Newlyweds of Convenience

Inverness, and cleverly gave each room a character of its own just by careful choice of colour, so the bedroom was warm and restful, the bathroom cool and calm and the kitchen fresh and bright.

Having done much of the preparation in advance, it didn’t take her that long to slap on some paint, and she spent the rest of the time in the kitchen garden, where she’d started by clearing that one small patch. Mallory was surprised at how addictive she found it, and she got quite ambitious. She planted potatoes and beans, leeks and purple sprouting broccoli, peas and spinach, and once they were in she kept clearing one patch at a time, marvelling at what she found. There were great clumps of parsley and mint that had gone to seed, coarse rhubarb and chard, and a fine collection of old fruit bushes-blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries-that had grown woody.

Every night she would pore over the book she had bought, but the best advice came from Dougal, one of the roofers, who turned out to be a keen gardener. Dougal had a seamed, weathered face, and could obviously hardly bear to see her making mistakes. Every chance he could, he would climb down the scaffolding and stand over her in the garden, sucking his teeth and shaking his head.

‘You’ll no be getting a decent crop of potatoes now,’ he told her. ‘You’re much too late to be putting them in.’ He wagged a stubby finger at her. ‘Next year, now, you start in February.’

Mallory listened humbly. Dougal told her how to chit seed potatoes, how to grow carrots from seed, how to prepare soil, and he identified all sorts of plants that she had thought were weeds and had been planning to dig up.

‘It’s like Gardeners’ Question Time whenever I come in here,’ grumbled Torr one day, watching Dougal return reluctantly to the roof after finishing his mug of tea. ‘He spends more time in the garden than he does on the roof!’

Mallory pulled off her gardening gloves and put a hand to the small of her back. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without him,’ she said. ‘I can tell he thinks I’m too silly for words, but he’s showed me how to do all sorts of useful things. I’m going to start early so I can grow a really good variety next year.’

‘Don’t put in too much,’ Torr said. ‘Your year will be up before next summer. There’s no point in planting vegetables if you’re not going to be here to eat them.’

Without giving Mallory a chance to reply, he walked off, leaving her to stare after him in consternation. They had been getting on so well recently that his blunt reminder was like a slap in the face. It wasn’t that she had forgotten that she would be leaving in a year’s time, or that she had changed her mind, but she just hadn’t been thinking about it. She hadn’t been thinking about Steve either. She had just been painting and digging and walking Charlie and not thinking about anything very much. In spite of all her hard work, it had been a strangely restful time.

Now Torr had unsettled her again. She didn’t want to think about leaving, not yet. Much better to take each day at a time, Mallory told herself, and let the future take care of itself for now. She would just keep on tending the garden, and helping Torr with the mammoth job of bringing Kincaillie back to life, and she would worry about what she was going to do when the year was up.

Dougal and his fellow roofers drove back to the pub in Carraig every night. It seemed a long drive to do, there and back every day, but when Mallory asked Dougal if they wouldn’t rather camp at Kincaillie, he told her they had didn’t like to rough it unless they absolutely had to.

Absurdly, she felt almost hurt that the men would drive all the way to Carraig rather than stay at Kincaillie. ‘It’s not as if it’s that bad,’ she said to Torr when she told him about it as he came into the kitchen at the end of a rare sunny day, having washed and changed.

‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you?’ he said, with a somewhat sardonic glance.

Mallory was stirring a sauce on top of the range. She tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pan and rested it on the edge.

‘You’ve got to admit that things have improved since we arrived,’ she said, turning to lean back against the welcome warmth of the range. It might be May, but even when the sun shone the heat rarely penetrated the thick castle walls.

Torr let his eyes travel slowly round the kitchen, noting as if for the first time how much things had changed. Music played from small speakers, and appetising smells drifted from the pot on the range. Mallory was a bright figure, leaning there in jeans and a scarlet cardigan, her dark hair tumbling to her shoulders and her face vivid.

The walls had been freshly painted in a bold colour. She had made fabric blinds that cut out the blackness outside and made the whole room seem cosier. The armchairs in front of the fire were covered by new brightly coloured throws, and the table between them was scattered with books and magazines. Now that they had a standard light each they could actually read them at night now, while the music played and the fire burned low.

Given what a huge room it was, it had taken surprisingly little for Mallory to change the whole atmosphere.

‘You’re right,’ he said as his eyes returned to hers. ‘Things have improved a lot.’

Reaching into the fridge, he poured them both a glass of wine. ‘Seriously,’ he said as handed one to Mallory, ‘it all looks great.’

She took the compliment with a word of thanks. ‘Do you really like it?’ she asked almost shyly. It was always so hard to know what Torr was really thinking.

‘I do. I can’t believe the difference you’ve made.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘There’s no need to thank me. It’s just…’

‘Part of the deal. I know,’ Torr finished for her. ‘Still, you’ve worked really hard, and now everything is so much more comfortable. I want you to know that I appreciate it.’

Mallory was pleased, but his praise made her feel awkward at the same time. ‘You’re working just as hard,’ she pointed out, thinking of the long hours he spent in the rest of the castle. ‘It’ll just take longer for you to see any real results.’

‘That’s for sure,’ he said, with a brief, wry smile. ‘But it’s different for me. I’ve got an investment in what I’m doing because my future’s here.’

‘I’m investing in paying my debts,’ Mallory reminded him. ‘Besides,’ she went on, trying to lighten the atmosphere, ‘working is the only way to stay warm round here!’

Torr looked at her. ‘It’s not quite the only way,’ he said slowly, and even though she resisted, letting her gaze skitter desperately round the kitchen, something dragged it back to his until brown eyes and blue eyes locked into place so definitely that she almost expected to hear a click.

There were other ways to keep warm, of course there were, but as she stood there staring back at Torr, the only one Mallory could think of was going to bed and making love. What was more, she was convinced that Torr was thinking exactly the same thing. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but the air between them was suddenly tight, so tight that her breath shortened. To her dismay, she could picture it all too vividly-falling into bed together, kissing hungrily, hands fumbling for each other. Mallory felt warm just thinking about it.

More than warm, in fact.

If he suggested it, what would she say?

She would say yes.

The realisation made Mallory’s heart jerk, and she moistened her lips. ‘Like what?’ she asked huskily. Invitingly? She couldn’t decide whether she wanted Torr to think that or not.

‘Dancing, for instance,’ he said.

Dancing? Mallory felt as if he had chucked a bucket of water over her. He had been thinking about dancing when she…No, don’t even go there, she told herself fiercely, but it was too late to stop the flush of mortification staining her cheeks. Good Lord, short of hanging out a neon sign she could hardly have made it more obvious that she had been thinking about something completely different!

‘Are you suggesting a tango round the table?’ she managed, pleased to hear that her voice sounded almost normal, with just the expected hint of surprise at the idea of Torr dancing at all.

The corner of his mouth flickered in appreciation of the picture. ‘No, I’m not really the tango type,’ he said. ‘I forgot to tell you that when I went in to Carraig yesterday everyone was talking about the ceilidh on Saturday. They made a point of inviting us along.’

‘A caylee?’ Mallory echoed doubtfully, trying to echo his pronunciation. ‘That’s Scottish country dancing, isn’t it?’