Page 40 of Highland Games
Zoe lifted her tear-streaked face. ‘What?’
His eyes were light. ‘I want you to have it. I’ll finish it off and bring it to the cabin. I’ve got a mattress too that’s brand new. Take them both.’
‘But isn’t it yours? I—’
He brought his lips down to her forehead. ‘Shhh. I made it for someone who didn’t like it or want it.’
Zoe looked at him in astonishment. ‘They didn’t like it? What’s wrong with them?’
He smiled. ‘And that’s why you have to have it. I want to know it’s gone to someone who will love it.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Zoe faintly, her mind lost in his arms. ‘I’ll think of you every time I go to bed.’
She saw Rory’s eyes change, the pupils overrunning the irises with darkness. She froze, flushing with horrified embarrassment. Then it started. The nervous hysteria that hurt her cheeks and stabbed her stomach.
He stepped back.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Zoe spluttered. ‘It’s not you. When I say something stupid it happens.’
The corners of his mouth turned up in a tight-lipped smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I expect nothing less from you.’ He walked back to the workbench, took up the plane and continued to work on the side of the door.
Zoe held her sides. It wasn’t funny, it was painful. The sound tore at her throat, still raw from crying and knifed her in the guts. She’d laughed at him again. And she’d also seen his horror at the thought of the two of them in bed. She’d hurt both of them.
By stuttering degrees, she got control of herself. The room was silent except for the rhythmic sound of the plane on wood. She had to find a way to make amends, to make him understand. She walked to the workbench and stood in front of him.
He ignored her and carried on with his work, warm shavings dancing up into the air, then falling to the floor. She placed her hand on his and he stopped dead.
‘I want to apologise,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I need you to understand that when I am nervous, or upset, or embarrassed, I start laughing. It’s like a nervous tic. Mum thinks I have a form of Tourette’s. I try to control it, but the more I try, the worse it gets. And the more upset or agitated I am, the more impossible it becomes to stop.’
Rory didn’t move.
She squeezed his hand, willing him to listen. Her voice wobbled. ‘I laughed at Willie’s funeral. My mum was so upset, then she had to deal with me as well. She was so understanding, but to me, it doesn’t make it right. If I laugh when you are around it has nothing to do with you, it’s just the faulty wiring in my brain.’ Rory was silent. She put her hands to her forehead. ‘This is one of those moments when I really don’t like myself. I’m so sorry you’ve had to see this. I’m so much more than just Mad Willie’s crazy great-niece. I’ll leave you to it for a couple of days. I’ve got masses I need to do anyway, and I think you could do with some time off from the Zoe experience.’
She hurried out of the workshop before he could reply.
Rory watched her leave.The last hour had been excruciating. He’d almost convinced himself that she meant little to him. That the stress he laboured under was searching for an outlet, and by fantasising about her he could escape the reality of his situation. But when she’d entered the courtyard, he’d known he was lost. He tried to speak but no words had come, just a cough in his constricted throat. And then she’d touched him.
The muscles of his arms had strained against the desire to reach out to her. Standing unmoving, whilst she had picked the curls of wood out of his hair, was worse than crawling over hot coals, or being thrown into a pit of snakes. It was unbearable. Then she’d invited herself into his workshop, his most private space, the only place he felt truly himself since the move to Kinloch. He walked back to the bedframe, his feet dragging through the sawdust as if drawn to a magnet against their will. He remembered the hundreds of hours of love he’d poured into it, only to have it, and him, rejected.
He’d had enough of Lucy’s ghost in the last week. The memories he’d fought so hard to suppress had crawled out of their graves to stalk him. Zoe had unconsciously reanimated them with her very presence, and by finding the bedframe he’d created for Lucy as a wedding present. And now his mother was mentioning her daily, unwilling to let go of her as he had done.
He remembered her sleek brown hair, always perfectly in place. Her artfully shaped brows framing pale blue eyes, and her nose wrinkling at the sight of him whenever they were in public together. Lucy was sophisticated, cultured, charming; a perfectly groomed social animal. Rory sighed. He was just an animal. Despite nearly a year together, and her best efforts, even she couldn’t polish a turd. What had she seen in him? He walked to the back wall of the workshop, and tugged a large tarpaulin off the two paintings he had taken down earlier from the great hall. They showed exactly what Lucy had seen in him. It was what everyone saw in him.
The faces of a man and woman stared out from the canvases. The man was in his mid-forties, tall, haughty, domineering. He was wearing a kilt and a tweed jacket, and resting his arm on the butt of a shotgun. Behind him was painted an idealised version of the glen, and on the ground beside him lay a magnificent stag, its breast bright crimson with blood. The man’s head was tilted back as he looked out of the frame, condescending down to the viewer. He knew his place in life, and that place was above everyone else.
The portrait of the woman was in marked contrast. She was young, barely out of her teens, slim and beautiful. She was wearing a long gown, and seated in an ornate chair in one of the castle’s drawing rooms. Light from the window glinted off an enormous diamond ring on her ring finger. Her expression was victorious and bright. At such a young age, she’d achieved everything she’d always dreamed of. She was poised, in control and ready to take on the world.
The Earl and Countess of Kinloch: His mother and father.
As far back as he could remember he knew his life was mapped out for him. He was never given a choice, only expectations and obligations as constraining as a straightjacket. His father had been a brute. The only bad thing about his death was it forced Rory to take on the life he had spent years running away from. He loved his mother and he felt obligated to the job he was born to, but the estate was crumbling and so was he. Maybe it had been denial that had kept him and his mother in Edinburgh for so long after his father died. But when the castle didn’t sell, it was the townhouse that had to go, and they had no choice but to return to Kinloch. It had been mortifying for his mother to leave her carefully cultivated life with her rich and aristocratic friends for a backwater village she’d spent her life disassociating herself from. And as for him? The responsibility of the estate, his name, and his title were dead weights hanging around his neck. He didn’t want any of them. He didn’t want to be the earl, he didn’t want to have to sort out the mess his father had made, and he didn’t want to be known as Stuart MacGinley. Until he came to Kinloch, everyone knew who he was. Even in the army, when he started calling himself Rory, his parentage was something he could never truly escape from.
And as for women… At least Lucy was the daughter of his mother’s best friend. He had known her all his life, and their family had more money than he would ever see in a lifetime. His title and her money. What a perfect combination that should have been. But even the prospect of being the Countess of Kinloch wasn’t enough to make Lucy stay.
Now Zoe had exploded into his life and set him on fire. He wanted her but she clearly didn’t want him, and to top it off, she hated the MacGinleys and the peerage. He shook his head. He had so fucked this up. If she didn’t want him now, when she found out who he really was she’d want him even less. He’d thought he’d found freedom in Kinloch by hiding who he was, but he’d just created a prison he had no idea how to escape from.
15
Over the next few days, Zoe began to suspect Rory had placed a tracking device on her in order to avoid spending any time in her company. Each day she would wait at the cabin, working offline on her plans for the website until her batteries died, then she would dash into town for electricity, Wi-Fi, and food and company with Morag and Fiona. She left a spare key outside for him, and by the time she returned to the cabin she would discover he had been and gone. The firebox of the Rayburn would be filled with wood, the floor swept, and her milk supply replenished. No matter how she switched her day around, she always managed to miss him. By the end of the week, the windows had been replaced with wooden frames and triple glazing, she had an insulated box behind the cabin to use as a temporary fridge, and a new front door. The cabin was finally warm and weathertight and felt like heaven.
