The Catch Up, page 24
“That’s the beauty of it all,” Jan replied, her heart full of joy at how things had turned out. “I’ve not got a flight booked yet, because I had no idea how long I’d need to be at the castle. Accommodation is sorted. Mum and Dad have had a house in the Algarve for years. It’s rented out when the family don’t want to use it, but it’s been left free this summer so any of the family can go there. Ten minutes’ walk to the sea and vacant for me. Or us. Good, eh?”
“More than,” Thom replied. He rubbed his chin. “I’ll be glad when I can either grow a beard or shave this stuff off. It’s at the itchy stage.”
Jan glanced at the dark stubble on his chin and upper lip that he’d grown for the film. It suited him. Dare she say it made him look a bit off a ruffian? A hard man, but with a heart of gold? Nope, it sounds stupid. “I think it suits you. Is this a change of subject because you don’t like the idea of stopping here? We can always nip to the house in Portugal as well. Didn’t you say you’d got a few weeks before your next job?” Was she assuming too much? He actually hadn’t said he’d like to accompany her.
“It wasn’t, it isn’t and if it sounded as if it was, damn it. It was me saying what else was on my mind. I’m glad you like it, it still itches and yes, I have a month off. I think, if it’s okay with you, we should have a week here. Mind you, it would mean roughing it. No proper bed.”
“We can still stop at the castle. Zac is happy for us to hold onto the cottage for a couple of weeks.” Jan had checked that when she hadn’t been sure what her plans were. She hadn’t wanted to be left without any accommodation.
“Perfect. Then not so much roughing it after all. We shop and see what we want to buy then order it. Maybe head to Portugal for a couple of weeks, come back to sort out the cottage and then I guess you need to head off and I need to work. It’s only a short job, four or five weeks at the most. Then…well, I’ve no idea what then. Except I want to be with you.”
“And I want to be with you. We’ll work something out,” Jan said firmly. “With a bit of luck I’ll be able to work where I am around where you are. The joys of working from home. Or homes. We’ll manage it this time, Thom. I’m sure of it. Older, wiser and more in love than ever.”
Thom gave her such a look of love, Jan’s heart fluttered.
“That we will, my love. That we will.”
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The Scots and the Sassenachs:
The Duke’s Lost Love
Raven McAllan & Cassie O’Brien
Excerpt
By the light of a flaming flambeau held aloft by Sydney, page and general dogsbody to the Armstrong household, Mrs Evanna Percival-Smyth walked home. The moon was on the wane and that, added to the heavy cloud obscuring the stars in the night sky, made his illuminating assistance to guide her footsteps a necessity. A trip, with its likely consequence of a twisted ankle, was high on the cards otherwise.
Her house was cloaked in near darkness when she arrived. No servant would be up waiting. She was not meant to be there, but rather at Denny House, where she’d accepted an appointment to chaperone the Lady Cairstine McColl during her visit to Corbridge.
Circumstances had led to this unexpected return.
Of course, if she chose, she could wake the household and have people ready to do her bidding immediately—or almost immediately. It would mean they would have to dress and hurry, probably bleary-eyed or yawning, from their various rooms, and Evanna was more considerate than to ask for that. She valued her staff. Why should her unforeseen homecoming disturb their slumber? In her mind they got little enough respite as it was.
Plus, she had a lot to think about and didn’t want anyone to see her agitation. Sydney, bless him, did not count. His intelligence was not of the highest, but he was always willing to please.
At her front door, she opened her reticule and passed her young escort a silver sixpence. His eyes widened.
“Cor, Mrs P. Thank you.”
She patted his shoulder and smiled, even though, with her knees all a tremble after seeing Cairstine’s father, Nathan, for the first time in over twenty years, it was the last thing she felt like doing. She wanted to run and hide. Be alone.
Think things over.
Sydney stared at her, a slight frown creasing the space between his eyebrows. “You all right, Mrs P? You looked a bit strange just then.”
Bless him. “You’re a good lad, Sydney. I’m fine, just tired I suspect. Run along now. I imagine there will be plenty for you to do tomorrow. Is your bed ready?”
He nodded. “Course it is. I’s been mekking it tidy every morning like what you told me to.”
“Good boy. Take the flambeau to guide you but be sure to extinguish it in the water bucket when you get home.”
He nodded and dashed off.
Evanna watched him disappear and reached into her reticule, which along with a quantity of small change also contained her door key. She let herself in and sighed in satisfaction at the familiar scent of her own home—lavender and beeswax. Her housemaid had obviously not skimped on either the elbow grease or the furniture polish while she’d been away. An oil lamp, its wick turned down low, lit the interior and saved her fumbling about in the dark. It took but a second to pluck it from a small consul table and make her way up the stairs to her boudoir. By the lamp’s absence her servants would know she had returned.
Her thoughts were all over the place as she considered the events of the evening just gone. A large sherry to calm her agitation was in order, she decided. Once it was poured, Evanna settled back into her chair and thought back to when it had all started. Her first and only visit to Edinburgh…
* * * *
Before
The excitement began when she overheard her father’s dour tones followed by her mother’s firm but snappish retort from the other side of a not-quite-closed door.
“It would cost a small fortune. I’m nae made o’ money for you to fritter away on female foibles and frolicking, woman.”
“It’s got nothing to do with frolicking or frittering, Angus Kerr,” her mama retorted with a hard edge to her voice that Evanna had never heard her employ when addressing Papa before. Forceful. That was it. Intrigued, she continued to listen.
“Evanna is the prettiest of our girls as well as the eldest. Just give me five hundred pounds to take her to Edinburgh…”
Evanna held her breath, hardly daring to hope.
“And I’ll practically guarantee she’ll catch herself a well-to-do husband. Then she can sponsor each of her younger sisters when they are of marriageable age. That’s four for the price of one. Consider it an investment. After all, it’s not much more than you spent on that gelding last month.”
Her father fired back, “At least the gelding crossed the finishing line first and brought home the prize fund.”
“An aberration no doubt.” Her mother sounded less than impressed. “Let’s face it, it’s about time one of your stable achieved a positive result. Your racehorses cost more than all of we females do put together. The gelding’s winnings should meet the majority of the expenses I’ll incur in Edinburgh.”
“But…but…five hundred pounds,” her father said glumly. “Would fifty nae do?”
“It would not, now wheesht or I’ll be demanding a thousand. You think on my words, Angus. You fathered them and you have a responsibility to see your daughters respectably established.”
The rustling of stiffened petticoats warned Evanna it was time to move. She picked up her skirts and hurried away.
* * * *
Now
Nathaniel, Duke of Glenard sank gratefully into the padded comfort of a fireside chair and accepted the balloon glass of brandy offered to him by his daughter, Cairstine. The concern in her eyes mirrored the tone of her voice as he took his first sip. “You look quite knocked up, Papa. Drink this and we’ll talk in the morning. There’s no rush now the letter has been destroyed.”
Knocked up, knocked sideways and thoroughly knocked off kilter. Nathan could only manage a nod. One image filled his mind to the exclusion of all else. There was no room for more.
Evanna… My love…
Cairstine smiled softly and walked to the door. If she was disappointed at his lack of response in not enquiring as to her own part in the affair of the treasonable letter that had brought them all hotfoot to Corbridge, she didn’t show it. He would make it up to her in the morning. Ask all manner of questions about her adventures over the last few weeks. Tell of his own and express his happiness at her marrying the very man he would have chosen for her if she had not already done so herself—Duncan, the Earl of Callander. But for tonight he needed some time alone with his thoughts.
Evanna…
* * * *
Before
He had first seen her at an evening entertainment he’d attended at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh when his own father, Neil, had still been alive and he himself had borne the lesser title of Viscount Nathaniel McColl. His father had decided his twenty-year-old heir required a little town polish before his introduction to the height of the ton during the official London Season the following year, so had dispatched him to the Scottish capital to reside with his godfather, Sir Douglas Wallace, and experience the festivities enjoyed by the minor nobility and wealthy gentry who resided in the city. Sir Douglas’ own son, Alain, was not so far above Nathan in age as for them to have little in common. Their friendship had been cemented one evening while downing an after-dinner bottle of port.
Alain winked when the dining room door swung shut behind Sir Douglas. His wife, Alain’s mother, had long since retired to bed. “I fancy another round. How about you?”
Nathan, enjoying the mellow feeling imbibing the wine induced, agreed. A fresh bottle was soon delivered by way of the butler, and once it was uncorked, Alain dismissed the servant with a lazy wave of his hand. “We’ll see ourselves up, thank you.”
Nathan sipped and found the flavour as richly satisfying as he had the contents of the previous bottle.
“So…” Alain said. “How did you find the ladies sauntering in the park this afternoon? Did any of them catch you eye? I thought Lady Merrythorpe was looking rather hopefully in your direction. She’s recently enceinte and free to follow her own inclinations for the next couple of months, you know?”
Nathan cheeks heated to his hesitant reply. “Ah…she is…? Um…?”
Alain hooted with laughter. “You never have, have you? Come along. Admit it. You’re still as pure as the driven snow.”
Nathan fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat at the truth of that particular statement. An edition of engraved prints that included Ruben’s famous nudes of Venus, Angelica and Andromeda were his sole education on how men differed from women beneath their clothes. Apart from one stolen kiss under the mistletoe the previous Christmas, the book, his imagination and a fleeting glimpse of a breast when one fair matron’s neckline had slipped were indeed his total experience of the fairer sex to date. “Well…not exactly.”
Alain eyed him knowingly. “So, what did you get? A kiss or two? Or maybe she let you slip your hand down her bodice and feel her breast?”
That the kiss had been the extent of it, Nathan chose not to admit, so instead he nodded.
Alain grinned. “Well, that’s a situation we must rectify as soon as may be. A young matron up for some fun times will at the very least expect you to know what goes where and when. Gird your loins, my friend. You and I are going pay a call at Mistress MacDonald’s fine establishment tomorrow evening.”
Nathan swallowed hard as nerves and mounting excitement at the prospect played their part. “We are?”
Alain tossed down the remaining port in his glass. “Be careful how much wine you take with dinner. The proprietress of the house we shall visit after it will not permit admittance to any gentleman she suspects of being too tipsy to treat her valuable merchandise with care.”
Nathan set his unfinished wine down on the table and drank no more before they retired to bed. If he was to further his education with regards to the fairer sex, he’d best be on fine form come the morrow.
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About the Author
After 30 plus years in Scotland, Raven now lives near the east Yorkshire coast, with her long-suffering husband, who is used to rescuing the dinner, when she gets immersed in her writing, keeping her coffee pot warm and making sure the wine is chilled.
With a new home to decorate and a garden to plan, she’s never short of things to do, but writing is always at the top of her list.
Her other hobbies include walking along the coast and spotting the wildlife, reading, researching, cros stitch and trying not to drop stitches as she endeavours to knit.
Being left-handed, and knitting right-handed, that’s not always easy.
Raven loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website details and author profile page at https://www.totallybound.com
Raven McAllan, The Catch Up
