Chapter 7
‘I knew it would be a mess, but I don’t know… I just didn’t expect him to be this bad,’ Bex said as they walked home.
She’d been about to leave the lodge when she’d noticed a large box in the corner of the living room, with a wedge of fabric peeking out of the top.
Intrigue had got the better of her, and as she’d moved a little closer, she realised it was full of clothes.
Her clothes. Everything of hers that she’d left was shoved there in the corner of his room.
They had broken up in London, and after tears and hugs, Bex had told him it wouldn’t be necessary to send her things down.
After all, they were going to stay friends.
That’s what she’d said. And she’d believed that.
She’d believed she’d be able to grab all her belongings when she next visited. But that visit had not happened.
She could hardly blame Duncan for packing her stuff up and closing the lid, the way he’d felt she’d done to the relationship, but seeing it there caused a whole new rawness to tear at her.
They had been broken up for almost three months.
How was it possible to be so unrecovered from a breakup after so long?
She’d never experienced it before. But then again, she’d never been with someone for nearly a year and a half before.
On the plus side, at least it meant she had some warm clothes.
Had it not been for the exertion of carrying half of Duncan’s weight and borrowing Lorna’s gloves on the way down, she probably would have frozen.
So, after selecting a jumper, her biggest coat, gloves, scarf and hat, she had put the lid back down on the box and followed Lorna outside.
‘I know, he’s not in a great way. But you don’t have to shoulder all the blame yourself,’ Lorna replied.
Bex wasn’t quite sure she agreed with that, but Lorna glanced across at her.
‘He was away when Fergus passed,’ she explained.
‘He’d taken himself off somewhere, needed a bit of space.
There was no phone reception. By the time he got back, he discovered he had twelve missed calls from Fergus, asking him to come back so they could talk.
To say goodbye, I guess. Duncan never got that conversation. That closure.’
Bex covered her mouth as a searing pain throbbed in her chest and fresh tears trickled down her cheek.
It was all very well Lorna saying she shouldn’t shoulder the blame, but why had Duncan needed to take himself off for some space?
She would bet her impressive promotion it was because of their breakup.
‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like,’ she said truthfully.
Lorna nodded. ‘I know everyone thought an awful lot of Fergus, but for Duncan, it was different. Fergus was as close as family. He was his best friend, grandfather figure, employer. And the fact Duncan never got to say goodbye… well, he feels guilty, you know. That he should have been there for the old man.’
That ache in Bex’s chest was showing no signs of fading. Now it made sense why Duncan hadn’t rung to tell her about Fergus’s passing himself. It hadn’t been about her, or how he felt. He’d had enough to deal with.
‘God, poor guy,’ she said softly.
‘Right,’ Lorna said with a sigh, before turning to Bex and offering a watery smile. ‘But that doesn’t excuse him for acting like a complete dick tonight. Those things he said, he knows they’re not true. We all know how much you loved him. And why you ended things.’
It was a mutual decision to end things, Bex wanted to say, but she couldn’t get the words out. There was too big a lump stuck in her throat, blocking them coming up.
‘No. No, it doesn’t.’
Bex’s thoughts shifted back to her time in the castle.
Back to Fergus. The three of them – her, Duncan and the laird – had developed a winter habit of drinking hot chocolate together in the drawing room of an evening.
It was Fergus’s favourite room in the house, and he had to have spent over half his time sat in the armchair next to the fire, the blanket over his lap.
More than once, Bex wondered if, after she and Duncan had split up, it was a tradition the two men had continued.
Part of her had even wondered if Duncan might consider moving out of the lodge and into her room just so neither of them was quite so on their own.
But Duncan had never felt comfortable with the thought of living in the castle, even though she knew Fergus would have loved it.
With every step she took back towards the village, Bex considered how all these same thoughts would be eating away at Duncan.
She just wished there was something she could do to help him, but she was there for a job, and he had made it perfectly clear that of all the people in the world, the one he would probably hate help from most was her.