And the Bride Wore Prada (12 page)

Probably had one of those silly, newly married arguments
, she reflected with a wistful smile. Perhaps he hadn’t kissed Natalie good morning, or she’d neglected to pack his favourite sweater, or something equally ridiculous.

She’d been a new bride once, too. David had brought her burnt toast one morning before work, and she’d snapped at him. He’d snapped back and told her if she didn’t like it she could make her own damn toast.

Soon their words grew heated, and David picked up one of his grass-stained trainers from the floor and threw it at her. It whizzed by her ear and knocked over a lamp.

After the initial shock, she’d started laughing. They laughed until they could barely draw breath. Then they’d fallen into bed and made love until they were both ruinously late for work.

Her smile faded, and she thrust the memory away.

The thought of fresh Scottish air and a brisk, mind-clearing walk was a welcome one, and she reached for her coat. She could think, not about David and her long-ago life, but about Andrew, and Colm.

Perhaps the cold and the solitude would stimulate her mind and provide some answers to the questions that currently troubled her, Helen decided. She was beyond curious to see the police report from Freetown she’d asked Tom to get.

She left her room and went down the hall, and paused at the top of the stairs. Voices drifted up from below – Gemma and Dom’s – having a rather heated discussion about the wedding.

‘…need to leave soon!’ Gemma hissed. ‘If we’re to be married in Northton Grange in less than two weeks, I’ve got to be on hand to supervise. Otherwise, God knows what kind of wedding décor hell we’ll walk into.’

‘But we can’t possibly leave yet ‒ there’s still masses of snow on the ground,’ he hedged.

‘The main roads are clear. You’re not trying to postpone our wedding again,’ Gemma accused him, ‘are you?’

And as Dom assured her that no, he most definitely wasn’t, Helen took out her mobile and dashed off a quick email to Tom to update him on the rock star’s wedding plans.

When she was sure Gemma and Dominic were gone, she went downstairs and let herself out the front door. She was halfway down the drive when she saw a truck, its bed loaded with wood, and heard someone call her name.
Colm
.

‘Miss Thomas,’ he said as he rolled the window down. ‘What brings you out of doors today?’

‘I felt like a bit of fresh air. And it’s so lovely here – the scenery’s breathtaking.’

‘Oh, aye,’ he agreed. ‘You’ll get no argument from me there.’

‘Well,
that’s
a first.’ The words escaped Helen’s mouth before she could stop them. She bit her lip and waited for his smile to be replaced with its customary scowl.

But he only shrugged. ‘I have my moments.’ He glanced at her. ‘I’m on my way to the castle to unload some firewood. If you wait a few minutes, I’ll come back and take you for a look round the property – well, as much of it as I can show you with the snow still blocking some of our private roads.’

Helen eyed him in surprise. ‘I’d like that,’ she replied. ‘Shall I meet you in front of the house in ten minutes?’

‘Aye. I’ll see you then.’ He nodded, put the truck back in gear, and drove off towards the castle.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Helen muttered. ‘The man can not only talk in complete sentences, he can smile, too.’

And although she’d detected a trace of whisky on his breath, she chose to ignore it.

If it took a ‘wee dram’ to make Colm MacKenzie more sociable, and if a bit of whisky took away the scowl from his face, then she was all for it.

Chapter 20

Helen was just coming back up the drive after a brief walk when Colm drew the truck to a stop in front of the main entrance.

‘Are you ready for the grand tour?’ Colm called out as he leant out the window.

‘I am. And I hope you’ve got the heater going. It’s bloody freezing out here!’

He reached over and threw the door open, and Helen climbed, shivering, inside the truck cab. She was doing up her seat belt when Colm turned to her and held out a flask. ‘Have some. It’s whisky.’

She hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t...’

‘Go on,’ he invited. ‘It’ll warm you up.’ He lifted his brow. ‘Think of it as a before-dinner drink. If you were in the drawing room with the Campbells right now, I guarantee you’d be having a glass.’

That decided her, and she took the flask from him, tilted her head back, and took a swig.

Colm put the truck in gear and with a lurch, they were off. ‘I’ll show you the distillery first,’ he called out over the noise of the engine. ‘It’s what keeps the castle going.’

‘Whisky,’ Helen observed dryly, ‘is the lifeblood of the Campbells.’

‘Aye, and good stuff Draemar whisky is, too.’ He grinned and glanced at the flask. ‘You’re drinking it now.’

‘It’s very good,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t usually care much for the stuff, but this...well, I could learn to like it. A
lot
.’ She glanced at him. ‘What about you, Colm? Are you a whisky connoisseur?’

‘Hardly. I’m not much of a drinker, normally. But I do know good whisky from bad.’

‘You wouldn’t be much of a Scotsman if you didn’t.’

He laughed. ‘No, I suppose not.’ Returning his attention to the truck, he navigated down the sloping, snow-packed road that led to the Campbell distillery.

Like the castle, the building was made of stone and mortar and looked both impressive and invincible. Several dozen vehicles filled a nearby car park.

‘How many people does the distillery employ?’ Helen asked.

‘Eighty, at last count. Most are from the village.’

‘I see. So the Campbell family’s whisky makes for a booming local economy,’ she observed.

‘Aye, it keeps the village going. If the distillery ever went out, so would Loch Draemar.’ He threw the truck in reverse and headed back up the hill. ‘So tell me, Helen Thomas ‒ how’s that news story of yours getting on?’

She stared at him. Did Colm suspect that she was investigating Andrew’s death, that she was investigating
him
?

‘You know,’ he prodded as he saw her blank look, ‘the scoop you were after, the scoop on Dominic and Gemma’s secret wedding.’

‘Oh...yes.’ She managed a brief smile. ‘There’s nothing much going on at the moment, only Gemma driving us all mad with the wedding preparations, leaving stacks of bridal magazines everywhere, and subjecting everyone to shouty phone calls to caterers and florists and dressmakers—’

There was a quick flash of brown as a deer darted out of the surrounding woods and bounded in front of the truck. With a curse Colm wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid hitting the creature, and slammed on the brakes.

Helen, thrown hard against him, began to tremble. ‘Oh God,’ she breathed, ‘oh God...’

‘Are you all right?’ Colm asked as he turned to her. His face was ashen; fear tightened his throat. ‘Are you hurt?’

She straightened and managed to shake her head. ‘No. No, I’m fine.’

‘Sorry about that. I never saw the bastard coming. Damn, that’s your bag landed on the floor. I’ll get it.’

He reached down to retrieve it. A photograph and keys lay on the floorboard as well. ‘Here,’ Colm said, and glanced at the picture of a dark-haired man just before he handed it over with the keys. ‘Who’s this? Is he the bloke you were talking to on the phone the other day?’

She snatched it away. ‘None of your business,’ she snapped.

Colm’s jaw tightened and the closed expression settled back on his face. ‘Right, then. That’s me put in my place.’

For a moment there was silence, with only the ticking of the engine and the sound of Helen’s ragged breathing to mar the quiet.

‘He was my husband,’ she said finally. She gazed down at the photograph in her hands, and her expression was empty. ‘David. We were married for three years. We met at university – he was studying law, I was studying journalism. I loved him. Even though he drove me mad with his refusal to put his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, and even though he took perverse pleasure in tracking mud across my newly cleaned kitchen floor, I...loved him.’

Colm was silent, his hand resting on the gearshift, waiting.

‘He often worked long hours – he was a solicitor for a big firm in Canary Wharf. He’d bring home Chinese, or curry, and we’d sit on the floor in front of the coffee table and watch telly. He tried to teach me to use chopsticks. But I never could manage them properly.’

‘I still can’t,’ Colm admitted.

‘When I found out I was pregnant,’ Helen went on, turning the photo round and round in her hands, ‘we were
so
excited. We wanted lots of children, at least four or five. Two boys, three girls.’ She smiled fondly. ‘The ultrasound showed a boy. David was ecstatic.’

‘I can imagine,’ he murmured.

‘I was seven months along when we went to David’s office Christmas party. It was raining. He didn’t want to go, nor did I; I couldn’t drink, and I was as big as a lorry. But I convinced him to go, to at least show his face and mingle with the higher-ups.’

Colm reached out and took her hand. It was cold, he noticed as he squeezed it. ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Helen,’ he said gently.

She shook her head and squeezed his hand back before she released it. ‘I want to,’ she whispered, her voice low but firm. ‘I
need
to. I’ve not talked about it properly to anyone since it happened, really.’

In a few, concise words – a journalist always kept to the facts, after all, the who, what, where, when, and why ‒ she told him about the ride home, David driving down the rain-slicked streets, the looming headlights of the lorry, the head-on collision, the implosion of glass as the windshield shattered.

‘David was killed instantly. I was thrown from the car; I was lucky to survive.
Lucky
,’ she added, her words bitter. ‘That’s what they told me later, the doctors. ‘Mrs Thomas, we’re so sorry, you’ve lost the baby and your husband is dead, but you’re
so
very lucky to be alive.’’ She looked at him. ‘I didn’t see it that way. I still don’t. In the space of a few seconds, I lost everything that mattered to me.’

Colm didn’t answer as she wept; instead, he reached out and took her hand and squeezed it once again. But the gesture, in its simplicity, comforted her in a way that all the words, sympathy cards, and elaborate floral bouquets she’d received never had.

‘I always wanted to be a writer,’ she said as she took the tissues he offered and blew her nose. ‘Of great novels, of course. But I ended up writing for the red tops instead. I’m a tabloid writer. A hack.’ She glanced over at Colm. ‘You don’t have any fags, do you?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t smoke, sorry.’

‘Shame...I could really do with one right now.’ She sighed and rested her forehead against the window, watching as her breath fogged the glass. ‘I was resigned to life as a paparazzo, staking out coffee shops and lurking in airport lounges in hopes of scoring an interview or a photo of Gwyneth or Madonna or Dominic, smoking too many fags, and waiting – for the interview that’d be my ticket out of hackdom, for a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

‘For a long time I felt dead inside. I still do. But I can function. I can eat, and sleep, and carry on a conversation, just like this ‒ but inside, I’ve nothing left. It was my fault, Colm.’ She looked at him with an anguished expression. ‘I insisted we go to that fucking Christmas party. If I hadn’t, the accident would never have happened, and David would still be alive. How do I live with that? How?’ And she began to weep again.

‘Listen to me, Helen,’ Colm said, his voice low but firm. ‘You can’t blame yourself. Would’ve, might’ve, could’ve...they’re useless words. It happened, and that’s unfortunate. It’s fucking sad, and I’m truly sorry you had to go through it. But it
isn’t your fault
. You were only doing what you thought was best for the man you loved.’

They drove back to the castle in silence. Words had become unnecessary between them. As she gazed out the window at the snow-covered fields, Helen was glad she’d ended up at Draemar, grateful for Colm’s silent but reassuring presence.

As the castle loomed into view, she leant forward. ‘Oh, look. We have a visitor.’

Colm glanced up and saw a battered grey Volvo estate car parked in the curve of the drive.

‘Do you recognize it?’ Helen asked.

‘I do.’ He drew the truck to a stop behind the Volvo and opened his door, but offered nothing further.

‘Well, tell me, then – whose is it?’ she demanded.

Before he could answer, the front door swung open, and a tall woman in a grey Chanel twinset and pearls fixed them both with a gimlet eye.

‘Young man,’ she said in imperious, Scottish-accented tones, ‘kindly remove that truck from the drive and park it elsewhere. There’s a service entrance behind the kitchen for that express purpose. And use the servants’ entrance when you come inside.’

Helen flicked a glance at Colm, half expecting him to give the woman a piece of his mind; but he only tightened his jaw, nodded curtly, and said, ‘I’ll take care of it straight away, Lady Campbell,’ and turned and got back in the truck.

With a slam of the door, he was off, leaving Helen alone to face the Chanel-clad gorgon awaiting her on the doorstep.

Chapter 21

‘And who might you be?’ the woman asked. Although her tone was polite, her glance as it raked briefly over Helen’s trousers, boots, and puffa jacket clearly indicated that she found the outfit wanting. She refrained from remarking on Helen’s red, puffy eyes.

‘Helen Thomas,’ she said as she made her way up the front steps and held out her hand. ‘I’m here at Tarquin and Wren’s invitation.’

‘Indeed?’ She reached out, and her fingers as they clasped Helen’s were long and knotty, but her grip was surprisingly firm. ‘Then I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Evelyn Campbell, Archibald’s mother. Come in, Miss Thomas.’

As Helen preceded the woman inside, a dun-coloured Labrador lumbered into sight, its tail wagging. She bent down to pat his head. ‘What a lovely dog! Is he yours?’

‘Yes. I take him everywhere I go. He’s my constant companion now that my husband’s gone.’