Free The Secret Gift by Jaclyn Reding

She’d just assumed it was a cousin or a friend. Could it be instead ...
    A husband?
     
    Libby decided to take a short break before setting out on her next task, that of studying the parish marriage records, which would take much longer, since she would be searching a number of years, rather than just one. The musty air and low light inside the records room had given her a headache, so she’d decided on a short walk and some fresh air, escaping to the village’s fish and chip shop—called simply the Chip Shop—down the street for lunch.
    As she’d handed over her two pounds fifty to pay, Sean stopped by to tell her he had to leave the village for an outlying settlement that was in unexpected need of his services. He explained that he would have left her on her own but he wasn’t at all certain when he’d be coming back that night. Would she mind very much if any further search through the record books had to wait until the morning?
    Since she wasn’t on any timetable, Libby bid him good-bye, picked up her newspaper-wrapped fish and the accompanying bag of chips, and took the short stroll to the village green.
    There was a small garden there that in summer would be replete with native flowers, but now, in the chill harshness of autumn, the blossoms had long gone. It was still a lovely spot, with the small harbor with its fishing boats lined along the dock and the bay stretching out in the distance. Libby took a seat on a stone bench and quietly had her lunch. She thought of her mother growing up in the village and wondered if she’d ever sat at that same spot, on that same bench. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching on the gravel walkway behind her.
    “A fine day, is it no’?”
    He was tall, dark, and definitely handsome, made all the more so by the smart constable’s uniform he wore.
    Libby smiled. “Yes, it is.”
    His hair was a rich red-brown, his eyes warm and hazel, and he took her smile as invitation to linger. He lowered onto the bench beside her, taking out his own newspaper-wrapped fish and bag of chips, then offered his hand in greeting.
    “Angus MacLeith.”
    She took his hand, shook it. “Libby Hutchinson.”
    “American, aye?”
    Libby nodded. “New York,” she said, already answering what she knew would be the next question.
    “East or West Side?”
    Now that she hadn’t expected. “West.”
    “Upper?”
    She nodded. “Seventy-sixth and Amsterdam.”
    He smiled. “Ah, yes. Zabar’s. H&H Bagels. And Gray’s Papaya.”
    “Best hot dogs in the city,” she agreed.
    He took a bite of his fish, swallowed it down with a drink of his soda. She did the same, eating in companionable silence.
    “So what’s a New Yorker doing here of all places?”
    “I might ask the same of a Highlander who so obviously knows his way around New York.”
    He nodded, grinned. “Trained with the NYPD. Left a few months after 9/11.”
    She nodded, thinking she understood. But she didn’t.
    “Great blokes, the NYPD. Would still be there today, but my sister lost her husband, accident on the North Sea oil rig where he worked. She needed someone to help her meet the rent, raise her three kids. And the village I had always known as home suddenly found itself in need of a constable. So I came back, and here I am. PC Angus MacLeith. Keeper of the village of Wrath’s peace.”
    Libby nodded, munching on a chip. It was an amazingly small world sometimes.
    “You haven’t answered my question yet,” he said a moment later.
    Libby looked at him. “Oh. You mean why I’m here? My mother was born in the village.”
    He nodded, understanding completely. “Come to see the homeland, then?”
    “Yes, I—”
    Libby was just about to tell him the rest of her story when she spotted a black Land Rover driving slowly by. It wasn’t the vehicle, which she’d never seen before, but the driver, whom she’d
definitely
seen before, that had caught her attention.
    It was the man she’d