Marion Lennox - The Earl's Convenient Wife

He loved the cattle. More, he loved this whole estate. His grandparents had made one small section of the castle liveable when his grandfather inherited, and they’d brought him here as a boy. He’d wandered the place at will, free from the demands his socialite parents put on him, free of the restrictions of being known as a rich kid. He’d fished, climbed, roamed, and when his grandmother had decided on restoration he’d been delighted.

Only that restoration had brought Jeanie into their lives.

If it hadn’t been Jeanie, it would have been someone else, he thought grimly, striding down the line of battered fencing towards the bay. His grandmother’s two dogs, Abbot and Costello, elegant spaniels, beautiful, fast and dumb, had loped out to join him. The smell of rabbits would be everywhere, and the dogs were going nuts trying to find them.

Alan’s wife...Jeanie...

His grandmother had said she’d loved her.

He’d thought his grandmother had loved him.

‘So why treat us like this?’ he demanded of his departed grandmother. ‘If we don’t marry, we’ll have nothing.’

It was blackmail. Marry... The thing was nonsense.

But the knot of shock and anger was starting to untwist. Jeanie’s assessment was right—his grandmother was a conniving, Machiavellian matriarch—so he might have expected something like this. Marriage to Alan’s widow... Of all the dumb...

Eileen had loved reading romance novels. He should have confiscated every one and burned them before it was too late.

He reached the bay and set himself down on a great smooth rock, a foundation stone of an ancient fortress. He gazed out to sea but his mind was racing. Option one, no inheritance. Nothing. Walk away. The thought made him feel ill.

He turned and gazed back at the castle. He’d hardly been here these past years but it had always been in his mind. In his heart?

There’d been McBrides at Duncairn Castle since almost before the dinosaurs. Would he be the one to let it go?

The woodchip industry would move in, he thought. The pastures included with the castle title were mostly wild. The castle was heritage-listed, but not the land.

There were deer watching cautiously just above the horizon, but money was in woodchips, not deer. The land would go.

Which led—sickeningly—to option two.

Marriage. To a woman he couldn’t stand, but who also stood to gain by the inheritance.

He gazed around again at the cattle, at the distant deer, at the water lapping the shores, the dogs barking in the distance, the eagles...

His land. Duncairn.

Was the thing impossible?

And the more he calmed down, the more he saw it wasn’t. His apartment in Edinburgh was large, with separate living quarters for a housekeeper. He’d bought the place when he and Celia were planning marriage, and afterwards he’d never seen the point of moving. He worked fourteen-, fifteen-hour days, especially now. There were things happening within the company he didn’t understand. Nebulous but worrying. He needed to focus.

He still could. He could use the Edinburgh house simply to sleep. That could continue and the terms of the will would be met.

‘It could work,’ he reasoned. ‘The apartment’s big enough for us to keep out of each other’s way.’

But what will she do while you’re away every day? The question came from nowhere, and he briefly considered it.

‘She can shop, socialise, do what other wives do.’

Wives...

He’d have a wife. After Celia’s betrayal he’d sworn...

Eileen had known that he’d sworn. That was why she’d done this.

He needed to suppress his anger. What he’d learned, hard and early, was that emotion got you nowhere. Reason was everything.

‘It’s only for a year,’ he told himself. ‘There’s no choice. To walk away from everything is unthinkable.’

But walking away was still an option. He had money independent of Duncairn—of course he did. When he’d first started working in the firm, his grandmother had insisted on a salary commensurate with other executives of his standing. He was well-qualified, and even without this dubious inheritance he was wealthy. He could walk away.

But Duncairn...

He turned and looked back again at the castle, a great grey mass of imposing stone built by his ancestors to last for centuries. And the company... The financial empire had drawn him in since his teens. He’d worked to make it the best in the world, and to let it go...

‘I’d be able to buy the castle from her when the year’s up,’ he told himself. ‘You can’t tell me she’s not in for the main chance. If I’m the highest bidder, she’ll take the money and run.’

Decision made. He rose and stretched and called the dogs.

‘I’ll do this,’ he said out loud, addressing the ghost of his absent grandmother. ‘Fine, Grandmother, you win. I’ll talk to her and we’ll organise a wedding. But that’ll be it. It might be a wedding but it’s not a marriage. If you think I’ll ever be interested in Alan’s leavings...’

Don’t think of her like that.

But he couldn’t help himself. Alan’s betrayal, his gut-wrenching cruelty, was still raw after all these years and Jeanie was Alan’s widow. He’d stayed away from this castle because he’d wanted nothing to do with her, but now...

‘Now we’ll have to share the same front door in Edinburgh,’ he told himself. For a year. But a year’s not so long when what’s at stake is so important. You can do it, man. Go take yourself a wife.

* * *

She was in the kitchen. The kitchen was her solace, her joy. Cooks had been baking in this kitchen for hundreds of years. The great range took half the wall. The massive oak table, twenty feet long, was pocked and scratched from generations of chopping and rolling and kneading. The vast cobbled floor was worn from hundreds of servants, feeding thousands.

Eileen had restored the castle, making it truly sumptuous, but she’d had the sense to leave the kitchen free from modern grandeur. Jeanie had an electric oven tucked discreetly by the door. There was even a microwave and dishwasher in the vast, hall-like pantry, but the great stove was still lit as it seemed to have stayed lit forever. There was a sumptuous basket on each side for the dogs. The effect was old and warm and breathtaking.

Here was her place, Jeanie thought. She’d loved it the first time she’d seen it, and she’d found peace here.

She was having trouble finding peace now.

When in doubt, turn to scones, she told herself. After all these years she could cook them in her sleep. She didn’t provide dinner for the castle guests but she baked treats for occasional snacks or for when they wandered in after dinner. She usually baked slices or a cake but right now she needed something that required no thought.

She wasn’t thinking. She was not thinking.

Marriage...

She shouldn’t care. She hadn’t expected to inherit anything, but to tie the estate up as Eileen had... It didn’t matter how much she disliked Alasdair; this was cruel. Had Eileen really been thinking it could happen?

And even though her thoughts should be on Alasdair, on the injustice done to him, there was also a part of her that hurt. No, she hadn’t expected an inheritance, but she hadn’t expected this, either. That Eileen could possibly think she could organise her down that road again... Try one grandson, if that doesn’t work, try another?

‘What were you thinking?’ she demanded of the departed Eileen.

And then she thought: Eileen hadn’t been thinking. She’d been hoping.

Those last few months of her life, Eileen had stayed at the castle a lot. Her normally feisty personality had turned inward. She’d wept for Alan, but she’d also wept for Alasdair.