‘Another task to tick off your list?’ he asked, taking a bite and groaning. ‘Wow. These are amazing. So good.’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘Seriously good.’
Izzy preened a little, delighted with his response. To date her cooking had been fairly basic – everyone liked freshly baked bread, and soup wasn’t exactly fancy – and she’d been dying to impress people with her new skills.
‘Thank you. Secret ingredients.’ But it was also that special ingredient of making food with love. She’d always associated mince pies with Christmas, more than another festive food, and she’d wanted this first Christmas in the castle to be perfect. She wanted the food to be extra special so that it would be memorable as this was the start of something that would live in her and her mother’s memories for ever. Christmas had always been the two of them, they’d never missed being together for the holidays.
She sat with her tea and took a bite of one of the mince pies, closing her eyes to savour the hit of citrus, the mellow warmth of the whisky and the crisp, buttery pastry. She smiled, her heart lifting in her chest. Everyone was going to enjoy this Christmas; she was going to make sure of it.
‘How’s your work going?’ she asked as they sat chatting. Ross had taken to coming down for a morning break and despite his earlier avowals that he didn’t want to be tied down to a specific time for lunch, he joined Duncan, Jeanette, Jim and her at twelve thirty most days.
‘Slow, and I’d get on a lot quicker if my editor didn’t keep phoning me every five minutes. Unfortunately, I’ve to go to Edinburgh on business one day next week.’
‘Will you be gone for long?’
‘No, I’m planning to go there and back in a day. I’ll leave very early and get back late but I don’t want to waste any more time.’
‘That’s a long day,’ mused Izzy. Thinking out loud rather than thinking it through, she found herself saying, ‘I don’t suppose I could scrounge a lift? I’ve some Christmas shopping to do as I need to buy gifts for the Carter-Joneses’ stockings and for Xanthe, Jeanette, Jim and Duncan. If you’re only going for the day, that would be perfect.’
Ross didn’t say anything for a moment and as the seconds ticked by, Izzy realised she might have assumed too much.
He frowned. ‘I still might decide to stay over for the night. My plans aren’t finalised yet. And like I said, I’ll be leaving very early.’
There was still a slight reserve about him as he took a long slug of coffee. Izzy watched his Adam’s apple dip as he stared out of the window.
‘Okay,’ she said, a little hurt at his obvious reluctance. She had thought they were at the very least friends. ‘Sorry I asked. It’s obviously a bit of an imposition.’ She turned her back on him, her face flaming with sudden embarrassment. Foisting yourself on someone else when they clearly didn’t want you was something she’d done with Philip. As he’d candidly said when they’d had that final showdown, she ‘was too much’. It had made her worry that she was too much like her mother even though she did her very best to be as likeable and easy-going as possible. It had become a habit to be the easy one when her mother could sometimes be the difficult one.
She turned her back on Ross and busied herself by grabbing a dustpan and brush to sweep up the dusting of flour on the floor. When she stood, Ross frowned and huffed out a long-suffering sigh.
‘McBride, you’re not an imposition,’ he said, but the obvious guilt on his face said otherwise. Still mortified, she muttered something about how much work she had to do and fled.
Chapter Eleven
The cold morning air stung her cheeks and bit at her lungs, leaving her a little breathless as she strode out of the castle, her feet crunching on the gravel drive. As clouds of steam puffed from her mouth, she wrapped a scarf around her neck, tucking the ends into her coat to keep the cold out.
‘McBride!’
She turned in surprise.
‘Ross.’ She greeted him with a forced smile. Thankfully she’d seen very little of him in the last couple of days, although she couldn’t shake that sense of deflation she’d felt when he’d refused her a lift to Edinburgh.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going down to the village to get a few bits. I thought I’d grab some sausages for dinner; it feels like a sausage and mash sort of day.’ And she’d make some nice red wine and onion gravy to go with it.
‘Mind if I join you? I’m going to the library. I need a break.’
It would have been downright churlish to refuse but hadn’t he done that himself, just two days ago? He’d made it quite clear he didn’t want her company. Well, not on a car journey at least. Was that because in the confines of a car there was no escape?
She silently shrugged, ignoring the quickening of her pulse and her wayward subconsciousness’s declaration that he was more than welcome.
He matched her brisk pace stride for stride, but then, it wasn’t the sort of morning for dawdling.
A pale, wintry sun glowed eerily through the wraith-grey sky, casting a flat light across the landscape. In the quiet air, their feet crunched across the frosted earth, the only other sound the harsh caw of a lone rook perched in a ragged, sprawling nest, one of many in a clump of ash trees.
Izzy took a deep breath and watched it billow out in front of her. She sighed and rolled her neck, not able to stay quiet and ignore him even though her first instinct was to leave any conversation to him.
‘I needed this.’
‘Me too.’
