He gave a low whistle. “There’s always that possibility. You don’t mind if I opt out of any discussion you have with Caleb?”

“Why should I? You’re not worried. He’s not worried.” She leaned back in her seat. “And I’m going to try to follow your example. Until I see him. Didn’t you say that Caleb wanted you to entertain me by telling me the rest of MacClaren’s story? He’s so good with plans that I think you should just go along with it.”

“Are you certain?” he asked warily. “I don’t believe you’re in the mood.”

“You’d be wrong. I want MacClaren’s story to be happy and successful and hopefully brimful of ways to sting the bad guys.” She paused. “As long as it includes Fiona in a way that has meaning and doesn’t leave her to trail after MacClaren like a lost puppy dog.”

“Some of it you’ll have to judge for yourself. You have the letter. I can only tell you what I know about MacClaren.”

“And the last thing I heard was that he’d talked Jamie into letting him paint Fiona’s portrait. But the chance of Jamie letting her have anything to do with him other than that was nil. True?”

He nodded. “She was gentry. He was a penniless artist. So they had to find a way to work around it. Not easy during that period. They decided to play a waiting game. Jamie wanted that portrait, and he didn’t know much about the artistic process. So MacClaren showed some of the razzmatazz he’d learned while he was in America and pretended that the portrait wouldn’t be any good if he didn’t take a long time to create it. That gave him and Fiona months together, and as long as they played it cool, Jamie wouldn’t object. But money became a problem, and since MacClaren was doing Fiona’s portrait for a pittance, he told Jamie he’d contracted to do murals for the railway to make ends meet. That gave them the opportunity to go up to the hills and stall even longer while he painted the murals. Graeme was in Europe on an extended business trip, and Jamie suspected nothing. It was a good time for them. Fiona even managed to go to the rail yards with him once when he officially turned over the murals to the owners of the company. But the good times ran out and they couldn’t stall any longer. Other clients of the railway were trying to hire MacClaren to paint similar works for them.” He shrugged. “And Jamie wanted his portrait. He needed money and Graeme, Fiona’s fiancé, was due to come back from Paris. He planned on showing him the portrait and then making the final wedding arrangements to clinch his deal with him.”

“They were in a corner,” Jane murmured.