Christmas at a Highland Castle

Chapter 22

Sebastian was all fingers and thumbs when he woke to the brand-new week. Never mind worrying about Jess breaking the castle’s crockery, within minutes of waking he’d cut himself shaving, broken a knob clean off his chest of drawers and then managed to knock over the planter at the bottom of the staircase, spreading the soil and sansevieria contained within all over the floor.

Time was counting down to the arrival of Edward Ellingham later that morning, and the thought was turning the palms of his hands slick with nervous sweat. Once he’d tidied up the mess, Sebastian went in search of Jess to check she’d be around to provide refreshments. She was in the kitchen and looked far happier than she had in the aftermath of the shoot. Perhaps she’d managed to put the events in the woods out of her mind. He supposed sharing a prolonged hug with someone you cared about was one of the best fixes there was – and she and Robbie had certainly looked as though their hug wasn’t fleeting.

He knocked lightly on the door frame, wishing he’d done so on the evening of the shoot and spared himself the confirmation that Jess and Robbie were more than friends. He supposed there was nothing like a bit of life-endangerment to sharpen the emotions, but after the fear of what could have happened to her in that wood, something had shifted in the way Sebastian viewed Jess. Long gone was the desire to get her out of the house, and instead it was dawning on him just how much he appreciated being around her. He found he wanted to be where she was, to borrow from her natural good spirits and allow her to make him want to smile.

Typical, then, that she should be involved with another man. It was no more than he deserved, Sebastian decided, especially after he’d been so cavalier with her at the start.

She looked up at his knock.

‘Hi Jess. Just wanted you to know the guy from the development company I called is visiting today, he’s due in a while. I’ll need to show him around, and then I plan to discuss details with him in the library. Would you mind bringing us some coffee then?’

Jess looked confused. ‘Why would I mind?’

‘No. OK. I just wanted to check.’ Sebastian shook his head. Treating her as an employee was becoming awkward, for him at least. Jess seemed mystified by him, and he supposed the shift in his attitude was confusing. ‘I’ll let you know when he gets here.’

‘Perfect. Thanks.’ A frown flickered across her face. ‘Had I better go and get rid of the buckets from the attic – so the place doesn’t look too decrepit?’

‘Don’t bother. If he’s interested, he might as well see it warts and all today.’

‘Fair enough,’ Jess said. ‘Will he want to see the village, too? Are you thinking of selling the entire estate?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Why?’

‘I could always pop down and let Mrs Keel know, if that helps. And the Macwarrens.’

‘Were you planning on visiting Vivi?’

‘Only if there’s time.’

Jess bit at her bottom lip, an action which Sebastian was noticing more and more as he got to know her. Taking a deep breath, he did his best to ignore it. ‘Go and see her. I’ll phone you once I have an ETA. How about that?’

‘Perfect.’ Then she frowned all over again. ‘I have a question.’

‘Hit me.’

It was her turn to grin. ‘Phrases you never expect to hear coming from the mouth of an earl. I should start to make a list. Sebastian, I was just wondering. If you do sell the estate – what happens to the villagers?’

‘They’ve mostly got lifetime tenancy agreements, and those things are pretty much unbreakable, so they don’t need to worry. It’s just like a change in management in a football club, or something.’

‘You think I know how football clubs work?’ Jess began to grin.

‘No? To be honest I don’t, either. I’m not sure why I chose that as an example. But what I’m saying is the villagers don’t need to worry.’

‘Not even the ones who would like to see you hung, drawn and quartered?’ She was teasing him – at least he hoped she was.

‘They feel that strongly?’ he asked.

‘I may be exaggerating a bit,’ she said, her smile dropping away, replaced instead by a pensive look.

The conversation should have been at an end, but she stayed put, staring at him. For the first time, Sebastian allowed himself to acknowledge her gentle expression, her oval face set with delicate features. The strength emanating from her wide, dove-grey eyes. There was something she wasn’t saying.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

She pressed her lips together, then sucked in a big breath. ‘OK, so now I’m completely overstepping, but there’s something else I need to ask. It’s been preying on my mind. And I’m going to apologise in advance, because it’s difficult to ask and probably even more difficult to answer. But here goes. I overheard you and Olivia – well, it wasn’t difficult, she was shouting very loudly about who should have inherited Kirkshield, and why. And I wanted to ask – are you OK?’

‘Am I OK?’

‘Yes. I can only imagine how an accusation like that might feel, for you and for your mother. And from your own sister, of all people.’

Sebastian shook his head. ‘Olivia blows very hot very quickly. It’s just who she is. And as for my father’s claims? I always was a disappointment to him. I suppose in a twisted attempt to distance himself from me, the old bastard tried to convince my sister that our mother had an affair, and I was the result. Just because he was a lecherous old bugger, shagging anyone who came close enough for him to get his ugly old paws on …’ Sebastian paused, shaking his head. ‘He never did appreciate our mother. Treated her horribly. But this? It’s completely beyond the pale to accuse her of this. And to make Olivia complicit. My sister never could see his flaws. Didn’t want to, I suppose.’

‘But there’s something I don’t understand,’ Jess said. ‘And I might be being completely indelicate with this thought, so I apologise in advance – but if he didn’t want to think you were his son, why did he leave everything to you? Why not leave the estate to Olivia and be done with it?’

Sebastian smiled, but it was thin, hardly travelling north of his lips. ‘No, it’s a good question. A couple of reasons, I think. Firstly, there’s no way he would have broken with tradition like that. And not because he was a traditionalist, as such, more because it would have screamed my supposed illegitimacy to the establishment, and there’s no way he’d want anyone to think that of him, even posthumously. There’s no way he would have wanted anyone thinking he’d lost control of his wife. And the other reason is …’ Sebastian sighed, as though this was far harder to vocalise, ‘He knew full well our mother would never have done something like that. He knew it was a lie, and the fact that he would do his best to convince Olivia of it anyway – Jess, it’s poisonous.’

‘Dear God, Sebastian. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’ She looked truly shocked. It was the most genuine reaction Sebastian had heard in a long while. ‘But if he never had any intention of leaving the estate to Olivia, why say any of it at all? What was the point?’

‘To drive a wedge between us all once he was gone, I suppose. Who knows …’

‘That’s so cruel,’ she whispered.

He arched his eyebrows. ‘He was. And since I’ve been back, I’ve started to wonder if he didn’t spend the last ten years buggering up the finances on purpose, to leave me with this mess to deal with.’

‘And there was me thinking I’d missed out by not having a family – other than Vivi, I mean.’

He smiled. ‘As family goes, your aunt Vivi might not be blood, but she’s about as good as it gets. Go and see her, and I’ll let you know when the investor is due to fly in.’

‘Fly in?’

‘Helicopter.’

‘Oh. Wow.’

The mirth in Jess’s expression cushioned him, allowed him to turn the potential dismantling of his heritage into a joke, of sorts. ‘Yes. Hopefully that means he’s got more money than sense and he’ll want to take this old heap off my possibly illegitimate hands.’

He took strength from her gentle smile and left the room before his emotions got the better of him.

Dee woke gently, wrapped up warm and comfortable in Robbie’s bed, the morning sunlight sidling in past the lower edges of the curtains. In the moments it took her to remember where she was, and whose bed she was in, she’d sighed with a contentment she hadn’t felt for far too long, then panicked when she glanced across to find the other side of the bed empty. She’d only just found him. Where had he gone?

Sounds from downstairs gradually percolated through the room: clattering and banging kitchen noises, the gentle burble from a radio. Dee pulled the tartan wool throw from the floor, where it had slipped at some point earlier on, wrapping it around herself as she climbed from the bed and pulled open the door.

She wanted to go to him, to boldly descend the stairs wearing nothing more than the blanket they’d kicked away amid their passion, but Dee paused, suddenly unsure of herself – of any of it.

‘Robbie?’ she called out softly, crouching like a child to sit on the second-to-top step of the staircase. When there was no reply, insecurity reared its ugly head again and Dee almost bolted back upstairs for her clothes.

The staircase was open to the kitchen but set at an angle which meant she wasn’t immediately visible. She took the next couple of steps and peered around one of the blackened wooden uprights which formed the integral structure of the building.

Robbie was occupied, his back to her, so she ventured down another few steps.

As she said his name again, more clearly this time, he swung around, an instant grin on his face as he set down the butter knife and came to her.

‘You’re awake,’ he said, wrapping her up in his arms, the woollen throw prickling against her naked skin as he hugged her tight.

‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked.

‘All night. You looked so peaceful I left you to rest. I thought you might be hungry when you did wake. Would you like a wee bite of something?’

It took a second or two for his expression to change, for the quirk to take hold of one side of his mouth. At the same time, Dee began to grin as his words took on a different meaning. ‘I’d love that, Robbie Keel.’

‘Are you still talking about food, or …?’

She laughed, but she was hungry – for the first time in longer than she could remember her stomach craved sustenance. ‘Food. I might take a shower first, if that’s all right.’

‘Aye, of course.’

She took the first couple of steps, glancing back to see him watching her.

‘Tartan has never looked so good,’ he said.

In a moment of boldness, Dee allowed the throw to fall from her shoulders, catching it up tight again before she revealed any more of her body. She was rewarded when Robbie took a sharp intake of breath.

‘Maybe the shower should wait,’ she said, her smile transitory as he crossed the space and caught her face up between gentle palms. His kiss was as sensitive as it was demanding, stirring insistent feelings in her all over again.

Afterwards, Dee showered and took her time to dress. Robbie seemed able to shower in a matter of seconds, and he was dressed and downstairs, completing his snack preparations before Dee had even located all her clothes.

However much she didn’t want to compare, her thoughts slipped to the early days with Henry. Back when she was in love with him – because she had been in love with him, there was no point pretending otherwise. But even then, even when she believed the feelings she was experiencing were being reciprocated, her physical connection to Henry had never been this strong.

And maybe it went part-way to explaining how she’d managed to tolerate life with Henry for so long, even when he made his infidelity so obvious. Because Dee felt sure that if her connection with Henry had been as strong as this, if he’d made her feel even half as interesting and desirable and amazing as Robbie had managed in less than twenty-four hours, then the fact he’d drifted away from her would have been enough to kill her.

Instead, she’d been happy enough to live a half-life, and Dee was beginning to understand that the life she’d started out with, even when she’d believed it to be whole and complete, had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors all along.

As they ate toasted sandwiches oozing with Scottish cheddar and packed with strings of soft red onion, sitting at Robbie’s scrubbed pine table in a cottage smaller than one of the formal rooms in the castle, Dee wished it had always been like this. Wished she’d been born into a different family, wished she’d never met Henry and that she could have done the things she’d always wanted to do but instead had squashed away in the dark recesses of her mind.

Dee allowed herself to daydream. What if she’d never gone to that party, the evening she’d met Henry? What if she’d gone travelling instead – a dream which had never been allowed daylight. She might have come to the Highlands much later, met Robbie and made a completely different life, with him.

But if that had been the trajectory of her life, she’d never have had her children. Dee frowned, pretending it was the heat from the melted cheese when Robbie looked concerned. Her children had been everything to Dee – how could she now wish them away? How could she imagine a different life in which they didn’t exist? Surely that was beyond contempt.

For the first time since she’d fully understood the extent of Robbie’s feelings for her, Dee felt the strength of her real life pulling her back. The cold dousing of what it would be like to admit to her children that she was in love with the gamekeeper, and always had been. How would they take the news? What if they weren’t in the slightest bit happy for her? How would she deal with their rejection of the idea?

And what about Robbie in all this? Would he feel comfortable spending his time in the castle, or should she move in with him here? She glanced around the cottage. He was at ease here, but would he want her here, too?

Dee had been so badly burnt by Henry, it was difficult for her to make her own judgement calls about anything. Decades of being treated as an inferior, as someone who never quite measured up, had battered at Dee’s sense of self.

If she and Robbie were going to do this, maybe they should start slow. Keep it between themselves to begin with, until she had a chance to gauge everyone’s reactions and could smooth the way.

‘I should get back,’ she said.

‘Aye, of course. Shall I walk you up to the castle?’ Robbie dropped the heel of his sandwich onto his plate, pushing back his chair.

‘No. I should probably go alone.’ She swallowed, unsure how to phrase her thoughts. ‘Is it OK if we keep this between ourselves, for now at least?’

Robbie frowned. ‘You don’t want anyone to know?’

‘No. It’s not that – it’s just that I’m not sure how to broach the subject with my children. Especially so soon after …’

‘ Now you’re worried about preserving that old bastard’s memory?’ There was a spike of anger in his voice. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. You know what you need to do, I suppose.’

Soon her walking shoes were laced and her damp hair teased into place as best as she could manage. Robbie held out her blue scarf.

‘Here. Take this with you. That way you can pretend that’s all you came here for.’

‘I don’t want to pretend, Robbie. I just need some time. This is a lot for me to have to deal with. Can you understand that?’

‘Aye. It’s a lot for me, too.’ Something had darkened in his expression, and Dee wanted to tell him everything was exactly as she wanted it to be, and once she’d told the children she would shout it from the rooftops, but she didn’t. She needed to be sure that what she was feeling was real, for his sake as much as for herself.

The sound of a low-flying helicopter took their attention, Dee spinning to the window to watch the yellow belly of the aircraft as it skirted around the castle grounds searching for somewhere to land.

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

It was an odd way to conclude what had been the best few hours of Dee’s life – she’d made it sound as though he had provided her with a service, and she chastised herself for her awkwardness as he closed the cottage door and she headed along the granite slab path to the garden courtyard. She clutched the blue scarf between her fingers, hoping she hadn’t messed everything up.