Chapter Ten
Isla
Scotland was as beautiful as I had imagined.
We flew across the Atlantic on Angus’ private jet, an enormous Boeing that was absolutely nothing like flying coach. In coach your legs are smooshed up against the seat in front of you, your elbow rubs against your neighbor’s, and you count yourself lucky if the harried flight attendant manages to pour you a single Coke.
But the Boeing—well, it had luxurious white leather couches, a huge widescreen television, and a bar stocked with extravagant alcohol and delicious snacks. It also boasted a queen-sized bed. The flight was smooth, but my stomach was nevertheless unsettled, and I curled up on the soft mattress and slept most of the way. Part of me was tempted to join the Mile-High club, but I wasn’t feeling totally comfortable with Angus right now. He seemed to sense that and was carefully keeping his distance.
In fact, we hadn’t made love since the day I’d seen that awful headline. Part of me was relieved, thinking that it was safest to keep away from him until I knew for sure what had happened. But part of me still longed for his touch.
We flew into Glasgow Airport, where a stately black Bentley driven by an even statelier chauffeur picked us up. For most of an hour, we drove through hilly country cut through by rivers, small towns with cobbled streets lined with ancient stone houses, and newer towns lined with row houses. As we got further away from Glasgow, some of the roads were impossibly narrow, sometimes only wide enough to accommodate one car, and when we approached another car, the driver had to turn out at a designated “passing place” so they could get past one another.
However, Kilmarnock was a decent-sized town (far larger than my own Kilmarnock, which only had about fifteen hundred residents), and Angus pointed out to me the Johnnie Walker plant (“closed five years ago after almost two hundred and ninety years”) and the Dick Institute (“it’s a museum, lassie, get yer mind out of the gutter”). Despite the loss of the Johnnie Walker plant, there were still a good many businesses in the town, and I saw plenty of people on the streets, going about their daily life. It didn’t look that different from daily life in the United States, if you ignored the fact that everyone drove on the wrong side of the road.
Not too far past Kilmarnock, we rolled through a crumbling old stone gate, and up a long, winding drive, lined with ancient, bare-branched oaks and evergreen pines. At last, the trees fell away, giving way to a wide, rolling lawn, and an enormous stone edifice appeared before us. As Angus had said, it was a peculiar mixture of styles—there was a medieval keep, with crenelated towers so tall that Rapunzel’s hair would’ve had a difficult time reaching the ground, but much of the rest of the house looked to be Regency era. It was grand but odd, and I understood Angus’ desire to put his stamp on it, to make it all fit together better.
We got out of the car, both of us stretching to relieve our stiffness. The air was cold and crisp, and I drew in a breath, smelling salt.
“The Firth of Clyde,” Angus said, noticing my curious expression. “The house sits right on the cliff, overlooking the Firth.”
It sounded like something from a gothic novel, and for a moment that made me smile. But then I remembered Una, Angus’ girlfriend who had committed suicide. Had she thrown herself off the cliff here?
Or had she been pushed?
Angus’ mother was waiting just inside for us, in the entrance hall. It was paneled with dark wood, and swords and other weaponry were displayed on the walls. Angus greeted her with a cool nod of the head.
“My mother, Mrs. Scott,” he said. “Mother, this is my fiancée, Isla Blizzard.”
I had expected a proud, standoffish woman, but instead, she seemed delighted to meet me. She stepped forward, smiling, and embraced me. She had a worn, wrinkled face, and slightly stooped shoulders. Her hair had once been redder than Angus’, but now it was graying and tucked into a modest bun. Her blue eyes were just like Angus’ in shape and color, but where his were illuminated with a fierce drive and glittering impatience, hers shone with kindness and tranquility.
“Call me Fiona, dear. I’m so happy you’re here.”
I couldn’t help noticing that she’d hugged me, but not her son. Then again, Angus wasn’t exactly showing signs of wanting to be hugged. He kept a careful distance from her, and excused himself quickly, so that he might speak with the constable as soon as possible. His manner was courteous but chilly.
Fiona didn’t appear taken aback or hurt, so perhaps chilliness was what she’d expected from her son. She seemed delighted to give me a tour of the castle while Angus met with the police. Maybe she just welcomed the distraction from worrying about her son’s fate, or perhaps she was simply lonely now that her husband was gone.
She led me through the ground floor, showing me the dark, small-windowed keep, and then the newer parts of the dwelling. At last, we paused in a beautiful circular drawing room, which had expansive windows facing the east and, for the first time, I looked out over the gray waters of the Firth of Clyde. It might not be Loch Ness, but it wasn’t hard to imagine a sea monster out there, swimming about in the cold, dark water. There were rocks visible in the water a little ways from shore, and I imagined there must be rocks at the base of the cliff as well.
I thought of poor Una, falling to her death against those rocks, and shuddered.
“I thought ye might care to see this.” Fiona’s voice was gentle and musically accented. She showed me a leather-bound album. “Pictures of my son.”
I imagined Angus as a redheaded, freckled boy, and immediately knew that yes, I did want to see those pictures. We settled onto a carved sofa with silk upholstery (Louis XV, I thought, remembering back to one of my classes), and she opened the album.
Angus had indeed been an adorable child. His hair had been a little redder back then, and he’d had freckles scattered thickly all over his cheeks and nose. I envisioned him running wild on this estate, a bundle of unrestrained energy, and couldn’t help smiling.
“He spent much of his days with Thomas and Una back then.” Fiona tapped a finger on a photo of three teenagers. “They were a little wild, especially him and Thomas. Oh, nothing bad, my dear. He could never kill anyone, I am certain of that. Just pranks, and a few fights at school. But the three of them were inseparable. After Una’s death, Angus and Thomas drifted apart. I’m not quite sure why, but I suppose she was the glue that held them together.”
I looked down at the pictures of the three of them. It wasn’t difficult to see they’d been close—there seemed to be almost endless photos of them together. Angus had been a handsome boy, and so had the dark-haired Thomas, but of the three of them, Una had been the most striking, with flaxen hair, pale blue eyes, and a slim build. She had been a stunningly beautiful girl.
I thought of her empty body on the rocks, broken and bleeding, and my stomach roiled.
Could Angus have pushed her? The two of them had been friends since childhood. Even if their romance had ended… he must have still had affection for her. Or had she broken up with him, and angered him to the point where he’d shoved her in a fit of rage, causing her to stumble and fall?
Even worse, could Angus have killed her on purpose? Could he do something like that?
Of course not, I assured myself, but the terrible truth was that I wasn’t altogether certain.
The thoughts spinning in my brain made me feel breathless and sick, or maybe it was just leftover motion sickness from the long plane ride. My stomach jolted unpleasantly, and I had the awful feeling I was seconds from losing the small breakfast I’d eaten all over the priceless Aubusson carpet.
“’Scuse me,” I said thickly, scrambling to my feet. Fortunately, Fiona had shown me the location of one of the many bathrooms as we walked toward the drawing room.
I fled for it, collapsed to my knees in front of the toilet, and threw up.
***
Angus
“I told you this years ago. I wasn’t there.”
“Aye, ye said that.” The constable frowned down at me. He’d seated me in a chair and was using his height to loom over me in an obvious effort to intimidate me. Alastair Buchanan and I had been schoolmates and rivals, and we’d been in more than one fight together. He’d been a petty bully back then, and becoming an officer of the law evidently hadn’t improved him any. “But a new witness has come forth, and they claim to have seen ye heading toward the cliff that night.”
“Una died at night,” I pointed out. “’Twould’ve been dark.”
“Aye, but there was a bright moon, and the witness swears it was you.”
“I told you,” I said, trying to hold onto my temper. “I was with my father.”
“Pity the old man’s dead.” Buchanan failed to sound sorry. “Wee bit difficult for us to recheck yer alibi, isn’t it?”
“The servants heard us fighting. Some of them are still with us. They can corroborate my story.”
“But they’re loyal to you and yer family, Angus.”
I tried to hold back my irritation and approached the problem from a different angle. “Isn’t it a bit odd that a new witness came forth now, after all these years? Where have they been all this time?”
“They told us they were protecting you, laddie. That they didn’t want to see you in jail. But that they finally decided they had to do the right thing.”
“That sounds unlikely.”
“On the contrary.” Alastair grinned down at me. “Sounds perfectly likely to me. I always knew ye were trouble, Angus. I always suspected you had something to do with Una’s death.”
With a sensation of warm nostalgia, I remembered the time I’d broken Alastair’s nose in school, and I rather wished I could do it again. But to let him provoke me into idiocy would be to find myself inside a jail cell for a very long time, and that I couldn’t do, no matter how satisfying it would be to smash the bampot’s face in. I had a company to run, and a woman to wed. I couldn’t allow Alastair to ruin my life. Not now. I seethed but remained in my chair.
Alastair seemed to relish my impotent fury. He smirked down at me.
“Ye’re our main witness, Angus, and we’ll want to question ye again. Likely more’n once. Mind ye stay in town.”
***
Isla
The bedroom we were sharing was large and luxurious, with a four-poster bed and a huge window that overlooked the Firth. We’d been there for three days, and we’d carefully kept to our own sides of the bed, allowing our relationship to remain in a platonic state. We hadn’t discussed it; it had just happened.
Part of me ached for Angus, longing to be wrapped in his strong arms, to feel his hot mouth against my skin. But I was still afraid. I’d agreed to marry a stranger, and despite all our midnight talks, I had to admit I still didn’t know him all that well. For all I knew, he could be a murderer.
At least that was what my brain told me.
My heart disagreed.
But right now I wasn’t thinking about my brain or my heart. My stomach was the problem. It seemed to be making a concerted effort to crawl right up my throat. The sight and scent of sausage (bangers, as they called them here) on the breakfast table had made me feel ill, and I’d barely managed to choke down a dry piece of toast. But even that had been enough to make me very, very ill.
And to make matters worse, as I repeatedly vomited into the toilet, it dawned on me that my period was late. Very late.
I’m not a complete idiot. After the first time with Angus, I’d been sure to wear my diaphragm whenever we were together, and he’d always used a condom, too. But sometimes all it takes is one time.
And I was pretty sure that in this case, once had been enough.
Once my stomach settled a bit, I had made an excuse to go to the local store, riding like a queen in the chauffeured Bentley. Instead of the antacid I’d claimed I needed, I’d purchased a pregnancy test. Once we returned to the castle, I retreated to my bathroom and followed the instructions, then placed it on the counter and sat down on the toilet seat to wait an excruciating three minutes.
At long last, I picked it up and looked at it, and panic clutched me by the throat. I was pregnant.
I was going to have Angus Scott’s baby.
This was awful. It was terrible. Angus was a billionaire playboy, and even if he’d committed to me for two years, that didn’t mean he was ready to commit to fatherhood. Besides, there was still the horrific possibility that he was a murderer, and if there was even the faintest possibility that he was capable of murderous rages, I couldn’t let him be involved with this child. I just couldn’t.
I put the test down, walked out to the bedroom, and sank down heavily on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t seem to stop the tears; they overflowed my eyes and ran down my cheeks. I tried to hold back my sobs, for fear that someone would hear, and wonder.
I sat there crying quietly, staring out at the Firth where Una had died. It looked steel-gray, reflecting the dark clouds above. Fear and grief roiled inside me, and I imagined fancifully that the dark and ominous waters of the Firth had somehow taken up residence in my chest, drowning me in anxiety.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
I was too caught up in my anguish to hear the footsteps in the hallway. The door creaked open, and Angus stood there, staring at me.
“Are ye all right, lassie?”
I knew he was worried because he’d reverted to his native accent. I sniffled pathetically, and he sat down on the bed next to me, and—for the first time in three days—wrapped his powerful arms around me.
It felt good. It felt right. I couldn’t help myself.
I buried my face in his shoulder and sobbed aloud.
“Easy, lass.” He ran a big hand through my hair. “Don’t cry. Tell me what’s troubling ye.”
“I just—I just—” I tried to get words out, but couldn’t. They choked off in a sob.
“Never mind.” He sighed into my hair, and his voice dropped to its lowest register, rumbling like thunder. “I already know. It’s me. Ye’re worryin’ I killed Una. But I swear to ye, lass, that I did not. I swear it on my da’s grave.”
The knot of confused emotion that had tangled in my chest loosened. I knew Angus well enough to know what his father had meant to him, and I was absolutely certain he would not have uttered those words if they had not been true.
“I believe you,” I whispered into his shoulder and meant it.
“That bein’ said…” He sighed again. “Well, the truth of the matter is that perhaps it is my fault, in a way. Una and I, we had been friends for years. When I told her I was leavin’ for America, and I broke up with her—maybe it was too much for her. She’d always had her problems, emotionally speaking. She’d be brilliant sunshine one day, and darkest midnight the next.”
“Bipolar?”
“I suppose, though she never saw a doctor for help with it. I begged her to, but she wouldn’t. I knew she had this issue, though, and still, I walked away from her. So in a way… I did this to her, lassie. I did.”
The grief in his voice cut straight to my heart. I snuffled, and straightened up, looking him in the eye.
“Don’t you dare blame yourself,” I said fiercely. “You tried to get her help, didn’t you?”
He nodded, looking miserable.
“You did what you could for your friend, Angus. But you couldn’t stay with her if you didn’t feel that way about her, could you? You had your own future to worry about. Your own life. Don’t think it was your fault, Angus. It wasn’t.”
He swallowed audibly and didn’t answer. His gaze flickered away from mine, and he studied the hand-stitched quilt on the bed like it was the most fascinating thing imaginable. I took a deep breath, trying to push back the dark waters rising inside me.
“At any rate,” I said, taking his hand in mine, “the truth is that I wasn’t crying over that. Well, not exactly. It’s…” I stiffened my shoulders. “I’m pregnant.”
He stared blankly at me for a long moment, and my heart sank. But then a soft, unfamiliar expression bloomed on his face, a look almost of joy.
“A baby,” he said softly and placed a hand on my belly. “To think there’s a baby growing right here. Are you certain?”
“I’ve always heard pregnancy tests are pretty reliable. And I’ve been throwing up. So yes, I’m certain.”
He looked pensively at my stomach. “It doesn’t show yet though.”
I snorted. “It’s not going to show for a while. For quite a while, I hope.”
He looked at my abdomen and smiled, like he was picturing me the size of a whale. The idea didn’t make me smile.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “I’ll take care of you both.”
Though softly spoken, the words had the weight of a sacred vow. I blinked at him. Somehow I hadn’t thought someone like Angus Scott would want a child to interfere with his glamorous lifestyle. But I looked into his eyes, which were practically glowing, and I thought maybe he’d longed for this more than he’d ever let himself admit.
“The child will want for nothing,” he said. “Nor will you. I promise you that.”
The words were reassuring, but I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I only had two years with him, after all. I’d signed a contract saying so. And after that, what would happen? Would we split custody of my baby? Or would Angus, with his vast money and power, use lawyers to wrest the child away from me?
I decided that was a foolish idea. Angus might have his faults, but he would never keep me away from my own child.
Even so, sooner or later, the two of us would go our separate ways, and we’d have to settle on a shared custody arrangement. The baby would only be mine on occasion. I knew that Angus would never suddenly realize he loved me, or announce that we should remain together for always. And now that I knew about Una, I thought I knew why. I looked out over the dark water and shivered.
Angus Scott’s heart lay in pieces at the bottom of the cliff, shattered on the rocks along with his first love.