Read A Bewitching Bride Online
Authors: Elizabeth Thornton
A Bewitching Bride (2 page)
“Will,” Gavin said, addressing the gentleman standing beside him, “who is that young woman in the gray dress, the one standing just inside the entrance doors?”
Will Rankin looked in the direction Gavin had indicated. “That’s Kate Cameron, Iain Cameron’s daughter and Juliet’s friend. She and Juliet went to school together.” He shook his head. “They’re an odd lot, the Camerons; unconventional is what I mean. Kate is the youngest, but you’d never know it when they’re all together. She’s the sensible one.”
“You seem to know the family well.”
“No, not really, apart from Kate. She and some other girls did volunteer work at the Aberdeen clinic as part of a school project, but she is the only one who has kept up with my clinic since she left school. She has a way with outcasts and misfits, so I’m always happy to see her.” He raised his voice. “I can hardly hear myself think for the din. Let’s find a quiet nook where we can converse like civilized people.”
They wandered into the hallway and found a nook beneath—what else?—a magnificent mounted head of a stag. A roving waiter was at their table before they had settled into their leather chairs. They relinquished their champagne glasses and ordered whiskey, but only if it was single malt and had been distilled on Speyside. It had. This was, after all, a first-class hotel.
Gavin could not tear his mind from the girl in the gray dress.
Was she the one?
The words flowed and ebbed inside his head. He needed more than one look from those intense brown eyes before he was convinced.
Was she the one?
The words flowed and ebbed inside his head. He needed more than one look from those intense brown eyes before he was convinced.
Will clapped Gavin on the shoulder. “I think,” Will said, “that Kate Cameron has made quite an impression on you. Do you know what I think, Gavin?”
“No, and I don’t want to know.”
Will laughed. “I think it’s time you came out of mourning and began to live again. I will say this. You put on a good show. But Alice has been gone five years now. You can’t live in the past.” The smile left his face. “But leave Kate alone. She’s not for the likes of you. I’m telling you this for your own good. She has cousins who would break your arms and legs if you were to hurt their little chick. Then there’s Dalziel.”
Gavin avoided the reference to Alice and picked up on the reference to Dalziel. “Your man of business? Does he have a proprietary interest in Miss Cameron as well?”
“He doesn’t confide in me, but I know that his intentions are honorable—not like some I could name.”
Gavin was amused. “Good God, Will! You make me sound like an out-and-out Lothario. I’m not a hunter, just the opposite. It’s women who lay traps and snares to catch me.”
“Just remember her cousins should you ever be tempted to let her catch you.”
Gavin lounged in his chair, stretched out his legs, and studied his friend. Will Rankin was a big man, easily above six feet, and built like a Highlander who was in training for the Braemar Games. Ruddy cheeks, red hair, and his ease in wearing the kilt reinforced that impression. Nothing seemed to disturb Will’s zest for life, though he’d seen his share of tragedy. He was the director of a clinic in Aberdeen that ministered to paupers and misfits and owned another clinic in Braemar for long-term patients. However, Will wasn’t interested only in healing sick bodies. He was also interested in healing minds and was one of those new doctors called
psychiaters
. His patients loved him, but he was scorned by the rank and file in his own profession.
psychiaters
. His patients loved him, but he was scorned by the rank and file in his own profession.
Gavin did not scorn his friend’s obsession for probing the minds of those afflicted with mental illness. There were times in his own life, such as now, when he wondered whether
he
was a little touched in the brain. If he was, it was his granny’s doing. Lady Valeria McEcheran had been a fully fledged witch who, on her deathbed, had passed her formidable gifts to her three grandsons, but Gavin had never been a true believer. There were episodes he could not explain, but nothing like the visions that had plagued his dreams in the last month.
he
was a little touched in the brain. If he was, it was his granny’s doing. Lady Valeria McEcheran had been a fully fledged witch who, on her deathbed, had passed her formidable gifts to her three grandsons, but Gavin had never been a true believer. There were episodes he could not explain, but nothing like the visions that had plagued his dreams in the last month.
Like a true connoisseur, Will swirled a mouthful of whiskey before swallowing it. “I was hoping,” he said, “that you and Juliet would make a match of it. What went wrong?”
“Nothing went wrong.” Gavin gave a careless shrug. “I’m fond of Juliet—more than fond—but we’ve known each other forever. I look upon her as a sister.”
Will grunted and was silent.
A moment went by, then another. Finally, Gavin said, “I’m sure that you didn’t invite me out here just to pass the time of day. What is it, Will? What’s troubling you?”
Will looked away. “It’s probably nothing at all. I don’t want to open a Pandora’s box when all I have are suspicions but no solid evidence.”
Gavin straightened in his chair. “Evidence of what?”
Will began to look uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to draw attention to my clinic or have my patients’ names splashed in all the papers. They have suffered enough.”
When Will was silent, Gavin said, “You can’t stop there. At least tell me what kind of crime we’re talking about.”
“Murder,” replied Will bluntly, and he exhaled a long breath. “Three people connected to my clinic have died in mysterious circumstances in the last month. If it was murder, I think I may know who the killer is. I’ll be on the train tomorrow for Aberdeen. There’s someone there I want to speak to before I go any further with this.”
When Gavin tried to speak, Will cut across his words. “That’s all I’m prepared to tell you for the moment. Gavin, I can’t make unfounded accusations.”
Impatience gave Gavin’s voice a sharp edge. “Then why drag me out here and refuse to confide in me?”
Will gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Damned if I know, except that I feel better, knowing that you are aware that I’m afraid for the welfare of my patients. Look,” he went on, interrupting Gavin yet again, “I’ll know more in a day or two, and when I do, I’ll tell you everything. All right?”
And more than that he would not say.
The reception began to wind down when the bride and groom left the ballroom to take the carriage that would convey them on the first step of their honeymoon. They weren’t going far that first night, only to the bride’s home on the other side of the Ballater Bridge. The mother of the bride was to stay on at the hotel to give the young couple a little time to themselves.
There were no sentimental tears from Mrs. Cardno. “At long last,” she said, raising her voice above the babble of well-wishers, “I’ve finally managed to launch my daughter. I feel like spreading my wings, embarking on an adventure or,” she poked Kate in the ribs, “perhaps I shall take a lover. There’s not much mischief a woman can get up to when her grown daughter is always looking over her shoulder.”
“Mother!” Juliet scolded, and she rolled her eyes. In an undertone to Kate, she said, “You know that she doesn’t mean it.”
“Who says I don’t mean it? If you’d known me in my prime, Juliet, you wouldn’t be so complacent.” To Kate, Mrs. Cardno added, “Listen to the words of someone who has seen a bit of the world, my dear. Time is precious. Make the most of it.”
Kate nodded and smiled. She liked Juliet and her mother enormously, in spite of Mrs. Cardno’s outrageous tongue. In her mind’s eye, she saw them as clear and refreshing as a mountain spring. Her own family was more like dragon fire. In her memory, she had never attended a Cameron wedding where a brawl had not broken out.
Juliet’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Remember what I told you about my cousin Gavin. Well, he’s not my cousin exactly, but near enough as makes no difference. He has a roving eye, but he has had his eye fixed on you all evening.”
Kate remembered Gavin Hepburn very well. She and her friends were all enthralled with him when they were gawking schoolgirls. He, of course, was an older man and didn’t notice their existence. Oddly enough, there had been a moment there, when she’d thought that he posed some kind of threat to her. The hair on the back of her neck had risen alarmingly. She had the instincts of a creature of the wild and could sense danger a mile off, but when she’d looked into his eyes, the prickling sensation at the back of her neck had stopped. She still didn’t know who or what had caused it.
Juliet wasn’t finished yet. “Don’t be taken in by his looks or his charm. He’s not interested in marriage.”
“Sounds as though we’re made for each other,” Kate quipped.
“Just be on your guard. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.”
Juliet’s sisterly advice ended in a screech when her groom swooped down and carried her off to the waiting carriage. A light snow had begun to fall, and everyone hurried inside. The fiddlers started up again, and more sets formed for the next country dance. Kate spent the following hour renewing old friendships with girls she’d gone to school with but who had not been raised in the Highlands. They were Lowlanders from Aberdeen and were enthralled with the handsome young men in their kilts whose soft accents and gentlemanly manners put them in a class by themselves.
It was all good fun, because most of the girls in her crowd, with the exception of Sally Anderson and herself, were married, and some of them had children. This was not how they had planned their lives when they were a close-knit fellowship of girls on the brink of womanhood. They’d all met when they had attended a newly opened progressive girls’ school in Aberdeen. They’d seen how their mothers spent their days, cutting flowers in the hothouse, attending frequent tea parties with other ladies, and doing charity work to fill the long hours, and they’d wanted none of it.
Universities, at least some of them, were allowing women to take their entrance examinations. Things were changing. They could be anything they wanted: scholars, doctors, lawyers, explorers . . .
Their fathers, sadly, were not as progressive as the school they’d sent their daughters to, and it took a great deal of money to send a child to university. She and her friends had no money of their own, so here they were, several years later, following in the footsteps of all the women who had gone before them.
She was already regarded as an old maid. An old maid by choice, she reminded herself firmly. She had made up her mind to it a long time ago. So why was she so restless? Mrs. Cardno’s careless words echoed inside her head.
“Time is precious. Make the most of it.”
So what did the future hold for a girl like her? She was still dwelling on that thought when she came face-to-face with the subject of Juliet’s dire warnings.
“Time is precious. Make the most of it.”
So what did the future hold for a girl like her? She was still dwelling on that thought when she came face-to-face with the subject of Juliet’s dire warnings.
Juliet had not exaggerated Mr. Hepburn’s appeal. He looked like a character who had stepped out of one of the gothic novels she used to read as a girl. He could not be the hero, because the hero always had blond hair and was a vapid sort of creature who waited in the wings to save the heroine in the nick of time. Mr. Hepburn looked like the kind of man who would lead a girl into trouble, like the dastardly villain who had base designs on the heroine’s virtue. As a girl, it was the dastardly villain who had captured her imagination, and she had always wondered what those base designs might entail.
“It’s Miss Cameron, is it not?” the villain said. “I’m Gavin Hepburn, Juliet’s friend. I can’t think why we haven’t met before.”
“I rarely come into Ballater,” she replied, “and from what Juliet has told me, I understand it’s the same for you. You live in London, don’t you, and come here for the fishing season?”
“I’m a rolling stone, I suppose, footloose and fancy-free. But the fishing on Deeside is one pleasure I never miss. It’s not just the fishing. It’s Deeside in springtime. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Her first impression of Gavin Hepburn began to fray around the edges. There was more to him than his reputation suggested. He loved Deeside. She knew exactly how he felt. But Juliet knew him better than she did, and where there was smoke there was bound to be fire. He was a dangerous man because he saw every woman as a challenge.
Balderdash! She was the predator here. If Mr. Hepburn knew what was going through her mind, he would take to his heels.
She made a jest of her reply. “You’re a rolling stone, and I’m a stay-at-home. Maybe that’s why our paths have never crossed.”
People were passing them and going around them to get to the stairs, forcing them to move closer.
Gavin said, “We have another mutual friend, Will Rankin.”
“Dr. Rankin?” She could feel her smile begin to waver. He was too close, too perceptive.
“He tells me,” Gavin went on, “that you’ve visited him at his clinic in Aberdeen and have taken an interest in his patients in Braemar.”
She felt her neck stiffen with tension. Why was he asking about the clinics? As naturally as she could manage, she said, “The clinic in Braemar is not far from my home. I do visit there, not that I’m much help. The patients get so few visits, you see. Any friendly face is welcome.” She didn’t like this turn in the conversation and put an end to it by holding out her hand. “I’m very happy to have met you, Mr. Hepburn. Perhaps I shall see you at breakfast.”
He startled her by clasping her hand when the custom was for a gentleman to touch a lady’s fingers. She was very glad that she was wearing gloves and hoped he hadn’t noticed that her hand had developed a tremor, not because she was attracted to him, but because he was asking too many questions.
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