Page 36 of Heirs and Graces at Highland Hall
With that, she turned around and walked out of the drawing room, wondering why the hell she had lied about Duncan and if her heartbeat was ever going to return to a normal pace again.
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Bex felt somewhat dazed as she ambled out of the drawing room. There was a pounding behind her temples that could have come from a lack of coffee, but could also have come from everything she was trying to juggle in her head. From keeping the will a secret, to Kieron asking her out, to the fact that she had lied about Duncan when she had been presented with the perfect opportunity to say exactly who she was heartbroken over.
Why did it matter if Kieron knew that she and Duncan had been a thing? Their dislike was certainly long-rooted, but was that purely because he thought of Duncan as staff? That was a him thing, not a her thing. She knew exactly who Duncan was; the type of man who brought a dog by the castle so she could see she was doing all right. The type of person who had loved her with his whole heart, but ultimately blamed her for the demise of their relationship because he had been too blind to see that if they’d kept going the way they had, they would have ended up hating each other.
‘Gordon, I just need to go out for a quick walk,’ she called down the hallway. She couldn’t deal with being in the study, looking through papers again, trying to unravel Fergus’s pastwhen she couldn’t even do that for herself. Not when her chest felt like it was going to explode.
Desperate for some fresh air, she didn’t even bother going and getting her bag from the study. Instead, she grabbed her coat from the stand, pushed open the door and stepped outside. The air was even more biting than it had been an hour ago, and the shroud of grey cloud seemed to be hanging even lower in the sky. Yet she paid it little mind as she picked up her pace and walked away from the castle.
Her initial plan had been to head up to the village and get a coffee, then go to the shop and get some more coffee pods to ensure the caffeine withdrawal didn’t happen again. But as the cold air flooded her senses, she found herself craving something other than caffeine. She needed space to think. Real space. And despite having been back in LochDarroch for five days, she still hadn’t been to the loch. That was what she needed. She needed to see the water, clear her head, and make sense of whatever was going on in that messed-up head of hers.
As she took the narrow path down towards the water, Bex’s mind continued to whirr. What was she doing? Why was she doing this?
She liked Kieron. She’d liked him from the very first moment she met him. He was charming, intelligent, respectful, kind, and undoubtedly wealthy. He ticked every box of what women were looking for. She’d be insane to turn that down, wouldn’t she? Yes. But that didn’t change the fact that nearly three months after their breakup, her heart was still well and truly taken.
Ex-boyfriend in London? London, like hell.
There was only one person muddling up her brain like this, and she hated him for it. Her mind filled with the image of Duncan, flirting with those girls at the bar. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t appeared in the pub? She shook her head, trying to push the thought away. She already knew. Theywould’ve gone back to the girls’ suite, presumably. How many times had he done that, thinking it didn’t matter? Thinking she wouldn’t find out? Thinking what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her? But then, whydidit hurt her? Why did it make her feel like she couldn’t breathe?
They weren’t together, and she had explained to every person who’d asked why that was the best thing. Why they wouldn’t work long term. But then she hadn’t gone on a single date since they had broken up and now, when a guy made it very explicit that he wanted to get to know her more, she was freaking out. Was it because, like Eilidh had said, she thought somewhere along the line it would work out between her and Duncan? That they would find each other again, when the moment was right? When fate intervened? But Duncan didn’t believe in fate. Understandably, given how he had grown up. Kieron did, though. Kieron seemed to think her showing up like this was the universe telling him she was meant to be in his life. It was hard to deny that the chances of them being on the same flight and then here together in the same castle in this tiny village were more than a little unlikely. If fate was real, then surely Kieron was the person it was drawing her to?
Unlike the morning, the flakes of snow seemed to be settling, yet she stumbled onwards, pulling her coat tighter as the wind kicked up a notch.
Across the field, on the other side of the woods, Bex spotted a small contraption. The clay trap. Her heart clenched. Though it hadn’t been an official date, Duncan had taken her there when they’d gone for their first walk together. He’d explained to her about clay pigeon shooting and showed her what she needed to do, then he’d held his chest up against her back and he’d wrapped his arms around hers, then guided her fingers over hers as they pulled the trigger together. She could still feel the warmth of his breath on her neck, his body pressed into hers.
What would it feel like if it were Kieron’s body pressed up against her instead? Did she want to know how it felt to have his arms wrapped around her? She wasn’t sure. And what about if it erased everything she had felt with Duncan; would she want it to? Surely the answer was no, but if it took away the pain of thinking of Duncan with those other women, then that was another matter entirely.
She wasn’t running so much as fast walking now, and not towards the trap. No, she had been wrong to think she should come here when the memories were almost as catastrophic as the castle. What she needed was to get to the village. She needed to get to the village, get a drink and call her friends. They would help her make sense of it all. They would tell her she was just panicking about nothing. That this was what happened when you started dating again after being in a relationship. But as she turned around, looking, she found herself struggling to know what direction to head in. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but the snow had fallen so swiftly, she could barely make out her footprints. And it wasn’t helping that it kept drifting in her eyes. Every time she stopped to wipe it out, she found herself more and more disorientated.
‘Sort yourself out, Bex,’ she said, not sure if she was talking about her heart or her navigational skills. She knew this loch. This land. She and Ruby had spent hours walking here. Sometimes with Duncan or Fergus, but sometimes just on their own. And not once had she ever got lost. This was not going to be the first time.
Determined to work out where she was, she kept walking forward, searching for something familiar, but it wasn’t just the snow that was stopping her from finding her way. Her breaths were growing shallower and the wind howled as it bolstered to such a force she struggled to stay on the path she had set for herself, while a deep fog drew in so quickly that soon, she couldbarely see two feet in front of her. It was with a terrifying nausea that chilled all the way to her already freezing bones that Bex finally realised the truth.
She was out in the Highlands, in the middle of a storm, with no idea how to find shelter.
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Bex screamed until her voice was hoarse. Turning in circles, she yelled out for someone to help her. To hear her. To save her. More than once, she tried walking desperately, hoping that she might stumble across a place to shelter. An old forgotten cabin. A den or just a hollowed-out tree trunk. But there was nothing but barren earth and snow-covered rocks. And soon she could barely hear her own cries above the screeching wind, let alone expect anybody else to.
Tears stung Bex’s cheeks as they met the freezing air. She was soaked to the bone, shivering in a way she had never shivered before. And she was lost. Utterly lost.
She pictured the headlines now:London Woman Tragically Dies in Highland Snowstorm.There would be pictures of her smiling, articles mentioning how she had spent some time in the area and naïvely thought she’d known it. Then all the safety awareness warnings would follow. There would be emergency numbers to call when you got lost. Apps like what3words. Duncan had told her about it before. How the developers had designed a system where any location in the world could be identified by three words and she knew it had already savedcountless lives, from people who had got injured out on remote walks to kayakers who had got in trouble out on the water.
Duncan had insisted she upload the app onto her own phone in case of an emergency like this. And she had. Even when she’d moved back to London, she’d left it on. Only her phone, and any chance of help, was back at the castle.
‘Help! Anyone!’ Bex cried again as she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the chattering of her jaw. She couldn’t die out here. Not like this. She couldn’t. This wasn’t how her story ended. She had too many chapters left to write. Too many adventures and experiences left to have.
But it was so cold. Every inhale made her shudder more and more, and the cold was searing through her feet. Every step was agony.
Deciding that perhaps preserving her strength was the best thing she could do, she stumbled on towards a thin tree trunk. Then, with a sound close to a whimper, she lowered herself to the ground and pulled her knees into her chest as her back pressed against the rough bark.
Why was it so hard to keep her eyes open? Was it because of the cold, or was it because of the disturbed sleep? Maybe that was it. Maybe if she just closed her eyes and let her body rest for a minute, she would find the extra energy she needed to start walking again. And if the storm passed quickly, then maybe she could see the castle and climb her way back.
She needed to get back to the castle. She had to. There were so many things she needed to say. To people. To her family. To her friends. But most of all, to Duncan. She needed to speak to Duncan and make sure he knew it wasn’t because she didn’t love him. She loved him. She would always love him.
As she swallowed back tears that filled her throat, Bex closed her eyes, wishing she could feel herself folded up in his arms onemore time. The cold didn’t feel so bad all of a sudden. She hardly noticed it. Instead, numbness had taken over her body.
