Summer at the Scottish Castle, page 27
She did, her stomach swooping when she began to move. ‘Oh, crumbs,’ she muttered, and then ended up swerving – over Mac’s toe.
Mac grunted, his face pained, but he said nothing.
‘Sorry!’
‘Keep going,’ he ordered, holding her upright as she straightened herself out. ‘Don’t look at the handlebars. Look at Arran.’
From the end of the path, Arran waved at her and she waved back. A bad idea, as taking her hand off the handlebars meant she almost crashed into the fence again.
‘Don’t take your hands off the bloody handlebars!’
‘Sorry!’ she repeated, keeping her grip tight this time. ‘Am I doing it right?’
‘You would be if you were going in a straight line.’
‘You’re not a very patient teacher,’ she remarked.
‘I just almost lost a toe for the second time today, so no.’
Still, he kept up with her, until his assistance was barely needed. She shook slightly as she reached the end of the path, but she hadn’t crashed yet, and that was a good sign. Arran shifted aside as she approached, and she beamed proudly at them. She was doing it. She was riding a bike. It felt like a much bigger accomplishment than it was, somehow: as though gaining hold of the slightly rusty handlebars was like taking control of her life.
‘OK. I’m going to let go when we get to the end and you’re going to do it on your own,’ Mac said.
Panic dropped like a handful of marbles in her gut, but she concentrated on the view in front of her. Rolling fields, red poppies everywhere, a bridge that crossed a burbling stream. It was like a Monet painting.
‘Ready?’
‘No,’ Jess said, but steeled herself anyway.
‘Tough.’ Mac let go abruptly as she reached Arran, and then she was off. All on her own. She only swerved into the grass a little bit before righting herself.
‘I’m doing it!’ she screamed. And then, as she reached the bridge: ‘How do I stop?’
She couldn’t be sure, but she was certain that Mac mumbled, ‘Oh, dear.’ Not comforting at all.
‘Mac!’ The bridge was getting closer, a rickety old thing that would probably collapse and leave her in the stream.
‘Squeeze the brakes on the handlebars – but not too hard! Slowly!’
Jess did, but in her panicked state she didn’t quite understand the concept of ‘slowly’. The brakes screeched and she jolted forward. At the same time, she swerved to avoid the bridge and the tyres skidded across grass and dirt as she tumbled to the floor.
The bike landed across her legs, hitting the sensitive part of her shins, and a cry fell from her. When the world finally stopped spinning, she groaned and realised her name was being called.
‘Oh, Jesus. Jess?’ Mac rushed towards her in a blur of freckles and red hair, Arran following quickly behind. The weight of the bike was torn away, but the utter humiliation stayed, and that was far worse. ‘Are you OK, love? Did you hurt yourself?’
She leaned back with a huff, squeezing her eyes closed against the blindingly bright sun. ‘Only my pride and dignity,’ she replied dryly.
He snorted, grabbing her hand and yanking her upright again before she could object. He examined her body, from the crown of her helmet to the tip of her loafers, hissing dramatically at the sight of her shins, which were grazed and bloody. But the shock had numbed the sting well enough that Jess didn’t care yet. She only cared that she was a sheltered idiot unable to ride a bike, and the man she liked very much now knew this.
‘Luckily for you,’ Mac said gently, ‘my mum always makes sure I carry plasters and bandages. First time I rode a bike, I knocked my two front teeth out. She almost passed out from the amount of blood. Sure you’re all right?’
Jessamine nodded, tucking her forehead into his shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
‘Please can you go and get my bike and backpack, Arran?’ Mac asked, patting Jess’s hair. ‘They’re at the other end of the snicket.’
The sound of their retreating footsteps followed, and then it was just the two of them.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Mac said optimistically. ‘At least you didn’t fall in the stream.’
Jess only groaned again, sinking further into his chest.
‘It was my fault.’ His voice softened with guilt, breath blowing across her head. ‘I didn’t tell you where the brakes were. That should have been the first thing you learned.’
‘I doubt it would have made much difference. I once fell off my horse when it was standing still.’
‘You had a horse?’
She stilled, realising her mistake far too late. Slowly, she pulled away, her hair mussed at the corners of her vision as she gauged Mac’s expression. He was calm as ever, but a line had appeared between his brows. She hated that line. It was the line of, do I know you? The line of you never told me these things about you before. And it was only sure to get deeper soon.
‘Yes. I did a lot of horse riding as a child,’ she explained carefully.
‘So you were taught how to ride a horse but you were never taught how to ride a bike?’
She shook her head. Now the shock was gone, she was beginning to feel the sting of her fall – not just on her legs, but her elbows, too. ‘My mum didn’t have time for the usual kid stuff. Half the time, she let me take all these pointless lessons just to get me out of her way.’
His lips parted, but any response was interrupted by Arran’s return. They dropped the backpack beside Mac.
‘Cheers, kiddo.’ Mac was all smiles again, but Jess could tell there was something more behind them. Questions. Ones she would have to start answering soon. He rooted through the backpack and pulled out a wad of plasters, bandages, and wet wipes.
‘Can we have the picnic at the pond over there?’ Arran pointed over to where the stream merged into a green pond, and Mac checked his watch. From what she could make out, it was barely eleven-thirty.
‘We’ve only just had breakfast.’
‘I’m hungry.’
Mac rolled his eyes as though he’d already predicted the answer. ‘All right. You can go and set up if you like. It’s all in the bag.’
Overjoyed, Arran leapt across the stream, their head bobbing further away until Jess saw them come to a stop in the grass further down by the pond.
She almost wished Arran hadn’t gone again. She needed the buffer, wrong as it was. Needed an excuse not to get too heavy with Mac before she was ready to reveal her secrets.
Mac’s gaze remained glued to Jess’s leg as he cleaned the graze.
‘Ow,’ she complained against the sudden sting, almost kicking him in the process.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, dabbing more carefully, until it was more of a tickle than anything else. His hands were warm, gentle, against her skin as he held her in place, and she couldn’t quite stop watching him tend to her. He was so careful, so caring. Nobody had ever taken care of her like this before. It was just a graze; she could easily continue without a fuss, but he touched her like she was made of glass.
‘So.’ He gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘The more you tell me about your mum, the less I like her.’
‘She wasn’t the warmest person in the world,’ Jessamine admitted. ‘Still, we lived in a nice house …’
‘But she never taught you to ride a bike,’ he finished for her.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Doesn’t really matter how nice the house was or how many horses you had, then, does it? Not if you weren’t happy.’
It was the last thing she’d been expecting. Mac had gone through all sorts of hardships in his childhood, and she could only imagine how greatly their experiences differed. Even now, his parents’ house was barely the size of the stables and barn they’d had on their Cheshire estate, later transformed into a guest house that was rarely used. She had no right to complain, not to him, and yet … he seemed to understand all the same.
Maybe Mac truly wouldn’t care about who she was outside of Fort Aileen? Maybe her title would mean as much to him as it did to her: nothing. And maybe he’d base his opinion on her for who she was, not what she owned. It was her only hope, and it would be a first, because her value to others had only ever been based on material and superficial things before now.
‘I suppose not.’ She couldn’t help but straighten a stray strand of his hair that had stuck up in the breeze. His eyes drew back up to meet hers, his expression full of things she couldn’t even describe because she’d never seen it before. Nobody looked at her like that. Nobody had reason to.
‘Where is she now? Your mum, I mean.’
‘London … mostly. I grew up in Cheshire, though.’
He picked a sycamore seed out of her hair and flicked it away. ‘Do you see her often?’
Not if I can help it.
‘She calls now and again,’ she said, and sighed. ‘It all feels like another life. I feel like I’ve found something here my family could never give me.’
‘I’m glad.’ A soft smile; a squeeze of her hand. ‘I feel the same. With you, I mean.’ He went back to tending to her wounds, and she watched him all the while, content. Perhaps a little bit in love, too, though she wouldn’t let herself think about that until after she told him. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. He deserved the whole truth first.
‘I put in the forms to adopt Arran,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘I need a few character references, but the process has started.’
She squeezed his hand, excitement fizzing through her. ‘I’m so happy for you both. I can only imagine how ecstatic Arran must feel.’
‘There’s definitely been a change in them recently. Though I have to wonder if you’re part of it, too. Arran likes you a lot. Trusts you. Thank you, Jess, for being part of their life these last couple of months.’
‘Of course. Thank you for letting me.’
He kissed her slowly, tenderly, as though she’d hurt her lips as well as her shins. Goosebumps crawled across her skin, despite the summer heat, as his hand slid to the nape of her neck, pulling her closer. She wanted to stay this way forever, bathed in sunlight while the birds and crickets chirped and the water whispered along the stream and he kept her safe, happy, cared for. She thought of all the lonely nights when she’d been married to Robert. All of the nights they hadn’t even been able to stand sharing a bed, but pasted on false smiles and held hands stiffly at parties the next day. There had been no intimacy there. Not behind closed doors. And while she’d tried to love Robert once, she wondered now if any of it had been real or just something she’d built in her head to get her through a marriage she hadn’t prepared for, or chosen.
Because this, here, is what it should have been like. It wasn’t all fairy tales, and he wasn’t a traditional prince, but he made her feel like a princess all the same. And she knew now that Mac would never hurt her like Robert had. He would never use her as an ornament to show off at parties or say terrible things about her that would haunt her forever. She trusted him completely. It was like all this time she’d been falling, and only now had her parachute opened. She was safe.
With him, she was safe.
‘All right, we have jam or cheese,’ Mac said, digging into his backpack and pulling out a wad of flattened, cling-film-wrapped sandwiches.
‘Jam!’ Arran and Jess replied at the same time.
Mac threw them a sandwich each and then tucked into his own, feeling like a kid again. Mum made the best picnic sandwiches. Mac hoped one day Arran might say the same about him.
‘Can I dip my feet in the pond?’ Arran asked after demolishing lunch at record speed, their lips sticky with raspberry jam.
‘Go ahead. If you want them to be covered in duck poo.’
Apparently, Arran did, because they wandered off to feed their sandwich crusts to the ducks before sitting on the edge of the small, algae-infested pond. Mac couldn’t help but smile. ‘How are the legs feeling?’
‘Better.’ She sidled closer to him on the picnic blanket. ‘How are you? We haven’t really talked about the cottage.’
‘They said it should be dried out and ready to start fixing up in a couple of weeks.’ He pursed his lips, missing his beloved home and the plants surrounding it. He’d been trying to revive them in his greenhouse after they’d been drowned, along with half the castle gardens, but going inside the cottage while it was still a mess hurt too much. ‘I wonder if I need a bigger place, though. If the adoption is approved, Arran will probably want more space.’
Jess frowned. ‘You love the cottage.’
‘Yeah, but …’ He shrugged. ‘At the end of the day, it’s just bricks and wood.’ He leaned back on his hands, losing a deep breath straight from his belly as he realised just how glorious the day was. The sun warmed his skin, the grass tickling his palms, and Arran was more at ease than Mac had ever seen them.
‘This,’ he said, his eyes locking on Jess’s. ‘This is home.’
She softened, placing her hand over his and leaning closer. A splodge of pink jam stuck to her chin, and he chuckled. ‘You have …’ He reached out, swiping the jam gently with the pad of his thumb. It pressed into the dimple of her chin as though it belonged there.
The sound of her breath hitching made his own lungs, skin, everything, tighten. Every time he touched her was like the first time, as though he couldn’t quite believe he was allowed to. Deserved to. But she glittered like there was nothing in the world she wanted more, and so he slowly drew his thumb onto her lip, leaving behind the excess jam. She licked it off slowly.
‘I was …’ He cleared his throat, his stomach jittering. ‘I was thinking … Wondering, really. Well, not wondering. More just pondering …’ He was rambling and he couldn’t stop.
Jess giggled. ‘What were you thinking-slash-wondering-slash-pondering, Mac?’
‘I suppose I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. We’ve kissed a lot and you’ve met my parents, and I just wanted to know if this is as big for you as it is for me.’
God, he felt as anxious as he’d been as a teenager, asking out the first boy he’d ever liked, but he had to know. He had to be certain before he sank too deep. ‘I suppose what I’m asking is … is this serious for you? Are we . . ?’
Falling together?
Because he was. Jess lived in his heart, his chest, all day. When he missed her or felt off or overwhelmed, he liked to remember the sound of her laugh. When he wasn’t with her, he wondered what she was doing, whether she was thinking about him.
When she was here, he could relax. Enjoy himself. Stop worrying if he was a good dad or how he would fix the cottage. He knew as certainly as he knew how to breathe that she was it for him. That he was hers if she wanted him.
‘Are you asking me if we’re together?’ Jess asked.
He nodded, words failing him.
‘I’d like to be.’
She fiddled with the buttons of his shirt distractedly – the same yellow one he’d worn at the fete, because he’d noticed its reflected light made her eyes look brighter, and because it reminded him of being with her on that Ferris wheel, and in the secret garden where they’d shared their first kiss.
‘In answer to your first question,’ she went on, ‘yes. This is big for me. Ginormous, even. Mahoosive. I’ve never …’ a sigh floated from her as she finally looked up at him, ‘I’ve never felt this way. Nothing has ever felt this … right.’
Mac’s stomach somersaulted. Even if she hadn’t said it, he could see in her expression a mirror of his feelings for her.
‘Do you mind me asking how it ended with the ex-husband?’ he said. ‘It sounds like you were unhappy for a while. What was the last straw?’
Jess’s eyes glossed over. ‘It didn’t end pleasantly. He started throwing little remarks around quite quickly after the wedding. The sort that you could pass off as joking, only I knew they weren’t. Things about the way I looked, or my job. Things that festered in me for a long time. Made me doubt myself. Whenever I brought it up, how he made me feel, he said it was ridiculous, that it wasn’t his fault I was so sensitive and insecure. In the end, I just got so tired of feeling lonely and rejected whenever he was around … And the final straw was when I found out he’d been sleeping with someone else, while he was supposedly away for work.’ She shook her head, probably at what seemed such painful memories. ‘When I left, he told me I’d never find somebody like him again.’ She gave a short, dry laugh. ‘And I … I said, “well, thank goodness for that”.’
‘Jesus. You deserve so much better than that.’ Anger shimmered in his words. Mac couldn’t imagine anybody marrying Jess only to belittle her, to leave her lonely and bored and discontented. She deserved the world. Deserved to be cherished. He supposed he owed her ex-husband a thank you because now he had his chance to treat her as she deserved. ‘Do you ever talk to him? Are you still—?’
‘No.’
Her face crumpled, though, and he had a feeling there was more to the story. Still, he didn’t want to pry. He waited patiently, wondering if she wanted to talk about it.
‘Being in Fort Aileen has made me realise that I don’t have to be trapped with the wrong people anymore,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to spend time with anyone who wants to make me feel small. I didn’t realise it was even an option a couple of years ago, but now …’ She laced her fingers through his. ‘Now, I never want to go back. This is where I’m supposed to be. So, yes, Mac. I’m serious about us. I’m very, very serious. Gravely serious, one might say.’
He smirked, tucking her hair behind her ear so he could look at her. Her fingers crept up his neck, to his jaw, as she pressed a lingering kiss on his lips. But then she pulled away quickly, tilting her head as clouds seemed to approach overhead.
‘Mac … I think maybe I should tell you someth— Oh my goodness!’ A scream left her, and Mac released a not-so-manly outburst of his own when a scaly, mottled heap was displayed between them on Arran’s hand.
A frog.
‘Look what I found!’ said Arran proudly. ‘Can we keep it?’
