Chapter Two
She was relieved to find the kitchen empty when she returned but just as she was taking her first grateful sip of tea, the door opened and a wiry man strode in, his salt and pepper hair still containing a few strands of faded red.
‘Ah, lassie, you’re back. I saw the car coming along the road earlier.’
‘Duncan, how are you?’ She smiled at the man who had worked at the castle for over twenty years. He was supposed to be retired, but he’d offered to help her with any information she might need about the estate and its history.
‘Not so bad, not so bad. How d’ye get on in Ireland?’
‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘I’ll no be embarrassing myself with my cooking.’ Her accent always became stronger whenever she spoke to Duncan. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Aye. I’ve got plenty to update you with.’ He shook his head and clicked his teeth.
‘Right,’ she said, busying herself with making him a cuppa.
‘I got that quote frae the builders about the roof repairs.’
‘That’s brilliant; thanks, Duncan.’ She gave him a grateful smile. They’d talked about it six weeks ago and she was impressed he’d remembered to fix it for her return.
He gave her a terse smile in return. ‘I dinna think you’ll be thanking me when you see the size of the estimate. Yon roof’s a bit worse than we thought.’
‘How much worse?’ asked Izzy, wrapping her fingers around her cup as if its warmth might offer some solace.
Duncan pulled his mouth into a variety of comical shapes.
‘You’d better spit it out.’
‘Yer looking at twenty thousand as a minimum.’
The tea swirled in her stomach in a nauseous wave. ‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘They might be able to do a bit of patching in the short term but the whole lot over the east wing needs replacing.’
Izzy nodded dully, trying not to feel sick.
‘On the good side, the hens are still laying so at least we won’t go hungry.’
‘Great,’ she said with a weak smile.
‘It’s good to have ye back, lassie.’ He gave her a cheerful grin before his face darkened for a moment. ‘Verra good to have you back. Xanthe’s had me running about the place like a loon for the last couple of weeks. I’ll be glad of a rest, that I will.’
Izzy gave him a gentle smile, wondering what on earth her mother had been up to.
‘I’d best go find her. I haven’t seen her yet.’
‘She’s no changed,’ said Duncan, his mouth firming into a straight line.
When she walked out into the main hallway a few minutes later, she was hailed from the floor above by a voice as loud as a foghorn. ‘Izzy, darling! You’re home!’
Her mother leaned over the wooden balustrade and waved as if she were Her Majesty the Queen on the Royal Yacht Britannia as it came in to dock.
‘Yes, Xanthe, I’m home,’ Izzy muttered as her mother skipped down the stairs, almost getting tangled in the layers of lilac chiffon floating around her legs. At the bottom of the stairs, she clutched Izzy’s shoulders and the feathery plume of a matching lilac fascinator, perched like an exotic bird on her mother’s fire-engine red curls, almost took out Izzy’s eye. ‘Darling, look at those dark circles. We need to get you some cucumber.’
‘Why was there a strange man in the kitchen?’
Her mother took a haughty puff of a cigarette in a diamante holder and shot Izzy a wicked grin. ‘Nice, isn’t he? Those shoulders. He’s got a touch of the Jamie Fraser about him. I thought we might keep him.’
Izzy burst out laughing. Her mother was completely bonkers but there was no point trying to argue with her. She’d learned long ago that it was counterproductive. ‘You’re incorrigible. What’s he doing here? He thinks he’s staying for three months.’
