CHAPTER TWO
The red squirrel leapt from tree to tree.
As it settled on a branch, Celina Stirling, her bright hair as red as the squirrel’s, raised her shotgun and took careful aim.
She took in its frothy tail, its delicate paws and its enquiring face and then lowered the gun for just a moment before bringing it up again and pulling the trigger.
The animal swiftly leapt from its branch to one on a neighbouring tree.
Celina looked up with satisfaction at the centre of a large knot on the tree, now riddled with her shot.
There, that would prove it to Hamish MacLean her accuracy with a gun and there was no need to slaughter a poor squirrel.
Unconsciously she glanced again at the citrine set in a gold ring on her engagement finger.
Two weeks ago now Hamish had asked her to be his wife.
She picked up the empty game bag and set off back towards Beaumarche Castle, remembering the visit she had paid this morning to her mother’s old friend, Lady Bruce.
“Celina, my dearest girl, do you really intend to go through with this match?” Lady Bruce had asked bluntly, once she was sitting by a blazing fire in her salon.
Though the sun was shining, it was dark and chilly inside Beaumarche Castle, the MacLean ancestral home.
Over the past two weeks Celina had fantasised over how she would transform this old place once she became Lady MacLean.
Nothing could be changed whilst her uncle, Lord MacLean, was still alive and it looked as though he would survive a great many more years yet.
“What sort of a question is that, Aunt Margaret?”
“You are cousins, my dear. It has never seemed to me a suitable union.”
Celina tossed back her flowing hair.
“It is one that seems very suitable tome.”
She poured coffee and handed a cup to Lady Bruce.
“Thank you, my dear. I do so wish that when your dear mother and father died in that dreadful accident, you could have come to me. At twelve years old to be brought up in an all-male household did not seem at all right. I did try to persuade your uncle, but alas without success.”
The light in Celina’s eyes softened for a moment.
“You have kept a close eye on me and the MacLean household, Aunt Margaret,” she replied lovingly. “I have always known I could come to you if I was worried about anything.”
Lady Bruce smiled at her.
“Your mother was my closest friend and nothing would have given me more pleasure than to have the care and upbringing of her daughter.
“You are in a rather delicate position, Celina. You are a very lovely girl and heiress to a sizeable fortune when your Trust fund matures on your thirtieth birthday.”
Celina rose abruptly and stalked around the room.
“Hamish and I have always been the best of friends. I have never met a more exciting man. He is always doing something most unexpected. There are so many activities we both enjoy – he has taught me to shoot and fish and we love riding together. I am proud to be a member of the MacLean family.”
“Oh, how like your mother you are,” La
