I wasn’t sure what to say without being rude to one of us. I was at least four inches taller than Catriona, but whereas she spent her free time riding and breathing country air, I spent mine eBaying and chain-crunching Pringles, and the difference was at least one dress size.
“I’ve got a couple of stretchy ones,” she offered, as if reading my mind. “I can pop home at lunchtime and bring some over for you to try.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Catriona,” said Ingrid. “I’d offer Evie something from the trunk we found, but they’re so tiny, the old dresses, aren’t they, Sheila?”
Sheila nodded. “I’m having to let them out for Ingrid, and you can see what a wee bird she is.”
“No, I’ve ripped enough vintage jackets in my time to know I’m not vintage-sized,” I said. “Thank you, Catriona.”
What else could I say? It wasn’t that I wanted to go to the only ball I’d ever be invited to in someone’s old “stretchy” dress, but what alternative was there? I crossed my fingers that somehow Alice’s ballgown might still turn up. That was definitely worth another call. She could harass the couriers from her end.
“I’ll pop back now and sort that out.” Catriona flashed me a satisfied smile and pulled a pen out of the top pocket of her pinafore to jot a reminder on her clipboard.
I noted, with a sinking heart, that she was wearing a pinafore. That didn’t bode well for the dresses.
“And I’ll go and see if I can raise Robert,” I said. It occurred to me that if I called Alice from Robert’s landline, she might just pick up.
“You do that, hen,” said Sheila with a wink.
*
Outside the sun was bright and surprisingly warm on my face, despite the nip in the air. In the distance the Cheviots were solid white with snow, and the sky above them was pure and clear like pale blue glass.
The second I got any reception at all, I pulled one flap of Robert’s trapper hat up and applied the phone to my ear to get my messages.
To my absolute astonishment, the first was from Alice, Queen of Cheek. She must have called in the three-minute window when I hadn’t been trying to call her.
“Just me, checking in to see if everything’s okay. Have you got the dress yet? And have you remembered to leave some money in your room for the housekeeper?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I spluttered. She couldn’t stop micromanaging even when she’d bailed out.
The second message was also from her. “Meant to say, is Fraser all right? What did you tell him? I hope you didn’t tell him anything too outré.”
That was it. I phoned her back, ready to leave a ripsnorting message when she didn’t pick up.
Imagine my surprise, then, when she did.
“Evie, are you all right?”
I stopped walking. I was right in the middle of the woods, halfway between the lodge and the main house. No one could hear me.
“Finally you pick up,” I said icily. “I’ve only been trying to get hold of you all morning. How are you?”
“Fine,” she said. “Apart from this client of Mum’s—he’s a footballer and he collects turf from famous pitches, can you imagine the mess, they’re all over the—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh,” said Alice in a small voice. “Is this about Fraser?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is about Fraser.”
Maybe it was something about the snow and the woods that unleashed some unusually fierce home-truth-dispensing instinct, but I was overwhelmed with a vision of Fraser dropping everything to drive me into Berwick with his snow chains, Fraser patiently teaching me to dance, Fraser covering up his disappointment so as not to spoil my weekend, when in fact Alice had just ruined his. Maybe even ruined his lovely planned proposal.
And this wasn’t me whipping up imaginary visions; this was real.
I’d always fancied Fraser, but I’d never liked him as much as I did after this week. He was a real gentleman, and he didn’t deserve to be messed around with like this. Especially if that reason was something to do with Robert.
Oh, God, it was so complicated. Alice always managed to make things so complicated, when all I wanted was a nice, straightforward happy-ever-after.
“Alice, there’s something I have to say, and you mustn’t interrupt until I’ve finished,” I began.
“Oh, actually, while I remember—the dress,” Alice interrupted, before I’d even stopped telling her not to. “You might need to get some Spanx—”
“No!” I shouted, then lowered my voice. “I mean, no, it’s not about that, it’s about Fraser.”
That shut her up.
I swallowed and crashed onward, walking fast as if my feet could somehow give my brain momentum.
“I need to know why you’re not coming,” I said. “I can’t carry on lying to everyone—it’s not fair on me or him. And besides which, I think you’re making a huge mistake. He is an amazingly nice man.”
“Don’t, Evie.”
“Don’t what? Don’t remind you what you’re risking screwing up here? Do you know how his mother is looking at me right now? Sheila’s not a stupid woman, Alice. She knows there’s something up.”
“Don’t,” she said again, in the la-la-la not listening tone that reminded me of Mum.
“Don’t say don’t ! That’s the problem, no one in our family actually gets past the bloody don’t !” I spun round, frustrated. “It’s Robert, isn’t it? Have you had some kind of fling with Robert and you’re scared of seeing him? Because if it is that—don’t interrupt me!—I can totally see why, he’s incredibly sexy in that smooth London way you go for, but he’s not Fraser. And frankly, he’s so completely wrapped up in his own problems that I very much doubt he’d even find time to—”
“It’s not Rob. I mean, Robert,” said Alice. “We’re … I mean, he’s … there’s nothing to discuss. Ask him.” She paused. Then said, “Actually, don’t ask him.”
“Well, that tells me everything!” I declared.
“No, it doesn’t. You’re making it sound all dramatic and it’s not,” she said crossly. “We just … had a misunderstanding. That party I met Fraser at—well, I thought I was going with Robert, only I wasn’t, as it turned out; but it was okay because I met Fraser, but ever since, Robert’s always been a bit ‘You’re not good enough for my mate because you flirted with me,’ and then we had a bit of a frank exchange of views about business, and …”
I was stalled at the part where Alice had imaginary relationships too.
“We get on fine now,” she insisted, “apart from when he tries to boss me around. Fraser says we’re very alike, which I don’t see at all. I honestly didn’t know he’d be there this week. If I’d known, I’d have told you. Warned you.”
“So why aren’t you here?” I demanded. “The only explanation I can think of is that you’re trying to let Fraser down gently, and if that’s the case, you’d better be really sure you know what you’re doing, because there are girls queuing up here for him.”
“I’m not trying to let him down,” she spluttered. “What gives you that idea?”
“I know what you’re like,” I went on. I wasn’t going to bring this up, but I heard myself saying it anyway. “How long have you two been going out? Two years? Isn’t this about the time you normally bail? When they try to give you the key to their flat?”
“I do not!”
“It’s exactly what you do!” I howled. “Every time! You audit them, and always find a ridiculous problem. Alice, Fraser is a keeper! He’s going to be a fantastic father, and a gorgeous, supportive husband, and in thirty years’ time he’ll be a silver fox and your daughter’s friends will have massive crushes on him!”
“Like you do now?” she sniped back.
I stopped spinning and came to a sudden halt by a patch of spiky fern poking through the snow. “Like I—what?”
“I’m sorry,” said Alice. “But don’t lecture me about bailing out on relationships when you’re t
he one who only has crushes on men you can’t have.”
“I—”
“Fraser. Max. David Tennant. Don Draper in Mad Men who doesn’t even exist, Evie! Men you can slot into your ridiculous period-costume daydreams where everyone says ‘Goodness!’ and uses Brylcreem. You fixate on men who won’t ever ask you to live in the real world. That’s far more of a problem, if you ask me. That and cramming your flat full of other people’s junk instead of getting your own bloody life.”
It felt as if she’d thrown a glass of ice water over me. I stared sightlessly at the rabbit prints looping across the path. The agonizing thing was, I knew she was right, in her brutal, neat-and-tidy way.
“You call me a control freak,” she went on remorselessly, “but if you ask me, you’re the ultimate control freak.”
“At least I don’t make my boyfriends sterilize their toothbrushes if they leave them in my flat.”
“Ha!” barked Alice. “As if you have men staying overnight! They can’t get past the pile of moth-eaten bears on your bed. And if that’s not Freudian, I don’t know what is!”
My throat was hot and tight, as if something was trying to force itself out. “I just don’t want to be like Mum and Dad!” I wailed, so loud three pheasants launched themselves out of the tree next to me.
“Well, neither do I!” Alice bellowed back. “I’m bloody terrified of marrying Fraser and ending up with beanbag TV dinner trays! In the middle of nowhere! Talking about slacks we like in the Lands’ End catalogue!”
We were both quiet. I could hear the traffic in the background at her end; there was no sound in the forest for her to hear at mine. The wildlife had sensibly gone to ground.
I honestly didn’t know what I could say next; it was the most honest conversation we’d ever had and I couldn’t even see her face.
“Alice, where are you?” I asked. “Are you on your own?”
“The reason I am too scared to come up there this weekend is that I’m afraid Fraser will propose,” said Alice haltingly. “Everyone will be watching—his parents, his friends, everyone. I do love him, you have to believe that, but … I’m scared.”
The crack in her voice made me want to hug her and shake her at the same time.
“You’re not scared of anything,” I said. “Why are you scared of someone loving you so much he’s prepared to spend the rest of his life with you?”
“Because Fraser deserves someone who can guarantee he’ll be happy. I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Well, who can?”
“Someone who comes from the same sort of world as him. Someone who knows what to do with a pheasant. Someone who can dance, and bring up happy children with mucky faces, and not care if the dog licks them clean.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that the most romantic story I’ve ever heard was about a pampered American and a Scottish bachelor who—”
“Stop it. You’re making it up.” Alice heaved a sigh. “It’s not like I could have got there anyway, is it? Didn’t you say the roads are closed?”
“If you loved him, you’d find a way to get here. He would for you.” I stopped, visualizing Fraser driving through snow and ice (admittedly in a horse and cart), doing anything for Alice because he loved her. How long had I tried to imagine a man like that into existence? And failed?
“Fraser is divine and real. If you can’t see that, then, yeah, maybe you don’t deserve him.”
“Evie—”
I couldn’t talk to her anymore. I was too churned-up and cross. And jealous.
“I’ve got to go. I need to talk to Max. Believe it or not, I do have other things to worry about, like my job. And what I’m going to say to all these very nice people to explain why you’re too rude to be here.”
“Call me later, after fiveish—”
“I’ll call you when I can.” I hung up and turned to set off again, but my phone rang again.
“I’ve got a buyer, and better than that, guess what?”
It was Max. Great.
Twenty
“What?” I said heavily. “I’m not in the mood for guessing.”
“I’ve got a TV crew! From the BBC. Remember that runner who booked Leonard Slaine for that terrible ‘Sell your granny for cash’ program?” Max actually sounded as if he’d had his teeth whitened. He was schlurring schlightly. “Well, he reckons he can get a team together, on the cheap obviously, to follow me as I find the last undiscovered Chippendale in England. He’s got a title already: Max Uncovers the Chippendales! Or something like that.”
I closed my eyes. Max’s dream was to break into the closed circle of TV antiques experts. This was an even bigger deal for him than the money. Wheels were being set in motion now, and I knew I should be thrilled, but somehow I wasn’t.
“So you scuttle back there and give McAndrew senior the glad tidings,” Max went on starrily. “Tell him to settle back and prepare for fame and fortune.”
*
I headed back to the house, strange emotions swilling round me.
It was too much to deal with in one go. Like a particularly toxic party punch of stress—Alice and Fraser, Robert, the table, the looming financial peril of the house, topped off with my own guilty excitement at a real ball—it was making me feel nauseous.
I needed to sit down with Violet’s notebooks and just take stock, I told myself. Tune back in to my instincts. Tune back in to the house.
Inside, the hall was a bustling hive of activity, but I pretended to be on an errand and trotted up the sweeping staircase.
When I got to the top, I was struck with a sudden urge to see Violet’s beautiful ballroom, before it was filled with dancers.
The clamor downstairs faded away and the velvety silence of the upper floors descended as I turned down the landing toward the ballroom, now helpfully marked with a wooden sign. I pushed open the double doors and held my breath, letting the atmosphere seep into me as I walked slowly across the empty room, drinking in the details greedily.
It was oak-paneled around the five tall windows, each offering a long view of the snow-covered drive. Huge mirrors hung from chains to reflect the candlelight from spidery wall sconces, perfect for stealing glances and checking out rivals, and a row of gold-painted chairs had been set up along the long wall. At the far end of the room was a magnificent organ, its fluted pipes reaching up to the lofty ceiling, garlanded with—yes, feathers and violets, crowned with an eagle. There was no other furniture, just the meticulous slats of the polished floorboards. And the lingering tremors of a thousand memories, triumphs, heartbreaks, surprises, rivalries …
My spine elongated as if I were crossing the floor in a corseted ballgown with a diamond tiara balanced in my elaborate hairdo. I couldn’t help it. The air was full of ghosts, like the tiny fragments of light that sparkled from the crystal chandelier above me, dancing on the polished floorboards.
I closed my eyes and wished I could open them again and be at one of Violet’s glory-days balls, when she had American dollars to lavish on entertaining, and her Ranald to adore, and no clouds on her newlywed horizon. I ached to meet her—she seemed so close all the time, yet tantalizingly distant.
“Believe it or not, this is my favorite room in the house,” said a voice from the door.
I jumped.
I saw Robert reflected in the mirror opposite. He was standing in the doorframe, his arms crossed, watching me. I wondered, embarrassed, how long he’d been there.
“Why’s that? Because there’s nothing in here?” I pretended I’d been looking at the carved panel opposite, and turned round as casually as I could.
“Exactly. I love it because there’s never anything in it.” His shoes echoed as he walked over, and he raised a hand toward a carved cherub gamboling to a panpipe. “It is what it is. The proportions, the space … it’s designed for its purpose. Which is dancing.”
“Which you don’t like,” I reminded him.
Robert gave me a funny look. “I didn’t say that.?
??
“You did.”
“I said I wasn’t keen on the ball.”
“That’s not the impression you’ve given me,” I started, but my brain abruptly crashed with an overload of too many other thoughts, heightened by the still yet charged atmosphere—Robert’s crooked mouth, the flash of skin under the neck of his T-shirt, the owlish way he was looking at me, the sudden crackle of connection filling the space between us in this enormous room. I had to make myself look away.
“I bet it’s alive when everyone’s packed in.” My hands were itching to touch something, so I trailed my fingers along the petals of a carved violet. “I think anyone could dance better in here,” I added. “It feels … as if it’s waiting.”
“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.