Emmie recalled the strange giggling she’d dreamed of last night, and shivered.
“I hope I haven’t frightened you,” Lady Rotherham put in.
She met the lady’s concerned gaze, and tried so smile. “No, not frightened, exactly. I can’t say I was expecting that, but I’m sure it will be fine. As long as nothing jumps out at me.”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. Anyway, BBC Two is coming out for an episode of Haunted Britain. That’s happening mid-September. You won’t need to be on camera for that, either, but they will be staying overnight at the house to shoot.”
Emmie breathed, absorbing the news she’d just been blindsided with. “I think I can handle that.”
“I’m sure you can,” Lady Rotherham agreed airily. “For now, I just need you to work on the items in the house. You’re free to come and go as you please. I’m not a stickler for in-office hours… or in-house hours, in this case. As long as you’re making progress, that’s all I care about.”
“Understood.”
Lady Rotherham gave Emmie an appraising look. “I have a feeling we’re going to get along famously.”
She hoped the lady was right. Because after everything she’d just been told, Emmiewas wondering if she might be in over her head.
THE FIRST WEEK on the job was slow-going. Emmie began her first real day of work with enthusiasm. Perhaps also a touch of idealism. She was a soldier of history. Her mission: To return to the present those lives which had been lost to the past. She would be the voice that spoke for those who could no longer speak.
Lamb must have anticipated her eagerness. When she came downstairs that morning, he had a full Scottish breakfast waiting for her. She ploughed through it, enjoying—truly enjoying, imagine!—the haggis and blood pudding, and washed the lot down with three cups of coffee. When she got up to help with the washing up, he wouldn’t hear of it.
“You go on. You’ve a long day of… whatever it is you do, ahead of you.”
“Lamb, you’re a doll.” She gave him a one-armed, sideways squeeze. He hadn’t been expecting the familiar gesture. Sputtering, he patted her hand awkwardly.
“Yes, well… you go on then.”
Taking the stairs two at a time, Emmie barrelled into her career as an official curator.
By noon, she was ready to give up.
When she’d thought about how she would start the night before, she had decided the sitting room would be a good place to ease herself into the job. Old Cranberry (or so she’d taken to calling the curmudgeony earl in her head) had used this room until his death. It was one of the few rooms at Tullybrae which hadn’t fallen prey to consolidation and storage; the general cramming of too many items into too-small spaces.
At her side were her four favourite items, highly specialized equipment for historical cataloguing: a yellow notepad, an easy-glide ballpoint pen, a digital camera, and a box of pre-threaded manila tags. Cataloguing was one thing she knew how to do inside and out, since it was what she did most often under the tutelage of Professor McCall. Each item would need to be meticulously described, with as many distinctive marks and identifiers as she could locate. The item’s condition would also be recorded. It would then be photographed from multiple angles, assigned a number for future identification, and tagged.
But even the study quickly proved to be an overwhelming room. Everything, everything, was antique. The furnishings, the paintings, the rugs, the window treatments. Even the wallpaper. And although the room had the outward appearance of livability, there were mounds upon mounds of items stacked haphazardly within the hutch, the credenza, under the window seating, and inside a large ornamental chest in the far corner.
By lunchtime, Emmie hadn’t evaluated even half the room, much less catalogue her finds and determine their historical significance and value.
At twelve-thirty, Lamb brought a tray into the sitting room. Hearing his short-stepped gait, Emmie looked up from where she sat, cross-legged, on the floor in front of the credenza. Arranged neatly on the tray, which the butler clutched with a death grip, was a watercress sandwich, four homemade shortbread cookies, a Granny Smith apple cut into slices, cubes of sharp cheddar cheese, and a tall, frosty glass of milk.
“Lamb, you sweet man. I said I usually skip lunch. You didn’t need to do this.”
Lamb bent, his knees creaking, and handed her the tray when she rose to meet him half-way. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you going from dawn to dusk without eating. I hope I haven’t included anything you don’t like.”
“I’m grateful, thank you. It all looks delicious. I love watercress.”
“Do you? ’Tis an old-fashioned taste, I think. No’ what the young people like to eat nowadays.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed by my line of work, old-fashioned is kinda my thing.”
Lamb let out a huff that was almost a chuckle. “Fair enough.”
That first day tired her more than she thought it would. Emmie was asleep less than a minute after her head touched the pillow. If the strange giggling and the tugging at the covers happened again, she was too far gone to notice. Every night thereafter she slept soundly as well. Whatever had disrupted her that first night must have been an anomaly. A product of her over-active imagination, stimulated by the atmosphere of the house.
Or so she tried to convince herself. But her historian’s imagination, its fascination with the past, wouldn’t be subdued for long. No sooner would she chastise herself than her mind would drift back to the idea that there were beings in the house whom she couldn’t see. There were times, too, when she was alone that a spider web sensation would tickle along her spine. And though she knew she was being a little absurd, Emmie would find herself slowing down around corners, steeling herself against the possibility of coming face to face with a lurking spectre.
Nothing like that happened.
She asked Lamb about the ghosts one night at dinner. He wasn’t much help.
“Old houses like this have had many lives come and go through its doors,” he evaded. “It would no’ be a far stretch to imagine that they’ve all left their mark on the place in one way or another.”
“True enough. That’s why I do what I do, I suppose.” She forked a green bean and crunched it thoughtfully.
It was hardly the answer she’d been looking for, and he knew it. Emmie stared at Lamb. There was something he wasn’t saying. He studied his plate like he would be tested on its contents, and chose his next pan-fried mushroom with deliberate care. She let the matter drop.
That night, before she crawled under the covers, she stood in front of the dresser, kissed her forefinger, and planted it on the glass over her mother’s photo.
“Ghosts, Mom,” she whispered to the smiling face. “I’m not sure if I’m frightened or not. You’ll protect me, right?”
The face smiled back at her. That silent smile, frozen in time, meant different things at different times to Emmie. This time, she took it for reassurance.
As she became accustomed to life at Tullybrae, Emmie found that she was able to put the thoughts of spirits out of her mind most of the time. Her work kept her busy, and she enjoyed slipping into the routine of research.
There were three stages to the process of cataloguing. Once she’d written down as much as she could about an object by sight, and had taken photos, she then retreated to her laptop to see if she could identify her finds through reputable websites. Those items to which she could not assign a manufacturer and year, she tagged with the frustratingly simple, moniker TU: Temporarily Unidentified. Originally, Professor McCall had instructed her to use just a “U,” but Emmie was never comfortable with the permanence it conveyed. Thus, she began adding the “T” early on in her career.
For these “TU” items, she could forward what details she had to the university archives at Edinburgh or Cambridge, which would do a trace on them—for a fee. But as yet, she had not taken this step. Emmie had not discussed it with Lady Rotherham. She had no doubt the lady wou
ld approve. But, as Lady Rotherham openly admitted, it was her husband who would be paying the fee, and he might not consider a positive identification worth the cost.
So, Emmie’s “TU” pile grew.
Mid-week found her moving from the sitting room to the library. By then, her days had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Mornings she would spend doing the grunt work of cataloguing, and afternoons she would spend researching. For this part of the job, she’d set up an office of sorts in a room which had once been the nursery.
Emmie liked this room the best. Being at the east corner of the house, its hexagonal shape was a result of the manor’s turreted architecture. High, bright windows which faced both east and west flooded the room with light through most of the day. The children’s items had been moved out and stored in the attic over a quarter of a century ago, Lamb informed her when she asked. In their place, the late earl’s personal documents and records had been moved in. Brown, crumbling banker’s boxes were stacked willy-nilly around the room. Some were so old that they threatened to collapse, which would send almost fifty years’ worth of yellowing paper spilling out onto the threadbare carpet.
It was a simple matter to restack the boxes against a wall, only an hour’s heavy lifting. Emmie wasn’t too pleased that it had to be a window wall, but the walls on the inside of the house were unsuitable. One had a small, old-fashioned radiator which, like the one in her room, was still operational in the winter months. Beside that was the wall with the door, and the wall beside that was the fireplace wall.
By the time the weekend limped in, she was satisfied with the amount of work she’d accomplished, and was looking forward to a break.
Saturday morning dawned dim and foggy, but her mood was light enough to drive away the shadows.
“You look like you have some plans for the day,” Lamb noted at the breakfast table.
Emmie nodded as she dunked a narrow strip of toast—a “soldier”—into her soft-boiled egg. “I’m thinking of driving into Aviemore today to do some errands. This is really good, by the way.”
“Nothing I can help with?”
“Just dry-cleaning and some groceries. Nothing I can’t take care of, myself. And I have a few things I want to pick up that I’ve run out of. Why—you wanna come?”
“Nay, you’re all right,” he answered. “But thank you all the same.”
“Do you need anything while I’m out?”
He thought for a moment. “Well, as long as you’re asking, I wouldn’t mind a nice bottle of red wine. His lordship has a fine reserve in the cellar, but I don’t feel right about taking from him.”
“Oh, come on, Lamb. He’s dead. He can’t complain. Live a little.”
His eyes crinkled in what was almost a grin. “Old habits die hard. Anyway, will you be out all day, do you reckon?”
She mopped up the last of her egg yolk with her remaining soldier and bit into it. “I should be back mid- to late-afternoon. I was thinking of finding a pub somewhere for lunch.”
“Ah. Well, then you’ll want the Aviemore Arms. On the High Street, just past Craig Na Gower Avenue. They do a nice steak and ale pie, they do. That is, if you like steak and ale pie. You might not, but I do.”
“I love steak and ale pie. I’ll check it out.”
After clearing away the dishes, Emmie dashed out to her Panda. Soon, she was on the road, driving through thick, Highland mist, her headlights and her eyes peeled for stray sheep. She made it to Aviemore in a little over half an hour.
By mid-morning, the sky had cleared up, and the sun came out. It shimmered through the moist air, bestowing the quaint tourist town with an invigorating, dew-kissed feel. The Highland air was so fresh and so fragrant that Emmie found herself inhaling deeply every time she stepped out of a shop.
The locals were friendly, and customer-service was clearly a top priority. Each shop owner invited her in like she was an old friend. They spent time with her, explaining their products, and letting her try, feel, taste and smell them. At one store, a stout, middle-aged lady in a tartan vest took the time to explain to her all the different clan plaids that were represented on pure wool scarves, which were prominently displayed near the front window.
“This one here is Urquhart,” she said, pulling one out and showing it to her with soft, short-fingered hands. “My clan.”
“Matches your vest.”
The woman beamed. “Aye, it does. And see here?” She fingered a small, gold pin anchored to the lapel. “Speak weil, mean weil, doe weil. The Urquhart motto.”
Emmie’s eyes travelled up the built-in cubbyholes with all the scarves stacked neatly by clan. “What about MacCombish? Is there a tartan for that name?”
“MacCombish, MacCombish.” The lady tapped her chin with her pinkie finger, then scurried to the counter at the back of her store on fat, little legs. From beneath the cash register, she pulled a well-thumbed paperback book.
“MacCombish,” she repeated to herself as she leafed through the pages. “Ah, here it is. Well, see now, MacCombish was under the protection of Clan Stuart. The Bonnie Prince himself. So they would have worn his colours.”
The lady laid the open book on the counter, and pointed to the entry. Emmie leaned over, craning her neck slightly to read the blurb beneath the name.
“And here’s the Stuart colours,” the woman continued, flipping to a well-used page. In a full-page, glossy image was a replica of the red and black of Clan Stuart. “Is your name MacCombish, lass?”
Emmie hesitated, drawing a finger over the colourful plaid photo. “Yes… well, no, actually. It’s Tunstall. But it was MacCombish once.”
“Oh.” The lady furrowed her brow. “Married?”
“I was adopted when I was six, and my adoptive parents had my last name legally changed to theirs. But MacCombish was my mother’s name.”
“I see. Well, it is always good to know something about a person’s family history.”
“And now I do.”
The woman nodded proudly. “Aye. Now you do.”
By the time Emmie left the shop, she had a bag of hand-knit lamb’s wool mittens, a wool scarf in the Stuart colours, a leather bookmark with the Stuart motto embossed in gold Gaelic script, and a tin of organic heather balm.
At one in the afternoon, she took Lamb’s advice and headed over to the Aviemore Arms for a late lunch. It was a cozy little pub, the décor not dissimilar to any of the pubs back home in Corner Brook. But the creaking, wide-planked floors, the smoke-stained beams, and the distinct scent of centuries-old wood gave the place an authenticity that no New World establishment could fabricate.
When the barman came to take her order, she asked for the steak and ale pie.
It was delicious, just like Lamb said. The meat was tender, and the gravy thick, almost buttery. On the suggestion of the barman (a good-looking man, though a little old for her taste, in his mid-forties, maybe), she paired it with a nice, dark half pint of a locally brewed stout.
As she sat by the open window overlooking the leisurely bustle of the high street, Emmie savoured her meal and enjoyed some more of the book she’d brought along. She felt at peace. Happy. In the whole of her life she never felt like she belonged anywhere. From what she remembered of her childhood before the Tunstalls, she and her mother moved around a lot.
After the Tunstalls, she felt like an outsider. To be fair to them, they provided her with much-needed stability, and all the love and support they had to give. But she never really felt like she was “one of them.” She was always curious if her brother, Chase, felt the same way, too. He’d been adopted by the Tunstalls also, from a First Nations reserve in the Yukon. She never asked.
The happiness, though. It was being here in Scotland, being at Tullybrae… it just felt right. Like whatever watered-down Scottish heritage that had made it into her blood was singing now that it had been called home.
She laughed quietly to herself. A historian’s fancy.
“Something funny, love?” The barman h
ad come over to see if she wanted anything else.
“Oh, no. Just thinking to myself.”
“Pie was okay?”
“Yes, thank you. It was delicious. Actually, a friend recommended it to me.”
“Oh, aye? And who might your friend be? I know all the regulars.”
“Harold Lamb. Up at Tullybrae House.”
“Ah, yes. Good old Harold.” The man nodded, his full head of salt-and-pepper hair catching the afternoon light from the window. “He’s a top bloke, he is. Been around forever, it seems. And the stout, how’d that go down for you? Not too strong, I hope.”
“It’s delicious. Stout’s my beer, actually—when I drink beer, that is.”
“Of course it is. It’s my job to read the punters, guess what their flavour is. I saw you, and I said to myself, ‘Now that lass likes a dark pint. She’s got a bit of the Celt in her, she does.’”
“Are you reading my mind? I was just thinking something like that.” She clapped her hands together lightly beneath her chin.
The barman winked flirtatiously. “That’s my secret, love. I’ll take this plate away for you, then.”
Emmie watched him go, his lithe, trim body gliding effortlessly between the close-packed tables. She smiled a secret, private smile. Too bad she wasn’t looking for a relationship just now.
When she returned to Tullybrae late in the afternoon, the aroma of roasting meat greeted her like a warm hug. Still clutching her shopping bags, she followed the scent down to the kitchen. There, she discovered an elaborately set table, with fresh-cut, late-bloom toad lilies from Tullybrae’s back garden. Lamb stood at the oven in one of his serviceable aprons, where he had a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings going.
“Lamb,” she chastised. “It’s still my week to make dinner.”
He eased open the stove door and removed a pan with a roast sirloin tip in it. “T’was no bother. It’s been far too long since I’ve had someone to have a proper roast beef supper with.”
The Ghosts of Tullybrae House Page 4