Page 3 of Kilts and Kisses at Highland Hall (Kilts and Kisses #1)

‘How long have you got left to go?’ Claire said, her voice tiny through the car’s speaker system. ‘You must be nearly there now?’

‘Three hours,’ Bex replied with a groan. ‘Remind me again why I decided to drive rather than fly.’

She already knew the answer, of course. If she was going to be in the middle of nowhere, away from tubes and taxis, not to mention everything she loved about London life, then she needed her car to get around.

Unfortunately, that meant an eleven-hour drive.

She had done half of it the day before and had planned on getting up early to finish off the remaining five hours, but then she had overslept, there had been roadworks and diversions, and for the first three hours of the journey, the time on her satnav kept going up rather than down.

Now it was already gone three in the afternoon, but at least she had passed Glasgow and was on the narrow country lanes, finally feeling like she was making decent progress. Besides, the long summer evenings meant there were still hours of daylight ahead of her.

‘I’ve been researching the village where this house is.’ Daisy’s voice took over on the phone. ‘It looks lovely. Very posh. They hold clay pigeon shoots and country balls, that type of thing.’

‘Well, I’m sure that’s lovely for the people who live there. I, however, will not have time to do anything other than pretend I’m a bookkeeper for the next two months. Honestly, the more I think about it, the madder I get. But at least it’s pretty. Very pretty.’

Pretty was probably the biggest understatement for what she was seeing.

It was stunning. Breathtaking even. Whichever window she looked out of, all she could see was miles and miles of constantly changing greenery stretching out in every direction.

One moment she was driving through undulating hills; the next, it was long, tundra-like plains, and only a couple of miles later, the green had been replaced entirely by the sight of the sea, pale blue and glinting with sunlight off in the distance.

‘That’s not the only thing,’ Daisy continued. ‘The place you’re staying at, you said it was called Highland Hall, right?’

‘That’s right, why?’

‘Well, I looked that up too and?—’

‘What the hell!’ Bex slammed on the brakes. Her pulse soared as the car skidded on the stony road and came to a stop only half a foot away from disaster.

‘Bex? Is everything okay?’

‘Has something happened?’

Even though Bex could hear the worry in her friends’ voices, she couldn’t reply straight away. Her pulse was still sky high, and she needed to catch her breath. Slowly, she loosened her grip on the steering wheel and managed to choke out an answer.

‘Sheep,’ she said. ‘Lots and lots of sheep.’

* * *

Never before had Bex known sheep to put her in such a foul mood.

Normally the only times she saw them were out of the windows of trains or in the fields around Wildflower Lock, and she loved to watch the little bouncing lambs leaping around without a care in the world.

But these sheep weren’t in a field. They were on the road, and rather than leaping, they were trudging forwards as if they were completely oblivious to the fact that this was a road with traffic on and people in cars who needed to be somewhere.

After apologising to the girls for scaring them, then opening up the camera so they could see what she was having to face, Bex hung up the phone and got out of the car in search of any sign of a farmer or someone she could yell at.

But if there was someone there she couldn’t see them.

So she returned to her vehicle, flicked her audiobook on and tried not to get any more wound up at the massive inconvenience.

Finally, after nearly forty minutes, the sheep filtered off the road and into one of the fields.

‘Okay, time to make up some of that lost time,’ Bex said, pushing her foot down on the accelerator.

After her flat, her car was her biggest purchase, and she had spent even longer choosing it.

She had wanted something sporty and sleek, but which also had enough space to take all the girls, including Claire’s daughter, away for weekends.

And so she had finally picked a four-door coupé that ticked all those boxes.

Unfortunately, as she weaved down a gently sloping hill and saw a sign at the side of the road, she realised there was one criterion that she definitely hadn’t considered when choosing a car.

‘Someone somewhere is having a very big laugh at my expense,’ she said as she cut the engine, climbed out of the car and walked a little way down the road. Her stomach plummeted at the sight in front of her.

Of course, Bex had heard of fords before.

She was an intelligent woman. She had probably driven through one or two of them with her parents when they had gone on holiday to the Cotswolds, but she had never driven through one herself and certainly not in her own car.

Her own, expensive, low-to-the-ground car.

She looked at the body of water in front of her. It was slow flowing, but definitely flowing. A river, not a puddle, and probably around ten feet wide. Though it didn’t matter how wide it was; what mattered was how deep it was, and that wasn’t something she could tell.

‘Marvellous, just bloody marvellous,’ she said as she turned around, shaking her head.

Back in the car, she checked the satnav to see if there were any other routes, and when one appeared, her chest lightened with relief until she noticed that it added another two hours to the journey.

Two hours. And what if there was another ford on that route, too?

She would find herself in exactly the same position.

But then, if she flooded the car, she would be in even more trouble.

What she needed was some way to work out exactly how deep the water was without risking the car.

Which meant there was only one thing she could do.