Highlander in Her Bed (4 page)

"I what?"

Mara stared at Percival Combe with disbelief. Her fork slipped from her fingers and clattered onto her plate, her clumsiness sending two spring peas sailing through the air. "A whole castle?"

She swallowed at the solicitor's nod, her face flaming as shocked silence swept the hallowed Wig and Pen Club and fellow diners swiveled their heads to stare. Not that she cared. Such news was well worth a few raised eyebrows.

If she could believe it.

With her luck, she'd probably misunderstood.

Sheesh, she hadn't even managed to find someone willing to invest in Exclusive Excursions when she'd hoped to find a partner not so long ago.

So who would leave her a castle?

Not even halfway convinced anyone would, she curled her fingers around her chair's armrests and leaned forward. "Would you repeat that, please?" she asked, hoping she didn't have suspicion written all over her.

But Percival Combe only smiled. "With pleasure," he obliged, sounding as if such astounding disclosures were the merest commonplace. "My late client has bequeathed her holding, Ravenscraig Castle, to you."

Looking at him, Mara chewed her lip. Something bothered her, and not just the improbability of becoming an overnight heiress. "This is extraordinarily hard to believe," she said, wishing her doubt weren't so palpable. "Where I come from, people just don't go around inheriting castles."

"No, I don't suppose they do," he agreed.

"That's right, and if anyone ever did, I can't imagine a more unlikely candidate." Skepticism beating all through her, she searched his face for a sign she'd fallen prey to someone's warped sense of humor.

But there was nothing.

Far from it, he appeared the epitome of sincerity. Kindly faced, graying, and with startling blue eyes, the sixty-something solicitor looked anything but the bearer of falsehoods.

Even so, she had to know. "Are you sure this isn't a joke?"

"You have my solemn word," he assured her. "Lady Warfield was most determined to see Ravenscraig go to you."

Mara's brows lifted. "Lady
Fiona
Warfield?"

He nodded.

"Oh, dear," Mara gasped, and struggled for something better to say.

She knew Lady Warfield.

The eccentric old woman owned—no, apparently
had
owned—Wychwood Hall in the Cotswolds and had graciously allowed Mara to escort tours through her home. She'd sometimes even accompanied the groups, claiming a fondness for Americans.

And she'd always been especially nice to Mara.

"I'm sorry to hear she passed away," she said, remembering the woman's sprightly walk and sparkling eyes. "I didn't know. Wychwood wasn't on my current itinerary. How—I mean…"

"She slipped away in her sleep a month ago yesterday," the solicitor said, understanding her unspoken question. "Quite peacefully, I was told."

Mara nodded her thanks. "She was a remarkable lady. A bit unconventional, but I liked that." She swallowed against the sudden heat in her throat. "We got on well, but I can't imagine why she'd remember me in her will."

"She had her reasons," he said and took a sip of wine. "You might be surprised to learn she believed she knew you quite well."

Mara's brows knitted. "I don't see how."

"Ah, but you said yourself that she was unconventional. Is it then so surprising to learn that she saw the same trait in you?" he asked, smiling at her.

No, that, at least, made sense.

And Mara knew exactly what he meant.

Glancing aside, she noted more than the well-laid tables with their flickering candles and gleaming silver, the brilliance of crystal. Her inner eye caught the airs and undercurrents, the constant posturings of the hoity-toity as each one vied to outdo the others' nonchalance.

Though she'd definitely been at home in such circles, Lady Warfield would have taken wry amusement in the long-nosed looks still aimed at Mara's table.

"Is that why she did this?" Mara fixed her most direct gaze on the solicitor. "Because we shared a few worldviews?"

"Among other things." Percival Combe angled his head, his expression as serious as her own.

Enough so to give her a jolt of apprehension. "What kind of
other things
?"

"Nothing unpleasant, I assure you."

Mara lifted a brow. "Maybe I'd prefer to judge that myself," she said, shivering in reaction.

She knew what was coming.

The catch.

There had to be one. Nothing came without strings. And she smelled a stipulation as surely as she'd known her mushy vegetables would taste like boiled cardboard even before she'd tried them.

"So what do I have to do?" She sat back to wait for the blow. "What's the real reason I am a beneficiary?"

Percival Combe sighed. "Lady Warfield liked you. There was, however, more to her decision. It was your name, Miss McDougall. Quite simply your name."

"My name?"

"Were you aware Lady Warfield was a Scotswoman?" he asked, peering intently at her.

Mara's eyes widened. "I had no idea." She shook her head, genuinely bewildered. "She never once mentioned Scotland and she spoke with such an English accent."

"A cultivated accent," the solicitor said, watching her over the rim of his wineglass. "She came from Oban in the West Highlands, though not many knew. She was born a MacDou—"

"
MacDougall
?" Mara near choked on her astonishment.

Percival Combe set down his glass and nodded.

Mara's face grew hot. Now she knew why the name Ravenscraig had bothered her.

It was the ancestral home of her clan.

Leastways the seat of the lesser chieftain her branch of the MacDougalls hailed from.

Her father even kept a faded photo of the castle framed above his desk. A photo carefully clipped from a Scottish magazine, not one he'd snapped himself, much to Hugh McDougall's regret. No one in her family had ever been able to afford to make the trip, and in recent years her father's health had proved too poor to risk the transatlantic flight.

The closest they'd come was buying a house, albeit humble, at One Cairn Avenue. And even with such a Scottish-sounding name, the street was in a blue-collar corner of Philadelphia, not Scotland.

"Sadly," the solicitor was saying, "Lady Warfield's husband, Lord Basil, did not share her great love for her homeland. Out of devotion to him, she allowed him to anglicize her. A decision she regretted in later years."

Mara shifted uncomfortably. She didn't harbor any great affection for tartan and pipes either, preferring London with all its fascinations to peat bogs and sheep.

Her nerves began to tighten. "Surely she didn't think we were related?" she asked, her voice sounding a shade higher than usual. "My father spends all his time researching our ancestry. He would swoon over a direct blood tie to the MacDougalls of Ravenscraig, but our line goes back to John the Immigrant, an impoverished crofter who left Scotland in the mid-eighteen hundreds."

"Lady Warfield knew that," the solicitor admitted, looking slightly chagrined. "We did a background investigation on you, hoping to discover a connection, however remote. Yet when our efforts failed, she still wanted you to have Ravenscraig."

"But why?" Mara puzzled. "There had to be a deeper reason."

The solicitor let out a sigh. "If you were as familiar with Scotland as your father appears to be, you would know family is everything to a Scot," he said, his expression bitter earnest again. "The clan system is generous, accepting a wide variety of name spellings. Each clan has members scattered across the globe, yet the bond remains powerful."

"I know," Mara agreed, for a moment seeing her father bent over his papers and books, a plaid across his knees and zeal in his eye. "The Scottish Diaspora in their millions, each one proud to the bone and ever yearning for their home glen."

Percival Combe inclined his head. "Such a pull is strong, Miss McDougall. Even now, centuries after their day, the clans evoke deep emotions. To Lady Warfield, you were family. A MacDougall."

Mara touched her fingers to her temples, her mind still flailing. "But surely she knew someone more appropriate?"

"You were her choice." The solicitor leaned toward her, his blue gaze capturing her, roping her in. "She was the last surviving descendant of the clan's original chieftain, and she died childless. Under other circumstances, she would have surely selected a suitable heir from her family's clan society. But through her marriage to Lord Basil, she'd alienated herself from the lot of them."

He sat back. "And that, my dear, is where you come in."

"You mean what I must do to make this happen."

"A stipulation, yes." He cleared his throat. "You must fulfill a goal she wasn't able to accomplish."

Mara's heart plummeted.

She let out a windy sigh. Of course, it'd been too good to be true.

"Please don't tell me I have to spend the night in a haunted dungeon or try out medieval torture equipment," she said. "I've had all the spooks and weirdness I can handle lately."

The solicitor shook his head, warmth lighting his face. "Nothing quite so adventurous. In fact, Lady Warfield was confident you were the best-suited person for the task."

Mara lifted a brow. "How so?"

"She felt your organizational talents would help you coordinate her wish to erect a MacDougall memorial on the castle grounds."

Mara sat up straighter, a surge of hope strengthening her. This wasn't as bad as she'd thought. And if the castle came along with funds, such a task didn't sound so difficult at all.

Still, there had to be more.

Certain of it, she tilted her head. "So what else must I do?"

"You must reunite the clan," he said, watching her. "That, and make certain as many MacDougalls as possible attend the memorial's unveiling ceremony."

Mara reached for her wineglass and drained it. Her benefactress had chosen unwisely. She was the last person who'd know how to bring a family together, much less mend a clan-sized rift.

An only child, she knew solely about
small
families.

Small, dysfunctional families, since her mother had run off when she was two, and with his nose always buried in genealogy records, her father hadn't exactly invited interaction with the handful of relatives they did have.

Mara sat back in her chair. "And if I fail?"

The solicitor drew a deep breath. "If, after the monument's completion and a fair attempt to establish good relations between the clan members and yourself as new chatelaine of Ravenscraig, the hard feelings toward my late client haven't been resolved, you must leave."

"I see," Mara said, surprised by the depth of her disappointment. "And what would happen to the castle then?"

"Simply put, you would retain half of the fortune Lady Warfield is leaving you and Ravenscraig would go to Scotland's National Trust, the same as Wychwood went to the British National Trust."

Mara looked aside, astonishing herself even more because her eyes were misting. She rarely got emotional, prided herself on keeping her feet firmly on the ground and making sure her only hopes and dreams were attainable ones.

But neither had she ever run from a challenge.

In fact, she thrived on them.

"Miss McDougall?" Percival Combe's voice came edged with encouragement, as if he sensed her capitulation.

And she was surrendering, her determination to succeed mounting with each indrawn breath.

"You can be assured I will help you in every way I can." He spoke again, the possibilities behind his words wooing her. "Anything you—"

"Anything?" Mara's heart gave a lurch, a wild notion beginning to spin inside her.

Percival Combe smiled. "The smallest detail."

"Well," she began, "there is something."

"No need to be hesitant, my dear."

"It's about a bed…"

Much later, in the small hours of the same night but on the other side of London, Sir Alexander Douglas suppressed a yawn with all the noble dignity he possessed. Seldom had he been so weary. Or more resentful of not being allowed to succumb to the long sleep of centuries.

Instead he'd spent his evening striding about
her
bedchamber, hoping in vain that his spurred footsteps would clank loudly enough to wake her, but the wretched inn she'd chosen for lodgings kept
tapestries
on the floor!

Flexing his fingers, Alex glared at the offensive flooring. A full-caparisoned destrier could thunder across such thickly woven cloth and make nary a stir.

Aye, he'd done his utmost and still the wench slept.

His ire rising, he stopped his pacing and, if only to fuel his gall, once again surveyed this new MacDougall's lavishly outfitted sleeping quarters.

THE BUXTON ARMS, the establishment's signpost proclaimed, the Englishness of the name darkening his mood. As did the room's trappings. And not just the arras-laid floor. That particular affront was but a small portion of the decadency. Saints, the wee chamber brimmed with more luxury than Robert Bruce's entire royal court.

A fine cushioned chair, infinitely sumptuous, earned his especial wrath. The piece stood near the foot of the bed, and, och, but it beckoned. Alex folded his arms, his resolve granite hard. He'd sooner stand naked in a patch of stinging nettles than sink into a MacDougall chair.

Aching limbs or no.

His brows snapping together with displeasure, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror, scowling not at his own formidable appearance but at the smooth perfection of the mirrored glass.

The MacDougalls' fortunes clearly hadn't lessened over the centuries if a member of their dastardly number could afford to lodge in such splendor.

"Tapestried floors, indeed!" he snorted, turning away.

Silence and shadows greeted him, the drip-drip of rain and the sighing of the night wind increasing his weariness. Not to mention the weight of his mailed shirt and other knightly accoutrements, all donned expressly to strike terror into the MacDougall lass should she waken and glimpse him looming over her, but alas…