Chapter 30
The hotel lobby is empty, with just one solitary potato sitting on top of the reception desk as a reminder of the events of earlier.
The ballroom, however, is still filled with people, and there’s a low hum of excitement in the air as they crowd around the room’s tall windows, watching the rain falling outside.
The wind whistles through the trees that line the driveway, making them bend precariously, and, as I watch, there’s a sudden loud roll of thunder, that makes the smaller kids – and Millie – shriek in alarm.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Dante, have you?
’ Zara says, coming hurrying over as soon as she catches sight of me.
‘Or Sabrina? No one knows where they are, and this lot are getting restless. None of them want to risk driving back in this weather, and apparently the power’s still out in the village, so they don’t want to leave, even if they could. ’
As if on cue, lightning lights up the room with a loud crack that makes me jump, and Millie scream again.
This is going to be a very long night.
‘I haven’t seen either of them,’ I tell Zara, my mind still struggling to process everything that’s happened in the last few hours; and the last few days. ‘If Dante isn’t around, though, I guess that leaves the Laird in charge?’
Zara and I look over to where Lord Glenmuir is sitting in a wingback armchair in front of the fire, looking rather lordly with a glass of whisky in one hand and a jacket potato in the other, which he’s eating as if it’s an apple.
There’s a couple of villagers around his age sitting on each side of him, and the entire scene is strangely reminiscent of something from Game of Thrones – which isn’t particularly reassuring, all things considered, although the fact that he’s apparently decided to make peace with the ‘intruders’ can only be a good thing.
Thunder booms around the room once more. Just a few seconds between it and the lightning, which means the storm must be almost overhead.
‘Er, you should ask him,’ I say, nudging Zara forward. ‘You seem to know what you’re doing. And also, I’m a bit scared of him.’
Zara sighs loudly, sounding a lot like my oldest sister when the kids have asked her to do one too many things simultaneously.
But, after a moment’s hesitation, her instinct to take charge kicks in, and she goes striding confidently towards the Laird; me trailing much less confidently along behind her, fighting the urge to drop a quick curtsy as we arrive in front of him.
‘They can stay here,’ says the Laird, when Zara finishes explaining the situation with the storm and the villagers, having to raise her voice so he can hear her over the sound of the rain, which now sounds like it’s attempting to break through the windows.
‘If there aren’t enough rooms, some of them can sleep in the ballroom.
It’ll be just like in the war, when we were requisitioned.
Soldiers in every corner. Limbs falling off and everything.
Blood everywhere. Marvellous time it was, though. Proper Dunkirk spirit.’
For once, not even Zara knows quite what to say to that, and I’m just glad Yasmin isn’t within earshot.
‘So . . . what, we just hand out room keys?’ she manages. ‘Shouldn’t someone from the hotel be doing that kind of thing?’
‘I am “someone from the hotel”, young lady,’ the Laird growls, glaring at her from underneath a pair of very bushy eyebrows. ‘Although it’s really that nephew of mine you want to get on the case. Where is he, anyway?’
Zara glances at me, and I shift uneasily from foot to foot.
‘Did you know?’ she asks in a low voice. ‘That it was Hunter?’
‘No,’ I confirm miserably. ‘No, I found out at the same time as everyone else. I . . . look, I don’t know where he is. We’re just going to have to manage without him.’
Zara briefly closes her eyes, as if she’s trying to make up her mind about something.
‘Right,’ she says, opening them again. ‘Here’s what we do: we . . . Oh, thank God, here’s Dante.’
Dante comes sidling silently into the room to the accompaniment of a particularly dramatic bolt of lightning. The Laird imperiously beckons him over, and I shrink back behind Zara, willing him not to notice me.
I’m going to have to apologise at some point for trying to call him out like that in front of everyone; and being wrong about it, into the bargain.
‘We don’t have enough rooms for everyone,’ says Dante, snapping back into manager mode once Zara’s explained the situation for a second time.
‘So I’d suggest we allocate the rooms we do have to the people who need them most, then we can get blankets and pillows from the laundry for everyone else.
If you’re sure you really want all of them to stay here, that is? ’
‘Yes, yes,’ says the Laird impatiently. ‘They must all stay. Wouldn’t put a dog out in weather like this. Not that one, though,’ he adds, pointing at me. ‘That one has to go.’
I blink rapidly, then look quickly over my shoulder, just to make sure there isn’t someone standing behind me.
But there isn’t. And from the way the old man is glaring at me, it seems pretty obvious who his ire is directed at. My stomach gives a nervous little gurgle which, unfortunately for me, sounds freakishly loud, even with all the background noise.
‘Rosie?’ says Zara, with a confused frown. ‘You don’t want Rosie to stay? But . . . why?’
‘Well, because she’s a spy, of course,’ the Laird says, his eyebrows shooting up towards his fluffy head.
‘I’m not having a spy on the property one moment longer.
Go on, get off with you,’ he adds, shaking his whisky tumbler in my direction, and making the liquid inside spill out on the floor. ‘Off you go.’
‘I . . . I’m not a spy,’ I say shakily, aware of everyone’s eyes upon me. ‘I’m not anyone, really. I’m just Rosie.’
‘That’s right,’ says the Laird, as if this confirms it. ‘Rosie the spy. That’s what I said, didn’t I?’
‘But Rosie isn’t a spy,’ Zara says soothingly. ‘You’re not, are you?’ she adds, under her breath.
‘No! Of course not,’ I gasp, more and more convinced that this is some kind of weird nightmare, and I’ll wake up from it soon. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘I think I do,’ says Dante, a small flush of colour spreading unexpectedly across his high cheekbones. Before he can go on, though, there’s a loud crashing sound from somewhere outside the window – the kind of sound you just know doesn’t mean anything good.
As one, we all dash for the windows, cupping our hands against the glass in order to see out.
‘Shit,’ says Dante, running an exasperated hand through his dark hair. ‘I think there’s a tree down in the driveway. I need to find Hunter.’
He disappears out through the double doors and, a few minutes later, we see his shadowy form, accompanied by the familiar (to me, at least) figure of Hunter appear on the front steps, both of them holding the collars of their coats up to shield them against the wind and rain.
We all stand there watching as they make their way down the driveway, to where we can just see the hulking form of something black and huge blocking the gates.
This does not look good.
Sure enough, when the two men finally rejoin us in the ballroom, their hair plastered to their foreheads and water dripping from their clothes, I can tell by Hunter’s face that I’m not going to like what he has to say.
‘There’s a tree down just in front of the gates,’ he announces, directing his words to Lord Glenmuir, and carefully avoiding looking at me.
‘One of the big ones. It hasn’t hit anything, thankfully, but it’s going to take a bit of work to move it.
I’ll make a start on it first thing tomorrow, but it might take me a bit of time.
It’s going to have to be chopped up before it can be moved, and nothing’s getting through those gates until it is. ’
There’s a low murmur of discontent from the assembled villagers, who seem less keen on being forced to stay in the lap of luxury now that it’s the bawbag nephew who’s telling them about it.
I guess I’m not the only one who feels let down by him right now.
‘We’ll worry about that in the morning,’ says Dante firmly, before the complaints can get out of hand. ‘For now, we need to just concentrate on finding everyone somewhere to sleep. Where’s Agnes?’
He turns to look for her, and Hunter reluctantly meets my eyes.
You OK? he mouths cautiously in my direction. I nod slowly. I’m not OK, as it happens. Someone’s trying to scare me, there’s a red warning in effect over the entire area according to Google and the Laird has just accused me of being a spy.
So, no, I’m pretty far from OK right now.
But Hunter is no longer the person I can turn to about all of this, so I just settle for that tiny nod, then turn quickly away, almost walking into Zara in the process.
‘Here,’ she says, dumping a pile of blankets into my arms. ‘Start handing these out, will you? It’s going to have to be all hands on deck for a bit while we get everyone settled.’
I do as she says, and the next half an hour or so passes in a blur of pillows and blankets, and last-minute requests for hot chocolate and directions to the spa, where the new guests have been told they can use the showers, but not the other facilities, much to their disappointment.
Finally, though, peace descends on the ballroom, punctuated only by the occasional rumble of now-distant thunder, and the rather more regular rumble of people’s snores.
The worst of the storm seems to have passed, but the rain is still doing what Izzie describes as ‘pishing it doon’, and, upstairs, every vacant room in the hotel is now filled; including my own, which I offered to Ian, Callum and Rowan, begging Zara to let me bunk in with her instead, so I don’t have to worry about any more goings-on.
As I settle into one side of the fourposter bed, though, all I can think about is Hunter, in his room just a few doors away.
Despite everything I found out tonight, I still can’t bring myself to think of him as the bad guy the villagers seem convinced he is.
The fact that he hid his identity from me is a whole other matter, of course, but I believe him when he says he’s doing his best to save the hotel, under circumstances I can’t even begin to imagine.
And even though I wish he’d trusted me enough to tell me who he really was, I guess I can sort of understand why he didn’t – especially once I got rolling with the ‘arsehole nephew’ comments.
I cringe, remembering the things Izzie and Ian told me that I mindlessly repeated to Hunter, not knowing he was the person I was talking about. The stupid jibes. The cucumber video.
I really wish he hadn’t seen the cucumber video.
But he did. And he still decided to kiss me, even though my attempts at influencing could’ve cost him his business.
So I’m upset, sure, but I can’t bring myself to hate him. And even if there’s no future for the two of us, I still wish there was one for the hotel – and for the villagers, too.
But we don’t always get to do the things we love most in life.
Isn’t that what Hunter told me?
It is.
And, most of the time, I suppose it’s true.
But what if this time it didn’t have to be?