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“You’re screwed, laddie,” Dunstan concluded, tossing his pen onto his legal pad. “Zebedee signed about the most lop-sided contracts I’ve seen this side of Maryland public procurements. You’re bound hand and foot to the masonry crew, the landscape designer, the architect, and the carpenters. You haven’t signed anything with Nick’s hotshot castle engineer, so you can still dodge that bullet.”

Dunstan apparently leapt into contract clauses with the same zeal Elias dug into corporate books, and yet, most of the contracts on the law office’s conference table were simple enough. Zebedee Brodie, on behalf of his heirs, assigns, and successors in interest, agreed to pay for repairs further described as exorbitant, endless, and difficult.

“The castle engineer is the lynch pin that holds all the other repairs together,” Elias said. “No point replacing the wainscoting if the rising damp is soon to take over the premises.”

“If I had any money at all, Elias, I’d gladly give it to you.”

Not lend, give. As bleak as the situation was, Dunstan’s generosity warmed Elias’s heart. A knock sounded on the conference room door.

“Dunstan, UPS wants me to sign for a package from Scotland,” a small, graying woman said. “Are you expecting anything?”

 “I am,” Elias said. “I’ll sign for it.” He needed to get up and move, needed to check his phone on the off chance that Violet had called him.

Though what was there left to say? Think of me when you hear the bulldozers destroying that beautiful stone barn? Remember me when the traffic in front of your house becomes dangerously congested?

And Violet couldn’t call him, because he’d never given her his phone number, his email, his anything.

Except his heart.

“I have one last client appointment today,” Dunstan said, when Elias returned to the conference room. “Jane and I will drive home together, if you want to take the truck.”

Jane had gone off on some errand at lunch time, and Elias hadn’t heard her come back. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“You’ll be gone soon enough, and I’ll likely not see you until the child’s old enough to travel. Jane wants to name a boy after you, though, and when Jane makes up her mind about something, the outcome is assured.”

Dunstan ran a finger along the inlay edging the conference table. The piece was massive, elegant, and probably quite valuable, unlike the rest of the furniture in the law office, which was more utilitarian. His expression was fondly distracted, as if the conference table put him in mind of dear memories.

Which might well involve the wife with whom he shared a law practice.

“Are you and Jane managing?” Elias asked.

Dunstan picked up his pen. “Managing?”

“Financially. I know you’ve been remodeling your farmhouse, and that’s expensive. You and Jane will need time off for the baby and children are not cheap.”

“You know this, how?”

The fact that Dunstan didn’t simply answer the question suggested Elias had been right to ask. “Zebedee never intended to have the raising of me. He made sure I knew at every turn what I cost him, to the point of keeping a ledger for me.”

“That’s awful,” Dunstan said. “Even for a tight-fisted Scottish bachelor, that is inexcusable.”

“Heidi and Helga told him as much, and he got out the ledger he’d kept on them. Keeping track of the pence and quid is a fine way to ensure a young man is responsible toward the ladies,” Elias said, though he wasn’t feeling very responsible toward his own lady right then. “Where do you suppose Jane has got off to?”

“Possibly shopping for maternity clothes.”

“Jeannie said that’s when Henry became real to her, when she couldn’t fit into her clothes any more. Before that, he was a nice if somewhat worrisome and badly timed idea.”

Dunstan tapped his pen on his yellow pad. “You’ll not keep a ledger on that boy, Elias. I know you’re the head of the family, and the earl, and all that rot, but children are for loving, not accounting.”

Well, yes. Parents and cousins were for loving too. Castles were for… Elias wasn’t sure what castles were for, though a week ago, he’d probably have spouted off knowledgeably if asked.

“Jeannie is earning a fine salary managing matters at the castle, and I’ve set up a trust for wee Henry. He’ll have some options in life, no thanks to his useless father.”

“So what’s in the package Jeannie shipped to you?”

The package sitting out by the front door, so Elias would not forget it when he and Dunstan left for the day.

“A few items for tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll take you up on the loan of your truck. I need some fresh air.”

“I’m chained to my oar here for another hour or two,” Dunstan said. “About tomorrow’s meeting?”

Elias closed his laptop and stashed it in his backpack. “I don’t expect the meeting will take long. Maitland will offer a sum just above insulting. I’ll mutter and dither for form’s sake. You’ll pretend I ought to refuse the offer. Then we’ll grudgingly capitulate, provided Maitland is prepared to convey the funds immediately. He’s already made the arrangements with his investors, because he’s competent and his investors are greedy.”

“You aren’t a fool either, but I wish you had another option, Elias. I really do. Not for the sake of the local populace, or even for Violet Hughes, or the greater good of the greater number. I wish for your sake that you had another option besides selling your soul for a damned castle. The rest of the family goes there to get married, and that’s about it.”

Elias rose, because the whole topic was wearisome. “I live there, in case you’d forgotten.”

“No, you don’t. You live at the lodge outside the walls of the bailey, and the lodge is lovely. If the castle fell to pieces, wee Henry would just get married in the ballroom at the lodge. To you, it’s a castle or a monument to your parents, or a symbol of Scotland’s occasionally glorious past. To the rest of us, it’s a cheap wedding venue.”

Ouch. Though again, Dunstan was being kind, in his way. “Jane must be in love with you, if that’s one of your scintillating closing arguments. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Dunstan tossed him the keys to the truck, and Elias left, making very certain to pick up his package on the way out.

“I don’t understand,” Jane said, pouring lemonade and cold tea into a glass, adding ice, and setting it before Violet at the kitchen table. They’d moved inside, both because the afternoon had grown oppressive, and because the stink of the dogs was upsetting Jane’s stomach.

“Elias needs money to fix up the castle,” Violet said, as if repeating a conclusion for her own benefit. “He’s not playing high stakes poker, adding to his whisky collection, schmoozing politicians, or buying race cars. I understand that now.”

Jane filled a glass from the tap, added ice cubes, and took the place at Violet’s elbow. “You didn’t understand that a week ago? I thought Elias was fairly forthcoming with you, for a guy.”

“Elias is as honest as a farmer’s day is long, Jane, but then I got that letter.”

The water tasted different here—well water did that. Varied from property to property. Violet had good water, neither metallic nor sulfurous.

“The letter from the insurance company? I’ve heard something about this letter, but what can you expect from a company that hires Derek Hendershot as their outside counsel?”

Violet traced drops of condensation as they ran down the side of the glass. “Who’s he?”

“The kind of lawyer who gives lawyers a bad name. Tell me about the letter.”

  “If I can believe Maitland, then the insurance company can’t get me thrown off my property, but for a couple days, I walked around here feeling…”

“Like crap?”

“Like I was awaiting a sentence of transportation, like I was about to be banished from my own kingdom. If I couldn’t get up the nerve to climb around on my own roof with no one to hold the ladder, use a chain saw thirty feet up a tree… I’m still not sure how I’ll take care of what remains on that list, but I was a wreck, Jane.”

Jane was hungry. She was always hungry lately, and she had to pee about every seven minutes too, but she also had to understand why two people who should be together were letting considerations as petty as an ocean, an eight-hundred-acre farm, a thousand-year-old castle, a social conscience, and family loyalty keep them apart.

“You look pretty good for a wreck,” Jane said. “Do you mind if I make brownies?”

“It’s too hot to bake, and you need protein. There are hard boiled eggs in the fridge, and sliced veggies with ranch dressing dip. That’s my hot weather go-to combo.”

Jane fetched the food, which appealed to her more than it should have. “So you were a wreck, and now you’re only a heartbroken wretch?”

“I was terrified of being tossed off my own farm. My father died here, I grew up here, only here, nowhere else. My friends are in this valley, my past, my present, and I’d assumed my future. One letter shows up in the mailbox, and I’m homeless, with my cat, dogs, sheep and chickens.”

“Is Maitland to blame? I might be able to get him disbarred if he broke the rules of professional conduct, which are quite strict.”

Violet considered a stalk of celery. “That would be too easy. Max is the one who claims my mortgage can’t be accelerated for lack of insurance. I believe him, oddly enough.” She crunched the celery into oblivion, then went after a slice of green pepper.

Jane chose red pepper, no dressing. “Raw vegetables are fun because they’re loud. I like loud food. If Max Maitland gave you an advisory opinion on property law, then you can rely on it. Everyone in the local bar association bounces commercial real estate questions off Max.”

Violet winced at the half a green pepper slice remaining. “Max Maitland is the devil’s cabana boy. Don’t you be saying nice things about him or I’ll sic my stink-bomb dogs on you.”

“And people accuse lawyers of being sociopaths.” Red peppers were also good, or this red pepper was. “You thought you were homeless, so now it’s OK for Elias to dump a fortune into his castle?”

“I thought I was homeless, defenseless, friendless, broke, and blindsided. That’s how Elias feels, only he’s right and I was wrong. I don’t hear anybody else from Clan Brodie rallying to the ramparts. He’s on his own, and I hate that. If I can’t be with him, he should at least have the castle of his dreams.”

“You have it soooo bad,” Jane said. “But you make a good point. Elias has a lot of family on his mother’s side—I met them at the wedding—and yet, they haven’t come to see Dunstan the whole time he’s been in the States unless they had other business here. With the exception of Jeannie, they don’t seem to be pitching in with the castle either.”

“Jeannie needed a job and a place to raise her baby,” Violet said. “The humidity’s starting early this year.”

“We say that every year. You should move to Scotland.”

“I’ve caved on eight hundred acres of the best farmland this valley has, Jane. I can’t go to Scotland and leave my own property for Max Maitland to snatch. He talks a good game about wanting me to stay where I am, but I don’t trust that guy.”

“You want to stay here to keep an eye on him,” Jane said. “I want a pickle. Do you have any pickles? My sister warned me the cravings aren’t just a cliché. I want a whole jar of pickles. I am at risk for swilling pickle juice, which is just disgusting.”

Violet got up and fetched a jar of kosher dills out of the fridge, and Jane nearly caught a buzz from the smell.

“You know what the worst thing is about being pregnant?”

Violet’s expression was forlorn as she helped herself to a pickle. “Haven’t a clue.”

“And I’m only in the warm up rounds. A lot of it’s lovely, but this business of not being able to do proper justice to a bottle of wine is no damned fun. Somebody should get you tipsy, Violet. I cannot believe you just put ranch dressing on a perfectly respectable dill pickle.”

“You want to drink the pickle juice, and you an officer of the court. If we got me tipsy, I might start to cry.”

“If you start to cry, I’m likely to cry by association, another blessing of impending motherhood. I could just kick Elias Brodie. He’s supposed to be a smart guy.

“Jane?”

“Violet?”

“I think I’m going to cry anyway, even without the wine.”

“Me too.”

“I have learned something,” Dunstan said, as he and Elias marched down the bumpy sidewalk.

“Some of us are just a wee bit slow,” Elias said. “Better late than never, though. What have you learned?”

“I have learned that one man in a kilt is an oddity, but two men in kilts are… I’m getting different looks when it’s the two of us strutting around in plaid. When I wear my kilt to a retirement dinner, or an American wedding, I get odd looks. The looks we’re getting now are…”

He fell silent as they passed two older women apparently coming from an exercise class.

“Stop smiling like that. You are happily married.” Though Elias well knew what Dunstan meant. When he and his cousins turned out in their kilts for an occasion, all the men were a bit handsomer, a bit more charming.

A bit more of everything lovely about being Scottish, and today Elias needed that.

He’d awoken alone, from a dreamy memory of lovemaking with Violet. The contrast, between the warmth and pleasure of her beside him in bed, and the indifferent scrutiny of Dunstan’s cat had been…

Rude and riveting. Wallace had perched on Elias’s chest, regarding him as if he were a particularly large, lame mouse. In want of brains. In want of even common sense. Too dumb to deserve the mercy of being consumed.

The castle was a cheap wedding venue to the rest of the family.

“Where is your signature backpack?” Dunstan carried a briefcase, though it probably held only a yellow legal pad, some pens, and a bottle of water.

“I have everything I need in my sporran, and behind it.”

“Feeling frisky? If you’re planning some great blunder at this meeting, it’s only courteous to tell your lawyer first.”

“I left a suit of clothes at Violet’s house,” Elias said.

“That qualifies as a blunder. Your suits are worth nearly as much as my truck.”

Violet would put much more value on a functional truck than on bespoke business clothes. “I left that suit there on purpose, in case I needed an excuse to stop back and see her one last time.”

They’d arrived at Maitland’s doorstep. In the few square yards of anemic grass that ran along the sidewalk, three dead gladioli lay in a sad tangle.

“I don’t think Violet will pitch you off the property,” Dunstan said. “Though you might want to keep your lips to yourself. Jane stopped out to see her yesterday.”

“Is Violet… she’s not all right. I slept with the woman then turned around and broke her heart. I’m not all right.” The words resonated with inner truth, for all Elias had spoken softly. “I woke up this morning, envisioning Violet in a wedding dress, the family surrounding her, the soaring vault of a medieval great hall rising around us. I can’t have both—I can’t have the woman and the castle.”

“She can’t have you and have her farm, that’s the greater problem,” Dunstan said. “You mention a medieval great hall, not our medieval great hall. Was it your own castle you saw, or perhaps one of the many castles littering the Scottish countryside?”

“There’s no other castle so fine as ours, Dunstan, or so fine as ours will be. I’ve often thought of turning it into a wedding venue for hire. We’d get plenty of business from Aberdeen, family reunions, the occasional ceilidh. The fishing alone could bring in substantial revenue, and—”

The squirrel was traversing the telephone wire again, leisurely hopping across the road by a route mostly unseen, and for the squirrel, free of risk.

An idea wafted into Elias’s mind, as a change of weather steals unseen across a valley, a trickle of cooler, dryer air in the middle of a steamy summer, a gradual shift from a white hot sky, to a clear blue. The idea was risky, different, and daring—but it coalesced in Elias’s imagination like the squirrel’s path across the road: To one with the requisite skill and perspective, the risks were minimal.

“Are we meeting with Maitland,” Dunstan asked, “or standing about in our finery until somebody asks us what we’re wearing beneath it?”

“Hush,” Elias said, watching the squirrel leap into a venerable oak across the street. “I need to think.” It could work. It could very possibly work. “We need to postpone this meeting. I’ve numbers to run, estimates to fine tune. I’ll need to talk to Jeannie and Nick, and—”

The door opened, and Max Maitland stood on the threshold. “Gentlemen, if you’ve come to do business, then I suggest we use my conference room. Six other law offices have addresses on this street, and lawyers love to gossip.”

He aimed a pointed stare at Elias’s kilt.

“We’ve come to tell you that the meeting will have to be postponed,” Elias said. “Apologies for the short notice.”

“We either meet now, Mr. Brodie, or there will be no offer.”

Dunstan propped a foot on the bottom stone step. “That’s a bit unfriendly, Maitland. Elias has been in the country for less than ten days, and you want to snatch his land away with virtually no discussion.”

“Come inside,” Maitland said, stepping back. “If I had more time to give you, I would, but investors are a nervous bunch. I either get a handshake on this deal today, or they’ll look elsewhere—elsewhere, very likely without me. And may I remind you, Cromarty, you and Mr. Brodie approached me, and this meeting was set up at Mr. Brodie’s request.”

Dunstan’s silence left the decision to Elias. If the meeting went as expected, Elias would be on a plane for Scotland by this time tomorrow.

“Lead on, Mr. Maitland,” Elias said. “We’ve much to discuss, and you’re entirely correct. One does not conduct business in the street.”

Maitland led them to the same conference room—no flowers today—and offered them coffee, which both Elias and Dunstan declined. The offer for the farm was fair, possibly even more than fair, and the terms were exactly what Elias had expected to have to bargain, wheedle, posture and negotiate for.

Cash in hand, or the next thing to it. A lot of desperately needed cash.

“That is a very reasonable and attractive offer,” Elias said. “Dunstan, what are your thoughts?”

“Violet, hello,” Jane said. “They’ve gone to their meeting. What is that?”

“A suit of very nice clothes,” Violet said, knowing very well who they were. “May we talk in your office?”

A legal assistant had greeted Violet, the sort of compact, competent woman who was likely running the practice, did her employers but know it. She watched this exchange with a professionally unreadable expression.

“Come along,” Jane said, taking the clothes from Violet. “You are a menace, did you know that? I’ve craved red peppers since I got up this morning. This is your fault.”

“Red peppers are cheerful and bold, like you. They’re good for us, and I like them.”

Jane closed the door to her office, a tidy space sporting a bouquet of daisies next to a picture of Dunstan and Jane in their wedding attire. She hung the suit on a hook on the back of the door, and then stuck her head out the door.

“Kathy, please hold my calls.”

“Got it, boss.”

When the door was closed, Violet sniffed at the flowers, which was stupid. The scent of daisies was not pleasant. 

“I kept Elias’s shirt,” she said. “He can come and get it if he needs it so badly. I wore it to bed last night—for the scent.”

“Pathetic,” Jane said. “Elias and Dunstan wore their kilts to this meeting. I have no idea why, but suspect it’s a Scottish guy thing. Were you hanging on to the suit?”

“Nope,” Violet said, taking a chair across from Jane’s desk. “I needed something to do after you left yesterday and because the endless list of things I should be doing held no appeal, I decided to clean the powder room downstairs. I never use it myself, but Elias did the first day I met him. I wonder if he misses those clothes.”

Or had he left them with Violet on purpose, like the sunglasses in her shoulder bag? Though what was she to do with a man’s suit?

“You’re sparing me a phone call,” Jane said. “The cop shop called. They’ve picked up Elias’s former caretaker on a non-support warrant. He was also charged with fleeing and eluding, which means trying to get away from the officer with the warrant. This guy thought they were after him for arson, which is a very bad felony.”

“Arson?” Maitland had used that word, too.

“Seems he was stealing from your woodpile one fine and frosty morning, and the joint he was smoking dropped. Your woodpile is apparently surrounded by woodchips and tinder and this genius fled then too. He thought you’d seen him, and took off for the nearest girlfriend’s couch.”

Relief cut through Violet’s upset. “What about Elias’s alpacas?” 

“He says Zeb told him to sell them, and he did—then sent the check to Zeb, who might have already expired.”

“Elias will be pleased.” Elias probably wouldn’t much care, given the magnitude of the other problems he faced. “If he can find that check, it will help with immediate cash flow problems, assuming the check is still good. Did Elias say when he’d be back?”

And should Violet just go before he returned? 

“Dunstan told me the meeting shouldn’t take long,” Jane replied, moving the flowers to the windowsill. “These things stink almost as badly as your dogs, at least to my pregnant nose. Did you want to wait until the guys are done with their meeting?”

What Violet wanted was impossible. “I did not. I wanted to drop off the clothes and run like a rabbit with two farm dogs in pursuit.”

Jane opened a drawer and set two chocolate kisses on the desk blotter, then pushed one across the desk to Violet.

“No farm dogs here, Violet. Just us women in love, some chocolate, and a stash of peppermint tea.”

And friendship, the most precious bloom to grow in any woman’s garden.

“I’ll wait then, if you don’t mind. I want to say good-bye in person. Elias has done the best he could, the best anybody could. I’ll have fond memories, and—”

Jane opened the drawer again and got out a whole bag of kisses. “People in love should stuff a lot of chocolate in their pieholes, so they don’t say stupid things, about fond memories, and saying good-bye. I won’t even charge you for that advice.”

“Thanks. You mentioned peppermint tea?”