A Recipe for Love

Chapter Two

No. Adam shook his head. No. His father wasn’t the sort who would do something like that. He was… he was… constant. Whoever moved on, whoever left, whatever changed, his father was there. ‘What happened?’

‘I’m sure your grandmother will tell you properly. Or Darcy.’ She trailed off.

‘What happened, Flinty?’

‘It was sudden.’ She wasn’t meeting his eye. ‘Well, if he was ill I never heard anything of it.’

‘Babe,’ Bella’s voice cut through the soup that was swirling around him. ‘Come and sit down.’

He let her lead him, as compliant as a child, to a row of hard plastic seats.

‘Shall I see if I can find us some tea?’ she asked.

‘No need, lass.’ Flinty produced a giant thermos from her bag. ‘I came prepared.’

A plastic cup was pushed into Adam’s hand and Bella all but guided his hand to his mouth so he could take a sip. He could hear her asking Flinty questions somewhere out there but the voices echoed like recordings from some place far away.

‘So what now?’ Bella was asking. ‘Do you know when the funeral will be?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Do we need to come and help plan that or is someone…?’ His fiancée’s voice trailed away. ‘Sorry. Who are you?’

He heard Flinty half-chuckle. ‘Was thinking to ask you the same thing. I’m Flinty. Miss Flint. Maggie, but none of these have called me that for fifty years.’

‘Hello Maggie. I’m Bella. I’m Adam’s…’

The silence she left pulled Adam back to the conversation. ‘Bella’s my fiancée.’

Flinty looked from Adam to Bella and back again. ‘Your grandmother didn’t say anything.’

No. She wouldn’t have. ‘My grandmother doesn’t know.’

‘Well, this is going to be interesting.’

‘So what do we need to do now?’ Bella asked again.

‘Well, I was going to take this one back tonight so he could get stuck into everything in the morning.’

So this was it. He’d be ferried back to the family home and what followed from there was what had always been destined, wasn’t it? If he could just have one more night. One night in his flat, with Bella. One night of the life he’d thought they were starting. ‘You can’t drive tonight. It’s late.’

‘I’ll be fine. Never sleep more than three or four hours a night anyway, and you can nap in the car.’ Flinty turned to Bella. ‘I suppose you’ll be coming with us then.’

Bella squeezed his hand. ‘If you want me to?’

Bella was sun and joy and the life he’d desperately wanted to choose. A few weeks with her had opened up parts of him that he’d learned to keep shut down. The Adam he was with her was less anxious, more impulsive, more willing to take risks.

He tried to picture Bella back home, with his grandmother pursing her lips, and the village calling her ‘his new lady friend’ for the next twenty years. It was too much to ask, but if he didn’t, he was going back alone. ‘Yes. Please.’

‘All right then.’

Flinty stood and smoothed down her sensible tweed skirt. ‘Let’s get on the road. If we set off now you’ll have time for a couple of hours’ kip before Veronica’s up and at you to get working.’

‘It can’t be that far!’ Bella laughed. ‘Scotland isn’t so big.’

Flinty shrugged. ‘Five, six hours depending.’

Five to six hours of driving and fifty to a hundred years back in time.

‘Right then lad.’ Flinty paused. ‘Sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t say that now, should I?’

‘Lad is fine.’ Lad was what Flinty had always called him. He was a growing lad, or just a lad being a lad, or a wee lad who needed feeding up. ‘You didn’t have to come, Flinty,’ he told her. ‘You’re supposed to be retired.’

She puffed her cheeks out. ‘Like either of them could manage without me, lad.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry. Best to get used to things from the get-go,’ Flinty insisted. ‘Right then sir.’

‘Sir?’ Bella hissed the question as they followed Flinty’s small but surprisingly brisk strides towards the short stay parking.

Adam had known this conversation was coming. He’d known it when he’d first seen Bella working behind the pass in the hotel’s trendy ‘open to the dining room’ kitchen. It was the reason he hadn’t approached her on the first night in Malaga. It was the reason he never approached anyone he thought he might actually like. He’d known it was coming when he’d sat next to her and talked about his life in Edinburgh and studiously not talked about his life before that. He’d known it was coming when he’d let her pull him into her, but by then it was already far too late. He was already utterly, irredeemably in love.

And, he’d known it was coming when he’d asked her to marry him. Was it a sort of lie to have not mentioned it so far? Perhaps. But it was also a truth. He’d shown her who he was, who he actually was, not who he was supposed to become. ‘It’s not really a big deal.’

‘But you’re a sir?’

‘Not really.’ There was no way round it. ‘A baron technically. Some people say laird, but officially it’s a barony.’ He fumbled the words out as fast as they’d come, trying to make them small and less laden with implications. ‘You can pretty much call yourself a laird if you own any land at all, so it doesn’t mean much.’

‘But baron means something?’

Another shrug. ‘A long time ago maybe.’

‘You never said you were a baron,’ she hissed.

‘Well I wasn’t.’ That was technically true, but not the whole story. ‘I guess I didn’t think I was likely to be. Not for decades anyway. My father was…’ The thought caught in his throat. ‘I thought he was going to live forever, I suppose.’

He watched his fiancée – if she was still his fiancée – for some hint of what she was thinking. Eventually she nodded. ‘Sorry. It’s just a lot to take in all at once.’

Of course it was. There was no one on earth who wouldn’t be having second and third and fifteenth thoughts right now. ‘No. I’m sorry.’ There was only one right thing to do. He could release her from whatever obligation she was feeling, even if it broke his heart to do so. ‘You don’t have to come.’ She didn’t reply straight away. Adam’s stomach clenched. ‘It’s OK. I understand. If you want to walk away, you can take my flat keys, until you sort out what you’re doing next. I know this isn’t what you signed up for. I am sorry.’

It certainly wasn’t what they’d discussed. They had discussed life in the city, and bars and festivals and Bella finding a cool new job. Bella wasn’t sure she was suited for supporting a grieving family, for funeral planning or applying for probate or any of the general adulting that being adjacent to death presumably required. And then there was the other thing. ‘What does being a baron actually mean? How did your family become…?’ Her head was spinning. ‘Do you have servants?’

And then she saw Adam’s face, the tiny dimple at his jaw where she could see all the tension he was holding inside, the haunted look in his eyes that someone else – someone who wasn’t built to fit in to the gap alongside him – might think was angry or stoic, but Bella already knew was pure fear. She shook her head. ‘I signed up for you. If you go, I go.’

‘You’re sure? My family… they can be… they can be a lot.’

‘If you go, I go,’ she repeated, and saw the deepening furrow at his brow ease just a little. She squeezed his hand. ‘I mean it’s not forever. We’ll go. We’ll do what needs doing. You can spend the time you need with your family. We’ve got our whole lives.’

She hoped that was the right thing to say. She didn’t want to make it sound as though losing his father was something small, but she hoped that reminding him that nothing was forever and that this horrible moment would pass would help him through. He nodded wordlessly.

Flinty led them to the most decrepit rusty Land Rover Bella had ever seen. It sat like a gremlin of decay amid the nice neat family hatchbacks in the airport car park.

‘How is this thing still going?’ Adam asked.

‘Perfectly good car this. Plenty of life left in her. Jump in.’

Bella stepped forward.

‘Not that door!’ Flinty shrieked. ‘That one does nay open. Well it does open, but then it does nay close again and you’ll have to hang on to it all the way back.’

‘Right.’ Bella followed Adam round to the passenger side, where the open door let out a waft of eau de wet dog. Adam slid across the dog-hair-covered back seat, before she climbed in next to him. He reached for her hand. A wave of nausea grabbed her. He’d given her the chance to walk away and she’d chosen to stay on the ride. It was like the ghost house at the fair when she was a kid. About a third of the way through there was a route you could take if it was too scary and you didn’t want to go on. She’d never taken that turning then. Why start now?

She pushed the unease back down. They’d go to Adam’s family home for a couple of weeks, and then, once the funeral was over, they’d be back to the life they’d talked about. This wasn’t an unending path into the unknown. It was merely a temporary diversion. She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it. ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ she said.

Despite Flinty’s instructions to try to sleep, Bella didn’t manage to do any more than doze during the first part of the journey. At first Adam kept up a smattering of small talk with the driver and with his fiancée, but as one hour on the road turned to two, and then to three, he became quieter and quieter until, by hour four, he was staring silently out into the night, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

Bella tried to nap, but the roads were narrowing and the turns getting sharper and the old rusty Land Rover jolted and shook them over every bump. Every time she thought they must be getting close to their destination, simply because it absolutely couldn’t be possible for the lanes to get smaller or more remote, she was wrong. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

‘Getting closer. Another hour and a half at this time of night. Quicker in the daylight when you can see where you’re going,’ Flinty added cheerfully.

Bella chose not to dwell on her driver not being able to see where they were going, but her fingers gripped a little tighter to the seat beneath her. Eventually the car pulled to a halt. ‘I’d assumed you’d be in your room, but…’ Flinty glanced at Bella. ‘There’s a room made up in the coach house if that would be more comfortable for…’

Whatever the end of that sentence was going to be, Adam cut it off. ‘We’ll both be fine in the coach house.’

Bella surveyed the dark grey building in front of them. The dark night obscured much of her view but she could see that the wall was high and the windows small. It put her more in mind of a Victorian prison than an idyllic Scottish retreat.

Flinty hauled their bags out of the car. ‘Sorry. I didn’t have time to make up your room. And I didn’t know if you’d want to be in there or in… well in the laird’s room. Although I’m sure your grandmother will have something to say.’

Bella let the chatter wash over her. So long as there was a bed and she could get to it soon, she really didn’t care.

‘And there’s only one room made up.’ Flinty glanced at Bella.

‘One room will be fine.’

‘I’m not sure your grandmother…’

‘One room will be fine,’ Adam repeated.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ She stepped forward and squeezed Adam suddenly on the shoulder. ‘I know this isn’t what you expected, but you’re going to do all right, lad.’ She stepped back. ‘I’ll be up in the morning to do breakfast.’

Adam shook his head. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I will though. So no point arguing about it lad. Sir.’

‘Lad’s fine.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

Bella staggered up the stairs behind Adam and into the room that Flinty had prepared for them. Well for him, but still. It was cold and a little unloved but it had a bed and a wardrobe and a small chest of drawers. She sat down on a rather tatty old velvet-covered chair, which sagged beneath her weight. ‘This has seen better days,’ she joked.

Adam glanced up. ‘Yeah. Should have looked after that better. It’d be worth a lot more.’

Bella shook her head. She’d seen her nan haggle chairs in much better state than this down to a tenner for a set of four at the car boot. ‘Cos it’s like a Chippendale or something clearly.’

‘No.’ Adam strolled over and ran his hand over the arm of the chair. ‘My granddad reckoned this was by his son. Chippendale the younger.’ He shrugged. ‘Worth way less than the real deal.’

‘You’re joking?’

Adam frowned. ‘I doubt we’ve got proper provenance for it anyway.’

Bella lifted herself very carefully from the seat. ‘I’m really taking my socks off in an actual Chippendale.’

‘Well—’

‘Baby Chippendale. Whatever.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’ He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Sorry it’s a bit sparse. My father never really bought things new. Furniture just gets moved around to rooms that aren’t used as much.’

Right. Bella battled to take that in. The almost-Chippendale was Adam’s equivalent of the mismatched set of pans her nan had liberated from her former neighbour’s house when Mrs Standish had moved into the home. A slightly unloved hand-me-down that nobody really noticed and that nobody would ever miss. ‘Any other heirlooms I should be aware of?’

Adam half-laughed. ‘Seriously, it’s all heirlooms. Everything here was here centuries before I was born.’

‘That’s incredible.’ What on earth would it be like to have roots that deep? To be connected to every single object in a place by generations of history. Bella sat down next to Adam on the bed and wrapped her hand around his. ‘You’re lucky.’

‘So I’m told.’ He turned his head slightly away from her and rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘We should get to bed.’

He was right. Bella was exhausted and she could only imagine Adam felt the same. She quickly brushed her teeth, went to the loo, stripped down to her T-shirt and knickers, wrapped her body around his, and fell fast asleep almost as soon as the light flicked off.

For an hour or two at least. When she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was Adam, standing by the window, staring out, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. ‘Did you sleep?’

‘I dozed a bit.’

Bella sat up in bed. ‘So what now? Do we need to see your grandma?’ His grandmother had certainly been mentioned a lot last night. That was fine. Bella had her own experience of a grandmother who doubled as a force of nature. She could charm a grandmother. Who else? ‘Your stepmum lives here too?’

Adam nodded. ‘Darcy.’

‘Who else do we need to tell about your dad?’

‘Oh, just the great and good of the Highlands and Islands.’ Adam’s already grey complexion paled further. ‘And my mother.’ He closed his eyes for a second. ‘Grandmother will have dealt with the rest. She’s very good at dealing with things.’

‘She sounds interesting.’

‘She’s…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what any of us would do without her.’

He hadn’t moved from the window. Bella swung her legs out of bed. The stone floor, only part covered with a ragtag of thinning unmatched rugs, sent a shiver through her. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I don’t know. Numb.’

She padded over to the window, blinking against the low morning light. They were looking out towards another building. Not just another building. A castle. There was a surrounding wall, and some sort of grand gate and a big square… what was the word? Keep?… with actual turrets at the corners. ‘Woah.’

‘What?’

What did he mean what? There was an actual castle right outside the window. ‘Who lives there?’

‘What do you mean?’

Understanding dawned all too slowly. Baron Lowbridge. He was a lord, or laird or whatever it was he’d tried to explain last night. ‘Is that your dad’s house?’

Adam nodded. ‘Yeah. Well no. I suppose it’s our house.’

Bella pulled on her linen trousers and a T-shirt from the roll of clothes in her bag, along with her kitchen clogs, and followed Adam through the gate, across the cobbles and into the castle through a heavy wooden door. That took them into a narrow corridor, past an apparently unused room with an unconnected washing machine in one corner and a square of ill-fitting carpet in the middle, and then into the kitchen.

Here the castle felt inhabited. Flinty was frying rashers on the hotplate of a huge old fashioned stove. The smell greeted Bella like a hug.

‘I’m glad you two are up.’ Flinty gestured at the bacon. ‘I did this out of habit, and then I thought nobody was going to come and eat it.’ She pursed her lips. ‘He liked his bacon, your father.’

Adam nodded.

‘Though maybe he liked it a bit too much.’ She shoved the rashers to the edge of the plate with her spatula. ‘Maybe you’d prefer something lighter. There’s that bran stuff the lady has.’ Her shoulders slumped a little. ‘Or melon. I’ll be doing melon for your stepmother in a second.’

Bella shook her head. ‘A bacon sandwich would be amazing. I’m not even sure when we last ate. Bacon sandwich?’ she asked Adam.

He didn’t reply.

Flinty did. ‘Aye. Well if you go through I’ve got things set out in the small dining room.’

The small dining room? That implied the existence of a larger dining room. ‘How many dining rooms do you have?’ she whispered.

‘Two?’ Adam replied.

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘Well two dining rooms in the house. Plus the coach house, and they used to use the great hall for banquets.’

‘The great hall?’

Adam nodded. ‘It’s quite small.’ He caught her eye and, just for a second, sunny warm Adam broke through the tension. ‘Like an entry level great hall.’

‘Oh!’ Flinty called them back. ‘She doesn’t know yet.’ She nodded towards Bella. ‘About all this.’

‘Right.’ Adam pulled a face.

‘ She? ’ Bella asked.

‘My grandmother. She’s, well, she likes things done a certain way.’

Bella followed Adam from the kitchen into a large hallway. Adam pointed to the grand double-width doors opposite a wide staircase. ‘That’s the main door. Not sure when it was last used. It’s probably reserved for visiting royalty.’

‘Get a lot of those, do you?’

He shook his head. ‘Bit far from Balmoral for them to pop over for tea.’

The hallway walls were lined with paintings. The largest showed a square stone-built castle, surrounded by a high wall that extended out from the main building and, presumably, enclosed a courtyard out of view of the artist. Alongside that, just outside the wall another stone building faced the pathway that led to the castle. ‘Is that here?’

‘Yeah. Years old though.’ He pointed to the pathway. ‘That joins up with the road now, and someone – my great-grandfather maybe – extended the coach house and replaced the roof here.’ He pointed to the top of the castle. ‘So it doesn’t quite look like that any more. And there’s the dower house off the east wing, that you can’t see here.’

‘Dower house?’

‘Where the dowager lives. Built for the eighth baron’s mother I think.’

‘Right. So you have whole extra houses about the place and you live in the sort of castle people come and paint pictures of.’

Adam shrugged. ‘Not that many people.’

‘So this is the only painting of your house?’ she asked.

He did at least look slightly sheepish. ‘Well, it’s definitely the biggest,’ he replied.

The painting wasn’t the most striking thing in the hallway. The most striking thing was too much like something from a long-forgotten school trip for Bella to even begin to get her head around. ‘You know there’s a suit of armour at the bottom of your stairs?’

‘I am aware.’

‘Like where do you even buy something like that?’

Adam shook his head. ‘You don’t buy things like that. You just sort of have them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you do.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You can’t really get rid of them. Would you fancy taking Colin to the tip?’

‘The suit of armour is called Colin?’

Adam smiled. ‘My dad started that cos it used to freak me out when I was little. Hard to be scared of a shape in the night that’s called Colin.’

Bella patted the suit gently on the shoulder. ‘Well hello Colin.’

‘And Colin’s not so bad. The one upstairs is much worse. His arms fall off if you look at him the wrong way.’

Further discussion of precisely how many medieval soldier suits the Lowbridge family owned was curtailed by a sudden flurry of fur and paws and woofs. Adam bent down to pet the very excited chocolate Labrador in front of them. ‘Dipper! Hello girl. Who’s a good girl?’

Bella crouched down and held out her fingers. Dipper obliged with a tentative sniff and exploratory lick before turning up her nose and padding away.

A second later she was barking again, jumping up and down in the space in front of them, focused entirely on a patch of air somewhere off to Bella’s left.

Adam ignored her. ‘Come on. Breakfast’s through here.’

The small dining room was panelled in dark brown wood, and there was a very faint smell of damp in the air. The dominant feature of the room was the huge stag’s head, mounted between the two tall windows staring mournfully down at the room. Bella couldn’t help but feel he was judging them. The table was laid for four with proper china, painted in a delicate floral pattern, and gleaming silver. There was a place at the head of the table, two more down one side and one directly opposite them. Bella moved towards the first chair, where she could keep the stag under surveillance without feeling like he was staring her right in the eye.

‘That’s the laird’s place.’ The voice came from the doorway, but Bella hadn’t heard footsteps, so who knew how long the apparition glaring at her had been standing there? The woman was elderly, but the sort of elderly that would never acknowledge such an inconvenience as the passage of time. Her white hair was scraped into an impeccably neat bun, and she was smartly dressed in navy blue trousers with a rose pink sweater over a high buttoned-up blouse. Her spectacles hung around her neck on a fine gold chain. And she was wearing court shoes. In the house. At half past seven in the morning. Bella wasn’t sure she could think of a wider cultural gulf than the one between her and a person who wore court shoes for breakfast.

Adam greeted the woman with a tentative peck on the cheek. ‘Grandmother.’

She nodded curtly. ‘So, the new Baron Lowbridge.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m very well.’ Her gaze settled on Bella. ‘And you are?’

Adam was at her side straight away, hand in the small of her back. ‘This is Bella Smith.’ Bella felt the intake of breath he took before the next part. ‘My fiancée.’

If the senior Lady Lowbridge was shocked or surprised she did not let any such disquiet appear on her face. ‘Miss Smith.’

She held out a slender hand for Bella to shake, and then turned her attention immediately to the table. ‘I presume your stepmother is joining us.’

‘How is she?’ Adam sounded concerned.

His grandmother shook her head. ‘Well, she made the most tremendous fuss yesterday.’

‘It must have been a shock,’ Bella suggested.

‘But still.’ Adam’s grandmother pursed her lips. ‘There are things we need to get on with.’

‘Oh.’ A new voice in the doorway to the kitchen made them turn. In an instant Adam was over there wrapping the newcomer into a hug. Adam’s grandmother clasped her hands at her navel. Bella hung back, not sure where she fit in.

Eventually Adam released the stranger. She could have been anywhere from twenty-five, but elegant beyond her years, to fifty, with a really talented botox technician. She was model tall, with hair cut short in an Audrey Hepburn style crop showing off her sharp cheekbones and wide blue eyes, but her face was pale and those unmissable eyes had shadows beneath them. She was wearing what looked like traditional men’s pyjamas and a long man’s dressing gown over the top. ‘How are you feeling?’ Adam asked her.

The stranger shook her head. ‘I really don’t know.’ She had more than a twang of an American accent.

Bella cleared her throat, perhaps a little more pointedly than she’d intended.

Adam stepped back towards her. ‘Right. Sorry. Bella, this is my stepmother, Darcy Lowbridge. Darcy, this is Bella.’ He paused. ‘My fiancée.’

One perfectly sculpted eyebrow elevated slightly. ‘Fiancée?’

‘It’s new,’ Bella explained.

‘Clearly.’ A spark of life had come back into Darcy’s demeanour at this news. ‘Well,’ she turned to Adam’s grandmother. ‘Did you hear that, Veronica? Adam’s engaged.’

‘Apparently.’ Veronica turned to the table. ‘Shall we?’

Adam hesitated before he took the place at the top of the table. Bella went to take one of the chairs nearest to her fiancée but Veronica and Darcy were already taking their places, so she was shunted down to the space next to Darcy, as Flinty bustled into the room. ‘Oh, Lady Lowbridge!’ She smiled at Darcy. ‘I didn’t realise you were coming down. I was going to bring you a tray.’

‘Veronica thought it was better to keep doing things normally,’ Darcy explained.

‘Doing things properly ,’ Veronica corrected.

‘Is there coffee?’ Darcy was staring at her crockery like she was unsure what to do next.

Flinty took the cup from her hand. ‘You sit down, petal. I’ll do a cafetiere.’

Darcy slumped back into her chair. Bella stood up. ‘I’ll help.’

Veronica shook her head. ‘Flinty has everything in hand.’

Flinty was laying out serving dishes on the dresser at the far end of the room. She stopped as Bella approached. ‘You sit down, love. I can manage.’

Bella turned back towards the table. Veronica was glaring at her. ‘I said that Flinty has everything in hand.’

Bella sensed she’d made a terrible faux pas but she was hazy on how. It seemed incredibly rude not to help when one person was doing all the work, even if it was their job. And hadn’t Adam said Flinty was retired? She found herself stuck in no man’s land, between Flinty busying herself at the dresser, and the family sitting stock still and silent at the table.

‘I’ll bring some coffee and your melon,’ Flinty told Darcy, as she set down a teapot on the table. ‘You can help yourself to the rest.’

Bella stepped back towards the array of food laid out for them. She’d worked in hotels that put on a less fulsome breakfast buffet. She picked up a plate.

‘The laird goes first.’

‘Right. And I walk two paces behind him, do I?’ Bella laughed as she turned, and stopped when she saw Veronica’s face.

‘I’m sure that’s not necessary, but there is a proper order.’

Bella glanced at Adam. ‘It’s fine.’ He sounded exhausted. ‘We’re all adapting a bit today, aren’t we?’

He ushered Bella in front of him.

She helped herself to crispy bacon and a light fluffy white roll. Adam hadn’t picked anything up. ‘You need to eat something.’

‘I don’t know what…’

She handed him her plate. ‘Take this. I’ll go again.’

As she took her seat next to Darcy, Flinty was putting a plate of melon and a cafetiere down in front of the second Lady Lowbridge. She stared at it with the same empty expression Adam was wearing.

‘I was going to call Xander down so you could tell him your news. But…’

Adam squeezed her hand. ‘He’s gone.’

‘I won’t believe it.’ She looked at Bella as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Oh, I am sorry. We should offer you a drink.’

Bella shook her head. ‘I’ve got tea.’

‘Right. Good. Bit early for something stronger.’

It wasn’t even eight a.m. ‘It is a bit,’ Bella agreed. ‘How long were you married?’

‘Fifteen years. Well, it would have been fifteen in June.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I keep thinking he’ll be down in a moment. The smell of bacon always gets him down for breakfast.’ She glanced towards the door. ‘It’s just that I was in the next room. I’d called through to him to ask if he’d seen my address book because it wasn’t by the telephone, and I don’t know why I wanted it, but I needed to call the plumber about that tap and his number is in my cell, but I was going to phone on the landline so I didn’t quite think of that, and anyway, Xander yelled back that it wasn’t in the estate office, and why on earth would I think it might be? And then there was this sort of moan and a crash and…’ She stopped. ‘I was just talking to him, you see.’

Bella did see. It was utterly unfair and entirely inexplicable that someone could be right there and then, at the very next moment, not there at all. ‘I’m sorry.’

Darcy sipped her coffee and winced slightly at the heat. ‘That’s kind.’

They completed their breakfast in silence. Adam, Bella was relieved to see, did eat his sandwich. Darcy did little more than push her melon around the plate, before she retreated to her room. Veronica’s appetite appeared unaffected by the death of her son. Eventually she drained her teacup, dabbed her white napkin precisely to the corners of her lips and announced that she must get on. ‘I shall need you in the estate office,’ she told Adam ‘There are arrangements to be made.’

‘I was going to show Bella round.’

Veronica glanced in Bella’s direction. ‘Well I’m sure that won’t take all morning. I shall wait.’

Flinty reappeared a heartbeat after Veronica left, so precise a timing that Bella suspected she’d been in attendance in the hallway throughout the meal. ‘So that’s Veronica. The baroness,’ she said. ‘Well, the dowager baroness.’ Flinty closed her eyes for a second. ‘No. That’s Darcy. I don’t know what that means.’ She looked at Adam. ‘Are they both the dowager?’

‘I have no idea. I always asked my dad that stuff.’ He swallowed back something that could have been a sob. ‘Then didn’t listen when he tried to explain.’

Flinty squeezed his shoulder. ‘Well, you were young. We all thought there’d be more time, didn’t we?’

The weight of the sorrow in the house suddenly felt heavy on Bella’s heart. ‘Do you want to go for a walk? Clear your head a bit?’

Adam nodded. ‘Let’s give you the grand tour.’

Bella followed him back through the kitchens and outside. She found herself standing at the edge of a large courtyard, surrounded by high stone walls on all sides. Adam pointed back through the archway behind her. ‘So the coach house, where we slept, is through there.’

‘Right. Cos everyone needs a whole spare house on the side.’

He half-smiled. ‘We’re just really short of space.’

Bella turned around to take in the enormity of the building that surrounded her. ‘So this is all your house.’

‘Yeah. Well… it’s not all house really.’ He moved to stand behind her, turning her body back towards the kitchen. ‘So that’s the main wing.’

‘Wing?’

He laughed. ‘What? That’s what it’s called. So the front entrance is opposite the stairs and the dining room on the other side of this part, and the living rooms are sort of…’ He paused. ‘In that corner and a bit along the second side.’

Bella followed his pointing finger. ‘Right.’

‘The main bedrooms are upstairs. Darcy. My…’ He stopped.

Bella turned and wrapped her arms around his waist.

‘I’m OK. My father’s room was up there. Anyway…’ He didn’t continue.

She leaned into his body. ‘So what’s the rest?’

‘All sorts. A lot of these rooms…’ He pointed towards what Bella was thinking of as sides two and three to the square. ‘Aren’t in use any more. There’s the library, and then the more public rooms, for like audiences with the baron, and big receptions and stuff.’

Audiences with the baron? Where the baron did a couple of songs and a big dance number to finish? ‘Audiences?’

‘A long time ago. You know, people wanting their disputes sorted out or begging to be let off paying their rent.’ He looked around. ‘And then servants’ quarters obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Bella muttered.

He took her hand and led the way through a passageway in the far corner of the quad. ‘This comes out sort of behind the coach house, and here we are.’

In front of them was a long low single-storey stone building, alongside a wide square patch of open grass. ‘So you’ve got a field?’ Bella asked.

‘A paddock.’

Which was different because?

‘And stables.’

‘You’ve got horses?’

Adam nodded and then stopped. ‘Well, I don’t. I haven’t ridden for years, but Darcy does. Only… I’m not sure, I think three or four horses here now.’

‘Four,’ the distinctive New York accent carried across to them from the entrance to what Bella now understood was a stable block. Darcy was still in her dressing gown, with wellies pulled on over the pyjamas. She beckoned them over. ‘Sophie McCullen keeps hers here since, since all that business with her granddaddy’s place. And Nina from the village still rides. Apart from that it’s just Liberty and Larry.’

Bella peered past Darcy into the gloom of the stable.

‘This is Larry.’ Darcy stopped at the first stall and petted the nose of the large brown thing that nuzzled against her.

Did you even say brown when it was horses? Horse people said grey for white, didn’t they? Bella didn’t have a clue.

Adam ran his hand over the side of Larry’s head. ‘No offence mate, but how are you still here?’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Darcy instructed.

‘He must be about a hundred and eight.’

Darcy demurred. ‘Larry is just swell.’ She paused for a moment, forehead pressed against Larry’s head. ‘It’s good to have them here. Especially today. When you want to just hide away the shit still needs shovelling.’

‘Since when do you shovel shit?’

‘I help out.’

‘Sure you do,’ said Adam gently. ‘How are you?’

‘How are you?’

‘I don’t know.’

Darcy nodded. ‘Same.’

Bella hovered at the entrance to the stables, not wanting to intrude or freak out the horses or stand in the wrong place or…

Adam turned towards her. ‘Sorry. So yeah, horses. Do you ride?’

Bella shook her head. ‘Not much riding in a flat in Leeds.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Darcy replied. ‘I learnt at a city stables in Brooklyn. Every weekend as soon as I was big enough to sit on a pony. There’s no feeling quite like it.’

Bella definitely thought of riding as a posh country thing not a normal city thing. ‘I’m not sure it’s for me.’

Darcy shrugged. ‘To each their own.’

Adam glanced at his watch. ‘I probably shouldn’t keep Grandmother waiting much longer.’ He stopped next to Bella. ‘Oh, but what will you…?’

She pasted on a smile. ‘I’ll be fine. I can explore on my own.’

In the kitchen Flinty was putting away the breakfast pots. ‘Adam’s gone to see what his gran needs.’

Flinty nodded.

‘I think me turning up was a bit of a shock to her.’

‘To all of us,’ Flinty confirmed. She put her tea towel down on the big table in the middle of the kitchen. ‘She’ll warm up to you.’

‘Really?’

‘Probably not,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘But you’ll get used to her.’

Bella picked up the last two cups from the draining board. ‘Where do these go?’

‘You don’t have to be doing that,’ Flinty told her.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Really.’ Flinty took the cups off her and opened a high cupboard above the sink. ‘Veronica – Lady Lowbridge – she does have a good heart. She’s just not very warm and cuddly, if you know what I mean.’

Bella felt she knew exactly what Flinty meant. ‘She’s not like my grandma.’

‘Was she more pockets full of Werther’s Originals and spoiling her grandkids?’

Bella almost laughed out loud at the image. ‘Noooooo. More of a lifelong rolling stone.’

‘You were close to her?’

‘My mum wasn’t really around when I was growing up.’

Flinty nodded. ‘Ah well, good you had somebody then. Have you told her about you and Adam?’

Actually no. ‘I will. Soon. Next time I call.’

Flinty didn’t reply.

‘So what else can I do?’ Bella needed to be busy. She needed to roll her sleeves up. Her absolute dream would be a full crate of potatoes that needed scrubbing and peeling and chopping – something mindless that she could lose herself in. ‘I know my way around a kitchen.’

‘Not my kitchen you don’t.’

No. Of course. No point treading on toes when she’d only just arrived.

Flinty turned back towards her. ‘Sorry. Not my kitchen, is it? Going to be yours soon, so you can knock yourself out. One of the few things Veronica and Darcy have in common is that they don’t really get involved in here. I mean Darcy would live on her smoothies given the chance, and Veronica…’ She trailed off.

‘What?’

‘Well, she’s had fifty years of food being something that appears in the accounts and on the table. I don’t think she has the faintest idea, any more, what happens to it in between.’ Flinty looked around. ‘Anyway I think I’ll be doing trays for lunch today, so not much to help with. You got here very late last night. You should rest.’

Bella didn’t point out that Flinty had got here just as late and she hadn’t had the chance to nap on the journey. This kitchen was clearly Flinty’s domain, and that was something Bella could absolutely respect.

‘You could go for a walk?’ Flinty suggested. ‘Or explore the house a bit more.’

‘The house?’

Flinty looked at her blankly. ‘Big stone thing you’re standing in.’

The castle. Why did nobody else seem to have noticed that they lived in a massive blooming castle?

The surroundings of the estate office were utterly familiar to Adam but, at the same time, strangely alien. As a small child this room had been Father’s space. If Father was in here, he was not to be disturbed. Even as a teenager, using the office as a cut through from the back stairs to the main castle had felt illicit. He still, instinctively, hesitated in the doorway, as if he was expecting his father to grumble that he was busy, and for Flinty to come dashing down the corridor and chivvy him away with promises of biscuits in the kitchen.

His father’s chair wasn’t there. His father had always had a strange leather-backed thing that looked for all the world as though someone had bolted an old fashioned dining chair onto a set of wheels and plonked it behind the desk. But the chair his grandmother was using was new, a standard black office chair that could have come from any catalogue anywhere in the world. ‘Where’s his chair?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘His chair? The leather one?’ Adam shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Of course it didn’t matter. It was just a chair. Chairs broke. People bought new ones. Things changed. Things kept on changing.

His grandmother took her seat, what seemed to be her seat, in his father’s place, behind the desk, and gestured to the seat opposite her. Dipper padded into the office and bounded up to the desk. She sniffed the carpet beneath the table, sniffed Veronica, and finally Adam. He held his hand out to his father’s beloved dog. She nuzzled for a second, before turning away. He clearly wasn’t the master she was looking for.

‘Shall we get on then?’ his grandmother asked. ‘You need to learn the ropes.’

‘Not today?’

‘No better time.’

He’d known she was going to say that. Veronica Lowbridge was a woman incapable of putting things off. If a task needed doing, the task got done.

‘I prefer to do the routine tasks first. Otherwise one ends up cherry-picking the out-of-the-ordinary things and the day-to-day can get neglected.’

‘OK.’ Adam let his grandmother talk him through the regular weekly tasks for the running of the estate. He received instruction on logging into the bank accounts and the estate email inbox, all the while doing his very best to ignore the way the grey walls seemed to be pressing in on him. His grandmother sighed pointedly.

‘Look. That damned plumber has re-sent his invoice. And it still doesn’t have the right total. I suppose that idiot girl quite forgot what with…’ She shook her head. ‘With everything else.’

The ‘idiot girl’ of course being Darcy, and ‘everything else’ being the death of her husband. Adam’s father. Veronica’s son. ‘How are you doing?’ he asked her.

‘Very well thank you.’

Adam swallowed back a wince. ‘I mean, how are you doing since Father…?’

‘I know perfectly well what you mean. No point dwelling on things.’

His father had been dead less than twenty-four hours. ‘It’s hardly dwelling—’

‘I need to take you through the accounting.’

‘Had he been sick?’ The question rushed into Adam’s mind and straight out of his mouth.

‘What?’

‘Before… you know, had he been sick?’ Darcy had made it sound quite sudden, but some days it seemed like the sun coming up in the morning was a bit of a surprise to Darcy so he wasn’t sure she was a particularly reliable witness. The idea took shape in Adam’s head that maybe his father had been ill. Maybe there’d been things he could have done, if he’d known. If he’d been here. ‘Had he seen a doctor recently?’

‘He was a man in his fifties. All they ever do is see the doctor. It’s all prostates and backs and weak knees. One doesn’t like to pry.’

As if there was anything his grandmother wouldn’t pry into.

‘I’m sure it was just one of those things,’ she added. ‘As I say, no point dwelling.’ She pulled a hardbacked ledger off the shelf behind her. ‘These are the household accounts, separate from the estate accounts.’

‘This isn’t computerised?’

‘Your father was used to doing it this way.’

Adam scanned the neat columns of numbers. They danced under his gaze. In normal life, in his real life, Ravi dealt with this sort of thing. The figures were written mostly in his father’s slanting scribble, with the occasional oasis of his grandmother’s neat copperplate script. His father would never write in this book again. ‘I can’t do this now.’

His grandmother nodded. ‘Very well.’ She closed the ledger. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. And I suppose we should concentrate on the funeral arrangements first anyway.’

The mention of the funeral brought one of the many thoughts that had crowded out sleep the night before to the front of Adam’s mind. ‘Has anyone let my mother know? I mean I know it’s complicated.’ Boy, did he know. ‘But they were married for a decade.’

Veronica nodded. ‘I sent an electronic mail to the address I have for her. I don’t expect a reply. I presume you have a telephone number.’

‘Yeah.’ Adam’s contact with his mother was minimal. ‘I don’t know if it’s up to date.’

He pulled out his phone. What would he even say to her? The screen flashed with two missed calls, both from Ravi. He fired off a brief text explaining that he was in Lowbridge and would ring when he could, but not explaining why.

His mother was trickier. Adam’s finger hovered over the call button and then froze. He texted instead.

Hi. Just checking you’ve seen my grandmother’s email.

Veronica had already moved on. ‘I’ve already arranged for the vicar – the new vicar – to come. I don’t know if the girl will want to come to that.’

‘Bella?’

His grandmother frowned. ‘No. Why on earth would she want to come?’

‘To support me?’

That suggestion was ridiculous enough to be met with a simple small shake of the head. ‘I meant the American.’

‘Darcy? Yes. I think she will want to be involved in the funeral arrangements.’

‘Whatever you think. I’m sure you’re more than capable.’

Adam sucked back whatever response he might have wanted to offer. ‘It’s not only up to me though is it?’

Veronica gave him a look of sharp consternation. ‘You’re the laird. Things are generally very much up to you.’