Chapter 12
Ashley had eventually decided to use the time Colin was gone to make things homier for herself here. He had told her to do so and, if she was going to be here for the next nine months, she might as well do so. The initial payments she had been given were more than enough to pay off her debts and still have plenty left over to treat herself to a few things. So, she decided to go shopping. Dressing, she went to find one of the bodyguards, which wasn’t difficult.
Opening her patio doors, she stepped out to find Carl, the older of the two guards, standing nearby sending a text on his phone.
“Carl?”
He put his phone in his pocket and turned toward her, smiling politely. “Yes ma’am.”
“I want to go into the city to do some shopping. How do I get there?”
“I’ll take you,” he replied simply.
“Oh, no. I don’t want to disturb your duties here,” she told him. “I just thought you would be best to tell me the best way to travel.”
“You are my prime responsibility here, ma’am. If you want to go shopping, I’m afraid you’ll have to tolerate me tagging along. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
“Okay then, but please, call me Ashley. If we’re going to be attached at the hip, that ma’am stuff is going to get old quick.”
“Fair enough, Ashley,” he replied. “What time would you like to leave?”
“An hour?”
“Perfect. I’ll get Mike to come in to watch the house,” he told her.
“Oh, no. I feel bad. I don’t want to disturb his time off.”
“Don’t worry about that. He will be happy to get away from the wife. Trust me.”
Ashley laughed and nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you in an hour then. Out front?”
“Out front.”
She nodded again, agreeing with that and going back into her room to get dressed for a day out. It was quite chilly here, despite it being what was normally the hottest part of summer back home. Colin had explained that she should pack what she would consider fall and winter clothes for the coming months. By the time she began to show and need maternity clothing, he would buy her heavier gauge clothing better suited to this climate, as even her winter clothing was thin compared to what she would need here.
Carl met her at the front door, as promised, and they were quickly on their way to town in an SUV that looked like something you’d expect a dignitary to arrive in. It was all black, with tented windows and she was guessing many fortifications she wasn’t aware of, just from looking at it. She found herself wondering just what it was really that Colin did for a living. She knew his parents had money, but where had he gotten his wealth from if he was still waiting for an inheritance that hinged on a wife and child of his own. She started to ask Carl, but then decided it might be better that she not find out, at this point. It was a bit too late for that, wasn’t it?
“Have you been to Scotland before?” he asked
“No. This is my first time. How long have you been here?”
Her limited interaction with Carl before today hadn’t warranted any commentary from him. It had only been this morning, in speaking with him outside her patio doors, that she had realized he wasn’t Scottish. Though his accent came across as fairly neutral, she was guessing he was American or perhaps even Canadian.
“A long time. I met a woman back in the eighties while I was stationed in England. We married, and I settled over here after my service ended.”
“How long have you worked for Colin?”
“Most of his life. I was hired by his parents when he was still a kid and came here with him when he bought his own place.”
“Wow. I had no idea. I guess you like it here then.”
“A guy could do worse. He pays me well and the hours are pretty decent. I’ll be here a bit more while you’re staying, but normally, he’s gone a good bit and its only periodic rounds to make sure the house is secure. Split between myself and Mike, that’s not too bad at all. Beats going back to West Virginia and working in some factory alongside my cousins,” he laughed.
“I would imagine so. I take it you live near the estate then.”
“Near? I live on the estate. Everyone who works there lives on the estate except the new doctor and he’ll be living there for the next couple of years while you’re there and then for a while after the baby comes.”
“In the house? I’ve not noticed anyone else coming and going beyond their normal hours, other than the doctor.”
“No, not in the house. There is a set of flats on the backside of the property. You can’t see them from the house. They are hidden behind the partial wall that still exists from the castle.”
“Castle?”
“You really don’t know much about Colin, do you?”
“I guess I don’t,” she laughed.
“Well, it’s not my place to really tell you about his life, but he inherited the property that sits adjacent to this from his grandfather. There wasn’t much there except the remains of a castle that lay in ruins and a partial development of new flats that had gone bankrupt. Only the first segment had been mostly finished. Colin finished them, with the intention of building more and renting them, pretty much what the original proposition had been.”
“But he never has,” she observed.
“No. Not long afterward, the estate home that sat next to it became available and he bought that with the money he had gotten. He moved into it and decided that he didn’t really want a housing development right next to him, something the previous owners had been saying for the past ten years to the earlier developer hired by his grandfather. So, he left what had been built intact and made it a part of his hiring package for house staff, like myself.”
“Are they nice?”
“If you are asking if he’s a slumlord, the answer is no. They were always large, upscale apartments and continue to be so. Most people employed in the fields we are couldn’t afford to live there and we have them for free, plus a salary that is far above that of people in equal jobs elsewhere.”
“You said there are castle ruins. Can I see them?”
“Sure. I’ll take you for a walk when we get back, if you feel up to it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
The conversation lulled for a bit, as Ashley turned her attention back toward the landscape as they passed by it. The countryside here was beautiful, so green and lush. She wondered what it would look like as the months rolled on and the cold seeped in. Would it be more desolate looking or just as beautiful in a different way?
Their trip into town was pretty uneventful other than Carl wouldn’t allow her to pay for anything. He produced a credit card assigned to him by Colin to take care of anything she might need while he was away, including a very nice lunch at a local bistro she spotted in the town center. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until her food arrived and she cleaned her plate, adding a dessert to finish it off.
“Wow, I’m starving today.”
“It would seem so,” Carl laughed. “Do you want anything else?”
“No. I think I’m good now,” she laughed.
“Did you get everything you needed from the shops?”
“I think so. Thank you so much for carrying it all around for me,” she laughed.
Her trip into town had led to the unexpected realization that things worked a bit differently here. You didn’t drive around from one place to another. Like New York, you parked somewhere or took public transport and walked about until you were ready to leave the area again. He had been hauling her packages around all over since they arrived, only stopping by the car to put them in the back while they went to eat and perhaps gathered more things, but she had gotten most of what she came for. Some other things she would order online to be delivered.
“Oh, can we go in there?” she asked on the way back to the car again, spotting an old bookstore she hadn’t seen earlier.
“Of course,” he replied, seeming amazing unfettered by her ongoing shopping trip.
Inside, she marveled at the quantity of books that had been managed into what had seemed like a small space, but was actually much larger as it went back for quite a ways beyond the narrow front face of the building. She marveled at the vast selection, both of used and new books. She had only brought the handful of pregnancy books she had bought before leaving New York. Almost an hour later, she was walking out with two large bags of used books that she could read and then leave behind for whoever might make use of the suite at Colin’s house next time. Empty book cases were such a tragedy, she thought.
“Okay. I think we’re really done this time,” she laughed as they made their way back to the SUV.
“Anything else you’d like to do while you’re out?”
“No. Let’s just get back to the house and maybe we can go for that walk around the ruins? If you are still up to it?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
After unloading her belongings and carrying them upstairs for her, now with the help of Mike who had been making rounds when they arrived, Carl honored her request to see the ruins. It was like stepping into a different world after stepping off the path that led through the back garden. The clean lines of the well placed shrubs and flowers gave way to what she would call nature’s chaos. There was a large gravel pathway through the field that separated Colin’s home from the ruins that lay behind it.
As they grew nearer to what she had originally thought was just a wooded area when looking at it from the garden, she saw that it was a mixture of trees and a large mass of green and purple vines that covered what had once been a stone wall. It appeared to still be intact for quite a way on one side, but open, otherwise. Behind it sat the neat row of brick flats and beyond that, a single tower.
“What is that?”
“The tower? It is the only remaining piece of the castle. Everything else fell during a siege by a rival clan, centuries ago. Somehow, the tower was left untouched. It was gutted by fire but was restored by Colin’s grandparents not long after the attacks were over. They initially built a home nearby on the property, but it also burned not long after their death. Arson, it is believed.”
“Wait. You said that the original castle was destroyed centuries ago and then that Colin’s grandparents repaired the tower not long after that. The math . . .,” she began but he cut her off.
“Yeah. The math doesn’t work, does it? Shifters can live to be very old, hundreds and, in some cases, even thousands of years old. The truth is that Colin’s grandparents didn’t own this castle. They guarded the castle as dragons and when it fell, the family that owned it fell with it. They remained to protect the land and it eventually became theirs when more modern ownership processes took place.”
“I don’t understand. They were dragons that protected a castle, but they also were humans. Did the family know?”
“No. It was fairly common for shifters back then to use their skill as a dragon to become protectors of fortunes. They would allow themselves to be captured in dragon form and taken to the basements like guard dogs. Not much attention was paid to a dragon once it was chained in a basement. When no one was around, they simply slipped free of their chains and snuck out in human form.”
“So, when the castle fell, they became the new owners of the fortune left behind.”
“Exactly.”
“That is why Colin’s family is so wealthy and why he has to have a family to inherit the wealth. His family is still just a dragon clan guarding the fortune entrusted to them, in some weird way.”
“Now, you’re catching on.”
“Seems a bit bizarre,” she mused, looking out toward the tower that stood like a lone soldier in a field of battle long after the war had ended.
“I suppose it does to those of us who aren’t part dragon.”
“Can we go into the tower?”
“No. That is one place I cannot take you. You’ll have to ask Colin if you want in there and I’m not sure you’ll be allowed then.”
“Have you been inside?”
“Only at the base, to talk with him while he is working.”
“Working? In there?” she said curiously.
“I’ve said too much already. Let’s get you back to the house for dinner. It’s getting late.”
Ashley nodded, sensing that he had somehow overstepped his bounds of what he should have related to her without Colin’s express permission. She glanced at the tower once more, now even more determined to get in there. Then, she followed Carl back to the house, returning to her room to put away her purchases before she went down for dinner.