Posh Doc, Society Wedding (2 page)

‘I remember it well,’ Izzy said. ‘We had such a lot of fun, didn’t we?’

Molly nodded, her expression gleeful.

‘Mum’s in hospital now,’ Cameron said, his gaze solemn. His hair was dark, like his father’s, and his eyes were grey. ‘She hurt her head and her leg and her arm, and she can’t walk very well. We’re going to see her tomorrow.’

‘I know, sweetheart. Your mother’s been very poorly, hasn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘We’ve been to see her a lot in hospital where we live, but now they’ve moved her.’

‘But it’s all right,’ Molly put in, ‘because she needs to learn to walk about and do things, and they have a place at the new hospital where they can help her.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it? I’m sure the doctors will look after her very well.’ Izzy stood up and waited as Mary shepherded the children towards the garden area at the back of the shop.

‘Your uncle says you can have these buns to eat, and you’re to share the crisps,’ Mary told them as they eagerly walked with her. ‘I’ll bring the drinks, and maybe you can have ice creams a little later, once you’re settled.’

She left the shop, and Izzy realised the moment could not be put off any longer. She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to take a good look at the man who had played havoc with her feelings over a good stretch of time. Tall, striking in appearance, with black hair dark as midnight, he was the devil incarnate, sent
to try her with his powerful presence and his innate authority descending over everyone and everything.

She looked into Ross’s eyes and found herself trapped, submerged in those blue-grey depths, only to falter as she had always done when he was anywhere around.

‘We had no idea that you were planning on coming here,’ she murmured. ‘It’s been such a long time since your father’s funeral that we felt sure you had decided to stay away for good.’

‘And now my coming back here will well and truly set the cat among the pigeons, I dare say.’ There was a glint in his eye that told how he relished that thought. ‘I know there are those who would much prefer never to set eyes on me again, but sadly they’re in for a disappointment. Your father will most likely be sharpening his axe at the first whisper of my return…The battle between the Buchanans and the McKinnons is set to run and run, isn’t it?’

She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘From what I’ve seen, you seem to thrive on any skirmishes that come your way. You’ve never been one to back down from a fight, have you?’ Her chin lifted. ‘That’s why you and your own father were at loggerheads the whole time. Two stubborn men coming face to face will always clash, and it’s the same with you and my father. Neither one of you will ever consider taking a different course. That would be too simple, wouldn’t it? It would reek too much of losing face.’

He raised a dark brow. ‘Why should I want to change my ways? I’ve done nothing wrong—and, more to the point, I’m the only one left to uphold the Buchanan name.’ He stood before her, his long legs taut, his back
ramrod-straight, as though daring her to deny it. ‘That might not seem important to you, but it’s something that lays heavily on me.’

‘Of course it does,’ she retorted, her grey eyes smoky with mocking amusement. ‘That’s why you left it to Jake to do what was necessary. Do you think any of us here care a jot about the Buchanan name? Whether the landlord is a Buchanan or not, he’s still going to look after himself first.’

He laughed. ‘You haven’t lost any of your straight-talking ways, have you, Izzy? That’s what I always liked about you. You could be relied on to put me right if I looked to be veering off course.’ He reached out to gently cup her face in his palm. ‘As I often did. But then I was young and foolhardy, and reckless was my middle name.’ His voice softened to a whisper. ‘It’s good to see you again, sweet Isabel McKinnon.’

Izzy’s skin heated where his hand lightly trailed over her cheek. The lightest touch of his fingers was enough to fire her blood, and she didn’t know why he had the power to do this to her—to make her senses quicken and her heart pump faster.

It was frustrating, and above all it wasn’t fair, this hold he had over her. He was the enemy, he was everything she should rebel against, and yet…And yet her body ignored every warning, flouted common sense and instead abandoned her to the powerful onslaught of his devil-may-care charm whenever he came near.

It wasn’t to be borne, and out of desperation she decided that attack was the best form of defence. ‘You might not be so pleased once you settle in at the castle and see how many complaints I’ve lodged with your
estate manager. Or perhaps you aren’t planning on staying around all that long?’

‘Long enough to take the scowl from your mouth, perhaps,’ he said, tucking his hand under her jaw and swooping to drop a fleeting, fierce kiss on her soft lips.

She gasped as the imprint of his mouth registered on her, leaving a tingling explosion of sensation in its wake. Her whole body responded in a surge of fizzing excitement. ‘You…you kissed me,’ she said in shocked wonder.

Heat shimmered in his gaze, laughter dancing in the blue-grey depths of his eyes. ‘I couldn’t resist,’ he said, letting his hand fall from her. ‘But I was right, wasn’t I? It certainly lifted the scowl from your lips, and it only took…what…all of two seconds?’

She waited a moment or two while she battled to bring her emotions under control once more. ‘I wonder if you should have more pressing things to do with your time?’ she said finally, for want of any more cutting response. ‘I think the children may well need your attention. Or perhaps you’d forgotten all about them?’

‘I would never do that. But far be it from me to give you cause to find me wanting,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll go right away and find out what they’re up to.’ He paused, though, to study her slender figure, letting his glance sweep over her from head to toe, taking in the clinging cut of her jeans and the soft cashmere of her top. ‘Still as beautiful as ever, my lovely Izzy. But a sight more feisty than when last we met, I dare say, and with way more delicious curves.’ His mouth curved. ‘Yum.’

Her grey gaze narrowed on him. ‘You should watch your step, Buchanan,’ she said in a low, controlled tone. ‘You’re not so big you can’t take a tumble.’

He put up his hands in self-defence. ‘Okay, okay. You can stand down. I’m an unarmed man.’ He made a mock attempt at wiping his brow with the back of his hand as she finally relaxed her shoulders. ‘Phew! And I thought young Molly could shoot sparks. They’re nothing compared with her aunt’s artillery.’

He was chuckling as he moved away in the direction of the garden, and Izzy stared at him, firing more darts at his straight back. The man was dangerous—a hazard to all unsuspecting women who suffered under the misapprehension that he was a good-natured, easy-going kind of man. He could effortlessly take your heart and squeeze it dry.

But that was probably the least of her problems right now. How on earth was she going to break the news to her father that Ross Buchanan was back in town?

‘W
OULD
you like more coffee? I just made a fresh pot.’ Izzy’s housemate lifted the coffee percolator, letting it hover over two brightly painted ceramic mugs in the centre of the kitchen table.

‘Yes, please…Anything to warm me up. It’s freezing in here.’ Izzy chafed her arms with her hands in an effort to drum up some heat. ‘We really need to get that central heating fixed, or at the least buy a portable heater.’ She frowned, gazing around the room. ‘I suppose I could make some toast—the heat from the grill will probably make us feel better.’

Lorna nodded. ‘Good idea. I’ll fry some bacon. I’m really in the mood for toasted bacon sandwiches to set me up for a day in A&E.’ She grinned. ‘Just in case we don’t make it down to the cafeteria again.’

‘Good idea.’ Izzy took out a loaf of bread from the wooden bin. ‘But I’ve been thinking…We could take our own food in to the hospital—sandwiches, biscuits, cereal bars…anything that we can cover with clingfilm and set out on a trolley. That way we’ll have stuff on hand if things get hectic.’ She smiled. ‘I thought it was
great when Greg brought in hot sausage rolls and pastries the other day. They gave me the will to go on.’

‘Me, too.’ Lorna replaced the coffeepot on its base and went to get a frying pan from the cupboard. ‘As to the central heating, and all the other repairs that need doing around here, I suppose Ross will need a bit of time to settle in before he gets round to sorting things out. That’s if he means to stay, of course. It could just be that he’s brought the children over to be closer to Alice, and once she’s up and about he’ll be off.’ Lorna hesitated, frying pan in hand, thinking things through.

She was a slender girl, with a mop of fair hair that had a flyaway look about it, as though it was permanently out of control—pretty much on a par with her bubbly character. Just now, though, her blue eyes were thoughtful. ‘Then again,’ she murmured, ‘he always had a bit of a thing for Alice, didn’t he? In fact, if you recall, the rumour was that she was seeing Ross long before she decided to run off with his brother. Quite the scandal at the time, I hear.’

‘Yes, it was.’ Izzy frowned. ‘Especially where my father was concerned. He hated the thought that she had anything at all to do with any of the Buchanans.’

Lorna placed the frying pan on the hob and turned towards Izzy, throwing her an anxious look. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Izzy…I was forgetting for a minute that she’s your cousin. I didn’t mean to say anything out of line—it’s just that everyone’s talking about Ross coming back here. People are wondering what’s going to happen about the crofts, and whether they can do anything to improve the general standard of living. And on top of all that they’re buzzing with talk about the way your
families have been at each other’s throats for as far back as anyone can remember. There doesn’t seem to be any getting away from it. Of course they’re all siding with you and your parents and Alice.’

‘It’s all right, Lorna. I knew as soon as I saw Ross was back in Glenmuir that the tongues would start wagging. I don’t know
what
he’s going to do about the crofts. Most people hereabouts lease the land and the cottages from him, but I imagine he’ll have to put his own house in order before he can find time to look into any concerns they might have about their livelihoods. I suppose he could always say that what they do with the land is up to them for the term of the lease.’

‘Not his problem, you mean?’ Lorna pulled a face. ‘You could be right. But people seem to think Ross should do something so that they can make a decent living from the land. It’s history rearing its head once again—you know how it is…people around here don’t let go of the past easily. They’re convinced their rights were taken from them in the Highland Clearances well over a hundred years ago. At the very least they think he should pay them compensation on behalf of his ancestors.’

Izzy switched on the grill and set bread out on the rack. ‘That’s fighting talk,’ she said with a husky laugh. ‘But, knowing how the Buchanans operate, I doubt it will get them very far. They’ve always known how to manoeuvre their way through the legal system and come out the winners.’

‘I’m told the Buchanans have oodles of charisma when they choose to exert it, and none of it lost on the women who cross their paths…’ Lorna turned the heat on under the pan and added rashers of bacon. ‘That was
the start of things with your families, wasn’t it?’ she asked. ‘Your father’s great-aunt being seduced by the former Laird—Ross’s great-grandfather—some eighty odd years ago.’

‘That’s very true.’ Izzy slotted the grill pan under the heat. ‘Of course it caused all kinds of anger and heart-ache and general mayhem when she died in childbirth. That really upset the McKinnons and added fuel to the fire. I think my father, when he was growing up, soaked up all the vitriol that was poured on the Buchanans, and consequently he has no time for them.

‘Alice going off with Robert Buchanan was history repeating itself, and that well and truly stirred the melting pot, didn’t it?’

‘What happened when Robert and Alice took off?’

‘My father exploded, but at least he directed most of his anger towards Robert back then. I suppose it made things worse because Alice had been seeing Ross to begin with, and at least he was the steady one, whereas Robert always had a wild streak.’

Alice and Ross…Izzy shied away from that thought. How deep had their feelings been for one another before Alice had turned to Robert? Did Ross still care for her in the same way? She pulled herself together, aware that Lorna was waiting for her to go on.

‘Alice was young, and had obviously been led astray by both Buchanans,’ she said, ‘but for all that my father wouldn’t forgive her. He’s never had much to do with her children, either. My mother has always kept in touch with the family, by letter and the occasional visit, but she’s very wary of what my father would have to say on the subject. She keeps things low-key and tries not to provoke him.’

She frowned. ‘The only real difference, for all the scandal that it caused, was that Robert Buchanan was never going to be the new young Laird.’ Izzy pondered the situation as she laid hot toast down on the plates. ‘I can’t help wondering if that was what lay behind all the resentment simmering between him and Ross. As the older brother, Ross was the one to take over the estate. Robert always wanted what Ross had, and unfortunately that included his girlfriends.’

‘That must have been some sibling rivalry.’ Lorna added tomatoes to the pan, and it wasn’t long before the appetising aroma of sizzling bacon filled the air.

The kitchen was much warmer now, and Izzy began to place the plates on the table, ready for the meal. She was setting out cutlery when there was a loud knocking on the door.

‘I wonder who that can be,’ she said with a frown. ‘It’s barely seven-thirty in the morning. Who else would be up and about at this time of the day apart from farmers, doctors and the milkman?’

‘I did notice the milkman giving you the eye the other day,’ Lorna remarked with a hint of mischief. ‘I thought at the time he was just surprised to see you open the door at that hour, but I may have been wrong about that.’

Acknowledging that with a smile, Izzy shook her head. ‘You have such a lively imagination.’ She went to find out who was there.

A moment later she stared down at the two children who were standing on the doorstep, her brows lifting in astonishment. ‘Molly, Cameron—I wasn’t expecting to see you.’ She glanced around to see if anyone had come
with them, but nothing stirred on the path that led down the hill except for a solitary bird that took flight from the nearby copse. ‘Have you come here all by yourselves?’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘It isn’t far to here from the castle, and we remembered where you lived from last time we came to visit.’ She frowned. ‘Uncle Ross wasn’t staying with us then, though.’

‘No, we came here with Mum,’ Cameron put in. ‘Dad stayed at home.’ A momentary sadness washed over his thin face. ‘He’s not here any more, you know,’ he said earnestly. ‘Mum says he was hurt in the car accident and they couldn’t make him better, but he’s peaceful now.’

‘I know, sweetheart.’ Izzy wanted to put her arms around the children and make everything right again, but it was an impossible task. How could she begin to comfort them for the loss of their father? She contented herself instead with making them welcome, putting an arm around their shoulders and ushering them into the house. ‘Come into the kitchen. It’s warmer in there.’

‘Mummy’s not going to go away, as well, is she?’ Molly asked, her voice hesitant. ‘She was in the car with Daddy, and she was hurt.’

‘No, Molly. Your mother is getting better every day. It will take some time before she’s on her feet properly, but before too long she should be back with you.’

‘In the New Year?’ Cameron suggested. ‘That’s what Uncle Ross says…some time in the New Year.’

‘That sounds about right to me,’ Izzy said. Her cousin would recover well enough from the broken bones she had sustained in the car crash, but she had also suffered head injuries and internal bleeding that added substantially to her problems. The head injuries meant that she
had no memory of the accident itself, though thankfully her faculties had been spared. It was hoped that in time she would make a full recovery.

She pushed open the door to the kitchen and showed them inside.

Cameron sniffed the air appreciatively. ‘Are you making breakfast?’ he asked in a hopeful tone, his eyes widening.

‘Yes, we are.’ Izzy nodded. ‘Looks like we have more people to share the sandwiches,’ she told Lorna. ‘Do you think we can run to a couple more?’

‘I think we can manage that. I’ll add a bit more bacon to the pan.’ Lorna smiled at the children, and then, as they stared about the room, taking everything in, she surreptitiously lifted questioning brows towards Izzy at their arrival so early in the morning.

Izzy hunched her shoulders in a bemused gesture before turning her attention back to the children. ‘Sit yourselves down by the table,’ she said. ‘So, your Uncle Ross knows you’re here, does he? Hasn’t he given you anything to eat?’

‘He’s asleep,’ Molly said, shaking her head so that her curls quivered. ‘I tried to wake him, but he didn’t even open his eyes…Well, just the corner of one, a tiny bit. Then he closed it again and made a sort of “hmmph” from under the duvet, and buried his head in the pillow.’ She lifted her arms to show the extent of her helplessness.

Izzy’s mind conjured up an image of Ross, his dark hair tousled from sleep, his limbs tangled in the folds of the duvet. It made her hot and bothered, and she quickly tried to banish the errant thought from her head.

‘And I’m starving,’ Cameron confirmed. ‘I
couldn’t find the breakfast cereals in any of the cupboards, so I went to look for Maggie, but she wasn’t anywhere around.’

‘I imagine it’s a bit too early for the housekeeper,’ Lorna commented. ‘From what I’ve heard she doesn’t usually go up to the castle until after nine o’clock.’

‘Well, we didn’t know what to do, so we decided to come and see you,’ Molly finished triumphantly. ‘I remembered that you live at the bottom of the hill…and that you always have a cookie jar on the worktop. I remember it’s a yellow bear with a smiley face and a Tam o’ Shanter hat.’

‘That’s right.’ Izzy pointed to the corner of the room, where the ceramic cookie jar sat next to the microwave oven. ‘There he is, just as you said. Perhaps you could have a cookie after you’ve eaten your sandwich?’

Pleased, Molly nodded, while Cameron fidgeted in his seat and asked pertinently, ‘And me, too?’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t dream of leaving you out, Cameron.’

He looked suitably appeased at that, and Izzy concentrated on making them both a sandwich. Pushing the plates towards them, she looked from one to the other. ‘So your uncle doesn’t have any idea that you’ve come here?’

Cameron shook his head, looking uncertain, but Molly, after taking a bite from her sandwich, said, ‘I left a note for him on the kitchen table to let him know we’d come here. Mummy said we should always make sure someone knows where we are.’

‘Mmm, that’s good. That was the sensible thing to do,’ Izzy said with a smile. ‘I think I’d better give him a ring all the same, as soon as we’ve eaten, just to make
sure he knows what’s going on, or he might be worried.’ She wasn’t going to let her sandwich go cold on his account, though. That was supposing he was even awake by now, of course. But if he wasn’t she would simply let the phone ring until he answered it. How could the man be so careless as to let the children run loose at such a young age? ‘Lorna and I have to go to work soon, you see, otherwise you would be able to stay here. Perhaps we’ll take you back home when we’ve all eaten.’

‘That’s okay,’ Cameron said. ‘I said you’d probably have to go to the hospital. I remembered from last time we were here.’

Izzy sat down to eat her toasted sandwich with Lorna and the children, chatting to them about life up at the castle. ‘Are you settling in all right?’ she asked.

Molly nodded. ‘It’s kind of exciting. There’s loads of rooms and we can go in any of them.’

‘And there’s a winding staircase that goes up and up,’ Cameron said. ‘And there are lots of doors. I nearly got lost, and Uncle Ross had to come and find me. He said I was in the pantry, but it was big—like a room.’

A few minutes later Izzy left them talking to Lorna while she went into the hall to phone Ross in private. It was a while before he answered.

‘Did I wake you?’ she asked.

‘No. I was some distance from the phone.’ His voice was deep, warm and soothing, and to hear him was a little like sipping at rich, melting chocolate. ‘I was checking the rooms to see where the children might be hiding. They’ve taken to disappearing of a morning, and usually I manage to find them in what used to be the servants’ quarters. They seem to like playing in the smaller
rooms. I’ve never known such early birds. Where on earth do they get their energy from?’

‘The fountain of youth, I should imagine.’ She hesitated. ‘So I take it you’re still looking for them? Have you tried the kitchen?’

‘I’m heading there now.’ He made a soft intake of breath. ‘I should have taken time to dress properly—these stone floors are cold. I need to get some carpets in here…or install under-floor heating.’