Chapter 8
Bex had arranged to meet Fergus’s lawyer at the castle.
Though she had never met the man before, she already had a strong vision of him in her mind.
He would be Scottish, naturally, and old, probably not far from Fergus’s age.
It was likely that he’d known the old laird since childhood.
That was the way it seemed with almost everyone there.
Their lives were webs, the strands of which had been entwined since before the births and would continue that way for generations after their passing.
It wouldn’t have surprised her if she’d even met the old man more than once and not known what his role was, but still, she couldn’t help but feel a bubble of nerves as she walked down the lane towards the castle, hoping that it was open and that she wasn’t going to have to stand out in the cold and wait for too long.
It was better, now that she’d got her gloves and coat, but that didn’t stop the icy sting at the end of her nose or the way her breath fogged in the air in front of her.
Bex really wasn’t sure how likely it was that the castle was unlocked.
Lorna had said that Kieron, Fergus’s nephew and the new laird, was expected to arrive from London any day, but there’d been no news yet, and the village grapevine would’ve normally been on top of such things, especially given the circumstances.
When she reached the castle, Bex stood out in the driveway.
Ignoring the biting cold that stung the tops of her ears, she allowed her mind to be flooded with memories of when she had first arrived.
She had assumed Fergus was the groundskeeper – with his tatty clothes, dishevelled hair, and the half-dozen dogs always around him.
Then she had thought he was a grumpy old man with zero people skills.
But it hadn’t taken long before he had just become Fergus to her.
Fergus, laird and lord to many, but to her, an old man whom she knew had suffered heartbreak, when he’d lost the love of his life in his youth.
The ins and outs of that relationship – including whether it was the reason for his fallout with Duncan’s grandfather – Bex couldn’t be sure, but while Fergus had married, the conversations they had shared told her that his heart had always remained in the past.
As for other family, Duncan would regularly speak to Fergus’s sister, though she didn’t live nearby, and if what Duncan had said was true, the only times Kieron ever even came to Highland Hall was when he’d wanted to have some big party or host a fancy shoot for his London friends.
She doubted he even knew the real Fergus – the man Fergus was to her.
The one she’d share a hot chocolate with in the evenings.
Who’d comforted her at the start of her and Duncan’s relationship when her own heart had suffered a hefty blow.
He hadn’t even put up much of a fuss when his dog, Ruby, decided she liked Bex more than she liked him.
He had only wanted what was best for other people. That was what it came down to.
With a heavy weight in her heart, she moved towards the castle, only to stop again.
There, just a little way off the drive, was a small herd of deer, basking in the pale rays of the morning light, a large stag standing in the middle of them all.
There was so much Bex loved about LochDarroch and the land around Highland Hall, but the wildlife had to be one of the main things.
Deer, hares, foxes. She could have spent hours watching them.
Although surprisingly, it was the birds she loved the most. From the dainty dotterel to the majestic birds of prey.
She’d never seen a golden eagle before visiting here and even now she remembered the first time she had.
It had been her first summer, when she was still working on the accounts, and Duncan had surprised her with a picnic lunch.
Given how wholeheartedly Fergus had approved of the burgeoning relationship, he’d given them the entire afternoon off, and the pair had headed down to the loch with a large blanket and after eating their food had lain down together and stared up at the sky.
That was until Bex saw the giant bird and had leapt up from the ground.
‘Is that… Is that… What is that? It’s enormous.’
‘That? That is a golden eagle,’ Duncan had replied, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her back down next to him, so that her head rested on his chest.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she’d whispered.
‘Aye, it is. Special creatures, they are. Mate for life. Once they find the one, that’s it. There’s no one else for them.’
As she snuggled down into him, and watched the great beast turn in lazy circles in the sky, a strange feeling had settled over Bex. Like Duncan hadn’t been talking about the birds at all.
The memory stirred a warmth somewhere in the pit of her being, only to evaporate as the image of Duncan, drunk with his arms around the two Australian women, resurfaced in her mind.
It was with a shuddering of her shoulders that Bex shook the feelings away and reminded herself to focus on the task at hand.
Then, with one last glance at the herd of deer, she headed over to the front door and, upon finding it unlocked, stepped inside the castle.
It was eerily quiet. The grandfather clock stood where it always had, and the large oil paintings hung on the walls in timeless landscapes of the ever-changing views around them, but there was no patter of dogs’ paws on the floors.
No sign of life. Closing her eyes, she drew in the scent of leather and wood polish and a history she only knew a fraction of.
Quashing the melancholy that threatened to overwhelm her, Bex walked towards the study, the room in the house where she had spent months sorting through old paperwork, only to stop and change her mind.
After all, she probably shouldn’t just let herself into the house without knocking.
It wasn’t like it used to be. The new lord might not take kindly to finding a strange woman wandering around his home.
‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘It’s Bex. Rebecca. The accountant.’
‘I’m just in here.’
The voice that answered took Bex by surprise.
First, it was coming from the drawing room, the small room next to the main staircase – where Fergus would sit in the evenings with a dram of whisky and his dogs.
It was the homeliest room in the castle, and certainly not where she expected to be doing business with the lawyer.
The study would have been a much better fit, and assuming the lawyer was an old friend, she’d thought he would know that.
But the second thing that surprised her was that the lawyer sounded English.
Not a hint of a Scottish accent anywhere.
He also sounded younger than she had expected.
Another person sent up from London to get the job done? Possibly. And there was no point delaying it any further.
With a sense of sadness she knew would come with seeing Fergus’s room, she pushed open the door to the drawing room, only to be hit with a spark of anger.
The lawyer, whoever he was, had his back to her.
He had picked up a chair and moved it so that it was directly in front of the fire.
Only it wasn’t just any chair he’d taken and turned.
It was Fergus’s armchair. The one he’d always sat in.
And to make matters worse, the old tartan blanket that Fergus had kept across his lap had been tossed aside onto another chair with half of it dangling on the floor, like it was meaningless.
‘Sorry, but you shouldn’t be sitting there,’ Bex said.
‘Excuse me?’ the voice said, nothing but his expensive shoes visible.
‘I said you shouldn’t be sitting there. That’s Fergus’s chair and you should have left it where it was. It’s a matter of respect.’
As the man rose leisurely to his feet, Bex’s frustration rose. ‘Did you hear what I said? I said you need to put that chair back where it belongs.’
She stopped as the man turned slowly to face her, almost as though he was toying with her. The heat of anger bubbled to burning, but as his eyes met hers, words stuck in her throat.
‘It’s you,’ she choked out, struggling to make sense of who she was seeing. ‘You’re the man from the airport.’
His eyes twinkled in the exact same way they had done the day before. ‘And you’re the woman who nearly gave me a broken ankle.’