Swept off Her Feet Page 6

  At a quarter to seven exactly, I was in the middle of pronouncing on a Spode teapot when I became aware of a marked thinning-out of the guests. It was as if a plug had been pulled out of a bath, and they were all circling toward the door, half against their will.

  In the hall I could see a dour woman in a plain black dress, evidently wielding some kind of invisible social tractor beam. She was handing people their coats from a portable rack that had also materialized, and they were dazedly bundling up in fur hats, scarves, and lots of Barbour jackets.

  “Mhairi’s a wonder. Her family has looked after the house for years, her father was the last butler,” murmured Ingrid, appearing at my elbow with a full tray of unfinished drinks. “Do you know, everyone round here leaves parties when they’re supposed to? And they arrive on time, not an hour late!”

  We both gazed at Mhairi. Something about her didn’t encourage dawdling.

  “Do you have a lot of staff?” I asked, envisioning rows of black-and-white-clad parlormaids in starched caps, lining up by the stairs.

  “Just Mhairi. I don’t know how I’d cope without her.” She looked down at her full tray. “Actually, it was Mhairi’s idea to let Duncan serve his carrot schnapps instead of sherry. She doesn’t like parties to go on after half seven.”

  “This is carrot . . . schnapps?” I asked.

  “Home brew,” said Ingrid. “Duncan’s very . . . keen. Anyway, I should go and . . .” She made a vague gesture toward the door, as if she were still getting the hang of her own house.

  “Oh, yes, absolutely. I’m fine here,” I said. Actually, I was eager to go poke around the silver wedding photos on the piano, for a start.

  Once Ingrid had fluttered out, I stood back and tried to take it all in. McAndrews through the ages glowered back at me from the burgundy wallpaper: the floppy hats, wigs, and tiaras varied, but the strong nose and shrewd Scottish eyes stayed exactly the same. The young Regency buck posing against a tree stump had the same brooding good looks, if not the same breeches, as Robert McAndrew.

  It must be incredible, I thought enviously, to see that you were part of such a long chain of people. We had one album of family photos. You’d think the whole Nicholson family fell out of the sky fully formed in 1974, the year my parents got married. I’d have been happy for a snap of a relative in a bowler hat, let alone a suit of armor.

  One blond head stood out in the crowd of swarthy swaggerers: a full-length portrait of a young woman hanging by the bay window. Something about the mischief in her pretty face made me sleepwalk over for a closer look, trailing my hands across velvet sofas and threadbare cushions as I went.

  She was younger than me—about twenty—but she had a grown-up sophistication about her half-smile and knowing blue eyes. I didn’t recognize the artist, but I could tell he was good: he’d captured the pre-party sparkle of anticipation that glowed around her and the golden softness of her swept-up curls, the luminescence of the pearls in her delicate ears. Going by the nipped waist and floaty off-the-shoulder neckline of her gown, I estimated it must have been painted sometime before the First World War. The last hurrah for languid society beauties and their untroubled lives of house parties and never-ending afternoon teas.

  Ooh, I thought suddenly. Was this the heiress? Was I gazing into the eyes of the American buccaneer who’d steamed across the Atlantic to save this ancient castle from financial ruin?

  “Jolly well done, Evie,” said Duncan, appearing next to me with a side order of cold air still hanging around him. “Who knew Jock Laing’s toy cars were worth more than his real one? Ha!”

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  “My great-grandmother Violet. Painted just after she got engaged to Ranald, that chap there.” He indicated a companion portrait on the other side of the fireplace: another dark-eyed McAndrew male, this time in shiny-buttoned regimental uniform, with a thick mustache and rather luscious brown eyes that hinted at a devilish streak beneath the stern exterior.

  “What a handsome couple,” I said, instantly imagining them holding court in this very room, sitting on those big sofas. Yes, I could picture Ranald warming himself beside the fire after a brisk hunt through the rolling moors that surrounded the house. And Violet in a sumptuous day dress, arranging flowers from the hothouses round the side of …

  “Do you have hothouses here?” I asked. “Or an orangery?”

  Duncan frowned. “I don’t know. There was some form of piggery during the war, I think. Now then, dinner!” He rubbed his hands together. “Mhairi will show you to your room. Dinner at half past?”

  I’d have liked to hear a bit more about Violet and Ranald—how they met, what her fortune was made in, all that—but Mhairi had now appeared and she didn’t look in the mood for reminiscing. I replaced my barely touched sherry glass on the silver salver and followed her out into the bone-chilling hall and up the stairs.

  It was almost impossible not to feel as if I were stepping into one of my own most colorful daydreams.

  Six

  I trailed behind Mhairi as we tackled the glorious oak staircase in silence, my eyes widening with each step. My attention skipped from one intriguing glass case to another, and more McAndrews, draped in their distinctive orange-and-black tartans and posed standing on dead things, even the women. I ran my hand up the thick banister and wondered how old the tree was that had made it—it must have seen Henry VIII, at least.

  “Mind the halberd,” said Mhairi as we ducked beneath a scary pike thing. She had a proper Scottish accent, like deep-fried haggis.

  “It’s magnificent,” I breathed, walking backward to take it in, but not wanting to get left behind.

  “Aye. It’s a pain to dust.”

  At the top of the stairs, we headed down a book-lined corridor, and Mhairi pushed open a solid oak door with an enameled coat of arms. It gave out a proper haunted-house creak.

  “Your case’s in here.” Mhairi delivered each pronouncement as if words were strictly rationed.

  “Thank you!” I squeaked.

  She reached around for the brass switch, and a low light flooded the room. “There’s a bell if you need anything.”

  My eyes widened.

  My overnight wheelie case was lying open, embarrassed, on the counterpane of a real four-poster bed, the sort monarchs chose to die in, all crimson velvet hangings and gold swags. There was more crimson and gold at the bay window, a marble fireplace with a selection of ticking clocks, and a rococo dressing table that wouldn’t even have fitted through the door of my flat.

  That was the headline furniture. Alongside that were assorted mahogany chairs, gilt mirrors, a chaise longue for swooning onto, a wardrobe big enough to house Narnia plus any other mystical universe, and a linen chest with a vast Japanese Imari dish containing silver and gold glass balls.

  I gazed in delight at the dressing table, with proper silver brushes with which to brush my hair before dinner!

  I turned to ask Mhairi how far up the scale the McAndrews dressed for said dinner, but she’d already gone, leaving me free to explore my room like a child in a sweet shop.

  Needless to say, once I was sure I was on my own, I lost no time in holding on to the bed frame and imagining a maid lacing me into a very tight corset. Mhairi’s great-grandmother had probably hauled tight enough to make even the whalebones squeak for mercy.

  The bathroom wasn’t so much a mere bathroom as a whole other room, and it took me nearly fifteen minutes to run enough tepid water into the cavernous rolltop bath.

  Still, it gave me time to admire the magnificent brass taps, and the curly iron rack for holding your book and wine while you soaked. And the paintings of artfully draped ladies, and the stuffed pike, caught in the estate lake in June 1909.

  Just before half seven, I left my room looking smart but feeling frozen. I’d opted for a silk wrap dress and heels that I hoped would be grand enough. Two steps down the staircase, though, and—mentally, at least—I was in a whispering silk crinoline and heavy tart
an sash.

  One didn’t just walk down these stairs, I thought, my pace slowing the better to savor each step, one descended. As if someone were waiting for you in the hall, with tragic/urgent news from London, maybe even toting one of Innes Stout’s dueling pistols.

  “Why, my lord!” I murmured in my head. Well, more or less in my head. “The bagpipes? I simply adore them!”

  There was no one around, so I tilted my head to show off my swanlike neck to an imaginary admirer, trailing a hand along the banister, worn smooth by generations of hands. Big, claymore-wielding hands, and delicate embroidering ones, resting where my fingers were now.

  “Lord Dunmore, the Dunmore of Dunmore? For dinner? How unexpected!” I paused at the corner of one flight, and pictured the hall beneath thronging with ladies in diamonds and men in wing collars, waiting as their cloaks were taken before the ball. I imagined the tarnished gas lamps polished up and blazing, and the empty grate filled with logs, the air heavy with gossip and flirtation and woodsmoke.

  This was exactly why I loved antiques: Kettlesheer was crammed with proof that those Regency romances had once been everyday life. I paused, and smiled down into the dim hall, imagining everyone gazing up at my arrival, the mysterious chestnut-haired beauty from London. My hand lifted, and I found myself giving a small royal wave.

  And Fraser Graham, the handsome eldest son from the neighboring house, was waiting to take my hand and lead me into the—

  Alice’s hand. Waiting to take Alice’s hand.

  Guiltily I rejigged my vision.

  I could almost see Fraser Graham, the handsome young heir from the neighboring house, and his unattached brother Douglas—

  There was a discreet cough from the stairwell.

  I jumped so hard, my foot slipped on the worn carpet and I had to grab the banister to stop myself from falling. Luckily it was made of sturdy stuff.

  Robert McAndrew was standing just round the corner by a wall-mounted sword, his arms crossed over his gray hoodie. He hadn’t bothered to change for dinner, I noticed. He hadn’t even changed out of his jeans.

  “Are you all right?” he inquired.

  “I’m fine, I didn’t see you there,” I stammered, cursing the stupid shadows and the lack of modern lighting. At least he couldn’t make out my red cheeks as I scuttled down the remaining stairs.

  “You don’t have a camera crew with you?” he went on.

  “No!”

  “It’s just that you seemed to be making an entrance.” He paused, and gave me an inscrutable look. “And you were talking to yourself.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said, concentrating on not slipping. That never happened in Jane Eyre, Jane skidding down the stairs on her bustle. “I was examining a painting. Am I late for dinner? Were you sent to find me? I’m sorry—it took a while to run the bath.”

  “A bath? I’m surprised you’re not still up there—it’s quicker to fill a moat.” Robert gestured down the corridor. “Don’t worry about it. I’m late too. We can be late together. After you,” he said, and I stepped forward.

  “Chop-chop,” he added. “Uncle Carlisle set up those Scrooge lights that go off before you’ve had time to see where you’re going. We’ve got thirty seconds to get down the east wing.”

  “It’s a wonderful house,” I said, dragging myself past a cabinet full of Roman fragments. “Everywhere I look, I want to stop and make notes, and just . . . breathe in the history. But I suppose you’re used to it by now.”

  “Nope,” said Robert, somewhere behind me. “Mum and Dad only moved up here a couple of years ago. Takes a bit longer than that to get used to living in Scotland’s biggest attic.”

  “You live in the attic? Aren’t there enough rooms?”

  “Metaphorically speaking.” He laughed. At least I think he did. “It’s like they never threw anything away—they just stuck it in a case. If you think this is bad, you should see what’s actually in the attic. I keep telling Dad: just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s important.”

  This time I knew Robert wasn’t being faux-modest; he sounded genuinely repulsed. In fact, he sounded a bit like Alice: she was always threatening to start a localized fire in my garage to “cure my hoarding.”

  “Well, one man’s junk is another man’s priceless collectible, as a wise man once said to me!” I replied. “It’s all part of someone’s life, isn’t it? And those people are part of your life.”

  We’d reached a dimly lit corner of the paneled corridor, and I hung back, waiting for him to hit the next light switch. I couldn’t resist tapping a dark oak panel with my knuckles. Then the one next to it.

  “Sorry, what are you doing?” he asked.

  I looked up. “Tapping the panels. To see if there’s a hidden passage.”

  “And what sort of noise would one of those make? Out of interest.”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I’ve just seen them do it in films. You tap the oak panels and one of them . . . swings back.” As I said it, I realized how ridiculous I sounded.

  “To reveal what?” Robert raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “The slide down to the Bat Cave? Or the chute for the discarded servants?”

  “You never know with houses like this,” I said. “You read about noblemen hiding chests of gold pieces during enemy raids, and then dying in battle so they’re undiscovered for centuries.” My eyes widened. “Wouldn’t that be fate?”

  Robert sighed and raised his hands. “Fine, let’s get this out of the way before dinner,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, there is no buried treasure in this house. No unburied treasure, either. Kettlesheer is a giant white elephant, full of someone else’s colonial supermarket sweep. I’m embarrassed by some of it, frankly.”

  My mouth dropped open. “But there are some wonderful historical things here that—”

  Robert held up his hands. “So give them to the Museum of Scotland. A house this size is a massive drain in this day and age. It’s ruined at least three recent ancestors, and I don’t want to watch my parents dragged down by the stress of keeping it going. Selling little bits here and there for the roof, to do the electricity—waste of time. Personally, I’d sell it tomorrow.” He made a chopping gesture in the air.

  “But it’s your family home!” I protested, swamped with disbelief that he could dismiss it so coldly. The spectral McAndrews around us must have been clutching their jabots in shock.

  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, scrabbli
ng 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.