23. Edie
EDIE
Three kisses would be way easier to handle than three awkward encounters. A week later and I’ve immersed myself in work. I haven’t let myself think for even a second about the way his fingers tangled in my wet hair.
The structure is laid out, the timeline is clear, and the inconsistencies… well, I’m working on that bit. But it’s that magical moment when it all starts to make some sort of sense, and I can feel a little bit of pride creeping in.
And I’m avoiding Rory like the plague. Not consciously, more… tactically. Because I’ve had three encounters with him over the last seven days and every single one has left me feeling like I’ve left the house and forgotten to put any clothes on.
Exhibit one: after a long day staring at my laptop, I take a drive up to see Kate and visit the new foals.
The sun is shining, the spring grass green, the air full of the sound of birdsong and hints of summer.
My heart feels like it might explode with the beauty of it all, tinged with the vague sense of regret that as the weeks pass, the reality that my time here is limited starts to hover in the corner of my mind.
“Can you go and grab me a headcollar from the tack room?” Kate says, leaning over the stable door. She’s pushing a stocky grey mare out of the way, laughing as she does so. “This madam is liable to make a run for it if I let her out into the yard. She thinks she’s a racehorse, not a Highland pony.”
“Of course.” I head across the neatly swept courtyard, humming to myself.
I push open the heavy door that leads into the gloom of the tack room, inhaling the scent of well-oiled leather and saddle soap that reminded me of childhood riding lessons.
And there’s a broad-shouldered and unmistakable shape in the darkness, lit up as I switch on the light.
“Afternoon.”
“Shit,” I say, grabbing my heart. “You gave me a fright.”
His brow lifts almost imperceptibly.
“What are you doing in here,” I say, putting my hands on my hips.
Rory looks at me steadily, his face giving nothing away. He inclines his head towards a saddle on the rack in front of him. “If you can’t figure that out,” he says drily, “we are in trouble.”
“Oh, you’ve been riding.”
It would be really helpful at this point if my brain would stop replaying the library kiss on a loop.
“I have.”
I can’t work out if there’s something in the air, some sense of tension or a hint of what happened the other day, or if it’s just him looking at me as if I have one brain cell.
“Lovely weather for it,” I say with a bright smile, and grab the wrong headcollar before making a hasty exit.
Exhibit two: I’m in the corridor outside the library, my arms full of files.
I walk around the corner and crash straight into the solid wall of his chest. His naked chest. He’s got a crisp white towel around his neck which shows off the tanned skin.
The scent of his freshly showered post-workout body hits some sort of olfactory jackpot button in my brain and my knees give a very definite wobble, making it harder than it ought to be to pick up the folders that have fallen onto the parquet floor. My dignity collapses like a deckchair.
Our eyes meet as we both try to grab the last folder at the same time and our fingers brush for a fleeting second.
Rory pulls his hand away as if he’s been burned.
“T-thanks,” I stammer.
“My pleasure,” he says, so quietly it’s almost a growl.
And then last night was exhibit three: when we ate dinner together with Janey, who joined us to discuss the safe houses project, which we’re going to see later today.
Seeing him relaxed and chatty with her, as she put him at his ease, just underlined how awkward things are between us.
Yes, he asked me polite questions about my writing, and Janey proudly told him about my would-be novel and how much she’d enjoyed reading it.
The moment when Janey cheerfully said how good it was to all be working as a team left a silence hanging in the air which seemed to last about ten minutes, but she seemed completely oblivious to the atmosphere, getting up to clear the plates and bringing back a delicious apple crumble and custard Gregor had made because I’d swooned over it the week before.
Somehow, that had almost smoothed the atmosphere over.
But as I stood to leave, I’d turned back to the table to see Rory looking at me for an unguarded moment, and the expression on his face was not polite at all.
And then he’d looked away, and I’d wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing .
I shut my laptop now, resisting the urge to replay every second of that dinner with forensic detail.
Instead, I head for the morning kitchen in search of a coffee to take outside to the walled kitchen garden.
It’s bursting with life as if someone somewhere flicked a switch.
In the last week or so everything has been misted with the faintest green haze and under the huge glass roofs of the greenhouses, rows and rows of tiny plants are reaching out their leaves in search of warmth.
I find Janey in the kitchen clutching a dishcloth with a worried expression. Her hands are braced on the windowsill and she’s gazing outside, staring into the middle distance.
“Everything okay?” I grab a mug and head for the coffee machine.
She gives a tight smile. “Probably nothing. Muffin’s gone AWOL. He went out with Rory and the spaniels when he went for a run. Normally he’s straight back here to sit with me in the office, but?—”
I’m already heading for the door. “I’ll help you look.”
She opens her mouth to protest, but then Rory walks in from the back door that heads out into the kitchen garden.
He tosses a black hoody down on the table and wipes away sweat from his forehead.
His face is set in a grim line, and the grey sweatpants he’s wearing are splattered with mud.
Bramble and Tilly, the two brown and white spaniels, are panting at his feet, their ears festooned with grass and mud as if they too have been searching.
“No sign,” he says. “I’m going to head down the loch path and see if he’s got stuck in a rabbit hole or something.”
“I’ll come with you,” I say, before I can stop myself. I’ve grown fond of little wire-haired Muffin, who likes to mooch around under my desk in the hope of snacks, then curl up in a little fuzzy ball on the library sofa beside me when I’m reading.
His eyes flick to mine. “You don’t have to.”
“No,” I say, holding his gaze. “But I want to.”
“I’ll stay here in case he comes back,” Janey says, holding the door open for us. “I bet he’ll turn up five minutes after you’ve gone, with mud all over his face and begging for one of Gregor’s doggy biscuits.”
She glances between us. “I’ll give Jamie a shout, see if he can head out with the dogs from the other side of the loch. He might have headed down to the lodge.”
Rory grabs the hoody again and pulls it over his head.
I follow him out into the spring sunshine, it’s bright but there’s a chill in the air and the faint smell of woodsmoke blowing from the fires in the castle.
We walk for a while in silence, the only noise the sound of our boots on the gravel as the spaniels dart back and forth, their noses to the ground, chasing scents but not finding poor Muffin.
“He was your father’s dog?” I say, more to fill the quiet than anything else.
Rory nods, not looking at me. “Used to belong to Craig, the old gamekeeper. When Craig retired due to ill health, Muffin couldn’t go with him to the sheltered housing place and my father took him in.”
“That’s sweet,” I say, surprised.
Rory gives a wry smile, and this time he turns for a moment to look at me. “You sound surprised. You’ve spent too many hours reading his diaries.”
He holds open a narrow wooden gate and I slip through, waiting while he secures it.
“Not surprised?—”
“He was a contrary bugger, but he loved his animals.” He shrugs. “I’ll give him that. And I’ll forgive pretty much anything if you’re nice to dogs.”
“Even the way he behaved?” I press my lips together the moment the words come out, realising I’ve gone a bit too far.
Rory surprises me with a gruff laugh. “Almost. What’s the alternative? Carrying a grudge for the rest of your life about someone that isn’t even here?”
We pass the stone buildings where the gardeners keep their tools, then follow a narrow path lined with the first wildflowers of the season, winding down toward the loch.
The silence stretches longer this time, heavier.
Every so often, Rory gives three sharp blasts on the dog whistle he’s carrying, and the spaniels come bounding back to check in—always two, never three.
I glance sideways. His jaw is tight, shoulders stiff, and his long stride forces me into the occasional trot just to keep pace. I can’t tell if he’s worried about Muffin or still fuming over the diaries, left spread across the library table like evidence in a crime scene.
I risk another sideways glance. “Has he done this before?”
“Plenty of times,” Rory says. “But he’s always come back after ten minutes or so. He’s getting old now, and he’s slower than he thinks he is. If he’s gone down a badger sett or got trapped in a rabbit hole…”
The idea of bright-eyed little Muffin curled up somewhere, hurt or alone kicks something in my chest. Without thinking, I pick up the pace, scanning the tree line as we turn up towards the forest trail and away from the edge of the loch.
“Maybe we should split up,” I say. “We could cover more ground that way. ”
He gives me a look. “If something happens to you, we’ll be searching for two, not one.”
“Fine,” I say, gesturing to the path ahead. “But we can take it at your speed. I can jog to keep up.”
He looks at my legs for a moment and gives the ghost of a smirk. “That I’d like to see.”
“I’ve been going to the gym or swimming every day after working,” I protest. “I’m basically an athlete now.”