Underneath The Mistletoe Collection. Marguerite Kaye
towards the Isle of Arran, whose craggy peaks were such a contrast to the gentle, greener Isle of Bute, before veering east, round the very tip of the peninsula on which Strone Bridge was built, to follow the coastline north. ‘It’s only about fifteen miles overland from the castle,’ Innes told her, ‘but there’s just the drover’s roads and sheep tracks to follow.’
‘This is much nicer.’ Innes was wearing a thick fisherman’s jumper in navy blue that made his eyes seem the colour of the sea. With his tweed trews and heavy boots, his hair wildly tumbled and his jaw blue-black, for he had not shaved that morning, he looked very different from the man she had met all those weeks, months ago, at the lawyer’s office in Edinburgh. ‘Your London friends would not recognise you,’ she said. ‘You look like a native.’
‘A wild Highlander.’
She smoothed her palm over the roughness of his stubble. ‘Is this for me, then? Is this the day you drag me off to your lair and have your wicked way with me?’
‘Wasn’t last night enough?’
‘Didn’t you say this morning that there was more?’
Innes caught her hand and kissed it. His lips cold on her palm, then his mouth warm on each of her fingers. ‘Are you going to prove insatiable?’
‘Will that be a problem?’
Innes gave a shout of laughter. ‘It’s every man’s dream. There’s plenty more,’ he said, releasing her and hauling at the tiller to straighten the dinghy, ‘but unless you want us to end up on the rocks, maybe not just yet.’
Ainsley shuffled over on the narrow bench. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Wait and see. This is Ardlamont Bay. We are headed to the next one round. You can see now that we’ve not really come that far. If you look straight across, you’ll get a glimpse of the castle’s turrets.’
The breeze began to die down as they headed into St Ostell Bay. Directly across, the Isle of Arran lay like a sleeping lion, a bank of low, pinkish cloud that looked more like mist sitting behind it and giving it a mysterious air. In front of them stretched a crescent of beach, the sand turning from golden at the water’s edge to silver where high dunes covered in rough grass formed the border. Behind, a dark forest made the bay feel completely secluded.
The waters were very shallow. Innes pulled off his boots and stockings and rolled his trews up before jumping in and hauling the boat by the prow. Seeing that the water lapped only as high as his knees, Ainsley, who was wearing a skirt made from the local tweed, pulled off her stockings and shoes and followed suit. The little boat rocked precariously as she jumped over the side, and she gasped with the cold, stumbling as her feet sank into the soft sand.
The tide was on the ebb. Leaving the boat at the water’s edge, they made their way up the beach, Innes carrying the basket that he’d had Mhairi pack. There was not a trace of a breeze. The sun blazed down on them, giving the illusion of summer. The air was heady with salt and the scent of the pine trees. Shaking out her dripping skirts, Ainsley stopped to breathe it in, gazing around her with wonder. ‘It’s just beautiful.’
‘I’m glad you like it.’
They deposited the hamper and their shoes in the shelter of a high dune before picking their way along the stretch of the sands. ‘I like your Highland outfit,’ Innes said. ‘I’m not the only one who would be unrecognisable to their friends.’
Ainsley’s skirt was cut short, the hem finishing at her calf, in the local style, which gave her considerably more freedom of movement. She wore only a thin petticoat beneath, not the layers that were required to give fullness to her usual gowns, and a simple blouse on top, with a plaid. ‘It took me hours of practice to get this right,’ she said. ‘You see how it is folded to form these pockets? The local women have their knitting tucked into them. They can knit without even looking, have you noticed?’
‘Are you planning on making me a jersey?’
‘Good grief, no. I’ll wager Mhairi knitted that one.’
‘She did.’ Innes caught her as she stumbled, and tucked her hand into his. They headed down to the shoreline where the sand was harder packed and easier to walk on, but he did not release her. The wavelets were icy on her toes. In the shallows, flounders rippled under the sand. Spoots, the long, thin razor clams, blew up giveaway bubbles. At the western tip of the beach, a river burbled into the sea. ‘The Allt Osda,’ Innes said. ‘There’s often otters here. I don’t see any today.’
It was only then that she realised he must have come here as a boy. He talked about his childhood so rarely, it was easy to forget that he must have a host of memories attached to all these beautiful places, must have sailed around that coastline countless times. It was obvious, when she thought about it. The way he handled the boat. The fact that he’d navigated almost without looking. As they followed the river upstream on banks where the sand became dotted with shale, Ainsley puzzled over this. She still had no idea what haunted him, but she was certain something did.
The river narrowed before twisting onto higher ground. They crossed it, Innes holding her close as her feet slid on the weed-covered rocks, his own grip sure. It was odd, knowing him so well in some ways yet knowing so little of his past. Strange, for they had shared so much last night, yet she had no idea whatsoever right now of what he might be thinking, no idea of the memories he associated with this place, save they could not be bad. No, definitely not bad. He was distant but not defensive, simply lost in his thoughts.
It was a different ache, she felt. Not the sharp pang of feeling excluded, but something akin to nostalgia. Like pressing her nose against a toyshop as a child and seeing all the things she could not have. Silly. Fanciful. Wrong. It was not as if Innes had any more idea of what she was thinking after all. Nor cared. She caught herself short on that thought. Last night had been a revelation, but it was fun and pleasure, nothing more. Surprising as it was, this discovery that she could be so uninhibited, that the body she had been so ashamed of could be the source of such delight, she would do well not to read anything more into it. She and Innes were, as luck would have it, extremely well matched physically. No, it was not luck. That connection had been evident right from the start. And that was all it was. She’d better remember that.
* * *
Innes left her to unpack the basket while he went into the forest in search of wood. The sun was so warm, and the dune in which they sat so sheltered, that Ainsley could see no need for a fire, but when she said so, he told her she would be glad of it when she had had her swim.
‘You were teasing me,’ she said later, watching him as he made a small pit in the sand and lined it with stones. ‘The water is freezing.’
Innes began to kindle the sticks. ‘That’s why we need the fire.’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘Do you want to learn?’
Ainsley looked at the sea. Turquoise-blue, and, she had to admit, extremely alluring, with the sun sparkling on the shallows, the little wavelets making a shushing noise. Then she remembered the shock of cold on her feet when they had first landed. ‘No,’ she said decisively. ‘Perhaps another day, when it’s warmer.’
Innes, feeding bigger sticks to the small flame, shook his head. ‘It’s nearly September, the end of the summer—it doesn’t get much warmer, nor much colder, either.’ He settled a larger piece of wood on the fire, before joining her on the blanket. ‘We used to...’
The fire sparked. Innes put his arms around his knees, staring out at the sea. She waited for him to change the subject, as he always did when he stumbled on a memory, but he surprised her. ‘Malcolm and I,’ he said. ‘We used to come here the first day of the New Year to swim. It was our own personal ritual, after the Hogmanay celebrations.’
‘A cleansing?’ Ainsley joked. ‘Another form of a fresh start?’
‘Aye, the Drummonds are fond of those, aren’t they?’ Innes said ruefully. ‘Funnily enough,