“Ah, that’s only if the reel’s perfect.” He swung his hands.
I really couldn’t make out Robert’s attitude. Was he being politely vague about his private life? Could he really be as unconcerned as he seemed?
“But that’s what bothers me,” I went on. “Your mother and her mother seem to think your party piece in the middle of the Eightsome is going to involve a ring box, so if I crash into a suit of armor and spoil the whole thing, they’re going to be pretty—oh!”
The penny suddenly dropped. How had I been so thick not to realize before?
“Oh, I get it!” I was so poleaxed that my feet stopped moving. “You want the whole thing to be screwed up, so you’re off the hook! That’s why you insisted on me taking over from Alice—not because you wanted me there, but because you wanted me there to wreck it!”
Robert stopped too, a pace or two ahead, and turned back. “Don’t be ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling me I’m deliberately not getting married so I don’t have to inherit.”
“You wouldn’t do—!” Actually, I didn’t care whether he was joking or not. Scalding waves of mortification were sweeping over me.
I’d done it again—let my imagination create a whole scene that not only wasn’t happening but was actually the opposite of reality! If any snowflakes had fallen on my burning cheeks, they’d have sizzled straight off.
“That’s not even funny,” I snapped, losing any semblance of self-control. “Catriona expects you to propose! I can’t think of anything more ungallant than letting a girl think she was about to get the most romantic moment of her life and then deliberately ducking out of it. Using someone who—someone who isn’t a confident dancer at the best of times!”
Had Robert planned this from the moment I’d told him I couldn’t dance? Had that spin outside his house been a test, to see how bad I was? Oh, God. And I’d been trying to wrestle him into top hats and breeches, like Fraser …
I pushed away the mortified voice in my head and marched onward. Stupid. My stupid imagination, running wild in that house, casting myself in some imaginary romantic drama. Again.
“Wait! Evie, wait!”
I could hear Robert running, but I carried on walking. I had an awful plunging sensation in my chest. I’d never been more embarrassed in my life.
What would Alice do? I thought. She’d be practical. Like Mum. Tidy up. Make lists.
Number one, get back to the house. Two, make a report about the furniture for Max. Three, call Alice and tell her to get herself up here, by helicopter if necessary. Four, leave, in same helicopter.
A hand grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I slipped and tried to keep my eyes fixed on the deep footsteps I’d made in the snow, but Robert pulled me round and I slid, leaving me very close to his face. Close enough to see the faint freckles round his nose, and feel his hot, quick breath in the cold air.
“Evie, that’s not why I wanted you to stay. Honestly.” He tried a smile but it came out crooked. “Look, my parents are dancing in this reel—Dad’s bound to make at least one major cock-up. I don’t need to add any more chaos to the mix.”
But I was still smarting. I hoisted my chin. “That’s not the point. This isn’t just about Catriona, is it? I don’t think you understand what your mum and everyone else is expecting. They need you to be involved. They’re struggling. You’re right—they don’t understand what needs to be done with Kettlesheer to make it work, but you do. You could help.”
Robert shoved his hands in his pockets. “So what are you saying? That I should just fall in with what everyone expects me to do? Move to some leaky barn that I’ll have to patch up as long as I live and then foist onto my own kids?”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I said, thinking of Ingrid despairing over the accounts. “There are loads of businesses you could start, grants you can get. It’s a wonderful place! I’ve only been here four days, and I never want to leave! And that’s without any emotional blackmail from anyone!”
Robert spun round and stomped a few steps away, staring out into the trees.
I waited. I thought I’d probably said too much already, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was in the middle of a forest. A snow-covered forest.
Eventually, he turned back and spoke in a soft, quite angry voice.
“Dad keeps going on about how it’s our duty to keep the castle going, because he remembers his father telling him. And his father’s mother telling him. But that’s not how our family life was. I didn’t grow up hearing about how one day I’d have to drop everything and move up to Scotland and be a farmer. Even Dad didn’t think he’d have to—I mean, he wore tartan trousers at the weekend and wept tears of pure Macallan at rugby internationals, but you can do that when you’re safely in south London and have two uncles ahead of you in the queue, can’t you?”
“But you’re here now.”
“It’s a bit late for being sat down at my dad’s knee now! I’m thirty-one. I’ve got my own life, my own career, my own plans.” Robert rubbed his hand over his face. “Look, we’ve had this conversation. I just feel like I keep having it with bloody everyone up here.”
“Did you read the postcards?” I asked.
“I did.” He looked me in the eye, and though he was cross, I could see something else: panic. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s a sweet idea, but even that’s someone else’s love story. Not mine. What have I got in common with some rich American princess? Or her landed husband? I’m a self-employed businessman, Evie. This isn’t my life.”
“But it wasn’t Violet’s either! She came from New York and—”
“Evie, stories don’t do it for me the way they obviously do it for you,” he said. “I need something a bit more factual.”
“But Violet was a smart cookie too!” I insisted. “Sheila Graham says everyone round here really respected her for the way she kept the house going after she was widowed, kept everyone in work. That’s not some airhead, that’s a businesswoman. I bet if you went through those rooms, you’d find the most incredible records, a real story—”
Robert raised an eyebrow at my passionate hand-waving, and I stopped, suddenly self-conscious.
“Sheila also said you’d find it different when you wanted to settle down,” I went on. “I know that can be scary. But I know lots of people who weren’t sure about getting married, and they took the plunge and now—”
“Oh, God,” said Robert, and set off walking again. “I preferred it when you were trying to sell me on the house.”
I caught his arm. “Robert.”
He turned back. “What?”
I screwed up my courage; at least let one good thing come out of my mortification. “Don’t let Catriona think you’re going to propose on Saturday if you’re not. There’s really nothing worse than”—my face was burning again—“than realizing you’ve read the signals wrong …”
“Does that actually happen in—” he scoffed, but I carried on.
“And that the reason everyone is cheering is because the man you thought might be proposing to you is actually proposing to someone else.”
“Oh.” Robert fell silent. “That sounds painful.”
“Mmm.”
It had been. Jack Wrightson. My ex-flatmate and, I thought, secret admirer. We’d spent many a long night having exactly the sort of long, confessional conversations I felt soul mates should have. He had gorgeous Byronic eyes and long hair, and I’d totally pictured him proposing on the steps of St. Paul’s during one of our long chatty mooches around London. I’d even hinted as much to Mum.
Sadly not.
It was still something that was raised at Christmas: “Some people grow out of having imaginary friends as toddlers, Evie. They don’t develop imaginary fiancés …”
“How did you get from … presumably not much to proposing? If it’s not a rude question?”
I sighed and started walking. “Well, when you’ve got quite an overactive imagination …”
&nbs
p; Whether it was the forest or Robert, the words tumbled out surprisingly easily. “I’ve got used to having to fill in the blanks. Supply the romance. You don’t know how lucky you are, having a tradition to get married to. My family’s the least romantic ever. My parents never row and make up, they don’t have nicknames, they don’t even have a song!”
“A song?”
“You know, like ‘Candle in the Wind,’ or ‘Angels.’ ”
“Those are both songs about death, Evie.”
“Whatever.” I crunched faster. “They’re shared romance. My biggest fear is marrying a man who gives me power drills for Christmas, like Dad does. Okay, so maybe I overcompensate, and maybe I do want things to be rosier than they are; but honestly, if you’d grown up in my house, you’d be making top-ten favorite historical periods for proposals too.”
Robert kindly said nothing.
I stopped, and he stopped next to me. “Catriona’s already mentally redecorating the house for when you’ll move in together,” I said. “Please don’t make a fool of her, just because you don’t know what you want to do with yourself. Do you love her?”
I didn’t think so. There were no sneaking glances, no excuses to touch. But then, what did I know?
Robert looked uneasy. “Cat’d make an excellent mistress of a house like Kettlesheer,” he said. “And I think she’s being pushed into it as much as me. She’s a nice girl, I like her. It helps that her dad’s the only bloke round here with any money.” He arched an eyebrow. “Nothing changes much.”
“What if there was something in the house that was worth selling?” I asked eagerly. “Something … really important?”
“Is there?”
“There might be.”
He looked at me shrewdly. “Then Dad wouldn’t sell it.”
“Unless you persuaded him that it was worth it, to keep the house.” I looked Robert in the eye. “If you found a reason to keep Kettlesheer in the family.”
He didn’t drop my gaze, and we stood in the moonlight, trying to read each other’s minds. Robert’s gaze was fierce, and it really felt as if he was trying to drag the thoughts out of my head.
I thought of petite Violet, toughening to survive the Scottish winters, and Ranald, wrapping her in his thick tweed topcoat as they walked back to the lunch hut after a late-autumn pheasant shoot. I didn’t know where the image had come from, but it was sharp in my mind.
“You look cold,” he said. “Let’s get you back to your bed. Come on.”
He put an arm around me, initially to move me along, but he left it there as we walked, and it warmed me up. There was no actual physical contact through our many, many layers of clothes, but the gesture was warm.
The woodland was thinning out now, and as we stepped onto the path that led to the house, a cloud moved away from the moon. Clean, cold light flooded Kettlesheer’s turreted roofline, leaving it stark against the sky like a film set.
“Fabulous,” I breathed.
“All it needs now is a werewolf,” agreed Robert. “Or a broomstick.”
“Or a family ghost.”
“I’m sure we’ve got one of them,” he said. “I’m surprised you haven’t found one.”
“Give me time,” I said. “I’ve got a few more days …”
Robert smiled, and it reached his unsettling, beautiful eyes.
Stop it, I told myself. This isn’t your fairy tale.
Nineteen
I tried to get hold of Alice before breakfast, after breakfast, and on the half hour before lunch, but she wasn’t answering her phone. There were things I needed to discuss with her as a matter of urgency—what I was going to wear, for one, and when she was going to call poor Fraser with a decent explanation.
It wasn’t as if I had time to run in and out, since I was also supposed to be handing Duncan a preliminary list of what he could expect to sell. To do that properly, I needed to hear from Max about the table, and he was proving elusive too.
Meanwhile, Kettlesheer itself was metamorphosing into a green and gold winter palace. Despite the thick snow blocking some roads, the Ball Committee and its team of volunteers had descended on Kettlesheer with a vengeance, and now tumbling arrangements of ivy and golden apples were springing up everywhere and massive candles were being fastened in every crevice. Ladies in tartan pinnies whisked dusters around while log fires were built in every available grate and scattered with fragrant pinecones.
Deliverymen wheeled box after box of wine through the hall, supervised by Fraser, who’d arrived in his off-duty red jeans to brief the bar staff on the drinks they’d be serving and also to speak with the caterers preparing Ingrid’s dinner for sixty.
Poor Fraser kept trying to catch my eye like a freshly kicked spaniel, clearly hoping for some news of Alice’s sprained ankle. I was already avoiding Catriona and her Bluetooth headset. She’d cornered me in the dining room while I was trying to get another look at the Chippendale and made me demonstrate the steps of the Duke of Perth reel using eight silver salt and pepper pots being polished by Sheila and Ingrid.
(I got it more or less right, though, as Sheila pointed out, it would have been easier if the condiments had been more obviously male and female.)
The whole morning was very like a reel: me scuttling in and out of rooms, round and behind everyone else, swapping one conversation off against another, and generally trying to avoid everyone other than Sheila and Ingrid.
I couldn’t avoid them: they both had lists of tasks for me to help with.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Ingrid, who’d taken on a much happier air since I’d hinted about the possible lifeline in the dining room. “Where’s my son? He should be up here, mucking in.”
“If he doesn’t come up to help us, I’m going down to get him,” announced Sheila, over the sound of a Jacobean reiver-crushing shield being covered in bubble wrap by two of Janet’s elderly foot soldiers. “He knows we’re run off our feet.”
“He’s maybe working,” I said. “His office is phoning him even though he’s on holiday.”
“And what am I doing?” demanded Ingrid wildly. “Self-tanning? So much for glamming up before the ball—have you seen my nails? I’m going to fail Janet’s inspection!”
Sheila turned to me. “Evie, do you have to go down there this morning for e-mails? Maybe you could persuade him to grace us with his presence.”
“I’m not sure I’m his favorite person this morning,” I said. “We had a bit of a discussion about the house last night. I think I might have been rather … frank.”
I’d actually woken up at 6 a.m. with some of the things I’d said clanging in my ears. I’d gone far too far. I barely knew the man, and I’d told him what he should do with a life I had no clue about. And oh, God, I’d also admitted my own most embarrassing secret. Not even Max knew about Jack Wrightson and the Invisible Proposal. Yet now Robert did.
Sheila gave me a shrewd look. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen more of Robert round here this week than we usually do in a month.”
“It’s true,” said Ingrid. “Last time he had dinner up here voluntarily was when the river flooded and his electricity went off. And yet … twice this week. And a trip to the Grahams’.”
“Where he’s not set foot in over a year, despite repeated invitations.”
They turned their combined laser beams on me.
“I think he just enjoys talking to someone from London,” I offered weakly.
“But, darling, you don’t talk about London,” said Ingrid. “You only seem to talk about this house!”
“Ladies! What a hive of industry!”
We all jumped as Duncan strode in, his gingery hair wild around his head like static.
I slid my notebook off the table and onto my lap, where it wouldn’t draw attention to itself. I had a draft list of items to discuss with him, but obviously the table made a huge difference. And beneath my bubbling excitement about it, I couldn’t quite shake off that odd sense of … wrongness.
/> “Evie, we must find a moment amidst this fevered preparation to sit down and discuss your discoveries,” said Duncan. “When do you think would be a good time?”
“When’s a good time for you?” I hedged.
“This afternoon?”
I glanced at Sheila. “Actually, if the main road’s clear, I was hoping maybe Fraser might be able to drive me into Berwick this afternoon. Alice’s dress still hasn’t arrived, and I need to find something to wear.”
“Poor Alice. Did she manage to get to the post office?” Ingrid asked innocently. “How is her ankle? It was her ankle, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” My neck went hot. “I expect she got her assistant to parcel it up.”
Bloody Alice, I thought. These were really, really nice people, and I was having to lie to them—and I couldn’t even do it convincingly because I was as clueless as they were about why she was being so rude.
“Och, I’m sure he’d be happy to take you,” said Sheila. “He’s always going on about how that car of his could drive up the side of Ben Nevis.”
“This evening, then.” Duncan rubbed his hands gleefully. “I must admit, I’m quite excited—it reminds me of opening the first bottle of the year’s vintage. How have we done? What surprises will there be? What delights have been revealed?”
“Duncan,” I began nervously, “it’s really only a preliminary—”
“I’ll go and find Fraser now,” said Sheila. “Can’t have Cinderella going to the ball with no dress!”
“Who doesn’t have a dress?”
Catriona had appeared in the doorway, clipboard primed for action and problem radar swiveling.
“Evie’s ballgown hasn’t arrived yet,” said Ingrid. “She was hoping Fraser could run her into Berwick this afternoon, to see what she can find.”
“But Fraser’s supposed to be moving the trestle tables downstairs for the caterers to start setting up.” Catriona’s mouth closed, her eyes went blank as her brain worked; then she smiled, plan formed. “I’m sure I’ve got something you can borrow, Evie. The roads are awful—Ollie Jennings nearly wrote off his Subaru last night. You could be gone hours, and there’s no guarantee you’d find anything. We’re about the same size, aren’t we?”