Chapter 29
‘Ouch!’
I reluctantly turn around just as the first foil-wrapped jacket potato hits Hunter square in the chest. It’s quickly followed by another, then another, and before anyone knows quite what’s happening, potatoes are raining down on us all, most of them thrown more or less at random, because the people standing at the very back of the room don’t have a good enough view to know who they’re supposed to be aiming at.
And I’m not sure they particularly care, either.
In the middle of it all, Hunter stands, his hands raised to protect his face from the flying veg, and his eyes locked pleadingly onto mine.
I’m sorry, he mouths, ducking out of the way of a particularly large spud. I’m sorry.
I turn my back on him, my entire body trembling with shock as I look at the scene in front of me.
Over by the doors, Callum is still cradling Daniel Foster in his arms, like a baby. Next to them, Bex is dabbing tearfully at the stain on her dress, while, a few feet away, Sabrina viciously slings potatoes at Dante, with a devastatingly accurate aim.
I push my way through the crowd, opening the first door I come to, which turns out to lead down to what I’m assuming is the castle’s wine cellar.
Or possibly the dungeon.
It’s definitely creepy enough, with its low ceiling and uncovered stone walls.
Just as I’m about to turn and leave again, though, there’s a low, fizzing sound, and the lights come on, making shadows jump into the corners of the long, underground room, which is, reassuringly, lined with bottles of wine rather than the skeletons of long-dead prisoners.
‘Rosie? Are you down here?’
A moment later, Hunter’s feet appear on the stairs I’ve just climbed down, followed by the rest of him.
‘I can explain,’ he says, holding up both hands as if he thinks I might shoot. ‘I promise I can explain, Rosie.’
‘Bet you can’t,’ I reply, annoyed by his confidence, and how much it reminds me of my gaslighting ex. ‘But you can give it a try. I can’t wait to hear it.’
I lean back against the rough wall of the cellar, my arms folded across my chest.
‘OK. Right. Well. Where to start?’
Hunter sits heavily down on top of a barrel and scratches his head, looking lost.
‘How about starting with you being the Laird’s nephew,’ I say helpfully. ‘And then you could move on to the bit where you’ve been scheming to sell the hotel behind everyone’s backs?’
He looks at me warily.
‘I wouldn’t call it “scheming”, exactly,’ he says, in a tone that suggests he knows he’s not off to a strong start here.
‘I’m just trying to do the best I can for everyone, Rosie.
This deal with WanderNest – if it happens, and that’s still a pretty big if, mind – is worth a fortune.
Way more than we could ever hope to make without them. It would—’
‘So it’s all about the money, then?’ I interrupt, struggling to reconcile the man who sneered at the so-called materialism of influencer culture with the one in front of me, who’s apparently willing to sell his family’s inheritance to the highest bidder.
‘You just want to make as much as you can, then go back to Glasgow with your . . . your spoils?’
‘No,’ he protests, stung. ‘No, it’s not like that at all. I don’t care about the money. I’ve never cared about the money. It’s Dougie I worry about.’
‘Dougie?’ I blink, wondering if he has another child he’s neglected to mention.
‘Douglas. Lord Glenmuir,’ he explains. ‘He’s the one who needs the money. God knows, there’s none of it left.’
He rubs his eyes, and I somehow get the feeling this is an old worry of his; one he’s used to poking at, and prodding, and turning around in his hands without ever really solving.
‘Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a place like this, Rosie?’ Hunter says quietly, looking at me through his fingers. ‘I don’t just mean as a hotel; I mean the building alone. The heat, the light, the non-stop maintenance.’
I shrug, thinking about the flat I used to rent in London, and how extortionate everything connected to it was. I can only imagine what the upkeep a place the size of the Chrysalis must be.
‘It’s a lot,’ Hunter goes on, without waiting for an answer. ‘And Dougie . . . well, let’s just say, he hasn’t always stayed on top of things, financially speaking. There’s . . . well, there’s debt. Quite a bit of it, actually.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I mutter, surprised to find I have something in common with Lord Glenmuir.
‘That doesn’t mean selling up is the only option, though.
Especially when you haven’t even given the place a chance.
You never know, the launch could go really well.
The hotel could take off without WanderNest and their money.
You haven’t even tried, Hunter. How can you give up on it without even trying? ’
‘Think about it, Rosie,’ Hunter says. ‘People don’t want boutique hotels anymore.
We’re right on the route of the North Coast 500.
We’re competing with people in camper vans and tents.
With glamping pods and budget hostels. And here we are, trying to market ourselves as a luxury five-star spa hotel.
I’ve done my best to cut as many costs as I can, but I had to take out a loan for the renovation and the extension, so now I need to cover that, too.
It’s not going to work. I can already tell it’s not going to work. ’
He shakes his head despairingly, and I’m tempted to go over and shake him right along with it.
‘You don’t know that,’ I tell him stubbornly. ‘You’re being ridiculously defeatist about it. The only way you can know for sure that it won’t work is if you don’t even try.’
‘I’ve run the numbers, Rosie,’ Hunter says, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘Over and over again. We have fifteen bedrooms; all of them huge. WanderNest could triple that easily.’
‘How?’ I ask. ‘By taking everything that’s unique and special about the place and turning it into something ordinary? That’s going to be your gimmick, is it?’
I take a deep breath, aware that I’m starting to sound like Millie.
‘No. No, that’s not what I’m talking about,’ Hunter says, his voice rising to match mine.
‘What do you take me for, Rosie? I’m not some vandal, willing to destroy the place for the sake of a few pounds.
I’m trying to save it. I don’t know why you can’t see that?
And I’m from Edinburgh, by the way,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought.
‘I don’t know where everyone’s getting this Glasgow thing from. ’
‘Sorry,’ I reply, flicking my hair over my shoulder. ‘I didn’t know. Just like I didn’t know you were the Laird’s nephew, say. I’m starting to think there’s a lot I don’t know about you, actually.’
‘You’ve only known me for a few days,’ he points out, not unreasonably. ‘I’m sure there’s probably a lot I don’t know about you, either.’
I pause, momentarily wrong-footed.
He does have a point there, actually.
‘I know we haven’t known each other long,’ I say, slightly less confidently. ‘But, even so, that seems like a pretty big detail to leave out, don’t you think?’
‘Not really,’ Hunter says. ‘I haven’t even known about it myself for long, so it’s not the first thing that occurs to me to blurt out to a pretty girl I’ve just met, and who’s only going to be here a few days.
And Dante and I had agreed not to tell the staff who I was just yet.
I didn’t want them to feel like the owner of the hotel was breathing down their necks all the time, and I wanted to be able to get to know them all without them thinking of me as “the boss”.
So it wasn’t just you I kept it from, Rosie; it was everyone. ’
I take a ragged breath, my mind desperately trying to latch onto the ‘pretty girl’ comment, but snagging instead on the bit about me only being here for a few days.
Does that mean he was never really interested in getting to know me? Was all of this just a bit of fun to him?
‘What do you mean you haven’t known about it for long?’ I ask, choosing to concentrate on a question I actually want to know the answer to, other than the one that could break my heart.
‘Exactly that.’ He raises his shoulders as if this explains everything.
‘I’m not the Laird’s nephew, for one thing; I think I’m actually his great-great-nephew, once removed, if you want to get technical.
Or twice removed, maybe. Whatever it is, I only found out a few months ago, when Dougie’s solicitor contacted me to let me know he was planning to name me as his heir, and that he wanted to meet me.
I mean, you can imagine what that felt like, finding out you’re one day going to inherit a sodding castle in the middle of nowhere. ’
He chuckles mirthlessly.
‘It just so happened to come along at the same time Hannah’s mum had accepted a big contract in New York,’ Hunter goes on, looking like he could be doing with a dram of that whisky he likes so much.
‘She was going to be away for months, which meant there was nothing keeping me and Hannah in the city. So I thought: what the hell, why not come up and meet the old guy? I thought it would be a bit of a laugh, I suppose – something to tell people about when I got back. And, to be totally honest, I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t some kind of wind-up. ’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘No. No, it was all real enough; a bit too real, actually, because once I got here, and Dougie told me what a mess he’d managed to get himself into, I realised it wasn’t quite the windfall his solicitor had made it sound like.
At first, I thought the only option was going to be to sell up and use whatever we got for the place to pay off the debts. ’
He shakes his head again, but this time I don’t feel quite so frustrated by him.
‘Was it really that bad?’ I ask instead. I have no idea what a Highland castle is worth, obviously, but I’m guessing it’s a lot more than even I could run up on my credit card, which means . . .