Page 69 of Highland Games
‘Thank you, Morag, thank you for everything. I feel slightly more human now.’
Morag stroked down Zoe’s arm.
‘I’m so sorry, love. I just can’t believe Rory is Stuart MacGinley. The earl? We’re all in shock. He stormed into the post office yesterday looking like the world was about to end and when he told me you’d been arrested, I couldn’t take any more in.’ Morag picked up Zoe’s plate, put it on the side, then sat down again, fiddling with her cuticles. ‘Why the secrecy? What else is he hiding? And what does this mean for the village?’ She looked up. ‘You know, love, it must have been him that spoke to Chantelle and Sally, told them not to use you. But I don’t understand why he would do that?’
‘He didn’t. It was his mum.’
‘Barbara? Is she in Kinloch as well?’
Zoe nodded. ‘Yeah, and she doesn’t much like me.’
Morag scoffed. ‘She doesn’t much like anyone who’s not got a direct line to the queen. Honestly, her grandfather was a sheep farmer, lived in a croft smaller than yours, could hardly write his own name, and yet she acts like she’s to the manor born just because she managed to snag that miserable so-and-so Stuart MacGinley. Just you wait till I tell everyone what she’s done. You’ll have so much work, you’ll be richer than her.’
Zoe gave her a wan smile. ‘Thanks, Morag, but I’m not sure I’m going to stay.’
The colour fell out of Morag’s cheeks. ‘No! Why not? You can’t let them win!’
Zoe shrugged.
‘All my life I did what I knew I should do. I never did anything crazy, never went travelling, never took drugs, never got a tattoo. I got a useful qualification, got a sensible job, never went into debt. But when Willie died, all the crazy that had been bottled up just exploded, and I ditched everything to come and live here. It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, and it’s been a mistake. I should have listened to Mum and Dad.’
Morag took her hand, shaking her head vehemently. ‘No, Zoe, a life half lived is a life not lived at all. And your ma’s one to talk! She gave a good show of being well-behaved, especially to avoid trouble from your dragon of a granny, butshewas the one dragging me over walls to scrump for apples, and making cider in the shed. And look what happened when your father showed up. Within a week she was off. Best decision she ever made.’
After brunch,Zoe was itching to get back to the cabin. She needed time alone, time to think. Fiona had given Jamie a lift up that morning to collect her truck, so after assuring Morag she was okay and she’d ring Fiona, she drove home with her bags and Basil’s cage on the back seat.
The cabin was quiet, left in stasis from the previous day. Rory’s work looked abandoned in a hurry, the tools still lying about, sawdust on the floor. The bed was still unmade. The last time she’d slept in it, she’d also slept with Rory. She stared at the carving he’d made of her in the centre of the headboard, then took her patchwork blanket and draped it over, hiding it from view.
The police told her she could collect her chairs later, so she filled the Rayburn with wood to get it back to temperature, tidied away Rory’s tools and swept the floor. She had been back less than fifteen minutes when she heard a vehicle driving up the track. She went to the window to see a tiny car driving up. An enormous man unfolded himself out of it.
Rory.
Her heart jumped, and she put her palm on her chest, as if pushing it back inside, moving away from the window. There was a knock at the door. She ignored it, rooted to the spot.
‘Zoe, it’s me,’ he called out. ‘I have the lease for the cabin.’
‘Leave it outside the door,’ she called back.
‘I can’t. I need a signature from you on both copies, one for you and one for the estate. I’ll go and wait in the car and you can sign them, then I’ll take a copy away.’
She heard him stepping off the porch. She opened the door, pulled the folder inside, and took it to the sofa.
She flipped through the two copies. They were different from what she remembered. These were brand new. She read the document, making sense of the legal jargon. The penny finally dropped that these were for a freehold lease. She would own the cabin outright. She could live here forever, or she could sell it and start again, put a deposit on a flat back home. Why had he done this? To finally get her and the cabin out of his hair? To say sorry? To get back at his mum? She signed both copies, put one with her important documents, the other outside the front door, then waited for him to return.
When she heard his footsteps on the porch, she opened the door a crack and looked at him.
Emotions scudded across his face. ‘Zoe, I’m so sorry.’ His voice was a whisper, he looked exhausted.
‘Why did you lie to me?’
He paused, his jaw working but no words coming out. Finally, he spoke. ‘Do you want the long answer or the short answer?’
‘Short.’
He dropped his head, sighed, then pinned her with his wolf eyes. Inside she lit up, but kept her expression neutral.
‘I don’t want to be Stuart MacGinley. I don’t want to be the earl. I don’t want to be saving an estate from the mess my father made. I don’t want any of it. When I came back to Kinloch, I didn't tell anyone because I didn’t want it to be real. I wanted to fix the castle and leave. But I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I met you. You didn’t know who I was but you still liked me. I didn’t have to be the earl, just myself. Being with you was like a perfect dream, and I didn’t want it to end.’
Zoe remembered laying her body and soul open to him, the intimacies they had shared. Hurt spiralled up again into anger. ‘Anything else you haven’t told me? Any wives in the attic, children in the cupboard, or bodies under the patio?’
