The Earl's Convenient Wife

‘Jeanie, my grandmother’s treated us both badly,’ he said and his tone was one of conciliation. ‘I don’t know what you wanted but you surely can’t have expected this.’

She started at that. The anger she’d heard from him had disappeared. What came through now was reason and caution, as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

That made two of them.

‘She hasn’t treated me badly.’ She made herself say it lightly but she knew it was true. Eileen had had no cause to offer her a job and a livelihood in this castle. There’d been no obligation. Eileen’s action had been pure generosity.

‘Your grandmother has been very, very good to me,’ she added, chopping butter and starting to rub it into the new lot of flour. The action was soothing—an age-old task that calmed something deep within—and almost took her mind off the sex-on-legs image standing in the doorway. Almost. ‘I’ve loved living and working here but jobs don’t last forever. I don’t have any right to be here.’

‘You were married to Alan. You were... You are family.’

It was as if he was forcing himself to say it, she thought. He was forcing himself to be nice?

‘The marriage was brief and it was a disaster,’ she said curtly. ‘I’m no longer your family—I’m your grandmother’s ex-employee. I’m happy to keep running the castle until it’s sold but then... Then I’m happy to go.’ Liar, liar, pants on fire, she added silently to herself. It’d break her heart to leave; it’d break her heart to see the castle sold to the highest bidder. She had so little money to go anywhere, but there was no way she was baring her heart to this man.

Right now she was almost afraid of him. He was leaning against the doorjamb, watching her. He looked a warrior, as fierce and as ruthless as the reputation of the great lineage of Duncairn chieftains preceding him.

He was no such thing, she told herself fiercely. He was just a McBride, another one, and she needed to get away from here fast.

‘But if we married, you could keep the castle.’

Jeanie’s hands stilled. She stood motionless. In truth, she was counting breaths, or lack of them.

He’d said it as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. If you give me a penny, I’ll give you an apple. It was that sort of statement.

Ten, eleven, twelve... She’d have to breathe soon.

‘Maybe it’s reasonable,’ Alasdair continued while she wondered if her breathing intended starting again. ‘Maybe it’s the only sensible course of action.’ He’d taken his jacket off and rolled his sleeves. His arms were folded. They were great, brawny arms, arms that gave the lie to the fact that he was a city financier. His kilt made him seem even more a warrior.

He was watching her—as a panther watched its prey?

‘It’d get us both what we want,’ he said, still watchful. ‘Alone, we walk away from everything we’ve worked for. Eileen’s will is a nightmare but it doesn’t have to be a total disaster. We need to work around it.’

‘By...marrying?’ Her voice came out a squeak but she was absurdly grateful it came out at all.

‘It’s the only way you can keep the castle.’

‘I don’t want the castle.’

That stopped him. His face stilled, as if he wasn’t sure where to take it from there.

‘No matter what Eileen’s will says, the castle should never be my inheritance,’ she managed. She was fighting to keep her voice as reasonable as his. ‘The castle’s my job, but that’s all it is. You’re the Earl of Duncairn. The castle’s your ancestral home. Your grandmother’s suggestion might be well-meant, but it’s so crazy I don’t believe we should even talk about it.’

‘We need to talk about it.’

‘We don’t. I’m sorry your grandmother has left you in such a situation but that’s for you to sort. Thank you, Lord Duncairn, for considering such a mad option, but I have scones to cook. I’m moving on. I’ll work until the lawyer asks me to leave and then I’ll be out of your life forever.’

* * *

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this. A straight-out refusal to even talk about it.

Okay, it was how he’d reacted, he decided, but he’d had an hour’s walk to clear his head. This woman clearly hadn’t had time to think it through.

To walk away from a castle... This castle.

What else was she angling for?

He watched her work for a bit while she ignored him, but if she thought he’d calmly leave, she was mistaken. This was serious.

Keep it as a business proposition, he told himself. After all, business was what he was good at. Business was what he was all about. Make it about money.

‘I realise the upkeep would be far too much for you to keep the castle long-term,’ he told her, keeping his voice low and measured. Reasoning as he talked. Maybe she was still shocked at not receiving a monetary inheritance. Maybe there was anger behind that calm façade of hers.

‘The company has been funding long-term maintenance and restoration,’ he continued, refusing to see the look of revulsion on her face. Revulsion? Surely he must be misreading. ‘We can continue doing that,’ he told her. ‘If at the end of the year this inheritance goes through and you don’t wish to stay, the company can buy the castle from you.’

‘You could afford that?’ she demanded, incredulous?

‘The company’s huge. It can and it seems the most sensible option. You’ll find I can be more than generous. Eileen obviously wanted you looked after. Alan was my cousin. I’ll do that for him.’

But at that she flashed him a look that could have split stone.

‘I don’t need looking after,’ she snapped. ‘I especially don’t need looking after by the McBride men.’

He got it then. Her anger wasn’t just encompassing Eileen and her will. Her anger was directed at the McBride family as a whole.

She was holding residual anger towards Alan?

Why?

He and Alan had never got on and their mutual dislike had meant they never socialised. He’d met Jeanie a couple of times before she and Alan had married. Jeanie had worked as his grandmother’s part-time assistant while she was on the island. On the odd times he’d met her she’d been quiet, he remembered, a shadow who’d seemed to know her place. He’d hardly talked to her, but she’d seemed...suitable. A suitable assistant for his grandmother.

And then Alan had married her. What a shock and what a disaster—and Jeanie had been into it up to her neck.

Until today he’d seen her as a money-grubbing mouse. The fire in her eyes now suggested the mouse image might possibly be wrong.

‘Jeanie, this isn’t about looking after—’

‘Don’t Jeanie me.’ She glowered and went back to rubbing butter. ‘I’m Mrs McBride. I’m Duncairn’s housekeeper for the next few weeks and then I’m nothing to do with you.’

‘Then we’ve both lost.’

‘I told you, I’ve lost nothing. The castle’s my place of employment, nothing more.’

‘So you wouldn’t mind moving to Edinburgh?’

Her hands didn’t even pause. She just kept rubbing in the already rubbed-in butter, and her glower moved up a notch.

‘Don’t talk nonsense. I’m moving nowhere.’