Underneath The Mistletoe Collection. Marguerite Kaye

estate was less than twenty miles from here. ‘She never returned to Scotland,’ he added, presumably in response to her sceptical look.

      ‘Don’t you want to know if she’s happy?’

      Innes shrugged dismissively. ‘I never sought her out, and she has never, to my knowledge, tried to get in touch with me for the same reason. Guilt,’ he clarified. ‘She will not wish to be reminded of those times any more than I do, and I have done enough damage, without dragging it all up for her. I know you think that’s hard, Ainsley, but it’s best left alone.’

      ‘You are very sure of that,’ she said.

      ‘Yes. That’s not arrogance. I’ve had fourteen years to make sure.’ He pushed his hair back from his face and smiled very wearily. ‘You do understand, Ainsley, this is how it has to be? I won’t—I won’t— I will sleep in my own bedchamber from now on.’

      ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

      He took a step towards her, then stopped. ‘I must go and speak to Robert. Don’t wait dinner for me.’

      He turned away, but she caught his arm. ‘Innes, I— Thank you for telling me. I won’t— I promise I won’t make it difficult for you.’

      He enveloped her in a fierce hug. ‘I never thought you would. I only want— I’m sorry.’

      She watched him go, hurtling down the scar in the cliff that would be the new road, allowing the tears to run down her cheeks now that he could no longer see her. She stood for a long time, staring out at the Kyles of Bute, her mind numb, her heart aching. Then she scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve and drew a shaky breath. Innes had done so much to help free her from the burden of her past. She had until the end of the year to do what she could to return the favour. Which meant she had better make haste if she was going to track down Blanche Caldwell.

       Chapter Twelve

      Dear ‘Anna’,

      Your letter touched my heart. The love you feel for this man shines like a beacon from the page. I do not doubt that, as you say, you have in him found your soul mate. It therefore pains me all the more to tell you that I can see no way for you to have a future with him that could be anything other than troubled. Were you a woman of fewer principles, if you loved this man less, then I would gladly tell you what you so desperately want to hear, that love can triumph over all. But, my dear, this can only happen when that love is equally given and received, and sadly, in your case, it is not. This widower, you have made clear, loves his three children before all else, and these children have made their unequivocal opposition to his proposed marriage to you abundantly clear over a prolonged period. You have done all you can to win them round. Their opposition has increased rather than decreased over time, and now encompasses their dead mother’s family, too. Frankly, if this man loved you as much as you love him, he would have made a stand by now. He will never put you first. The rights and wrongs of this make no difference, ‘Anna’, because you love him too much to endanger his happiness, and if you truly believed that this was with you at the potential cost of his relationship with his children, you would have acted accordingly. That you have turned to me for advice tells its own story, don’t you think?

      It is therefore with profound regret that I am forced to advise you this: you must leave him, for he will never let you go, but nor will he marry you while the situation remains as it is. I hope you will take strength from doing what is right for you. I pray, as I am sure all our readers will, too, that you will find the future happiness that you deserve.

      With my very best wishes,

      Madame Hera

      Ainsley put down her pen and dabbed at her cheeks with her handkerchief. This was one letter that she would not show to Innes. It was now the beginning of December. Having bared his soul, he had retreated like a wounded animal, making it clear that he wanted neither comfort nor further discussion on the subject of Blanche and Malcolm. Or the date of Ainsley’s departure from Strone Bridge, set for the first week in January.

      She had been through the wringer of emotions, from shock to horror, from pity to compassion, sorrow and sadness, jealousy, anger, dejection, but she had not once doubted, since that day at Malcolm’s graveside, that she must leave. Reading over Madame Hera’s advice to ‘Anna’, Ainsley was confronted with how fundamentally her own feelings had changed in the face of Innes’s determination not to allow himself to be reconciled to his past. She had not given up hope of contacting Blanche to help with this, but having had no response to her letter, and with only a few weeks left till the end of the year when she must leave Strone Bridge, Ainsley was not optimistic.

      In one sense, it made no difference. Like ‘Anna’, she had found her soul mate, but unlike ‘Anna’, Ainsley could now see very clearly that her soul mate was not free to love her as she deserved to be loved, and also unlike ‘Anna’, Ainsley had grown to believe that she would settle for nothing less. It was strange and surprising, too, how much less important her inability to bear children had become. It grieved her deeply, but in a sense, she had been forced to acknowledge, she had been hiding behind it, pretending to herself that it was this that prevented her from declaring her love, telling herself that she was making a noble sacrifice in removing herself from Innes’s life when in fact she must have known that it would have made no difference. He would not love her. He would not allow himself to love her. And Ainsley, having experienced second best, was not about to accept it again.

      Lying wide awake and aching with longing at night, she could not decide which was worse: knowing that Innes wanted her so much, or knowing that he did not want her enough. She loved him, but in her time here she had come to love the person she had become, too. She knew he still wanted her, she no longer questioned her own desirability, but she would not use it to push them both into temporarily satisfying a passion that would ultimately make it harder for her to leave.

      She longed more than anything to force Innes to see his past more clearly, but she could not, and the woman who could do so remained incommunicado. So Ainsley concentrated on the one thing she could do to help, her plans for the castle, which today she had decided were finally in an advanced enough state for her to share with Innes. Putting Madame Hera’s correspondence to one side, she hurried to her room to check her toilette. Her dress was of taffeta, printed in autumn colours. The bodice was fitted tightly to her waist, and came to a deep point. The fashionable oval neckline was trimmed with shirring of the same material, and the long sleeves, like the bodice, ended in a sharp point.

      Though it was early December, the sun had a hint of unseasonable warmth as she made her way to the pier in search of Innes. He was in his shirtsleeves. He had lost weight since coming to Strone Bridge. Days spent in the fields and out here in the bay had sculpted his muscles. He would smell of sweat and the sea and the peaty air, and of himself. There was a spot, just where his ribs met, where she liked to rest her cheek and listen to his heartbeat and where she always imagined she could breathe in the essence of him.

      ‘Ainsley? Did you want me?’

      ‘Yes.’ Too late, she heard the longing in her voice. It was no consolation to see it reflected momentarily in his eyes, too. ‘I mean, I was hoping to speak to you,’ she amended hastily. ‘I have something I’d like to discuss with you.’ Innes nodded, pulling his heavy fisherman’s jumper over his shirt. ‘I thought we could go up to the castle,’ she said when he looked at her expectantly. ‘That way we won’t be interrupted.’

      The climb back up helped calm her flutter of nerves. She had worked so hard on her plans, but though she had been sure that it would be a pleasant surprise for Innes, it occurred to her belatedly that she had, by keeping her work a secret, contradicted her own hard-won wish to be consulted.

      She opened the heavy front door with her keys and led the way through to the Great Hall. ‘Do you remember,’ she asked nervously, ‘that I said the solution to Strone Bridge’s economy would prove to be something other than modernising the crofts? In fact, you came up with the idea yourself, that first day you showed me round this