Tidings of Great Boys

by Shelley Adina

  As Gillian would say, all the neurons in my brain lined up and fired at once. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? It’s not to help me put together the party—it’s to talk with Dad about what’s to be done.”

  “Of course I’m here for your party.”

  “But that isn’t all.”

  “No.”

  “What does Dad say?”

  She looked away, out the window over the trees of the park. Since we were on the third floor, she could see quite a distance. “He doesn’t know. Because… darling, this is difficult for me to admit, so I’ll just say it. When we divorced, part of the settlement was that the money I’d been contributing toward the upkeep of Strathcairn would continue until I remarried.”

  I sucked in a breath. “You’re not—are you—”

  “No, no, of course not.” She crossed the room to sit beside me, and gave me a quick hug. “If anyone would know about such a thing, you would.”

  “I’ve been gone since September.”

  “I have no doubt your endless social resources would have informed you. But what I was saying is that, with the capital shrinking, the percentage of my income going to Strathcairn has been reduced, too. Which is why the film people working here last year were such a godsend. Dad was able to keep afloat for another year, just because of the location fees they paid him.”

  “But now that year is almost over.”

  “And things are not looking good.”

  “Dad would never sell this place. Never.” I couldn’t wrap my brain round such a possibility. Our family had always been here. For my dad to sell up and move into an Edinburgh suburb was unthinkable. Where would he put the chickens, for one thing? And how would he live without his experimentations in the cellar, or his rambles over the hills with the dogs, or any of the things that both of us loved to do? Where would my horses go? Where would I go, for that matter? “It’s completely impossible.”

  “It’s not. That’s the sad thing. That’s also the unhappy news I have to break to him.”

  Now what Patricia had been saying all made sense. “You have to talk him into this self-sustaining plan. Turn this into a working estate again, and we can get through the economic downturn thing.”

  She ran a manicured hand over one cheek, and pushed her hair behind one ear. “Daddy isn’t exactly good at playing lord of the manor. Patricia has some good ideas, but the very thought of strange people overrunning the place would make him shriek and hide in the basement. You know it would.”

  “But he’s a good host. Look at him today. A bunch of strange people are overrunning the place, and he was in the kitchen gassing away with half of them.”

  “There’s a difference between family guests you’ve invited and paying guests inviting themselves.”

  “Yeah. About three hundred pounds a night.”

  She smiled, a sad, rueful smile. “We could only hope.”

  “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “I can’t involve you in this, darling. This is for your father and me to work out.”

  “How can you work it out when you haven’t actually spent any time with him in years?”

  “We have a very civil relationship, as I hope you’ve observed. There’s no need for dramatics.”

  “Yes, but how do you even start a conversation like that? Graham, we’re going to lose Strathcairn and four hundred years of your family’s history unless you turn it into a hotel.” I mimicked my mother’s plummy Belgravia tones. “That will go over well.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “You could start with your feelings for him.” The words leaped out of my mouth and into the space between us with no warning at all, and hung there, waiting, while Mummy stared at me.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh, don’t give me your countess face, Mummy. You’ve seen the way he looks at you. If you haven’t, I have some video to show you.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I think that’s the third reason you braved the trains and a snowstorm to come up here.”

  “I think you’re imagining things.” She got up and returned to her empty suitcase. With nothing left to do, she began to zip up the exterior pockets. The zippers made tiny screeching sounds in the silence.

  “When are you going to forgive him for something he did before you were ever married?”

  “Lindsay Margaret Eithne MacPhail, that is ancient history and absolutely none of your business. I’m sure your guests are looking for their hostess. You’re being terribly rude to them.”

  “My guests are listening to the Queen’s speech, along with everyone else in the house. And since I nearly got blown up by David Nelson, that ancient history is very much my business.”

  “Please don’t remind me of that dreadful person.”

  “But he’s the reason you won’t trust Dad again, isn’t he? You hate that he had a kid and didn’t tell you, even though he didn’t know about David himself until five years ago. And you hate that his kid tried to hurt me.”

  “I refuse to discuss this with you.”

  “You don’t need to. You need to discuss it with Dad. Are you angry because I’m the only child you have and I can’t inherit the place?”

  “Of course not. We are discussing ways to keep from losing it, if you’ll recall. Poor Roger will appreciate it deeply, I’m sure.”

  My mother, the mistress of the evasion tactic. Well, I hadn’t palled round with Gillian Chang all these months without picking up a little of her knack for honesty. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Dad’s never going to talk about Strathcairn with you if he thinks it’s all about money. He’d rather go down with the ship than do that. But if he thinks he’s going to lose a home you might come back to, well, that’s different.” I held her offended and angry gaze with mine as I got up from the narrow guest bed. “Someone has to tell you the truth, Mummy. And the simple fact is, we’re going to lose Strathcairn unless you admit to Dad that the divorce was a mistake.” I paused in the doorway. “But first you have to admit it to yourself.”

  I closed the door quietly behind me.

  Which made the thump of one of her Balenciaga shoes hitting it all the more satisfying.

  DLavigne News flash!

  VTalbot Happy holidays to you, too. Are you in Montreal?

  DLavigne Oui. I’ve just had yet another message from Emily.

  VTalbot Emily needs a life.

  DLavigne She just got her course schedule. She’s taking a sewing class from MexiDog. Snore. How’s Italy?

  VTalbot Divine. Am expecting Mother and her husband tomorrow, so have one last night of freedom with the ragazzi. Rashid’s parents have a Tuscan village. Maybe I should text him and ask if I can crash.

  DLavigne I think you mean villa.

  VTalbot No. Village. What’s your news?

  DLavigne Emily’s pathetic obsession with Lissa and co. has her putting Google Alerts on them. But it may have paid off. Check out http://www.youtube.com/Xlfjk19284

  I FOUND ALASDAIR wandering in the gallery, looking up at the portraits. “Looking for a family resemblance?”

  He stopped under a huge painting of a proper Victorian family. The mother’s blue silk skirts practically engulfed her two children sitting at her feet, and all you could see of the paterfamilias behind it was his top half. His left hand rested on the top of a broken pillar, and his right on his wife’s bare shoulder.

  “The material in that dress could clothe an entire African village.”

  “You’re probably right. That’s my great-great-grandfather on Mummy’s side. He’s the one responsible for the family fortune—including some African villages, when it comes to that. He invested in diamond mines. I suppose the dress was his way of telling people how much money they had.”

  “Your mum doesn’t look like them at all.”

  “It’s Victorian. Paintings back then conformed to some ideal of beauty, not what people actually looked like.”
<
br />   “You know a lot about painting?”

  I shrugged. “Just what I learned in art history, and from growing up surrounded by them.”

  “Whereas I’m from the kind of family that would produce a traveling painter, too scared to do anything but paint the mistress of the house as if she were a beauty. Otherwise he wouldn’t get paid.”

  “Why didn’t you go home for Christmas, Alasdair?”

  My soft question seemed to surprise him into truthfulness. “And have to pick my mum and her whiskey bottle up off the floor? And scour the town bars looking for my aunts? No, thanks.”

  Chagrined, I felt the blood surge into my face. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t been home since I left school. I tell people I’m on my own.”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I am. Doctors make a lot of money, though. I won’t be poor forever.”

  “So do people in films. Maybe Gabe would do something for you.”

  “Why should he? He’s done enough for me, and it’s only because of Lissa anyway.”

  I flinched before I could control my own reaction. “I know.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Gabe only invited me because he thought Lissa and I had something going. He thought he was doing something for her. Like I’m a gift he could present to her, all wrapped up in a borrowed jumper.” He was still wearing Dad’s sweater. Not that I could blame him. The gallery wasn’t exactly tropical.

  “Aren’t you? I’ve seen how you look at her.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Like you want to be her personal gift.”

  “Then you’re wrong. We had a bit of a thing last year, but that’s all it was. Over as soon as she left.”

  “And her dad was okay with that? She thinks she’s committed some kind of sin, having a ‘bit of a thing’ with an older man. To hear her tell it, they’d have a cow if they found out about you.”

  He huffed out a breath of air in a laugh. It wasn’t quite cold enough in the gallery for me to see it condense in front of his mouth, but it was close.

  “They know. Tell her to relax.”

  “So it’s all over.”

  “There was hardly enough there to be over, but yes.” He paused. “Are you glad?”

  My breath clogged in my chest and I lost the ability to speak.

  He rushed in to fill the vacuum. “I’m sorry. That was stupid. Forget I said anything. So, who’s in this picture down here? Is this your dad?”

  My thoughts tumbled like clothes in a dryer. I couldn’t reach in and pull one out, so my mouth operated on autopilot. “No, my grandfather. The boy with him is his twin brother, who’s my cousin Roger’s granddad. Roger will inherit Strathcairn.”

  If there’s a Strathcairn left to inherit.

  I pushed that thought back into the whirling dryer and slammed the door on it. “He and my uncle and aunt are coming up from Edinburgh tonight for the family supper.”

  “I feel awkward intruding on your family party.”

  Finally the gears of my brain meshed and engaged my mouth properly. “I’ve discovered lately that my friends are like family. I wanted the girls to come with me for Christmas because they’re the closest thing I have to sisters. And I want you to feel that way, too.”

  “Like your brother?” He cleared his throat. “Thank you. Not quite what I—thank you.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant at all.”

  “Thanks for the tour of your family, Lindsay. I’ll see you downstairs for dinner, shall I?” He looked down at himself. “Remind me to change out of this before I turn up at the table.”

  “Alasdair, listen—”

  “Are those the stairs? I’ll see you later.”

  And before I could get the words out, or put out a hand to stop him, he’d rushed down to the end of the gallery and taken the stairs to the floor below, two at a time. He’d find himself in a warren of unused presentation rooms, with the furniture covered in sheets, but he was a smart lad. He’d find his way out.

  Now if only I could find my way out of the maze of my own stupidity.

  What on earth was the matter with me? I could walk into a room full of diplomats and minor royalty and own it. I could take on the likes of Vanessa Talbot on her own turf and crush her with a single sentence. So why couldn’t I simply open my mouth and tell a boy that yes, I was glad he wasn’t in love with my friend, and no, I would never dream of thinking of him as a brother?

  I clutched my hair. “Auuuggghh!”

  “Mac? Are you okay?”

  I whirled to see Carly standing in the doorway at the far end of the gallery. A weight seemed to lift from my chest.

  “You are exactly the person I need to see. I need some advice from an expert.”

  “About what?”

  “About men.”

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  Date posted: 12/25/09

  More in People

  chapter 13

  I NEED HELP.” My voice echoed in the gallery, magnifying my idiocy to stentorian proportions. “You’re the only one I can talk to.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Carly closed the distance between us and sank onto a settee under a portrait of a hunt in full chase. Must be one of Mummy’s. Dad’s family seemed to keep the pictures of blood sports to a minimum.

  “You’ve managed to hang onto Brett Loyola for nearly a year. That makes you the expert.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with hanging on.” She made herself more comfortable, slipping off her flats and tucking her feet under her. “He cares about me. I care about him. Simple as that.”

  “Mmphm.” Don’t be smug. “But what about in the beginning? You didn’t just walk up to one another and say, ‘Hey, let’s go out.’ If you did, I’m leaving right now.”

  “Of course not. I spent the first six months being completely invisible. Then, when a miracle happened and he talked to me, you came along and suddenly wallpaper was more interesting than me. So I thought, at least.”

  “And then all the drama over David Nelson happened.”

  “Right. And there was Brett, in it up to his neck. Up until the point where he actually kissed me, I thought he was just being polite.”

  “Yes, politeness is the first thing about Brett that jumps out at you.” Sarcastic much?

  “No, the first thing is the fact that he’s drop-dead gorgeous.” Carly twinkled at me.

  That, I had to admit, was true. “But how did you get him to notice you? Especially if you thought he liked m—er, someone else?”

  “Lending him my chem notes helped.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any of those handy,” I said. “Though if I thought they’d work, I’d find a white lab coat, stat.”

  Outside the mullioned windows, fat snowflakes began to drift to the ground.

  “You’re crushing on Alasdair, aren’t you?”

  A person just didn’t lie to a girl with eyes like that. Carly and I were beyond lies and little self-protections, anyway. I owed her honesty, and a lot more besides.

  “Yes. As if the whole house can’t tell.”

  “Oh, I don’t think anyone else knows. I thought he might like Lissa, though. And when you mentioned someone else, I figured I was right.”

  “Fortunately, you’re not. He told me himself it was over. But unfortunately, I’m an idiot.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I made a jerky gesture toward the back stairs. “You didn’t see me making a fool of myself a few minutes ago. Now he thinks I can’t stand him. Or that I want to be like a sister to him.”

  “Then you need to fix it.”

  “But how?” I pulled one of the cushions out from behind my back and wrapped my arms round it. “I can’t just walk up to an older man and say, ‘Hey, I lik
e you. Want a snog?’”

  Carly giggled. “I bet you could.”

  “I could, yeah. And have done. But this is different.”

  Carly blinked at me. “What makes it different?”

  I gave the cushion a squeeze. “When he got out of the car yesterday, something about him just… He doesn’t have a very happy family. And because of it there’s something hurting inside him.”

  “And you think you can make it better?”

  I shook my head. “I’m no good at that kind of thing. Strategy, yes. Plans and goals, yes. But people? I’m notoriously bad at that.”

  “I remember the first time I met you. I didn’t know whether to throw something at you or slam the door and run.”

  “Exactly.” I sighed, and the dust from the cushion went up my nose and made me sneeze. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be horrid—well, sometimes I do—but I didn’t then. I was just so far from home and all I could think to do was brazen it out.”

  “That came in handy, though. It put Vanessa Talbot in her place.”

  I shook my head. “That girl. She’s either very insecure or insufferably arrogant. I can never tell which. Is it true the romance with the prince is cooling off?”

  “Brett told me she was in Italy for Christmas, and Rashid flew home to Yasir. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If Rashid had any sense, he’d dump her. She’s being all sweetness and light to him because she’s hoping to climb back on top of the social heap.”

  Carly shrugged. “Whatever. But we were talking about Alasdair.”

  So much for directing the conversation away from my pathetic self. “It’s a hopeless subject.”

  “No, it’s not. All you need is a little help. That’s what friends are for.”

  “But how?”

  “Leave it to us,” Carly said with a slow smile. “We’ll have Alasdair in the palm of your hand by Hogmanay.”

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  00:30:26

  Date posted: 12/25/09