“Maxwell Maitland, how dare you? Every single item on these walls is authentic and has historical significance to my family. It stays.”
From the back of the house, Jeannie heard a door close. Mrs. Hamilton had doubtless seen the car, and soon they were to have an audience.
“Let’s change the baby,” Max said. “If we’re going to have an argument, then it’s unfair to expect me to battle chemical weapons at the same time.”
“We’re going to have an argument,” Jeannie assured him. “And you will lose.”
“Then I’ll lose, but while you tend to Henry, I have a phone call to make to somebody in Maryland, and I promised I would make that call right about now.”
“So what’s he like?” Hugh Morven asked around a mouthful of meat pasty. “The Yank?”
Fergus left off trying to total the column on his time sheet—his time sheet from three weeks ago. The sun had changed angles, so the countess’s parlor wasn’t as well lit as in the mornings.
“Maitland’s like a Yank. He talks funny.”
Hugh—six foot three of bonnie wee carpenter in his handsome prime—smacked Fergus a love tap on the back of the head that had Fergus’s ears ringing. “You talk funny.”
Hugh was an Aberdonian on his father’s side, and if anybody talked funny, it was the folk from rural Aberdeenshire. “Maitland will be underfoot for the next year at least. You can make up your own mind about him.”
Hugh balled up the paper wrapped around his bridie and tossed it over his shoulder to join the discarded sandpaper, sawdust, and stray nails casually swept into a corner.
The countess would have had a fit if she could have seen her parlor now. She and her earl were said to haunt the castle.
“In other words,” Hugh said, situating himself on an empty barrel turned on its side, “you might like Maitland, but you don’t want to admit it in case he turns out to be a horse’s arse. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign, considering your taste in football teams.”
Fergus got up from the carpenter’s workbench—the only level surface in the room—retrieved Hugh’s trash, and pitched it at his face. “Bin it, ya eejit. Maitland will make some changes, most of which I applaud. Can’t have the work site looking like the Glasgow city dump when the bankers might come sniffing about without warning.”
Hugh, whose mum was a Glaswegian, lifted the balled-up paper into the air with the tip of his steel-toed boot, then caught it in his hand. “I don’t care for bankers.”
“But we all care for their money, and Brodie Castle is a good old pile of rock. The earl had to do something with it when the National Trust has castles to burn. A couple hundred years fancied up to take money from Yanks, oil sheikhs, and Germans isn’t a bad plan.”
Hugh tossed the trash back at Fergus’s crotch and unwrapped a second meat pasty. “Does Maitland know what he’s doing? I don’t mind working for an arrogant sod as long as he knows what he’s doing—witness, present company.”
Hugh was the same age as Fergus. They played on the same football teams, occasionally faced each other on a shinty pitch, and had downed many a wee dram together. No finer carpenter ever wielded a hammer, and the men liked working for him.
But God, Hugh could do with a proper thrashin’.
“In the space of less than two hours,” Fergus said, “I did not form an opinion of Maitland’s technical expertise. He’s smart, and he’ll gather information before he makes up his mind, but he’s a lawyer and admits freely that the trades have knowledge he lacks.”
Hugh gestured with the uneaten half of his bridie. “Which he oughtn’t have done the first time he met you. Showing you his cards. Or was he showing you only the cards he wanted you to see?”
“Or was he showing me the cards that would make me tip my hand?” Or—interesting notion—simply being honest?
“Poker’s a stupid game. Dinty Dundee says he saw the earl and the countess up on the parapets last night.”
Last night had been Friday, Dinty’s traditional drinking day. “Tell him to take his drinking down to the pub. Fern will let him sleep it off in the common.”
“It’s the waxing quarter moon, Fergus. You know what that means.”
“It means our great-great-great-granddas would have been out stealing each other’s cattle.”
Hugh balled up his second bit of trash, righted the barrel he’d been sitting on, and lobbed the paper over his shoulder lay-up fashion into the bin.
“When the earl and lady walk under a reiver’s moon, somebody’s courtship is about to commence.” He tossed the rest of his litter into the barrel and glanced around the room. “Somebody should clean this place up. Doesn’t do to let the American think we’re a pack of lazy slobs.”
He sauntered on his way, leaving Fergus to sweep the litter in the corner into the barrel.
“You will remove these precious items of Scottish history from these walls over my dead body,” Jeannie said, stepping nose to nose with Max.
Max resisted the urge to pinch his own nose shut. Henry’s exhaust fumes packed a wallop.
“We’ll talk,” Max said. “After I’ve made one phone call and seen the rest of the premises. We might be able to find another use for all of this... this...” Junk. Clutter. Nonsense. “Memorabilia, but it’s hardly a welcoming prospect.”
The dead animals in particular just didn’t…
“The purpose is to impress,” Jeannie said. “To announce the might and history of the family to any who come within these walls. To inspire a traveler granted hospitality to pause for a moment and consider their host’s stature and power. To make relations taking shelter at the family seat recall the might we have when we stand together.”
“The power Bonnie Prince Henry is wielding right now is about knocking me off my feet.”
Though Henry was apparently impressed by his mother’s ferocious lecture, as was Max. He’d seen Jeannie Cromarty’s personal fire as a cheerful glow, practical and gracious, if a bit buffeted by the winds of motherhood. The torch brandished in her words now had the power to singe, if not incinerate.
Jeannie laid the baby on a twelve-foot-long glass-fronted case that held more implements of murder and mayhem to go along with the collection on the walls. Max dug in the diaper bag and fished out wipes, a clean diaper, and a sealable plastic bag.
Also a stuffed bear with a lopsided grin.
Jeannie dealt with the dirty dipe, passing it tightly taped and rolled to Max, who sealed it up in the plastic bag along with the used wipes. Some things never changed. Jeannie faced at least two more years of this, which fact Max did not feel compelled to state out loud.
“Consider this,” he said, tossing the bear in the air and catching it. “Corporations with diverse boards and diverse workplaces have been shown to be more profitable. Those are precisely the successful, well-informed organizations that I hope will be booking their management off-sites, yearly retreats, and even holiday parties here. As many women as men will be walking through that door, making those arrangements, and deciding where to bring the family next summer. Do you really think dead animals and weaponry will impress that demographic with our hospitality?”
Jeannie tucked Henry against her shoulder. “Those are precisely the women who ought to understand an impressive display of power and familial fortitude.”
Max wasn’t going to win this debate in one round, and a short, white-haired woman who bore a striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth II stood smiling at the top of the steps.
“We’ll finish this discussion later,” Max said, hefting the diaper bag. “I understand that family history and a glorious past are part of the ambience unique to this property.”
“And you’d sell the lot of it on the internet.” Jeannie swept past him, trailing streams of affronted Scottish dignity. “Mrs. Hamilton, hello. How have you been?”
Jeannie had a gracious smile for the housekeeper, and much fussing and cooing over the baby ensued while Max took the phone back ou
tside to place his call to Maura.
She didn’t answer her cell, so Max phoned the cottage. The manager on duty told him Maura was in the shower, and he promised Max he’d have her call when she got out. Very likely, she was angry with Max, which the counselors had told him to expect. They’d also warned him that keeping to a set routine of phone calls and regular emails would require effort, but that Maura needed the structure and would adjust eventually.
Nobody had seemed concerned about Max making the same adjustment, but he would dearly, dearly liked to have heard Maura’s voice, even if only to endure her grumbling. Once the phone calls and emails were going well, Max would add video chats, again on a fixed schedule.
After rejoining the ladies, he was led from one high-ceilinged, plaid-covered room to another. The hall was enormous, the basements equally vast, the attics blessedly empty on one side of the house, horrifically full on the other. Everywhere, Max was assaulted by wool and plaid, plaid and wool, and more history than he’d been exposed to in his entire upbringing.
And the housekeeper spoke with obvious affection about the earl’s collection of whisky. The whisky hoard was the pride of several generations of earls, and Elias Brodie had exempted the transfer of any rights to his whisky from Max’s leasehold. The whisky could be displayed, but not consumed or sold, nor could it be removed from the premises without Elias’s permission.
“The larder is full,” Mrs. Hamilton said when Max had hiked the equivalent of the West Highland Way in stairs and corridors. “I made up both the earl’s apartment and the blue guest room, because I wasn’t sure if you preferred a view or proximity to the kitchen. I’ll be back on Wednesday to tidy up, and you can leave a list on the fridge of any groceries you’d like me to order. Please do recall to wipe your feet when you come in, Mr. Maitland. My nephew Dinty is among your crew up at the castle, and I know construction can be very dirty work.”
Verra dairty wairk.
She went on her way after giving Jeannie a hug and Henry a smile. Max felt as if he’d been given a warning.
“You never did eat your fish and chips,” Jeannie said. “Shall I heat them up for you?”
To tour the house, Max had mustered false energy, keeping up with a woman old enough to be his granny, rather than admitting that jet lag was landing on him like a load of wet cement.
Or possibly, jet lag, low blood sugar, and a growing sense of having bitten off more than he could chew. Again.
“I want to sit and make a map of this place while ideas are fresh in my mind, but you don’t have to cook for me. I’m a bachelor, and I know how to fend off starvation. I have some protein—”
Jeannie pushed past him. “Spare me your protein bars. Mrs. Hamilton would be mortified by such disrespect for her full larders.”
Jeannie led the way to the kitchen, which Max might not have been able to find on his own. The Baron’s Hall presented an impressive façade to the front drive, but the place felt to Max like two or three country houses connected by glassed-in walkways, galleries, and hidden stairways. The result was several enclosed courtyards, which would, of course, need serious landscaping before they’d become the charming semi-open green spaces the castle guests should adore.
The kitchen was a metaphor for what Max hoped the Hall would become—the past respectfully in evidence, the latest conveniences right at hand. Exposed beams, a brick hearth, bay windows at ground level, a porcelain sink full of house plants—herbs, perhaps?—and plaid towels, runners, and a hearth rug all pointed to the past.
The enormous, gleaming appliances faced toward the future, thank God, and the barstools at the end of the counter were blessedly padded—with plaid cushions, of course.
“Will you throw a pot of boiling water on me if I say some of the plaid has to go?”
Jeannie passed him Henry and opened the fridge. “Of course not. Wool is durable. As a result, virtually any article of tartan cloth to cross the threshold in the past two centuries is still on the premises. There’s a lasagna in here. I hope you like pepperonis. Mrs. Hamilton made you a salad, and there’s a sticky toffee pudding cooling on the range.”
Henry was watching his mom, as was Max. Jeannie knew her way around this kitchen, had hauled the kid all over Hogwarts’s plaid annex, and had been prepared to swing her verbal claymore at any Yank presuming to dishonor the family baubles.
Max said nothing as Jeannie excavated a backhoe-bucket-sized piece of lasagna from the dish, stole a pepperoni from the top, and set the lasagna on a plate. He should be doing that himself, he could be doing more than finger-wrestling Henry, he should be scaring up a pencil and sketch pad, he should—Instinct, or something close to it, dropped an insight into Max’s tired, daunted mind. I need Jeannie Cromarty.
“Will you stay for the all-hands meeting on Monday?” Max asked.
She stared into the gleaming bowels of the fridge. “I’d rather not. Your plans for this place and my notions about it will put us in conflict.”
“Exactly. When I’m in conflict with you, you will get in my face, explain my error, set me straight, and not miss a beat. If I’d asked a crew of Fergus’s laborers to pack up the entrance hall, they’d have done it, then punctured my tires some dark and stormy night.”
Jeannie thunked a carton of half-skim milk onto the counter. “They’d alert Elias to your daft scheme and then invite you to play shinty. Don’t accept. It’s a glorified brawl followed by a drinking competition among the fallen. Where’s the—?” She extracted a long, serrated knife from the butcher block knife holder on the counter and sliced off two hunks of what looked like homemade bread. Onto each, she troweled a wheelbarrow’s worth of organic butter.
“You will educate me without drawing blood,” Max said. “You will stop me before I’ve ripped out too much plaid, but agree that some of it needs to go.”
She paused, knife in hand. “Is that a metaphor?”
“It’s a fact. You can save me a lot of time and hassle, probably a lot of money too. This is why Elias wanted a family member’s hand on the tiller.”
“Elias wanted to be able to stick his nose into your business. He’s good at that, and he always has the best intentions.”
She bit off a corner of bread and got a smear of butter on her cheek.
Max wanted to lick it off, a troglodyte impulse he was too tired and hungry to keep trapped in his lizard brain.
“So you’ll stay for the meeting?”
“I’ll think about it. Henry’s falling asleep.”
Makes two of us. “I can eat with one hand.” And had on many occasions. “Take a load off, Jeannie, and tell me what the guidelines are for renovating the Baron’s Hall.”
Because he did need her— or to be precise, his project did—and Max was determined that what his project needed, his project would get.
Chapter Six
Jeannie Cromarty was more passionate than she looked.
Max’s conclusion wasn’t sexual, but rather, the result of several hours of arguing, discussing, brainstorming, wandering the Hall, poking around in the closets and corners, and passing Henry back and forth.
The baby was a solid little guy, which made Max happy in an entirely irrelevant way. No heart surgeries for Henry, no apnea monitors starting with the first night home from the hospital, no dreading every appointment with the pediatrician and endless rotation of specialists. A new parent shouldn’t have to deal with those heartaches, much less a new single parent.
“Are you ready for some sticky toffee pudding?” Jeannie asked when she and Max had returned to the kitchen.
“I’m ready for bed.” Max had showered and borrowed a pair of Elias Brodie’s sweats, along with a worn T-shirt that felt like the greatest comfort known to weary man. “But the sun isn’t cooperating.”
“This is the gloaming.” Jeannie turned the kettle on and removed a plaid towel from a square glass pan that looked like it held gingerbread. “This time of year, we don’t get pitch dark most nights. We get a summer sky. I
f the moon’s neither full nor new, the countess and her earl are sometimes seen walking the parapets.”
Max gently extracted the salt shaker from Henry’s fist, though not soon enough to protect Max’s knees from being dusted. “Have you seen them?”
“I have not, but then, I’m only here for weddings, family gatherings, or lately, to collect paperwork from Fergus. Elias saw them fairly often as a boy and said they are the most cheerful, besotted ghosts in all of Scotland. He saw them again before he left for Maryland this spring and joked about the legend being a lot of nonsense.”
This was normal for her, to talk of ghosts at the family castle.
Henry went after the pepper grinder next, which Max let him have. “What’s the legend?”
She set a glass measuring cup of some dark syrup in the microwave. “If the earl and his countess walk under a reiver’s moon, somebody’s courtship is about to begin.”
In two seconds flat, Henry figured out how to twist the pepper grinder and add to the mess. “That’s the whole legend? No foretelling of deaths, misfortune, or calamity?”
“We get the ghosts we get, Mr. Maitland, though there are many family stories. Elias has a desk in his study upon which Auld Michael is said to have first kissed his Brenna when he came home from ten years of war. Earl Michael left a history of the Napoleonic Wars as seen by a Brit from the French side. He was a spy rather than a traitor, though nobody would use that term at the time to speak of a man with a title.”
The microwave dinged, which distraction allowed Max to rescue the pepper grinder from Henry’s grasp. An aroma of caramel heaven filled the kitchen as Jeannie cut two pieces of gingerbread and set them in the microwave next.
“Is there a marketing angle to having besotted ghosts?” Max asked.
She passed a glance over Henry, who was gumming Max’s forearm. Not exactly gumming—Henry had a few teeth.
“Who knows?” Jeannie said. “Perhaps at Valentine’s Day. Michael and Brenna had seven children. One doesn’t accomplish that after a ten-year separation without a significant level of marital accord.”
Scotland to the Max Page 7