Christmas at a Highland Castle

Chapter 4

The following morning it took Jess a few seconds to work out what had woken her up. A snuffling, licking noise close to her pillow prompted her to open her eyes to see Digby running through his early morning ablutions on her duvet. Close enough for her to get an extra-special early-morning blast of Digby-breath.

She supposed she should be grateful it was his breath she could smell, especially with his back leg cocked up far enough for him to be able to lick all the way to his …

‘Christ’s sake, Digby. Get off my bed.’

As a rule, Jess favoured a slower start to the day, but this morning she flung back the covers and ejected herself from the bed before Digby’s digestive system could realise how squashed it was.

‘Get down from there, dog. Right. Now.’

For once her tone of voice must have carried enough authority, because with a protracted sigh, Digby gave her the filthiest look ever, then slid the entire length of his undercarriage across her duvet as he vacated her bed and flopped with exaggerated pathos into his basket.

‘Thank you.’

The room was icy cold, and Jess pulled on a woolly jumper before beginning to strip the bed. However tempting it might be to slide back into the pocket of warm air she’d only just vacated and grab a few more minutes of dozing time, there was no way she could bring herself to get close to linen on which Digby had licked parts of his anatomy she’d rather not think about.

With the sheets sloshing around in the washing machine, and Digby furnished with breakfast, Jess made a mug of instant coffee and dragged a chair to the circle of warmth in front of the Aga, propping her feet – now encased in thick fluffy socks – onto the spindles to keep them from the icy touch of the flagstones.

Underfloor heating might have been invented by the Romans, but it was clear it hadn’t been in the designs for Kirkshield Castle. Understandable, perhaps – Jess reminded herself that the Romans hadn’t ever made a proper dent this far north, had been beaten back by the fierce, blue-faced Celtic tribes. But the fact remained, there didn’t seem to be any form of heating currently in operation. The place was like the inside of a fridge.

Jess was sure there was a minimum level of heat required for a work environment, wasn’t there? Did that apply to private dwellings? It hadn’t ever occurred to her before; everywhere she’d worked had been toasty warm and even her tiny one-bed rented flat, devoid of heating unless absolutely necessary, took very little time to warm up. Jess glanced around the kitchen and pursed her lips. A place like this would take significantly longer to heat up – and with energy costs at their present levels, she supposed it wasn’t a surprise that the place wasn’t well heated. Historically, they would have relied on open fires, closed doors and heavy curtains, while she supposed those below stairs would have been kept warm by constant physical labour and the heat from the kitchen ranges.

Jess shivered, sipping at her coffee and curling her fingers around the warmth of the mug. Funny to think that in this setting she could be considered a servant. It wasn’t a job description she was keen on, but somehow this place was so ridiculously grand she was feeling utterly out of her depth, struggling to understand how she was supposed to fit in. Perhaps the whole point was that she never would. After all, the new earl seemed utterly unimpressed by her existence. And Jess’s itchy feet would ensure she was ready to move on when the time came.

The scratching of a key in the Yale lock of the scullery door made Jess start and had both her and Digby on their feet, the latter managing a snarly choking cough at the shock of the intrusion. Jess abandoned her coffee and skated her way across the slick flagstones on her socks, gripping the frame of the doorway through to the scullery to steady herself as she watched Mrs Keel push open the outer door. Jess’s shoulders dropped and Digby also lowered his defence warning level to DEFCON 4 as he wiggled his tail and trotted across, sniffing at the hem of Mrs Keel’s sensible tweed skirt.

‘Come away in, you wee scallywag,’ Mrs Keel said, thankfully blocking Digby’s escape route and closing the door firmly behind herself.

‘Morning, Mrs Keel. Can I get you a coffee?’ Jess asked.

‘Won’t say no.’ Mrs Keel indicated the basket she held. ‘Brought you a few bits and bobs. I know what it’s like to have to find your way somewhere new.’ She pursed her lips. ‘And it’s not like you’ve the benefit of a proper handover, what with Elsa leaving so suddenly.’

‘Why did she leave so abruptly?’ Jess was itching to know why the previous housekeeper had left, but Mrs Keel ignored the question and began to empty out the contents of the basket. First from the basket was a small rectangular tin.

‘I brought you some shortbread biscuits. Young Sebastian always loved my sister Kitty’s shortbread, used to cycle down to the village when he was a wee button of a lad to ask if she’d been baking. He said he could smell it all the way from the castle, but Kitty said that was impossible. She always had some in a tin, though, for him. He was such a wee charmer.’

‘Was he?’ She almost asked what had gone wrong, what had changed. Instead, Jess re-boiled the kettle and made more coffee, sliding a mug onto the table for Mrs Keel.

‘I’ll bet he hasn’t tasted Kitty’s shortbread in years, so I brought some up for him. And I’ve got some fresh lamb cutlets – the countess loves lamb.’ Mrs Keel paused, pulling a grimace. ‘She’s the dowager countess now, I suppose. Not sure how she’s going to suit that as a title.’

‘Why?’ Jess lifted the lid on the biscuit tin, a waft of creamy shortbread mixing rather too well with the steam rising from the rapidly cooling coffee, making Jess’s tastebuds prickle with enthusiasm. She was going to have to be very disciplined if she was going to keep her fingers out of that tin. She slapped the lid back on.

‘Nobody likes change, do they?’ Mrs Keel said. ‘And it was so sudden, so unexpected. She must be finding it all very difficult.’

‘Do you think?’ So far, the only interactions Jess had experienced with the woman had been stilted and she had felt more than a little judged. Sebastian’s mother had the gaze of a hawk searching for soft-bellied prey, in Jess’s opinion. In fact, none of the family had shown much of a sign of friendliness. Mrs Keel must be made of strong stuff if she still cared about their well-being after a lifetime spent in their company.

‘Now, if you need anything else, there’s the wee shop in the village. It’s well stocked with essentials. You’ll probably find you want to go to Inverness to find a wider range of provisions. Elsa used to go once a month, I believe. Took the old earl’s Range Rover, she did.’ Mrs Keel sniffed as though something wasn’t to her taste, then unloaded the final items from her basket: a block of cheese wrapped in wax paper, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a supermarket pack of spaghetti. She smiled. ‘A bit of insider knowledge for you – they all love a spaghetti supper when they decide to have a movie night. It’s a family tradition.’

Jess frowned. Spaghetti supper and a movie? Somehow it felt incongruous in this setting.

‘However much they might like to put on airs and graces, they’re still people, like you and me. Olivia loves westerns. And when Sebastian was a little boy, he used to end up with tomato juice all down the front of his shirt, every time. Once he filled his shirt pocket with spaghetti, pretended he had a nest of worms in there. Just remember that if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed by this place, or the people in it.’

Jess gave her first genuine smile since she’d arrived in Scotland. ‘Thanks, I will.’

‘Now. Has anyone told you about the buckets?’

‘Buckets? No – what buckets?’

‘For the leaky roof. Come with me and I’ll show you the attics.’

It was so strange to be back in his childhood bedroom. Everything was familiar and yet distant. The morning light spearing through the gap in the curtains did little to dispel his apathy at being back. The room felt generic. Only to be expected, Sebastian supposed, after almost a decade away. He’d come home plenty of times in between, so he was already aware his posters of his teenage crushes, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, were long gone, along with his collection of CDs and the box of dodgy cigarettes and condoms he’d left under his bed in a pathetic teenage fit of angst, hoping he’d shock someone.

He should have known it would take a damn sight more than that to surprise anyone living under this roof.

Sebastian lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. He’d traced those cracks in the plaster with his gaze more times than he could count, always with the detachment of someone who longed to be somewhere else. But now those cracks were his, and there was no escaping the fact.

He’d hoped for another decade, at least. Another ten years to further his dreams and to be himself before the reality of who he was expected to be had closed in around him. But thanks to his father’s undiagnosed heart condition, those years had evaporated and everything he’d worked for was slipping through his fingers.

It wasn’t as though the situation was a surprise, though – it was simply the timing which was doing its best to throw him off.

Once dressed, Sebastian took the back stairs and headed for the kitchen. A mug of tea and some toast and jam would put him in a more positive mood, and he could begin the task of looking through his father’s papers and computer records before the estate manager, Ben, arrived at ten.

When he reached the kitchen, Jess was nowhere to be seen. He checked the scullery and the pantry, finding a loaf of bread on his journey, but there was no sign of her, just the watchful gaze of her little dog.

Unable to decide if he should be annoyed not to find her there, or relieved he didn’t have to face her yet this morning, Sebastian dumped the bread on a cutting board and peered at the dog, who was sitting resolutely under the kitchen table. The little creature was quite cute, if a bit scraggly around the edges.

‘Where’s Jess?’ he said, but the only reply he got was a tilt of the dog’s head. ‘No, I don’t know either.’ He cut some bread, threading it into the toaster before tidying up the crumbs.

With breakfast made, he sat at the kitchen table to eat it, noticing the dog creeping closer. Pretending to ignore the movement, Sebastian cut off a corner of one of his pieces of toast, then waited for the dog to edge close enough for his snout to be level with Sebastian’s knee.

‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ he said, then lowered the corner piece so the animal could take it.

Sebastian had never known a dog make so much noise chewing up a corner of toast, snuffling and snorting and huffing as though it was choking. Glancing around, Sebastian prayed Jess didn’t choose this moment to walk through the door. If the dog was going to choke to death, Sebastian needed to make good his escape before she got back and realised what he’d done.

He held his breath until the dog swallowed, didn’t keel over, and the array of noises died away.

‘Thank God for that,’ he breathed, picking up his mug of tea and grinning at the dog, who stared back at him, licking thoughtfully at its lips.

The grin faded, and Sebastian took a deep breath. It was difficult to know how to rate the comparative impact, the effect it would have. As far as a housekeeper was concerned, how bad would it be to have an earl kill her dog within twenty-four hours of her arrival? Would it be a lesser offence than having an aged earl with a dodgy ticker dying on her in flagrante delicto?

Sebastian shook his head. If only his father had managed to display a bit more in the way of self-control, or at least have had himself given the all-clear by a doctor, none of this need have happened.

Had it been a shock to learn how his father had died, or to discover why there was a sudden need for a substitute housekeeper? However hard his mother had tried to cover up the discord in her marriage and hide the kind of person his father actually was, Sebastian wasn’t an idiot. No, it hadn’t come as a shock.

Instead, the news had come in the form of a sledgehammer and had set about destroying the life he wanted to live, all over again.