Strangers at the Altar. Marguerite Kaye

‘Your father’s will has put you in an impossible situation, then,’ Ainsley said.

      ‘As has yours,’ Innes replied tersely. ‘What happens to your trust if you have no children?’

      ‘It reverts to me when I am forty and presumably deemed to be saying my prayers.’ She could not keep the bitterness from her voice. She had loved her father, but his unwitting condemnation of her was still difficult to take. ‘I have only to discover a way of avoiding my husband’s creditors and surviving without either a roof over my head or food in my belly for the next ten years in order to inherit, since I have no intentions of marrying again.’

      ‘Nor any intention of producing a child out of wedlock, I take it? No need to look so shocked,’ Innes said, ‘it was a joke.’

      ‘A poor one.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      She forced a smile. ‘I do not really intend to sell myself down the Cowgate, you know.’

      Innes covered her hand. ‘Are your debts really so bad?’

      ‘There will certainly still be sufficient of them to pay off when I finally do come into my inheritance,’ she said.

      His fingers tightened around hers. ‘I wish I could be of some help to you.’

      ‘You have been, simply by listening,’ Ainsley replied, flustered by the sympathy in his look. She no longer expected sympathy. She had come to believe she did not deserve it. ‘A problem shared and all that,’ she said with a small smile.

      ‘It’s a damnable situation.’

      He seemed much bigger, this close. There was something terribly comforting in those broad shoulders, in the way his hand enveloped hers, in the way he was looking at her, not with pity at all but with understanding. Close-up, his irises were ringed with a very dark blue. She had never seen eyes quite that colour.

      Realising her thoughts were once more straying down a most inappropriate path, Ainsley dropped her gaze. ‘If my father had not left my money in trust, my husband would have spent it by now, and I’d have nothing to look forward to in what he clearly thought of as my forty-year-old dotage. The money might have postponed my husband’s demise, but I doubt very much it would have been for more than a few years, and frankly I don’t think I could have borne a few more years married to him.’

      ‘I confess, at one point I thought you were going to tell me you had killed him yourself,’ Innes said.

      Ainsley laughed. ‘I may not be the timid wee mouse he married, but I don’t think I’ve become a monster.’

      ‘I think you are a wonder.’ She looked up, surprised by the warmth in his tone, and her pulses began to race as he lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. There was no mistaking it for one of those polite, social, nothing kisses. His mouth lingered on her skin, his lips warm, his eyes looking deep into hers for long, long seconds. ‘You are a most remarkable woman, Ainsley McBrayne.’

      ‘Thank you. I— Thank you.’

      ‘I really do wish there was some way that I could help you, but I know better than to offer you money.’

      ‘I really do wish there was a way I could accept it, but—well, there we are, I cannot, so there is no point in discussing it. In fact, we have talked far more about me than you. I’m still not clear about what happens to your lands if you remain unmarried. What does this trust entail?’

      She was pleased with how she sounded. Not a tremor to betray the quickening of desire his lips had stirred, and she hoped the flush she could feel blooming had not reached her cheeks.

      However Innes Drummond felt, and she would have dearly liked to have known, he took his cue from her. ‘A trustee appointed by that lawyer, Ballard, to manage them, and all monies associated with them banked. I can’t touch a penny of it without a wife,’ he replied, ‘and even with a wife, I must also commit to living for a year on Strone Bridge.’

      ‘Is it a great deal of money?’

      Innes shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea, since I’m not even entitled to see the accounts, but the money isn’t the point, I have plenty of my own. I haven’t a clue what state the place is in at all. It could be flourishing, it could have gone to rack and ruin, for all I know.’

      ‘So the fall out between yourself and your father then, it was...’

      ‘More like a complete break. I told you, he was an old-fashioned man. Do as I say, or get out of my sight.’

      Innes spoke lightly enough, but she was not fooled. ‘How long is it since you were there?’

      ‘Almost fourteen years. Since Malcolm—since I lost my brother.’ Innes shuddered, but recovered quickly. ‘You’re wondering why I’m so upset about the trust when I’ve spent most of my adult life away from the place,’ he said.

      ‘I think this has all been much more of a shock than you realise,’ Ainsley answered cautiously.

      ‘Aye, mayhap you’re right.’ His accent had softened, the Highland lilt much more obvious. ‘I had no inkling the old man was ill, and he’d no time to let me know. Not that I think he would have. Far better for me to be called to heel through that will of his from beyond the grave. I don’t doubt he’s looking down—or maybe up—and laughing at the mess he’s put me in,’ Innes said. ‘He knew just how it would stick in my craw, having to choose between relying on someone else to run what is mine or to take up the reins myself under such conditions. Be damned to him! I must find a way to break this trust. I will not let him issue decrees from beyond the grave.’

      He thumped his fist on the table, making his glass and Ainsley jump. ‘I’m beginning to think that your situation is worse than mine after all.’

      ‘Ach, that’s nonsense, for I at least don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. It’s a sick coincidence, the way the pair of us are being punished by our parents, though,’ Innes said. ‘What will you do?’

      ‘Oh, I’m beyond worrying right now.’ Ainsley waved her hand in the air dismissively. ‘The question is, what will you do? If only you could find a woman to marry who has no interest in actually being your wife, your problems would be solved.’

      She spoke flippantly, more to divert his attention from her own tragic situation than anything, but Innes, who had been in the act of taking another sip of whisky, stopped, the glass halfway to his lips, an arrested look in his eyes. ‘Say that again.’

      ‘What? That you need to marry...’

      ‘A woman who has no interest in being my wife,’ he finished for her with a dawning smile. ‘A woman who is in need of a home, and has no fixed plans, who might actually be looking for a respite from her current life for a wee while. You’re right, that’s exactly what I need, and I know exactly the woman.’

      ‘You do? You cannot possible mean...’

      His smile had a wicked light in it. ‘I do,’ Innes said. ‘I mean you.’

      Ainsley was staring at him open-mouthed. Innes laughed. ‘Think about it, it’s the ideal solution. In fact, it could almost be said that we are perfectly matched, since you have as little desire for a husband as I have for a wife.’

      She blinked at him owlishly. ‘Are you drunk?’

      ‘Certainly not.’

      ‘Then I must be, for you cannot possibly be proposing marriage. Apart from the fact that we’ve only just met, I thought I had made it plain that I will never—absolutely never again—surrender my independence.’

      ‘I’m not asking you to. I’m actually making it easier for you to retain it, because if we get married, I can pay off all those debts that bastard of a husband of yours acquired and then you really will be free.’

      ‘But I’d be married to you.’