Scotland to the Max

by Grace Burrowes

  Brodie Castle was larger, older, more complicated, and more expensive than either of the previous projects, and it was in Scotland. What Max knew about Scottish building regulations would barely make a credible doorstop. What he knew about Maryland’s building and land-use regulations would have made a long, hard undergraduate curriculum, with summers spent doing backbreaking construction labor. He’d added a master’s program that had included practicums in accounting, project management, and human resources, and picked up law school at night.

  The PhD could be conferred only by experience holding the actual reins and taking the risks.

  Fergus seemed to delight in showing Max every crack, subsidence, uneven floor, and irregular window on the site. Max had seen most of them before in videos, drone footage, and photographs, but the granite reality was altogether more depressing.

  Likely more expensive too.

  “The old castles are all like this,” Fergus said. “The floorplans are ridiculous, the modernizations a hundred years old, the challenges bad to start with and worse once you roll up your sleeves. I love ’em.”

  Because those sorts of projects lasted forever and became so idiosyncratic that bringing on new crew meant an endless learning curve. The managers who were in on the ground floor had years of job security at good wages.

  “Who’s your assistant?” Max asked as they ambled through the great hall. His steps echoed off of the enormous vaulted ceiling, the stone beneath his feet covered with that grit known to every active construction site.

  “I don’t need an assistant, Mr. Maitland. We have a dozen masons hard at it. They know their jobs, and I know mine. Assistants clutter the place up, countermand orders, cost money, and agitate.”

  Here we go. “You’ve yet to show me the project office. Perhaps we’d best have this discussion there.”

  Fergus smiled, a prizefighter ready to enjoy thrashing somebody. “Haven’t one of those either. We keep the paperwork in the porter’s nook, so everybody knows where to get the forms for the time sheets and progress reports. All you’ll need is a safe and a desk, and you’ll be good to go.”

  Max ambled for the door, and Fergus strode along beside him.

  “Let’s finish touring the outbuildings,” Max said, “and then you can point me to the Baron’s Hall.”

  “Jet lag is the very devil.”

  Said with such sympathy. “The Baron’s Hall is part of the work site, an important part, and I can’t keep the housekeeper waiting forever on a Saturday. Elias Brodie asked her to come in this afternoon as a favor to him, and she’s in the best position to tour that facility with me. I enjoyed a fine night’s sleep at the cottage, and I have tomorrow to catch up if that wasn’t enough.”

  “Cranky,” Fergus said. “That’s always the way when I’m knackered.”

  This needling in the form of commiserating was a variety of Scottish humor. Max recognized the tactic because Elias Brodie, the earl who’d granted Max’s investors a ninety-nine-year lease on the castle, was a gifted needler.

  Also a hellaciously skilled negotiator.

  “This would be the laundry,” Fergus said as they approached a building made entirely of pale granite. “The drains give it away, as do the light and ventilation. You noticed the lavender growing along the walk, that’s another possible indicator of a laundry. The laundresses would spread the linens on the bushes to dry, or string a clothesline downwind of the border so everything caught the scent.”

  “Lavender is a good smell.” Neither masculine nor feminine, and while it would fade, it didn’t decay over time as some fragrances did into less-than-elegant finishes. Aromatics were now part of high-end property management, just as floral arrangements and noise abatement were.

  “Lavender keeps the vermin down,” Fergus said. “The Victorians conquered half the known world because their womenfolk first sharpened their swords on the challenges of bugs, dirt, and illness.”

  Always, the history lessons.

  The laundry was airy and high-ceilinged. Oriel windows near the eaves let in light and had probably been intended to let out heat and humidity. The design was simple—three rooms in shotgun layout, the two rooms on the ends smaller, while the central chamber was a good twenty by thirty feet.

  A perfect conference-cum-war room, in fact. “Original glass?” Max asked.

  “Victorian, possibly Georgian. I haven’t sent the glaziers around to have a look because this building is in relatively good shape.”

  Good shape—for a place without running water, electricity, or heat—except it did have two enormous fireplaces in the central room.

  “Where do the drains lead?”

  “Right down the hillside, I assume.”

  Not a good enough answer. When an edifice sat at the top of a high, steep hill, storm-water management was a significant issue. Max tapped yet another note into his phone.

  Fergus waited while Max peered around at odd rings stuck into the walls, window casements that—thanks be—did not leak, and floors that were solid, for all they’d been designed with a slight grade toward a shallow central gutter.

  “This will be the project office,” Max said. “We can move a generator over here Monday, and I’ll make a list of supplies to get it set up. The purchasing agent can have the back end, the project will use the middle, and we’ll put the break room out front.”

  Fergus took up a lean against stone walls three feet thick at the base. “Will we, now?”

  “State your objections, Fergus, and I’ll listen. Neither one of us has time to waste.”

  “A break room means the lads will be waltzing out of the castle to wander over here, by way of the bushes, their cars, a smoke break, and a wee chat with the missus four times a day. A project office over here means that you—the grand high manager of us all—aren’t where the work’s being done, keeping an eye on things as they happen, rather than as they’re relayed to you by various interested parties.”

  Max kept his expression neutral, though the conversation was taking a predictable turn, which was a relief.

  “Don’t hold back on my account, Fergus. Give me the benefit of your thinking.”

  “Again, if you set up shop here, you set yourself apart from the people doing the work, making you harder to reach. If a man wants to report a safety concern, he’s seen making an appointment with you—probably through another flunky—and then all know who went tattling to the head Yank. You aren’t on hand to be consulted, so nobody consults you—too much bother to fetch you when you might not even be at your desk.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Expense. Why do you need to use up a whole building, get it wired and lit and heated, when money is always tight, and we don’t have enough laborers for the work ahead of us?”

  “Good points. Let me address them. First, I carry a phone at all times. Nobody has to hit pause on a critical decision and waste twenty minutes scaring me up. Second, I want my crews to have the option of bringing me into a decision or leaving me out of it.

  “I am not a mason,” Max went on, “or a glazier, plumber, electrician, carpenter, or landscaper. I don’t want the trades coming to me to make decisions that are better off made by the trades. If I’m underfoot, or eavesdropping on every conversation, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Third, we have a safety officer—or we soon will have—and safety concerns ought to be brought to his or her attention before anybody comes to me with them.”

  Fergus studied the oriel window as if seeking divine guidance from the sunlight beaming down. “I take it you are not finished.”

  He was listening, or had sense enough to pretend he was.

  “I am not finished,” Max said. “If this was a private renovation, just another wealthy earl moving the staircase or dropping in a light well, then we’d have much more latitude. This effort will soon become a commercial job, and different rules apply. We need a project office off premises for visitors to report to, so they can be equipped with escorts and hard hats.” />
  “Oh, for the love of—”

  “Competitors will try to spy on us, children are always curious, and spouses drop by with forgotten cell phones. Safety matters, and so do liability and confidentiality. The crews need to know that everybody not employed on the site reports first to the project office, which will soon be one of the few non-hard-hat areas on the grounds.”

  “I forget you Yanks are always suing each other, and your government lets your accidents and illnesses become a source of somebody else’s profit.”

  You Yanks… Except, Fergus wasn’t wrong. He also wasn’t making a relevant observation.

  “Businesses sue each other too, even here, Fergus. Breach of contract and tortious interference with an advantageous business relationship are not American inventions. They arrived on the Mayflower along with religious intolerance.”

  Fergus pushed away from the wall. “Go on.”

  “A project office adds a layer of security, putting financial matters behind another set of locks and keys and making sure critical plans aren’t all kept on the work site. A fire, a flood, a crime—”

  “Now you’re murdering my crews?”

  “If a serious crime occurs on a job site, the authorities can turn that job site into a crime scene, and we lose our right to ingress and egress until that crime-scene tape comes down. I damned near lost a project once over an accusation of theft. Do you know how long it takes to dust a building site for fingerprints? How long it takes a forensic detective to investigate one hard drive?”

  “I take the point, but my lads and lasses don’t steal.”

  “I never said they did. Add up all the factors—privacy, management efficiency, safety, security, and risk management—and having a project office makes sense. I’ll set it up myself within a day.”

  Fergus looked at his phone. “A long day. I’m supposed to have a wee chat with the glaziers about the solar in ten minutes.”

  Max snagged his backpack and headed for the door. “That’s another reason I want a break room. I want a place for the trades to mingle, to catch up with each other and swap gossip without having to call it a meeting, complete with managers and foremen foghorning at them.”

  Fergus fell in step behind Max as they crossed the bailey. “Do you not have pubs in America?”

  America had bars, which were usually not the same thing. “Only some of the people we have working here can stop for a pint at the end of the day, and the pub is… public. Some things are better aired on the job.”

  “Like all those murders and thefts we’ll be having. I see.”

  “We’ll have a tidier work site if the employees have a place to stash their coats, their lunch boxes, their whatever. Personal items left all over the castle will invariably get in the way or go missing.”

  Fergus took the castle steps two at a time. “Is this obsession with crime unique to you or something all Americans lug about?”

  “People lose things, Fergus. They pick up the mallet they’re sure is theirs when it isn’t. Their stuff gets moved because the carpenters decided to tear out an extra set of cabinets. A break room means nobody’s personal effects are sitting where they shouldn’t be. A break room is also a place to take a load off, hydrate, sit down over some as-builts. It’s not a meeting if the discussion is in the break room.”

  “Hydrate. Is that like drinking water regularly? My English—”

  “You don’t have the temperatures here we do in the US. I doubt your winters get as severe as they do on the northern Great Plains, and I guarantee you’ve never had to run a jackhammer for eight straight hours under a one-hundred-and-ten-degree sun. So yes, I’m aware of the need to hydrate. A break room is also a central location for all medical supplies and a place to post job openings, schedules, assignments, and safety notices.”

  Fergus started up the spiral stairs leading from the great hall. “My objection is not to a break room in itself. I was an apprentice once too. My objection is to putting that break room across the bailey, in the front parlor of your royal presence chamber.”

  Max remained at the foot of the steps, because no way was he making that hike again if he didn’t have to.

  “So where would you put the break room?”

  “There’s a parlor near the solar—the countess’s parlor—with a magnificent view of the hills. The lads seem to gravitate toward it when they’re eating lunch. It’s one floor up, on the east side of the old castle, which is fairly central. The carpenters knocked us together some benches, but it could do with a proper table and such.”

  “I’d rather have the break room in the laundry.”

  “Then why ask me for my opinion, Mr. Maitland?” Fergus stood several steps up, the curve of the stairway casting him in shadow. He doubtless knew what a menacing picture he made. Put a broadsword in his hand and he could have held off an army.

  “You say the men have already chosen this parlor, more or less?”

  “That I did.”

  “Then we’ll put the break room there. Will they be offended to have lockers assigned?”

  “Put the lockers in the corridor outside the break room, leave it to the men whether to put locks on them.”

  “Done.”

  Fergus turned to finish ascending the stairs, then shot a look at Max over his shoulder. “Why do I have the sense you went through that whole discussion—the murders and spies and whatnot—just to put the break room exactly where I wanted it?”

  Because I did. “Your concerns matter to me, but I’m the guy who has to keep the investors happy. Without their backing, none of us have jobs, Fergus, and you don’t know what it takes to keep them happy.”

  “So you play them the way you just played me?”

  “I negotiated with you.”

  Fergus smiled, showing a lot of big, white teeth. “I suppose our negotiations will continue on Monday, then. Welcome to Brodie Castle.”

  “Before you dodge off after having the last word, how do I get to the Baron’s Hall?”

  “Easy,” Fergus said. “Out the gates, take the path to the right descending the hill. Can’t miss it. At the fork in the woods, go left, and you’ll be there in no time. It’s a pretty walk, and there’s a bench about halfway down that the young people like to use for smoking pot and canoodling on long summer evenings.”

  What was it about this castle and canoodling? “Thanks, Fergus. See you Monday.”

  Max took the path Fergus had indicated and made his way through another lush, mature forest. No river whispered by, but the canopy was full of birds, and a red deer looked Max over before leaping away through the undergrowth.

  At the fork in the path, Max took the left option, as directed. He was preoccupied with mentally drafting a purchase order for the furniture and supplies needed to fit out the project office and break room, and thus it took him another fifteen minutes to realize Fergus had sent him not to the Baron’s Hall, but to the village. Another hundred yards on across a field and the path would end up on the main street, a few doors up from the pub.

  “I’ve been negotiated,” he informed a shaggy red cow chewing its cud on the far side of a stone wall. He switched his backpack to the other shoulders, and continued on toward the village, checking his phone to see if Jeannie had sent him directions for the lost-luggage delivery.

  That would be a nope, which resulted in a small disappointment. He’d liked her, she’d kissed his cheek twice, and the small hug in parting had felt… comforting. The only person to hug Max Maitland in recent years had been Maura, and she was happily ensconced in her Saturday routine thousands of miles away.

  “Damn Uncle Donald for a lazy old disgrace.” Elias Brodie, Earl of Strathdee, re-read Jeannie’s email, but the words didn’t change. The family member assigned to sit on the board of the Brodie Castle Corporation had preferred a day of fishing—genteelly termed resting up with a bout of bursitis—rather than guarding the family interests or making a good first impression on Max Maitland.

  “Something w
rong?” Violet asked.

  Elias’s wife was on her side of their office/sunroom, drafting a blog post about window-box herb gardens. She and Elias were living at her farmhouse, while his larger dwelling across the road was undergoing some maintenance… a lot of maintenance. The plan was to eventually use her house for staff quarters, because a thousand acres of Maryland farmland, plus a farm store, greenhouses, and a mail-order business, would be more than one newlywed couple could manage.

  Assuming all went well and enough skilled help could be hired.

  Elias passed Violet his tablet. “Jeannie had to not only fetch Maitland from the airport, but also put him up in the cottage overnight, then drive him out to the castle.”

  Violet closed her document. “Is Donald all right?”

  “He’s doubtless fine as five pence, hip-deep in the River Tay, reciting poetry to the fishes. He’s off to Germany next week. Some kind soul has arranged guest passes for him at a trout fishing operation in Bavaria. Donald loves to meddle, but keeping his hand in for the long haul is another matter.”

  “Your burr gets thicker when you’re worried.”

  “I’m no’ worried, I’m angry. The only tether I have on Maitland is a family member sitting on the board of his development corporation. If Donald intends to be this cavalier about his duties, then I’ve chosen the wrong family member.”

  Though for all the effort and sacrifice Elias had gone through to find a way to save the castle from ruin, any family member should have been happy to step up, particularly one retired and without many other obligations.

  Violet set aside the tablet and settled into Elias’s lap. She was a fifth-generation farmer, sturdily built and wonderfully curved. Elias’s arms came around her and some of his worry—his anger, rather—slid away.

  “Who are your other choices?” she asked.

  “Liam is an architect married to a potter. They’d bring an educated eye to the job of overseeing renovations.”