She looked back at photograph. ‘But…this looks like a castle,’ she said, still puzzled.

‘It is.’ To her relief, Torr moved away from the fireplace and sat down on the sofa at right angles to her chair. He lounged easily in one corner, as far away from her as he could get. ‘You can only see the medieval part in that view, but there’s a later wing behind, so it’s more comfortable than it looks.’

‘You’ve inherited a castle?’ said Mallory in disbelief. She was more than half convinced now that the whole thing was some kind of hoax that Torr was pursuing for his own reasons.

A bit like their marriage, in fact.

‘The whole estate,’ he said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to acquire a ruined castle. ‘And the title that goes with it, if that interests you. It turns out that I’m the new Laird of Kincaillie,’ he went on, an ironic inflexion in his voice, ‘and as you’re my wife, all evidence to the contrary, that makes you the Lady.’

All evidence to the contrary. Mallory flushed and her eyes slid away from his.

‘I didn’t realise that you were in line to inherit a castle,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘Nor did I,’ said Torr. ‘Oh, I knew that my family had associations with Kincaillie, but I certainly never expected it to be mine. I remember my father took me there when I was sixteen, and my great-uncle was Laird, but he had two sons so it didn’t seem likely I would ever inherit. One of them was killed in an accident years ago, and the younger brother had already emigrated to New Zealand by then and didn’t want to come back. There’s a complicated entail in place which means that Kincaillie can’t be sold, so it’s been abandoned for the last few years. Apparently he had a heart attack a few months ago, and it took some time for the lawyers to track me down.’

‘And you just heard today?’