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But all Kirsty had achieved had been more apathy from Susie. And now they stared at the imposing fortress and Susie’s expression of bewilderment echoed what was in Kirsty’s own heart.
‘Why didn’t Rory tell me his uncle was an earl?’ Susie whispered. ‘And to live in a place like this… I never would have come if I’d known this.’
It had been a shock, Kirsty acknowledged. They’d arrived in Dolphin Bay that afternoon, tried the local post office for information and had been stunned by their reception.
‘Angus Douglas? That’ll be His Lordship you’re wanting. The earl.’
‘Angus Douglas is an earl?’ Kirsty had demanded, and the postmistress had smiled, propped her broad elbows on the counter and prepared to chat.
‘Ooh, yes. Dolphin Bay’s answer to royalty is our Angus. He’s the Earl of Loganaich, he tells us, but the Loganaich part of him is long gone.’
‘Loganaich,’ Kirsty had said, not understanding, and the lady had needed no more encouragement to expand.
‘Apparently his family’s castle burned to the ground back in Scotland,’ she told them. ‘Lord Angus says it was a nasty, draughty place and no great loss. He’s not all that sentimental, His Lordship. Except when it comes to wearing kilts. Ooh, you should see him in a kilt. Anyway, Lord Angus and his brothers left Scotland when they were not much more than teenagers, and two of them—the two eldest—came here.’
‘Tell us about them,’ Kirsty said faintly, and the lady proceeded to do just that.
‘Lord Angus married a nurse during the war,’ she said, pointing to a community notice-board. A yellowing newspaper clipping showed an elderly lady at what seemed to be some sort of village fête. ‘That’s Deirdre, God rest her soul. A lovely, lovely lady.’ She sniffed and it was obvious to Kirsty why the fading newspaper was still on the board. This was personal loss.
‘Did they have children?’ she asked, and was met by a shake of the head that was almost fierce.
‘They had no kiddies but they were happy.’ The postmistress groped for a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘Deirdre only died two years ago and it broke His Lordship’s heart. It broke all our hearts. And now His Lordship’s alone in his old age. Doc tells me he’s not good. Doc’s doing all he can do but there’s only so much one doctor can do.’
‘Did you say…His Lordship…had brothers?’ Kirsty asked cautiously, abandoning the tangent of an overworked doctor for the moment, and got a grimace for reply.
‘The brother we knew was a bit…erratic,’ the postmistress told them. ‘And he married a girl who was worse. They had two boys, Rory and Kenneth. The boys were born here but the family left soon after. The boys came here on school holidays, just for a bit of stability. Deirdre and Angus loved them to bits, but from what I hear Kenneth was too like his dad ever to be peaceable. Kenneth fought with Rory all the time. Finally Rory went to America to get away from him. Then a few months ago we heard he died in a car crash. His Lordship was devastated. Kenneth still visits, but he’s not liked locally. We won’t be calling him Lord Kenneth when Angus dies, that’s for sure.’ Her mouth tightened in a grim line. ‘Titles are all very well when you’re loved, like Lord Angus is, but Kenneth… Ugh.’
‘But…Angus is still an earl,’ Susie whispered, dazed by this surfeit of information, and the postmistress looked sympathetically at Susie in her wheelchair, and grimaced.
‘Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? He doesn’t like being called it. He says just Angus is good enough for him. But we like to call him Lord Angus among ourselves—or Lord Douglas when we’re being formal. What he and Deirdre did for our town… I can’t begin to tell you. Wait till you see his house. Loganaich Castle, we call it, just joking, but the name fits. You need to find it? I’ll draw you a map.’
Rory’s Uncle Angus an earl? Loganaich Castle?
Susie had come close to going home then—and now, sitting in the car outside the extraordinary mass of gleaming stone that was the new Loganaich Castle, she turned to her twin and her eyes were as bleak as Kirsty had ever seen them.
‘Kirsty, what are we doing here? Let’s go back to America. We were dumb to come.’
‘We’ve come so far, and you know we can’t go back to America now. No airline will take you until after the baby’s born. Let’s find a bed for the night and come back in the morning.’
‘Let’s go back to Sydney in the morning.’
‘Susie, no. You can’t lose every link with Rory.’
‘I already have. And you heard the postmistress. Rory had lost any link to his uncle.’
‘Rory spoke of Angus and his aunt with affection. The postmistress said Angus was devastated to learn Rory was dead. You have to see him.’
‘No.’
‘Susie, please…’
‘The gates are opening again,’ Susie said, in a voice that said she didn’t care. ‘Someone’s coming out. We need to move.’
Kirsty turned to see. There was a dusty Land Rover emerging from the forecourt out onto the cobbled driveway leading to the road. Kirsty had driven as close as possible so Susie could watch her as she’d knocked, and the cobblestones were only a car-width wide. Their car was blocking the driveway—meaning the Land Rover had to stop and wait for them to move.
The gates were swinging closed again now behind the Land Rover. This was apparently a castle with every modern convenience. Electronic sensors must be overriding manual operations.
There was still no access.
OK. They’d go. Kirsty started the engine, and then glanced one last time at the Land Rover.
The man who’d slammed the gate on her was at the wheel. His lanky brown dog was sitting beside him. The dog’s dumb, goofy—almost grinning—face was at odds with the man’s expression of grim impatience. His fingers were drumming on the steering-wheel as he waited for her to move.
She hesitated.
The fingers drummed.
The man looked angry as well as impatient.
He wasn’t alone in his anger. Kirsty glanced across at her sister. She wouldn’t get Susie back here tomorrow, she thought. Susie’s expression was one of hopelessness.
Where was the laughing, bubbly Susie of a year ago?
Kirsty wanted her back. Fiercely, desperately, Kirsty mourned her twin.
Her anger doubled. Quadrupled.
Exploded.
She killed the engine.
‘What…?’ Susie started, but Kirsty was already out of the car. Her car was half off the cobblestones and there was a puddle right beside the driver’s door. She’d climbed out carefully last time but this time she forgot about the puddle. She squelched in mud to her ankle.
She hardly noticed. How dared he drum his fingers at her?
In truth her anger was caused by far more than merely drumming fingers, but the fingers had a matching face, a target for the pent-up grief and frustration and fear of the last few months. Too much emotion had to find a vent somewhere.
The drumming fingers were it.
She marched up to the Land Rover, right to the driver’s side. She hauled open the door of the vehicle so hard she almost yanked it off its hinges.
‘Right,’ she told him. ‘Get out. I want some answers and I want them now.’
He should have been home two hours ago.
Dr Jake Cameron had spent the entire day sorting out trouble, and he had more trouble in front of him before he could go home that night. As well as the medicine crowding at him from all sides, there was also the fact that his girls were waiting. The twins were fantastic but he’d stretched their good nature to the limit. Mrs Boyce would have to put them to bed again tonight; she’d be upset at not getting home to Mr Boyce, and he winced at the idea that he’d miss yet another bedtime.
Who needed a bedtime story most? The twins or himself?
The answer was obvious.
‘We could all use a good fairy-tale,’ he told Boris as he watched the flaming ball of anger stomp along the cobblestones toward him. ‘Do godmothers do a line in “Beam me up, Scotty”?’
No godmother arrived, and he couldn’t leave. The woman’s car was blocking his path and he was forced to stay motionless while she hauled open his door and let him have it with both barrels.
She wanted answers?
‘What do you mean, you want answers?’ he asked coldly, sliding his long frame out from the vehicle so he could face her anger head on. She’d said she was Angus’s family but he’d never seen her before. Who was she?
He would have noticed if he had seen her, he decided. She was five feet three or four, slim, with an open face, clear brown eyes and glossy auburn curls that tangled almost to her collar. Late twenties? he thought. She had to be—and she was lovely. She was dressed in faded, hip-hugging jeans and an oversized waterproof jacket, but her clothes did nothing to dispel his impression that she was lovely.
Apart from her foot. One foot had landed in a puddle. It was the same foot he’d squashed, he remembered, and he looked down and saw the mud and felt repentant.
Then he thought of Angus and he stopped feeling repentant.
‘My sister and I have travelled all the way from New York to visit Mr…Lord Douglas,’ she snapped. ‘We need to see the earl.’
‘You mean Angus.’ He’d only referred to Angus as His Lordship to intimidate these two into leaving. It hadn’t worked so he may as well go back to using Angus. Angus, his friend.
What else could he do for the old man? he wondered as he waited for the virago to speak again. Angus needed oxygen. He needed round-the-clock nursing, and if he didn’t get it…
‘My sister’s not well,’ the woman snapped.
So what was new? ‘No one’s well,’ he said bitterly. ‘And there’s only me to deal with it. I need to do three more house calls before dinner. Can you move your car, please?’
‘You’re a doctor?’ she asked blankly, and he sighed.
‘Yes. I’m Dr Jake Cameron, Angus’s doctor.’
‘You don’t look like a doctor.’
‘Would you like me to wear a white coat and stethoscope? Here? An hour ago I was shifting cows blocking the track to my next patient. This is not exactly white-coat country.’
‘I thought you might have been a nephew.’
‘You are indeed a close family,’ he said dryly. ‘Does your sister need medical attention?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then, please, move your vehicle. I’m two hours late and you’re making me later.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘Is there anyone else we can talk to?’
‘Angus is alone.’
‘In that huge house?’
‘He’s accustomed to it,’ he told her. ‘But if it’ll make you happier, he won’t be here much longer. He’s being transferred to the Dolphin Bay nursing home tomorrow. It’d be much easier to call there, don’t you think? But if you’re thinking of pushing him to change his will, don’t bother. You bring a lawyer near him and I’ll call the police.’
She gazed straight at him, her eyes wide and assessing.
‘Why are you being horrible?’
‘I’m not being any more horrible than I have to be. Angus is weary to death of family pressure and I’m in a hurry.’
‘So be nice to me fast. Tell me why we can’t see the earl.’
He sighed. He’d had this family up to his ears. ‘Angus has severe breathing difficulties,’ he told her. ‘He’s settled for the night and if you think he’s coming downstairs to indulge a couple of money-grubbing—’
‘You see, there’s the problem,’ she said, and her own anger was palpable. ‘You’re treating us as if we’re something lower than pond scum. We don’t even know Angus. We never knew he was an earl or that he was living in something that looks like a cross between Disneyland and Camelot. And as for money-grubbing—’
He was hardly listening. He couldn’t. He was so late! He’d promised Mavis Hipton that he’d look in on her this afternoon, and he knew she needed more analgesic to make it though the night. Mavis suffered in stoic silence. She wouldn’t complain, but he didn’t want her suffering because of these two.
He glanced at his watch. Pointedly. ‘You said you’re family,’ he told her. ‘Why do you know nothing? You’re not making sense.’
‘My sister was married to one of Angus’s nephews,’ she told him, standing square in front of him, making it quite clear he wasn’t going anywhere until she had answers. ‘Susie’s never met her husband’s family, and she’d like to.’
‘Especially now he’s dying,’ he snapped. It had only been this afternoon that he’d fielded yet another phone call from Kenneth, and Kenneth had been palpably pleased to hear that Angus was failing. The phone call had left Jake feeling ill. And now…was this Kenneth’s wife?
He didn’t have time to care.
‘I need to go.’
‘We didn’t know Angus was dying,’ she snapped, her colour mounting. ‘As far as we knew, Rory’s uncle Angus was as poor as a church mouse, but he’s all the family Rory had—except a brother he didn’t get on with—so we’ve come all this way to see him. Of all the appalling things to say, that we’re fortune hunters!’
He hesitated at that. For a moment he stopped being angry and forced himself to think. What had she said? Rory’s Uncle Angus. Not Kenneth, then. Rory. The nephew in the States.
She was so indignant that he was forced to do a bit more fast thinking. OK, maybe he was out of line. Maybe his logic was skewed. Angus was one of his favourite patients, and telling him he had to go into a nursing home had been a really tough call.
Kenneth might be nasty and unbalanced but there was no reason to assume everyone else was.
Maybe these two really were family.
He forced himself to think a bit more. Angus had talked affectionately of his nephew Rory. Jake remembered the old man had been devastated to hear he’d died.
If Rory had been married, then this pair really were part of Angus’s family.
Caring family?
The idea that hit him then was so brilliant that it made him blink.
‘You really don’t know Angus?’ he asked, thinking so fast he felt dizzy.
‘I told you. No.’
‘But you’d like to see him tonight?’
‘Yes, but—’
