Sally Wentworth - Tiger in His Lair

by Sally Wentworth

  Sally Wentworth - Tiger in His Lair

  No man would ever have a hold on her again!

  Romily's heart was sealed. She'd discovered that the man she loved, and who she thought loved her, was married. Hurt and humiliated, she left London for a job as cook at her brother's soon-to-open hotel in the Scottish Highlands.

  Then she met James Gordon, a Highland laird angry about the encroaching tourists the hotel would bring—and more handsome and virile than the devil himself.

  Slowly he pried at the seals of Romily's heart. And despite her vow, despite her fears, Romily found his presence exciting, enticing…and dangerous.

  CHAPTER ONE

  So this was Abbot's Craig. Romily pulled the car into the side of the road and sat back in her seat, wondering for the hundredth time whether she'd done the right thing in coming here. But London had been intolerable and this offer of a job had come along at just the right moment. Or so it had seemed at the time. Then, Romily had felt so heartbroken and bitter that all she'd wanted to do was to get as far away as possible from her job and the people she knew; she hadn't given a thought to Abbot's Craig's remoteness in the Scottish Highlands. But if it was being turned into a hotel then presumably some people must come to the area.

  From here, high up on the hill road, she could look down on to its pseudo-Gothic gabled roofs and turrets, on mellow brick walls and latticed windows set into stone mullions. It looked imposing enough, built at the height of the Gothic revival by a rich Victorian as a hunting-lodge, but now too costly for an ordinary family to maintain even as their main home, which was why Romily's brother and sister- in-law, Gerald and Carol Bennion, had decided to turn the place into a hotel after Carol had inherited it from her father at the end of last year. And they had asked Romily to take over the kitchens.

  It was a job she was quite capable of doing; she had no qualms about that. She had all the qualifications and experience it needed, and it would, in fact, be a step down after her last job, but it was only after she had committed herself that Romily began to wonder if it was a very wise move. She sighed, feeling fed up and not looking forward to the future at all, but then the weak March sun came reluctantly from behind a bank of cloud and shone on to the house, turning the windows into a thousand sparkling diamonds. The thick fir trees surrounding the house lost their sombre hues, and she glimpsed the blue waters of a lake down below in the valley. Her heart lifted a little. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all. The scenery, at any rate, was on a grand scale. Lifting her eyes to look further up the steep, craggy hillside, thick with fir trees, Romily glimpsed another building about a mile further on. This, too, looked to have high, turreted walls, but these appeared to be the battlements of a real castle from what she could see of it among the trees.

  The sun went in again, making the landscape bleak and inhospitable, Romily shivered and started the car, looking forward to a hot drink and a soak in a bath after the long drive from London. A little further on she came to a side turning to the left, marked by a board with 'Abbot's Craig Hotel' painted in rough letters on it. Presumably Gerald hadn't got round to erecting a proper sign yet. Which made Romily wonder just how near he was to being ready to open on the date he'd given her.

  When she drove down the road and reached the house her misgivings deepened. There were piles of builders' materials and tools in the courtyard, even a bath standing rather forlornly waiting to be installed. The front door stood wide open and from inside there came the sound of hammering and an electric drill. Well, at least something was going on.

  Getting out of the car, Romily stretched her cramped legs as she looked round the garden in the fading light. It looked neglected and overgrown, but the basics were there: a good layout and plenty of shrubs to give colour, but the nicest thing about it was the view down the steep hillside to the lake and the rugged peaks on the other side.

  'Thought I heard a car. Hallo, Romily. How are you?'

  Romily turned at the sound of her brother's voice. It was the first time she'd seen him in over two years and he seemed to have changed, got older. Not that she knew him very well. He was her elder by fifteen years and was actually only her half-brother. They had the same father but different mothers, and hadn't been brought up together. The last time she'd seen him had been at their father's funeral when Gerald had flown back from the Middle East where he'd been working, but when Carol's father left her Abbot's Craig they had decided to return to Scotland.

  'Hallo, Gerald. I'm fine, thanks.'

  He didn't kiss her or anything, they weren't that close, and Romily was glad of it; right now she didn't want a close relationship with anybody, even a brother.

  'I'll take your cases in.'

  She unlocked the back of the car and Gerald lifted out her two large cases. 'Is this all?' he asked in some surprise.

  'Yes, that's it. Just two cases.'

  He looked at her for a moment, then carried them through the wide doorway into the hall, which again was cluttered with ladders and tins of paint.

  'How's it going?' she asked doubtfully.

  'Oh, coming along, you know.' But he didn't sound at all optimistic. 'Come and say hallo to Carol.'

  Leaving her cases at the bottom of the stairs, Gerald led her through a swing door into what must have been the servants' quarters of the house and along a corridor to the huge kitchen. Her sister-in- law was standing at a small electric cooker, trying to prepare a meal in a room strewn with pieces of new equipment that hadn't yet been installed: two large freezers, a commercial cooker, a dishwasher and lots of cartons and crates that hadn't yet been unpacked.

  'Romily! Am I glad to see you.' There was a note of genuine relief in Carol's voice and she had no reserves about greeting her with a kiss, but Romily knew that with Carol it didn't mean anything, she greeted everyone she knew like that. 'As you can see, we're in a state of chaos,' she said with a laugh and a wave of her hand round the room. 'We're depending on you to set it all to rights for us. Did you have a good journey? I expect you're hungry. Dinner won't be long. Would you like a sherry first? Find her one, will you, Gerald?'

  Romily had opened her mouth to answer the first question, then shut it again as Carol had gone on without a break. It had been such a long time that she had forgotten that this was Carol's normal mode of conversation.

  'How are the boys?' she asked, as soon as she could get a word in.

  'Oh, they're fine. It's lovely to be near them again, although unfortunately they won't be coming for Easter because they've arranged to go skiing with their school.'

  'That's a shame.' There was surprise in Romily's voice; because Gerald had worked abroad, his two sons had been sent to boarding-school in England and she had thought that the family would have taken every opportunity to be together now that they were back in Britain. As the boys' aunt she had conscientiously visited them at school every term and reported back to their parents, but she felt no closer to the boys than she did to Gerald and Carol. They had always accepted her politely enough and quite enjoyed showing off their young and pretty aunt to their friends, but that was as far as it went. Only once or twice with the younger boy, Simon, had Romily ever felt the slightest emotional bond. On one occasion when she'd visited them he had clung to her hand when she was about to leave, and once he'd written her a letter and put 'With love from Simon' and a big 'X' on the bottom. But that was at the beginning, when he'd first been sent to school at the age of five, and he had soon stopped writing at all.

  The three of them ate dinner at a small table pushed against a wall in the kitchen, which was about the only available space. The food was all right, but Carol was no cook and didn't pretend to be. Most of her life, here
before she was married and out in the Middle East, she had had servants to do the cooking and everything else for her. Presumably she expected to run the hotel on the same lines as she had organised her servants, but if she didn't intend to do any work herself up short. She mustn't prejudge. Maybe both Carol and Gerald were willing to work hard to make the hotel a success.

  'You said you wanted to open in time for Easter,' she reminded them. 'Do you think you'll be ready by then?'

  'We'll have to be,' Gerald said rather grimly. 'I admit things haven't gone quite as well as we'd planned. Late deliveries and running into snags with the bathroom conversions, that kind of thing, but we must have at least four rooms ready by Easter because I've taken bookings for them.'

  Romily looked from one to the other of them, saw the frown and tiredness around Gerald's eyes and heard the note of strain in Carol's overbright chatter. Things obviously weren't going well for them and it was beginning to show. She smiled encouragingly. 'Well, now that I'm here you'll have an extra pair of hands. I'll soon get this kitchen sorted out, and I'll take over the cooking which will give Carol more time to help.'

  Gerald gave her a grateful grin. 'Thanks. It was a real boost when you said you'd join us. Good chefs are like gold-dust in the Highlands!'

  Which rather tactless remark made Romily wonder wryly how many they'd tried to get before they thought of asking her. But maybe she was doing them an injustice; she felt pretty sour and suspicious of everyone's behaviour towards her at the moment. Once bitten, forever shy.

  After dinner, Gerald showed her round the rest of the hotel. Although this had been Carol's family home and she and Gerald had lived here for some years after their marriage, Romily had never been here before, and she was impressed by the sheer size of the place. There was a big room overlooking the lake that was to be a lounge for the guests with a smaller room opening off it as a bar. Then there was a dining-room, and a room that Gerald said had been a billiards-room was being made into a TV- cum-writing-room. 'Really somewhere where they can park the kids in the evenings,' Gerald told her. 'Not that we expect to get many children staying here—I've only advertised double rooms.'

  'How many rooms?'

  'We hope to have eight this year, with possibly another two in the house and three more in the converted stables, if we can run to it, next year.'

  'And what about your own accommodation?'

  'We're having the attic floor made into a flat with two bedrooms, a sitting-room, kitchen and bathroom. Though I'm beginning to wonder if even that will be ready on time,' he added pessimistically.

  'And where have you put me?'

  'In the old housekeeper's room. Through here.' He led the way to a room in one of the projecting turrets at the south-west corner of the house, looking out over the lake. To reach it you went up the main staircase to the first floor, then through a door and up a tiny little stair in the thickness of the wall to a round and quite spacious room.

  'You've got your own bathroom opening off it,' Gerald told her, indicating a door in the far wall. 'But I'm afraid it's the original plumbing. We couldn't afford to have that one modernised as well at the moment.'

  'Don't worry, this will do fine. Do you think you could bring my cases up now, Gerald? The drive is beginning to catch up on me.'

  'Yes, of course.'

  He went away and Romily looked round the room. There was a single brass bed, a wardrobe and dressing table, an old button-backed chair with frayed upholstery and a circular rug on the floor.

  Not much, but the furniture had a shabby comfortableness about it that was somehow welcoming. She wondered who the housekeeper had been and whether she'd been turned out when Gerald and Carol took over. This one room would have been her home, not the whole house, just as it was about to become Romily's home.

  Gerald heaved her cases in. 'Anything else you need, just shout. Carol's put soap and towels in the bathroom. Well, see you in the morning, then. Hope you sleep all right.'

  'Thanks, I'm sure I will. Goodnight.'

  He nodded and left. Romily gave a small sigh, kicked off her shoes, and went over to the window set into the deep thickness of the wall. It was so dark that it was impossible to see anything, but for a few minutes she just stood there, listening to the silence. After working and living in a large hotel in the heart of London it was deafening!

  Her face grew grim at the thought of London. She had been so happy there at first, meeting Richard, gaining experience under master chefs, and gradually being given more responsibility. But the months had turned into years as she waited for him to commit himself, and then it had all blown up in her face and everyone had known what a fool he'd made of her.

  That kind of humiliation wasn't easy to forget, even though she had tried hard to put it behind her and concentrate on her work. But it was always there, all the staff knew about it and she hadn't been able to live it down. So she'd been right to get away. But to bury herself in this Scottish backwater when she could almost have had her pick of any hotel in Europe? Romily turned back into the room and began to undress tiredly, telling herself that she didn't have to stay here for ever; she could see the hotel on its feet and then move on at the end of the summer when it closed. But the two years she had spent waiting for Richard to marry her now seemed like the most precious years of her life that had just been wasted, thrown away. She felt old, and bitter, and dried-up inside, as if she had no love and laughter left in her. Which was a hell of a way to feel when you were only twenty-five years old.

  The birdsong next morning acted like an alarm clock and woke her up as the sound of heavy traffic would never have done. For a second Romily couldn't think where she was, but one look at the room brought it all back. She was at Abbot's Craig and there was a great deal of work to do. Years of living in hotels made her get up as soon as she woke and she washed quickly and put on jeans and a sweater.

  But the window drew her, and this time she gave a gasp of wonder as she looked out. Watery sunshine lay across the lake and the forested hills that reached right to its shores. In the middle of the lake there was an island with what looked like a building on it, either a small house or a barn. The island seemed an interesting, mysterious sort of place and Romily wondered whether it belonged to Abbot's Craig. Perhaps fishermen used it or yachtsmen; she could see a jetty near the building. A movement on the lake caught her eye and she saw a boat, a powerboat from its speed, skimming across the grey water from the eastern side of the lake towards Abbot's Craig. For a moment she thought it must be coming there, but then she saw it go by and carry on until it was hidden by the trees and was lost to sight. Some holidaymaker out early, she supposed, and thought that the boat looked like fun. But there was no time to stand and stare, she had promised to take over the cooking and Gerald and Carol would be wanting their breakfast.

  For the next few days Romily worked really hard, supervising the men who were installing the kitchen equipment to the plan that she had carefully worked out, helping Gerald to strip off old wallpaper and put up new, painting woodwork, lining shelves for glasses and crockery, humping furniture. Whatever needed doing, she cheerfully lent a hand, and gradually some sort of order began to come out of the chaos. But it was hard work and when, on the Saturday morning, Gerald and Carol drove into Inverness to collect all the bed-linen they had ordered, Romily decided to give herself some time off.

  It was raining a little, but she longed for some fresh air so she borrowed a pair of Carol's Wellingtons and an anorak and went out for a walk. First she went down to the lake, finding her way to it through the garden, down a steep flight of overgrown stone steps to a kissing-gate, and then along a path leading through fir trees until she came to the water's edge. There was a small inlet below the house with a boathouse and a wooden jetty, both of which looked as if they had seen better days. The boathouse had once been a fine, large building of two storeys with stone walls and a slate roof, but many of the slates were broken or missing now and the rest were covered in lichen and mos
s, and in one place a branch had fallen from an overhanging tree and broken one of the windows in the upper storey.

  Romily looked up at it through the misty rain, wondering if it had been used for elegant picnic parties in Victorian and Edwardian times when Abbot's Craig was in its heyday. Had the ladies sat at the big window overlooking the water, watching their menfolk while they fished from boats on the lake? For a few moments her imagination painted a romantic picture of an era in which a privileged few lived in feudal comfort, but then she thought of the other side of the coin, of the ordinary working people on whose backs the rich lived. In those days she would have been considered too young and inexperienced even to be a cook, she would probably still have been just a kitchen maid, being grudgingly taught an occasional recipe by the matriarch in charge of the kitchens! Romily laughed to herself, but wondered rather wistfully which life would have been better, one in which you knew exactly what your place was, or today's, where you rose or fell on your own merits and energy.

  The rain eased as the skies began to clear. Romily shook off these rather defeatist thoughts and turned inland, not following a path or making for anywhere in particular, just walking through the trees. Drops of water fell on to her from the pines overhead and splashed into her face when she moved aside low-lying branches, but eventually the rain stopped completely, which made walking more pleasant. Often she came to fallen tree trunks which she had to climb over, and she got a little out of breath, realising that she was climbing higher all the time. The soft earth of the forest floor gave way to occasional outcrops of rock and Romily began to wonder if she ought to turn back; she didn't want to get lost. But a little further on the going became much easier, the trees grew in parallel rows instead of haphazardly and the ground had been cleared of dead wood.

  She walked on, able to see the sky now through the tree branches, but presently she came to another, larger, outcrop of rock and climbed up to the top of it, where it formed a wide, deep shelf, hoping that she would be able to see where she was. Peering through the trees, Romily first looked downhill, but couldn't see the lake, then uphill and was surprised to see the battlements of a castle only about a quarter of a mile away. It must be the one she had seen from the road above Abbot's Craig on the day she had arrived. For a moment she toyed with the idea of going to have a closer look, her eyes lingering curiously on the castellated walls, but decided that she had come far enough for today and would go back. She turned to look downhill again, wondering whether to try and find the lake or to head back the way she had come. While she made up her mind, the sun came out, giving the raindrops that still clung to the pine needles a dazzling iridescence. Romily lifted her face to the warmth, wondering why on earth she hadn't got herself a job in the South of France, or somewhere equally hot, instead of this wet and inhospitable land.