Marion Lennox: The Heir’s Chosen Bride

He was wearing cream suede shoes.

Cream shoes. Here.

She looked past the clothes with an effort-and there was surely something to see beside the clothes. The stranger was tall, lean and athletic. Deep black hair. Good skin, good smile…

Great smile.

She’d left the outer gate open. There was a small black sedan parked in the forecourt, with a hire-car company insignia on the side. She’d been so intent on her worms that he’d crept up on her unawares.

He could have been an axe murderer, she thought, a little bit breathless. She should have locked the gate.

But…maybe she was expecting him? This had to be who she thought he was. The new earl.

Maybe she should have organised some sort of guard of honour. A twelve-gun salute.

‘You’re the gardener?’ he asked, and she tried to wipe mud away with more mud as she smiled back. She was all the welcome committee there was, so she ought to try her best.

A spade salute?

‘I am the gardener,’ she agreed. ‘Plus the rest. General dogsbody and bottle-washer for Loganaich Castle. What can I do for you?’

But his gaze had been caught. Solidly distracted. He was staring at a huge golden ball to the side of the garden. A vast ball of bright orange, about two yards wide.

‘What is that?’ he said faintly.

She beamed. ‘A pumpkin. Her name’s Priscilla. Isn’t she the best?’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘You’d better. She’s a Dills Atlantic Giant. We decided on replacing Queensland Blues this year-we spent ages on the Internet finding the really huge suckers-and went for Dills instead. Of course, they’re not quite as good to eat. Actually, they’re cattle feed, but who’s worrying?’

‘Not me,’ he said faintly.

‘The only problem is we need a team of bodybuilders to move her. Our main competitor has moved to Dills as well, but he doesn’t have the expertise. We’ll walk away with the award for Dolphin Bay’s biggest pumpkin this year, no worries.’

‘No worries,’ he repeated, dazed.

‘That’s Australian for “no problem”,’ she explained kindly. ‘Or you could say, “She’ll be right, mate.”’

This conversation was going nowhere. He tried to get a grip. ‘Is anyone home? In there?’ He waved vaguely in the direction of the castle.

‘I’m home. Me and Rose.’

‘Rose?’

‘My daughter. Are you-’

‘I’m Hamish Douglas. I’m looking for a Susie Douglas.’

‘Oh.’

He really was the new earl.

There was a moment’s charged silence. She wasn’t what he’d expected, she thought, but, then, he wasn’t what she’d expected either.

She’d thought he’d look like Rory.

He didn’t look like any of the Douglases she’d met, she decided. He was leaner, finer boned, finer…tuned? He was a Porsche compared to Rory’s Land Rover, she decided, limping across to greet him properly. She still had residual stiffness from the accident in which Rory had been killed, and it was worse when she’d been kneeling.

But the pain was nothing to what it had been, and she smiled as she held out her hand in greeting. Then, as she looked at his face and realised there was a problem, her smile broadened. She wiped her hands on the seat of her overalls and tried again.

‘Susie Douglas would be me,’ she told him, gripping his reluctant hand and shaking. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ he said, and looked at his hand.

‘It’s almost clean,’ she told him, letting a trace of indignation enter her voice as she realised what he was looking at. ‘And it’s good, clean dirt. Only a trace wormy.’

‘Wormy?’

‘Earthworms,’ she said, exasperated. This wasn’t looking good in terms of long-term relationship. In terms of long-term caring for this garden. ‘Worms that make pumpkins grow as big as Priscilla here. Not the kind that go straight to your liver and grow till they come out your eyeballs.’

‘Um…fine.’ He was starting to sound confounded.

‘I’m transferring them to the compost,’ she told him, deciding she’d best be patient. ‘I’m laying concrete pavers to the conservatory, and how awful would it be to be an earthworm encased in concrete? Do you want to see the conservatory?’

‘Um…sure.’

‘I might as well show you while we’re out here,’ she told him. ‘You’ve inherited all this pile, and the conservatory’s brilliant. It was falling into disrepair when I arrived, but I’ve built it up. It’s almost like the old orangeries they have in grand English houses.’

‘You’re American,’ he said on a note of discovery. ‘But you’re…’

‘I’m the castle relic,’ she told him. ‘Hang on a minute. I need to check something.’

She limped across to the closest window, hoisted herself up and peered through to where Rose snoozed in her cot.

‘Nope. Still fine.’

‘What’s fine?’ he asked, more and more bemused.

‘Rose. My daughter.’ She gestured to the headphones now lying abandoned in the mud. ‘You thought I was listening to hip-hop while I worked? I was listening to the sounds of my daughter sleeping. Much more reassuring.’ She turning and starting to walk toward the conservatory. ‘Relics are what they used to call us in the old days,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘They’re the women left behind when their lords died.’

‘And your lord was…’

‘Rory,’ she told him. ‘Your cousin. He was Scottish-Australian but he met me in the States.’

‘I don’t know anything about my cousins.’ She was limping toward a glass-panelled building on the north side of the house, moving so fast he had to lengthen his stride to keep up with her.

‘You don’t know anything about the family?’

‘I didn’t know anyone existed until I got the lawyer’s letter.’

‘Saying you were an earl.’ She chuckled. ‘How cool. It’s like Cinderella. You should have been destitute, living in a garret.’ She glanced over her shoulder, eyeing him appraisingly. ‘But they tell me you’re some sort of financier in Manhattan. I guess you weren’t in any garret.’

‘It was a pretty upmarket garret,’ he admitted. They reached the conservatory doors, and she swung them wide so he could appreciate the vista. ‘Wow!’

‘It is wow,’ she said, approving.

It certainly was. The conservatory was as big as three or four huge living rooms and it was almost thirty feet high. It looked almost a cathedral, he thought, dazed. The beams were vast and blackened with glass panels set between. Hundreds of glass panels.

‘The beams came from St Mary’s Cathedral just south of Sydney,’ Susie told him. ‘St Mary’s burned down just after the war when Angus was building this place. He couldn’t resist. He had all the usable timbers trucked here. For the last few years he didn’t have enough energy to keep it up, but since I’ve been here I’ve been restoring it. I love it.’

He knew she did. He could hear it in her voice.

She didn’t look like any relic he’d met before.

Susie was wearing men’s overalls, liberally dirt-stained. She was shortish, slim, with an open, friendly face. She had clear, brown enquiring eyes, and her auburn curls were caught back in a ponytail that threatened to unravel at any minute. A long white scar ran across her forehead-hardly noticeable except that it accentuated the lines of strain around her eyes. She was still young but her face had seen…life?

Her husband had been murdered, he remembered. That’s what the lawyers had told him. Back in New York it had seemed a fantastic tale but suddenly it was real. Bleakly real.

‘Do you know about the family?’ she asked, as if she’d guessed his thoughts and knew he needed an explanation.

‘Very little,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to hear more. Angus was the last earl. He died childless. Your husband, Rory, was his eldest nephew, and he and the second nephew, Kenneth, are both dead. I’m the youngest nephew. I never knew Angus, I certainly didn’t know about the title, and I’m still trying to figure things out. Am I right so far?’