her hands in her pockets and trudged after Charlie. She needed some time alone. The wind whipped her dark hair about her face and made her narrow her eyes. The earlier brightness had been swallowed up by lowering grey clouds, and although it wasn’t exactly raining, there was a kind of fine mizzle in the air that clung to her skin.

It didn’t take long to cross the tussocky grass of the promontory and find the sea. Charlie was delighted to discover a beach, and plunged straight into the water. He loved the sea and would frolic in and out of waves for hours if she let him.

Mallory scrambled over the rocks down to the shoreline rather more slowly, and walked along the beach, her feet crunching on the fine shingle. It had a faint pink tinge to it, and when she stopped and looked more closely she could see that it was made up of millions of crushed shells.

At the end of the beach, Mallory sat on a lichen-stained rock to watch Charlie play. Torr had been right when he’d said that the dog would love it here. Holding her hair back from her face as best as she could, she breathed in the air, salty and seaweedy and laced with the heathery smell of the hills. The sea was a sullen grey, choppy in the stiff breeze, and she could just make out the blurry grey outlines of the Western Isles on the horizon. Sea birds flitted around the rocks and wheeled, screeching, over the sea, but she didn’t recognise any of them.

She didn’t recognise anything about this place, Mallory realised. The forbidding castle behind her, with its backdrop of looming, brooding mountains, the distant islands shrouded in mysterious mist, this strange pink beach, the silence broken only by the wind and the bubbling, croaking, piping cries of the birds around her…It was hard to imagine anywhere more different from the bustling centre of Ellsborough, with its people and shops and restaurants. That was home.

Mallory shivered and huddled into her jacket. This was an awful place. Bleak, harsh, cold. Unwelcoming. Intimidating.

It made Mallory feel very small and very lonely, and all at once she was overwhelmed with it all. What was she doing here? She should be in her lovely little house, or out at work, meeting clients, flipping through fabrics and wallpaper samples, putting together design boards. She should be meeting a friend for lunch, or popping down to the delicatessen for some of its wonderful cheeses. She should be looking forward to the evening, to welcoming Steve home and knowing that they had the whole night and a whole lifetime together to come.

She should be planning her wedding.

She should be happy.

Instead she was here, trapped at Kincaillie with a man who didn’t love her-who didn’t even want her.