Page 19 of Kilts and Kisses at Highland Hall (Kilts and Kisses #1)

Any reservations Bex had about telling Lorna and the others what her role at the castle was had faded; it was clear that everyone in the village knew everyone else’s business anyway. She’d rather they heard it from her than have them think she was being all coy and secretive.

‘Apparently his wife, Winny, used to do most of the accounts, but I’m guessing she’s not around any more?’

‘Winny?’ Eilidh raised her eyebrows. ‘She hasn’t been around for almost twenty-five years.’

‘What?’ Bex nearly spat out the wine she was drinking.

The person who had been in charge of the accounts that she now had to sort out had died nearly twenty-five years ago?

Who had been doing it since then? Certainly not Fergus.

No wonder she had so much of a mess to clear up.

It was a miracle he hadn’t gone bankrupt.

Then again, it was just him in that place and from what she had seen, he didn’t have much in the way of expensive taste.

Unless you considered dog food, because she doubted the raw meat and tins she had seen in the kitchen came cheap.

‘Yup. She passed away when I was in primary school. I remember it,’ Eilidh continued. ‘We all went to the funeral.’

‘I remember,’ Niall said. ‘We stood next to each other, and you had to share my coat because you insisted you weren’t cold.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ Eilidh replied, smiling.

‘Oh, I do,’ he said, grinning back.

As the old friends continued their trip down memory lane, Bex thought about the implications of what they were telling her.

At a guess, she would say that Fergus was around eighty.

Meaning he would have been around fifty-five when his wife had died.

Fifty-five wasn’t that old. Not by today’s standards, in any way.

‘Has Fergus been on his own this whole time?’ she asked. ‘Over twenty years?’

‘Yup,’ Lorna said, taking a sip of her drink. ‘I mean, Duncan is the one who knows all the dates. He grew up at the lodge and everything, before our parents married. He would remember Winny’s passing better than anyone else. I think he and his dad went in the car with Fergus to the funeral.’

So Bex had been right in thinking that the two of them were very close, but it was the questions about Fergus that were continuing to occupy her thoughts.

‘There must have been other women in Fergus’s life since then though?’ she asked, still not able to drop the subject. ‘Has he not had other girlfriends? Did he not think about marrying again?’

‘Trust me,’ Lorna said, ‘he would have no problem. Anyone over the age of fifty still believes he’s the most dashing man around, if you can believe that. All because he was super-hot when he was our age, apparently.’

Bex could hardly picture it, but she kept that thought to herself.

‘I guess he must have really loved Winny,’ she said, trying to imagine what it would be like to choose a lifetime of loneliness than let anyone else into your heart.

Would Duncan feel that way, she wondered?

If he’d thought Katty was the love of his life – which he obviously had, given that he’d proposed – would he give up on finding anyone else now?

No, that didn’t seem right – not when he was still so young.

Her eyes involuntarily drifted to Katty, who was still sipping her wine.

It hadn’t been the first time Bex had found herself inadvertently seeking out the ex-fiancée.

For a while, Katty had taken a seat near Moira, but she was now back on her own.

From what Bex had seen, not one person had walked over to her and attempted to make conversation, and she couldn’t help but think it said a lot about Duncan that the others were giving Katty such a wide berth.

‘Oh shit,’ Niall said. Bex swivelled around, wondering what had caused his reaction, only to notice the way Lorna’s cheeks had paled too.

‘This is not good,’ Lorna muttered. ‘Not good at all.’

At first Bex assumed Lorna was looking back at Katty, but following her gaze, she realised instead that she was staring towards the doorway, now blocked by a figure.

A very attractive figure with sandy hair, green-blue eyes and a suspected aroma of pine that unfortunately she couldn’t sense from all the way over here, no matter how much she wanted to.

Bex’s pulse quickened as she tried to swallow the lump that had forced its way up her throat. She had an inkling that their quiet drink was going to become anything but.