Page 20 of A Scottish Lighthouse Escape (Scottish Escapes #9)

Chapter Fifteen

I thought I’d misheard for a moment.

My grandma had been engaged to another man before my grandpa?

Reece nodded at my shocked expression. ‘Aye. It’s true.’

My eyebrows fired up.

‘I was madly in love with her and she with me.’ He glanced up at the tumbling clouds over our heads. ‘That’s why I still think about her and have done over the years. It’s why I regret what happened.’

I shook my head. ‘Well, this has come as a bit of a shock.’

Reece gave me an embarrassed glance. ‘I expect it has. I’m sorry, lass.’

‘Look,’ I faltered, thrown that my late grandmother had never told me anything about this before. ‘Why don’t you come in, Mr Stewart… sorry… Reece, and I’ll make us some tea?’

The older man’s eyes widened with gratitude. ‘Thank you so much. I’d appreciate that.’

I encouraged Bronte on, and she followed Reece and me up the cottage garden path. Reece was taking everything in, examining my late grandparents’ plants and the colour of the front door.

He studied the cottage over my shoulder.

I unlocked the front door. I couldn’t quite believe what he’d just told me. Talk about a bolt out of the blue. My grandma and I had talked about everything, and I’d confided in her about my teenage crushes during the holidays and my hormones raging.

But never once had she mentioned to me that she’d been engaged to another man before she’d met my grandpa. The name Reece Stewart had never passed her lips.

I turned in the hallway to take another look at Reece, but he was unaware I was checking him out. He was too preoccupied, appreciating my late grandfather’s green fingers in the garden. He hesitated at the doorstep.

Bronte leapt inside. ‘Please come in,’ I said to him.

He offered me a gentle smile of gratitude and bowed his head almost reverently as he stepped through the doorway.

His attention turned to my late grandmother’s paintings in the hallway. ‘She was always so very talented,’ he remarked with a wistful air. ‘I don’t think your grandmother realised how great an artist she actually was.’

I beckoned Reece into the sitting room and he took up a seat in one of the armchairs.

My head was brimming with questions. My grandmother had been engaged to someone else before my grandfather? It seemed so unlikely somehow. And why hadn’t she mentioned this before? Had she ever said something to my mum about it? If she had, Mum had certainly never breathed a word to me.

I realised I was staring at him again, with fascinated curiosity.

I supposed it was because he was a connection to my grandma, one that had just erupted out of nowhere.

Another part of her past. ‘How do you take your tea?’ I asked him, trying to visualise him as a young man.

I could picture him now, all long, lean legs and thick hair.

Handsome, in an intense, long-nosed sort of way.

‘Just a dash of milk please.’

I hurried off into the kitchen and busied myself with making the tea. Bronte, meanwhile, had melted. She’d morphed from Satan’s hellhound back into a wriggling ball of fun.

She’d picked up her new, squeaky apple toy, clamped it in her mouth and proceeded to push it against Reece’s leg in an attempt to get his attention and coax him into playing with her.

I kept mulling over thoughts of my grandparents.

It was almost incomprehensible to imagine Tilda with anyone other than my grandfather, let alone contemplating marriage to them. I knew she’d had other boyfriends when she was younger, before settling down with my grandfather, but she’d never mentioned Reece, let alone another engagement.

She and Grandpa Howard had been like two bookends. Even when the odd argument erupted, it would soon blow over with laughter.

They were demonstrative and affectionate, cajoling each other. Just like Joe and I had been. Or so I thought.

I fetched the milk from the fridge and dashed some into Reece’s mug.

I could hear Bronte thumping her toy with her paw.

‘I think we’re friends now,’ he smiled up, with a hint of awkwardness, as I came back into the sitting room.

I handed him his mug of tea. ‘She’s a softie, really. I think she was just trying to protect me.’

Reece gratefully accepted his mug of tea. ‘Well, you can’t be too careful. Thank you.’

‘Would you like a biscuit with that?’

‘No, thank you. My doctor wouldn’t approve.’

I sank down on the sofa opposite Reece, cradling my mug in my hands.

Reece took a long, considered mouthful of his tea and relaxed a little in the armchair.

His fingers, I noticed, were gripping the mug and he delivered a few cautious glances at me from over the top of it.

‘I’m so sorry again for scaring you the other day.

I didn’t mean to.’ He sighed and stared around himself again.

A soft look enveloped his periwinkle blue eyes.

There was that melancholy air about him once more.

‘I’d hoped to be able to talk to her again face-to-face.

I know it’s been a long time, but I wanted to explain to her and apologise.

I owed her that much.’ He drank in the sitting room surroundings, from another couple of paintings lining the walls, to the framed family photos in the sitting room cabinet.

It was a home that had been carved out of nothing by a couple devoted to one another.

Reece craned his neck up to her artwork. ‘She’s everywhere, isn’t she?’

I nodded. ‘They both are.’

Reece eyed me. ‘Do you mind me asking what happened to her?’

I gathered myself. ‘It was a heart attack. Fourteenth March. Very sudden.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He clutched the handle of his mug, more regret flickering through his eyes. ‘And your grandfather?’

‘He passed away five years ago now. A stroke.’

‘My condolences.’

God, I was sick of hearing that phrase, even though I knew people were only being thoughtful and kind.

Reece hunched over and began to ruffle Bronte behind her ears. She nuzzled her nose against his age-spotted hand. You would never have thought she’d been snapping at his heels ten minutes ago. ‘And were they happy together? Your grandparents?’

‘Very. Oh, they had their moments, believe me, but they were devoted to one another and woe betide anyone who tried to come between them.’

A sad ghost of a smile travelled across his face. ‘That’s lovely. I’m glad Tilda was happy. She deserved it.’

That sounded like Reece hadn’t been? Or was I trying to read too much into his words?

I sipped my tea. Outside, the late November sun danced around and through the clouds and onto the water.

‘How did you find out about my grandmother living here?’ I asked him.

‘I found your grandmother on Facebook last year and she gave me her address. We messaged each other from time to time.’ He glanced out of the sitting room window. ‘I was living in Italy– Florence– at the time, when I discovered her on social media.’

My eyes pinged open. Good grief. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about my grandmother– until now. Turned out I’d been wrong. Reece had tracked her down and yet she’d never mentioned anything about this to me.

She had been a keen painter, a lover of hill walking and adored Neil Diamond.

But there had been this other side of her life that I never knew existed.

A combination of shock, admiration and disbelief was firing through me.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but can you tell me what happened? Between you and my grandmother?’

Reece shot a considered, lost look to his right, out of the panoramic sitting room window again. His gaze looked as unsettled as the clouds.

Then he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his wallet.

From it he produced a black and white photograph and handed it across to me.

It was of him and my grandmother up by Edinburgh Castle on a foggy day in what looked like the early sixties, going by my grandma’s long leather boots and short winter coat and Reece’s bushy moustache and collar-length hair.

They were cuddling and laughing at something.

It was a captivating scene, catching them in an intimate moment.

A young couple sharing love. I kept looking down at the photograph and then back up at Reece.

She did look like me in the picture, with her snub nose and riot of tumbling, red curls.

I handed it back to him. ‘It’s a gorgeous photo of both of you. ’

‘That was taken a few weeks before I proposed to her.’

‘So… where did you meet her? What happened?’

Reece slid the photo back inside his wallet.

‘I met your grandmother in nineteen sixty-three. I was twenty and she was eighteen.’ He took a considered gulp of his tea and carried on.

‘I’d gone into the centre of Edinburgh with a few friends, but all they wanted to do was hit the pubs, so I slunk off by myself and decided to visit The Royal Art Gallery instead.

’ Reece rolled his eyes. ‘My parents were horrified that I wanted to become a painter and study fine art. I was studying law at The University of Edinburgh to get my degree, but it was really just to placate them. My heart wasn’t in it. It never was.’

‘I don’t blame you for choosing art instead.’

His lips twitched. ‘My life up until I met your grandmother had been somewhat directionless. I kind of drifted around, not really knowing what my purpose was. My parents were snobs.’ He let out a wry laugh.

‘Och, don’t get me wrong. I loved them but they came from very comfortable families and had very set ideas about things. ’

‘What kind of art do you paint?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘Did paint,’ corrected Reece with a small, sad smile. ‘Iwas more of an abstract artist. Cubism. Pushing the boundaries a bit or so I thought. But I lost my passion for it after what happened between me and your grandmother.’

I eyed him. ‘So, you didn’t pursue it? Your art career, I mean?’