Swept off Her Feet (10 page)

I made a mental note to ring Max and ask him if we had any bloodthirsty clients with a
Braveheart
fixation.

“Were these family weapons?” I asked. “Or were they . . . collected?”

“Probably picked up off the field of battle,” said Duncan cheerfully. “Or found in the gardens. It’s always been a lively area, Berwickshire. Sometimes English, sometimes Scottish, with reivers—or bandits, I suppose you’d call them—mounting raids over the Border on both sides, Scottish lords trying to control the northern lands. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing. Marrying, slaughtering, pillaging. And that’s just the prince Bishops! Nothing like that now, of course! Well . . .” His face went thoughtful. “The Ball Committee has its ups and downs, but that’s Janet and Sheila for you! Old habits die hard!”

“Ooh!” I said, intrigued by a massive parchment painted
with a family tree, the red lines surrounded by thistles and ferrets rampant. “Is this the McAndrew line? Wow! How far does it go back?”

“All the way to 1269!” he said proudly. “There I am. And Robert, of course.” Duncan peered and pointed to himself, right at the bottom. The line of succession swung wildly from generation to generation as unmarried heirs failed to grab the prize and other brothers’ urgently produced children sprouted like grapes on a vine. There were also a lot of nuns.

I
loved
a family tree. I’d tried to persuade my parents to help me do ours, but they couldn’t see the point. And looking at this, I could sort of see why: there were McAndrews here when the Spanish Armada was passing by, whereas all I’d discovered was that most of my dad’s male relatives were called Ernest.

I tried not to touch the glass with eagerness. There was Ranald Claude Duncan, born in 1879, and Violet Esme, born 1884, married in 1902; their five children, Clarence, born in 1903, James in 1904, Beatrice in 1907, Carlisle, 1915, Lachlan, 1916 …

“Robert’ll have to get a move on,” observed Duncan. “Don’t want to run out of space! Still, fingers crossed things are moving in that direction at last! Wink, wink! Now, up we go! I thought we’d start upstairs.”

“Oh, aren’t we going to begin in the main living rooms?” I asked, thinking of Max’s mysterious table. If I could find that, it’d be a good start. “I—”

“No, no!” Duncan interrupted. “I’d rather you had a look at some of our—how shall I put it?—surplus furniture first.” He ushered me onward, past a cabinet full of Venetian glass and up the main staircase. He moved pretty quickly for a big
man in tight trousers, and I found myself jogging up the stairs to keep up.

“We pop a lot of stuff out of harm’s way before the ball, you see,” he explained, stopping by a thick door. “Gets a bit
raucous
, if you know what I mean: people swept away by the party spirit, champagne flowing all night . . .”

“Really?” I breathed.

He had to put his shoulder to the door to get it open, and I flinched at the ominous cracking noise. I couldn’t tell whether it came from the door or Duncan.

“Yes, well, between that and the reeling, the blood fairly gets going! It’s a marvelous night. Dinner beforehand’s a family tradition, started by my grandmother, Violet. Bit of an entertainer in her day, brought a full Limoges dinner service for sixty people over from New York when she married and made Ranald promise they’d use it once a year. Ingrid’s got a hard act to follow, bless her.” He stepped back triumphantly as the door swung open. “Now, I’m confident you’ll find at least ten wonderful items in here.”

I took a deep breath. China-blue walls with white molded swagging were just about visible behind the stacks of brown furniture and lumpen china. It was as if the furniture had gone feral and bred indiscriminately—tables with chairs, sideboards with linen racks, and everything covered in crocheted antimacassars. I could barely imagine the carpet, let alone the historical scenes that had once taken place in here.

“And this is just
one
of our spare-furniture rooms!” Duncan guffawed. “You should see the attic!”

I couldn’t see where to start. I gazed around, but all I could see was brown. Brown wasn’t great, when it came to finding cash-convertible antiques.

Was Max’s table in here? It could be. But so could a whole stuffed polar bear, for all I could make out.

“Take your time, pull out the drawers, do whatever it is you experts do,” said Duncan, tenderly wiping the dust off a glass case containing an owl making short work of a stoat. “Would it help to hear a few of the amusing anecdotes about Kettlesheer? Such as the time Uncle Carlisle had the pest controllers in to get to the bottom of the rattle in the attic, and ended up calling the parish exorcist! Turned out to be the ghost of . . .”

I was torn. Part of me was longing to hear some rip-roaring tales of country-house antics, but the larger part of me needed to get on with the task at hand. It was a bigger job than I’d anticipated. Much bigger. Plus I wanted to poke around in the hundreds of drawers on offer and really lose myself in the deliciously dusty atmosphere.

“Maybe we could do both?” I said. “But I do need to get online. Where’s the best place for me to connect to the Internet?” I gestured to my laptop bag. “I might need to e-mail some photos back to my partner in London, for a second opinion.”

“Internet?” Duncan raised his eyebrows.

“You do have broadband, don’t you?”

“Broad
band
,” repeated Duncan. “No, I don’t think we do.” His face brightened. “There’s a fax machine in my office, if that’s any good?”

“No Internet?” I croaked.

“If you ask me, you young people are too reliant on it.” Duncan actually wagged a schoolteachery finger at me. “You need to use this!” He tapped his head, then his eyes. “And these!”

“Right.” I swallowed. “So, tell me about your childhood here! Did you fish for salmon and that sort of thing?”

“We did indeed.” Duncan began edging his way between the sideboards toward the leaded windows, his hands behind his back like Prince Philip. “I remember learning to make butter from the cows that my grandmother kept down in the field behind Robert’s house, churning it in the old dairy and—Oh, dear.”

I looked up. Duncan was staring out at something, panic visibly freezing his eyebrows. He swiveled round, nearly knocking over a Chinese dragon, and started to squeeze his way back out.

“Something the matter?” I asked. “Please, do go on.”

“No, no! No, I’ve just noticed that Mrs. Learmont has arrived. For her Ball Committee meeting.” Duncan grimaced. “And I haven’t quite finished the, ahem, list of tasks she . . . Would you excuse me?”

And, like one of the ferrets on the family tree, he wriggled off.

Curious, I tiptoed onto the landing, and heard the front door open. Voices and a chill draft drifted up.

“. . .
yes
, Janet, I have. . . . Yes, I’ve
done
that. . . .”

It was an excellent balcony for eavesdropping. I leaned farther over the solid banister, at which point my eye was caught by a morose Regency-period nun, who could almost have been hung there on purpose, to deter nosey parkers. I jerked backward, and crept back into the Room of Writing Desks.

I spent nearly two hours dutifully going through every item, taking photographs and trying to put dates on things so Max could value them. The whole lot would fetch about two grand at auction, and to my immense disappointment there weren’t even any love notes or interesting trinkets left in the drawers, just old newspaper linings, which were fascinating—
the adverts! the news!—but definitely not the valuable table Max had wanted me to find.

I sat back on my heels. I was going to need more help.

But when I got my phone out of the bag, I discovered the castle was even more resistant to modern life than I’d thought: there was no reception.

I tried climbing on a desk, then standing near the window, then leaning out of the window, but still nothing. Even going out onto the landing and leaning out of the window seat didn’t help.

Footsteps echoed from the hall downstairs, and I could hear more posh Scottish voices discussing fire exits and “crash zones.”

I tucked my phone into my bag and racked my brains. I didn’t have time to waste photographing Victorian reproduction writing desks. Max needed something big, and by the sound of it, so did Duncan and Ingrid.

I closed my eyes and tried to listen to my instinct.

If I were the owner of this house, where would I put all the really good stuff? Not in a junk room. Not upstairs.

I’d put it where people would see it. Where it was warm. Where the social business happened.

The drawing room.

To my relief, there was something rather fabulous in the drawing room: a magnificent inlaid mahogany console table that I hadn’t noticed behind the huddled bodies of last night’s guests.

I laid my hands on it and felt the beeswax polish layered over hundreds of years, the bored rubbing of housemaids’ yellow dusters. I could picture tea being served on this, when tea
was a real ceremony. I could imagine Violet arranging a bowl of pink roses, fresh from the garden. It was a lovely thing.

The delicate inlay on the top was partially hidden by the froth of knickknackery that covered Kettlesheer’s every surface, in this case a cricket ball bowled in the 1979 Ashes series, many small pigs, Ingrid and Duncan’s wedding photo (bride and groom both sporting mad ’70s flares). I took some photos of the table on my phone, then made some notes. I reckoned it was George III, the quality plain to see in the pale ribbons and swags that rippled out of the polished wood.

As per Max’s tuition, I got down on my hands and knees to examine the underside, making sure it all matched up. While I was down there, I must admit I got a bit distracted by tapping along the edges, in search of hidden drawers, and it was only when I saw feet approaching at the other end of the room that I realized I was no longer alone.

The drawing room was so big that it was partially divided by couches and occasional tables. Underneath the console table, I was still hidden behind several rows of other furniture, and as the feet marched across to the couches, I weighed up whether I could inch my way out without looking ridiculous.

It didn’t help that they were already talking and, as a result, I was already eavesdropping.

“. . . can’t tell people where they have to stand, Janet! What are you going to do? Put up sheep pens?”

I recognized that amused voice: Sheila Graham, Fraser’s mum.

“Sheila, I have to disagree, dear. It’s perfectly possible for a skilled set of reelers to complete the reel and finish beneath the trothing ball.” A quick slap of a clipboard against a palm.
“Ingrid merely needs to
see
the possible collision zones and pad accordingly!”

I shuddered. I recognized those nasal tones too: Janet Lear-mont.

“I’m still not one hundred percent reassured about the fireplace,” said a querulous man’s voice. “It’s a potential fatality.”

“Gordon, no one in the two hundred years this ball has been taking place has had a problem with the fireplace,” said Sheila impatiently. “Unless you count the time Janet’s brother-in-law managed to get his—”

“That was a reaction to his medication,” snapped Janet.

I peered round the side of the table, and saw the Ball Committee arranging themselves on couches around a large tray of coffee and biscuits.

Sheila Graham was on one side, her firm jaw set as if she’d had it wired shut, and facing her was Janet Learmont. Between the flared nostrils and bared teeth, she was giving off a very Dragon-y vibe. Catriona perched on the sofa arm behind her, clutching her little dog. They were like clones, only Catriona had her long braid draped over one shoulder and Janet had an Hermès scarf patterned with bridles. Both wore natty tartan trousers and sheepskin vests.

Sitting nervously to one side was a tall, thin man with white hair holding a file marked
Health and Safety
, and in the middle was Ingrid McAndrew, who virtually had
Tense Nervous Headache?
stamped across her forehead.

Janet, and Catriona, and Catriona’s evil-looking terrier.

No,
I thought resignedly.
I am definitely trapped beneath this table now.

The Ball Committee wasted
no time on pleasantries and got straight down to the main business, which, it seemed, was the Reel of Luck, starring as it did two actual committee members.

“Now, while we’re on the topic of the first reel . . .” Janet’s voice trailed away, leaving a long pause. Then, when no one took her bait, she added, “What do we think?”

I held my breath as Janet stared pointedly at Sheila and Ingrid; Catriona was stroking her braid and pretending they weren’t talking about her, and Gordon was jabbing at his calculator. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t his problem.

“I suppose what I’m saying
since no one else will
,” sighed Janet, “is . . . are they up to it?”

“Don’t worry, Mummy,” said Catriona. “Robbie’ll make an effort on the night. He knows how important it is.”

“I wasn’t talking about Robert, darling. I mean, he really ought to have dragged himself along to those practices, but I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. If you’ll forgive me, Sheila, I was meaning Fraser and this new girlfriend of his. Alex, is it?”