Swept off Her Feet (9 page)

Robert ran a hand over his face. “Our family home was a perfectly nice villa in Wimbledon, by the common. Big garden, tennis court, ample parking. No bats. No sculptures in the bathroom. I’m not saying this
isn’t
beautiful—it’d make an amazing hotel, or a nursing home, or something. But it’s not a
home
home.”

“It
is
!”

“It’s a
museum
. To tat and kleptomania.”

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

“But you can
see
it’s a home everywhere you look,” I protested, my voice so high even the aforementioned bats could hear it. “It’s just a bit more . . . scaled-up. You’ve got portraits instead of photos. I mean, that worn-down foot-scraper by the door, and . . . and . . . this mirror here—can you
imagine
what that mirror’s seen over the years: the changing costumes, and the hopes, and the romances—”

“There’s nothing
romantic
about a house that costs forty thousand a year just to heat.”

“Log fires are the most romantic thing
ever
, and you’ve got your own forest out there!”

Robert started to say something, then stopped himself. It seemed to be taking a fair bit of self-control. “We may have to agree to disagree on this one,” he said. “I’m only telling you now because every meal we have when I’m home turns into a row. Dad has fallen for this place, and he thinks I should too.
But I’m a businessman, and he’s not. I don’t want you to be embarrassed about whose side to take. He’s your man to talk about romance with. Just don’t ask him how much the insurance costs, because he hasn’t the first idea.”

“Fine,” I said, scrabbling to make amends. “Tell me what I can talk to
you
about, then?”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Dogs?” I suggested. “Ibizan clubs? Rhubarb?”

The corner of Robert’s mouth twitched, but the rest of his face remained impassive. “I’m sure we’ll find something to chat about.” He gestured toward a spiral staircase leading downward. “I’ll go first, give you something to fall on.”

“Oh, wow! A spiral staircase!” I said before I could stop myself. “Aren’t they meant to go clockwise, so noblemen could sword-fight up them? Or was it down them?”

Robert looked up from three steps down, and I felt the shrewd McAndrew eyes taking me in. I couldn’t quite read them.

If I’d met him in a bar in town, I’d have put Robert well out of my league. His clothes were casual but expensive, his general aura urbane and confident. Whatever he did for a living, he was in charge. His only obvious flaw was rather wonky teeth. But there was a funny vibration about him—not nerves, not awkwardness, just a sort of . . . not quite wanting to be there—that made a tiny chink in his polish.

“They go left so the chambermaids can hold the chamber pots in their right hands.”

“Really? I suppose it does make sense—”

“No,” he said. “I just made that up.”

We clicked down a stone corridor lined with cobwebbed servants’ bells for various bedrooms, studies, games rooms, bathrooms, nursery.

“Are those still in use?” I asked, thinking of Mhairi’s instruction to ring if I needed anything.

“You’ve an electric one.”

I thought it was a bit odd that we were dining in the cellar when there was bound to be a perfectly good baronial dining hall, but maybe they’d done up the kitchens as a big basement diner.

We passed several butler’s pantries before we came to the kitchen. I assumed it was the kitchen, anyway; it was the only room with a thin sliver of light beneath the door. I wrapped my cardigan more tightly round myself as Robert pushed his way in.

“Punctuality costs nothing,” said Duncan, tapping his watch. “Not you, Evie, you’re very welcome.”

I did a double take.

No gleaming candelabra. No dining table. No butler.

Instead, round a long scrubbed pine table sat Duncan and Ingrid McAndrew and Sheila Graham. Sheila was still in the same twinset and skirt, but Ingrid was wearing a mushroom-colored tracksuit, and Duncan had changed into a blue velvet smoking jacket and a hat with a tassle.

If you didn’t count Duncan’s bizarre hat, I was the only one who’d dressed up. My expression froze, along with the rest of me.

“Good Lord, Evie, you must be a warm-blooded girl, wearing a dress like that!” barked Duncan. I was still thinking what on earth to say to that when he turned to Robert and added, “
She
obviously doesn’t feel this terrible cold you’re always whining on about.”

“I’m not whining,” said Robert—heading for the chair nearest the Aga, I noted. “I’m just pointing out that there are parts of this bloody freezing house that you probably couldn’t legally keep animals in.”

They didn’t dress for dinner!
Robert could have
said
something when he saw me, for God’s sake. He could have
told
me that everyone else would be bundled up to the nines when I still had time to go and get several cardigans. We were eating in the
kitchen
!

“Evie, that’s a beautiful dress,” said Sheila, noticing my discomfort. “And orange and black to match the Kettlesheer tartan—did you know?”

Ingrid’s face dropped. “Oh, Evie, you needn’t have bothered,” she said. “We never dress for dinner. I mean, we dress in that we put more clothes
on
. . . .”

“This? Oh, it’s nothing special,” I lied. “I, er, have thermal underwear underneath.”

“Jolly sensible,” said Duncan. “Be prepared.”

“Come and sit here, where it’s warm,” Ingrid said, getting up to give me her own seat. “And let me get you a drink,” she went on, pushing a glass in front of me. “Red? White?”

“Wow, are these Georgian?” I forgot my annoyance in a nanosecond. The table might have had generations of servants who sat round it, but the place settings were fit for a duke: big porcelain plates with gold rims and purple thistles flanked by heavy silver cutlery.

Like the kitchen, it was a funny old mixture of fancy and plain, but I was completely charmed. It had atmosphere, with its worn stone flags and polished brass pans sitting next to a very modern KitchenAid mixer. There’d been some hustle and bustle in here over the years, I could feel it.

“You tell us, Evie!” Duncan said at once. “We’ve got about a hundred upstairs—worth much, do you think?”

“Dad, Evie’s already valued half the tat in Rennick tonight,” said Robert. His voice was light, but his eyes were warning. “Give her an hour off, will you?”

“Tat? Tat!”

Duncan glared at Robert and I was reminded of the painting in my room of two stags glowering at each other in a handbags-at-dawn standoff.

Sheila Graham offered me the bottle of wine just as Ingrid McAndrew closed her eyes and reached for her glass in one practiced movement.

Normally, I didn’t drink much in new places (I had a bad habit of getting rather mystical about people’s valuables, which was embarrassing if they’d only just bought them), but the sudden frost in the air had nothing to do with the conditions outside, and I pushed my glass toward Sheila. She filled it with an almost inaudible sigh and a conspirational wink.

I was woken the next morning
by a strange smell—the sort of burning-rubber whiff you get when you don’t take the plastic off a microwave-ready meal properly.

I pulled the four-poster’s heavy curtain aside, ready to face the bright Scottish sunlight streaming into the room, and found myself staring into the eyes of a burly black Labrador bearing a silver teapot on its back.

I squawked and jerked backward into the pillows, nearly knocking over the water jug on the bedside table.

Once the room swam into focus, however, I realized that the dog was stuffed, and a solid mahogany breakfast tray had been placed on a small table behind it. I wasn’t surprised that someone had come in and left it without me noticing; the drapery was so thick the Scots Guards could have piped the breakfast in without disturbing me.

I sniffed warily. The smell was coming from beneath a silver dome. Next to it was a battered silver pot of coffee, and some milk, and a bowl of solid oatmeal that you could stand a spoon up in. There was no sugar, just a small bowl of salt. Proper Scottish porridge, in other words.

And—I leaned over and lifted the dome with some trepidation—kippers.

To be perfectly honest, kippers were one of those things that I always liked the
idea
of more than the reality. These looked as if they’d been freshly scraped off the outside of a trawler. But on the other hand, they were sitting under a silver dome on a crested porcelain kipper plate. With kipper knives and some kipper implement I’d never even seen before.

How often did you get the chance of a breakfast-in-bed that crossed over with the life of Queen Victoria?
Not
very often.

Gingerly I maneuvered the tray onto the eiderdown, and poured myself a cup of coffee in readiness for the fishy challenge ahead.

It was a gorgeous cup: fine porcelain and crested with a thistle wrapped in little flowers. I sipped more delicately than I usually did with my first coffee of the day, and admired the Labrador, which had obviously once been a much-loved family member. It still had its collar on: Lord Bertold had been its name. I felt a twinge of sympathy; I kept our cat’s old collar in a treasure box, having retrieved it from Mum’s merciless tidying of Cleo’s basket after The Long Dark Trip to the Vets.

Between the romantic Reel of Luck and their inability to throw anything away, including deceased pets, I was starting to think the Clan McAndrew could be one after my own heart. Or maybe I was just a thwarted aristocratic collector trapped in the body of an underpaid London singleton.

Then, with a deep breath, I tackled the first kipper.

Once I’d finished the porridge and coffee and forced down half a kipper, I pulled on as many layers as I could manage, then headed downstairs with my breakfast tray, ready to tackle the castle and all its hidden nooks and crannies.

In the kitchens I was greeted by the sound of Duncan bellowing some rousing Scottish song in the worst Scottish accent I’d ever heard. Mhairi was washing up at the big Belfast sink, wearing fur-trimmed fuchsia washing-up gloves with giant plastic solitaires and gazing impassively into the bubbles, presumably praying to be struck deaf.

“Good morn, good morn!” he roared as I appeared at the door with my tray. “How’d you find the kippers? Put hairs on your chest!”

“Um, I couldn’t finish them as well as the porridge,” I lied. “Delicious, though.”

“I had one when we first moved in here two years ago, and it’s still repeating on me,” said Ingrid. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a pile of notebooks and pens around her, and yellow Post-it notes fluttered from every surface as she flapped her hands around, looking for something. “Give me muesli anytime. Duncan, how many loo rolls do you think three hundred people reasonably need? Barring accidents?”

Duncan didn’t answer. Instead, he rubbed his hands together and advanced toward me. “Now, the guided tour!” He beamed. “As my noble kinsman, Merry Ivan McAndrew, famously commented in 1564, ‘There’s aye fashing in mickle muckle.’ “

He adopted a strange hunched, one-eyed posture as he said it, and I smiled nervously. Was that a question or a statement? I had no idea.

“Duncan, don’t forget Janet Learmont’s coming over at
eleven for the committee meeting.” Ingrid sounded as if she were talking about a dental appointment. “Please don’t tell her about your sporran.”

“It’s in hand,” said Duncan cryptically.

“I meant to say,” I started, “thanks so much for the breakfast in—” but Duncan was ushering me out and up the spiral staircase, outlining the history of the castle as he went. I managed to insert a question every now and again, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the general narrative theme: the McAndrew passion for
stuff
.

He marched me through the oak-paneled hall, where my eyes were drawn to the bloodthirsty decoration. Where other people might have a nice Canaletto, the McAndrews had wall after wall of grisly medieval weaponry. It looked as if someone had put an enormous magnet next to the Battle of Bannock-burn.