Christmas at a Highland Castle

Chapter 11

A couple of days later and, despite her misgivings, preparing for Sebastian’s welcome-home party was proving more fun than Jess had expected. Almost everything was in place, and Jess had managed to keep shtum, hadn’t given the game away to Sebastian. The only downside had been a lack of time to go and visit Robbie. He hadn’t been in when she’d returned his clothes, and Jess had been forced to leave them in his porch.

On the plus side, she’d managed to rope Mrs Keel in to lend a hand – in a sort of quid pro quo arrangement for singing in the village choir – and although the older woman had reservations about holding a party so soon after a funeral, with some associated mutterings about mourning times not being correctly observed, she’d become a willing confidant.

That was to say, preparing for the party had been fun, right up until the moment Olivia waltzed into the kitchen with a hanger full of clothes swathed in dry-cleaner’s plastic and hooked it to the pelmet of the huge dresser.

‘I’ve got you these,’ she said, ripping open the plastic with a triumphant flourish. A black dress with what looked horrifyingly like a frilly white apron around its waistline was inside. ‘Just for the weekend, just to set the tone,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to wear the hat thing if you don’t want to.’

Hat thing? The apron was bad enough. Jess’s charitable smile must have slipped, rather catastrophically if Olivia’s frown was anything to go by.

‘You don’t like it?’ she said, an undercurrent of uncertainty sliding into her tone.

Jess pressed her lips together, not entirely sure how to express just how vehemently she loathed the idea of wearing anything remotely approaching that kind of an outfit. Instead, she stared at Olivia, fingers gripped hard around the back of a chair.

‘Well, listen, I’ll just leave it here in case you want to try it on, or …’ Olivia shifted her stance, then smiled again. ‘As long as you look smart, I don’t suppose it really matters. It was just an idea.’

Jess managed to stop herself from saying she hadn’t intended to dress in sack cloth for the duration of the party, or suggesting she might offer herself as one of those naked sushi platters – thereby forgoing the need for clothes of any kind. She could have covered herself in bits of Iberian ham, instead of clothes, and laid herself out on the dining table.

She gave herself an internal high five for not immediately taking the Victorian housemaid uniform and shoving it into a very dark cupboard. Instead, the uniform stayed put. Mostly because Jess wanted to make Olivia feel uncomfortable every time she came into the kitchen, but also because touching it might look as though she had accepted the idea.

Unfortunately, leaving the dress hanging for anyone to see had a different outcome when, shortly afterwards, Sebastian came into the kitchen in search of coffee.

He did a double take when he saw the uniform hanging on the dresser.

‘What’s this?’ he said, wandering over to it and wrinkling his nose as he scrunched his fingers around the fabric.

‘Oh, um. Nothing.’ It wasn’t Jess’s finest hour, not her best deflection. In fact, she could hear the guilt leaching through the ill-chosen words. She suddenly wished she had shoved the uniform where the sun didn’t shine.

Sebastian turned to her, a quizzical expression engulfing his face. ‘Why’s it here, then, if it’s nothing?’

Good question. She bit at her bottom lip, wondering if she should lie to him and keep the party a secret, or confide in him and risk spoiling the surprise.

‘Are you going to a fancy-dress party or something?’

He’d given her the perfect ‘out’, a completely feasible reason for the dress being there, and yet Jess couldn’t bring herself to lie to him. Even if it did ruin the surprise, she decided, in that split second, that she didn’t want to deceive Sebastian any longer.

She pulled in a breath. ‘Not exactly. Olivia brought it for me to wear – it was just an idea, she said I don’t have to … which is just as well because you’d have to drug me to get me to wear something like that …’

‘Slow down, Jess. Why did Olivia bring it for you to wear? I don’t understand.’

He did look confused, his eyebrows flexing as he looked between her and the dress, which hung like a dead crow on the dresser.

‘It’s supposed to be a secret,’ she said, cutting to the chase. ‘Olivia is organising a party, a welcome-home party for you, and it was meant to be a surprise. She thought it would be a nice touch to have me in uniform, I guess.’

‘Fucking hell.’

The strength of Sebastian’s language surprised Jess, and she stared at him as he wheeled away. It wasn’t that she didn’t swear; she did. Often and with a colourful array of verbal concoctions, some of which she was extremely pleased with. Like cockwomble, for example. So versatile. But somehow, those words delivered in his cultured tones, the angry twist in his unquestionably handsome features, was a shock.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘None of this is your doing; please excuse my language. Could you tell me a bit more about what Olivia has planned?’

He sounded controlled again, but Jess could see that his shoulders had risen by several inches and didn’t slacken off as she filled him in on the party plans.

Once she’d finished, he nodded. ‘Thank you. Do you have any idea where my sister is right now?’

‘I’m not sure. She was with Candida, watching TV in the butler’s pantry.’

Sebastian pulled in a difficult breath. ‘Excellent. Being productive as always. And my mother?’

‘I think she’s back from her walk, so maybe in her room?’

Sebastian unhooked the dress, plastic trailing as he stalked to the door. The hat, an honest-to-God Victorian mob cap, fell from the hanger and as he dipped to snatch it up, Jess was sure she heard him swear again.

Unsure what to do, Jess dithered for a few moments, then told Digby to stay with a level of gravitas which, for once, the little dog seemed to take on board – or maybe he was already cowed by Sebastian’s outburst. Whatever the reason, Digby didn’t shift from his mat and Jess trailed behind Sebastian, part of her wanting to be on hand to explain to Olivia why she’d had to spill the beans. As she followed him from the room, she also decided a larger part of her wanted to find out what Sebastian was about to do.

He almost headed for the library first to pick up a bank statement, thinking that being able to shove it under their noses would add weight to what he was about to say. But Sebastian would have had to veer off in a completely different direction to reach the library, and he was already at the door to the butler’s pantry.

The pantry consisted of a series of rooms, close to the kitchens and originally the butler’s lair. At some point in the dim and distant past, one of the tangle of rooms had been converted into a snug. It was where the media centre was situated, a place where the furniture was sloppy and comfortable. Coffee cups could be abandoned on wooden tables without fear of ruining the patina, shoes could be sloughed off and nobody tutted. Their informal space.

It was as good a place as any to give the rest of his family some home truths.

As luck would have it, his mother was also in the room, and she was the first to look up from the TV, her smile at Sebastian’s arrival tempered by a confused frown.

‘Sebastian, darling, what have you got there?’

From the squashy two-seat sofa, Candida and Olivia glanced across simultaneously, Olivia raising her eyebrows as she saw what he was carrying.

‘Care to explain?’ Sebastian aimed the question squarely at Olivia.

‘She was supposed to keep it—’

‘Supposed to keep it a secret?’ Sebastian said, aware his tone was spiralling, but his throat was so tight with the effort of holding it all together.

‘What’s going on?’ his mother said. ‘Who was supposed to keep what a secret?’

‘I don’t get the problem,’ Olivia said, turning to her mother. ‘All I’ve done is organise a surprise party next weekend to welcome my brother home. Jess was supposed to help me and keep quiet, and she’s obviously told him, and now it looks like he’s going to throw one of his strops. I mean, you work it out, Mummy, because I can’t see what the problem is. I was trying to do something nice for you, Seb. If it’s the stupid dress which has upset you, throw it in the dustbin, it was just a bit of fun.’

Sebastian could hear her tone change, too. Her words sounded reasonable, but he could sense there was an undertone of steel to them. Out of his two siblings and himself, Sebastian had always thought Olivia to be the most like their father. She didn’t back down easily and, when Olivia decided to do something, she expected to be able to do it. There was never any question.

Until today.

Today, Sebastian needed to make her understand – he needed to make them all understand.

‘A party?’ His mother sounded confused, and rightfully so. In Sebastian’s opinion, there was nothing to celebrate.

Olivia had enough grace to look marginally embarrassed. Perhaps she was realising that, although the siblings knew exactly what their father had been like and had a fair idea of what he’d put their mother through, he had only been dead for a couple of weeks.

But that wasn’t Sebastian’s issue, that wasn’t uppermost in his thoughts. Instead, his focus remained on the dress in his hand.

‘First of all,’ he said, shimmying the dress for extra emphasis, ‘Jess will not be wearing this. Not now, or ever.’ He threw the whole lot at his sister, not caring when the hanger caught her on the knee before the dress slunk to the floor as if it was doing its best to hide.

‘Sebastian!’ The shock in his mother’s voice was clear.

‘All right. You’ve made your point,’ Olivia said, rubbing at her leg.

‘No. I haven’t. And that’s the problem. You lot are living in cloud-cuckoo-land.’

‘What do you mean? What’s wrong with wanting to welcome you home?’

‘Who have you invited to this thing?’ Sebastian said, folding his arms as he stared at her.

‘Oh, not many people. The Matthews. Gram and Spikey. Bridey, Hops and Tank. Some others, too. All the old crowd.’

They were all people he hadn’t spent significant time with for nearly a decade.

‘ Your friends, then,’ he said.

‘They used to be yours as well.’ Olivia crossed her arms, too, and raised him a defiant pout.

‘Yes, Olivia. But lots of things have changed.’

‘Darling, I believe Liv was thinking of you. They are some of your oldest friends, you can’t deny it.’

It was a valiant attempt by his mother to bridge the gap between her children, but Sebastian hadn’t dropped the bomb yet. He flexed his eyebrows as he tried to decide how best to pull the lever.

‘How much is this party going to cost?’ he asked.

As he suspected, Olivia shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. It’s just a few bottles of champagne, and whatever Jess needs for the catering.’

‘And how much does the champagne actually cost, Olivia?’

‘I don’t know the precise amount, Sebastian. The estate will pay, though, won’t it?’

And there it was: his way in. ‘With what?’

‘What do you mean “with what”?’

‘There. Isn’t. Any. Money.’ Sebastian enunciated every word carefully, to garner as much attention as he could. ‘There’s no money to pay for the temporary housekeeper you decided we couldn’t survive without, and there’s definitely no money for bloody stupid parties.’

Olivia laughed, then frowned as she watched his expression. Their mother shook her head. Candida did her best to look anywhere but at any of them.

‘This estate is all but bankrupt,’ he added.

‘But Daddy always said there was nothing to worry about, that we were to enjoy ourselves and the estate would take care of itself.’

Sebastian heard himself laugh, but he wasn’t sure where the sound came from – this was anything but funny. ‘That sounds about right. Well, Olivia, Daddy was wrong.’

‘No. That can’t be right.’ Olivia was on her feet now, the detective drama on the television playing to an audience whose attention was anywhere but on the killer’s denouement.

‘Your Land Rover, the one with all the extras and the fancy off-road kit? Did you think we own that?’

Perhaps he was being unfair, zeroing in on his sister like this, but she’d started it with her secret party plans.

‘Well, yes. Daddy bought it for me.’ Olivia’s voice had lost some of its bullishness, her confident expression losing its rigidity.

‘No. What Daddy actually did was take out a finance agreement which the estate is still trying to pay back. Alongside the one he took out on his Evoque, and the one on your Audi.’ Sebastian moved his focus to his mother. Then he swung back to Olivia. ‘In fact, my VW is the only vehicle on the estate which hasn’t got finance owing on it.’

‘What, even the keeper’s truck, and the estate manager’s car?’ There was a definite uptick in the level of concern in his mother’s voice.

‘And the vehicles are the tip of a fucking enormous iceberg,’ he added. ‘Right now, I’m trying to work out how to be able to afford all the upgrades needed in the tenant properties – just to bring them up to standard. Upgrades which should have been completed years ago.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. We’re breaking laws with some of what hasn’t been done.’ He waited for his words to sink in, then said, ‘Anyone been up to the attics lately?’

Olivia looked confused as she shook her head. ‘No. Why would I?’

‘Oh. No reason. Unless you fancied lending a hand to bail out the dozen or so buckets which are up there to catch the water leaking in through the roof. I think Mrs Keel has been doing it, and now Jess has taken over the job. An additional skillset any housekeeper worth their salt would love to add onto their CV, don’t you agree?’

‘Now you’re being petty,’ Olivia said. ‘And anyway, it’s too late – they’re all invited.’

‘How is your priority still the sodding party? This can’t go on any longer.’ He should take some of the sting out of his words, absorb some of the blame by admitting his part in all this, his lack of interest in anything to do with the estate until his hand had been forced. But he needed them to understand just how serious their situation was.

‘What do you mean?’

Sebastian glanced at his mother. She was watching him intently. He didn’t want to put her through this, not in this antagonistic way – but she needed to know, to understand. They all needed to understand.

‘Living as though there’s a bottomless pit of money. It’s going to stop. Luckily enough, I have managed to come up with some possible solutions,’ he said.

Olivia sank back onto the sofa, already beginning to relax. His mother continued to watch him like a hawk, and internally Sebastian congratulated her for her perceptiveness.

Nobody interrupted him, so he continued. ‘Among some of Father’s papers I came across a letter from someone called Edward Ellingham. He visited a few years ago, brought some friends for a day’s shooting. Enjoyed himself so much that he wrote to Father to tell him how he loved Kirkshield Castle.’

‘So?’ Olivia said.

‘So, he owns a company called Ellingham Investments. Amongst other things, they convert beautiful buildings into upmarket hotels. I looked some of them up. There’s one in Cumbria, a huge manor house they renovated a dozen years ago. What he doesn’t have is a hotel in the Highlands. I thought I might contact him.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, Olivia, you’re not that dumb,’ Candida said, speaking for the first time since Sebastian had entered the room. ‘To see if this Ellingham guy wants to buy the castle.’ She glanced at him, ‘Right?’

‘Correct.’ Sebastian held Olivia’s gaze.

‘But you can’t …’

‘I’m the Earl of Kirkshield,’ Sebastian said, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘And if I learnt anything from my father, it’s that I can do whatever I want.’

Before anyone spoke, he turned and left, spotting the flash of a peacock-blue jumper shooting around the corner, heading back into the kitchen. Jess. She had been listening in. That was all he needed; she was bound to have heard him tell Olivia they could barely afford to pay her wages, and he’d have to deal with the fallout from that now, too. Like he didn’t already have enough fires to fight.

Sebastian swore again, under his breath, and followed her.

Jess shot back into the kitchen, sliding across the flooring, and grabbed at a pile of cutlery to add to the dishwasher in her haste to look as though there was no way she’d been anywhere but here all along. Just in case any of them decided to make the kitchen their next port of call. Maybe Olivia would come in hot, angry that her plans had been disrupted and Jess would need something she could focus on, to keep her busy.

Or maybe she should be the one brimming with anger. Maybe she should have stormed in on them, rather than scooting back to the kitchen. Demanded to know when she was going to get paid. If there really was no money, she would be on the first train home. The aristocracy might have held on to their wealth in the past by suggesting their suppliers should be grateful to be associated with the ‘big house’, that it should be payment enough, but Jess couldn’t live on fresh air and fake promises.

Maybe it was time to jump ship and get the hell out, regardless. By the sounds of things, the family was imploding, and the estate was on the rocks. Hardly an attractive proposition for anyone. And that was without telling Sebastian the food and drink for the party was already on its way and the invoices would need paying either way. She tightened her fingers around the pile of cutlery, turning to sweep the whole lot through to the dishwasher, and that was when she felt the pain. Like a wasp had hidden itself in the centre of the pile of knives and forks and was aggrieved at being roughly handled. Her brain worked slower than her pain receptors, it would seem, as her fingers continued to tighten for a second before she yelped and dropped the whole lot on the floor.

Glancing at her clenched hand all she could see was red liquid squeezing through her fingers, trailing its way down the back of her fist towards the cuff of her favourite jumper. Blood. Strange that her first thought was how blood was hell to shift from wool, and as she tried to push the sleeve out of the way of the advancing blood with her free hand, while dodging her way around the blades littering the kitchen floor, Jess began to realise the whole situation was making her feel nauseous, not to mention light-headed.

As she turned to get her hand into the sink, run some water over the cut and assess the damage, Jess congratulated herself on not vomiting on the floor. She then noticed the floor tiles had come much closer to her face than where they had been a few moments before, and also that her knees had gone all wobbly. Her fingers brushed at the edge of the sink on her way down, and she tried to grab at it, but by the time she slid to the floor Jess was out cold.