Page 28 of Kilts and Kisses at Highland Hall (Kilts and Kisses #1)

‘That’s an invoice from one of the gamekeepers,’ Duncan said, picking a piece of paper out of the ‘binned’ pile where Bex had put it only a moment before.

‘How do you know?’ Bex asked, squinting. ‘There’s nothing written on it that says that. It’s just a couple of numbers.’

‘There.’ Duncan pointed to a scrawl at the bottom of the page. ‘That’s Turlough’s signature.’

‘God, I thought someone was just trying to make a pen work,’ Bex said, grimacing at her mistake, before picking up the rest of the scraps she had placed in the bin pile. ‘In that case, maybe you could go through these as well.’

They were an efficient team. Impressively so.

With all the obvious rubbish sorted, they were now riffling through the rest. After the first two hours, they had all the ledgers stacked together in one corner of the room, though Bex hadn’t dared open any of them.

If she did, those tears of pure frustration which had been teetering on the edge of release all morning might well appear, and there was no chance she was going to let that happen.

‘Duncan, I’ve found a couple of handwritten notes here,’ she said.

She was crouched at the bottom of a bookshelf, which housed dozens of meaty tomes on farming.

Though trapped between them had been a small stack of papers.

‘They look to be legal things. I don’t think it’s money, but I’m not sure.

It’s got information about hospitals on it?

Correspondence from them to Fergus, I think.

Do we already have a pile for legal stuff? ’

Duncan’s face pinched. ‘Hospitals, you say? That’s weird. I found a notebook in here with a list in it. I wasn’t sure what they were, but come to think of it, they might have been hospitals too.’

‘Can I see?’ Bex asked.

‘Sure.’

He handed her the small leather notebook, open on the first page. There was a long list of names, all of which had been struck through with a single line, leaving them perfectly legible.

‘Edinburgh Royal, Queen Charlotte, Maryfield.’ Bex read the first few aloud, although the list went on.

While she didn’t recognise all of them, she agreed with Duncan that they could well be hospitals.

‘Let’s put this together with the letters I found.

There’s a ton of legal ones too. They can go in the same pile.

That way, Fergus will know they’re all together.

Not that I expect him to look through any of it. ’

It would be helpful if he would though, she thought. Some of the ones that were full of legal jargon may well be to do with loans or invoices, in which case she would need to come back to them later. So maybe it was better if she put those in a pile of their own.

Her thoughts about the old man continually switched between feeling sorry for him – he was obviously incredibly lonely, after all – and being angry and frustrated.

He had access to the type of funds most people could never dream of.

There was really no excuse for letting his accounts get into this type of state.

Just like there was no excuse for the way he had spoken to her about Duncan when he had no idea of the situation.

If he was going to be mad at her for anything, it should be the fact that Ruby very much preferred her to him. That she would understand.

With her thoughts on Fergus, she remembered the jumble of keys he had given her earlier in the day.

‘Can you see if you can unlock the desk drawers?’ she said to Duncan. ‘I’m pretty sure there’s some stuff I need access to in there, but I think Fergus’d be happier if you went through them rather than me.’

‘Sure,’ Duncan said.

Bex held out the keys for him. Yet as Duncan moved to take them from her, his fingertips brushed against her palm.

An electric tingle shot out from the place he touched her, and a rush of heat flooded the rest of her body.

The tiniest of gasps escaped her lips before she stumbled back, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

It was just like the first time they had touched.

Why the hell was her heart beating so damn fast from just touching him? Surely that wasn’t normal? And why the hell was he standing there, staring at her with those swimmable blue-green eyes?

‘Um, it’s that desk,’ she said, pointing across the study and trying to act like her pulse hadn’t suddenly rocketed.

‘You mean the only desk in the room?’ Duncan said, the slightest smirk twisting the corners of his lips.

‘Yes, that’s the one,’ she said.

Aware that her cheeks were now fluorescent, Bex turned around and busied herself with a pile of paper she had already sorted.

Yet even with her back to him, she could feel Duncan’s eyes boring into her.

She could sense that slanted smirk on one side of his face too, and it was sending her stomach into a full Cirque du Soleil routine.

It was just because she had been told to steer clear, she told herself.

That was the reason she was feeling like this.

And it would pass soon enough. She just had to get to know him more.

Most of the men she thought were attractive suddenly became less so when she got to know them.

That would happen with Duncan too. She was sure of it.

As she finally put down the stack of already sorted paper, Duncan got to work on the desk. After a few minutes of fiddling, he spoke again.

‘Got one,’ he said. ‘And it looks like these might actually be useful to you,’ he added, holding out yet another stack of leather-bound ledgers.

‘I knew there would be stuff in there I needed,’ Bex said, careful not to touch Duncan’s hand this time as she took the pile from him.

Despite her desire to leave all the accounts until after the physical sorting had been done, Bex couldn’t help flipping through the top ledger.

Her eyes lit up. Unlike most of the paperwork she had looked through before, these were surprisingly organised.

Blue, black and red ink only, all within the columns, clearly labelled and not the slightest hint of purple anywhere.

She was actually feeling rather happy – until she noticed the date on the top. Her jaw dropped.

‘These are from fifty years ago?’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t possibly have to look at the accounts from fifty years ago!’

She wanted to cry. She was going to have to speak to Nigel about this. This was not a one-person job. An entire team had been called in to settle smaller tasks. What he was asking of her was ridiculous, and she was about to say as much to Duncan when he spoke again.

‘Oh wow,’ he said.

‘What is it? Because if you tell me it’s a hundred-year-old ledger, then that’s it. I’m walking.’

He let out a dry chuckle, but his eyes remained on the items in his hand.

‘No, it’s not that. I just opened the top drawer and it’s mostly old photos and cards,’ he said, pulling out a few faded images.

‘But this one… My grandad used to have a photo just like this in the house, though I didn’t find it until after he’d died.

It was locked away in a drawer, a little like this. ’

He held it out to her.

It was of two young men and a woman standing between them.

From the hint of scenery in the background, it was probably taken somewhere in the grounds, with a view of the loch in the distance.

It was the type of photo where you could feel the joy radiating from the paper.

All three of them were laughing, with heads thrown back and grins so wide their eyes were creased to almost nothing.

Bex squinted. ‘Is that your grandad?’ she asked, pointing to the man on the left. Even with the difference in clothes and the angle he stood at, there was a vague resemblance between the man and Duncan, that came mostly from the height.

‘Aye, that’s my grandad,’ Duncan said. ‘And that’s Fergus.’

‘Fergus? As in this Fergus? Grumpy old Laird Fergus?’

Duncan laughed.

‘That’s the one.’

Bex could hardly believe it. Fergus had once been as dashing as people claimed. In the photo, he wore a flat cap perched jauntily, his wax jacket was clean, and one of his hands was casually in his pocket. With his smile wide and carefree, Bex could barely recognise him.

‘So your grandad and Fergus were friends,’ Bex said, continuing to study the photograph.

‘Apparently, they were very close growing up,’ Duncan said. ‘Grandad was the groundskeeper here until the day he died, but by that time, he and Fergus hadn’t been speaking for years.’

‘What? Why? What happened?’ Bex said. This insight into the laird’s past was substantially more intriguing than all the work that awaited her.

But rather than replying immediately, Duncan let out a long sigh.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But something did.’

‘Yet your grandad carried on working here? For Fergus? Living in the lodge?’

‘I think Fergus knew that no one could do the job better than Grandad, and Grandad knew he’d never find a job he loved more than this.

And he didn’t want to uproot Mum. That was another crazy relationship.

Apparently no one even knew Grandad was seeing anyone, then he turned up with this young woman and announced that she’d had his baby and they were a family now.

Well, it wasn’t a family that lasted long.

She left when Mum was only two, leaving Grandad to be Mum’s sole parent.

Didn’t even stay in touch. I think that’s part of why Fergus let them stay.

You know, she’d already had a lot of change to deal with. ’

‘Wow.’

Bex knew lots of families had complications, but her heart went out to Duncan’s grandfather. To have lost his best friend and then for his wife to walk out and leave him with a toddler must have been one hell of a lot to deal with.

‘Who’s the girl?’ Bex asked, looking at the third person in the photo. Fergus had his arm slung around the woman’s shoulder, while Duncan’s grandfather had his hand around her waist.

‘No idea,’ Duncan said, frowning.

‘Do you think maybe she’s the reason they fell out?’ Bex was weaving a story in her head, with these three people as the main characters. ‘Maybe they were both in love with her?’

She could see it now, the beautiful young woman, torn between the dashing laird and the good-hearted groundskeeper. It was the type of story novels were based on.

‘I guess it’s possible,’ Duncan replied quietly.

‘Aren’t you interested in knowing more?’

‘Not really.’

It took Bex a mere heartbeat to realise why Duncan’s voice had taken on a distant quality. The instant it did, guilt stirred through her.

Two childhood best friends, torn apart because they loved the same woman.

The story she had described was pretty much exactly what had happened with Duncan, Archie and Katty.

And yet here she was talking about it like it would be a fun, exciting piece of gossip.

Silence swilled around the room. Bex found herself desperate to reach out and take Duncan’s hand.

To apologise for her thoughtlessness. And yet she suspected he would hate that. Hate her feeling sorry for him.

‘Come on,’ she said, attempting to break the tension. ‘Let’s set those aside in case Fergus wants them later. We’ve got plenty to get through. Unless you’re already tired from moving books and need a rest?’

He lifted his gaze and quirked an eyebrow at her.

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve got enough stamina for days. I’ll show you if you like.’

‘Perfect,’ she replied, unable to grin back. ‘Because I need that filing cabinet open next.’