40. Edie
EDIE
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
It’s sunny, but the wind’s blowing off the sea and I’m in a pair of old jeans, a striped T-shirt and my favourite comfy cardigan. She’s more dressed up than normal and she’s wearing lipstick, which is definitely not standard issue for a Saturday afternoon.
I shrug. “I don’t want to look like I’m making an effort.”
She snorts out a laugh. “Well, you’ve done that.”
I look down at my outfit. “Are you saying I should change?”
“I’m saying—” She pauses for a moment then frowns and shakes her head. “No, sod it. You’re fine as you are.”
The road to the castle is strangely busy.
“This is the closest Loch Morven gets to a traffic jam,” laughs Kate, changing gear as we slow up at the junction that turns down towards the big house .
I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously. “Is there something going on?”
She gives a knowing smile. “Wait and see.”
I fold the top of the paper bag full of cardamom buns I’m holding as a peace offering. We pull up in the overflow car park at the back of the castle and I get out of the car and look around.
“Okay, this is weird.”
“Come on.” Kate tugs my arm, and we crunch over the gravel towards the front of the castle. I catch a whiff of something candy-sweet in the air, like vanilla and sugar.
I’m not in heels or glitter or pretending to be someone else. I feel weirdly nervous, like the whole place is waiting for something to happen. There’s a strange buzz in the air.
And then we walk around the corner and everything becomes clear.
The castle grounds have been transformed.
There are white marquees between the trees and bunting flapping in the wind.
There are little wooden stalls selling homemade tablet and a candy floss machine that explains the scent in the air, and the sizzle of venison burgers from a trailer over by the entrance to the walled garden.
And the place is full of faces I recognise – the people from the village I’ve grown to know as I’ve spent time here and working in the coffee shop.
The ceilidh band is tuning up on a stage made from straw bales, and kids with tiger face paint are chasing each other around a maypole. There’s even a carousel over on the lawn, the music blowing on the breeze. An old-fashioned fair, right here in the wilds of the Highlands.
I spot Janey with her arms folded and a smug expression over by a fenced off area where children are reaching in to pet woolly brown Alpacas who peer over at me with curious looks on their faces as Janey shouts hello.
Jamie has a baby goat in his arms and a massive grin on his face. There’s a bouncy castle full of shrieking children by the yew trees.
And then I see him.
Rory’s standing by the bandstand in jeans and a white shirt, sleeves rolled, the dogs sitting patiently by his side.
He’s talking to – I shade my eyes and frown because I can’t quite believe it – what looks like a reporter with a cameraman by his side.
There’s a woman from the trust I recognise and Pippa, his PA, is hovering by his side.
His jaw is rigid, his posture’s stiff, but he looks up for a moment and scans the crowd.
And then he spots me, and his whole body seems to shift, as if the tension has gone. He says something to the reporter, and he nods briefly before heading off in the direction of the venison burger stall. I walk across the grass towards him, and he meets me halfway.
“You came,” he says.
“I’m only here for the alpacas.”
A smile pulls at the edges of his mouth, and he lifts a hand to push his hair back from his face. I notice his forearm and the faded tattoo under the dark hair, and I feel my stomach contract with longing. He tips his head towards the bandstand. “I’ve been waiting to make a speech. Would you?—”
I nod. “Go ahead.”
We walk together, not touching but close enough that my arm brushes his twice and I half expect to look down and see actual sparks shooting between us. A crowd gathers as he steps up onto the platform and Pippa, the PA, hands him a microphone .
He doesn’t look at any notes. There’s a long moment of silence, and I watch as the adults all stop what they’re doing and pay attention to him, waiting with a sort of instinctive respect.
In the background there’s the sound of children shrieking and laughing on the bouncy castle and the strangely tinny music of the carousel.
“My father was a complicated man,” he begins. I turn, realising that Jamie is on my right, his hands in his pockets, waiting.
“He believed in legacy, as I do. And in duty. But he also believed that power only belonged in one place, and that’s one of the points where we differ.”
A quiet murmur ripples through the crowd.
“I’ve spent most of my life trying to live up to his version of leadership.” Rory glances over at me for a moment. “And the past few months trying to unpick the truth of it.”
I put my hand to my mouth and stand there, frozen.
“I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been afraid. I’ve shut people out – the wrong people. But someone once told me that I couldn’t see the magic of this place because I was too busy trying to control it.”
I catch Jamie shift in the corner of my eye and flick him a sideways glance. His brows are raised and there’s a knowing smirk playing on his lips.
“So, from this day forward we’re going to be making reparations.
We’ll be returning over four hundred acres of land to community ownership.
We’re making shared spaces, creating affordable homes, and the Kinnaird Foundation will be working to ensure the people of Loch Morven are stewards of their own future. ”
There’s a pause. It’s long enough that a flicker of uncertainty crosses Rory’s face, and then applause bursts out like summer rain, gentle at first, then rising in intensity
Rory coughs and silence falls again. “This is the beginning. I need you all to understand that. This isn’t the past, where promises were made then wrapped up in corporate bullshit and fancy rhetoric.”
Jamie gives a snort.
“My apologies,” says Rory, remembering himself and glancing over at the reporter’s camera. “But this is something I feel very passionately about. It’s something new, something better, I hope. And I want everyone to be a part of it.”
His eyes meet mine. He hands off the mic and starts striding towards me as if there’s nobody else in the world, closing the distance between us in moments.
“I meant what I said in the coffee shop,” he says roughly. “But perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.”
I realise I’m still holding the bag of cardamom buns, and I look down at them for a moment and then turn as I hear a commotion by the candy floss stall. Someone in a silk scarf and oversized sunglasses emerges as if she’s the main event everyone’s been waiting for.
“Finally,” says Annabel, holding her arms out wide as she approaches us. “You two have been exhausting .”
Rory stares at her. “What the?—”
Annabel sweeps over, hooking the arm Gregor as she passes. His expression is half-horrified, half delighted. She’s beaming like she’s on the red carpet at the Met Gala and not an impromptu village funfair.
“I knew it,” she declares, gesturing between us, the smell of candyfloss wiped out by wafts of Chanel. “Knew you two would work it out. Edie, you have always had such talent and absolutely no self-belief. And Janey tells me the book is going great guns.”
“Book?” Rory looks from her to me with a confused expression on his face.
“And you, darling,” Annabel pokes him in the chest with a long red fingernail. “The most tremendous sense of duty but no love for this place. None. And who can blame you.”
Gregor’s still standing there pinned in place by her arm looped through his and a stunned expression on his face.
“And now look at you.” She beams. “I’m like a bloody fairy godmother.”
Janey appears at her elbow, eyebrows raised. She folds her arms. “You are not taking credit for this,” she says, laughing. Annabel links arms with her as well.
“Of course I am, sweetie. I brought Edie here, didn’t I?”
Gregor snorts. “Coincidence.”
Annabel’s mouth lifts in a Sphinx-like half smile and her brows lift a fraction of an inch. “Or was it…?” She looks from Gregor to Janey. “You two next, I think.”
And she strides off, towing them with her. Their protests echo behind them.
“We are not?—”
“I have no idea whit you’re on aboot!”
“Hush now,” Annabel says, steering them towards the drinks tent. Janey throws me an eyeroll over her shoulder but she’s laughing, and Gregor’s ears are definitely pinker than normal.
Rory leans in towards me. “Did you know she was coming?”
“I had a voicemail the other day saying she was heading north to reclaim her narrative. You know Annabel, that could have meant anything. ”
He smiles and laces his fingers in mine. “Come with me?”
I glance around. Kate’s talking to Jamie, who’s holding a helium balloon in one hand and a hot dog in the other. Even Morag looks happy, probably because she’s got the day off and she’s sitting down being fed—oh, and of course she’s right in the middle of all the village gossip.
“Did everyone know about this except me?”
Rory grins. “I have to admit I didn’t think Morag had it in her to keep her mouth shut, but the payoff seems to have been worth it. This will give her something to talk about for months.”
“The funfair?”
He looks at me for a moment, that half-smile I’ve tried not to love playing on his lips.
“No,” he says, and his hand tangles in my hair, his thumb tipping my chin up as he bends to kiss me. “This,” he says, his mouth almost on mine, and I give the briefest nod before he kisses me.
We slip away through the trees and up the path that winds up behind the estate.
The castle fades behind us, the music and voices blowing away on the breeze, swallowed by the riot of midsummer birdsong and the rush of the pines.
Rory leads the way, glancing back every so often as though he’s half expecting me to have disappeared.
At the top of the rise the old stone folly waits – silent, half-crumbling, the pale stone warm in the half-light. He pushes the door open, and I step inside first, my breath catching at the glow of lanterns that are burning in the corners as if someone has made the place ready.
“This is beautiful.”
I turn to see Rory standing, one hand leaning on the doorframe, looking at me like he wants to memorise this moment.
“How long has this place been here? I can’t believe I didn’t find it when I was exploring.”
“Oh, a couple of hundred years. It was built for my great-great-grandfather for his wife. She was a writer, too – a poet. This was her sanctuary.”
I look around, surprised. “I didn’t know any of that.”
“All in the archives, but I guess that’s another story. It turns out that once the words are written and the books are on the shelves, they just become part of the furniture.”
He steps toward me, the lantern light shadowing his face. “There’s a lot about this place that isn’t in the official records. Things worth preserving but not locking away.”
“This doesn’t feel like the end of a story,” I say meeting his gaze.
“It’s not.” He closes the distance between us. “It’s the beginning.”
His hands slide around my waist. My palms find the line of his jaw, feeling the tension beneath the skin, the back of his neck, the solid heat of his shoulders.
His kiss is different this time – slower, his lips grazing mine for a moment so I pull in a breath.
It feels like we have all the time in the world.
His mouth finds the curve of my shoulder and I say his name as I let my hands tangle in his dark hair. When we part, he gently tucks a lock of hair back behind my ear and lets his thumb trail down my cheek.
“Can you give me a chance to start over?”
“I thought I already did.” I flatten my hand against the wall of his chest, feeling his heart beating.
“With all of it.” He steps back, his hand still in mine, his thumb tracing a path down the inside of my wrist. “I’ve fucked up a million times over.”
I laugh. “Can I have that in writing?”
He grins and shakes his head. “Give it a few days and it’ll be an exclusive in The Telegraph … just in case your friend Anna was still considering a scoop.”
I put a hand up. “Don’t call her a friend.” I’ve had my things shipped up from the flat, paid my debt, and cut all ties.
Turns out that she blew her chances in journalism with one too many embellishments of the truth and she got wind that something was up at Loch Morven, so her visit to me had an ulterior motive. Now she’s in high level reputation management, spinning lies for the billionaires she claimed to despise.
“Whatever she was,” his jaw tightens for a moment, “we got her shut down.”
His eyes are hard as he says it.
“That’s not the only reason why you’ve spoken to the press?”
He shakes his head. “I saw this place through your eyes. I’ve read your manuscript over and over and I realised that even someone as talented as you couldn’t make him sound better than he was.”
I smile. “I think that’s a compliment.”
“It is. But I realised that was his time. Who reads the diaries of my ancestors?” He shrugs. “Nobody. They’re consigned to a shelf, forgotten. What lives on is the work we do. That’s how I can make a difference, not by harking back to the past.”
He takes my face in his hands and cups it gently, looking at me for a long moment before he speaks.
“I want you with me to do it, Edie. ”
I take a breath.
There was a time when I would have pulled away, told myself that I wasn’t enough.
I think of Fenella’s catty comment at the ball and Anna’s little barbs.
But I’m not standing here with a duke. I’m looking at the man, not the title.
He could be a New York bartender, and I’d still want him, because I don’t love the castle – okay I do, I love the history and the magic and all of it – but I love the man who finally saw this place for what it could be and believed in it. And in me.
“You have a home here, if you want it.”
I look up at him thoughtfully. “I don’t need a castle, Rory.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because you’re stuck with one. And me along with it, if you’ll have me.” His eyes search mine. “I love you, Edie. Not because you can spin my father’s mess into gold, but because you saw through all of this” – he gestures to the estate below – “to what matters.”
I try to breathe but my throat catches. His words – the ones I never expected to hear – hang in the air around us.
“You already have me,” I say, my voice low. “And not because you’re the duke and all this stuff.” I add, sounding more like myself. I wave my arm around, almost knocking a lantern off the wall. “You could lose all this tomorrow, and I’d still be here.”
His fingers tighten around mine.
“I want you, Rory. That’s all.”