for Colin’s comfort and well-being.
“Find anything?”
He started at the sound of his sister’s voice and turned to see her framed in the narrow doorway at the top of the stairs. He must have been completely lost in his own thoughts not to have heard her come up. “All the dust you could want. My mother’s out-of-date dresses. A few pieces of ugly furniture.”
Cora wrinkled her nose, climbing the rest of the way up to join him. “So I’m to assume you dinna find a stash of gold tucked in the rafters?”
“I’d be halfway to London by now if that were the case.”
“Honestly, I doona know what happened. Papa spent hours each day wandering the estate, and then he’d hie away in his studio for half the night. He swore that he was working on something important and that we were no’ to disturb him. He even locked the door so I couldn’a sneak up. I still canna believe the studio was empty.”
Not just the studio. Everything was empty. Colin’s house was empty of anything of value. His mind was empty of a way to fix it. His heart was empty of the love of his chosen bride, and unless something drastic happened in the next two days, his future would be empty of promise.
He shook his head, looking over Cora’s shoulder out the small window that offered up a small, framed view of the estate. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
Cora looked up from the yellowed fabric of his mother’s gowns. “What?”
“A man spends his entire career painting portraits and yet he left nothing behind of his own life. No portraits of him, or even the old landscapes showing his childhood home. None of my mother, or yours, or even Gran. There were a few of me, but that was back when he was perfecting his art, and most of those were painted over. It was almost as if he was never here at all.”
Cora clearly didn’t know what to make of his maudlin mood. Holding out an arm, she said, “Why doona we go have a nice cup o’tea with Gran before the pair of us catches our death up here.”
Fifteen minutes later, with hot tea still warming his belly, he stood by the terrace door beside Gran. “If you were any sort of grandmother at all, you’d have the perfect plan for me to convince Beatrice of my intentions.”
She chuckled, her gaze on the rippled surface of the pond. “Would that I could, lad. Sometimes, no matter our intentions, things can gang agley. We have to work whit what we have. And at the moment, we have naught but one another.”
“Thanks to Father.”
“Judge not lest ye be judged,” she said, lifting her wrinkled brow. “I think ye forget, Colin, that yer father never set out to harm the ones he loved. Take it from an auld soul: It doesn’a do any good ta hate a man who has left this world ahint.”
“On the contrary. It gives me a target for my anger. If we lose this place—”
“Then we lose this place. It’s a great pile of stone, now, isn’t it? The only thing that matters is that we doona lose one another. And that be including yer father’s memory.”
A damn sight easier said than done. It seemed that everything he ever wanted in life had been jeopardized. How could he possibly forgive his father when he was on the cusp of losing it all?
Gran put a hand to his back, rubbing it like he was a child. “I think yer forgetting who yer father truly was. So here it is: I’m prepared to give up this old gusty place if it means ye’ll have yer life’s love. But what I’m not willing to give up is yer fondness for yer da’s memory.”
“I doona know if that’s still possible, Gran.”
“We’ll see about that.” She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands back and forth over her slender arms. “Ye know, there’s no better way to know a man’s soul than to walk in his footsteps for a day.”
Colin scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Gran, I appreciate the thought, but I have absolutely no intention of following my father’s path. In fact, I have made a point of
“And see now where that’s gotten ye, lad.”
“Actually,” he said, making an effort not to grind his teeth, “it got me quite far, until this mess yanked me back. Which, I feel compelled to point out, was entirely of his doing.”
She clucked her tongue, shaking her head from side to side. “Ye’ve always been harsh where yer da’s concerned. No’ without reason, I ken. But have you acknowledged, lad, that ye’d have never met yer lass if it weren’t for him?”
It was true, damn it. Colin dipped his head in reluctant agreement. Nothing else would have ever put him in the same room as Beatrice. And even if it had, the only reason she had given him even a moment’s notice was because of her fascination with his father.
The irony was rich indeed. His father was single-handedly responsible for both Colin’s love and heartache. He had simultaneously brought Beatrice to Colin and torn her from him.
Impressive, really.
“Oh, Colin, what’s an old woman ta do whit ye? Go. Walk the trails leading to the west. Frederick set out every morning for the foothills, no matter the rain or chill. I think ye need a different perspective, and sometimes that’s only ta be had among the forest. Ye never know when the fairies will whisper to ye.”
He doubted a trek through the estate in the dead of winter was going to bring anything more than frostbite. But he had been pacing like a caged lion in the house for days. There was not a room unsearched, no cupboard unopened. He was out of ideas, out of patience, and almost out of time.
“Perhaps I will.” Offering her a perfunctory kiss on her soft, wrinkled cheek, he strode to the front door, retrieved his greatcoat and hat, and set off toward the tree line where a narrow trail split the vegetation. The wind was vicious, but at least it had stopped raining last night, leaving the rocky path muddy but passable.
The cold was invigorating, clearing the muddled cobwebs from his mind. He took Gran’s advice, following the path to the west, away from the small loch and toward the foothills rising upward into the mist. He used to come this way when they first moved in, a young adolescent exploring his new domain. From the rolling meadow filled with wildflowers in the spring to the old gamekeeper’s cottage with its dilapidated thatched roof and river- rock chimney, to the crystal clear stream that swept through the property before dumping into the small loch not far from the house.
He might not have been born here, and he might not have even lived here for much of the past two years, but it was a part of him. It was home, more than any other place on earth. He loved it here and could scarce imagine anyone but his family calling it home.
The trail sloped up and to the left, delving deeper into the towering trees. He kept a steady pace, his boots hitting the rocky earth at an almost rhythmic pace. The bare, spindly branches extended over him in a weblike canopy, shielding him from the worst of the wind, but the bitterness of the day still chilled the exposed skin of his face.
His father had taken this walk nearly every day, Gran had said. Why? What had the land held for him? Perhaps he had been soaking it in. Enjoying the last of his time as master of the hard-won estate and the prosperity that he had earned and lost in the space of a decade and a half.
Before anyone else knew the dire state of their finances, he had already been saying good-bye.
Colin kicked a stone, sending it flying through the underbrush. A warning might have been nice. The selfishness of it all was hard to comprehend and impossible to forgive. Damn it all. This walk wasn’t having the intended effect. His breath came out in abbreviated puffs, and despite the cold, sweat trickled down his back.
He was about to turn around to head back when the stone chimney of the gamekeeper’s cottage came into view, its gray rock nearly blending in with the clouded skies behind it. It was probably best that he stop to rest before he soaked through his clothes and caught his death.
Slowing as he approached the tiny cabin, the barest hint of a smile lifted the corner of his lip. It looked exactly the same as it had a decade ago, with its squat walls covered in ivy and its uneven, thatched roof looking like an overgrown mop of hair. It sat right on the edge of the meadow, with a view to the mountains beyond through its two back windows. Perhaps “windows” wasn’t the right word—they were just open portals, covered by sturdy shutters that swung out on ancient hinges.
He’d spent many an afternoon in the place, exploring, reading, pretending to live alone in the woods. His pulse settled as he walked up the gravel path and stomped his feet on the flagstone stoop. It was like stepping
