LENGROTH CASTLE LOOKED bigger than it had on the website. More imposing.
On the slick, professional website of the Earl of Lengroth the castle had been bathed in sunlight, with impossibly blue skies shining behind its corner towers, the stone walls almost white in the sunshine. In reality, even on a dry July day in Scotland, the skies were more white with cloud than blue, and the stone was a heavy, dark and imposing grey. The seventeen stone steps up to the dark wooden front door seemed designed to put visitors off altogether—they were narrow, steep, and they looked slippery with moss encouraged by the moat they rose across.
In fact, the whole scene was enough to make Heather Reid want to jump on the first train back to Hertfordshire and never return.
Except she couldn’t. Not until she’d done what she’d come to do. After that...? Well, what happened next was anybody’s guess. By then the ball would be firmly in the court of Ross Bryce, Earl of Lengroth.
Steeling herself, Heather crossed the gravelled courtyard from the open front gate and carefully made her way up those seventeen slippery steps. Halfway up, she risked a glance down at the moat. The water was black and bottomless. Much like her fear.
Heather swallowed and took another step.
A splash beside her made her jump and almost lose her footing. Grappling for purchase on one of the higher steps, Heather darted her gaze around, looking for the cause of the sound. A fish? Duck? Crocodile? She wouldn’t put it past the Earls of Lengroth to have installed the Loch Ness Monster in their moat.
Then she spotted the rubber duck, bobbing happily on the dark water.
‘Not a monster,’ she whispered to herself. ‘That’s a start.’
But that duck definitely hadn’t been there when she’d started climbing the steps. Risking letting go of her step, Heather looked up at the windows overhead, trying to see who might have thrown the rubber duck.
Nothing.
Ross Bryce had kids, she remembered uncomfortably. Two of them, perfectly turned out in a party dress and a sailor suit respectively, featured on the home page of the website, standing and smiling sweetly next to their handsome father, the Earl, and their beautiful mother, Lady Jane Bryce, Countess of Lengroth.
She’d been physically sick when she’d seen that photo and realised how monumentally she’d screwed up. Of course, she’d been throwing up a lot lately anyway. But seeing that photo had marked the moment she’d realised just how much trouble she was in, and the magnitude of the consequences she had to face.
There was still no sign of the duck’s owner, but Heather had been a teacher long enough to know that when a child threw a duck at you it meant you weren’t wanted. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d have been able to figure that much out even without her teaching qualification.
Carefully, she reached down to the water and retrieved the duck as it bobbed past, tucking it under her arm.
‘I don’t want to be here, either, kid, believe me,’ she muttered.
And then she took the next step anyway—because what choice did she have?
She’d made a mistake and now she needed to own up to it, deal with it and face it head-on. She knew only too well what happened when people ducked their own guilt and tried to cover up their actions with lies.
The big brass knocker on the castle door echoed around the courtyard as she lifted it and let it fall against the wood. At least she’d survived the steps and the duck missile. As long as the door didn’t open outwards and send her flying into the moat she was almost there.
And then would come the really hard part.
She’d practised what she would say to Ross—it was hard to think of him as the Earl of Lengroth at this point—all the way up on the train. She’d thought of different ways to break the news, but it all came down to the one basic fact.
I’m pregnant. With your child.
She really hoped his wife wasn’t in the room when she saw him again.
Not that he’d mentioned his wife, of course, when they’d met that night in London. Or his kids. He’d told her about the castle, and about lonely dark Scottish nights—even in early June, apparently. He’d talked about the countryside and his responsibilities and the parties he went to.
But he’d failed to mention his family. And he hadn’t been wearing the wedding ring she’d seen on his finger later, in the most prominent website photo of them all—a large family portrait.
‘You must have all the aristocratic ladies after you,’ she’d joked, when he’d told her where he lived and shown her a snapshot on his phone. ‘How do you know they’re interested in you and not your castle?’
‘Trust me,’ he’d replied with a wicked grin. ‘My castle is the least impressive thing about me.’
Heather groaned, just remembering the line. How had she fallen for that? She blamed the cocktails her friend Lacey had insisted on them drinking.
Was anybody ever going to open this door? She really wasn’t enjoying reliving the worst mistake of her life in her head while she waited. She’d done enough of that over the last month as it was.
Now she was there, at Castle Lengroth, she just wanted to get this over with. She wanted to see Ross Bryce and tell him everything. She wanted this to be someone else’s problem, too, even if just for a few minutes before he inevitably threw her out.
Heather didn’t have high hopes for this meeting. But she knew it was something she had to do. Ross deserved to know about the baby—even if he didn’t want anything to do with it, or her, after this. At least she’d have done the right thing.
Because, apart from one stupid night in London almost two months ago, Heather Reid always did the right thing. Her mother had taught her that much—if only by being a stunning example of what happened when a person didn’t.
Finally the door creaked open to reveal an elegant,