Chapter One
Theo Townsend blinked as though his inheritance were a mirage that might disappear at any second—but no, when he opened his eyes, the castle was still there on the gray horizon, looming like a specter.
When his solicitor had told him there was a castle on the Highland property, he’d been skeptical, but the medieval stone structure—which came complete with a curtain wall and a tower house for enemies who’d long since vanished—couldn’t be called anything but. It didn’t look like there’d been any renovations to it in, oh, three hundred years or so. He felt like he’d somehow been dropped into another time during the last leg of the journey, into another life entirely.
“It’s wonderful,” his sister Georgina said.
“It needs work,” he muttered, eyeing a turret in the back that was crumbling. “It will be expensive.”
His other sister, Eleanor, smiled softly as she stared over Georgina’s head.
He sank back in the cart seat, but not before catching a glimpse of his brother on horseback.
He was surrounded.
He’d imagined doing this on his own. He’d imagined being alone—blissful, peaceful loneliness, the kind where no one asked you anything you didn’t want to answer, and no one expected anything from you, either. But his meddlesome siblings had had other ideas, and he’d barely heard the news from the solicitor before they were making plans to accompany him.
His refusals had been met with defiance—a quieter stubbornness from Eleanor and a more outspoken one from Georgina and Robert.
And in the end, he couldn’t deny that his siblings deserved their own home, and it was his duty to provide it for them.
He just wished he’d had more time to…he didn’t know what, exactly. He just wished he’d had more time.
At least their new home was big enough that he could keep to himself.
The cart bumped over a dirt road that was in desperate need of repair—they’d been told to drive a vehicle that could take bumps and bruises in this part of the Highlands—before coming to a halt as close to the castle as it could get.
Theo was forced to navigate a rocky pathway, leaning heavily on his cane so he didn’t lose his balance. In front of him, the castle both sprawled outward and jabbed upward, dominating the landscape with a face of gray stone, high turrets, and deep crenellations. It was, in spite of a few derelict spots, a structure that was made both to house and fortify. A place that would scoff at the frilly “castles” modern day aristocrats designed for themselves.
It was a place built to last. A place built to keep others out.
He felt a surge of something almost like fondness for the ancient pile of rocks.
Yes, this would do.
This would do nicely.
As the others looked at the outside of the castle, he moved into an interior courtyard through an open gate. A tree stood at the center, a gnarled, twisted form that shot up from the ground and cast shadows over the grass.
And attached to the tree was…a woman?
He blinked, trying to clear his vision. But there she was, stretched up on her tiptoes, her arms raised high overhead. She was muttering something under her breath, but Theo couldn’t make out the words.
She was tall, and a little gangly, and she had one of the most unique faces he’d ever seen—a long nose, a stubborn chin, wide eyes, and a high forehead. She would’ve looked sharp to the point of severity, but her blond hair was tumbling out of its pins and feathering her face with loving tendrils. The hem of her dress was muddy, and underneath it, stockinged feet peeked out, just as mud-soaked as her dress. She looked like she’d been caught in a storm.
Or maybe she was the storm.
He must have made a noise, because her head jerked toward him suddenly, and he was caught. Caught in a depth of green that surrounded him like the lushest, quietest forest, that cradled him like the softest meadow grass.
“Good God,” he breathed. “What are you?”
But she was not, as his weary, confused mind supplied in that instant, a witch of some sort—he blamed this incredibly stupid thought on his fatigue from the long, arduous journey, and the ancient superstitions of an ancient land, and all he’d seen so far of this wild, sea-swept place.
The look she shot him, which shifted with mercurial speed from shock to affront, was incredibly, painfully human.
She brushed her hair from her face impatiently and then lowered her arms. “Who are you?” she asked shrilly. Her Scottish accent wasn’t as thick as the Highlanders’; it was a subtler, softer thing, which made him think she’d been raised closer to the border. “What makes you assume you have the right to come in here? You, sir, are trespassing.”
Trespassing? A sliver of annoyance worked its way into his chest. She was the one who was trespassing. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but Robert chose that moment to step into the courtyard. At the sight of the woman, a delighted smile curved his mouth—Robert loved meeting new people; he loved plying his never-lacking charm. He was about as different from Theo as a man could be.
Theo sometimes wondered if one of them had been switched at birth.
“I thought I heard voices,” he said. “Introduce us, Theo.”
“I don’t know who she is,” Theo responded flatly.
The woman took the matter into her own hands and gave Robert a curtsy—which looked more awkward than elegant in her muddy dress and stockinged feet. “Annabel Lockhart.”
“Good lady,” Robert said. “Dost thou appear by magic? No earthly mortal could present such a vision of loveliness.”
Miss Lockhart blushed a little at that. Even though she looked skeptical, her mouth twitched, and to Theo’s increasing annoyance, she played along. “You didn’t give me a name, good sir. Dost thou be a warrior? A knight, perhaps?”
“Robert Townsend. Sometimes I fancy myself a knight,” he said with a friendly grin.
“Hmmm…” Miss Lockhart tapped her finger to her chin—gloveless, Theo noted with another twinge of irritation. Her fingers were slender and long and pale. “Do knights ever rescue cats?”
“Is there a cat that needs saving?” Robert asked.
Miss Lockhart pointed, and sure enough, a black cat stared down at them through the tree branches. Robert, without further ado, heaved himself onto the lowest, sturdiest branch and began climbing the tree with wily grace.
Theo realized he was alone with Miss Lockhart once more. His brother might exasperate him sometimes, but at least his affability acted as a buffer in situations like these, when Theo felt the strain of his failure to perform the normal social niceties.
He glanced at the woman next to him. A little shock went through him when he met her eyes again. He’d never seen such a deep green. It was almost unearthly. And she did own a black cat—he didn’t think he could really be blamed for his assumption, ludicrous though it was. She looked away from him without saying a word, tilting her chin in a pointed snub.
Which was perfectly fine…did he truly want to converse with a trespassing woman who dashed about shoeless in the mud? She obviously had no respect for propriety.
A few moments of tense silence passed before Robert dropped to the ground with the cat in his arms.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, a wide smile breaking across her face as she took the overweight beast from him.
“Your wish is my command,” Robert answered.
Theo barely refrained from rolling his eyes.
Georgina and Eleanor strolled into the courtyard, arm in arm, stopping at the sight of Annabel Lockhart. And then Georgina pulled forward eagerly to meet the woman. Eleanor, who was more reserved than her sister, followed behind cautiously.
Introductions were made, and before long, Georgina was asking Miss Lockhart about the cat—what its name was (Willoughby, from a character in a book—ridiculous), how old it was (unknown)—and Eleanor even took part in the conversation, smiling tentatively.
Theo felt the situation spiraling out of his control. This woman was a stranger, not a family friend, and no one was supposed to be here in the first place.
“What exactly is going on?” he asked, bringing their happy chatter to a halt. “I thought Llynmore Castle was currently uninhabited. Are you a servant?”
Miss Lockhart quickly shuttered the friendliness she exuded toward the others as she faced him. “I live here.”
“That’s not possible,” he said. He didn’t want it to be possible. He felt the first thread of the future he’d envisioned for himself starting to unravel—he couldn’t very well isolate himself in a deserted castle if the castle wasn’t actually deserted.
“I assure you, it is,” she responded, with all the haughtiness of a duchess. “My aunt and I reside at Llynmore Castle, thanks to the charity of the Earl of Arden. I’d like to know why you think you have a right to arrive unannounced.”
Theo found himself straightening under the weight of her condescension, pushing up from his walking stick, simply so he’d be taller than her. And then it was by a mere inch or so. An annoyance, that.
“I’m the Earl of Arden.”