mix of everything. Everyone. Grizzled farmers, kids with fairy floss, old ladies in wheelchairs. Gorgeous young things kitted to the nines in full dressage gear ready for the equestrian events. Kids in bathing costumes, obviously torn between beach and fair. A clown on stilts lurching from car to car and using the bonnets of the cars to steady himself.
The clown ended up right by them as they parked, and he lurched a little more, made a rush and hit their trailer. By the time they emerged he was dusting himself and staggering to his feet, pushing himself up against their pumpkin. Priscilla was almost as high as he was.
‘You hurt that pumpkin and you’re dead meat, Jake Cameron,’ Susie told him, clearly unmoved by clowns tumbling into her trailer. ‘If there’s so much as a blemish on my pumpkin, it’s disqualified.’
‘Hi, Susie,’ the clown said, removing a bulbous nose. ‘Great to see you, too.’
‘I didn’t know you rode stilts.’
‘I don’t,’ Jake said morosely. ‘But the kids’ schoolteacher asked for volunteers and the twins volunteered me. It’s not going to work. The kids have been coaching me for weeks and all that’s going to happen is that I break my neck. Who’s going to fix me up then, I want to know?’
‘Kirsty’s really good at broken spines,’ Susie said, and grinned. ‘Or failing that, she’s specially trained in palliative care. If you die you’ll die in the best of hands.’ She turned to Hamish, who was feeling vaguely better that he wasn’t the only ridiculously clad person here. ‘Hamish, this is Dr Jake Cameron. Jake’s my brother-in-law. Jake and Kirsty are Dolphin Bay’s doctors.’
‘Hey!’ Jake said, holding out a red-gloved, vast-fingered paw. ‘You’re the new earl. Welcome to Dolphin Bay, mate. You want to find a beer?’
Beer sounded fantastic to Hamish-but Susie’s hand was on his arm and she was holding on like he wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Hamish is due at the opening ceremony in ten minutes.’
‘No beer until you’ve done your duty,’ Jake said sympathetically. ‘But me… I’ve been all round the fairground on these damned stilts, risking life and limb at every step. I’ve added local colour for all I’m worth and I’m done. Off duty. Beer it is.’
‘So who looks after the kids when they fall off the Ferris wheel?’ Susie demanded.
‘Heaven forbid,’ Jake said. ‘But Kirsty’s official medical officer for the day. She’s taken the pledge for the next few months so I’m a free man.’
‘Jake…’ Susie said, and stopped. There was a pause. A pregnant pause. ‘She’s taken the pledge… Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
Jake replaced his nose. Fast. ‘Whoops,’ he said, backing off. ‘No, I didn’t say that. Gotta go. Take care of your earl.’
‘I will,’ Susie said, but still looking very oddly indeed at her brother-in-law. ‘Where’s Kirsty?’
‘Avoiding you, I suspect,’ Jake said. ‘See you.’ And he took himself off like a man hunted.
‘What was that about?’ Hamish asked, watching the very speedy retreat of the scarlet and purple patchwork clown.
‘Oh, if she is…’ Susie said. ‘How can I go home?’ She caught herself. ‘No. I must. Business. Let’s get you to the stage.’
‘Do I really need to?’
‘Of course you need to,’ she said, astonished. ‘Everyone plays their part. You’re part of this community now, Hamish Douglas, like it or not, and at least we’re not asking you to say your speech while you’re wearing stilts.’
His speech was astonishing all by itself.
The sensation of being piped onto the stage, of every face in the fairground straining to see him, of a gasp of approval as he finally reached the dais and the sound of the pipes fell away…
Susie was right, he thought, appreciating the drama of the situation. If Angus had done this for the last forty years, this small ceremony would be sorely missed-and how much worse it would be because Angus was dead.
Times changed. The time of having a laird in Castle Douglas was over, and people had to accept it, but at least he could do as Susie suggested now. He could play his part.
Speech. He had to make a speech. Not a ‘take over the company’ sort of speech, not now, but something with, God help him, emotion.
Just this once.
And in the end, the words came.
‘I can’t replace my Uncle Angus,’ he told the crowd, tentative at first but growing surer as he saw by their smiles that just standing up here in the right tartan was enough to plug the void. ‘I can’t replace Lord Angus Douglas, Earl of Loganaich. I don’t want to. But the house of Douglas has been associated with Dolphin Bay for so long that the connection will never die. As long as Castle Loganaich stands, we’ll remember the link between castle and town. We’ll remember the friendship, the love, the good times and the bad. Lord Angus’s death was a low point but he lived a full life with his beloved Deirdre, both of them surrounded by this town full of their friends.’ He hesitated.
‘Plus the odd monarch in the bathrooms,’ he added, and there was a ripple of delighted laugher. Most people here had at least heard of Queen Vic.
But Hamish hadn’t yet finished. He was on a roll. Maybe he could be a lord after all. ‘Angus’s legacy remains in the laughter and the camaraderie I’m seeing here,’ he told them. ‘Angus would want-Angus would insist-that life goes on and that everyone here enjoy themselves to the full. So I, Hamish Douglas, ninth Earl of Loganaich, make this my first public decree. That this fair is officially open and that everyone here proceed to have a very good time. And after the pumpkin judging… As Lord Douglas, I decree that everyone here take home a slab of pumpkin so I don’t get landed with pumpkin pie for the rest of my life.’
Hooray. He’d done it. There was cheering and more laughter. The pipes started up again and Hamish made his way off the stage to find Susie smiling at him through tears.
‘Oh, Hamish, that was wonderful.’
‘There’s no need to cry,’ he said abruptly and turned away. Drat, he was almost teary himself.
His laughter faded. He’d almost been enjoying himself but tears always did this. They snapped him right back to dreary reality. Tears in a situation like this were ridiculous. And now, if Susie not only cried but infected him with it…
No!
‘Pumpkin judging,’ someone yelled. ‘We’re waiting on the Douglas pumpkin.’
‘Ooh.’ Susie’s tears were gone in an instant and she turned to a middle-aged lady beside her. ‘Harriet, can you take Rose for a bit?’ She thrust her baby forward, but Rose obviously knew the lady who Hamish recognised as the postmistress. He’d stopped and asked directions from her when he’d arrived.
‘Come on.’ Susie was clutching his hand and towing him through the crowd and people were laughing and parting to let them through. ‘We’ve got a date with destiny-right now.’
Their pumpkin won. It was the fair’s biggest pumpkin, with trophy and certificate to prove it. The second biggest was entered by a withered old man who didn’t seem the least bit upset about losing.
Or maybe he did. He laughed and cheered with the rest of them when the pumpkins were weighed, but as the trophy was given to a flushed and triumphant Susie, the elderly man turned to Hamish and an errant tear was rolling down his wrinkled cheek.
More tears!
‘He knew, dammit,’ the old man said, and he reached out and wrung Hamish’s hand so hard that it hurt. ‘Your uncle was the best mate a man could have. He knew he’d beaten me this year, damn him. He knew he was a winner. I wouldn’t have wanted him to go any other way but hell, I miss him.’ He sniffed and his wife darted forward and hugged him and led him off to the beer tent.
Susie came down from the dais, clutching her trophy and certificate, and she watched him go and sniffed again.
‘I need a hanky,’ she said, helpless with her hands full, and Hamish was forced to find his-from his sporran-and
