Her Highland Boss: The Earl's Convenient Wife / In the Boss's Castle / Her Hot Highland Doc

‘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 (#ubfca6f34-cc34-5c4c-abb8-086e8bbe32c9)

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.

‘You idiot. You king-size madwoman. To walk back into the McBride realm...’

Shut up, she told her witches, but they were ranting and she lay in the narrow cot in Maggie’s tiny attic and held her hands to her ears and thought she was going mad.

Something hit the window.

That’ll be more witches trying to get in, she told herself and buried her head under the pillow.

Something else hit the window. It sounded like a shower of gravel.

Rory used to do this, so many years ago, when he wanted to talk to her and her father was being...her father.

The ghost of Rory? That’s all I need, she thought, but then another shower hit the window and downstairs Maggie’s Labrador hit the front door and started barking, a bark that said terrorists and stun grenades were about to launch through the windows and a dog had to do its duty. Wake up and fight, the dog was saying to everyone in the house. No, make that everyone in the village.

There was an oath from Maggie’s husband in the room under Jeanie’s, and, from the kids’ room, a child began to cry.

And she thought...

No, she didn’t want to think. This was nothing to do with her. She lay with her blanket pulled up to her nose as she heard Maggie’s husband clump down the stairs and haul the door open.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Dougal’s shout was as loud as his dog’s bark. ‘McBride... It’s McBride, isn’t it? What the hell...? You might be laird of this island, but if you think you can skulk round our property... You’ve woken the bairns. Shut up!’ The last words were a roar, directed at the dog, but it didn’t work the way Dougal intended. From under her window came a chorus of frenzied barks in response.

Uh-oh. Jeanie knew those barks. Abbot and Costello! Alasdair was here and he’d brought Eileen’s dogs for the ride.

And then it wasn’t just Maggie’s dog and Eileen’s dogs. The neighbours’ dog started up in response, and then the dogs from the next house along, and then the whole village was erupting in a mass of communal barking.

Lights were going on. Maggie’s two kids were screaming. She could hear a child start up in the house next door.

Should I stay under the pillows? Jeanie thought. It had to be the wisest course.

‘I need to speak to my wife.’ It was Alasdair, struggling to make himself heard above the din.

His wife. She needed more pillows—the pillows she had didn’t seem to be effective.

‘Jeanie?’ That was Maggie, roaring up the stairs. ‘Jeanie!’

‘I’m asleep!’