A Bewitching Bride Read Online Free Page A

judgment.”
    Gavin hardly spared Gordon Massey a glance. He was more interested in his friend’s problems. “So, Will,” he said, “you missed your train this morning?”
    “No trains running, I’m afraid.”
    “What about the problem you mentioned? What will you do now?”
    “There’s nothing much I can do until the trains are running again.” He shrugged. “I wish that you would forget I ever mentioned it. The more I think about it, the more bizarre it seems. Accidents do happen, and I’m coming to believe that’s all they were, accidents.”
    Gavin might have said more, but his friend was borne away by the young widow McCrae to make up a four at her card table. No sooner had his friend vacated his place on the sofa, when it was taken by Mr. Fox, another of the hotel’s paying guests. Gavin swallowed a sigh. He’d had the misfortune to sit beside Mr. Fox at dinner, and he’d heard enough about the former headmaster’s views on the younger generation to last him a lifetime.
    Mr. Fox said solemnly, “I could not help but see, Mr. Hepburn, that you and that doctor fellow had a lot to say to each other.”
    “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Gavin allowed. He didn’t like the tone of Mr. Fox’s remarks. In fact, he didn’t like anything about Mr. Fox, from his highly polished boots to his too-tight neckcloth.
    “He’s a psychiater, I believe?”
    “He’s a doctor,” Gavin replied. “Some of his patients suffer from . . .” He searched for the right word.
    “Dementia?” Fox supplied.
    “I was going to say from a nervous condition. Dr. Rankin has had some success in treating them.”
    “Really?” said Fox. “Do you know what I think, Mr. Hepburn? I think that Dr. Rankin has discovered an easy way of making money out of his patients’ misery. In another twenty years, we’ll look back on the medical profession and call this the age of humbug.”
    Gavin rarely lost his temper, but Fox’s unprovoked attack on the character of a man who had given up a lucrative practice in Edinburgh to work in the slums of Aberdeen, the city of Will’s birth, was more than he was willing to tolerate.
    He got to his feet. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I believe I’m being invited to play cards.”
    He left Mr. Fox red-faced and sputtering. His own anger didn’t show on the surface, but it seethed inside. Will Rankin was like a brother to him. They’d known each other since they were infants, when they’d caught minnows in the shallows of the river Feugh where their parents had summer homes. Over the years, catching minnows had graduated into catching salmon. To this day, fishing in the Feugh or in the Dee was a mutual pleasure that neither was willing to forgo. Even though their paths had diverged, they always managed to spend a week or two in the summer months on the banks of their favorite haunts.
    A flash of memory passed through his brain: Will, seeing Maddie, his future wife, for the first time as she crossed the stepping-stones on the banks of the Feugh to get to the other side. Will had waded in to help her and had stepped right into a pothole and fallen flat on his face. Now Maddie was gone, and Will directed all his energies and his once considerable fortune to the clinics he had opened in Maddie’s memory. To belittle his achievement was tantamount to declaring war as far as Gavin was concerned.
    “Gavin!” a feminine voice called out.
    Janet Mayberry waved him over to the card table. She’d been hounding him from the moment he’d arrived, and he’d thanked his lucky stars that he was domiciled a good half mile from the hotel. Janet was an indoors girl. She was afraid of dogs, and where he went, Macduff was sure to follow. Dogs had their uses, he thought ruefully.
    “Mr. Massey has had enough of cards,” Janet told him. “And we need another player.”
    She had bedroom eyes, a bedroom voice, and a heart that was impervious to love: just how he liked his women, but not