"See that little waterfall over there? You can slide down those rocks and straight into the water - only on a really hot day, of course, because the water in the loch is absolutely arse-freezing."
The water did look cold. It also appeared that word 'loch' meant lake. I was glad I wasn't going to have to ask anyone about it and risk looking like a stereotypical insular American.
"Jennifer, I'm sorry if I was too familiar earlier. I really didn't mean anything by it - it's really lovely to have someone new here for the summer and I think you're going to love Cameron. I'm going to the south of France for the summer and she needs a solid female presence in her life."
We walked back to Castle McLanald together, Anne peppering me with questions about America and me peppering her right back with questions about Scotland. By the time we walked through the front doors I had a feeling we could easily become friends - all the weirdness of the earlier discussion of her brother had dissipated and I assumed it was probably the jet-lag and the unfamiliar surroundings making me a little sensitive.
Chapter 4
I was roused from deep sleep the next morning by the distinctive sound of a helicopter. A helicopter? I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, confused and certain I was misinterpreting the noise. But it was a helicopter - I looked out the window just in time to see it slowly lowering itself behind one of the castle walls until it was out of sight.
Up until that point it hadn't really occurred to me just how wealthy the McLanald clan was, or how different the lives of its members must have been compared to mine. I'd seen the castle and taken in the huge swathes of land surrounding it but somehow it hadn't quite sunk in that Laird Darach owned this place. He and his sister had both seemed surprisingly normal and neither of them was anything like the idea I had in my head of a European aristocrat - snooty, unfriendly and, perhaps most importantly: old. Anne was no older than twenty-five and Darach looked to be around thirty, maybe thirty-five at most.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Clyde.
"Jennifer! Are you awake? Wee Cameron is back from London - I've got breakfast ready if you'd like to come down?"
"Yes! I'll be right down!" I called back through the door, jumping out of bed to get ready.
I hadn't been expecting the child to arrive so early in the morning, so I rushed through my shower, threw on the first clean clothes I found and hurried downstairs as fast as I could, worried that I'd screwed up by not being ready earlier.
"Don't worry, lassie, there's time," Mrs. Clyde reassured me as I almost ran into her on her way out of the kitchen. "The Laird is playing in the courtyard with Cameron, you don't have to be there right away."
I didn't want to eat breakfast, because I'm never hungry when I wake up too quickly, so I made my own way through the castle's halls and out to the courtyard. No one was around except Darach and Cameron - who I could see had inherited her father's pale blonde hair - so I held back for a few moments and watched them, slightly nervously. I've spent a lot of time around children - babysitting was my main source of income from the ages of fourteen until I went away to college but this wasn't a neighborhood toddler. This was the heiress to Castle McLanald and her sexy, self-assured father. I desperately wanted to make a good impression.
"Jennifer!"
Darach had spotted me hanging back behind one of the archways. Oh, God. Heat rose in my cheeks as I walked out into the courtyard to meet Cameron.
She was adorable - a tiny little sprite in a white summer dress - and the spitting image of her father and her aunt. At first she sat shyly on Darach's lap, hiding her face against his broad chest and refusing to look at me directly when I greeted her. She soon warmed up, though, when I started asking her questions about her life - how old she was, where she lived, what her favorite food was. In fact within a few minutes she'd squirmed her way over to my lap and was busy twisting one of my dark curls around her fingers and taking her turn to ask me questions:
"Why do you sound like that, Miss Robinson?"
She'd obviously been told how to address me. I wanted to ask her to call me Jenny but the Laird was right there and I was worried he might disapprove, in spite of his earlier statement about disliking formality.
"Because I'm not from Scotland. I'm from America."
She turned to her father, eyes wide:
"Daddy, I went to America!"
"Yes you did, Cameron."
Darach was attentive to his daughter, but sitting there next to him on fountain's stone ledge, I could feel his attention was also on me. I didn't acknowledge it because I didn't know what it meant - it was probably just the interest a good parent takes in the relationship between his child and her new nanny - but having his eyes focused on me was both nerve-wracking and strangely enjoyable. It was the first time I'd been so physically close to him, too, and the proximity actually made me feel small. I'm five foot eight and blessed with the kind of lush, generous curves that make some girls insecure and turn other girls into huge show-offs. I was neither of those things, but feeling petite next to a man was a new experience. I liked it. I liked it more than I should have. When the Laird told me and Cameron he had work to do I was almost relieved when he left, exhaling slowly when he was out of sight and relaxing for the first time in over an hour.