‘Is it?’ Mallory said a little sadly.

Torr looked at her with that dark blue gaze that seemed to see so much more than she wanted it to. ‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘It’s just…’ Avoiding his eyes, she turned the stem of her glass between her hands. ‘Don’t you ever have regrets?’ she asked on an impulse.

‘About our marriage? No.’

You could always rely on Torr for an uncompromising answer.

‘You don’t ever wish that things could be different?’ she persisted. ‘That you could have married the woman you love and spent your life with her instead of with someone who doesn’t love you?’

Something flickered at the back of his eyes and was gone. ‘That’s just a dream,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in wishing for something you can’t have. It’s better to deal with what you’ve got, and we’ve got each other-for now, at least. Our marriage may not be very romantic, but I think it’s successful, don’t you?’

‘It depends what you mean by successful,’ said Mallory doubtfully.

‘We’re both getting what we want out of it. You’re paying off your debts; I’ve got some practical support. It’s not a whirl of romance, I agree, but it’s working. As long as we both put something into the marriage, and both get something out, then, yes, I’d say it was a success.’

But we don’t sleep together, Mallory wanted to shout. We don’t love each other. How can it be a successful marriage?

But she didn’t. Perhaps, after all, Torr was right, and they had a partnership that gave them both what they needed. Perhaps that was enough.

She could see the waitress approaching with two plates. Sitting back in her chair, she pushed her cutlery back into place and put on a smile she didn’t feel. ‘Maybe when we’re divorced you can find her and tell her how you feel,’ she suggested helpfully. ‘You might find that you can have your dream after all.’

Torr’s eyes were dark and blue as they looked at her across the table. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

It was dark when they got back to Kincaillie the next evening, just as it had been the night of their arrival, but this time there was no storm to rage around the car. To Mallory the blackness felt less threatening, and the looming castle walls in the headlights less creepy. It would be too much to say that it felt like coming home, but nonetheless she was surprised at how familiar the kitchen seemed, and how pleased she was to get back.

The range had retained some heat, and once Torr had lit a fire everything began to look…not cosy, no, but more welcoming at least. In the bedroom, Mallory plugged in the radiator she had bought, and clicked on the new bedside lamps. In their soft yellow light the improvement was instant. When she had made the curtains and unrolled the new rug, the whole room would look positively inviting.

It would be very different going to bed now.

Although perhaps not that different. She would still be going to bed with Torr.

Mallory would rather have stuck pins in her eyes than admit it to him, but she had missed him the night before. The hotel room had been wonderfully warm, but the bed had felt big and empty, and she hadn’t been able to get comfortable. The truth, as she had admitted to herself at about three in the morning, was that she had felt lonely on her own.

She’d had Charlie for company, of course, although sometimes rather more than she’d wanted. It had been a treat for him to be able to sleep in the same room as her, and every now and then he’d put his front paws on the bed, whimpered with excitement and tried to lick her face. And if he hadn’t been doing that, he’d been snoring loudly, and reminding Mallory just why she usually made him sleep in the kitchen. She loved him dearly, but he wasn’t a restful companion at night, it had to be said.

Mallory had thumped her pillow and sighed, wondering if she would ever get a good night’s sleep again. She couldn’t sleep with Torr, and now it seemed she couldn’t sleep without him either.

The bed really did look inviting now, she thought, standing back and admiring the effect of the new lamps. She was weary after the long drive back to Kincaillie, and the thought of snuggling down under the duvet and settling against Torr’s hard, warm body was dangerously appealing. The realisation that she was looking forward to sleeping with him again was unsettling, even disturbing, and Mallory did her best to shrug it off. She was just tired, she told herself. She was looking forward to a long sleep, that was all.

‘I never thought I would admit it, but I’m shopped out,’ she said to Torr as they unpacked the perishables they had bought at their last stop. They had done a major supermarket shop, stocking up on all the basics, and as many fruit and vegetables as they thought would keep fresh for a while, as well as some luxuries, including a ready-made meal that went straight into the range to heat up when they got in.

‘Just as well,’ said Torr, stacking milk in the old chest freezer. ‘If we do many more shops like that we won’t be able to afford to have the roof done! We’ll have to make do with what we can get in Carraig for a while now.’

‘We really need to try and grow as much as we can ourselves. I’m all fired up now I’ve bought my book on growing vegetables,’ Mallory told him. ‘I’m going to start digging a patch to plant those seed potatoes I bought tomorrow.’

‘I thought you were painting tomorrow?’

‘That’s true.’ She was dying to get going on the bathroom, but if she didn’t start planting vegetables soon it would be too late. ‘I’ll paint in the morning,’ she decided, ‘and garden in the afternoon.’

Torr raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t need to knock yourself out,’ he said, and something in his tone made Mallory flush. She was obviously sounding too keen.

‘That was what we agreed as part of our new deal,’ she reminded him stiffly.

He didn’t reply for a moment. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said at last. ‘You’re working to repay your debts so you can leave in a year’s time with a clear conscience.’

Mallory bit her lip. She hadn’t been thinking about leaving, but if she denied it he would start to wonder why she was getting so enthused about planting vegetables she would probably never eat.

And he wouldn’t wonder nearly as much as she would.

So she told herself that repaying her debts according to the terms of their deal was all she cared about.

It certainly gave her a good excuse to work really hard for the next few weeks. She had bought paint in Inverness, and cleverly gave each room a character of its own just by careful choice of colour, so the bedroom was warm and restful, the bathroom cool and calm and the kitchen fresh and bright.

Having done much of the preparation in advance, it didn’t take her that long to slap on some paint, and she spent the rest of the time in the kitchen garden, where she’d started by clearing that one small patch. Mallory was surprised at how addictive she found it, and she got quite ambitious. She planted potatoes and beans, leeks and purple sprouting broccoli, peas and spinach, and once they were in she kept clearing one patch at a time, marvelling at what she found. There were great clumps of parsley and mint that had gone to seed, coarse rhubarb and chard, and a fine collection of old fruit bushes-blackcurrants, redcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries-that had grown woody.

Every night she would pore over the book she had bought, but the best advice came from Dougal, one of the roofers, who turned out to be a keen gardener. Dougal had a seamed, weathered face, and could obviously hardly bear to see her making mistakes. Every chance he could, he would climb down the scaffolding and stand over her in the garden, sucking his teeth and shaking his head.

‘You’ll no be getting a decent crop of potatoes now,’ he told her. ‘You’re much too late to be putting them in.’ He wagged a stubby finger at her. ‘Next year, now, you start in February.’

Mallory listened humbly. Dougal told her how to chit seed potatoes, how to grow carrots from seed, how to prepare soil, and he identified all sorts of plants that she had thought were weeds and had been planning to dig up.

‘It’s like Gardeners’ Question Time whenever I come in here,’ grumbled Torr one day, watching Dougal return reluctantly to the roof after finishing his mug of tea. ‘He spends more time in the garden than he does on the roof!’

Mallory pulled off her gardening gloves and put a hand to the small of her back. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without him,’ she said. ‘I can tell he thinks I’m too silly for words, but he’s showed me how to do all sorts of useful things. I’m going to start early so I can grow a really good variety next year.’

‘Don’t put in too much,’ Torr said. ‘Your year will be up before next summer. There’s no point in planting vegetables if you’re not going to be here to eat them.’

Without giving Mallory a chance to reply, he walked off, leaving her to stare after him in consternation. They had been getting on so well recently that his blunt reminder was like a slap in the face. It wasn’t that she had forgotten that she would be leaving in a year’s time, or that she had changed her mind, but she just hadn’t been thinking about it. She hadn’t been thinking about Steve either. She had just been painting and digging and walking Charlie and not thinking about anything very much. In spite of all her hard work, it had been a strangely restful time.

Now Torr had unsettled her again. She didn’t want to think about leaving, not yet. Much better to take each day at a time, Mallory told herself, and let the future take care of itself for now. She would just keep on tending the garden, and helping Torr with the mammoth job of bringing Kincaillie back to life, and she would worry about what she was going to do when the year was up.