I was intrigued. As we drove into the old city I imagined there were plenty of spooky places.
I knew from my days as a travel agent that Edinburgh had a ghost tour and secret vaults beneath the city and a dungeon beneath the castle itself. ‘Are we staying in the castle?’ I asked.
He gave me the sideways smirk again and I fizzled with excitement.
Well, excitement, but also nervousness. This isn’t just an exciting and romantic New Year’s Eve getaway. It’s our chance to negotiate over Waterfall Cay and Glencorrie with Damion and Gloria. There’s so much at stake here. I’m sure Ethan must be feeling the same way, but he also has the added pressure of facing his brother again. The last time they met they almost came to blows. There’s no real way of knowing exactly how things will go and how this might resolve. Except of course, I do have my utmost faith in Ethan.
And I know Gloria will do her best to steer Damion around on the issue of Waterfall Cay.
‘From what you’ve told me, I think Glencorrie House also sounds a bit spooky.’ I said.
‘There is a resident ghost, actually. It’s a woman who was murdered in the music room sometime in the sixteenth Century. It’s said that she appears at night as a misty apparition.’
I looked at Ethan in horror and saw he was enjoying himself.
‘And have you actually seen this ghost yourself?’ I ask him in disbelief.
He laughed at my question, but he didn’t answer it.
‘I’m really looking forward to seeing were you spent your childhood.’ I told him, not imagining Skyfall this time but perhaps The House on Haunted Hill.
After negotiating a maze of one-way streets, we eventually drove up the Royal Mile. The tyres on our car thudded heavily against the steely grey wet sheen on the old cobbles, as Ethan drove slowly towards the famous castle. I could see it ahead of us, shrouded in an icy mist.
The dark shadows of a December twilight fell all around us, but I could see from the warm glowing lights in small pane windows, that all the restaurants and bars around here were busy.
A bagpiper busking outside St Giles’ Cathedral was dressed in the full highland tartan garb as he played ‘Flower of Scotland’ on his pipes, as tourists and locals and early revellers bustled by and threw him their spare change into his collection box.
Hearing the pipes and seeing the piper felt to me like a proper welcome to Scotland.
When we reached the gates of the castle itself, Ethan pulled the car over to the kerbside and we were approached by a uniformed valet, who would park the car for us and then a porter came forward to carry our luggage. I climbed down from the Range Rover to see we were outside a small hotel called The Alchemist that appeared to be built into the very walls of Edinburgh castle itself.
I was enchanted as we were ushered through the single entrance door into a tiny and ancient looking reception area and greeted by an exceptionally friendly and melodic sounding receptionist.
‘Och, Mr and Mrs Goldman, welcome to The Alchemist. I’m Ailish. Now, let me get you checked-in straight away as we have our most spacious suite all ready and waiting for you.’
I was blushing at being presumed Mrs Goldman.
Ethan eyed me naughtily while surreptitiously pinching my bottom.
Ailish escorted us through a narrow bare stone corridor that she called ‘the close’. It had lots of ancient weaponry and tapestries on display on the walls and a stone floor worn smooth by centuries of people coming and going. The air was chilly and felt unnaturally heavy in this narrow space. I could see my own breath hovering in front of me like a small ghostly spectre as we were shown towards a door that looked like it could have been the castle dungeon.
Then when Ailish turned an enormous key and flung open the door to our rooms, my breath was literally taken away by the sumptuous sight in front of me. The suite was stunning. It was all oak panelling and hanging tapestries and historic portraits. It looked more like a debauched inner sanctum than a hotel suite. It was also decadently warm inside after the bitter cold outside and felt all-embracing with so much red and gilt and heavy brocade and velvet.
The bedroom too was a sight to behold with a high off the floor four-poster bed draped with blood-red drapes. I spotted an ice bucket on a stand with a bottle of very good champagne sitting in it and I licked my lips in anticipation. It all looks so wonderfully eerily dramatic and gothic and romantic. And, did I mention, spooky and haunted?
I decided it was a good thing that I didn’t intend on sleeping tonight anyway.
As soon as we were alone in the room, Ethan and I fell into each other’s arms.
We hung onto each other as if we were back in the first moment he’d come back to me from the Antarctic and when I’d accepted his proposal all rolled into one. His lips crashed onto mine and his fingers moved lovingly through my hair while his other hand moved down to caress the parts of my body where my ardour was desperately aching with desire for him.
He then scooped me up into his arms and carried me over to the four-poster bed without taking his mouth off mine for a moment. Then he lay gently on top of me, slowly removing my clothes, as I desperately tugged and pulled at his so that we could be together again at last.
In the morning, my head was fuggy from last night’s champagne and late dinner and even later lovemaking, when I was woken by a determined knocking sound at the heavy door of our suite.
Two knocks, actually, then nothing more. I looked to Ethan, who was still sleeping soundly.
Then I slipped out of bed and slipped on a gown to investigate. ‘Who’s there?’ I queried.
When there was no answer at all, I opened the door and peered outside into the passageway.
There was no one to be seen but when I looked down, I saw a large wicker picnic basket.
I thought this rather strange, but also quite delightful, so I picked it up and took it inside.
Inside the hamper, I found a flask of hot coffee and also one of breakfast tea. There was a pile of warm toast wrapped in a large linen napkin, portions of butter and a selection of fresh fruit, and small glass pots filled with yogurt and muesli. I delved deeper into this trove and found sweet pastries and an assortment of preserves. This was a veritable breakfast feast.
But, I also saw it also came with a formal invitation, to eat a full hot breakfast in the restaurant as well, if we so wished. I imagined that we would because Ethan always enjoyed a hearty breakfast and had said that he was excited for me to try a traditional Scottish one.
Apparently, it consists of square sausage and haggis and white pudding.
I was rather intrigued. Although, the sound of the ingredients involved sounded odd.
However, it was still early yet, so plenty of time to work up an appetite between breakfasts.
After our mid-morning second breakfast, during which Ethan entertained me with tall tales about wild haggis and haggis-shoots and how these cunningly woolly creatures had adapted to life in the Scottish glens by growing three legs, so that they could apparently run straight on the hills, we headed in a northerly direction out of Edinburgh crossing the bridge over the Firth of Forth, towards the snowy Kingdom of Fife.
Fife, Ethan told me, was the ancestral home of Scottish monarchs as well as his own linage.
‘Fife might be famous for its golf courses,’ he boasted to me, ‘but it’s also home to Scotland’s oldest university and to countless castles and palaces and, of course, whisky distilleries.’ His eyes twinkled. I do know that Ethan appreciates a good single malt.
His words reminded me of a night on an island turtle sanctuary in Thailand where we’d first met. It was the night before we were leaving the island, when he’d offered me a ‘wee dram’ of Scottish whisky as a nightcap before we said our goodbyes.
Knowing now how all of that had all worked out, I sighed happily.
I gazed out of my side window at the white Scottish countryside. I enjoyed looking out for all the sights and places of interest that Ethan had mentioned to me
as we drove through historic looking small towns and quaint villages. Today, in stark contrast to yesterday’s white out conditions, the sky was the bluest of blue and completely cloudless.
High in the sky ahead of us, two airplane trails had crossed, and Ethan took great delight in pointing this out to me. ‘Look, Lori, there’s a Saltire in the sky. That’s just how King Angus saw it in the first Century. No airplanes back then, of course, but he saw it as a white cloud formation against a blue sky and a sign from St Andrew of sure success in the forthcoming battle with the English.’
‘And did he succeed?’ I asked, hoping this sign in the sky was an omen for us too.
‘Indeed. He did. And the Saltire became the official flag of Scotland.’
Chapter 19
From here on, the subdued northern mid-winter sunshine shone down on the seemingly endless white patchwork of fields containing lots of fluffy white sheep until, not long after driving through the town of Glenrothes, towards the gently rolling Lomond Hills, we took an unnamed road flanked by dry stone walls into what looked to me like the middle of absolutely nowhere.
In the middle of nowhere, there was another, even narrower road, a one lane track. It was only passable by one vehicle at a time and this road went on for many undulating miles. So, when I saw another vehicle coming along the same road and heading our way, I wondered how we’d both pass without resorting to one of us pulling off into a snowy field.
But Ethan had spotted what he called ‘a passing place’ in the road.
As we pulled over to let the old land rover pass, I noticed the person in the other vehicle raise his hand, so I waved back. As he came level with us, he stopped and brought down his window. The man gave us both a delighted and craggy looking smile.
Ethan had brought his side window down too and it became immediately apparent that these two men, in the middle of nowhere, happened to know each other.
‘Well, I’ll be damned, if it isn’t the Laird himself!’ the man said in a tone of astonishment.
I can tell you that I was pretty astonished myself when he’d addressed Ethan as a ‘laird’.
Was this yet another title bestowed upon the esteemed Sir Ethan?
‘Good to see you again, Mac!’ Ethan enthused. ‘How are you, old friend?’
‘Oh, I’m still going strong. Getting’ auld but not as auld as these hills.’
‘We’re just going up to check on the hoose.’ Ethan told him, pointing ahead into the snowy vista and with his Scottish accent sounding a little stronger now he was on his own turf. ‘It’s been a while. Is the old pile still standing?’
‘Aye, only you might need to buy a new roof after this winter?’ Mac laughed.
Ethan introduced me to his friend and a few more pleasantries were exchanged.
Then Mac insisted on offering us a brace of pheasant. He grabbed two shot dead birds, tied together by the neck and in full flock and feather, from the back seat of his land rover and handed them over to us as a gift. Thankfully, Ethan managed to decline politely and without offending him.
‘So, who is Mac. Is he a friend or family?’ I asked, once we were on our way again.
‘The gamekeeper. He lives in a cottage here on the estate.’ Ethan told me.
‘He called you Laird. Does that mean you are a Scottish Lord, or something?
‘Nah, not a Lord. In Scotland, Laird is just the name of the landowner, that’s all.’
Then, all at once, a tall grey stone turreted tower came into view and my eyes practically popped out of my head with shock and amazement. This historic structure had obviously been built up and fortified over many centuries and by many generations. The more I looked, the more turrets I saw with actual arrow slits for windows and cute cone-shaped snow-capped roofs. Below the towers and turrets were rows of battlements and below these where so many rows of rectangular sash windows that I couldn’t possibly even count them all.
This wasn’t a house as Ethan had claimed. Glencorrie is an actual castle.
‘Oh, my goodness, Ethan. It’s like something from a fairy-tale. It’s—beautiful!’
‘You’re not telling me you’d rather live here than on a tropical island? He suggested.
I was so enchanted that I didn’t quite know how to reply to that question in that moment.
From a distance, Glencorrie looked like a considerable monument to Scottish history.
But then, as we drew closer, I realised that Ethan had been right about the place being run down. The evidence of this ancient building’s demise and decay over the past few winters was now glaringly apparent. As we parked up, I could see that the huge oak front door was off its hinges and the lintels supporting the once grand entrance had collapsed. We went around to the side, where Ethan said it was safer to enter, into the vast kitchen area and through into the Great Hall. Inside, ivy had invaded the room through gaping cracks in the walls, but I could see there were still dusty family treasures on display. I was amazed that the place hadn’t been ransacked for its treasures, but if there were still people living on the estate and in the cottages around the area, then maybe they were keeping a watchful eye on the place.
Ethan took my hand and led me up the sweeping staircase in the main hallway and beneath the central tower. All along the walls of this upper landing where historic portraits of illustrious looking people in various poses. Some holding guns aloft while dead partridge and grouse lay at their feet. I saw Ethan hesitate at a large painting of a glamourous and good-looking couple.
‘Your parents?’ I asked him. He nodded and then we took the final flight of stairs together.
All the rooms on this level showed evidence of when the place had been rented out as a care home. There were still care beds in place but now with smelly damp and mouldy looking mattresses on them and the odd zimmer frame in the corner and old wires hanging around of what would have been a call system. The place was now bone-chillingly cold and filthy dirty and full of dusty spider webs.
On seeing all of this decay, my enchantment had crumbled too.
‘How have you let this amazing castle get into this terrible state, Ethan? I don’t understand.’
‘Because renovating an old property is costly and time consuming. I’ve always felt my money and my time were better spent elsewhere. But I agree that the time has come to tidy the place up a bit. I’m quite happy to hand that considerable task over to Damion and Gloria.’
‘Well, I’m sure they’ll have this place spruced up in no time at all.’ I said, looking around me and feeling aghast at the sheer amount of work and expense that would certainly be required. We walked around for a while longer and Ethan assessed what needed to be addressed. ‘We’ll also have to get Historic Scotland and Scottish Heritage on board of course.’
‘Come on, it’s freezing. Let’s get back to Edinburgh.’ I said, wrapping my arms around him to both benefit from his body heat and also to comfort him as he gazed around nostalgically.
‘Aye. Let’s get back. We also need to go shopping. You’ll need some warmer clothes if we’re going to a street party tomorrow night. And, if we’re collaborating with my nemesis in a swanky restaurant tonight, you’ll be needing a new dress. It’ll be very interesting to find out if my brother and I can actually agree on something, for a change.’
The restaurant that we’d agreed on for our chance meeting was in Edinburgh’s sophisticated New Town area, a short distance over the New Street bridge and across from Princes Street gardens, in an area known for its sophisticated champagne bars and casual bistro scene.
We entered the restaurant at exactly 7.30p.m. It was very busy and noisy inside.
I was a little disappointed with our choice of establishment on account of how rowdy and boisterous it was in here. It was hardly an atmosphere conducive to holding an important discussion. But then again, if things turned nasty or heated, then it might actually be helpful.
I’d previously arranged with Gloria that they should arrive first, at 7p.m.
Then when we spotted each other we would feign complete surprise.
I was feeling quite weak-kneed and flustered with nerves as Ethan and I stood waiting to be shown to our reserved table. My eyes flitted over towards those seated at the bar and at those sitting at the tables lining the long narrow room. I was looking to see if I could spot where Gloria and Damion were sitting. I must have glanced quickly around two or three times, but to my dismay and escalating panic, I couldn’t see them anywhere.
I was suddenly worried that Damion hadn’t liked the look of the place either and insisted they go elsewhere. If so, then our plan would be foxed. But then, I saw that half of the room was set out with tables and chairs while on the other side it was all booths, making it hard to see half the diners in the room. I searched amongst all the women I could see for Gloria’s striking red hair. ‘I can’t see them.’ I hissed to Ethan.
If he was nervous, he didn’t look it. He told the waitress his name and that he had a reservation. I saw how she smiled at him but then also looked a little confused. ‘Goldman?’ She questioned. ‘Are you dining with the other Goldman’s who are already here?’
My relief was palpable. I sensed that Ethan was about to decline when I interrupted.
‘No, we’re not. But perhaps you could take us over to them, so we can say a quick hello?’
A moment later, we were being escorted right towards the back of the room.
In a high-backed booth, Gloria and Damion were sitting perusing the menu and sipping wine. When they looked up and saw us, I could immediately see that Gloria was relieved as well as nervous. Although, it was also clear that we’d caught Damion by complete surprise.
He flustered for a moment and then he stood up.
‘Well, Ethan. We do meet in the most unlikely places these days, don’t we?’
The waitress left us to it, saying she’d be back in a moment or two to seat us at our table.
‘Oh no, please, do join us. We have plenty of room here in this booth. Isn’t that right, darling?’ Gloria gushed, grabbing Damion’s arm as if trying to seize control of his response.
The Next Adventure Page 23
