Page 99 of The Secret Castle in the Highlands

An appreciative smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. ‘I like kooky.’ He encouraged me to sit down beside him on the sofa. Then he shrugged. ‘I was wary of my feelings for you and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, especially after all the mess with Geri. Then when we started working together to research the highwayman, I began to realise how I felt about you – and yet I still tried to fight it.’

He flashed me a hot look that made my stomach somersault. ‘I know I’ve acted like a right dick, but do you think there’s any way you could make room in your heart for a man who has a pulse?’

I lifted a finger and tapped him playfully on the tip of his hawkish nose. ‘Oh, there’s definitely a new rival for my affections.’

‘Oh, is there now? And who might that be?’ Mason feigned shock. ‘It’s not old Sydney from the Sea Shanty? You know, the elderly bloke who always sings “Waltzing Matilda” whenever he sees me?’

I recalled Sydney, a stalwart of Port Starr’s oldest drinking establishment, with his penchant for tight-fitting tartan waistcoats. ‘If you keep teasing me, I’ll make sure he is.’

Mason’s lupine grin was back. ‘Lucky old Sydney.’ He became more thoughtful. ‘Poppy, I’m so sorry. I’ve behaved like a complete idiot.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say you’ve been a complete idiot.’

‘Gee. Thanks.’

Darwin sat almost between us now on the carpet, a confused look in his button-blue eyes. His furry head swivelled between the two of us, as if he were spectating at a tennis match.

‘Now it’s time for me to be sorry,’ I insisted. ‘I’m sorry that I doubted you and that I was so offhand.’ I stared into his thick-lashed eyes. ‘I was so busy trying to prove to myself, to my dad and to everyone else that I could strike out on my own that I was frightened of letting you in.’ Embarrassment nipped at me. ‘You and Katie were right. It was easier for me to admire a man who died two hundred years ago than to love someone again who was standing right in front of me.’

Mason studied me for a few moments. ‘Love?’ he repeated, edging closer on the sofa.

I nodded and explained about Nick and the collapse of my marriage. ‘I suppose he shattered my belief in other people by the way he lied and deceived me.’ I brushed a stray dark wave from Mason’s forehead. I knew I could do this. I knew that Mason wasn’t Nick. I so wanted to capture his face in a pastel portrait. ‘Garrett’s very lucky to have you as his brother.’

An irresistible blush coloured his cheeks. ‘I think I’m the lucky one to have him.’ I noticed his eyes sweep down my face and rest on my mouth. ‘I know what it’s like to go through a failed marriage. I had to deal with Geri. I found it difficult to trust again and to open up. That was until you came along.’

An excited charge bolted through my chest.

‘There’s something else I need to show you,’ he said after a pause. ‘It wasn’t just Garrett I wanted to talk to you about.’

Mason disappeared out into the hallway and fetched something from the glass table. He re-entered the sitting room and handed me the brown envelope. ‘Take a look at these.’

I pulled out several leaves of paper in varying states of decay. They were yellow and rustling in my hands. ‘These look like receipts of some kind.’ I puzzled over them. ‘Is that what they are? Where did you get them?’

‘Ryan delivered them to me last night. He dropped by the cottages, but you weren’t there and then he said a scary cleaner chased him off.’

I smiled. ‘I bet it was Jenny. She’s really a pussycat.’

His eyes flashed. ‘It seems Georgina, with help from her trusted butler, Harris, bribed some henchmen employed by Augustus Lapley to hand them over.’ Mason’s mouth twisted into a hopeful smile. ‘Some of the writing is indecipherable, but others… They’re payments, Poppy. For services rendered.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Mason pointed to a smudgy letter in the top right-hand corner. ‘Can you make that out? It’s the letter L.’ He gestured at the paper again in my hand. ‘And I checked the dates – well, the ones I could decipher – against the dates of the crimes the Scarlet Highwayman was supposed to have committed.’

A bubble of hope hit the back of my throat. ‘And they coincide?’

‘Yes. We’re talking the same day or twenty-four hours either side.’

I shot out my other hand and squeezed Mason’s arm. ‘So, you’re saying the Lapley family paid someone else to do all those terrible things and they tried to frame the Scarlet Highwayman for them?’

‘It would seem so.’

A squeal erupted from my chest. I gazed up at Mason again, expecting happiness to be mirrored in his face too.

Only it wasn’t.

‘So,’ he exclaimed in an odd tone, ‘your faith in the Scarlet Highwayman wasn’t misplaced after all. He was framed for those crimes. I suspect the reason is Georgina Lapley, but we’re so close now.’ A faint smile hovered on his lips. ‘Your hero is still your hero.’

‘Yes, he is,’ I admitted. ‘But like I just told you, there’s room in my heart now for someone else.’