Swept off Her Feet Read online

  “I will.” I squinted against the sun. Robert was perfectly framed by his contradictory house: cream and cool behind him, mossy and old round the door.

  I raised a hand in farewell to all three of them and set off back to the big house, the contents of Violet’s desk tucked under my arm, taking deep lungfuls of the clean Scottish air until my jittering pulse returned to something nearer its normal rate.

  The forest path to the big house seemed much shorter on the way back—or maybe that was because I’d picked up my pace, eager to get back to sift through the box under my arm.

  I saw the walk back through Violet’s eyes now. Through gaps in the trees, I could make out grazing fields beyond the woods, sweeping away toward rolling gray hills on one side, while the woodland thickened on the other. Had she and Ranald ridden down here when she was still mistress of the big house? Did she look back with regret, once she’d been moved out? There were hoof prints here and there, in the dried mud. My fertile imagination immediately provided a chestnut horse, a sidesaddle riding habit, a large hat . . . with a veil?

  I was startled out of that particular dream by a pheasant rattling unexpectedly out of the undergrowth and surging straight up into the taller trees. As I squeaked with shock, a couple of rabbits bolted out of the hedge and bounced across the fields, their white tails flashing against the grass.

  I was the anti–Snow White. Wildlife didn’t flock to me so much as make a run for it.

  I shouldered my bag and pushed open the wooden gate onto the main track. After a few minutes’ brisk marching, Kettlesheer’s turrets rose up through the trees ahead of me. The sun had set now, though it wasn’t yet dark, and one by one the lights went on in the downstairs windows like friendly beacons guiding me home.

  For such a dramatic house, I thought, it had a surprisingly intimate pull. But then I felt like I’d been given a glimpse behind the tapestries, and now I didn’t just see Kettlesheer’s stately rooms, I was starting to see the people who had lived in them.

  Inside, the hall was deserted, apart from a pile of post on the dark oak sideboard, a file marked Cloakrooms, and the keys to several Land Rovers.

  Since there was no one about to herd me back to the junk rooms, I slipped upstairs to leave Violet’s box in my bedroom for later, then get looking for Max’s table.

  It took all my self-control to leave the box on the bed and not leap into it, right then and there. But, I reminded myself, Max hadn’t been joking. He would sack me if I didn’t come back with the table, and now was my chance to get a proper poke around without Duncan at my shoulder, waving African hunting horns at me.

  I wandered down the passageway, trying not to look directly at the suits of armor lined up against the walls. They were real Scooby-Doo specials, the sort that usually came with narrowed eyes flickering from side to side in the slits, only these had huge medieval swords attached. I wasn’t sure what the obsession with military hardware said about the family. Was there a ruthless streak running deep in the current McAndrews, under their soft English accents?

  I shivered, imagining Robert in a boardroom, his eyes flashing with the wild-eyed courage that had once defended the Kettlesheer estate from English—

  I caught my own moony reflection in a framed photograph of the staff, circa 1880, and pulled a face. I really had to get a grip.

  Kettlesheer was a big house. It had a lot of rooms—and they all had tables. Downstairs, I passed a couple more drawing rooms and a library, and each one made me want to stop and close my eyes and just breathe in. The stately house atmosphere was infectious. My shoulders straightened as I walked past huge mirrors; my neck seemed to arch as if all my hair were piled on top of my head in an elaborate bun.

  I paused next to a double door in a long corridor decorated with painted crests and imagined myself about to sweep in, announced by a discreet butler.

  “Lady Evangeline Nicholson.” I inclined my head, eyes closed, half-smiling in acknowledgment.

  Well, there was no one around.

  “Lord and Lady Fraser Graham—”

  And then voices floated into my mind. Actual voices! I couldn’t make out what they were saying, just the low murmur of conversation, but they were definitely coming from behind the very door I had my hand on, as if my warm fingers had set something back into motion. A shiver ran over my skin.

  The house really was coming to life around me. This was the spookiest, most spine-tingling—

  “Ah, Evie!” A hand descended on my shoulder, delivering a pat that sent me staggering against the doorframe. “I wondered where you’d got to! Carlisle amassed the most fascinating collection of hyacinth glasses that I think might prove to be worth a pound or two!”

  It was Duncan.

  “I went down to the lodge,” I said. “I needed to send some photographs to my boss, and Robert was kind enough to offer me his Wi-Fi.”

  Duncan’s jolliness dropped a level or two. “Wi-Fi? If you’d said you needed music, my dear—”

  “No, Wi-Fi. Not hi-fi, sorry, was I mumbling?”

  “Modern technology’s rather wasted on me, as Robert will tell you.” Duncan sounded a bit baffled, but perked up when he realized there was a room he could show me. “Are you coming in?” he inquired, nodding at the door. “Rather splendid, our dining room!”

  “Oh, er—”

  “Let’s see what’s going on.” He pushed open one of the doors, ignoring my bleats of panic, and immediately pulled it shut again. “Ah,” he said. “Maybe not.”

  “What’s in there?” I gasped, my mind crowding with spectral diners.

  “Ball Committee,” he mouthed. “Ingrid, Sheila. That old woman.”

  “But Janet’s down at the—”

  “Not Janet. Gordon. More of an old woman than all the others put together. No, best leave them to it,” he went on. “Come with me to my study—I’d love your opinion on some pocket watches my grandfather left me. . . .”

  And with that, I was swept reluctantly back down the hall.

  That night, I got dressed with a vengeance. I wasn’t going to make the same wardrobe mistake for dinner twice. I piled on as many layers as I could fit under my clothes, and made my way down to the basement with an extra cardigan, just in case.

  In the kitchen, Ingrid’s blond head and Sheila’s white roller-set curls were bent over something in the middle of the table. It looked like a board game, with ivory counters in pink and blue. Sheila had a pencil behind her ear, like a builder. There were wineglasses the size of buckets, but no sign of Duncan.

  He was, Ingrid explained, at a meeting of the Rennick Winemakers. The glass she pushed toward me had, she promised, nothing to do with him.

  “Duncan’s always been into home-brewing,” she explained. “All the teachers at St. Theobald’s were. You name it, he’s mashed it up and added alcohol to it. It’s just got worse, now he’s got access to his own water supply and hundreds of outbuildings to store the revolting stuff.”

  “Like what we were drinking last night?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Ingrid. “And I’m very sorry. The first time he served his home brew at one of those soirees, Dr. Murray called to see if we’d had a campylobacter outbreak, there were so many patients needing his attention the next day.”

  “You’ll have us teetotal yet,” said Sheila cheerfully. “Imagine that! What was the nonsense Jock Strathmorris was telling me about Duncan making whiskey in the stables? He’s not serious, is he?”

  “I’m afraid he is.” Ingrid took a big slug of chardonnay—I noticed the bottle was the house white from Fraser’s wineshop. “Duncan thinks that Kettlesheer turnip vodka they made at Christmas could be a moneymaker. God knows we need one. I’ve got the gas bill and the electricity bill, and I can’t decide which to hide first.” She sighed, making the silk ruffles on her blouse flutter sadly. She wore one of Duncan’s old cardigans over the top for warmth, which diminished the glamour somewhat. I admired her for trying, though. “I love this house, but I think the
boiler runs on liquid gold, not oil.”

  “If the water’s unusual, mightn’t a microbrewery work?” I asked, wanting to be positive. “Lots of big houses have breweries. You’ve got the space.”

  “Evie, hen. I’m a Scotswoman through and through, but even I think there’s a place for turnips, and it’s not in a glass,” said Sheila.

  “Well, what about bottled water?” I persisted. “I bet Robert would know how to market it to London shops. He could do a business plan, and Duncan could . . . um, design the label? If you put the castle on, I bet it’d sell by the lorryload!” I beamed at Sheila. “Fraser could sell it! It could be his shop’s house water!”

  Ingrid and Sheila exchanged trepidatious glances.

  “I’m not sure Robert and Duncan quite see eye to eye on business matters,” said Ingrid. “I sometimes think Robert feels owning a castle spoils his business credibility. No, what we need is a quick lump sum, even if it means prying some valuable out of Duncan’s hands.” She grimaced. “You might have some trouble persuading him to sacrifice something. It’s all very personal to him, you see.”

  That I could understand, but I thought of what Robert had said, about not wasting time selling little bits here and there. “If I can’t find the right thing,” I said cautiously, “has Duncan thought about putting the whole castle on the market? I mean, if it costs so much just to keep going every year—”

  “Duncan will never sell.” It was the first time I’d seen In-grid definite about anything. “Absolutely not.”

  “Ingrid, he might have to,” said Sheila. Her tone was gentle, but realistic. “People do, you know. It’s no shame, these days. No one’s got the income. Well, apart from Nigel Learmont. . . .”

  Something flickered in Ingrid’s face, and my drama radar pinged. I wasn’t quite sure why, though. An old crush, maybe? A refusal to see Janet lord it over her? Something to do with Robert and Catriona?

  “Duncan won’t sell,” she repeated, shaking her head. “He’s always said how it’s the family’s duty to keep this place going. His father drilled it into him and his brothers that if they ever got the house, they had to move heaven and earth to stay here. He got that from his mother. She used to sit them down in the nursery and tell them grisly tales of how their ancestors chopped off people’s heads to get Kettlesheer, and that it was only fair to those poor headless people that they didn’t let it go.”

  “Oh, Violet,” said Sheila. She smiled. “Yes, I can imagine her doing that, especially after Ranald died. Wanting to stay, no matter what.”

  “But she was American,” I said. “Didn’t she want to go home?”

  “No! No, she loved this place. She was more Scottish than he was by the end,” said Sheila. “She was buried with him out on the grouse moor with her shotgun and her saddle, like one of those Saxon queens.”

  “That’s what Duncan wants,” added Ingrid. “I’ve told him no. I fully intend to be cremated back in Wimbledon. I’m not spending my twilight years watching telly by candlelight under four blankets, just so we can be buried in a field together, like a pair of dead family pets.”

  I didn’t point out that McAndrew family pets were more likely to be stuffed and kept in a spare room.

  “Fraser said on the way up that your grandmother was a lady’s maid,” I said to Sheila instead. “Did she tell you stories or was she terribly discreet?”

  “Oh, she had a tale or two, after a glass of sherry. But it was common knowledge how much Violet loved this place. How much she loved Ranald too.” Sheila’s comfortable face softened and she looked almost girlish. “It was the big fairy tale when we were wee girls, like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. We all wanted to be swept off our feet like Violet McAndrew.”

  I leaned forward, my elbows on the table. “What, romantically?”

  “No, literally,” said Ingrid. “Ranald ran her over on his bicycle in Regent’s Park, playing bicycle polo with his cavalry division. Something about—oh, go on, Sheila, you tell this better than me.”

  “Och, no . . .” Sheila pretended to be polite for a second, in a way Janet Learmont hadn’t, and then launched into the story with relish.

  “Well, Violet had sailed over from New York with her sister Lilianne to do the season and to find a nice titled Englishman to marry,” she began. “She was very, very rich—her Papa had made a lot of money on the railroads and wanted to set his girls up properly, like a lot of wealthy Americans did then. And the story goes—Violet told my granny this, and everyone else, actually—that she was strolling in the park with Lilianne and their chaperone when suddenly something knocks her flying. When she gathers herself together, there’s a brown-eyed gentleman holding his hankie to her forehead, and when she sees how handsome he is and how lovely his Scottish accent is, being a practical sort of girl, she promptly invites him to a ball she’s throwing in Park Lane.”

  “That is romantic,” I breathed. “And practical!”

  “Luckily for her, he turned out to have a castle and a title, and was as mad about her as she was about him. They got married six months later. Ranald brought her up here, all the staff lined up outside in their uniforms, and she fell in love all over again, this time with Kettlesheer.”

  “I can see why,” I said. “It must have seemed like something out of a storybook.”

  “Well, in those days, it was,” sighed Sheila. “They had a household of about fifty, and her daddy built a railway extension from Berwick straight to the house, so guests could travel direct from London. All overgrown now, of course. And they did everything together, Violet and Ranald, which was really unusual then. She rode out hunting with him, went fishing on the Tweed with him, handled a shotgun like a lad. . . . And of course, she loved reeling. Loved the Kettlesheer ball.”

  “Have you been up to the ballroom yet?” asked Ingrid. She’d pushed back her chair while Sheila was regaling me with Violet’s life story, and was moving around the kitchen, stirring something on the Aga and slicing fresh bread.

  I shook my head. “I’ve barely even ‘done’ the main drawing room.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it,” said Ingrid with a knowing nod.

  “It’s in some architectural study,” said Sheila. “Violet spent a fortune remodeling it; then she invited the Prince of Wales—big shooting friend of Ranald’s—to the first ball there. He led her into the Reel of Luck, and he never danced at these things. If you look at the carvings, there are violets entwined with the McAndrew thistles in the paneling, and the heraldic feathers of the Prince of Wales and American eagles. There’ll be a photograph somewhere, won’t there, Ingrid? Of the royal party?”

  Ingrid waved a bewildered hand in the general direction of the house. “Somewhere.”

  How could it be somewhere? I thought wildly. I’d have had it on display! I made a mental note to find it, to take it down to the lodge where it belonged.

  “So it was a real love match?” I said. “Not just a financial arrangement?”

  “God, no! I mean, it helped that Violet had so much money, but they were devoted to each other. They were known for it—the only couple round here that insisted on not being separated at country-house parties.” Sheila laughed. “My granny used to get all sorts of teasing from the other staff at those. No breakfast tray scandal for Violet and Ranald!”

  “Were they married a long time?” I asked, trying to remember the dates on the family tree.

  Real sadness crossed Sheila’s kind face, and I felt an instinctive panic for the young lovers.

  “Ah, now, that’s the sad part,” she said, and I put down my glass, already braced for the worst.

  Eleven

  “What happened?” I asked. “Was it the war? Did something happen then?”

  “Not directly, but everything changed, one way or another. Two of Ranald’s younger brothers were killed at Ypres in the First World War, and half the estate lads were killed together at Passchendaele. They’d volunteered together, you see—Violet turned the house over to be a hospital f
or the Border Regiment. And then before the Second World War, her family money ran out. Not that we were meant to know,” Sheila added. “From what my granny heard, Violet’s father lost every cent he had in the Depression. Shot himself, poor man. And Daddy was paying the bills.”

  Sheila looked anxiously over at Ingrid. “It’s never been a rich estate, not many farms, and Ranald was no businessman. His youngest brother got into trouble in London, needed to be bailed out—that took most of his inheritance. Then when he was only fifty, Ranald had a heart attack while out fishing and died there, on the bank. Poor Violet—she was devastated, and with the house and death duties and five children to look after. All on her own.”

  “When was that?” Coldness crept over me, thinking of a love like that, a gilded, easy life, suddenly snatched away. And to be alone in a strange country, surrounded by everything she’d loved, but with her heart broken forever. Even I felt cheated, and I was just hearing the story.

  “Ooh, nineteen thirty-something? But you know what? She got herself through it.” Sheila tapped the table for emphasis. “She spent three days in bed, refusing food, company, everything. Then, the day after the funeral, lawyers came round with an offer from a family in Edinburgh. Always liked the house, apparently, wanted to take it off her hands. Granny didn’t want to let them in, but Violet swept downstairs and told them, in front of everyone, that she might have lost her beloved Ran, but while she was still in his house, part of him was still alive in her. And that she’d never sell.”

  Sheila’s eyes were glistening. Mine were too. Ingrid had stopped stirring. “God knows how she did it, with next to no money,” Sheila finished, “but she managed to keep the big house going, and nearly all the staff who worked here, and the tenant farmers.”

  “Were a lot of stately houses sold off?” I asked.

  “Och, yes. Who had the money to run them? Ollerslaw, that castle by the main road?” Sheila jerked a thumb toward the window. “That was sold to a hotel chain to pay death duties. And Edderburn, beautiful castle, been in the Dean family for centuries, that was turned into a reform school, then an old folks’ home, and now it’s executive apartments and a spa.”