Page 82 of A Scottish Highland Surprise

The sales representative had just left the shop and we were limping towards lunchtime when a glittery-eyed Ophelia came bursting through the door, sending the silver bell into a frenzy. She was struggling to contain herself. “Morning, Sophie,” she breathed, hitching her quilted white shoulder bag further up her shoulder. “I’ve just come from the library.”

I beckoned her over. A slow, hopeful smile spread across my face. “What is it? What have you found out?”

She dumped her bag on top of the counter beside my opened laptop and rummaged around inside for her mobile. “Well,” she began, searching her phone for something, “I went up to Briar Glen Library first thing. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but anyway…” Her voice vanished and she thrust her phone screen at me. I took a step closer. “It’s a marriage certificate,” she babbled. “For Briar Forsyth.”

I leant forward, eager to see what was on the screen, but a thought occurred to me as I did. My anticipation contorted into a feeling of dread. “Oh God, don’t tell me she married Jonathan Gray!”

Ophelia rolled her eyes, as if that idea had never even occurred to her. “Let’s give the girl some credit. No, I’m relieved to say she didn’t.”

I examined Ophelia’s outstretched phone screen again, but I was struggling to make out the details. “Thank goodness for that. Then who did she marry?” Then I started to laugh. “Ophelia. I don’t think that’s what you were looking for. Then again, it might be.” I nodded towards her phone. A photo of Hal was on the screen; he was topless, lounging on a sunbed and raising a pint of something cool beside some palm trees.

“Bloody phone!” mumbled Ophelia, jabbing at it with a shell-pink-painted fingernail. “That was on our last holiday to Majorca.” Impatience took over. “Never mind. It will be quicker if I tell you.” She fixed me with her expectant gaze. “What would you say if I told you Briar married Ernest Telfer?”

My jaw grew slack. “Ernest Telfer? As in Ernest Telfer who crafted the peacock tea set? The tea set that Briar was accused of stealing?”

Ophelia nodded, struggling to contain herself. “The very one.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I opened and closed my mouth for several seconds.

So, Briar married the artist who created the peacock tea set for Jonathan Gray’s mother Leonora? The same tea set that had reportedly been stolen from the family by Briar herself?

“Well,” I gasped. “I definitely didn’t see that one coming.”

Ophelia was bristling with anticipation under her sunshine-yellow and blue nautical jacket. Raindrops were sliding down the sleeves, but she was oblivious. “And there’s something else,” she said in a thrilled whisper, despite there being no one else in the vicinity. “Briar gave birth to a little boy, George, in November 1900 but she and Ernest only married in the June.”

I rubbed at my forehead, mentally pushing these latest developments together like pieces of a scattered puzzle. Maths had never been my strong point, but even I was able to calculate that didn’t add up. “Wow! So, the likelihood is that George wasn’t Ernest’s?”

“That is what I was thinking,” agreed Ophelia. “If we’re right, Briar would have already been pregnant when she met Ernest and he married her when she was four months gone.”

I glanced around at the loaded shelves of the shop, my mind whirring. “So could this little boy have been Jonathan Gray’s?”

Ophelia frowned. “I wondered that.” She scrolled away from the marriage certificate, which she had now managed to retrieve on her phone, to George’s birth certificate, and set her mobile down on the counter. “Another possible child of Jonathan Gray’s to add to the long list, perhaps? In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. He isn’t named as the father on George’s birth certificate, but that is probably to be expected. Ernest Telfer is.”

All the loose ends were beginning to intertwine.

What if Jonathan Gray, heir to Castle Marrian, had got Briar, the family scullery maid, pregnant and then dumped her? But what about the tea set? Had Briar threatened to tell Jonathan’s family about her pregnancy? Perhaps she had said that unless he publicly acknowledged her and the baby – even married her – she was going to make sure that not only his parents but the entire town knew?

Maybe that was why Jonathan Gray had Briar accused of stealing his mother’s tea set. Had he pretended Briar stole it from the family home, in order to blacken Briar’s name and therefore cast doubt on her claims that she was pregnant with his child?

And then there were those scenes with an enraged Jonathan Gray and a distressed young woman out in the snow in Briar Glen on Christmas Eve, that Saffy’s great-grandfather had made an account of. Was the young woman Victor Prentice had seen a desperate and upset Briar Forsyth? Maybe Briar wanted him to publicly acknowledge their relationship, and then, when he discovered she was expecting his baby, he was determined to banish her from his life? Had he engineered the theft so she would be blamed?

I relayed all my reeling thoughts to Ophelia.

“That all sounds perfectly plausible to me,” she answered.

Sympathy for Briar and George’s situation rose higher and higher inside of me. I swivelled my laptop further round, so that Ophelia had a clear view of the screen. “You said that George was born in November 1900, is that right?”

Ophelia picked up her phone and checked the boy’s birth certificate. “Yes. He was born on the 8th. Why?”

My fingers jabbed my laptop keyboard, pulling up the Castle Marrian website. It was strange being confronted with my former place of work, especially now the ghosts who once lived there seemed to be haunting my thoughts.

I bypassed the colourful glossy website photographs of it, with its whipped-cream turrets like extravagant meringues, and chandeliers dripping from its ornate ceilings.

I located the section which detailed the history of Castle Marrian and gestured to the second paragraph. Ophelia read the few lines I pointed out to her.

Castle Marrian was the treasured home of the Masters family for many years, until Lady Eliza Masters lost her beloved husband Lord Alfred Masters in a tragic riding accident in the spring of 1899.