“This is the only room that has any real meaning to me,” he said. “Not those cases of prehistoric flints or Italian marbles. Violet McAndrew created this room because she loved to dance, and people still dance here now.”
I looked up—his dark eyes were watching me, his lips slightly parted. I wondered how like Ranald he was, what he would look like in uniform, with a mustache. I imagined all the McAndrew men, whizzing backward through time in a collage of faces, the eyes staying the same.
“Course, it could just be the snow,” he went on. “It is kind of spooky.”
I stepped over to the stone windowsill and gazed out at the fairy-tale landscape stretching down the drive. The ballroom had a full panorama of the snow-blanketed park rolling away toward the woods, broken only by faint footsteps across the verandah toward the steps. The trees glittered in the last rays of wintry afternoon sun, which flooded the ballroom with a spectral bluish light. I could see the dust motes flicker in the air like tiny ghosts.
It was so quiet I could hear Robert breathing, and for a dizzying second, it felt as if we were the only people in the whole house. And even though my back was turned to him, I knew exactly how far away from me he was.
“There is a rather different atmosphere in here today,” he added, at the same time that I said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as this.”
I turned; Robert was close—exactly where I’d known he was—and our eyes met. I felt as if he was reading all the confused thoughts churning round in my head, and I blushed.
“You know, you were very wrong the other night, when you thought I expected to you mess up,” he said. “I actually think you’ve learned it all amazingly fast. Has Fraser managed to teach you the proper fast spin all the girls do up here?”
“God, no,” I said. “I’ve got the patterns of the reels in my head, that’s all fine, but I can’t make the spin work. I want to, because it looks amazing, but I keep locking up. I don’t know what happens, my mind’s telling me one thing, and my limbs just go—”
“We’ve plenty of room here,” he said. “Want to give it another try?”
“Oh, um, no, it’s fine. . . .” My voice echoed in the empty ballroom, bouncing off the high ceiling.
What was I saying? Of course I wanted to, any excuse to feel his hands in mine. But I had a horrible feeling it would be better in my imagination, where there was less chance of me falling over and possibly injuring him to boot.
“The lack of an audience might help,” he suggested.
“Okay,” I said, more matter-of-factly than I felt. “Show me what to do.” I held out my hands.
“Other way up,” said Robert. “Here, look.” He took hold of my wrists, positioned them the correct way, and clasped my hands in his, wrapping his fingers round mine.
I shivered, and hoped he couldn’t feel it. We’d done this before, but this felt different. More deliberate, more intimate.
“Now, don’t think, just feel what I’m trying to do with you,” he said firmly. “Relax. Now, I’m turning you round. . . .”
His hands tightened, and he raised his own arms so I had no choice but to rotate slowly toward his body.
“And now I’m going to give you an extra spin, so go with it, that’s it, just keep going round, and because I’m a helpful sort of chap, I’m going to position you right in front of the next man in the set. . . .”
All the while he was speaking, Robert was purposefully turning me on the spot, and my feet were obediently following. His voice sounded calm, but in the silence of the room, I could hear his breathing speeding up.
Meanwhile, my own heart was banging so loud in my chest it might as well have had amplifiers.
“. . . and there you are.” Robert released me with a little push, and I stumbled slightly, and found myself staring at the fireplace, piled with unlit logs and pinecones. “Ready to dance with Fraser.”
I’d done it. No lockup, no embarrassing yelp from my partner. It had been so neat and quick and . . . satisfying.
“When did you learn how to do that?” I asked. “Growing up in Wimbledon and all.”
“Oh, once a Scot, you know. I went to a few Highland balls at college, once I learned just what an aphrodisiac a good reel can be. And I had plenty of offers of practice.” He grinned at me. “From ladies who liked to be spun so fast they lost their breath.”
I caught sight of my own face in one of the mirrors lining the walls: I looked stunned. In a good way.
“Want to try that one more time?” he asked. “Make sure it wasn’t a fluke?”
My stomach bubbled with excitement, but I kept my voice cool. “Practice makes perfect.”
I held out my hands, the right way up, and he grabbed me again. He spun me faster this time, turning me round and inside out, not letting go as soon as he had before.
“Just trust me,” he called out as I staggered, not sure where I was. “You’ve got to go with it, no point trying to second-guess. Let the man be in charge. Should appeal to your costume-drama tendencies.”
“I think I’m starting to get the hang of this,” I said as he caught me again and pulled me into another one.
“I think you are too,” said Robert. He paused, and we stared at each other, our faces still quite close together. His eyes burned into mine.
“One more go? Fast as you like?” I raised my hands and risked a flirty wink. “So fast I lose my breath?”
But instead of grabbing my wrists to spin me, Robert scooped one arm round my waist and lifted my right hand in the air.
“There’s more to the ball than just reeling, you know,” he said, setting off in a dizzying circle. “There’s breaks for waltzing too.”
“Stop! I’ve done waltzing, this is going to end in tears!” I protested, laughing, but he kept moving, and my feet somehow skittered round between his.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined yourself in a proper ball situation?” he went on. “Crinoline? Tiara? ‘The Blue Danube’?”
“I have!” I protested. Our bodies were pressed close together now, properly close, not the quick hand-grip and touch of the reeling. “But I saw myself on the side, watching from behind my fan.”
“You didn’t see yourself dancing?” His eyes stayed on mine, and his arm tightened around my waist, guiding me. “That’s very sad.”
“No, it’s perfectly reasonable—I can’t dance!”
“What are you doing now, then?”
“I’m not doing anything!”
Robert stopped in a long dust-strewn shaft of snow-white light. My feet took a second to catch up, and skidded my body into his. Neither of us moved away.
I could feel his heart beating through the thin jersey, the pulse of his blood in his neck where my hand rested. We were both completely still, afraid to move. He held me, one arm curled round my waist, the other folding my hand into his shoulder, and my breath shuddered in my throat. He was so close I could smell his skin, and it was making me feel weak with desire.
“Evie,” he began, his voice low. “I looked at those postcards again, and it made me realize that—”
“Evie? Evie, are you up here?” A voice broke the silence. A very carrying voice.
Catriona.
I sprang out of Robert’s grasp as her kitten heels snapped down the corridor outside.
“In the ballroom,” I called out, making my way to the door.
“I need to talk to you,” Robert started, but I was already pulling the doors open, not wanting her to think we were hiding.
“There you are!” Catriona had come straight from the car; there was still snow dusting her full-length mac, and she was clutching a sports bag. She looked like Darth Vader’s hockey coach.
“You went home to get the dresses? That’s incredibly kind of you,” I said, in a voice that didn’t really sound like mine. “I know how terribly busy you are today.”
God, I sounded like her. I always did impressions of the people I was talking to when I was ne
rvous.
“It’s my pleasure—Oh,” she said in a sharp voice, “there you are, Robbie. We’ve all been looking for you. I thought you’d skipped the country.”
“Nope, I had a call from work,” he said. “I couldn’t tell them to wait until I’d put out three hundred gold chairs, believe it or not.”
“Yes, well, I was about to send the ladies in here to start the decoration.” She thrust the bag at me. “There should be something there that’ll fit. Have a try-on, and if you need any alterations, I’m sure Sheila will stitch you up. Do remember, though,” she added meaningfully, “the important thing is to be comfortable at these dances, not fashionable.”
“At least you know they’ll be preapproved by the dress-code enforcers,” said Robert, deadpan, his hands deep in his pockets.
“Oh, you!” Catriona swatted him, but her eyes were steely. “Do you know what Mummy found? In our attic?”
“Your dad?”
“No! Granddad’s sporran! The one he wore at the Highland Games when he danced with the Queen Mother.” She turned to me. “My paternal grandfather came from a very old Orkadian family. Much older than the McAndrews. Although obviously I don’t want to rub Robbie’s nose in it, ha-ha! But it would make Mummy so happy if you could wear it over your kilt, Rob.”
“Well, as I keep telling Evie, I’m not into antiques!” he said in the same light but steely tone. “Or kilts.”
Catriona pulled a Men! face at me, and I didn’t know what face to pull in return. I settled for a nervous/amused one that I could see, from the mirrors, just made me look stoned.
The light outside had shifted, and abruptly the room felt strange, as if the friendly dancing ghosts had vanished with the sunlight. It was colder, less welcoming. The ballroom belonged to Catriona and Robert, the future hosts, not me, crashing the party in my borrowed dress to rake up the past.
I watched as Catriona snaked her hand round Robert’s, slipping it into his pocket.
This wasn’t like one of the reels where partners changed merrily from one step to another. This was set long in advance. And there was a lot more depending on it. People’s feelings, people’s lives. It really wasn’t up to me to start whisking it all up, then vanishing while the champagne corks were still being swept away.
A gloomy sense of missing the boat settled on my shoulders. I was here at the wrong time, in the wrong place, yet again. I was used to that—feeling melancholy that I would never wear buttoned boots or live in Victorian Mayfair—but this was a very modern ache, and it hurt.
“I should . . . be getting on,” I said. “I’m supposed to be giving your dad my rough report this evening.”
“And I need to get on with my team,” said Catriona. “That’s the trouble with being a perfectionist, I guess! Still, it’s good practice for future events, eh, Robbie?” She beamed at me. “Weddings. Don’t you think this would make the most marvelous venue for weddings?”
I glanced between them. She looked serene, converting the kitchens and building into holiday lets already, but Robert’s eyes were hooded and thoughtful. Somewhere else.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said, and did.
Twenty-one
I spent the rest of the after-noon shuttling happily from one ball-related task to another, feeling more Christmas Eve-y as the daylight faded and the lamps went on. I tied gold ribbons, twisted linen napkins into holly-and-ivy rings, and listened to endless stories about proposals. Everyone seemed to have met their husbands at the Kettlesheer ball. It was like a matrimonial eBay.
All this bustling, though, wasn’t keeping the castle chill out of my bones. Now that I knew about the oil bill, I could hardly moan about Ingrid keeping the heating turned down, so I excused myself and went back upstairs in search of my last clean cardigan.
But Mhairi had been up and had tidied my clothes again, and not into the same drawers as last time. I looked at the endless chests and cupboards: the room wasn’t short of mahogany-based storage space. Ranald must have had a lot of clothes, I thought, starting with the tallboy by the window. How long had Violet kept his shirts and tweeds just as they were, smelling of him, in these drawers?
Maybe Max’s television contact was a good thing, I reasoned as I rhythmically opened and closed drawers, finding nothing but mothballs and old drawer liners. Maybe they could include dramatizations of Violet’s incredible transatlantic love story, from fortuitous bicycle crash to her brave fight for survival, interspersed with documentary stuff about the Chippendale table.
Ooh, yes! My imagination caught fire. And Robert could probably do some kind of deal. They could open a tearoom. Hold weddings in the ballroom! Let it out to other BBC film units to film period dramas . . . yes!
No sign of my own cashmere. I turned to the next likely chest, a long bowfront commode with a pitcher and ewer on top.
And maybe Robert would find some business deal in the romance that could—
I stopped. My eagle eye had spotted a key taped to the side of the top drawer, with a label reading Bathroom in faded script. I peeled it off. It was too small to lock the door. What was there in the bathroom that had a lock? A cupboard? A medicine chest?
Positively vibrating with Miss Marple–ness, I hurried into the big bathroom, which had taken on a whole new feel to me now that I knew Violet and Ranald had shared it. The double-ended bath, and the twin cupboards, and the looping brass towel-warmers …
No time now for romantic bath speculation. I frowned into the speckled mirror. Nothing. I ran my hands over the dark panels, tapping, feeling for a loose bit of wood. I lifted up the watercolors of Highland scenes on the walls, in case there was a concealed safe. Nothing.
I sank against the rolltop bath, frustrated. Maybe it wasn’t this bathroom. How many bathrooms were there in Kettlesheer? The enormity of the challenge crushed me, and then I spotted something odd about the medicine cabinet. Slowly I went over to it, and moved aside an old bottle of Listerine and spare coal-tar soap.
In the back was a keyhole.
My hands shook as I pulled out the shelves, then slipped the key into the lock. I had to jiggle it around, but then the whole cabinet swiveled open to reveal a little safe, built into the oak panels. I frowned at the dial, then turned it to 1-9-0-2, the year of Violet’s marriage. It swung open.
“I knew it,” I breathed. “Ha, Robert. Who’s laughing at my panel tapping now?”
I had to admit to a little flutter of anticlimax when I reached in and pulled out not a soft leather pouch of diamonds but another notebook.
It looked familiar. Very familiar. I patted around in the space, just in case there was a diamond or two, but that was it. Nothing else in there.
The light was better in the bedroom, so I went back in and sat on the bed to examine the book properly. Why would you lock up a notebook? Maybe it was a journal! I was desperate to find Violet’s proper diary, not just menu lists.
Hungrily, I opened it, and was instantly disappointed. It seemed to be some kind of scrapbook, filled with yellowed cuttings and notes in Violet’s madly curling hand. She’d clipped wedding announcements and society details from newspapers and magazines. Née Maybelle Asquith! she’d written against one. In motorcar engines! against another. Now in Baltimore!
I felt a shard of sympathy for Violet as the scent of money and distant glamour rose from the lines. Even if she loved the place, it must have been hard for her after Ranald died, reading about the girlfriends she’d done her London season with making their second and third marriages in New York and London, while she was on her own with five children, difficult tenants, and huge bills that had to be paid with something. Every year that passed, she must have felt more and more left behind with her memories.
I turned a page and came across a draft letter, dated February 17, 1934, and covered in crossings-out.
I lifted the letter nearer the lamp to make out the words better. She was an enthusiastic rather than neat writer. I could actually see her mind working under the scribble
s and scratches.
Dear Mrs. Whitelaw Ward [crossed out] Bettina [written above],
I was so pleased to hear that Beatrice liked the charming occasional table I found for you, and that it took pride of place in her wedding gifts! It was, as far as I know, crafted around 1840 and is made from Scottish oak. I hesitate to embarrass the lady who sold it to me, but the family is much envied for its fine collection of furniture, and she can vouch for its authenticity.
There was some scribbled indecision about pleasantries—Violet obviously hadn’t decided which tone to take—but then beneath that were some figures in a more definite hand and a rusty pin.
I turned the page to see what the pin was holding: a wedding announcement between one Beatrice deVille and an Ashton Davis Adams, and beneath that a note to herself.
Angus: for one occasional table: £5.
Table delivered 9/20/35; collected 10/14/35; shipped 10/18/35.
Personal check received from Bettina Whitelaw Ward 12/20/35.
See notebook A for provenance details, supplied.
What? I stared at the paper, wondering if I’d misread it.
I turned the letter over and read it again: Angus: for one occasional table: £5. And there was his receipt, and some sketches.
Book A? That was why the book seemed familiar; it was the same as the furniture record. I hurried over to the desk and brought it back. When I flicked through it now, I could see little numbers penciled against the details of the furniture listed, some crosses and some ticks.
I’d thought on first reading that Violet had given the table to Beatrice; but no, Violet had sold the table to Mrs. Whitelaw Ward. She’d been the one giving the present; Violet had been the very upmarket dealer in the transaction. And whose table was it? There was no note of any money paid back to the lady mentioned in the letter, just a payment to “Angus” for making an occasional table.