‘Robbie?’ she called out softly, crouching like a child to sit on the second-to-top step of the staircase. When there was no reply, insecurity reared its ugly head again and Dee almost bolted back upstairs for her clothes.
The staircase was open to the kitchen but set at an angle which meant she wasn’t immediately visible. She took the next couple of steps and peered around one of the blackened wooden uprights which formed the integral structure of the building.
Robbie was occupied, his back to her, so she ventured down another few steps.
As she said his name again, more clearly this time, he swung around, an instant grin on his face as he set down the butter knife and came to her.
‘You’re awake,’ he said, wrapping her up in his arms, the woollen throw prickling against her naked skin as he hugged her tight.
‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked.
‘All night. You looked so peaceful I left you to rest. I thought you might be hungry when you did wake. Would you like a wee bite of something?’
It took a second or two for his expression to change, for the quirk to take hold of one side of his mouth. At the same time, Dee began to grin as his words took on a different meaning. ‘I’d love that, Robbie Keel.’
‘Are you still talking about food, or …?’
She laughed, but she was hungry – for the first time in longer than she could remember her stomach craved sustenance. ‘Food. I might take a shower first, if that’s all right.’
‘Aye, of course.’
She took the first couple of steps, glancing back to see him watching her.
‘Tartan has never looked so good,’ he said.
In a moment of boldness, Dee allowed the throw to fall from her shoulders, catching it up tight again before she revealed any more of her body. She was rewarded when Robbie took a sharp intake of breath.
‘Maybe the shower should wait,’ she said, her smile transitory as he crossed the space and caught her face up between gentle palms. His kiss was as sensitive as it was demanding, stirring insistent feelings in her all over again.
Afterwards, Dee showered and took her time to dress. Robbie seemed able to shower in a matter of seconds, and he was dressed and downstairs, completing his snack preparations before Dee had even located all her clothes.
However much she didn’t want to compare, her thoughts slipped to the early days with Henry. Back when she was in love with him – because she had been in love with him, there was no point pretending otherwise. But even then, even when she believed the feelings she was experiencing were being reciprocated, her physical connection to Henry had never been this strong.
And maybe it went part-way to explaining how she’d managed to tolerate life with Henry for so long, even when he made his infidelity so obvious. Because Dee felt sure that if her connection with Henry had been as strong as this, if he’d made her feel even half as interesting and desirable and amazing as Robbie had managed in less than twenty-four hours, then the fact he’d drifted away from her would have been enough to kill her.
Instead, she’d been happy enough to live a half-life, and Dee was beginning to understand that the life she’d started out with, even when she’d believed it to be whole and complete, had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors all along.
As they ate toasted sandwiches oozing with Scottish cheddar and packed with strings of soft red onion, sitting at Robbie’s scrubbed pine table in a cottage smaller than one of the formal rooms in the castle, Dee wished it had always been like this. Wished she’d been born into a different family, wished she’d never met Henry and that she could have done the things she’d always wanted to do but instead had squashed away in the dark recesses of her mind.
Dee allowed herself to daydream. What if she’d never gone to that party, the evening she’d met Henry? What if she’d gone travelling instead – a dream which had never been allowed daylight. She might have come to the Highlands much later, met Robbie and made a completely different life, with him.
But if that had been the trajectory of her life, she’d never have had her children. Dee frowned, pretending it was the heat from the melted cheese when Robbie looked concerned. Her children had been everything to Dee – how could she now wish them away? How could she imagine a different life in which they didn’t exist? Surely that was beyond contempt.
For the first time since she’d fully understood the extent of Robbie’s feelings for her, Dee felt the strength of her real life pulling her back. The cold dousing of what it would be like to admit to her children that she was in love with the gamekeeper, and always had been. How would they take the news? What if they weren’t in the slightest bit happy for her? How would she deal with their rejection of the idea?
And what about Robbie in all this? Would he feel comfortable spending his time in the castle, or should she move in with him here? She glanced around the cottage. He was at ease here, but would he want her here, too?
Dee had been so badly burnt by Henry, it was difficult for her to make her own judgement calls about anything. Decades of being treated as an inferior, as someone who never quite measured up, had battered at Dee’s sense of self.
If she and Robbie were going to do this, maybe they should start slow. Keep it between themselves to begin with, until she had a chance to gauge everyone’s reactions and could smooth the way.
‘I should get back,’ she said.
‘Aye, of course. Shall I walk you up to the castle?’ Robbie dropped the heel of his sandwich onto his plate, pushing back his chair.
‘No. I should probably go alone.’ She swallowed, unsure how to phrase her thoughts. ‘Is it OK if we keep this between ourselves, for now at least?’
Robbie frowned. ‘You don’t want anyone to know?’
