Chapter Text
His Grace, Duke Myles Dunbar had been the owner of Dun Dunbar castle for twenty-five years. When he was a boy, he had never been able to appreciate the beauty of the castle nor the importance of the farmlands, for he was always too caught up in the issues that he had with his father. His family had been here for centuries, leaving their mark on the little village, for better or for worse. They prided themselves on staying afloat through every war, every recession, every hardship. Dun Dunbar stood strong. But the family were also old Scottish money, arrogant aristocratic royals at that. Every first born son to the family was a next generation duke, and the ego seemed to come hand in hand with the title.
Now, young Myles watched his grandfather and his father sit high up on their thrones in the grand castle, barking orders at both their house and ground staff, their farmers, their tenants, and bringing down heavy hammers when not at all necessary. They were cruel and commandeering, and Myles promised himself then and there that he would never become like them, no matter what kind of title he possessed. He formed a quick and long-lasting friendship with the son of the head groundskeeper, a boy just three years his junior named Thomas, and together they learned about true friendship, regardless of class difference. It was due to the treatment of Thomas and his family that Myles realized he had to get away from life on the castle grounds. He could not let himself turn into his father, who used and abused his staff and treated them like dirt beneath his polished boot. He wasn't ready to stick around and try to make things better from the inside, he just wanted to get away from his father.
Alas, the moment that he became of age, Myles headed to England, where a few distant family members helped him get on his feet before taking up courses at Oxford, and later furthering his education at Cambridge. He worked for his living, fell in love with one of his classmates, got married, and settled down in Oxford. When they hit financial troubles, his wife of ten years found someone with a heavier title - co-Prince of Andorra, to be exact - and Myles was on his own again. Heartbroken and angry, he returned home. Back to the castle. Him and his father fought so viciously and refused to agree on anything, to the point where the eleventh Duke ended up telling his son to just go ahead and take all of it for himself - the land, the farm, the debt, and the castle - and figure it all out on his own while he moved to London, where he would live out the rest of his days.
Myles may have been a defensive, arrogant, relatively bitter man, but he welcomed this challenge with gritted teeth and determination in his icy heart. He was used to being on his own, it was what he knew best. In fact, there was something comfortable about being alone, in his mind. That very year, when word came of his father's passing, Myles Dunbar became the sole proprietor of Dun Dunbar Castle. It was hard for him to be back among his worst childhood memories, but the town had growth up with him, and change was in the air. Without a marriage to worry about, he could focus on keeping Dun Dunbar afloat and providing safe land ownership for his tenants.
In fact, that was what he decided to devote the rest of his life to. Myles was in his mid-thirties and divorced, in his mind, that meant that he had completed that entire portion of his life. He had done the falling in love and getting married thing, and it hadn't worked out. Now, he was meant to worry about other things. He wasn't the kind of person who believed in second chances. In his experience, love only offered hurt, embarrassment, and opportunity for failure. He certainly didn't need something like that in his life voluntarily. He became a man motivated by anger. His anger towards his father lingered through the years, and drove him to be successful where his father was not. HIs anger towards his ex-wife morphed into a distaste for love and relationships beyond physical companionship. His anger towards himself festered somewhere beneath the surface, always unchecked. But subconsciously, he punished himself for all that anger. By promising to spend the rest of his life abrasive and alone.
Nonetheless, Myles left a better legacy than any duke ever had before. He did hands on work, he rehired Thomas as the main groundskeeper, he employed dozens of people from the village that needed work. Farmers, laborers, grounds workers, a few young kids in the giftshop, two cooks, even a maid or two. Of course, he helped out on the farmlands whenever he could, and anywhere else in the community, for that matter. And when his castle began to suffer financially, he was forced to lay off the majority of his staff, and him and Thomas really had their hands full. Still, he was always doing what he could for the little village that he was responsible for sustaining.
Presently, Myles was a man filled with emptiness. Deep down inside, he missed who he used to be. Not during his conflicting childhood or his enraged adolescence, but when he was far away from Dunbar Village, and things seemed to matter less. Back when he lived for himself, nobody else. Deep down, he missed the city. The friends he made. His wife. He missed it all. But Myles was a rough aging man, with a deep chip on his shoulder and a heavy distrust for anyone that he did not know well. But more than anything, he wanted to make the community a better place. To repair the damage that his forefathers had done. To give them a place to live, to work, to rely on. And he would have been doing a fine job, were it not for the insufferable inflation. There came a time when he could simply no longer afford to maintain so much land, and that was where he stood today - with his home on the market.
More specifically, today - on a crisp autumn afternoon - he stood under the blue skies of Dunbar village, sanding down a new sign for the Village Inn. Maisie and Shawn had owned the Inn for almost two decades now, until Shawn took off and Maisie was left to do it on her own. Now, Myles offered her free labour whenever she needed a handyman, for a few different reasons. Her and her inn were responsible for maintaining the majority of the town's tourism, she no longer had Shawn to help her out, and she was an old friend of his. So, Myles did what Myles always did. He showed up, he put on a gruff but almost friendly façade, and lent a hand.
It was merely late September, and though the sun was shining, there was a bite in the air and it was hardly over ten degrees. Myles had never been overly troubled by the cold, and today he was just glad to have the sun on his face. Soon, the telltale sound of wheels on the cobblestone street alerted him to look up and witness Eamon pulling his taxi up to the inn. This shouldn't have been too surprising, he often ran tourists to and from the airport in Edinburgh; however, it was a rather odd time for an arrival of tourists. September was far from their busiest month, and typically people rolled into town bright and early so that they could catch the shuttle bus than ran across the countryside, stopping at all the various castles and tourist attractions. Nevertheless, he maintained a sour look on his face and continued his work, surprised even further to watch one single, lone woman step out of the vehicle.
As he worked, he couldn't help but notice that she seemed rather overdressed, and figured that she must have come from somewhere southern. Myles noted this through his furrowed brow and stifled a roll of his eyes but tried to continue with his sanding as he watched this woman look around herself with wide eyes and a smile on her parted lips. He hoped that the inn would take her for all she was worth. Maisie could use the money, and she looked starstruck enough to doll it all out. American tourists - which he deduced that she was - often found charm in little struggling villages such as this one, and it was up to the citizens to take full advantage of that. To his horror, Myles heard barking coming from around the corner of the building, and before he could shout at his dog to get down, Hamish had come around the corner and barelled right into this clueless tourist.
Sophie would have been knocked to the ground were it not for the strong arms of a labouring man wearing an olive green jumpsuit, with blue eyes that resembled a calm sea after a wicked storm, and greying blonde hair parted over to one side, flopping clumsily in front of his face. She had been sent backwards initially, but in her struggle to find proper footing, Sophie was turned around to face him, so close that for just a split second, the tips of their noses brushed. She certainly had never been this close to a stranger before, and began to wonder why she did not mind the feeling of his hands around her waist as he tried to steady her.
They stared for a moment, both seemingly entranced by the strangeness of their situation.
Sophie noticed that he was tall, taller than her still and she was already a woman who tended to tower over most. He had this look on his face that was both calm and bewildered, all at once, and his lips were full and pink, his face bright and glowing with life. One look into those eyes and she found herself unable to read a single thought on his mind. She couldn't tell what he was feeling, nor whether or not he was mad about their forced proximity. Regardless, she could tell that there was much going on in his head, and she wondered how he managed to present himself so coolly. His hands were strong, and she still didn’t mind the fact that they were around her waist, even if this man was a total stranger. He smelled fresh, like the outdoors, with a hint of cologne, undeniably pleasant.
Myles noticed that she was tall. Not quite as tall as himself, but she was an impressively tall woman and felt rather slender, though he knew that his hands shouldn't have been feeling anything at that point. In keeping with her advantageous height, she had very long hair, rich chestnut brown and falling in loose curls all down her back and over her shoulders. Her nose and cheeks were dusted with the faintest of freckles, her brows were thick, dark, and expressive and she had wide blue eyes that were currently fixated down at his lips. Myles blinked away his surprise. He hadn't held this beautiful of a woman in his arms in years. Perhaps ever, he realized. What lucky timing.
Sophie finally realized that she was gripping on for dear life and enjoying it far more than she should, and released herself from him, brushing away a stray lock of hair for the sole purpose of giving her hands something to do.
"Well," she smiled awkwardly, looking up at the man who still stared at her. "I'm glad you were here," she finished with a shrug.
Though she had removed herself from this stranger's arms, the pair still stood barely a foot away from each other. Like two magnets, who had no idea why they were so drawn to one another.
"He, uh…" the man began, obviously in reference to his dog, but stopped to swallow once. Sophie wasn't surprised to hear the thick Scottish accent roll of his tongue, but she wished that it hadn't managed to make him even more attractive to her. "Doesn't usually like strangers."
"Neither do you, you dobber," Eamon interrupted, shaking Sophie and Myles from their trance as he came around the back of the car and handed Sophie her hat, before opening the back of his vehicle so that he could get the rest of her luggage.
Myles knew that Eamon was teasing him for getting so cozy with a beautiful stranger, for all to see - a highly uncharacteristic move on his part - but couldn't tear his eyes away from her. There were few things in life that he would let himself indulge in, taking in every moment with this enchantress of a woman before she walked out of his life just as quickly as she had entered, certainly couldn't hurt.
She thanked her driver with a shy smile as she grabbed her hat, and cast her eyes curiously back towards her handsome saviour, starting to feel strangely smitten. "Enjoy your stay, then," he nodded at her with a small smile, and Sophie wondered if that was the best that he could do. His grin had been crooked, thin, almost as if he was restraining himself from fully smiling.
Nonetheless, she smiled back at him before following Eamon into the inn, where she was again greeted by the big brown dog, who seemed to have taken a liking to her.
"Hey," Sophie reached down to give her a quick pet on the head. "Are you the welcoming committee?"
Nightfall came quickly after Sophie Brown had gotten herself unpacked and settled in, what with darkness falling earlier as autumn droned on. Knowing that tomorrow would be a busy day searching for the perfect glimmer of inspiration regarding the newest Emma Gale book she was determined to write, as well as some potential sight-seeing, she took tonight to unwind and adjust to her new life in a Scottish village of little over 150 people, even if it was only a temporary one. Already, she enjoyed the fact that there weren't reporters around every corner and photographers watching her every move. Sure, people recognized her, but they seemed far more tactful than anyone she encountered back in the big city.
With a nice hot cup of tea and a warmly heated room, Sophie gathered her thoughts and attempted to imagine what her next book should look like. As of this moment, she couldn't even picture Emma Gale in her mind. As if that character had died and been left way back across the ocean, never to be touched again. The serious author within her despised being trapped by the shackles of romance, all because she had decided that her first works would be inspired by the love that she once felt for her husband. Those books and that life was far away now, and she wanted to write something far more substantial than a woman's story that revolved around loving a man who never even existed in real life.
Shelving the book for now, Sophie hoped that tomorrow would bring about the end of her writer's block, and without much trouble at all, she fell asleep soundly, listening to the crackling of the fireplace and the light drizzle of rain coming from outside. She felt safe here, she felt peaceful. She hadn't felt this way in decades.