Underneath The Mistletoe Collection. Marguerite Kaye

blood relative. All of this was prescribed in the book that Ainsley had shown him. The Customs and Ways of the Family Drummond of Strone Bridge, it pompously declared itself in faded gold script. Mhairi had been insulted when he’d laughed. Ainsley had apologised on his behalf. Later, she’d teased him, calling it the Drummond Self-Help Manual. Now he was simply glad Ainsley had read it so carefully for him.

      ‘Friends,’ Innes said, ‘I bid you welcome. Before we begin the ceremony, it is traditional to toast the departed.’ He lifted the glass of whisky that lay ready, nodding to Ainsley to do the same, and waiting to make sure everyone watching had a glass. ‘Slàinte!’ he said. ‘To the old laird, my father. Cha bhithidh a leithid ami riamh. We’ll never see his like again.’ He drank, surprised to discover that the toast had not stuck in his craw quite as much as he’d thought it would. Perhaps it was because it was true, he thought to himself wryly. He was making sure of it.

      Innes put his glass down. ‘The laird has met his maker. With him must be buried all grudges, all debts, all quarrels. A forgiving and forgetting. A Rescinding. A new beginning. And I promise you,’ he said, departing from his script, ‘that it is not the case of sweeping the dirt out of one door and blowing it into the other. That is one change. The first, I hope of many. This Rescinding is an old tradition, but today it will be done in quite a new way. No recriminations. No half measures. No payback. That is my vow to you. Let us begin.’

      He sat down heavily. Sweat trickled down his back. He never made speeches. The words, his words, had not been planned, but they were his, and he’d meant them. Scanning the room anxiously, he waited for the reaction. They were an inscrutable lot, the people of Strone Bridge. The lightest of touches on his hand, which was resting by the side of his chair, made him look over at Ainsley. ‘Perfect,’ she mouthed, and smiled at him. When she made to take her hand away, he captured it, twining his fingers in hers. He felt good.

      * * *

      Ainsley waited anxiously. Innes had been nervous making his speech. His palm was damp. He’d been treating the Rescinding almost as a joke, at the very least a mere formality, but when he spoke it was clear that he meant every word he said. Such a confident man, and such a successful one, she had assumed speech-making came easily to him. It was oddly reassuring to discover it did not. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted there to be lots of petitioners or few, but she was vastly relieved when the first came forward, for none at all would have been a disaster.

      The man was a tenant, and by the looks of him, one of long standing. ‘Mr Stewart,’ Innes said, ‘of Auchenlochan farm. What is it you wish from me?’

      The old man, who had been gazing anxiously down at his booted feet, straightened and looked Innes firmly in the eye. ‘I petition the laird to forgive two wrongs,’ he said. ‘For my son, John Angus Stewart, who left two quarters rent unpaid on Auchenlochan Beag farm when he sailed for Canada. And for myself, for failing to inform the laird that the rent was unpaid.’ Mr Stewart looked over his shoulder at the rest of the room, before turning back to Innes. ‘The laird did raise the rents far beyond the value of the farms, it is true, and many of us here felt the injustice of that, but...’ He waved his hand, to silence the rumbles of agreement emanating from behind him. ‘But it was his right, and those of us who took advantage of his failing to collect were wrong, and they should be saying so now,’ he finished pointedly.

      Innes got to his feet, and said the words as specified in the Drummond manual. ‘Angus Stewart of Auchenlochan, and John Angus Stewart, who was of Auchenlochan Beag, your petitions are granted, the debt is Rescinded.’

      Mr Stewart nodded, his lips pursed. Before he had reached his wife, another man had come forward to proclaim another unpaid rent, and after him another, and another. Some went reluctantly, some resignedly, some went in response to Crofter Stewart’s beady-eyed stare, but they all went. The debts Innes was waiving amounted to a large sum of money. Ainsley couldn’t understand the old laird—the man was something of a conundrum—putting rents sky-high on one hand, then failing to collect them on the other. Since Mhairi assured her the laird’s mind had not wandered, she could only assume that it must have been severely warped. Twisted. That was a better word.

      As Innes continued to forgive and forget, the Rescinding began to take on a lighter note. A woman admitted to burying a dog along with her husband in the graveyard of the Strone Bridge chapel. ‘Though I know it is forbidden, but he always preferred that beast’s company to mine, and the pair of them were that crabbit, I thought they would be happy together,’ she declared, arms akimbo. Laughter greeted this confession, and Innes earned himself a fat kiss when he promised the dog and the master’s mortal remains would not be torn asunder.

      Whisky flowed, and wine, too, along with the strong local heather ale. Innes was preparing to end the ceremony when a man came forward whom Ainsley recognised as Mhairi’s taciturn brother, the father of Flora, the pretty lass who had been one half of Innes’s escort.

      ‘Donald McIntosh of High Strone farm.’ Expecting another case of rent arrears, Ainsley’s mind was on the banquet, which would be needed to sop up some of the drink that had been taken. She was trying to catch Mhairi’s eye, and was surprised to see the housekeeper stiffen, her gaze fixed on her brother.

      ‘Your father did wrong by my sister for many years,’ Donald McIntosh said.

      ‘Dodds!’ Mhairi protested, but her brother ignored her.

      ‘The laird took my sister’s innocence and spoilt her for any other man. He shamed my sister. He shamed my family.’

      ‘Dodds!’ Mhairi grabbed her brother by the arm, her face set. ‘I loved the man, will you not understand that? He did not take anything from me.’

      ‘Love! That cold-hearted, thrawn old bastard didn’t love you. You were fit to warm his bed, but not fit to bear his name. You were his hoor, Mhairi.’

      Hoor? Shocked, Ainsley realised he meant whore.

      Mhairi paled, taking a staggering step back. ‘It’s true, he didn’t love me, but I loved him. I don’t care if that makes me his hoor, and I don’t know what you think you’re doing, standing here in front of the man’s son. This is a celebration.’

      ‘It’s a Rescinding.’ Donald McIntosh turned back towards Innes. ‘I beg forgiveness for the curse I put upon your family.’

      Along with almost everyone else in the room, Ainsley gasped. Almost everyone else. Felicity, she noticed, was looking fascinated rather than shocked. What Innes thought, she could not tell. ‘What particular curse?’ he asked.

      ‘That the bloodline would fail.’ Donald spoke not to Innes, but to his sister. ‘I had the spell from our mother, though she made me swear not to use it.’

      ‘No. Màthair would never have told you her magic, Dodds McIntosh. No fey wife worth her salt would have trusted a mere man.’

      ‘You’re wrong, Mhairi. Like me, she felt the shame that man brought on our family.’

      Mhairi’s mouth fell open. ‘And now she is dead it cannot be retracted. What have you done?’

      Donald stiffened. ‘I am entitled to be forgiven.’

      ‘And forgiven you shall be,’ Innes said, breaking the tense silence. ‘The potency of the Drummond men is legendary. I refuse to believe that any curse could interfere with it.’

      The mood eased. Laughter once more echoed around the hall, and another supplicant shuffled forward. Stricken, Ainsley barely heard his petition. Until she came to Strone Bridge, she had not considered herself superstitious, but Mhairi’s tireless efforts to appease the wee people and to keep the changelings at bay seemed to have infected her. By some terrible quirk of fate, Dodds McIntosh’s curse had come true. Ainsley felt doubly cursed.

      Faintly, she was aware of Innes bringing proceedings to a close. Mechanically, she got to her feet while he said the final words. It didn’t matter, she told herself. It would matter if she and Innes were truly married, but they were not. Innes did not want a child. He’d