The Earl's Convenient Wife (Harlequin Romance) Page 7

  * * *

  Alasdair was not on his own. He was surrounded by eight irate guests and two hungry dogs. Where did Jeanie keep the dog food? He had no idea.

  He’d stayed in the castle off and on when his grandmother was ill, and after his grandmother’s funeral. During that time the castle had been full of women and casseroles and offers of help. Since that time, though, he’d been back in Edinburgh, frantically trying to tie up loose ends so he could stay on the island for twelve months. He’d arrived this morning via helicopter, but the helicopter was long gone.

  He was stuck here for the night, and the castle was full, not with offers of help, but with eight guests who all wanted attention.

  ‘Where’s the whisky, fella? We only came for the whisky.’ That was the American, growing more and more irate.

  ‘Jeanie has shortbread.’ That was the shorter of two elderly women in hiking gear. ‘I’m Ethel, and Hazel and I have been here a week now. We know she made it, a big tin. Hazel and I ate three pieces each last night, and we’re looking forward to more. If you could just find it... Oh, and Hazel needs a hot-water bottle. Her bunion’s playing up. I told her she should have seen the doctor before she came but would she listen? She’s ready for a drop of whisky, too. When did you say Jeanie would be back?’

  He’d assumed Jeanie had some help. Someone other than just her. These people were acting as if Jeanie were their personal servant. What the...?

  ‘I’ll ring the village and get whisky delivered,’ he said and the American fixed him with a death stare.

  ‘That’s not good enough, man. It should be here now.’

  ‘We’ve had a problem.’

  ‘Is something the matter with Jeanie?’ The lady called Ethel switched to concern, closely followed by visions of disaster. ‘Where is she? And the whisky? You’ve lost it? Were you robbed? Is Jeanie hurt? Oh, she’s such a sweetheart. If anything happened to her, we’d never forgive ourselves. Hazel, Jeanie’s been hurt. Oh, but if it’s robbery, should we stay here...?’

  ‘It’s not robbery.’

  ‘It’ll be that father of hers,’ Hazel volunteered. ‘He came when we were here last year, blustering his way in, demanding money. He took her whisky. Oh, she’ll be mortified, poor lass.’

  ‘But where’s our whisky?’ the American demanded and Hazel swung around and raised her purse.

  ‘If you say one more word about whisky when our Jeanie’s in trouble, this’ll come down on your head,’ she told him. ‘My bunion’s killing me and I could use something to hit. Meanwhile Mr...Mr...’ She eyed Alasdair with curiosity.

  ‘McBride,’ Alasdair told her.

  And with the word, the elderly lady’s face sagged into relief. ‘You’re family? Oh, we’re so glad. Ethel and I worry about her being here in this place all alone. We didn’t know she had anyone. Is she really all right?’

  ‘I... Yes. She just...needs to stay in the village tonight. For personal reasons.’

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t she?’ the lady demanded. ‘All the times we’ve stayed here, we’ve never known her to take a night off, and she works so hard. But we can help. The doggies need their dinner, don’t you, doggies? And we can make our own hot-water bottles. If you light the fire in the sitting room, Ethel and I will feed the doggies and find the shortbread. Oh, and we’ll take the breakfast orders, too, so you’ll have them all ready.’ Her face suddenly puckered. ‘But if Jeanie’s not back by the morning... Ethel and I come for Jeanie’s porridge. We can cope without whisky but not without our porridge.’

  * * *

  The guests headed to the village for dinner, and by the time they returned Alasdair had whisky waiting. It wasn’t enough to keep the Americans happy, but the couple had only booked for one night and for one night Alasdair could cope with bluster.

  But one night meant one morning. Breakfast. Ethel and Hazel had handed him the menus, beaming confidence. He’d glanced through them and thought there was nothing wrong with toast.

  He couldn’t cope with breakfast—and why should he? This marriage farce was over. All he had to do was accept it. He could contact the chopper pilot, get him here first thing and be back in Edinburgh by mid-morning.

  He’d be back in charge of his life—but Hazel and Ethel wouldn’t get their porridge and the Duncairn empire was finished.

  He glanced again at the menus. Porridge, gourmet omelettes, black pudding... Omelettes were easy, surely. Didn’t you just break eggs into a pan and stir? But black pudding! He didn’t know where to start.

  Did Jeanie do it all? Didn’t she have anyone to help?

  The memory flooded back of Jeanie in the car. What had he said to her? That his car was...‘blocking your profits...’

  The moment he’d said it he’d seen the colour drain from her face. The slap had shocked her more than it had shocked him.

  An undischarged bankruptcy?

  He didn’t know anything about her.

  What had she said? ‘This is a business deal. If you’re buying, Alasdair McBride, surely you should have checked out the goods.’

  He’d set Elspeth onto a background check. Yes, he should have done it weeks ago but he’d assumed...

  Okay, he’d assumed the worst—that Jeanie was as money-grubbing as her ex-husband. It had just seemed a fact.

  He thought back to the one time—the only time—he’d seen Jeanie together with Alan. They’d just married. Alan had brought his new bride to the head offices of the Duncairn Corporation and introduced her with pride.

  ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ he’d demanded of Alasdair and Alasdair had looked at Jeanie’s short, short skirt and the leather jacket and boots and the diamond earrings and he’d felt nothing but disgust. The demure secretary he’d seen working with Eileen had been a front, he’d thought. The transformation made him wonder just how much his grandmother had been conned.

  He was about to find out. ‘You know what this means,’ Alan had told him. ‘I’m respectable now. The old lady thinks the sun shines out of Jeanie. She’s already rethinking the money side of this business. Half this company should be mine and you know it. Now Eileen’s thinking it, too.’

  Eileen hadn’t been thinking it, but she had settled an enormous amount on the pair of them. ‘It’s easier than to have the inheritance of the company split when I die, and Jeanie’s excellent with money. She’ll manage it.’

  The next time he’d seen Jeanie, she’d been back here and his grandmother had been dying. There’d been no sign of the tight-fitting clothes or the jewels then. There’d been no sign of the brittle, would-be sophisticate—and there’d been no sign of the money.

  On impulse he headed upstairs to the room his grandmother had kept as her own. Eileen had spent little time here but when she’d known her time was close she’d wanted to come back. He had to clear it out—sometime. Not now. All he wanted to do now was look.

  He entered, wincing a little at the mounds of soft pillows, at the billowing pink curtains, at the windows open wide to let in the warm evening air. Jeanie must still be caring for it. All signs of the old lady’s illness had gone but the room was still Eileen’s. Eileen’s slippers were still beside the bed.

  There were two photographs on the dresser. One was of him, aged about twelve, holding his first big salmon. He looked proud fit to burst. The other was of Alan and Jeanie on their wedding day.

  Jeanie was holding a posy of pink roses. She was wearing a dress similar to the one she had on today. Alan was beaming at the camera, hugging Jeanie close, his smile almost...triumphant.

  Jeanie just looked embarrassed.

  So the tarty clothes had come after the wedding, he thought.

  So the marriage to Alan had been almost identical to the one she’d gone through today?

  Maybe it was. After all, he was just another McBride.

 
He swore and crossed to Eileen’s desk, feeling more and more confused. The foundations he’d been so sure of were suddenly decidedly shaky.

  What he was looking for was front and centre—a bound ledger, the type he knew Eileen kept for every transaction she had to deal with. This was the castle ledger, dealing with the day-to-day running of the estate. Jeanie would have another one, he knew, but, whatever she did, Eileen always kept a personal account.

  He flicked through until he found the payroll.

  Over the past couple of months there’d been a few on the castle staff. There’d been nurses, help from the village, the staff Alasdair had seen when he’d come to visit her. But before that... Leafing through, he could find only two entries. One was for Mac, the gillie. Mac had been gillie here for fifty years and must be close to eighty now. He was still on full wages, though he must be struggling.

  The castle wasn’t running as a farm. The cattle were here mostly to keep the grass down, but still... He thought of the great rhododendron drive. It had been clipped since the funeral. There was no way Mac could have done such a thing, and yet there was no mention of anyone else being paid to do it.

  Except Jeanie? Jeanie, who was the only other name in the book? Jeanie, who was being paid less than Mac? Substantially less.

  What was a good wage for a housekeeper? He had a housekeeper in Edinburgh and he paid her more than this—to keep house for one man.

  His phone rang. Elspeth.

  ‘That was fast,’ he told her, but in truth he was starting to suspect that what she had to find was easy. He could have found it out himself, he thought. His dislike of Alan had stopped him enquiring, but now... Did he want to hear?

  ‘I thought I’d catch you before you start enjoying your wedding night,’ Elspeth said and he could hear her smiling. ‘By the way, did you want more of those financial records sent down? I’m not sure what you’re worried about. If you tell me, I can help look.’

  ‘I’m not worried about the business right now,’ he growled and heard Elspeth’s shocked silence. What a statement!

  But she regrouped fast. She was good, was Elspeth. ‘I’ve been busy but this has been relatively simple,’ she told him. ‘From what I’ve found there’s nothing to get in the way of having a very good time. No criminal record. Nothing. There’s just one major hiccup in her past.’

  And he already knew it. ‘Bankruptcy?’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I... Yes.’ But how long for? Some things weren’t worth admitting, even to Elspeth. ‘But not the details. Tell me what you have. As much as you have.’

  ‘Potted history,’ she said. Elspeth had worked for him for years and she knew he’d want facts fast. ‘Jeanie Lochlan was born twenty-nine years ago, on Duncairn. Her father is supposedly a fisherman, but his boat’s been a wreck for years. Her mother sounds like she was a bit of a doormat.’

  ‘Where did you get this information?’ he demanded, startled. This wasn’t facts and figures.

  ‘Where does one get all local information?’ He could hear her smiling. ‘The post office is closed today, so I had to use the publican, but he had time for a chat. Jeanie’s mother died when she was sixteen. Her father proceeded to try to drink himself to death and he’s still trying. The local view is that he’ll be pickled and stuck on the bar stool forever.’

  So far he knew...well, some of this. He knew she was local. ‘So...’ he said cautiously.

  ‘When she was seventeen Jeanie got a special dispensation to marry another fisherman, an islander called Rory Craig,’ Elspeth told him. ‘I gather she went out with him from the time her mam died. By all reports it was a solid marriage but no kids. She worked in the family fish shop until Rory drowned when his trawler sank. She was twenty-three.’

  And that was more of what he hadn’t known about. The details of the first marriage. He’d suspected...

  He’d suspected wrong.

  ‘I guess she wouldn’t be left all that well-off after that marriage,’ he ventured and got a snort for his pains.

  ‘Small family fishing business, getting smaller. The trawler sank with no insurance.’

  ‘How did you get all this?’ he demanded again.

  ‘Easy,’ Elspeth said blithely. ‘I told the publican I was a reporter from Edinburgh and had heard Lord Alasdair of Duncairn was marrying an islander. He was happy to tell me everything—in fact, I gather the island’s been talking of nothing else for weeks. Anyway, Rory died and then she met your cousin. You must know the rest.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘You mean you don’t?’

  ‘Eileen didn’t always tell me...’ In fact, she’d never told Alasdair anything about Alan. There’d been animosity between the boys since childhood and Eileen had walked a fine line in loving both. ‘And Jeanie keeps herself to herself.’

  ‘Okay. It seems your gorgeous cousin visited the island to visit his gran—probably to ask for money, if the company ledgers are anything to go by. He met Jeanie, he took her off the island and your grandmother paid him to marry her.’

  ‘I...beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’m good,’ she said smugly. ‘But this was easy, too. I asked Don.’

  Don.

  Alasdair had controlled the day-to-day running of the firm for years now, but Don had been his grandparents’ right-hand man since well before Alasdair’s time. The old man still had a massive office, with the privileges that went with it. Alasdair had never been overly fond of him, often wondering what he was paid for, but his place in his grandparents’ affections guaranteed his place in the company, and gossip was what he lived for.

  ‘So Don says...’ Elspeth started, and Alasdair thought, This is just more gossip, I should stop her—but he didn’t. ‘Don says soon after Alan met Jeanie, he took her to Morocco. Eileen must have been worried because she went to visit—and Alan broke down and told her the mess he was in. He was way over his head, with gambling debts that’d make your eyes water. He’d gone to the castle to try to escape his creditors—that’s when he met Jeanie—and then he’d decided to go back to Morocco and try to gamble his way out of trouble. You can imagine how that worked. But he hadn’t told Jeanie. She still had stars in her eyes—so Eileen decided to sort it.’

  ‘How did she sort it?’ But he already knew the answer.

  ‘I’d guess you know.’ Elspeth’s words echoed his thoughts. ‘That was when she pulled that second lot of funds from the company, but she gave it to Alan on the understanding that no more was coming. She was sure Jeanie could save him from himself, and of course Alan made promise after promise he never intended to keep. I’m guessing Eileen felt desperate. You know how she loved your cousin, and she saw Jeanie as the solution. Anyway, after his death Eileen would have helped Jeanie again—Don says she felt so guilty she made herself ill—but Jeanie wouldn’t have any of it. She had herself declared bankrupt. She accepted a minimal wage from Eileen to run the castle, and that’s it. End of story as far as Don knows it.’ She paused. ‘But, Alasdair, is this important? And if it is, why didn’t you ask Don before you married her? Why didn’t you ask her?’

  Because I’m stupid.

  No, he thought grimly. It wasn’t that. He’d known Alan gambled. He knew the type of people Alan mixed with. If he’d enquired... If he’d known for sure that Jeanie was exactly the same as Alan was, with morals somewhere between a sewer rat and pond scum, he’d never have been able to marry her.

  Except he had believed that. He’d tried to suppress it, for the good of the company, for the future of the estate, but at the back of his mind he’d branded her the same as he’d branded Alan.

  ‘She still married him,’ he found himself muttering. How inappropriate was it to talk like this to his secretary about...his wife? But he was past worrying about appropriateness. He was feeling sick. ‘She must have been a bit like him.’ />
  ‘Don said Eileen said she was a sweet young thing who was feeling trapped after her husband died,’ Elspeth said. ‘She was working all hours, for Eileen when your grandmother was on the island but also for the local solicitor, and cleaning in her husband’s family’s fish shop as well. Being paid peanuts. Trying to pay off the debt left after her husband’s trawler sank with no insurance. She was bleak and she was broke. Don thinks Alan simply seduced her off the island. You know how charming Alan was.’

  He knew.

  He sat at the chair in front of Eileen’s dresser and stared at himself in the mirror. The face that looked back at him was gaunt.

  What had he done?

  ‘But it’s lovely that you’ve married her,’ Elspeth said brightly now. ‘Doesn’t she deserve a happy ending? Don said she made Eileen’s last few months so happy.’

  She had, he conceded. He’d been a frequent visitor to the castle as his grandmother neared the end, and every time he’d found Jeanie acting as nursemaid. Reading to her. Massaging her withered hands. Just sitting...

  And he’d thought... He’d thought...

  Yeah, when the will was read he’d expected Jeanie to be mentioned.

  That was what Alan would have done—paid court to a dying woman.

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’ Elspeth asked.

  Was there anything else he needed? He breathed out a few times and thought about it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last.

  ‘I’m here to serve.’ He almost smiled at that. Elspeth was fifty and bossy and if he pushed her one step too far she’d push back again.

  ‘I need a recipe for black pudding,’ he told her.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I’ll send it through. Anything else?’

  ‘Maybe a recipe for humble pie as well,’ he told her. ‘And maybe I need that first.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MIDNIGHT. THE WITCHING HOUR. Normally Jeanie was so tired that the witches could do what they liked; she couldn’t give a toss. Tonight the witches were all in her head, and they were giving her the hardest time of her life.